Biological Taxonomy - Kinds vs. Species (Linnaean taxonomy)

[Stuu]

Which is it, LilStuu?

Lilstu posted that in October 2016, and I posted mine in October 2017, so you can see how rapidly things are disappearing!

According to the sources cited in the Holy Wikipedia, it's 'more than 99%'.

Some creation, right? One that's just allowed to go extinct...

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

WOW.... just WOW....

And how are they unprovable assumptions, and how are they killers for the idea of radioisotope dating?

Stuart

 

[chair]

So, is this what you imagine the Bible is really saying:

And God made the beast of the earth after his [group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding]?​

...illustrating quite nicely why one shouldn't read the Bible as if it was a modern science textbook.

 

[Right Divider]

And how are they unprovable assumptions, and how are they killers for the idea of radioisotope dating?

Stuart

Try proving one of them, especially the first one.

 

[Stuu]

Try proving one of them, especially the first one.

I didn't make the claim originally. So before I go off on one about how we know the elements are formed in stars (apart from hydrogen which is a remnant of the Big Bang), perhaps you would care to contribute by justifying how the source of the elements is relevant to the operation of the isochron. Thanks.

Stuart

 

[7djengo7]

...illustrating quite nicely why one shouldn't read the Bible as if it was a modern science textbook.

What (if anything) do you imagine you mean when you say something as trite and meaningless as "The Bible is not a modern science textbook"?

Oh? You did not mean anything. You were just begging for attention again. OK. Well, hi there to you, too.

 

[Right Divider]

I didn't make the claim originally. So before I go off on one about how we know the elements are formed in stars (apart from hydrogen which is a remnant of the Big Bang), perhaps you would care to contribute by justifying how the source of the elements is relevant to the operation of the isochron. Thanks.

Stuart

• More unprovable big bang speculation.
• How the elements came to be is integral to whether their changes can measure anything.

It's impossible to try to talk science with someone, like you, that does not understand any of it and is just parroting what he finds on the Internet.

 

[Stuu]

• More unprovable big bang speculation.
• How the elements came to be is integral to whether their changes can measure anything.

It's impossible to try to talk science with someone, like you, that does not understand any of it and is just parroting what he finds on the Internet.

Can you explain the prediction of the Cosmic Microwave Background based on the Big Bang model made in the 1940s, with the subsequent accidental discovery of the CMB in the 1960s? (Can you give a single example of a creationist making a prediction that contradicted the modern scientific consensus, and that prediction being confirmed by evidence after the prediction was made? Surely there must be many, if it's so right. That is the job of science, after all)

Does it matter where your alarm clock was made, or from what materials? Do you trust it? Do you trust those who have told you it's a good clock? Have you even tried to calibrate it? Have you ever gone on the manufacturer's website and left feedback condemning them for not stating clearly which quartz crystal is contained in the circuit? That's pretty much what you are doing here. Wouldn't you expect them to ask you which model you were talking about, or what you thought the problem might be? That's what I have done in reply, with no useful response.

It doesn't matter what time measurement method you use. Sands through an hour glass, cups with holes dripping water like in the Roman forum, caesium atoms producing reliable microwave radiation. The only question is, if you leave it going for a minute according to a trusted source, does it record a minute?

In your current complaint, you haven't actually made a complaint. All you have done is insist that someone tells you what quartz crystal is in the alarm clock. For us to have a rational conversation about isochrons, you are going to have to explain how the origin of the isotopes affects how the clock works. I rather think it is not me looking things up on the internet and failing to understand.

Stuart

 

[chair]

What (if anything) do you imagine you mean when you say something as trite and meaningless as "The Bible is not a modern science textbook"?

Oh? You did not mean anything. You were just begging for attention again. OK. Well, hi there to you, too.

I meant exactly what I said. In response to what you wrote. I can't help it if you are incapable of understanding plain English.

 

[Right Divider]

Can you explain the prediction of the Cosmic Microwave Background based on the Big Bang model made in the 1940s, with the subsequent accidental discovery of the CMB in the 1960s?

You mean the after the fact prediction? Ever look at problems with the CMB?

(Can you give a single example of a creationist making a prediction that contradicted the modern scientific consensus, and that prediction being confirmed by evidence after the prediction was made? Surely there must be many, if it's so right. That is the job of science, after all)

Dr. Walt Brown has made many predictions based on the HPT and they have been confirmed.

Does it matter where your alarm clock was made, or from what materials?

That is one of the dumbest things that you've said.

It doesn't matter what time measurement method you use. Sands through an hour glass, cups with holes dripping water like in the Roman forum, caesium atoms producing reliable microwave radiation. The only question is, if you leave it going for a minute according to a trusted source, does it record a minute?

Some of those methods are scientific... some are not.

In your current complaint, you haven't actually made a complaint. All you have done is insist that someone tells you what quartz crystal is in the alarm clock. For us to have a rational conversation about isochrons, you are going to have to explain how the origin of the isotopes affects how the clock works. I rather think it is not me looking things up on the internet and failing to understand.

Stuart

You're not smart enough to understand the problem. I can't help you there.

 

[JudgeRightly]

That does sound very interesting, and from what I have seen of Sandbox, probably hugely entertaining.

It's actually not that entertaining. It’s pretty cool to simulate things, but when you’re trying to calculate with quite a bit of precision the trajectories of thousands of objects backwards in time, at only up to a few days per second (calculation steps), it takes a long time and can get boring quickly. And to be honest, isn’t as accurate as I had wanted, though still more accurate than I had imagined. Good for general models, but definitely not powerful enough for extremely high precision stuff.

The point of the ice cores and tree rings is that you really don't need to make any assumptions at all. Just count the years.

Again, you doing so is assuming that the layers accurately represent (individual) years all the way through, and by doing so you inherently exclude the possibility that the layers were laid down at one time. It’s question begging, and possibly special pleading.

Spectroscopy. All this stuff. This specific case.


It's the same as when you are stopped and breathalysed by the police (if that's a thing where you live). You blow into a little tube and the machine fires a beam of infrared radiation through the breath sample at a wavenumber of exactly 1055cm^-1 (I don't know that's the frequency they use, but it would be if I designed it) because absorption of light at that frequency is characteristic of a carbon-oxygen single bond, and the only reason your breath would contain C-O bonds is if you had been drinking alcohol.

So, just do the same technique but through a telescope, and look at the whole IR absorption spectrum for the fingerprint of each of these molecules. Indeed, alcohol is also found in the Sagittarius B2 cloud! If the molecules are being heated they could also give an emission spectrum. Although the BBC article says it's emission in this case, often they take the light coming from a star in the background and see what is being absorbed. Obviously spectra of mixtures are harder to interpret than those of pure samples.

27,000 light years is just over 8000 parsecs.

So according to this, from the Holy Wikipedia,

You should stop calling Wikipedia holy. It is far from it.

the techniques used on Sagittarius B2 would be calibrated using cluster cephids, which are pulsing stars that have a reliable correlation between their luminosity and period of pulsation. If you know the luminosity apparent on earth, and you know the actual luminosity of the star from its pulsation period, you can quite easily work out how far away it is. And, although it doesn't quite feel right saying it, 27,000 light years isn't that far away..! It is within our galaxy, so relatively close…

That wasn’t what I was asking.


