| Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Oct. 10 2006,16:08) |
 i dont think it's trees, I think it's runes. Daveys gone all mystick on us  |
Portuguese runes.
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| Date: 2006/10/09 11:22:46, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
|
Time to delurk... This weekend, I read Joan Bakewell's review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (here). I was struck by this passage:
Is anyone else reminded of someone? Someone, say, who's now been on the receiving end of almost 230 pages of "proof he was wrong"? Without shifting his position by a nanometre? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you afdave: the fundy's fundy. But let's give credit where it's due. Thanks to True Fundamentalist Dave, I can now speak Portuguese. Mas cerveza, s'il vous plait. |
| Date: 2006/10/10 09:16:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Dave. I missed it first time round:
Finally, a testable prediction. And it's falsified (see here for starters). So I guess we're done. |
| Date: 2006/10/10 11:29:40, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Portuguese runes. |
| Date: 2006/10/11 06:38:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||||||||
|
[quote=afdave,Oct. 11 2006,09:43][/quote] afdave:
And a couple of thousand years is long enough for this process? If you are making this claim, why do you also claim that evolution needs millions of years?
Mostly harmful, Dave. Mostly. Not always. Mostly. Mostlymostlymostly. But sometimes, we get mutations which convey a survival advantage. And then what happens?
Good grief. It's the Great Chain of Being. Dave, I know you have to quote-mine 40-year-old articles to lend support to your assertions, but you're going to struggle with this one - I think you'll need to start at about 140 years and work backwards. Dave, all organisms have evolved and are continuing to evolve. Fish didn't stop evolving after the first tetrapods hit the beach, amphibians didn't stop evolving after eggs started to be laid on land, and so on for every point on your right-hand graphic. Do you really think there have been no new fish species since the Devonian? Do you think any scientist would say this?
(My italics.) Good. Let's see this here evidence, then.
Yes, I've been following the thread. Please show me where "Talk Origins has been proven to be a very unreliable source".
Dave, if my field was paleontology or comparative anatomy, I could do some original research and send you a summary. As it's not, I could rewrite some of the existing material in my own words, but it would just be a paraphrase of the work of others. I can do this if you like, but what would be the point? Anyway, although we can't definitively identify a particular fossil as the ancestor of a modern group, we can certainly identify fossils which are at the very least close relatives of those ancestors, based on features which are intermediate between earlier organisms and later ones. Off the top of my head, two well-studied examples are Hyracotherium -> Equus and of course Australopithecus -> Homo erectus -> Homo sapiens. |
| Date: 2006/10/11 08:52:33, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
afdave:
Yes.
Yes.
The fossil record and DNA studies.
Using "proof" in the sense of "overwhelming evidence which creationists have failed to falsify", yes. Let's take "fish" as an example. Earliest fossils of a few teleost groups (from Tree of Life): Osteoglossomorpha: Late Jurassic Ostariophysi: Early Cretaceous Characiformes: Cretaceous After the Devonian, yes? So millions of years after the last common ancestor of tetrapods and telesosts, yes? So teleost fish did not stop evolving.
They didn't. Seen any Cretaceous fossils of modern lungfish?
They didn't. Seen any Cretaceous fossils of modern cockroaches?
They didn't. Seen any Cretaceous fossils of modern opossums?
They didn't. Seen any Cretaceous fossils of modern anything?
As no biologist thinks that evolution takes place through the interbreeding of separate species, how is that relevant? Where's your evidence for "inviolable boundaries" to evolution, Dave?
The "You've never been to Portugal, so how do you know Portugal exists?" argument. |
| Date: 2006/10/11 10:30:14, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
More evidence for Dave's "4.5 billion years isn't enough time for evolution, but 4.5 thousand years is plenty" hypothesis. This finch evolved last Tuesday. |
| Date: 2006/10/16 09:45:32, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
What point are you trying to make here, Dave? Are you claiming Dawkins is a creationist? (If so, I suggest you ask him if it's true. I'd love to hear his reply.) Do you think that, because he's saying the early Cambrian fossils look "as though they were just planted there", that Dawkins thinks that's what actually happened? Despite his explanation later in the paragraph? Are you familiar with the word simile, Dave? Or do you think that the obvious meaning of the entire paragraph (there are gaps in the fossil record, which mean we don't have a detailed understanding of Pre-Cambrian evolution) is support for your "hypothesis"? Something like this? 1. There are gaps in the fossil record, which mean we don't have a detailed understanding of Pre-Cambrian evolution. 2. Therefore, the Earth is 6000 years old. I see a wee gap in the argument here, Dave... |
| Date: 2006/10/16 12:12:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Dave, you're going to have to help me here. I see nothing in the Dawkins quote to support your assertion that there are no transitional fossils. You're saying it "staggers the imagination that someone could not understand what this quote does", so what I'm going to ask should be easy for you. Talk me through it, Dave. Show me where and how Dawkins says this. |
| Date: 2006/10/16 12:22:07, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
We're making progress, Dave. So there were more than 35,000 "kinds", but less than 10,000,000. And it looks like the number of bacteria "kinds" was less than that. How many "kinds", Dave? Can we rule out 36,000? How about 9,000,000? And how many of these were bacteria? |
| Date: 2006/10/17 11:11:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Fun with burden of proof, evidence, and speculation, afdave style... Eric, you have no evidence whatsoever that fresh water fish could not have learned to breathe air, grown claws, and clung to the gunwales of the Ark for a year. Why don't you try to refute me with evidence, not your speculation. Eric, you have no evidence whatsoever that fresh water fish could not have developed a civilisation, built little tanks with filters, and sheltered there during the flood. Why don't you try to refute me with evidence, not your speculation. Eric, you have no evidence whatsoever that fresh water fish could not have fallen through a wormhole in space, and happily passed the year of the flood in the freshwater oceans of the fourth planet of Epsilon Eridani. Why don't you try to refute me with evidence, not your speculation. |
| Date: 2006/10/19 06:52:12, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Seems clear to me, Ms or Mr Facts, and I agree with you. If intelligent life exists in the universe, what's the probability that intelligent life is possible in the universe? If intelligent life is impossible in the universe, what's the probability of intelligent life existing to observe the universe? |
| Date: 2006/10/20 08:46:55, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
A couple of days ago when I perused this thread, I thought "That's it. He's treed. Dave has absolutely no way to turn and he's going to back down." I was wrong. I haven't decided whther this means I overestimated Dave, or underestimated him. Anyway, Dave, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your ignorance of genetics isn't wilful. it's no disgrace not to know this stuff - i didn't know much until a couple of years ago when I started working on some genetic-epidemiology issues. So, let's join the throng of people trying to explain: 1. Humans, and most other organisms, have two copies of each gene. (Let's ignore the XY stuff for now). So an individual can either have two copies of the same allele (homozygous) or two different alleles (heterozygous) at each locus. 2. Therefore Adam and Eve were, at best, heterozygous at each locus, and had different alleles from each other. So, at most, there were four alleles for each gene 6000 years ago. 3. Regardless of what happened in the intervening 1500 years, Noah and crew were the only surviving humans. At most, that's 16 alleles per locus, and that assumes Noah's sons were adopted and not biological descendants. (Note also that for the non-human "kinds", the situation is even worse: no more than four alleles surviving at each locus). 4. We see a much greater allelic diversity today: hundreds of alleles in some cases. 5. To explain the observed diversity in the human genome, there must have been, at some point in the last 4500 years, an extremely high mutation rate: much, much higher that that which we observe today. Not to mention the other "kinds", in which there's not just been an increase in intra-species diversity, but enough mutation to produce speciation on a massive scale. Dave, which of the above five points do you disagree with, and/or not understand? |
| Date: 2006/10/20 18:35:07, Link 4.242.36.11 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Yes, Bing, of course you're right. I'm just giving Dave the maximum possible leeway, which is why I gave the Ark crew 16 alleles instead of a more likely maximum 10. But really, what's the point? We already have to invoke so many miracles (the Miracle of Accelerated Radioactive Decay, the Miracle of the >6000 Light-year Visible Objects, the Miracle of the Appearing and Disappearing Flood Waters, the Miracle of Paleosols in Flood Deposits, the Miracle of the Ordered Fossils...), so what's a few more? Maybe Noah's family were megaploid. |
| Date: 2006/10/26 07:03:00, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Dave, let's try this "Churchill/white noise" stuff another way. Nothing about mathematics, compressibility or Shannon. Imagine you're sitting there listening to a Winston Churchill speech. You're having no problems understanding it - there's information in the speech which you're able to process. But then, while Churchill continues his speech, Franklin Roosevelt starts talking about something completely different. Now there's twice as much information, but it's quite difficult to keep track of what they're both saying. Then Charles de Gaulle joins in. Even more information. Even harder to understand. One by one, other people start speaking. Every time someone starts, they're adding more information to what you're hearing. But it's now becoming impossible to make sense of anything - all you can hear is the babble of thousands of people talking at once. You're overwhelmed with information. Eventually, everyone in the world is talking - billions of people, all adding information to what you're hearing. But what you're hearing sounds like... white noise! Does that help? |
| Date: 2006/10/31 08:47:56, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
1) Radiometric dating, varves, dendrochronology, ice cores... leave my "hypothesis" deader than Dead Deady McDead, the deadest man in Death Valley, on the Day of the Dead. So let's just handwave them away. 2) If it's written down in "historical records", then it's true. 3) There's no qualitative difference between, say, a declaration of war in the US Congressional records, and a creation myth. See point 2. 4) So my approach to the Origins question is to discard any scientific observation, archaeology or outside historical account which disagrees with Genesis, then find out if what's left agrees with it. In the event of disagreement, discard the evidence. Repeat as necessary. |
| Date: 2006/11/02 10:04:28, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Well, no. But I'd love to know how much they spend each month on fire extinguishers and replacement pants. |
| Date: 2006/12/15 13:49:46, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
As a lurker and occasional poster, I think you have a point, Russell. Part of why I continue to read this thread is the insight it gives me into the thought processes of the fundy foot-soldier. Most of the usual creationist suspects manage to perform some self-censorship, and are able to package their message in a superficially sensible way. Dave seems to lack the tact, political sense or mental agility to do so. These people are the enemies of civilisation. Having one to cross-examine can only help defend it. |
| Date: 2006/12/15 14:37:30, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
