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Author Topic:   Peanut Gallery
Larni
Member (Idle past 164 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 196 of 1725 (535144)
11-13-2009 5:04 AM
Reply to: Message 182 by Percy
11-12-2009 9:17 AM


Re: Kaichos Man in the Information Thread
One comment from a friend I had lunch with yesterday: "It sounds like he can maintain understanding of only a single sentence at a time."
I've noticed this sometimes at work. When the subject you are trying to explain is not really considered important people often politely switch off until you finish talking (and then only retain the first and last thing you say).
Very much like listening to long winded directions when you are lost and ask someone in the street.
Then they launch into what they want to talk about.
Or some people do try to listen but can't quite 'get' your meaning (especially true when explaining something completely out side their frame of reference) but pick up on a few familiar words or phrases and put them together in a way that is meaningful to them (where the confirmation bias creeps in).
Often this leaves me with the thought "how the hell did s/he get that from what I said?".
People are funny old things.
ABE: ninja'd by RAZD
Edited by Larni, : Ninja'd

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 Message 182 by Percy, posted 11-12-2009 9:17 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 197 of 1725 (536662)
11-24-2009 12:04 PM


In the debate thread Arphy writes...
In the debate thread Arphy writes:
While biological arguments can certainly be used as corroborative evidence, many arguments can be used for creation in general. Geologic evidence and Anthropological evidence gives more direct biblical evidence as it provides evidence for one of the most significant events in the bible. Namely The Flood.
You've got to be kidding!
A global flood about 4,350 years ago is among the most thoroughly discredited ideas in history!
It has been disproved worldwide by many different fields of investigation.
Data from my own archaeological research disproves it based (at minimum) on: 1) continuity of human cultures; 2) continuity of genetic lineages; 3) continuity of fauna and flora; and 4) continuity of stratigraphy.
The only folks who believe in the flood are biblical literalists practicing religious apologetics.
You mention geological evidence: that doesn't work because geological strata are older than 4,350 years! Forget the Cambrian explosion and all the rest of geology; for evidence of what happened 4,350 years ago you need to look to the soils, not the rocks. And there is no evidence for a global flood in the 4,350 year old soils.
You also mention anthropological evidence, presumably myths of floods. Fine. All you have to do is prove that all of those myths refer to the same flood, then explain how those folks are alive to tell the tales after such a flood. (Don't you realize that most of the world's population lives very close to water? Don't you think floods are common? Just ask the folks in New Orleans, or along the Mississippi River.)
Sorry, the battle to document a global flood about 4,350 years ago was lost in the early 1800s.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Replies to this message:
 Message 198 by RAZD, posted 11-24-2009 8:16 PM Coyote has replied

RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 198 of 1725 (536745)
11-24-2009 8:16 PM
Reply to: Message 197 by Coyote
11-24-2009 12:04 PM