How do you know that the light has been traveling for that long, except by assuming that A) the speed of light has been constant (throughout the universe and throughout the entire time), and that B) some external force did not act upon it, for example, to “stretch out the heavens”?


The reason I ask this is that according to my position, when the Bible says “God stretched out the heavens,” a possible meaning of that is that God literally “pulled” the light from the stars to the earth, after creating them on day four to emit light, which He had created on day one, similar to how He, as the Hebrew word in Genesis 1 implies, “pulled” the plants out of the ground (basically accelerating the growth of the plants from seed to fully grown plant).

Stuu: But I do know what DNA differences are, and endogenous retroviruses, and isotope dating,


I don't remember that.

Sorry, I don’t think I was clear enough.


I was specifically referring to “isotope dating” with my comment there. The rest wasn’t part of what I was responding to.

There is no science to be had in 'common design'

To clarify, are you talking about the design itself? Or instead referring to the Designer?

because there is no pattern that demonstrates that.

Assuming the latter above, why do things that have a common designer have to have a common design?

You only have two options left, common ancestry or intentional divine deception.

False dichotomy.

Given how much of science is publicly funded, scientists have a social contract with the public to be impartial.

Considering that scientists need to eat, and generally speaking, all people desire wealth to some extent, if one sees that one will receive more funding by promoting one worldview over another, why do you assume that such would not influence that person to NOT be impartial?

Their job is to apply the principles of science, including the probability of being right, no matter whether they like the outcome or not.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case, currently, and it is simply naïve to think that every scientist everywhere is 100% honest in all his work.


If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend you watch “Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed,” with Ben Stein.

Creation scientists are privately funded by fundamentalist Christians.

All of them? or just most of them? Some of them? A few of them?


Because I can tell you right now, it’s not all of them.

They do not have the same social contract with the public,

True, but here’s the problem with that statement:


Their beliefs are that intentionally lying (generally speaking, as there are exceptions which are the topic of another discussion, not this one) is wrong, and that God is displeased with bearing false witness. In other words, their contract is with a higher power, rather than the public.


On the other hand, those who reject the idea of there being a God (or what have you) don’t have the moral obligation to not lie.


The question is raised, who is more honest, generally speaking, a Christian, or an atheist, even considering that there are those on both sides who don’t fit the mold.

theirs is very specifically work tailored for that audience,

Not necessarily.

who demand that the Answers are the ones in Genesis,

Not just Genesis. Throughout the Bible.

no matter what the evidence might have said.

If I haven’t said it before this explicitly, I’ll say it now:


Most of the evidence anti-Creationists claim supports their position is ambiguous at best, with relatively few exceptions.


In addition, I would have to say that there is more unambiguous evidence that supports special creation than there is to support naturalistic origins.

Science is not about whether you like the unambiguous conclusions. I for one, don't like the outcome of Darwin's work. It may be elegant, but it is also blind, brutal and uncaring when it comes to living things. My squeamishness is irrelevant, because it's just a fact that living things have evolved from common ancestry.

Saying it doesn’t make it so.

So a specific challenge here would be for adherents to the hydroplate hypothesis to try to disprove it. What are the big problems with hydroplates?

I think, currently, one of the biggest problems the theory has is the explanation of Oumuamua, which is claimed to be an interstellar object.


However, I was looking at a model of its trajectory in US2, and I have to say, relatively speaking, it’s trajectory carried it darn near center of the solar system. The odds of something like this happening are, pardon the pun, astronomical, if we assume that it did, in fact, come from outside the solar system.


However, a possible (and certainly plausible explanation (certainly to be determined if true or not) is again, that it was launched during the flood, and then eventually was influenced by a TNO’s gravity and got launched on a hyperbolic trajectory that took it past the sun, and which slingshotted it out of the system.


That being said, generally speaking, a theory’s problems are usually any failed predictions.


So, to relate that to Oumuamua, a prediction is that the trajectory will have been modified by a TNO to be hyperbolic, where before such an encounter it would have been in orbit around the sun.

Does Mr. Brown outline this in his book?

All or most of the predictions of the HPT are listed here:


http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ123.html#wp4593915

You might say that the biggest problem with planetary accretion is the angular momentum 'problem'. I disagree, I would say the biggest problem is the one metre problem: accreting small lumps is easy, accreting large lumps into larger ones is easy. My understanding is it is difficult to explain how you get from lumps a few cm across to many metres across.


What should be done if either of those 'problems' is confirmed as resistant to investigation? In the case of the hydroplates I would say that the problems include a large number of assumptions, contradictory physical evidence (for example a major difficulty with the Widmanstatten crystal forms in meteorites,

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview9.html#wp27145465

and from recent discussion in this thread, apparently, a difference between uranium abundances in the crust and in meteorites),

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity.html

and a lack of a really good reason to have made that hypothesis in the first place. That is a harsh thing to say perhaps, given the whacky history of scientific discovery, but Mr. Brown has failed to displace plate tectonics from it's large body of evidence, which should be his primary job.


Do we do as Mr. Enyart suggests, and just discard the whole planetary accretion theory and plate tectonics in favour of an alternative model that requires events of much lower probability,

Probability as determined by, what exactly? Isn’t this just question begging?

which match relatively none of the physical evidence?

Because you say so?

Since we have photographs of planetary accretion happening,

Well, no, if you’re referring to that orangey disk photo that was posted earlier, we have photographs of what is assumed to be planetary accretion happening. Since according to your position, such formations take millions to billions of years to complete, and we (humanity) have only been studying the stars for only a few thousand years, there’s no way to know for certain that such is, in fact, planetary accretion.

and we have continental drift demonstrated by contributions of evidence from many different lines, maybe we should have a go at resolving the 'problems' instead of giving up and invoking a non-explanation of divine intervention.

Which part of the HPT is “divine intervention”? Could you please specify?

The one metre 'problem' should be easy to solve, but apparently isn't. The angular momentum 'problem' looks challenging, but it looks more like a case of teasing out the relative importance of several different factors, each of which is reasonably challenging. So it's complex, but not a killer to planetary accretion. We should not be thinking of zebras when there are still enough horses to explain the sound of hooves.

You seem to be leaving out the possibility that it was the sound of hooves on the ground being played over speakers, rather than actual horses or zebras.


:idunno:


There’s more problems than that.


http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/AstroPhysicalSciences.html


RE: Mars Meteorites:

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Asteroids2.html

As far as I am aware, that's pretty much all there is. Biblical genealogy and a little bit of interpretation of text.


Try this for one description: https://creation.com/the-date-of-noahs-flood and this [URL="https://creation.com/biblical...tps://creation.com/biblical-chronogenealogies[/URL].

There are other methods.


Specifically this one:


http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ211.html#wp19592175

Young Earth beliefs in general started with Bishop Ussher adding up ages in biblical genealogies.

Incorrect.


For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. - Exodus 20:11 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus20:11&version=NKJV


[JESUS]But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’[/JESUS] - Mark 10:6 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark10:6&version=NKJV


The understanding that the earth is young long predates Ussher, going all the way back to Moses, who is reaffirmed by Jesus.

'Creation science' was started in the 1960s in the US, but there is not nearly as much interest in it in other Western countries.

So what?


If anything, the belief that the earth is older than a few thousand years is what has held back the relevant sciences for so long.

How does something 'not seen' constitute evidence?

Not sure if that was intentional, but you misread what was said.


FAITH is the evidence.