They are REAL metaphors, Dave. They are not REAL buildings. They do not pay REAL utility bills. They do not have REAL employees. They do not have REAL managers. They do not have REAL lunch breaks. They do not tender REAL bids for the REAL contract in REAL Birmingham. They do not outsource REAL jobs to REAL Malaysia. And on and on. As for why Dr. Durbin denies your claim, although I can't speak for him, I'm guessing it's because it's self-evident nonsense. |
| Date: 2006/12/18 14:47:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Even by your exalted standards, Dave, this is simply magnificent. I have some software on my hard disk. If I burn it onto a CD and delete the hard-disk copy, is the software the same or is it different, Dave? |
| Date: 2006/12/21 15:28:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I don't think we'll be hearing from Dave for a while. As we all know, Dave doesn't do metaphors. Therefore this:
must mean his sides really are splitting. He'll be in no condition to type for a while. Get better soon, Dave. |
| Date: 2006/12/22 13:18:27, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I wonder: where, on the intellectual-weight continuum, would DO'L put the Isaac Newton Of Poopy Noises? |
| Date: 2006/12/22 13:58:53, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| First 18 years in Doncaster, last 13 in Seattle, with a few years in Durham, Birmingham and London in between. |
| Date: 2006/12/28 12:41:00, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
What Steve and Eric said. Plus (same Wikipedia article):
After the Flood, and before the 25th century BCE: 1200 + 960 + 670 + 420 + 300 + 840 + 960 + 840 + 900 + 600 + 840 + 720 + 1500 + 400 + 660 + 900 + 1200 + 140 + 305 + 900 + 1200 + 900 + 625 + 324 + 420 + 1200 + 100 + 126 + 30 + 15 + 9 + 8 + 36 + 6 + 36 = 20290 years Plus, presumably, time for the population to expand post-Flood in order for there to be enough people in Sumeria to have a king. Oh, and we need an ice age too. So we can add another miracle to Dave's cosmology: Divine Number Theory. 20290<2500. |
| Date: 2006/12/28 12:53:17, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I live in Seattle and I'm British, so that gets me two beers. Either of the above would be fine - 74th Street Alehouse would be even better as it's only a short lurch from home. And to continue the intro: 45 Biostatistician Jazz//free improv/blues listener, cyclist, and amateur astronomer who's eagerly awaiting Dave's explanation for why we can see all those galaxies. |
| Date: 2006/12/28 12:58:04, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
MR has hit the nail firmly on the head. As long as no-one else gets hurt, you are entitled to believe anything you like. But if you're going to claim your beliefs are based on objective evidence, you'd better be able to produce it. One side of this "debate" is able to do so. Guess which one? |
| Date: 2006/12/28 15:28:06, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||||||||||
Time to play Count the Unsupported Assertions:
This counts as two - the average family size, plus the assumption that all children survive and have twenty kids of their own.
There's another one.
Failure to provide any reliable accounts duly noted, but in fairness this is in "support" of the claim above, so I'm not adding to your score.
But that counts. Four so far.
Whoosh! Three more go zooming by!
The Big One. The barn-door-sized unsupported assertion of the Flood itself. So that's eight unsupported assertions, plus of course the ever-popular All-Purpose Escape Clause:
Would they be the genealogies which start with "And prokaryotes begat eukaryotes," Dave? |
| Date: 2006/12/29 10:32:17, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
How much dog speciation has occurred in the last 500 years, Dave? |
| Date: 2006/12/29 12:07:17, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Dave, YOU NEED RAPID POST-FLOOD SPECIATION FOR YOUR "HYPOTHESIS" TO WORK. You need to get from a few hundred "kinds" to millions of species in a few hundred years, no? And yet, even with artificial selection designed to enhance the differences between breeds, how many new dog species have been created? |
| Date: 2006/12/29 12:16:57, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Yes, we went through it in detail. Your arguments were hunted down, shot, stuffed, mounted and put on display in the Museum of Really Wacky Ideas. Unless you now have actual evidence for the Miracle Of Water Flowing Uphill, the Miracle Of Meanders Produced By Rapid Flow, and either the Miracle Of Huge Cliffs In Mud Not Collapsing or the Miracle Of Overnight Erosion Through Thousands Of Feet Of Rock... |
| Date: 2006/12/29 12:26:58, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Yes, Dave, millions of species. How many insects were on the Ark? And the Flood would have wiped out either all freshwater species or all saltwater species (which, Dave?), so unless they were on the Ark too... But please, don't be sidetracked onto these specific questions if you're about to regale us with post-Flood ecology. This should be good. |
| Date: 2006/12/29 15:18:43, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
He "answered" this, sort of. Mr. "We're talking about BEETLES, MACACQUES and DOGS" said I was "changing the subject." From dogs to, um, dogs. |
| Date: 2006/12/29 15:49:49, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Failure to answer any questions duly noted. |
| Date: 2007/01/02 13:43:01, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| And while I'm here, Dave: how much dog speciation in the last 500 years? |
| Date: 2007/01/03 11:41:21, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
No, we're not supposed to believe that. It isn't true. |
| Date: 2007/01/03 11:51:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
What happened in the first 10^-43 seconds may actually be impossible to know, even in principle. Quantum mechanics is a very well-tested theory at this point, and it's held up extraordinarily well. This could be the last refuge of god-of-the-gaps-ists. |
| Date: 2007/01/03 12:37:05, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
If you train yourself to count really, really fast, in 10^-3 seconds, you can count up to 10^-40. But in 10^-43 seconds, no matter how fast you count, you can never count more than 1. Hope that helps. |
| Date: 2007/01/03 13:17:12, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I think this is looking bleak too. As far as I can tell, Dgszweda's cosmology is entirely based on religious faith, impervious to evidence, and indistinguishable from last-Thursdayism. So there's no ground on which to debate science. And it looks like this may be the new place for afdave to shovel his, um, stuff... Maybe we should sit back and watch the Daves throw pies at each other over speciation. |
| Date: 2007/01/03 13:34:18, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Sorry, Russell. Couldn't resist. Trying to be more helpful... the Planck time, 10^-43 seconds (approximately) is the shortest time it's theoretically possible to measure, and indeed the shortest timescale at which the laws of physics can be applied (provisionally, in the all-science-is-provisional) sense. Here is a Wikipedia article, which also links to this BBC story about the measurement of very short - 10^-16s - time intervals. At times shorter than the Planck time, and distances shorter than the Planck length, things get very strange indeed. But the effects are real and measurable. Therefore God. |
| Date: 2007/01/03 15:46:01, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| I think dgszweda's arguments provide enough comedy material. No need to make fun of his name. |
| Date: 2007/01/04 11:12:26, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Works for me. |
| Date: 2007/01/04 14:38:05, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Over there on the right, you'll see afdave all alone in a lifeboat from the good ship UCGH. Sunk without trace. |
| Date: 2007/01/04 15:07:52, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
What deadman said, dgszweda. This is the part that really made my blood boil:
indeed, you hypocrite.This from someone who has demonstrated his abysmal lack of knowledge of evolution in every post in which he's tried to educate us all on the subject. Not to mention a pretty shaky knowledge of physics, in which you claim to be an expert. Take the pig you rode in on and go back to the swamp. Goodbye. |
| Date: 2007/01/04 15:39:35, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
This is just what the fundies have been looking for. Evidence that evolutionists end up in ####. |
| Date: 2007/01/04 17:31:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
He's a lastthursdayist. God created the meteorites with these isotopic ratios. |
| Date: 2007/01/12 16:55:23, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I missed the first time Dave posted it. It seems Dave (or, more realistically, whoever originally wrote Dave's cut-and-paste) has actually come up with a testable hypothesis. Is this your position, Dave? Marine fossils will always precede terrestrial fossils in the geologic column? |
| Date: 2007/01/13 01:42:28, Link 4.242.105.36 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
So what about those Miocene marine fossil beds a few miles from my house, Dave? How many terrestrial fossils precede the Miocene? In general? Statistically speaking? |
| Date: 2007/01/16 10:17:16, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Could make for a good drinking game. Every time a DI hack says something stupid... On the other hand, I have to walk a couple of dozen blocks afterwards. I'd never make it. |
| Date: 2007/01/19 16:00:30, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
"If it's just money the IRS wants, I should have no problem separating it from a few thousand rubes." Despicable. |
| Date: 2007/01/23 14:36:12, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
"Cider" in the US usually means unfermented apple juice, unless it's "hard cider". Steviepinhead was drinking the imported Taunton stuff. I warned him about the "real' West Country stuff - it's not real cider if you're not picking bits out from between your teeth. |
| Date: 2007/01/23 15:49:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
But isn't scrumpy just a subset of cider? Scrumpy is cider, but cider isn't necessarily scrumpy? |
| Date: 2007/01/23 15:52:21, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Maybe they can invite Dembski to lead a farty noise workshop. |
| Date: 2007/01/24 11:11:29, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Avocationist, I'd like to thank you for reducing the ID position to its essence. If we strip away the obfuscation, wishful thinking and wilful attempts to mislead used by the likes of Behe, Dembski et al, it's always been driven by appeals to personal incredulity. "But it just doesn't make sense! Isn't it obvious that this couldn't have arisen without supernatural assistance?" The natural world doesn't care whether its behaviour makes sense to you, or to anybody else. It just keeps on doing what it's doing, without even pausing to consider whether you like it or not. What's more, we know that many of its workings are completely contrary to common sense (relativity and quantum mechanics, for example). If you don't like the theory of evolution, no-one is going to be impressed with the nasty taste in your mouth. What's your evidence for not liking it? |
| Date: 2007/01/25 11:25:16, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I think CharlesW* is right. Shrub does have the intelligence needed to outlaw evolution. * No relation, I hope. |
| Date: 2007/02/02 14:48:47, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| February 17, at the same ASS(watering)hole as last time would work for me. |
| Date: 2007/02/05 12:18:16, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
In which case, should we switch the venue to Reading Gaol? I like the idea of being thrown out of gaol. |
| Date: 2007/02/05 12:21:54, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| So ID implies creation of life by a load of poofs? Can't wait to tell the British and Australian fundies about this. |
| Date: 2007/02/06 11:40:37, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Can we reschedule? The Pacific Science Center is showing A Flock Of Dodos this week. Can we meet somewhere nearby, before and/or after? Maybe Saturday? Fantastic that the science museum in the DI's home town is doing this. I wonder if any IDiots are going to show up. |
| Date: 2007/02/06 14:15:45, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
They've got Pat Boone. We've got Pete Seeger. We win.
