Response to Enyart about a One-on-One
Response to Enyart about a One-on-One
Bob, thanks for the invite. My initial reaction to this offer was to summarily say, “No thanks”. There were two basic reasons:
- Most important was that I am interested in science being presented accurately. I could see no benefit from engaging in an exchange where the success or failure of good science being presented was contingent on just my knowledge.
- I wondered why you want to go one-on-one on the subject you have chosen to discuss. There is already an extant thread that you started with that as its subject, and I fail to see what benefit would arise from moving the substance of that discussion to the One-on-One forum. Well, perhaps I am being less than forthright. I do know why the invitation to the One-on-One forum – it probably stands as a chance for you to publicly confront me, and at the same time add another notch to your gun handle. You know - the one that you read from so eloquently on the radio – where it says, “Defeated – Shermer, Scott, Zakath …”. Maybe I should feel complimented thinking that maybe my name could be listed alongside theirs. But no, I suspect I am just a noisy little gadfly you would like to silence.
The first of my reasons above represents somewhat of a shift on my part, since for a year I had an offer on the table for me to take my time and my expense and travel to Colorado for an in-person debate with you in front of your own congregation. When it appeared that the offer was going to sit unaccepted, perhaps buried at the bottom of your overflowing in-basket, I finally withdrew it. As I have stated elsewhere in these forums, I am not sure that debate offer from my side was a good idea.
And just for the record, for those more infantile posters (such as Dread helm in this thread and Shimei in a previous one) who think that calling me chicken is a way to goad me to accept your challenge, my debate offer gives answer to that.
But on further reflection, I realized that if you are serious about pursing scientific truth, then there are more fundamental ideas in science than the one that you chose that need to be addressed first. I have initiated or participated in a number of threads in the Bob Enyart Live Forum over the past couple of years. In those threads I talk about a number of issues in science that you have seriously misrepresented to both your congregation and your radio audience. You have made the statement repeatedly that science supports a young earth, and used some of the scientific ideas I responded to as proof. In those threads I have been very explicit in detailing what the errors are, and yet you have been almost completely silent on answering those issues.
Just to make it very easy for you – below I provide links to threads still available on TOL showing that you don’t understand such basic concepts as angular momentum, gravitational differential, spherical geometry, how to use red shift data, and thermodynamics. But you want to argue General Relativity? You can’t handle milk yet, so a 32-ounce Porterhouse is hardly the thing you should be asking for. If you have time to prepare for a private discussion with me on Relativity, then you have time to look at your much more basic misunderstandings in those threads.
So let’s put the study of science in its proper order – let’s finish the simple things, then move on to the deeper subjects. Kinda like a book I heard about once, something about a plot – in which the author says it is important to get an understanding of an overview of the Bible, and then many of the apparently contradictory details resolve themselves. Ever heard of such an approach to learning, Bob?
I await your participation in the threads linked below that have languished too long already for lack of attention from you. Then let’s come back to your time and relativity question.
Here you show your don’t understand the law of the conservation of angular momentum:
Abp
Here you show that it really doesn’t matter what scientists say, you just make it fit what you want the Bible to say:
Bob’s evolution of astronomy
Here is one where you think you outdid NASA:
Bob Should Really Learn to be More Hubble
Here’s one where you show your understanding of spherical geometry is poorer than the understanding Moslems have had for many centuries:
Definitely not southeast
Here’s one of the few threads that you participated in, until you found that you were not going to be allowed to divert the subject. You tell what physics believes and then you disprove it (except it isn’t what physics believes):
Give ‘em the Silent Treatment
Here’s one that shows that you pick statements from scientists based on whether they said what you wanted them to say, rather than on the quality of the science itself.
Newton transmitting to Voyager from Kitty Hawk
Here’s one that shows how you portray the views of scientists in just the way you want, even if that means leaving an impression that is strongly at variance with the truth:
Cooking Lord Kelvin
Here’s one where you make a simple claim that is at variance with what is presented in books you already have relied on for other information:
Mooning Jupiter
Here’s an interesting claim from you about mineral in the oceans:
Can I get a Big Mac please?
There are several other threads that I have not taken the time to compose opening posts for that deal with other failings in your portrayal of science. But let’s start with the above for now.