It is evidence of things unseen.

It's not the kind used in science, history or geography, for example.

See 7djengo7’s post above.

Stuu: You could change my view with unambiguous evidence. How would I change your view?


I'm not sure how that would work. There is no unambiguous evidence

Good thing that “unambiguous evidence is not the standard for establishing anything..


God (whether you acknowledge Him or not) says “by the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a matter be established.”


The “two or three” wasn’t Him being uncertain. It was an indication that we should use our brains to ascertain if two witnesses are sufficient or if more is needed.


(And no, before you go there, “witness” does not necessarily mean “eyewitness”.)

for a god to begin with.

If by “a god” you mean “a supernatural being,” then....


Here is unambiguous evidence:


The effect cannot be greater than the cause.


The universe could not have always existed, for there are still stars burning through their fuel reserves. Entropy prevents perpetual motion machines, no matter how complex.


The universe could not have created itself, because in order to create, one must first exist.


Therefore, the only remaining possible explanation (and please, feel free to try to think up a fourth that doesn’t fit within the bounds of the first two) is that a supernatural being brought the universe into existence.


And because life is information based, and because information is not physical, and because

I rather think that is the point, you can't make your god testable, because that denigrates the concept of the need for faith.

False premise.

You might recall how many times absolute, testable claims have been made for the actions of various gods, and when the test has disproved the claim, that so-called god-of-the-gaps has died.

Good thing that’s not my position.

Creation science is a particularly interesting example to me, for two reasons. Firstly, they are honest enough to say that science should be addressed, but they end up making one huge god-of-the-gaps. It would be nice to think also, they were honest enough to admit when a bit of that god has died through disproof.

Again, “god of the gaps” is not my position.

Secondly, with a book full of 'supernatural' events to defend, why bend science out of all recognisable shape to find 'natural' mechanisms?

I think that you’ll find, should you actually do the research, that most of the Bible relatively few miracles (ratio of miracle events to non-miracle events) occurring.


In fact, there were long periods of time where God was completely silent.

Why not just say, Stuu, the flood was a divine intervention so you'll never know by your puny naturalistic science the means by which the world looked that way then, and this way now?

Because that’s not my position, and God doesn’t always use miracles to accomplish tasks. Often, He used forces of nature and men to do things, rather than doing them Himself.


In other words, He uses the tools He created to accomplish tasks, rather than always using His hands.

The bible doesn't even say whether it is possible to see or hear this god.

That’s because the god you argue against doesn’t exist except in your mind.


It helps to know the one true God. Like I said before, the Bible describes God in great detail. One only has to read the Bible to learn about Him. You should try reading it through.

It says in some places that it has been seen and heard, and in other places that this is impossible.

Context is important.

This reminds me of my (not very robust) argument against the existence of a deity. The universe appears beautiful to me.

Then why is it not a possibility that there is One who created it Who is even more beautiful?

Part of that beauty is the innocence of its origins: what you see is what happens when physical principles such as the properties of space-time are played out in practice.

Why do you not think that it was designed that way?

If there is a divine meddler pulling the strings where no one can see, then the universe is not knowable,

Why? and in what way?

and an important part of the beauty is the fact that the universe can be known.

https://americanrtl.org/Einstein

After all, it's quite remarkable that it made something (us) capable of thinking about itself.

Why do you assume that we, beings who are comprised of both physical and non-physical parts (to use the term loosely) could have arisen from a purely physical universe? My point being that there is not one law of physics or chemistry that could in any way give rise to, for example, information or a symbolic logic function. In other words, there are no symbolic logic functions in any of the laws of physics or chemistry, yet information, which is not physical, clearly exists.

Of course things could be either way, but the meddled version is less beautiful for being the deception it must be, and the universe looks far too full of beauty for that.

Beauty is not physical, and therefore cannot originate in something that cannot give rise to anything non-physical.

That's why you pay attention to unambiguous evidence.

There you go with that “unambiguous” bit again.


Evidence is evidence, ambiguous or not.


What you are doing is special pleading, ignoring the evidence against your side because it is not “unambiguous.”

They do know the difference, it is a basic part of the scientific method to remove assumptions

Something which scientists seem to ignore, seeing as they make plenty of assumptions when doing their experiments.

Science makes many mistakes.

I’m glad you admit that such does occur.

Most are never published, but many are.

Seems to me that hiding one’s mistakes does not allow for growth of the scientific community.


Maybe scientists (on both sides) should publish more of their failed results…


Would certainly help everyone be more honest.

There is quite a severe and rude correction mechanism though, in peer review and competition for reputation and prestige.

I’m personally not a fan of peer review.


Science shouldn’t be done on popularity (a contest which is what it has inevitably turned into, which people use to obtain grant money to continue their research and maintain their living standards.


It should be done out of a desire to discover the truth about our universe.


No, I’m not saying that for many scientists this isn’t the goal, but simply that it’s not the primary reason for many to do the science.

If you knew how to disprove plate tectonics, for example, what you should do is explain it to a young geologist so they may benefit from all the prizes and attention.

Good thing it’s been done, but is largely ignored because “creationist.”


Please explore “plate tectonic theory” on this page http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningIX18.html (Please excuse any broken links. Fixes are in the works, but it’s taking some time as there are other things going on presently).

There could be no more better career boost, to say the least.

Too bad that “consensus” shuns creationist science from gaining traction…


(Because the majority is wicked, and consensus is just an agreement of the majority of people on a topic.

Of course, your passed-on evidence would have to be capable of withstanding the most perishing scrutiny because of the size of the old egos involved in geology.

Good thing truth is not determined by consensus or the size of one’s ego.

And that's what the modern scientific consensus consists of: it is the result of many years of territories fought over, egos played out, constant attempts to tear to shreds any evidence claimed, and occasionally even respectful international cooperation with robust discussion...so eventually the theory is finally agreed because it is logically watertight and based on unambiguous evidence.

That’s just wishful thinking.


Money is plenty of motivation for many, and is probably one of the biggest factors in what science is done and by whom.

[rant] It is also chilling to note that 'public' creationists don't try to give presentations to staff in university geology or biology departments, who have the knowledge to balance out whatever arguments are presented. No, these particular creationists are despicable cowards because they know they will be demonstrated wrong, so instead they have targeted schools with young people unarmed to defend themselves against the torrent of intellectual sewage and sleight-of-hand those particular creationists have made their trade.


At least adults can turn off Bob Enyart's show, or if it's piped into rest homes then the elderly residents can bash the radios with their sticks [/rant]...but I digress.

:blabla:

I know of no example of a creation scientist correcting a mistake in non-creation science. Surely there must be some. Do you know of any?

To answer something you said recently that ties into this regarding predictions creationists have made that were verified in opposition to secular predictions on the same topic...


I can think of two off the top of my head:


The first is the design of the Lunar Lander Module’s feet, which is the design that was kept, but wasn’t actually needed.


A discussion was had in the early stages of designing the LLM about how thick the dust on the surface of the moon was. Even at 1/6th Earth’s gravity, the LLM was heavy enough that if there was any significant amount of dust it would sink into the dust and cause problems. The reasoning was that, based on the model of those who rejected a young earth, the moon should have a deep layer of lunar dust on the surface, but the model of those who believed the earth was young said that there would NOT be a deep layer of dust. If I remember correctly, by the time the matter was settled, it was too late to make any changes, and so the large feet were left on the LLM, and it when it landed, the secular model’s prediction was falsified, that the layer of dust was NOT deep, but extended maybe a few inches in places.