|
| Date: 2007/02/08 10:39:52, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Excellent. I've been looking forward to a book like this. It must have been quite a challenge to distil all the science done in ID laboratories all over the world into a one-volume summary. Now we have a concise explanation of all the ground-breaking basic research which underlies... What? Oh. |
| Date: 2007/02/13 15:30:26, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
It's up and running now, at least for me. Sound like just run-of the-mill server problems:
On the forum, the "Dave dives daily deeper into doo-doo" thread is up to 133 pages. |
| Date: 2007/02/14 13:23:00, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
I think I understand afdave's misunderstanding. Whenever he speaks about evolution, he sees people roll around on the floor, legs in the air, gasping for breath as tears of mirth gush forth. He thinks they're cowering in fear. |
| Date: 2007/02/14 17:46:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
DaveTard: most complimented man in the world. |
| Date: 2007/02/15 15:46:36, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I thought the truth was withstanding the "onslaught" of your daily attacks rather well. |
| Date: 2007/02/17 22:16:52, Link 4.242.33.188 |
| Author: JohnW |
| Looks like I'm not going to be able to get there tonight. Can someone drink my IPA quota? |
| Date: 2007/02/28 10:35:57, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Senator Finney's priority for 2007 should be: [ ] Get a clue [ ] Resignation [ ] A nice rest in the Tennessee Home For The Bewidered [ ] Boil head [ ] All of the above |
| Date: 2007/03/05 11:23:07, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Great Moments in Creationist Thought Processes, Episode 957:
|
| Date: 2007/03/05 11:36:01, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Primordial soup? |
| Date: 2007/03/07 11:39:03, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
|
Compare and contrast: Wikipedia on Conservapedia
Conservapedia on Wikipedia
Why do you want to learn about kangaroos, Einstein, gravity or evolution anyway? They're not even American. |
| Date: 2007/03/07 11:45:17, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
|
The tard just keeps on coming: Moon
And Long John Silver had only one leg. So that settles it. |
| Date: 2007/03/07 13:56:53, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
Hitler has only got one ball, Goering has two but they're too small, Himmler has something similar, And poor old Goebbels has no balls at all. Hitler was God.
See? |
| Date: 2007/03/08 16:11:47, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I nominate Kristine for AtBC Post of the Month. And also for AtBC Post of the Time of the Month. |
| Date: 2007/03/09 10:52:23, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| Let's not lose sight of the fact that most of the throw-out-the-non-fundies crowd aren't envisaging deportations involving airfare, a bag of cash and a nice house. They're thinking trains of cattle wagons crossing the border on the way to the camps. |
| Date: 2007/03/29 14:21:33, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Helphinstine's argument is that "Darwinism" influenced the eugenics movement, and since eugenics is bad, "Darwinism" must also be bad. Interesting. Did anyone else notice Slide 9 of the great man's presentation? Take a look at the bottom right. And if it influenced the eugenics movement, and eugenics is bad, then...? |
| Date: 2007/04/03 15:57:10, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
And who better to call for decorum and maturity than the Isaac Newton Of Farty Noises? |
| Date: 2007/04/04 17:42:35, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| Hmm... no wonder there are so many engineers (and physicists, and mathematicians, and biologists, and economists, and...) who think ID is a load of bollocks. |
| Date: 2007/04/04 17:59:20, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Now that's below the belt. Given your sample size (1), I'm not convinced you can make this inference. Whatever the profession, a handful of eejits always manage to slip through the net. I work with a lot of MDs. They seem pretty smart to me. Don't get me started on psychologists, though. |
| Date: 2007/04/05 10:27:19, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
How can biology be difficult when everything we need to know about it is written in the book of Genesis? Must be easy if just reading a few pages gives you the expertise to refute Dawkins, Gould, Mayr et al. The same argument applies to the likes of astronomy, geology and history. If we want a difficult subject, we need to come up with something not in the Bible. Betting on the horses, smoking crack or eating cheesy poofs, for example. |
| Date: 2007/04/05 11:49:02, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
More broadly, we should remember that these are, at best, anecdata. We don't know whether the people taking the test are representative (are economics majors who apply for med school typical of all economics graduates?), and we don't know the relationship between the skill-set being tested for and generic "smartness". Even if we were satisfied that these were reliable samples being plausibly tested, we'd need to know more about the distributions of scores before we could decide whether the between-group differences were meaningful. One of the joys of being a statistician is people asking me for help turning a scrap of paper like this into publication-quality results. I usually hide under my desk or pretend to be French. |
| Date: 2007/04/06 12:55:26, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Sadly, he probably is. |
| Date: 2007/04/09 16:30:02, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Priceless. Time to add another wing to the National Museum of Tard. Now if only they could find some peers to review this, they'd be able to increase the number of peer-reviewed ID publications to, um, hang on while I check... 1. |
| Date: 2007/04/16 15:25:01, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
There are some fields of medicine in which you should never, ever practice on yourself. |
| Date: 2007/04/17 15:36:03, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Richard, maybe you could print this table on the back, to help you spend your money wisely: PURPOSE CAN I SPEND ID FUNDS? Research No Press releases Yes |
| Date: 2007/04/17 15:56:02, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
And of course "the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it, and when I meet God I'm looking forward to explaining why I refuse to use the brain he gave me". |
| Date: 2007/04/18 11:19:16, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
OK, who had "less than 48 hours" in the sweepstake? Oh, right. Everyone. |
| Date: 2007/04/18 12:09:37, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| I've long been interested in what makes creationists tick, ever since I got to university in 1980 and was shocked to find out that some people still believed in Biblical literalism (hello, Mad Norman). I discovered the forum while following the Dover DI Death March, lurked for a while, then joined the afdave pile-on. |
| Date: 2007/04/18 12:19:23, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| I heard the story on the radio this morning. It seems this behaviour is just seasonal - the bats go after songbirds during the birds' migration, when there are thousands of them flying at night. During the rest of the year, it's back to insects. It would be interesting to find out whether the breeding cycle synchronises with this change in feeding. |
| Date: 2007/04/18 13:36:55, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Recent, but hardly surprising. The Gish Gallop is a time-honoured creationist tactic: set up a "public forum", tip a bunch of assertions into the manure spreader, and stand well back. Make fifty unsupported statements in your thirty minutes, watch your opponent spend her thirty minutes refuting two of them, and you win 48-2. Of course ID is not the same as other branches of creationism, because it's science, not religion, as indicated by all those peer-reviewed publi... what? Oh. |
| Date: 2007/04/18 14:15:59, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| -oops - wrong thread |
| Date: 2007/04/18 14:24:41, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| BSc in physics, MSc in statistics. I'm a sort of para-biologist, having worked as a biostatistician for the last fourteen years. |
| Date: 2007/04/19 10:55:15, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Jerry explains how to deal with objections:
Which approach do you suppose he's recommending: 1. ID makes the following testable predictions... and can be falsified by... 2. Evilushionists are a bunch of atheist Nazi church-burning Ebola boys. They eat babies too. |
| Date: 2007/04/20 12:42:18, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
On second thoughts, mentioning WAD, DaveTard or the DI here would be just too easy. |
| Date: 2007/04/20 14:44:49, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I don't think anyone over there cares any more. Ever since Dover, the "But it's all about the science" corpse has been twitching more and more feebly. |
| Date: 2007/04/23 13:19:37, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
More than several. And before WWII, let us never forget the many brave Americans and others who fought fascism long before their governments got off the fence. |
| Date: 2007/04/23 13:32:18, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
That's a really small office they've got there. I thought the Isaac Newton of Farty Noises would be taller than that. |
| Date: 2007/04/23 14:03:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
Ice? ICE? In bloody Laphroaig? I know this board is pretty casual about banning people, but surely this is going too far. |
| Date: 2007/04/23 16:42:49, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Try a splash of water. Ice just numbs the tastebuds - you might as well save your money and drink the cheap stuff. |
| Date: 2007/04/24 11:25:12, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Back on topic... Great article. I grew up in a coal-mining village, and both my grandfathers were miners. Fossils were, not surprisingly, pretty common underground, and one of the local mines had a 20-30 foot section of (if i remember correctly) tree-fern by the gate. My first exposure to fossils was from looking at the things my granddad found at work. I've known hundreds of miners and ex-miners. Many of them were very religious. Not a single one was a creationist. |
| Date: 2007/04/24 11:28:00, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Rather unlikely if your hypothesis is correct, no? |
| Date: 2007/04/24 12:18:42, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
That's the way they always play it, Louis. Two sides to the argument, both equally valid, therefore "teach the controversy" to provide "balance". Never mind that one side has a ton of empirical evidence and the other has a questionable interpretation of an old book. As long as your audience lacks the skills, time and/or motivation to assess the evidence, they get away with it. As to whether FTK really believes that both positions are equally well-supported: I'm keeping an open mind. |
| Date: 2007/04/25 11:21:17, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Absolutely right, Louis. The DI have been very clever in exploiting the "liberal" (in the US sense) attitude of "let's give both sides a hearing and see if we can reach a compromise". Combine that with an abysmal lack of understanding - among both the public and the media - of how science is done, and you can fool an awful lot of people who ought to know better. If you say 2+2=4 and I say 2+2=5, the correct answer isn't 4.5. There are many out there who don't seem to understand this. |
| Date: 2007/04/25 11:55:58, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
FTK, you're just a prawn in the game. |
| Date: 2007/04/25 16:40:00, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Of course they test and discard unworkable theories. Where they differ is what they test them against: Scientists: empirical evidence. Creationists: literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. |
| Date: 2007/04/25 17:17:14, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Creationism can play havoc with your vocabulary:
What a piranha. |
| Date: 2007/04/30 12:44:11, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I think I finally understand what they're trying to do. I've seen a lot of wacky arguments in support of a lot of wacky things, but nothing makes me spurt coffee out of my nose, bite the carpet and scream "Oh my God" more reliably than creation "science". And obviously, twitching uncontrollably while saying "Oh my God" is an outbreak of religious ecstacy and the first step on the road to Jesus. Maybe they're cleverer than we thought. Probably not, but maybe. |
| Date: 2007/05/01 15:06:39, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
Given the ID community's interest in farting, this seems like a natural for ISCID. |
| Date: 2007/05/01 15:29:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Evolutionist's hall of shame:
You evil, lying bastard. I'm ashamed that you and I are the same species. Before you and the pig you rode in on piss off back to the swamp, a quick question. Who is carrying out the Darfur genocide? [ ] Religious fundamentalists [ ] Scientists |
| Date: 2007/05/01 16:33:47, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Cover thy canteloupes, hussy! |
| Date: 2007/05/01 18:16:48, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
|
Creationists in space! (linked to from here. My God - it's full of bollocks...