Re: In the debate thread Arphy writes...
Hi Coyote,
Sorry, the battle to document a global flood about 4,350 years ago was lost in the early 1800s.
Actually it was lost long before that. Leonardo da Vince concluded that there was no single flood event from the evidence he had of shell deposits in
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/vinci.html
quote:
It may seem unusual to include Leonardo da Vinci in a list of paleontologists and evolutionary biologists. Leonardo was and is best known as an artist, the creator of such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa, Madonna of the Rocks, and The Last Supper. Yet Leonardo was far more than a great artist: he had one of the best scientific minds of his time. He made painstaking observations and carried out research in fields ranging from architecture and civil engineering to astronomy to anatomy and zoology to geography, geology and paleontology.
Leonardo's scientific and technical observations are found in his handwritten manuscripts, of which over 4000 pages survive, including the one pictured on the right, showing some rock formations (click on it to view an enlargement).
Leonardo knew well the rocks and fossils (mostly Cenozoic mollusks) found in his native north Italy. No doubt he had ample opportunity to observe them during his service as an engineer and artist at the court of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, from 1482 to 1499: Vasari wrote that "Leonardo was frequently occupied in the preparation of plans to remove mountains or to pierce them with tunnels from plain to plain." He made many observations on mountains and rivers, and he grasped the principle that rocks can be formed by deposition of sediments by water, while at the same time the rivers erode rocks and carry their sediments to the sea, in a continuous grand cycle. He wrote: "The stratified stones of the mountains are all layers of clay, deposited one above the other by the various floods of the rivers. . . In every concavity at the summit of the mountains we shall always find the divisions of strata in the rocks." Leonardo appear to have grasped the law of superposition, which would later be articulated fully by the Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno in 1669: in any sequence of sedimentary rocks, the oldest rocks are those at the base. He also appears to have noticed that distinct layers of rocks and fossils could be traced over long distances, and that these layers were formed at different times: ". . . the shells in Lombardy are at four levels, and thus it is everywhere, having been made at various times." Nearly three hundred years later, the rediscovery and elaboration of these principles would make possible modern stratigraphy and geological mapping.
In Leonardo's day there were several hypotheses of how it was that shells and other living creatures were found in rocks on the tops of mountans. Some believed the shells to have been carried there by the Biblical Flood; others thought that these shells had grown in the rocks. Leonardo had no patience with either hypothesis, and refuted both using his careful observations. Concerning the second hypothesis, he wrote that "such an opinion cannot exist in a brain of much reason; because here are the years of their growth, numbered on their shells, and there are large and small ones to be seen which could not have grown without food, and could not have fed without motion -- and here they could not move." There was every sign that these shells had once been living organisms. What about the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible? Leonardo doubted the existence of a single worldwide flood, noting that there would have been no place for the water to go when it receded. He also noted that "if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers -- as we see them now in our time." He noted that rain falling on mountains rushed downhill, not uphill, and suggested that any Great Flood would have carried fossils away from the land, not towards it. He described sessile fossils such as oysters and corals, and considered it impossible that one flood could have carried them 300 miles inland, or that they could have crawled 300 miles in the forty days and nights of the Biblical flood.
How did those shells come to lie at the tops of mountains? Leonardo's answer was remarkably close to the modern one: fossils were once-living organisms that had been buried at a time before the mountains were raised: "it must be presumed that in those places there were sea coasts, where all the shells were thrown up, broken, and divided. . ." Where there is now land, there was once ocean. It was possible, Leonardo thought, that some fossils were buried by floods -- this idea probably came from his observations of the floods of the Arno River and other rivers of north Italy -- but these floods had been repeated, local catastrophes, not a single Great Flood. To Leonardo da Vinci, as to modern paleontologists, fossils indicated the history of the Earth, which extends far beyond human records.
Pity he did not publish these comments in a peer reviewed journal ....
This very same kind of evidence is what convince the early "hobby" geologists in the 1800's, many of whom were clerical people, that (a) the earth was in fact very old, and (b) that a global flood had not occurred in the natural history of the earth.
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 197 by Coyote, posted 11-24-2009 12:04 PM Coyote has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 199 by Coyote, posted 11-25-2009 12:41 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 199 of 1725 (536767)
11-25-2009 12:41 AM
Reply to: Message 198 by RAZD
11-24-2009 8:16 PM


In the debate thread Arphy writes...
In the debate thread Arphy writes:
On the age of the earth AS expects CMI to come out with some sort of research that uses a "clock" which says that the earth is 6000 years old. This is just not possible, because every such natural clock is based on big assumptions. The date of approx. 6000 years comes from simple calculations using the dates and ages provided in the bible and other historical sources. Although even here certain assumptions are used, variancies if source information still do not allow for an excessive increase beyond this age.
Your use of the term, "big assumptions" is meaningless unless you can show that those assumptions are inappropriate. Calling the assumptions supporting radiometric dating "big assumptions" is not scientific evidence of any kind. It is nothing more than "well, I don't believe it so its not true." In other words, of no value whatsoever.
What I do find legitimate is when research is done that takes a wide variety of assumptions and possibilities into account. This type of research allows us to calculate maximum or minimum ages for the earth. CMI certainly provide evidence to support a "young" earth by using research (including references to the RATE project) which shows that the maximum age of the earth does not fit with the naturalistic ideas such as long-age geology or evolutionary biology. Yet the evidence does fit within Biblical creationist geology and biology. Note, that this doesn't necessarily completly negate a naturalistic explanation, but to say that naturalistic biology and geology will someday find a way to incorporate the "young-ness" of the earth, is really just special pleading. Therefore I think it is reasonable to say that evidence for a "young" earth is evidence for Biblical creation.
Don't cite the RATE project in support of a young earth. The RATE project concluded that there was evidence for several hundred million years of radioactive decay--and this is from their own data!
They could not support the "young-ness" of the earth with their study, but they fell back on that religious belief even when their data showed a much older earth than they wanted or expected to see. They showed that they were doing religious apologetics, not science.
Face it: a young earth is as discredited an idea as the global flood about 4,350 years ago.
Two reviews of the RATE project:
Assessing the RATE Project: Essay Review by Randy Isaac:
Assessing the RATE Project
Do the RATE Findings Negate Mainstream Science?:
Page not found - Reasons to Believe
Arphy--Are you going to respond to any of these posts or is this going to be a monologue?
Edited by Coyote, : Post directed to Arphy, not RADZ