The second is the prediction of the apparent age of especially far away galaxies.

The big bang predicts that when telescopes peer especially far into outer space, they should see only infant galaxies. Why? Because if the universe is 13.8 billion years old, light traveling toward us for 12 billion years would show galaxies as they existed in the early stage of the universe, just after galaxies had begun forming. Instead though, as we have been documenting for two decades, astronomers are repeatedly "startled" and "baffled" (per the journal Science) to see exactly what the big bang predicts should not exist. For many of the most distant (i.e., allegedly "youngest") galaxies look just like the Milky Way and the oldest galaxies that are all around us! Just in time for our 2014 RSR big bang program, the Carnegie Observatories: "discovered 15 [more] massive, mature galaxies located where they shouldn't be: at an average distance of 12 billion light years away from Earth." Such discoveries prove wrong Neil deGrasse Tyson and his claim last week that we creationists cannot not make predictions, as any glance at our RSR Predictions and our confirmed predictions shows. In 2005 a cover story Science News stated, "Imagine peering into a nursery and seeing, among the cooing babies, a few that look like grown men. That's the startling situation that astronomers have stumbled upon as they've looked deep into space and thus back to a time when newborn galaxies filled the cosmos. Some of these babies have turned out to be nearly as massive as the Milky Way and other galactic geezers that have taken billions of years to form." Finally, in 1995, as NASA was preparing to publish their first Hubble Deep Field Image, As a biblical creationist, Bob Enyart predicted that NASA and the entire big bang community of astronomers, physicists and astrophysicists, would all be wrong, because the furthest galaxies would look just like nearby galaxies regarding apparent age. Learn more here (link not working), here, here, here, and here!

(Working links present on page, fixed link here, broken link noted here)

https://kgov.com/writings/rsrs-big-list

I recommend not doing that. Use unambiguous evidence instead.

Supra: “special pleading”

Stuu: Tell me how the hydroplate hypothesis keeps the Himalayas up?

That’s not what you said.


Please refrain from dishonest wording.

Well, the massive height of the Himalayas and large extent of the Tibetan plain is due to subduction of the Indian tectonic plate under the Eurasian plate. The reason this kind of large-scale, high force action is possible is because tectonic plates are moved across the mantle by convection in magma,

See “plate tectonic theory” in the above link.

which is a sort of liquid that moves at about the rate of fingernail growth, and has reasonable traction as its constitution is a bit like plasticine. In the case of the Indian plate, a faster rate of movement could be due to it being a thinner plate, in turn due to the action of a hotspot, so the details make this a slightly exceptional case. But wayway, crucially the Indian plate has also been dragged under the Eurasian plate by the action of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction"]subduction[/URL]

I’m aware of what subduction is.


Could you explain, please, how a plate “dives” underneath another, when such plates are tens of miles thick?


Just a general explanation please, because as far as I can tell, such an event could never happen due to the sheer weight of the plates.

But in Mr. Brown's hypothesis, if I have it right,

Doesn’t seem that you do.

the Himalayas are made of three hydroplates that glided across lubricating water over a matter of hours and pushed each other up at the edges. Perhaps we would agree on this diagram from Wikipedia (which describes plate tectonics, but perhaps hydroplates too):

So my question is, if the Himalayas are the result of hours of collision of water-lubricated sliding plates, even with draining of water, what stopped the hydroplates from being lubricated to slide away from one another again?

Because of a process that lasted for a lot longer than a few hours.


http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningIX18.html


See also “Mid-Atlantic Ridge” and “Mid-Oceanic Ridge” entries here:

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningIX15.html

We are not talking about trivial amounts of elastic energy stored in the rocks in that collision: the forces acting in the direction opposite to that of the collision are probably too much even for convecting magma to hold up, let along lubricating water, without the effect of the subduction zone pulling on the plate.

See above.

I have another, more theological question about the hydroplates. Why would the god of the Judeo-christian scriptures build in a flood mechanism during the creation of the earth, before the events of Genesis 3?

In case His creation rebelled against Him.


Perhaps this is oversimplifying it a bit, but, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.


God is smart enough to know how to prepare for events that may or may not happen.

Did this god know already what would go wrong with creation,

No. But He knew it was a possibility.

and what wide-scale slaughter by drowning would be required?

Had man not rebelled, the crisis could have been averted.


The way God designed the earth, including the mechanism by which He could destroy it should man rebel, was such that God would not have to do anything at all, except leave man to his own devices for a period of time.

Or, you can lead a non-believer to the Kool Aid but cannot make him drink?

Ever considered that you’re the one drinking the Kool Aid? Serious question.

Let's not forget the religious motivation of the victims of the Jonestown delusion.

In what way is this relevant to this discussion?

I don't see atheists and agnostics behaving like that, motivated by their non-belief.

Behaving delusionally?


I see it all the time, especially by those who are supposedly at the top of the scientific hierarchy. *cough* Richard Dawkins *cough*

 

[Right Divider]

All or most of the predictions of the HPT are listed here:

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ123.html#wp4593915

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview9.html#wp27145465

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity.html

Odd that he's having so much trouble finding information on the HPT, since the book is online and he's been given many links into it.

Well, no, if you’re referring to that orangey disk photo that was posted earlier, we have photographs of what is assumed to be planetary accretion happening. Since according to your position, such formations take millions to billions of years to complete, and we (humanity) have only been studying the stars for only a few thousand years, there’s no way to know for certain that such is, in fact, planetary accretion.

He constantly repeats his "theories" as if they're facts.

 

[7djengo7]

I meant exactly what I said. In response to what you wrote.

You wrote nonsense in reaction to what I wrote. So, I guess you're telling me you meant nonsense.

​

I can't help it if you are incapable of understanding plain English.

I can't help it that you are incapable of using English meaningfully.

 

[Stuu]

Part I: Science

Again, you doing so is assuming that the layers accurately represent (individual) years all the way through, and by doing so you inherently exclude the possibility that the layers were laid down at one time. It’s question begging, and possibly special pleading.

As I mentioned in a reply to RD, it's the only reasonable inference. The layers are differentiated visually for tens of thousands of years. The annual nature of the layers can be directly calibrated, for example by the characteristic ash deposited by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79CE (different volcanoes blast their glass fragments in different ways). Species of plant that pollinate annually leave annual markers, and the summer-winter cycle changes the proportion of water with 18-O that evaporates then forms snow, giving a distinct annual cycle of that marker. In the higher, less mushed together layers you get alternating crystal formations that correspond to winter-summer cycles. A model that proposed the layers all being deposited at once would have to give a mechanism for each of those individual observations, and explain why the layers contain distinctly changing gas compositions in the bubbles.

How do you know that the light has been traveling for that long, except by assuming that A) the speed of light has been constant (throughout the universe and throughout the entire time), and that B) some external force did not act upon it, for example, to “stretch out the heavens”?

The speed of light is the speed of anything with zero mass through empty space, so you would have to have the properties of space-time and matter alter to have the speed of light change. The wavelength of the light changes as space-time expands, and that is why the high-energy light produced by the Big Bang is now 'stretched' so it appears in the microwave part of the spectrum. But the speed hasn't changed. There are so many relationships that involve the speed of light as a constant that it would be difficult to tease out all the implications of that. Probably the most directly problematic consequence would be the stability of matter.