No it won't.
So maybe, just maybe, making an analogy between the solar system and a watch has its limitations. Just a thought...
I suggest going out early tomorrow morning to look for a heat source in the solar system. Maybe it will dawn on you.
The motions of the bodies in the solar system are not that complex - the basic mechanics were figured out in the 17th century, and so well understood that Neptune was discovered mathematically in 1846. What part of F=GMm/r^2 is so complicated that we have to invoke a deity? And what is it with creationists and watches anyway? Has nothing else been invented since Paley's day in Fundieland? |
| Date: 2007/05/04 11:41:18, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| It's been a while. Time to reconvene? |
| Date: 2007/05/07 12:37:45, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Oooh - I know! I know! It's 3, isn't it? |
| Date: 2007/05/07 12:42:36, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| June 9 should work for me; so would any of snoeman's suggested venues. Or maybe the Barking Dog or Reading Gaol? |
| Date: 2007/05/07 12:50:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
From the Red State Rabble link given above:
The concurrent rise of the what? So not only does evolution=Hitler but evolution=abortion (and presumably abortion=Hitler). As many others have said, this is the end of the "ID=science" strategy. They're down to a hard core of swivel-eyed wackos and they're circling the wagons. |
| Date: 2007/05/09 11:57:47, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| The Hi-Life would be fine, but we might need a plan B - it's often packed to the gills on Saturdays. |
| Date: 2007/05/16 11:57:25, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
The majority of the population is fundie creationist? Source, please. |
| Date: 2007/05/17 11:43:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I was wondering what that creaking noise was last night. Turns out it was goalposts being moved. I'll take this as an admission that your suggestion that the majority of the population is fundie creationist was either inadvertantly misleading, or deliberate bullshit. |
| Date: 2007/05/17 14:11:48, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I'd say the term "fundie creationist" is pretty narrow, which is why you haven't been able to come up with a source for your (implied) assertion that they make up more than 50% of the population. Only one person on this thread is equating belief in a god with creationism. It's not Lou. |
| Date: 2007/05/17 14:19:08, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Two thoughts came to mind: 1. Poor, pathetic, closeted bastard. 2. I bet the men's crappers at Randy Thomas' local park see plenty of action. |
| Date: 2007/05/17 15:25:55, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Afdavium - densest, most impenetrable material known to science. |
| Date: 2007/05/17 15:28:05, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
"Do you smoke after sex?" "I don't know. I've never looked." |
| Date: 2007/05/17 16:32:12, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
You're buying 48%? Look here (evo/creo question is #12). Note that according to the poll, 13% of agnostics and atheists are YECs, and another 27% are theistic evolutionists. That to me says either "badly worded question" or "badly designed poll". Note also that 48% are YECs, but only 39% think evolution is not well-supported by the evidence. |
| Date: 2007/05/17 18:04:34, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
The publicity is all but guaranteeing him a tenured position in the Department of Apologetics at some fundie bible college. Maybe he's taking advice from The Isaac Newton of Farty Noises. |
| Date: 2007/05/29 12:50:41, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
The Cretin Museum has a chapel. So after your visit, just nip in there and help yourself to $20 when they pass the plate. |
| Date: 2007/05/30 12:39:35, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
bornagain77 gives us the hard stuff: pure, triple-distilled, illegal-in-27-states hardcore tard:
Pdf format = Pulled from arsehole, presumably. |
| Date: 2007/05/30 12:43:30, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
And from the same thread: no undamaged irony meters within twenty miles of kdonk62:
|
| Date: 2007/05/30 17:26:32, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| But it's cheap. |
| Date: 2007/06/01 14:26:16, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
That sounds like it's going to be way over the lethal dose of tard. To prevent harm to others, I think you ought to quarantine yourself for a while. You could ask us again in a couple of months, if your central nervous system is still functioning. |
| Date: 2007/06/07 18:19:28, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
It looks exactly like that, only less genteel. |
| Date: 2007/06/08 16:44:55, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Given that it's rare for people to reason their way out of deeply-held views they didn't reason their way into, I think you're right, Arden. The chair in Astropologetics at Billy-Bob's Backwoods Bible School beckons... |
| Date: 2007/06/08 16:47:26, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| Are we still on for tomorrow? |
| Date: 2007/06/11 16:41:51, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I see Mr Saboe has reviewed his own book, and given it five stars. Classy... |
| Date: 2007/06/11 18:41:54, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
But not, apparently, to anyone who can spell. |
| Date: 2007/06/12 12:40:25, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
And when did the "scientific" community proclaim the Earth to be flat, O Scare-quote-using One? Also, all the geometry books I've ever seen say that circles are two-dimensional. Of course, Euclid was a pagan, so what did he know? |
| Date: 2007/06/12 12:52:23, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Well, Falwell, for one. |
| Date: 2007/06/12 13:04:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Thank you for explaining what I feel deep inside. I had no idea I felt that. Now run along, and come back when you've found a way to falsify "directed evolution". |
| Date: 2007/06/12 16:48:26, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Speaking as a lay person (and expecting a slapping from Ichthyic if I've got this wrong): "Fish" is not a very helpful term in taxonomy, and while cartilaginous fish like sharks and rays and bony fish like most of the others share a common ancestor, they've been separate groups for an awfully long time. You and I are more closely related to a mackerel than Ichthy's toothy friend is. So it's not surprising that sharks look so different. |
| Date: 2007/06/12 16:52:32, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I think we have a performer for the ATBC Church-Burnin' Cabaret. |
| Date: 2007/06/13 11:58:40, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
Black Hole Beer: Get it down, and you'll never get it up. |
| Date: 2007/06/13 18:01:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Takedown of the week. I love it so! |
| Date: 2007/06/13 18:05:04, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
[pirahna] Could be Cretaceous, could be Bronze Age. I'm keeping an open mind. [/pirahna] |
| Date: 2007/06/15 16:24:01, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
That's the way I read it as well. And if she did mean "Theistic Evolution", then it is a religious position*, and I think most theistic evolutionists would concur. Why is speaking about this in churches so outrageous? *Edit: the religious position being the "theistic" part, not the "evolution" part. |
| Date: 2007/06/15 16:29:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Your party's been over since Kitzmiller v. Dover, ftk. |
| Date: 2007/06/20 10:08:40, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Skeptic, sometimes it's time to shut the book. All science is provisional, and the book can always be reopened if spectacular new evidence comes to light. But if someone is flogging a long-discredited set of ideas, and they are doing so for theological reasons, with dodgy evidence and flat-out-wrong methodology, do we even have a scientific line of of inquiry? Where should we draw the line, skeptic? Geocentrism? Phlogiston? |
| Date: 2007/06/28 16:35:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
There's a running joke in my family about the "Two-Bucket Award". My Dad once won a bet with a coworker who claimed he could lift himself off the ground by standing in two buckets. ("You've got the left leg up. Now pull harder on the right.")
Charles: Order of the Two Buckets. |
| Date: 2007/06/29 11:26:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
This should be saved for posterity. Two words you'll never, ever see in the same sentence again. |
| Date: 2007/06/29 15:21:07, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| At last. Time for the Isaac Newton of Farty Noises to settle this once and for all. He should ask Dr Lerle whether Darwin caused him to become a Nazi sympathiser. |
| Date: 2007/06/29 15:22:24, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Exactly. And if it's good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for the Germans. |
| Date: 2007/07/03 11:07:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Best PM since Callaghan? Now that's what I call damning with faint praise. |
| Date: 2007/07/03 12:10:38, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
Well, he was nothing special, but my point was that "best PM since before Thatcher" means "better than Thatcher or Major". I've seen unicellular pond life that would have been better than Thatcher or Major. |
| Date: 2007/07/03 15:21:54, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I strongly suspect (but don't expect to ever see proof) that Libby knew this was the deal all along. He takes the fall for his boss, his boss' boss makes sure he never sees any jail time, the slush fund takes care of the $250,000, Fourth-branch Dick continues to walk the earth a free man, everyone's happy. I think this was all explained to him before Plame was ever outed. It was wrong to let him off, but I can think of one or two others who should have been thrown into a deeper, darker hole for a lot longer. |
| Date: 2007/07/05 01:16:09, Link 4.242.33.89 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Good grief. Are you too young to remember the Thatcher years, Stephen, or has a warm rose-tinted glow already settled over the '80s? "Mass unemployment was very worrying" - not to the Thatcherites it wasn't. It was created. Deliberately. How better to increase profitability and help the rich get richer than to make several million people desperate for a job, or terrified of losing the ones they had? Still, never mind, eh? Quite a few of them still had "access to housing, heating, adequate food and clothing", and the ones who didn't were probably "parasites". |
| Date: 2007/07/05 11:40:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Ian, I think it was more sinister than that. It wasn't just that they didn't care; mass unemployment was the means by which they shifted money and power in the direction of their supporters. If people have lost their job, or are frightened of losing thier job, it's much easier to accept lower wages and poorer working conditions. I'm sure many of them were decent enough to have preferred another way of achieving their aims, but they thought it was a price worth paying. Which is an easy decision to make when it's not you paying the price. |
| Date: 2007/07/06 11:07:45, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Why? |
| Date: 2007/07/06 11:16:25, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Not quite. On my shelf, not read yet. I'm about a third of the way through Victor Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis". I'll reserve judgment until I've finished it, except to say that it's a fantastic bus book. For those who haven't seen it, the cover has "GOD" in huge letters, with smaller letters below reading "The Failed Hypothesis", then in tiny ones "How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist". I've had several people sidle up to me with grins on their faces, get closer, then turn pale and back away slowly. Which reminds me, I must get the shower fixed. |
| Date: 2007/07/06 11:26:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
"Ethics ought to be taught by those who are truly ethical." Indeed. And classes about organised crime should be taught by Mafiosi, ancient history should be taught by dead people, and religion should be taught by gods. Biology, however, should be taught by lawyers and engineers. |
| Date: 2007/07/06 11:39:38, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Titanis. Was thought to have gone extinct about 15,000 years ago, but this was more recently pushed back to the Pliocene (according to Wikipedia, anyway). |
| Date: 2007/07/06 12:30:20, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| Don't think I can make it tonight - if my son finds out I'm going to anything pirate-related without him, I'll be in serious trouble. |
| Date: 2007/07/06 12:34:51, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| After a few months of reading ftk, I've developed a magnificent set of eye-rolling muscles. |
| Date: 2007/07/06 15:44:02, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
[quote=Stephen Elliott,July 06 2007,14:19]
1. Given that I don't think there are an awful lot of economies with first-world living standards but average annual incomes of £300,000 or £120, why is classing poverty as earning less than half the average income "crazy"? 2. Why would it be "damn near impossible to be rid of poverty"? |
| Date: 2007/07/06 15:51:19, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
|
I can't find a reference, but I've seen discussions of that website before and I'm pretty sure it's a parody. It's just so hard to tell with this stuff, though. Either way up, it's magnificent:
Edited to add: just found this:
Dr. Paley? Busted! |
| Date: 2007/07/09 11:22:27, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
My emphasis. Despite our disagreements about La Thatch, I think we're on the same page quite a lot of the time, Stephen. |
| Date: 2007/07/09 11:26:23, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Possible, but built on pretty slender evidence. This sort of thing happens all the time on Amazon. Just look at the reviews of books by anyone controversial (Dawkins, Moore, Coulter, etc.) and it's pretty clear that few "reviewers", on either side, have read what they're critiquing. They can't all be Larry. |
| Date: 2007/07/09 14:55:31, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
What we learn here is that sinclairjd has a talking bum. I've never heard of any cosmologist who denies that "things change with respect to time as described by reliable laws of physics". Quantum physics does show that causality gets a little weird at the Planck scale. The only way that this can be extrapolated to mean what sinclairjd claims is through the application of several thick coats of tard. |
| Date: 2007/07/09 17:38:21, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
From the aforementioned response to blipey:
Interesting view of causality here. As far as I am concerned, ftk was a joke because of her consistent avoidance of anything "important". I like "lamblasted", though. Nice mental image. Bombs away! |
| Date: 2007/07/10 11:14:07, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I've heard of faculty people getting students to do all the legwork, but this is ridiculous. In all these years, Dembski has failed to do any of these things. |
| Date: 2007/07/10 18:18:59, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
D) offer to write a book on theology, but deliver a book on your pet subject and run away with $100,000 while making farty noises? |
| Date: 2007/07/12 11:07:33, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Chopra has killed a lot of trees already, while assembling his magnificent collection of green pictures of dead presidents. Spouting the same old crap in another forum is hardly going to shame him. |
| Date: 2007/07/12 14:39:53, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
If you have a spare seven or eight days with nothing better to do, you might want to peruse the "afdave" threads from a few months ago. He was repeatedly asked whether any corporations were using the young-earth/global flood premise to do geological work, e.g. oil exploration. The silence was long and total. |
| Date: 2007/07/12 15:08:45, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Guess I'll have to break the news That I got no mind to lose - Ramones |
| Date: 2007/07/13 12:39:40, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
That's tard for the ages, Ian. Like a fine malt, it should be savoured in small amounts, or you'll throw up, your eyes will hurt, and you'll get a splitting headache. From here:
Yup. Every mountain. |
| Date: 2007/07/17 10:41:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Finished it. He makes some good points, and although I think he makes an unjustified leap from "no evidence of existence" to "therefore non-existence", I agree with his overall conclusion that the universe looks exactly the way we would expect it to look if there was no god. It was nice to see such a concentration on the scientific evidence, rather than "religion is evil". Now reading Owen Gingerich's The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. |
| Date: 2007/07/17 11:35:37, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I more or less agree with you, Louis. I think the absence of evidence, given that it is total absence of evidence, is very, very strong evidence of absence, and it's why I am an atheist. I Just think that Stenger stretches the point a little. If we uncovered evidence that the universe had been created by a god (and I have no idea what that evidence might be) I would be very, very surprised, but I'm not prepared to rule it out totally, in the way we can totally rule out a 6,000-year-old Earth, or fairies at the bottom of my garden. (The unicorns ate all the fairies). And the fact is that most people do weigh the evidence on God in a different way to the evidence on unicorns. It's for cultural reasons, and it's not a good thing, but I think we have to just learn to live with it. "If only God would show me a sign. Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank." - Woody Allen |
| Date: 2007/07/17 11:53:13, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Are you surprised? This is going to do the rounds for decades, along with Darwin's deathbed confession, the second law of thermodynamics, the Paluxy footprints, no transitional fossils... They never retract anything, no matter how silly. |
| Date: 2007/07/17 16:01:19, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I think we can trust Louis' expertise here. On the evidence of his name, he is either a. an English aristocrat or b. French. Either way, he ought to know. |
| Date: 2007/07/18 10:41:42, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Arden, Arden, Arden... We're evilushonists. We eat babies. |
| Date: 2007/07/18 12:14:25, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Given the posting rate, and the average OE poster's degree of connection to reality, how long do you suppose it will take for someone to point out that you can't impeach a candidate? |
| Date: 2007/07/18 18:25:48, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| I recognise Richardthughes, but who's that on the left? |
| Date: 2007/07/19 10:31:06, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Until they get caught. I'm looking at you, Haggard. |
| Date: 2007/07/19 10:40:35, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
So we're supposed to worship the boss? |
| Date: 2007/07/19 10:47:27, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Let's review our favourite DI document:
Perhaps the business seminar is an admission that they've crapped out on goal #1, and it's time to try goal #2. |
| Date: 2007/07/25 16:19:36, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
It's like the difference between "Ordinary Banal Run-of-the-mill Everyday Education" and "Special Education". Reading UD usually puts me in mind of the latter. |
| Date: 2007/07/25 17:34:54, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
Jesus Christ on crutches. I'll go through this slowly. Probably not nearly slowly enough for Sal, but we live in hope. 1. Because of Doppler shifts in the spectra, we can tell that they are indeed multiple stars. (As the stars move, we'll see pairs of lines, with gaps which change as the star's velocity relative to Earth changes). 2. From the spectra, we can determine the spectral type of each star. 3. From (2), we can estimate the masses of each component. 4. From the Doppler shifts of the spectral lines, we can estimate orbital velocities. 5. From the periodicity of the eclipses, we can determine orbital durations. 6. (1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) are all mutually consistent. If the orbital periods were being slowed down by a factor of 60, I have a sneaking suspicion that this might not be the case. 7. And if that was not the case, I have another sneaking suspicion that one or two scientists (that's real scientists, Sal) might have noticed. |
| Date: 2007/07/26 11:54:31, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Funniest ID parody site on the Web. What? Oh. |
| Date: 2007/07/27 12:16:13, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Links to the usual antiscience suspects (UD, OE, FTK, Telic Thoughts, etc.), while not necessarily "nice", would be useful. Why not link to ISCID also, so we can keep up to date with all their publications. |
| Date: 2007/07/27 17:53:03, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| In case anyone else is going through a severe bout of Friday afternoon, there's some Grade A woowoo going down here, starting with Brenda Tucker's comment #195576 about half way down. Enjoy! |
| Date: 2007/07/30 16:25:31, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
Same thread:
On the assumption that Barnes & Noble doesn't have a "Complete Bollocks" section, I assume it showed up in either "Religion" or "Business". |
| Date: 2007/07/31 10:57:27, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I started to look at the main site (http://www.youngcosmos.com). Sadly, I can't get past the second paragraph without falling off my chair:
Whoops! On the floor again! This is starting to hurt. Let's try it once more. I'm going to hold on really tight this time.