But the universe has expanded since the first measurements of the speed of light were taken, and it hasn't changed. Early methods give values above and below the current value, but the accuracy has been good enough for the last few decades to demonstrate that it's stable. If you have one, catastrophic event in mind that made one large change then forget it. There was no matter like we have before whatever event that was.

The reason I ask this is that according to my position, when the Bible says “God stretched out the heavens,” a possible meaning of that is that God literally “pulled” the light from the stars to the earth, after creating them on day four to emit light, which He had created on day one, similar to how He, as the Hebrew word in Genesis 1 implies, “pulled” the plants out of the ground (basically accelerating the growth of the plants from seed to fully grown plant).

Well you have me at a disadvantage there, because I my pockets don't contain the same miracle cards to pull out!

Stuu: There is no science to be had in 'common design'

To clarify, are you talking about the design itself? Or instead referring to the Designer?

Stuu: because there is no pattern that demonstrates that.

Assuming the latter above, why do things that have a common designer have to have a common design?

It's a very good question. This is a response to what I percieve to be a widely-held creationist belief, and perhaps I have made a strawman of your view, for which I would apologise. In any case, the argument is usually that you would expect to find similarities between living things, whether or not they are the same kind, because it is good practice to reuse (DNA) code, or same designer, similar design, and variations on that.

So my usual answer is to ask if that is a creationist prediction: would you expect the same job to be done in the same way in different animals because of common design? This idea fails on testing because many features do use pretty much exactly the same code, but many other features have 'designs' that achieve the same function quite differently. Not all male mammals have nipples; cephalopod eyes are wired differently from human eyes, even though fish, living in the same environment as cephalopods, have eyes wired the same as humans.

Most of the evidence anti-Creationists claim supports their position is ambiguous at best, with relatively few exceptions.

I agree that because a lot of the discussion you might hear from scientists working in different fields is on the cutting edge, where they work, generally new evidence is far from unambiguous. But we are not discussing very much of that here. Mostly it is unambiguously supported ideas that are long established. They require pretty substantial contradictory evidence to overturn, and I don't see it happening on these pages.

In addition, I would have to say that there is more unambiguous evidence that supports special creation than there is to support naturalistic origins.

You would need unambiguous evidence of a special creator. Do you have any? It would also help to have a theory of creation. Mr. Brown has a story. He alternates it with descriptions of science, but the story is not science.

I think, currently, one of the biggest problems the theory has is the explanation of Oumuamua, which is claimed to be an interstellar object. .However, I was looking at a model of its trajectory in US2, and I have to say, relatively speaking, it’s trajectory carried it darn near center of the solar system. The odds of something like this happening are, pardon the pun, astronomical, if we assume that it did, in fact, come from outside the solar system. However, a possible (and certainly plausible explanation (certainly to be determined if true or not) is again, that it was launched during the flood, and then eventually was influenced by a TNO’s gravity and got launched on a hyperbolic trajectory that took it past the sun, and which slingshotted it out of the system. That being said, generally speaking, a theory’s problems are usually any failed predictions. So, to relate that to Oumuamua, a prediction is that the trajectory will have been modified by a TNO to be hyperbolic, where before such an encounter it would have been in orbit around the sun.

Oumuamua was certainly moving at interstellar kinds of speeds. I sense that the public who read about it believe that NASA can just prevent fast-moving objects threatening the earth no problem. Maybe we have collectively missed the point that, as I understand it, Oumuamua was not detected until 33 million kilometres after its perihelion. Eek! But well, as you suggest, what are the chances?

What do you think of 2I/Borisov? An interstellar comet? At least we (Borisov) saw that one coming!

All or most of the predictions of the HPT are listed here

I acknowledge your provision of links. The only one that gave me directly relevant material was the list of predictions. I don't think it is right to claim there aren't good explanations for these phenomena, because clearly there are.

Probability as determined by, what exactly? Isn’t this just question begging?

What probabilities would you assign to each of these proposed mechanisms for setting off the flood?

1. Lunar pumping created enough pressure to cause a spontaneous rupture
2. A god responding to sinfulness
3. Humans drilling into the earth
4. Humans failing to drill into the earth

Stuu: Since we have photographs of planetary accretion happening,

Well, no, if you’re referring to that orangey disk photo that was posted earlier, we have photographs of what is assumed to be planetary accretion happening. Since according to your position, such formations take millions to billions of years to complete, and we (humanity) have only been studying the stars for only a few thousand years, there’s no way to know for certain that such is, in fact, planetary accretion.

(Not billions of years for planetary accretion).

There is no way to know for certain that there was a global flood a few thousand years ago, right? The probability is not 100%.

Anyway, how about this photograph of the solar system of the young dwarf star PSD70 (obscured intentionally), which shows a young planet with a distinctly visible dark band from which accreted material has been removed:

Which part of the HPT is “divine intervention”? Could you please specify?

https://www.creationscience.com/onli...tml#wp19727119
Because of the depth of man’s sin¹ (Genesis 6:5–6), God destroyed the Earth by a flood.

How is that not divine intervention?

You seem to be leaving out the possibility that it was the sound of hooves on the ground being played over speakers, rather than actual horses or zebras.

Yes, that could have a similar probability to live horses, or to live zebras. Maybe the saying about horses and zebras should give a list of properly analysed candidate explanations of decreasing probability...even if the wit due to brevity is lost...

There’s more problems than that. http://www.creationscience.com/onlin...lSciences.html

You would have to be more specific about what problem is claimed on that page.

There are other methods. Specifically this one:http://www.creationscience.com/onlin...tml#wp19592175

This is a surprisingly entertaining page. I can see the appeal. One fallacy of course is in the prior assumption of a window of time inside which a result would be acceptable. And that window is based on the bible, presumably genealogies? But on this calculation alone, the flood could have been the previous time of simultaneous perihelion, or the previous one to that, and so on. Mr. Brown acknowledges the difficulties of this kind of calculation over many comets, but that is what he would need to do to be convincing. Have I missed the significance of this? How many comets are near to perihelion at any given time? Last year there were nine Halley-type comets passing through perihelion.

If you could first establish independently that the comets did all come from the earth at the same time, then this would be a legitimate way to give a list of possible dates for that event. If you could also establish independently that the earth is only a few thousand years old, then the particular cycle of the event would be more reliable. But neither of those other claims have been established, so this remains a quaint exercise in circular logic.

RE: Mars Meteorites: http://www.creationscience.com/onlin...steroids2.html

The trans-Neptunian Objects say back to you, who are you calling a maverick??

This reference shows a good example of Mr. Brown's slight-of-hand, which is: if you are prepared to accept <fantasy assumption> then it is entirely consistent with this <description of science that may or may not be relevant>.

So, wait just a minute there. What is the probability of that assumed event of mass ejection from a thousands-times-nuked planet being a reasonable deduction based on the weight of claimed evidence? It's pretty low actually, isn't it.