Ow! Ow! Ow! |
| Date: 2007/07/31 16:34:28, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I disagree, blipey. Ftk needs Brown to be right in order to justify her worldview. Therefore, as far as she is concerned, he is right. It's what distinguishes religious apologetics (start with the conclusions, then find a supporting spin on the evidence) from what the rest of us are trying to do. And it's why I don't think Ftk is, in her own mind, lying when she says she's willing to learn. She's willing to learn new excuses to bolster her unshakeable beiefs, and new ways to handwave away the evidence which falsifies them. |
| Date: 2007/07/31 16:38:21, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
IDers say we can only detect design, and can say nothing about the identity of the designer. Therefore the hypothesis that God made the arrowheads, and left them lying around for the Native Americans to find, is just as valid. |
| Date: 2007/07/31 17:17:24, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Not if that's where he threw the dregs. Of course, ID says nothing about the drinking habits of the Designer. |
| Date: 2007/08/01 11:43:28, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
OK, who had "before hell freezes over" in the "when will Denyse say 'frottage'?" sweepstakes? Anyone? ... crickets chirping... |
| Date: 2007/08/01 11:57:06, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Because I have a teeny suspicion that my comment on ftk's blog might not go through, here it is:
|
| Date: 2007/08/01 16:06:13, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
For perhaps the first time ever, Dave's right. Keeping up with all those evil Darwinists as they go about Using the scientific method Having a theory Doing experiments Finding conforming evidence, or changing their theories as documented in all those peer-reviewed papers, is indeed a full-time job. There's hardly enough time to stop and watch another layer of dust settle at ISCID. |
| Date: 2007/08/03 11:30:32, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Well, that and the NCB's plan to close all those coal mines. Which was why there was a strike in the first place. |
| Date: 2007/08/03 12:07:07, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
The idea that "unions had brought governments down" is quite simply nonsense. I was living in the UK in the '70s. If there had been a revolution, I would have noticed. What happened in reality was that Heath called an election in 1974, appealing to the electorate mainly on the issue of reducing union influence in general, and the NUM in particular. He lost, narrowly. The unions didn't bring him down. The voters did. You're right, though, about Thatcher wanting a fight and the NUM providing it. They were already in a weak position, partly because of massive stockpiles of coal at power stations (meaning the power cuts of 1973-74 weren't going to happen). It's hard to see what else the NUM could do though, after the mine-closure document was leaked. Strike action was unlikely to succeed given the circumstances, but the alternative was certain massive loss of jobs. |
| Date: 2007/08/03 12:33:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
It's magnificent.
Cows are insects. Evidence that they are mammals is not conclusive, and is based on the assumption that nothing remains undiscovered that will point to a different conclusion. |
| Date: 2007/08/03 12:38:03, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Wrong. The NUM Executive Council called the strike. Arthur Scargill did not have the authority to do so. |
| Date: 2007/08/03 14:44:38, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
Not balloting was undoubtedly a mistake, but it wouldn't really have changed anything. The NUM was not a dictatorship, the members were not mindless automata, and an overwhelming majority came out on strike. I think a strike vote would have passed easily, although that may have been because I was dividing my time between Yorkshire and Durham at the time. If I'd been in Notts, I might have thought differently. |
| Date: 2007/08/03 16:32:04, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
That's asking for trouble. Ever read A Clockwork Orange? After this trauma, you might never be able to listen to them again without your lunch taking an encore. I'd recommend stocking up on Pat Boone before the next shift at the shitmine. |
| Date: 2007/08/03 17:18:58, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Maybe not. I expect the UD regulars to fixate on the fact that automobliles are designed, and completely ignore Hawkeye's point. |
| Date: 2007/08/07 12:10:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Wow. Outstanding sacrifice of time and neurons to the cause, Lenny. So how long did you have to shower to get rid of the smell of old garbage? |
| Date: 2007/08/07 15:01:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
At last I understand:
My italics. So, we can conclude that the political crap slung back and forth became too much for ftk to bear round about the late 18th century, and she's been unable to keep herself informed ever since. If only her stomach had been a little stronger, she might have got to Hutton, Lyell and Darwin. Then she'd be able to give the occasional semblance of knowing what she was talking about. In other ftk news, her latest whine about those nasty ATBCers (http://reasonablekansans.blogspot.com/2007/07/ugh.html) seems to have gone on to a better place. Ah, whine, we hardly knew ye... |
| Date: 2007/08/07 15:21:00, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
bornagain77 has hit the jackpot. I know the competition's pretty stiff, but this is the purest, most concentrated nugget of tard yet unearthed at UD. A couple of highlights:
Sounds like a specific prediction of QM to me.
Not just unique - even better than unique. Extremely unique! And I'm sure you've done a statistical analysis of the data, right, bornagain77?
Bill Gates: evolutionary biologist.
Why? But enough - I don't want to take all the tardliciousness for myself. Happy tardfinding! |
| Date: 2007/08/07 15:33:26, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Well I certainly wasn't claiming any of it was original. I just hadn't seen so much of it in a single post in a while. |
| Date: 2007/08/07 16:02:22, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Agreed. I think he's making the (entirely justified) assumption that almost none of the regulars have any clue what Olofsson's talking about. After a while, he or one of his lackeys will declare victory, ban Olofsson, and close or delete the thread. |
| Date: 2007/08/07 19:06:55, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
If I was more of a conspiracy theorist, I'd think that nothing causes contribution checks to be written faster than another court defeat at the hands of a pinko judge (like, ahem, Bush-appointee Jones). And as the book was ready to roll anyway, and there's bound to be some school district somewhere which is dumb enough to use it... I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and this scenario assumes the IDiots and iDIots know what they're doing, but still... |
| Date: 2007/08/07 19:10:46, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I'm afraid I have to call bullshit on this one. I've heard this from dozens of different people, who all heard from a friend of a friend that it was a Georgia/Alabama/Mississippi/Arkansas preacher/professor/state senator/school board member. It's a good story, but I won't believe it until I see a primary source. |
| Date: 2007/08/08 17:48:30, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
|
Kristine gets quotemined! https://www.blogger.com/comment....0155958
What Kristine said was:
|
| Date: 2007/08/09 10:58:46, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I submitted the following comment to ftk. As I seem to be on the shit list, I don't expect it to appear.
Insert ISCID joke here... |
| Date: 2007/08/09 11:11:27, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Oh, you poor, poor man. |
| Date: 2007/08/09 11:41:48, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Creepy, but at the same time, strangely encouraging. In order to pull off the "ID is science - it's not about religion" stunt, they have to shut up about Jesus. But because few of them know any science, and their religious beliefs compel them not to shut up about Jesus, it's hard to maintain the self-discipline to stay on message and not start testifyin'. This is going down in flames as soon as it reaches a courthouse. |
| Date: 2007/08/09 14:26:17, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Me too. I spent ten years there one summer. |
| Date: 2007/08/10 10:56:40, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
And Rolf Harris. How could you forget Rolf Harris? |
| Date: 2007/08/10 12:18:33, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
I think this reflects the post-Dover shift of emphasis from "marketing ID as science to the outside world" to "marketing ID as science to creationists". |
| Date: 2007/08/13 16:54:15, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Nonsense. Legos connect your hipos to your ankleos. |
| Date: 2007/08/14 11:23:32, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
Bad analogy. Kepler's model of the solar system (with elliptical orbits) predates Newton, and does a far, far better job than epicycles. |
| Date: 2007/08/14 11:30:28, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Finally finished it. Bloody hell, three weeks, and it's a short book. The combination of biking to work and a very cranky four-year-old hasn't left me much reading time recently. Anyway, it was utterly fascinating - filled in a whole lot of gaps in my knowledge of Renaissance astronomy. For example, I had no idea Copernicus' model used epicycles. And obviously I need to start scribbling notes in the margins of all my books, for the benefit of future generations.  I'll start with the next one: The Real Frank Zappa Book. |
| Date: 2007/08/14 12:20:45, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
We observe an organism and say "Stuff this trying-to-determine-the-processes business! Goddidit!" |
| Date: 2007/08/14 15:01:55, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
The aforementioned "touchdown" being your bum on the toilet seat, presumably. |
| Date: 2007/08/15 11:46:04, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I know. Seattle in November. Tickets not on sale yet. |
| Date: 2007/08/16 14:46:37, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Meanwhile, in the real world, actual science is getting done on the subject. There are things we don't know about dark matter. The only logical conclusion is that it's all a load of nonsense and everything's 6,000 years old. Isn't that right, Sal? |
| Date: 2007/08/16 15:49:00, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| Slugs also rely on tasting nasty. Very few predators will touch them. |
| Date: 2007/08/17 10:54:24, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Tremendous stuff. Blood Meridian was the first McCarthy I read, and I've since read most of the others. (Not The Road yet). A truly great writer. |
| Date: 2007/08/17 10:59:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
And how does the range of slug predators compare with the range of snail predators? I assume you've studied this in the process of coming up with your "better than darwinian bullshit" explanation. After all, you do have an explanation, yes? |
| Date: 2007/08/17 16:17:00, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
When the UDers get bored with the "evil Darwinist conspiracy" excuse for not publishing any lab work, they can use this one. |
| Date: 2007/08/20 11:28:14, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
But it all works wonderfully well for his target audience, i.e. believers who know little about science, but who might be swayed by a sciency-sounding justification for creationism. ?It's all about drawing fence-sitters into the creationist camp, not establishing ID as science. |
| Date: 2007/09/05 15:48:57, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
It's based on "Infinity - Therefore God." In the great tradition of "Euler's Identity - Therefore God," "2+2=4 - Therefore God," and "Cheesy Poofs - Therefore God." |
| Date: 2007/09/06 14:26:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
The more ftk I read, the more I understand why she relies on cut-and-paste so much. Left to her own devices, we get the likes of this:
Not just your plain old bog-standard complexity. We're talking complex complexity. So complex, it begins with I. |
| Date: 2007/09/07 11:11:14, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
If we could understand Goddish, we'd be able to read the DNA software license agreement. |
| Date: 2007/09/07 11:45:11, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Or not scientists. |
| Date: 2007/09/07 16:23:11, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Yes, but the feather and the second black hole would fall at the same rate relative to the first black hole. I feel a little queasy getting all Newtonian when discussing black holes, but F=GMm/r^2 and F=ma Hence a=GM/r^2 Acceleration is independent of the second mass, i.e. heavy objects and light objects fall at the same rate. |
| Date: 2007/09/07 17:10:37, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
This needs to be in the high school physics curriculum. Teach the controversy! |
| Date: 2007/09/10 16:20:13, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
I would have thought Dr Dr Dembski would drive a newer Jag than that. Must be time for another Templeton grant. |
| Date: 2007/09/12 15:07:09, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
| This person has figured out how to get anything published, no matter how stupid or incoherent. (As you're neither, you're way ahead.) Why not drop her a line and ask her how she does it? |
| Date: 2007/09/13 12:02:39, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
A nasty combination of stupidity, wilful ignorance, narcissism and masochism.