I'll have a go (I'm not as good as Mr. Brown at this, remember): As I stand and throw a rock into space from here on the surface of the earth, and assuming that rock has traveled at earth's escape velocity plus a reasonable 30 metres per second in excess, then that rock would not arrive in the asteroid belt for just shy of 200 years. Now, the rock was thrown hard enough to achieve a net speed after achieving earth escape thus picking up considerable heat through friction with the atmosphere. Since convection and conduction losses are not possible in space, the only heat loss mechanism is radiation, which on earth accounts for a trifling percentage of the heat lost from an object by these three mechanisms working together. So the rock, already heated, spent 200 years gaining far more solar radiation than it was able to lose, and by the time it got to the asteroid belt it was molten. Many asteroids today show their former molten state, with their characteristic smooth peanut shape.

How am I doing so far?

If anything, the belief that the earth is older than a few thousand years is what has held back the relevant sciences for so long.

And which science has been held back in what way? If the earth is a few thousand years old then nothing in science is right. That's pretty much the scale of Mr. Brown's claim. Essentially, everything we observe is this way because of the events of a global flood, but one that, despite Mr. Brown's claims, appears to have left no trace whatever.

Good thing that “unambiguous evidence is not the standard for establishing anything..

Well it is if you wish to convince me. A large degree of confidence in a claim must be matched by evidence that promotes that one explanation to a significantly higher probability than any other competing explanation.

Please explore “plate tectonic theory” on this page http://www.creationscience.com/onlin...nningIX18.html (Please excuse any broken links. Fixes are in the works, but it’s taking some time as there are other things going on presently).

What am I looking for on these pages? I could come back later if it will be easier to navigate.

I can think of two [examples of creationists correcting non-creationist mistakes] off the top of my head:

[On creationist warnings about the thinness of moon dust]

Interesting example. I don't know much about that detail so I looked for photographs of the Apollo 11 LM and later LMs. I couldn't see the design clearly but the feet looked the same on the later LMs. Is it possible that they had a different reason for maintaining the same leg and foot design? They had kept looking for weight reductions and I would have thought that if the feet didn't need to be that big then they would have reduced the size pretty promptly.

You might be interested in these:

See here for a review of investigations into dust depth in relation to space travel and moon landings.
This creationist site warns creationists against moon dust arguments.

The second is the prediction of the apparent age of especially far away galaxies.

Do you have a timeline of predictions that demonstrates this?

Stuu: ...what stopped the hydroplates from being lubricated to slide away from one another again?

Because of a process that lasted for a lot longer than a few hours. http://www.creationscience.com/onlin...nningIX18.html
See also “Mid-Atlantic Ridge” and “Mid-Oceanic Ridge” entries here:

http://www.creationscience.com/onlin...nningIX15.html

I'm sorry to say that I don't find any of this intellectually satisfying at all. I guess Mr. Brown is writing at a popular science level as he seeks to convince people of new, quite technical ideas. It's close to Gish Gallop, but not quite because he does try to insert science as he goes. But see my mockery above for why I believe it's not credible even at a popular level.

I think the main issue with this page, from a reader's point of view is that people who have read about tectonic plates will know that actually this is a list of phenomena that are quite well explained. Perhaps there are anomalous details in some situations, but the principles of tectonic plates have been established since the 1950s and don't look in any particular danger to me.

"Many of the Earth’s Previously Unexplained Features Can Be Explained by a Cataclysmic Flood" could be more convincing if it read 'many of the earth's features are more effectively explained by a catastrophic flood event'. Of course I remain skeptical of this claim, obviously.

I imagine you might still be working on the sequences of the content so perhaps I should get back to it later.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

Part II: Scientific honesty

Considering that scientists need to eat, and generally speaking, all people desire wealth to some extent, if one sees that one will receive more funding by promoting one worldview over another, why do you assume that such would not influence that person to NOT be impartial?

There is a nice example relevant to this in Neil Tyson's book Letters from an Astrophysicist in which he receives an outraged note from a fellow astronomer about a proposal by the US Air Force to spend $7.5 million researching psychic teleportation. Tyson responds with a list of five historical bad predictions about the future of transportation and then points out that there is a military budget of $400 billion and that the Air Force, choosing good value for money, will be responsible with the $7.5 million because if it doesn't work they won't pay for it again.

So the idea that religious claims have not been impartially investigated is not really founded in fact. There have been many studies into the efficacy of intercessional prayer, for example. When the data is reviewed in a meta analysis there is never any positive effect evident. It is better not to know people are praying for you, because according to the data that gives you a slightly increased risk of dying from post-surgical complications. Anyway, should further money be spent on prayer? Subject to new, compelling observations, no. The same is true in other pseudosciences (sorry, but that is the status of creationism: the ideas are well tested and rejected) like homeopathy. Homeopathy has been studied, and as expected, no effect is found above placebo. It is obviously worth studying the placebo effect, but obviously not worth studying homeopathy any further. But this leads to complaints from homeopathy enthusiasts that there is a conspiracy against doing further study, which of course is nonsense.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case, currently, and it is simply naïve to think that every scientist everywhere is 100% honest in all his work.

Well, I will agree with you, especially if we include 'creation scientists'. The first case that springs to mind is that of Andrew Wakefield, who was ostensibly an honest doctor and medical researcher. But he turned out to be a crazy anti-vaxxer, with many deaths on his hands as a result of his dishonest paper about MMR vaccine and autism, which was so poor scientifically that it should never have been published. It is the system of science generally that has responsibility for ensuring that this kind of thing doesn't happen, and in this case I don't know but perhaps it was a failure of peer review.

If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend you watch “Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed,” with Ben Stein.

I have seen it, maybe not the whole thing. Tell me it wasn't pushing its own agenda much more dishonestly than anything it was claiming to be dishonest!

Stuu: Creation scientists are privately funded by fundamentalist Christians.

All of them? or just most of them? Some of them? A few of them? Because I can tell you right now, it’s not all of them.

Perhaps I should be clear that I mean the ones who are called 'creation scientists' like the ones who write for AiG or ICR, or lie to children in schools, and the like. I don't mean scientists working in research generally: such a scientist may harbour a personal commitment to a young earth, for example, but that doesn't bear any relevance to the research being undertaken so isn't an example of a 'creation scientist'.

The same would be true of Walter Brown, whose work as a military engineer (not withstanding Neil Tyson's view!) would not have involved, during the day, doing calculations for any of the material you find in his book. His teaching would not have involved instructing other military personnel on Young Earth Creationist views. He is a 'creation scientist' in his own capacity. So, how does he fund his own work, if it needs funding? Through book sales? It would be fundamentalist christians buying it.

Their beliefs are that intentionally lying (generally speaking, as there are exceptions which are the topic of another discussion, not this one) is wrong, and that God is displeased with bearing false witness. In other words, their contract is with a higher power, rather than the public.

I view creationists as either liars or ignorant. I think most people with those beliefs probably don't understand their own motives. I would agree that there are probably not many cynical ones because you can tell by how earnest some are. As I have bored you with already, the overall motive is to generate the alt-facts for the alt-worldview, not because they are actually factual, but because to have influence you have to have the power of the facts on your side, and the facts on the other side would rob them of that influence. It is particularly interesting that creation science arose at the same time as investment in 'secular science' was ramped up in the US, due to the space program. My guess is that the enhanced science being offered in schools was not pleasing to fundamentalists and what it was doing to their influence, so they started their own 'science'. More research on this hypothesis required...

So I think there could be a lot of bending of things to suit, a few white lies knowingly told as part of 'God's work', and a lot of group think between creationists. You can read that group think on creation.com, for example, where they discuss how important it is for creationists to work together to establish the truth of the bible. And, of course, AiG and others open their websites with a commitment to scripture, come what may.

I would hasten to add there are non-creation scientists who have these characteristics too. But they would lose their influence if they were to sign up to a prior commitment. The reason is that there is no validity in deciding on your conclusion before looking at the evidence, which is exactly what hydroplates are all about.

On the other hand, those who reject the idea of there being a God (or what have you) don’t have the moral obligation to not lie.

They don't really have a motive to lie, either. I'm not sure exactly what it looks like from a creationist point of view, but generally scientists aren't 'out to get' creationists or anything like that. For most professional scientists creation science is irrelevant because, like homeopathy they feel they proved it wrong long ago, and giving it any further attention is a waste of resources.

The question is raised, who is more honest, generally speaking, a Christian, or an atheist, even considering that there are those on both sides who don’t fit the mold.

Well, even accounting for conversions inside, imprisonment rates for atheists are vastly under their proportion of the population. 0.23% of the prison population are atheist versus 12% of the roaming population of the US, were the numbers just a few years ago.

This reminds me of the Steven Weinberg quote “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”

Here is unambiguous evidence: The effect cannot be greater than the cause. The universe could not have always existed, for there are still stars burning through their fuel reserves. Entropy prevents perpetual motion machines, no matter how complex. The universe could not have created itself, because in order to create, one must first exist. Therefore, the only remaining possible explanation (and please, feel free to try to think up a fourth that doesn’t fit within the bounds of the first two) is that a supernatural being brought the universe into existence.

I think we generally agree the universe had a beginning, and entropy is the taxation system on doing anything. In order to create, one must first exist then demands an explanation for the existence of the supernatural being. And although this is an old atheist argument, I don't think it is a particularly convincing one because the universe is something from nothing.

Spacetime is some kind of balloon that inflates spontaneously (sorry don't know the mechanism for that, because as an African ape I only really understand temporal concepts, and we are talking about the beginning of time itself, but I don't default to goddidit because that's logically fallacious). Once you have inflation started, the rest is well explained in the borrowing of positive energy/matter from the negative gravitational energy of the expansion. The total energy of the universe is zero. So it's not merely a matter of something from nothing, it's actually nothing from nothing, with the effect of having stuff based on the capitalistic ideal of living on credit. Hydrogen accumulates in bent spacetime; stars form and produce heavy elements; heavy elements accrete into planets around new stars; chemistry becomes living (somehow); African apes diverge and, consequently, digital watches appear about 14 million years later.

And because life is information based, and because information is not physical, and because

I think of DNA as a record of our ancestors' history in various environments, one that just happens to be readable to make and maintain a new individual. In the DNA of the ones who made it this far is a record of one way that was achieved. It contains no information that is necessarily useful for the future, although it is reasonable for the human carriers of the DNA to hope it will be highly useful. DNA is not a plan for the future, it is entirely retrospective. Strange kind of information base, don't you think? It is not used for intentional forwards planning by any known mechanism.

I think that you’ll find, should you actually do the research, that most of the Bible relatively few miracles (ratio of miracle events to non-miracle events) occurring.

Yes. So were miracles a reality, or a human insertion into scripture? And why does Paul of Tarsus not mention miracles at all? Was his writing inspired, and other's not, or are the miracles not really that important? If the latter, then I think that should be preached from pulpits, the miracles are not very important.

Anyway, it must be counted as a miracle that light existed before the appearance of any of the celestial bodies known to produce light, right?

Why do you assume that we, beings who are comprised of both physical and non-physical parts (to use the term loosely) could have arisen from a purely physical universe?

I disagree with your assertion that we have non-physical parts. I also disagree with your assertion that I assume the natural origins of our species. It is entirely a conclusion based on evidence. The only assumptions you need are that the universe is not an illusion (it's too beautiful for that, right?!) and that we do actually exist (I don't trust Descartes all the way).

Whether I like it or not, I am a member of an African ape species riding on a planet with an environment that formed me through descent in common with all other known living species from chemistry and natural selection, orbiting a small-medium sized star that is about half-way through its 10 billion year main sequence, in a spiral arm orbiting the centre of the Milky Way galaxy with a period of about 200 million years. Like quite a number of my fellow apes I still cling to the notion that the universe looks at itself through many eyes and thinks about itself with human brains. There is nothing else which constitutes an explanation for my existence that is even remotely plausible or based in unambiguous evidence.

My point being that there is not one law of physics or chemistry that could in any way give rise to, for example, information or a symbolic logic function. In other words, there are no symbolic logic functions in any of the laws of physics or chemistry, yet information, which is not physical, clearly exists.

The Unholy Wikipedia claims that information is the resolution of uncertainty. It says it comes from the verb to inform. So, what question do you believe the information contained in DNA answers? I think it answers the question how has it been possible to produce living things capable of survival and reproduction in the past?

And if you become good at reading that information, you can not only see how a successful living organism was made this time, but also something about how it used to be made in the past, and something about what viruses it might have been plagued by, and quite a lot about how closely related in time and space it is to other species. If you want to know how closely you are related to other humans alive today, you send off a saliva sample and the DNA is read for something like 700,000 markers, good for ancestry going back about 300 years. If you want to know whether you are closer cousins with rats or monkeys, you look in much more detail and count the differences in base sequence instead, and the greater the difference the less close the cousinship.

That's what exists in that information, and that's a short list to begin with. Is that the kind of thing you had in mind? It's not abstract, it's a chemical record.

Briefly, on maths, since I can't resist: I agree it's pretty amazing what has been done with maths, but is it that surprising that it fits the universe so well when its development is predicated on the geometry of the universe?

Beauty is not physical, and therefore cannot originate in something that cannot give rise to anything non-physical.

I don't know what that means but I respect your opinion regarding beauty, which, notwithstanding modelling of factors that contribute to perceptions of beauty, must be subjective. Although, the cognition of the perception of beauty is a physical process.

Evidence is evidence, ambiguous or not.

Maybe. But what do you intend to conclude on the basis of that evidence, and what are the other options that are not excluded by it? Really you want to be able to determine the probabilities and look for a clear, highest probability model if you can. Otherwise, what is the utility of the evidence?

Something which scientists seem to ignore, seeing as they make plenty of assumptions when doing their experiments.

Scientists, especially including those who perform peer review, understand the concept of improving the quality of inference by eliminating as many assumptions as possible. They do that, as you are no doubt aware, by systematically controlling as many relevant variables as they can.

Seems to me that hiding one’s mistakes does not allow for growth of the scientific community. Maybe scientists (on both sides) should publish more of their failed results…Would certainly help everyone be more honest.

Well there is such a thing as not wasting everyone else's time. Pons and Fleischmann wasted a lot of others' time by publishing their paper on cold fusion without taking sufficient care to get the basics of experimentation right. But it's not a point about whether people are honest, it's about whether you have a robust contribution that is going to help move your field forwards. Relevant mistakes are often published as yet another way not to do something, to save others' time. But 'look at how honest I am being by publishing my mistakes' is not actually helpful.

One area where all results should definitely be published is drug research. Because most drug development is funded by a company with a considerable investment, it is to their financial advantage that the benefits they claim for their new drug are not undermined by publishing the percentage of subjects who gained no benefit, or worse.

I’m personally not a fan of peer review.