Yes, but maybe it's just me. It's not just scientific terms - I develop a tic when I see things like "very unique", or "stadiums".
I'm a statistician. Yes, with knobs on.
Yes again. Don't get me started on "the law of averages". |
| Date: 2007/09/14 11:59:51, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Gareth, I salute you. Superhuman levels of patience in dealing with the Legion of Tard. |
| Date: 2007/09/14 12:08:26, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Well, that would depend on the expected chances of success, the likely cost, and the budget of the funding agency. We could find out once and for all whether there's a black hole at the centre of the galaxy by going there and taking a look. Would that proposal be a "shoe-in" (sic) for funding? |
| Date: 2007/09/14 12:30:39, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I agree up to a point. It's true that no competing scientific theory predicts Precambrian rabbit fossils, but young-Earth creationism does, and has to come up with hilariously contrived reasons for their non-appearance (100% efficient hydrodynamic sorting, anyone?) Given the proclivities of many UD people, this makes it an excellent example to use in that context. Yes, it's a bit of a gimmick, but I don't think anyone is planning to apply for a grant to go quarrying. |
| Date: 2007/09/17 01:07:41, Link 66.167.48.217 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Well, Dave, I'm pretty confident that Wesley and Steve will allow you to respond to Ian and Bill's comments, but in case you are nervous about all that typing going to waste by getting deleted, I'll make it easy for you. All you need to do is type two or three characters to give a straight answer to my question: Do you accept the evidence for an asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous? Yes or no? |
| Date: 2007/09/17 11:09:00, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I suspect it's the much less complicated argumentum ad making shit up. |
| Date: 2007/09/17 18:35:20, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Now that the mission has downshifted from "revolutionise science and culture" to "sell books to suckers", the "Designer ^= God" meme has outlived its usefulness. I can't remember the last time a UDer was admonished for not staying on message. |
| Date: 2007/09/19 11:22:20, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I'm glad it's not true, Dave. So:
|
| Date: 2007/09/19 12:16:54, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I see. So when you cite the K/T impact as evidence for creationism:
you're citing evidence you don't really accept? |
| Date: 2007/09/19 12:17:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Nice, Wesley. |
| Date: 2007/09/19 14:47:49, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I'm in. Most nights over the next few weeks should be OK. |
| Date: 2007/09/19 14:50:20, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I don't think we can rule out the alternative "thick as three short planks" hypothesis. |
| Date: 2007/09/21 12:11:12, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
My italics. I'm looking for statisticians and dairy farmers to discuss Bayes' Theorem. I've got 4 or 5 takers so far, but only one of them is a statistician or dairy farmer. |
| Date: 2007/09/21 12:48:22, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I know it's probably a waste of time poking holes in this (as far as I can see, it's all hole) but something else occurs to me. If the asteroid hit after the flood, then all Tertiary rocks, everywhere, have been deposited post-flood, in the last 3,000 years or so. Rock formation at this sort of speed isn't observed now, so we have a few more questions for afdave to run away from: - How were all those rocks formed? Don't forget that, now you've decided they are post-flood, you've got a lot of marine sediments on land to explain. - When did the rock formation slow down and why? - Why did no-one notice all this at the time? Thanks in advance for running away, changing the subject, or claiming you've already answered these questions. |
| Date: 2007/09/21 14:03:48, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
If ID was my back yard There would be no signs of life at all - just a lot of decaying dead stuff and dog turds. Hang on. That is my back yard. My back yard is in Seattle. So is the DI. I could be onto something here. |
| Date: 2007/09/21 16:18:19, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
I predict a long disappearance, followed by a re-emergence with another, completely unrelated, "proof" of a young Earth. |
| Date: 2007/09/25 12:43:28, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
The DI is now planning the renewal of science, culture and mathematics. 1 2 Many |
| Date: 2007/09/25 14:41:01, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I don't want to sound like I think the poster isn't a complete tard, but this does speak to a common misperception about the evolutionary process. They're only protofeathers in retrospect. We see an evolutionary sequence (feathers, horse feet, lobefins, whatever), and identify the intermediate structures as developmental stages. But the organism that owns those structures isn't limping along with half-formed appendages. They must work perfectly well for each organism at each stage in the sequence - and the fact that we see something "better" in later organisms doesn't change that. Because these "protofeathers" are advantageous (if not for flight, they might be useful for insulation, sexual display, camouflage, etc.), it's not surprising that they might survive for several million years, if not indefinitely, after one lineage develops them further. We've done pretty well with protoflippers sprouting from our shoulder blades. I know most ATBCers know this already, but people who get their science from the mass media and/or cretard sources often misunderstand this point. (I'm not going to mention anyone by name. Not even FTK). |
| Date: 2007/09/27 11:01:16, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
It's early in the morning, but I predict this will be the funniest thing I'll see all day:
Well, Dave, that's certainly convinced me. |
| Date: 2007/09/27 17:59:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
If we're looking to fill the short bus, how about afdave? |
| Date: 2007/09/27 18:14:45, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
More grim news from further down the same article:
It sounds like schools will have to teach some science in science classes, but an "equal time for nonsense" approach would be considered OK. I didn't see anything specifically addressing the question about GCSEs; I hope that means the answer is "no". If wrong answers are acceptable in exams, what's the point of making kids take them? |
| Date: 2007/09/28 14:11:43, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I love ATBC.
Twenty-one minutes later:
|
| Date: 2007/09/28 15:03:47, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
My emphasis. So you did not determine "the truth" about the origin of life by looking at the evidence, but by some other means? If that's the case, can your opinion of "the truth" be changed by new evidence? If so, what sort of evidence would do it? |
| Date: 2007/09/28 17:45:18, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
"I should cheer up. There are lots of people less fortunate than me. My housemate bornagain77, for example, is completely batshit." |
| Date: 2007/10/01 11:34:18, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Let's be careful about guilt by association. Southampton is a grown-up university and I don't think they can be blamed for Crocker. Remember who taught Kurt Wise. |
| Date: 2007/10/01 11:38:25, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
After many years of lawsuits, the drinkable stuff is available in the US now, under the name Czechvar. Which means it's impossible to buy it without straining the eye-rolling muscles. |
| Date: 2007/10/01 12:05:21, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
I voted "In religion classes". It seemed the best fit. Science classes is obviously a non-starter. Call me old-fashioned, but I think science classes are for the teaching of science. I thought about philosophy of science, but I'm not sure ID teaches anything about this subject. It's not so much a misguided attempt at science as a political/religious movement. I wouldn't be averse to mentioning it in passing here, though. As a separate study? There's just not enough substance to justify this. Outside of the school setting in churches, synagogues, etc.? Well, we can hardly stop this happening, can we? Wiped off the face of the earth? Not rreally achievable. Give it time and it will just fade away of it's own accord. But given the number of long-discredited arguments still in use by the cretards, it will not go away entirely as long as there are creationists. Which leaves religion classes. ID is a fine example of political (mis)application of religious apologetics, and I think would have to be covered in any course about contemporary Christian fundamentalism. |
| Date: 2007/10/01 12:16:13, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Not with 1970s American beer, no. |
| Date: 2007/10/01 12:41:20, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Yes, but if we assume "8-10" is exaggerated in the same proportion as something else, for which a measurement of 8-10 is also claimed... |
| Date: 2007/10/01 14:13:32, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Having read the last few pages of this thread, washed my hands, and overcome the rush of nausea, I think a more pertinent question is: why did a loving God create evil, homophobic bigots? |
| Date: 2007/10/02 11:33:02, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
An assumption cannot be proven right or wrong? Nonsense! We all do this all the time. This morning, I assumed there was milk in the fridge, I assumed my son's preschool would be open when I dropped him off, I assumed my bus would show up on time, I assumed John downstairs would know my coffee order without my having to say anything... All assumptions, in the sense that I didn't carefully think through all the possibilities before making any decisions. All informed by prior evidence. All subject to revision in the light of new evidence. Just like the fossil record. The ages of fossils and/or their surrounding rocks can be dated radiometrically, and hence we have a pretty good idea of the age of any rocks that we find containing, say, Triassic fossils. That means (our assumption) we don't have to date every single Triassic fossil we ever find. Just like I don't have to check the date on the milk every single morning. But our assumption can easily be tested. We could date the rocks, but we could also falsify our assumption in other ways. For example, if we found Triassic rocks with Oligocene strata below them and Cretaceous strata above them, or typical Oligocene, Cretaceous and Triassic fossils in the same rock (as the global-flood hypothesis would predict), we'd have a serious problem. So how do you explain the stratigraphic order of fossils? |
| Date: 2007/10/02 12:34:47, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
This seems to come up a lot in discussions with creationists - they use the "bible-study" mode of enquiry, where a quote (not the evidence itself) is removed from its context and closely examined, and the precise meaning of each word of the quote is considered. It's not the way science works. Regarding this specific example: I can't speak for Erwin. If it's that important to you to pin down the precise reason why he used the word "assumes" in this passages, you'll have to ask him. As far as I am concerned, and given that I haven't seen the passage in its original context, I have no problem with interpreting this as "given that we've established the age of the components of the stratigraphic sequence, we can assume, if we find Triassic fossils, that they were formed in the Triassic period, unless there are indications to the contrary." Just like I "assumed" the 48 bus would be running this morning. |
| Date: 2007/10/02 15:11:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I can't speak for the upper crust types on the board. Perhaps Louis will chime in when he takes a break from oppressing the workers. Please see my previous comments regarding the productiveness of quibbling over word-meanings in text. Science does not progress through exegesis of sacred scriptures. Bearing all that in mind, back to "assume". You've defined it in a way which the rest of the English-speaking world doesn't accept. (Hell's teeth! Of course assumptions are testable!) Here's the definition of "assume" from Merriam Webster. The relevant part for this discussion: 5 : to take as granted or true : SUPPOSE <I assume he'll be there> Nothing there about assumptions being "not testable in any sense." I think if Erwin had meant "untestable philosophical underpinning of what we do," he might have said "axiom", rather than "assumption". In any case, as I said earlier, if your argument hinges on what "is" is, why not contact Erwin and ask him? I assume the Rovers are going to hand out a stuffing to Walsall tonight. Doesn't mean I'm not going to test this assumption by checking the football scores in an hour or so. |