Peer review is the process organised by the editor of a scientific journal to pass a submitted paper to one or more reviewers with recognised expertise in the relevant area of science, with a view to using those reviewers' expertise to uncover flaws in the methodology or conclusions presented in the paper. Based on the reviews, an editor might then decide the work is robust enough to publish, or might recommend the scientist reviews the way the work is presented for clarity, or may reject the submitted paper altogether.

Science shouldn’t be done on popularity (a contest which is what it has inevitably turned into, which people use to obtain grant money to continue their research and maintain their living standards.

Yes, well if you knew how little research scientists are paid you might recommend they take up something more lucrative! But this is a problem with competitive funding models, not with the scientific process itself.

It should be done out of a desire to discover the truth about our universe. No, I’m not saying that for many scientists this isn’t the goal, but simply that it’s not the primary reason for many to do the science.

I think you would find that most scientists are motivated by a sense of responsibility for advancing knowledge in their area, alongside the motive provided by the thrilling experience of being perhaps the first human ever to observe a particular phenomenon, and to investigate it and play a part in developing the understanding of it. They're not all building evil empires using facilities hidden under island volcanoes, as I am sure you are aware.

Good thing it’s been done, but is largely ignored because “creationist.”

Yes, well that would actually be a good reason to ignore it. Don't forget how much investigation has gone into researching all sorts of pseudoscientific claims. But, sigh, well, what now?

Too bad that “consensus” shuns creationist science from gaining traction…

It's not too bad. It is the correct response, based on past investigations of creationist claims. Creationist claims are extraordinary, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But creationist don't have extraordinary evidence at this stage. The Air Force should spend the $7.5 million on psychic teleportation research (would be foolish to reject it out of hand, right?) but it should not spend a further $7.5 million just because the Psychic Teleportation Society feel upset.

Money is plenty of motivation for many, and is probably one of the biggest factors in what science is done and by whom.

Well I don't see that in the science done in my country. Scientists are paid relatively modestly and often have to work very hard if they want to see any commercial development of their research. The vast majority don't do research that can be directly exploited commercially.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

Part III: Scripture and religion

You should stop calling Wikipedia holy. It is far from it.

Well indeed. It is an ironic phrase, as you will have appreciated, and means to compare the dodgy practice of relying exclusively on an anonymously editable authority with the dodgy practice of relying exclusively on an anonymously written ancient text, but of which I am sure you would agree are inadequate epistemological methods.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. - Exodus 20:11 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...1&version=NKJV

But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ - Mark 10:6 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...6&version=NKJV

The understanding that the earth is young long predates Ussher, going all the way back to Moses, who is reaffirmed by Jesus.

But the age of the earth isn't 7 days, is it. That's not what is meant by Young Earth Creationism as far as I understand it.

FAITH is the evidence. It is evidence of things unseen.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for.

Well, you've got me there. I Googled the text of that verse, and consulted the first three apologist sites that appeared, whatever they were. Your reply was much clearer than anything I read. I thought it meant something before, but despite your efforts I realise I have no idea at all what it means. I think for many people like me who apparently are not capable of understanding this metaphorically, it could have the effect of platitude. In other words, it sounds deep, and I don't understand it, so I'll have to go along with its apparent depth.

You know, I think it is a confidence trick.

Stuu: It's not the kind used in science, history or geography, for example.

See 7djengo7’s post above.

Sorry, could you please give me a post number. 7djengo7 posts a lot of verbiage. I must have missed the gem hidden in there.

God (whether you acknowledge Him or not) says “by the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a matter be established.” The “two or three” wasn’t Him being uncertain. It was an indication that we should use our brains to ascertain if two witnesses are sufficient or if more is needed. (And no, before you go there, “witness” does not necessarily mean “eyewitness”.)

Eyewitness evidence, from whatever number of people, is a terrible way of establishing anything reliably. Eyewitness evidence is treated with distain in science, as it should be. Human observation and recall are notoriously poor, which is not surprising given how the brain divides its necessarily limited attention for the purpose of survival (and reproductive opportunity), and not for recording a period of history or event verbatim.

In fact, there were long periods of time where God was completely silent.

Indeed, as Christopher Hitchens used to say, there sat heaven unmoved for 100,000 years by all the misery and destruction...

Because that’s not my position, and God doesn’t always use miracles to accomplish tasks. Often, He used forces of nature and men to do things, rather than doing them Himself. In other words, He uses the tools He created to accomplish tasks, rather than always using His hands.

You see the problem with this claim, right. It is completely ambiguous. The model of a god maybe doing it this way or that way instead tells us nothing about the way a god does anything in particular. It makes no testable prediction.

So in that case, evolution by natural selection is right. Your god has used the tool of the brain given to each of us, and we have used the evidence of the unseen in that (I don't know what I am talking about here, obviously) and have worked out, without divine brain insertion that this is what is going on in the biological world. Understanding achieved by the tool of the god-given brain.

That’s because the god you argue against doesn’t exist except in your mind.

I'm entirely at one with you there. Just replace 'against' with 'for'.

It helps to know the one true God. Like I said before, the Bible describes God in great detail. One only has to read the Bible to learn about Him. You should try reading it through.

Thanks for your recommendation. I'm still working through the Nordic gods and then will be the classical ones. I've done enough 'getting to know' the Judeo-christian god for the time being. Maybe I'll get back there one day. Of course there are all the African gods, and those of the first nation peoples of the South Pacific...There are many True gods.

Stuu: It says in some places that it has been seen and heard, and in other places that this is impossible.

Context is important.

I have to say I don't see any relevant context in the contradictory verses. Perhaps I am worse than the most ignorant of the early centuries CE. The only pattern seems to be Jewish bible versus New Testament. The gospel of John is particularly problematic:

John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

John 14:9 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?

I mean, what the heck was 'Philip' meant to make of that telling off?

God is smart enough to know how to prepare for events that may or may not happen.

This is not quite the god of Calvin, then.

The way God designed the earth, including the mechanism by which He could destroy it should man rebel, was such that God would not have to do anything at all, except leave man to his own devices for a period of time.

So you are saying that there was a mechanism by which 'rebellion' led to catastrophic geological collapse of a system designed to kill if necessary? Is that the opinion of Mr. Brown? Isn't the point of his book to make creationism look like science by describing naturalistic mechanisms for biblical claims?

This means it is credible, from perhaps your point of view, to describe the human appendix as a time bomb planted in the abdomen. That would be just a more personal example of the same concept, right? So wouldn't that be an interesting study, to compare the infection and mortality rates of appendicitis in believers with that in blasphemers.

Ever considered that you’re the one drinking the Kool Aid? Serious question.

Yes, very seriously is how I take it. As one example of that, I think if I didn't take it seriously I wouldn't be posting here.

Stuu: I don't see atheists and agnostics behaving like that, motivated by their non-belief.

Behaving delusionally? I see it all the time, especially by those who are supposedly at the top of the scientific hierarchy. *cough* Richard Dawkins *cough*

What would be your favourite example?

Stuart

PS: Dear guest reader, that burning smell is your scroll wheel igniting. Sorry about that.

 

[Right Divider]

Kind as actually used in the Bible IS species.

Goats and sheep are regarded as different as are horses and donkeys in scripture. But the modern creationist definition of "kind", with its inclusion of evolution, would call horses and donkeys the same kind and sheep and goats another kind.

Just because horses and donkeys are "different" does NOT mean that they are "different KINDS".