| Date: 2007/10/02 15:19:31, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
You must have read a lot of the literature in order to reach this conclusion. Could you give us a few citations? |
| Date: 2007/10/03 10:54:37, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
So now we're the Church-Burnin' Ebola Family Boys. |
| Date: 2007/10/04 10:27:50, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
Would that be Dr Dr Critic-of-the-university? |
| Date: 2007/10/04 10:50:40, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Source, please. |
| Date: 2007/10/04 11:11:09, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Oh for crying out loud. Spiders which produce silk but don't make webs Spiders which make messy webs Spiders which make pretty webs This took me about five minutes. Would you like me to find you a ticket for the clue bus now? |
| Date: 2007/10/04 15:37:20, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I just changed my position on the "Dembski: cynical huckster or barking mad?" question. |
| Date: 2007/10/04 15:41:36, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I have no idea how this relates to my question (the source of your statement about the number of STDs). Do you mean "The NIH was the source of my information, and I asked them to confirm," or "I pulled the statement out of nowhere and I then asked NIH if it was true," or something else entirely? |
| Date: 2007/10/04 15:56:04, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I see. So when you said
you had no idea whether it was true. A hint for next time you engage in research - try doing the work before presenting your results. |
| Date: 2007/10/04 17:04:27, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Not "these days" - the book was published in 2002, according to PZ. Pre-Waterloo*, pre-farty-noises, pre-stalking-of-Baylor-regents. The good doctor doctor is in even closer orbit around Planet Loon "these days". * No wonder he didn't testify in the Dover trial. Can you imagine this coming up in cross-examination? |
| Date: 2007/10/05 14:33:13, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||
D'Oh and the gang pontificating on quantum mechanics? This is going to be good... ... and right on cue, along comes batshit77 with the first comment:
How very evidence-based. I believe in the theistic interpretation of horse-racing myself. Later, jerry wonders if we have ever really looked at our hands:
Interesting typo. I thought "the big bank" was where Dr Dr Dembski puts the money he took from the punters. And batshit77 returns with some exciting developments in mathematics:
This is one of the richest seams the tardmine has opened up in weeks. |
| Date: 2007/10/05 17:48:44, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
It's this kind of Godless decadence which made me leave the country... |
| Date: 2007/10/05 18:00:39, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I think lkeithlu is in the UK, where the situation is considerably muddier. What's being proposed might be inappropriate, but it's probably not illegal. |
| Date: 2007/10/05 18:38:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
If only jumping to conclusions was an Olympic event:
link |
| Date: 2007/10/09 10:58:14, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||
This comes up again and again as the creationist's last resort. See the Christopher Gieschen thread for a recent example. I find it interesting that unyielding fundamentalists are so willing to turn to postmodern relativism if it suits their purpose. The whole premise is, of course, utter nonsense. Simply claiming "I'm looking at the same evidence as you" does not mean your explanation fits the data as well as mine does. All science is provisional, but that doesn't mean all explanations are equally valid - the data we have allow us to dismiss many hypotheses. We don't know everything about chemistry, but phlogiston is never going to make a comeback. We don't know everything about astronomy, nuclear physics, geology, chemistry, archaeology, paleontology... but we do now know that the Earth is very old. |
| Date: 2007/10/09 11:10:45, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
It's even more amazing than we thought. Not only does he have access to a pc, Dave's hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that his arms are exactly the right length to reach the keyboard. Explain that, evilushonists! |
| Date: 2007/10/09 17:54:39, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I told her I must have missed the bit in the paper about the Earth being 6000 years old, and the part about special creation by a deity. I asked her if she could point out these parts for me. No sign of my comment yet. |
| Date: 2007/10/10 10:51:53, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
No, I wasn't joking. The fact that it was linked on your blog, and on youngcosmos, did suggest to me that you thought it presented evidence for, well, a young cosmos. As it does no such thing, I don't understand your reason for showing it to us. According to your more recent comment, your reason for posting the article was
So what's the connection between the Koonin paper and ID? |
| Date: 2007/10/10 10:59:23, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
That's not Louis. Louis is a supporter of the England rugby union team. While the bloke above is certainly of the right social class, he's not an ERU follower. I don't see a Range Rover, and I do see a chin. |
| Date: 2007/10/10 11:04:42, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
My emphasis. So what about that "omnipotence" business? Was that just PR? |
| Date: 2007/10/10 16:01:54, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
But they don't mimic ants, do they? |
| Date: 2007/10/10 16:38:46, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
FTK, please explain what the problem is here. Behe's argument is that evolution of the bacterial flagellum is impossible, yes? So all we have to do is demonstrate that it is possible, and (as long as our demonstration is sufficiently rigorous), Behe goes down. It doesn't matter if we can't determine the exact mechanism; we just have to show that there is at least one potential mechanism. If I claim that there's no way the chicken could have crossed the road, and you show that there's hardly any traffic at night and the chicken could easily get across then, you've won. Even if you don't have film of the chicken on the crosswalk. |
| Date: 2007/10/10 17:30:12, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Bollocks. Do you agree with the following statement? "If something is possible then it's not impossible." Yes or no? |
| Date: 2007/10/10 18:01:17, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
My italics. No need for further comment. |
| Date: 2007/10/11 11:14:53, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Jim, I understand your argument, but you are assuming that FTK does accept the germ theory of disease, rather that, say, possession by evil spirits. Is there any evidence to support this assumption? |
| Date: 2007/10/11 15:19:22, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I like this guy. |
| Date: 2007/10/11 16:26:26, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I'm taking this as an admission that your not here for a meaningful discussion, but merely to annoy. |
| Date: 2007/10/11 16:33:21, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
I don't have a reference (and if you think I'm going to google "animal recreational sex" from my office computer...) but I think dolphins and porpoises are pretty enthusiastic in this field. |
| Date: 2007/10/12 14:49:35, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
Jesus H Christ on a motorbike. Hang on a minute... No, I've checked the calendar and it is 2007. |
| Date: 2007/10/12 15:31:28, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Indeed. One tard landslide coming right up. |
| Date: 2007/10/12 16:04:12, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
It doesn't happen often, but today a UDer gets it right:
The first two sentences are a simply splendid example of argumentum ad making shit up. |
| Date: 2007/10/12 16:29:02, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Well, they gave one to Kissinger. |
| Date: 2007/10/12 17:13:20, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Thanks, FTK. Whenever I feel a need to be diagnosed, I always turn to anonymous anti-science fundamentalists on internet discussion boards. Do you do prescriptions too? |
| Date: 2007/10/16 11:08:07, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
We don't have as much data as we'd like so the usual caveats about science being provisional apply with great force here. But the consensus is that Venus completely resurfaces itself in a cataclysmic event every few hundred million years*. The surface of Venus is very different from Earth's** - it shows no ancient features and no evidence of plate tectonics. Because there are no plates to move around, the only way heat can transfer out of the core is by boiling over every so often. See here and here. Let me spell this out for the scientifically challenged*** - the main reason we think that Venus undergoes cataclysmic resurfacing is that its surface looks very different from that of Earth, which doesn't. * Problem #1 for afdave ** Problem #2 *** That would be you, Davey. |
| Date: 2007/10/16 14:03:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Here's my top one: Suppose we have a point mutation (G -> A, say), then, in the next generation, another point mutation which reverses the first one (i.e. A -> G). According to the cretards, mutations must degrade the "information" in the genome. So here, the "information" has degraded, then degraded again, but has exactly the same "information" as it started with. So how do two degradations result in zero net change? Edit: - This avoids getting bogged down in definitions of "information" - however you want to define it, there's no net change. |
| Date: 2007/10/16 14:47:51, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||
I've helped you out here by emphasizing the part I didn't (and still don't) believe. |
| Date: 2007/10/16 16:06:26, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||||||||||
| Author: JohnW | ||||||||||
Wrong.
Wrong. Evolution from a common ancestor predicts that we can arrange items, not just in a series, but a nested hierarchy. Creationism makes no such prediction.
AIDS appears to be a fairly recent acquisition by humans. But that wasn't your claim, was it? You claimed there were once only two or three human STDs. That's what I'm questioning.
You made the claim (originally two or three human STDs) - it's your responsibility to back it up, and not shift the burden of proof. |
| Date: 2007/10/16 16:26:52, Link 140.107.169.101 |
| Author: JohnW |
|
Now that biking season is over and I have about an hour a day of reading time on the bus, I've started a little project. I'm about 1.5 chapters into Volume 1 of Janet Browne's Darwin biography, which will be followed by Volume 2, and then From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books, which was a birthday present last year. (I've read Origin, years ago, but not the other three). I'll probably be interspersing these with lighter stuff, so this may take a few months. |
| Date: 2007/10/17 00:43:38, Link 68.167.191.243 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
How about this, Christopher. I won't teach morals from evolutionary theory, and you don't teach science from the Bible. Sound reasonable? |
| Date: 2007/10/17 00:55:35, Link 68.167.191.243 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
You forgot one: Punk. Teenage Lobotomy goes through my head every time I read one of batshit77's posts. |
| Date: 2007/10/17 11:41:29, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
Lotf attempts to have a rational discussion with batshit77:
There's an Indian proverb: "Playing the flute to the water buffalo." |
| Date: 2007/10/17 11:53:43, Link 140.107.169.101 | ||
| Author: JohnW | ||
|
Christopher, I don't think there's much point responding at length to your post. It's clear to me that you believe what you believe despite the evidence, so further discussion of any evidence would be a waste of time. (If I'm wrong, perhaps you could give an example of the sort of hypothetical evidence which might change your mind). I'd like to reassure you about one thing though:
|
(no relation to Col Sanders) has an online survey that I have been having fun with. Help him assess his 07 priorities by completing it 