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 198 by RAZD, posted 11-24-2009 8:16 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 200 by Adminnemooseus, posted 11-25-2009 12:46 AM Coyote has not replied
 Message 201 by NosyNed, posted 11-25-2009 12:53 AM Coyote has not replied
 Message 202 by Percy, posted 11-25-2009 5:00 AM Coyote has not replied
 Message 204 by cavediver, posted 11-27-2009 2:09 PM Coyote has replied

Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 200 of 1725 (536769)
11-25-2009 12:46 AM
Reply to: Message 199 by Coyote
11-25-2009 12:41 AM


And the topic in question (with link) is...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 199 by Coyote, posted 11-25-2009 12:41 AM Coyote has not replied

NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 201 of 1725 (536770)
11-25-2009 12:53 AM
Reply to: Message 199 by Coyote
11-25-2009 12:41 AM


Arphy Responses
Arphy doesn't have to respond here. He is in a great debate to avoid piling on among other things. Maybe we'll get to this, maybe not.
I don't have a lot of time and I don't believe that anyone should have to rush so Arphy and slevesque can take as long as they want.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 199 by Coyote, posted 11-25-2009 12:41 AM Coyote has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 202 of 1725 (536792)
11-25-2009 5:00 AM
Reply to: Message 199 by Coyote
11-25-2009 12:41 AM


Re: In the debate thread Arphy writes...
Coyote writes:
Arphy--Are you going to respond to any of these posts or is this going to be a monologue?
Adding to what Nosy said, this is a peanut gallery, a place where members can comment on a discussion in ways that would be inappropriate in the discussion itself, often because they're spectators rather than participants. It isn't a place for spectators to draw participants into additional discussion, and in fact, that's discouraged. If you want to have your own discussion with Arphy then suggest it to him, but one of the reasons he's in a great debate right now is so he doesn't have to respond to too many people at the same time.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 199 by Coyote, posted 11-25-2009 12:41 AM Coyote has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 203 of 1725 (537059)
11-26-2009 12:10 PM


Defining Evolution and Natural Selection
Because I'm moderating over in the Has natural selection really been tested and verified? thread I'll have to satisfy myself with commenting here in the Peanut Gallery.
Bolder-dash is beginning to feel that he's getting yanked around by changing definitions of natural selection. People tell him that natural selection operates on variation, and that variation comes from mutations, and he puts two and two together and concludes that natural selection operates on mutations. But people keep telling him he's wrong to reach this conclusion, because while it is true it is also woefully incomplete.
After four billion years of life it's a pretty safe bet that every nucleotide in every genome around the world began as a mutation. There must be very few untouched nucleotides left from the very first life. Therefore it could be argued that all nucleotides in all genomes are the result of mutations.
But we don't usually talk about mutations this way. We usually consider a mutation to be a genetic change that happened recently in just the last few generations, and this is the definition of mutation that people are using when they explain that natural selection operates on variation rather than mutations.
So it's not that natural selection doesn't operate on new mutations in the current generation. Natural selection most certainly does operate on new mutations to the extent that they're expressed. But natural selection also operates on all other variation in organisms. It is true that all this variation came about gradually over eons of time through mutations, but we don't usually call them mutations anymore. Past mutations that have become successful are considered part of the genome and we don't call them mutations anymore, we just think of them as the foundation for variation.
--Percy

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3644 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 204 of 1725 (537196)
11-27-2009 2:09 PM
Reply to: Message 199 by Coyote
11-25-2009 12:41 AM


Re: In the debate thread Slevesque writes...
Humphreys responded to this argument here: http://www.trueorigin.org/helium02.asp. Showing that the in vacuum results are totally acceptable, and that Henke's argument is faulty in many occasions.
No, Humphrey's claims are useless:
quote:
Zircon, being harder than steel, would be much less compressible than lead.[5] So pressure should affect diffusion rates much less than in lead
...completely ignoring the point Henke raises concerning defects and fractures in the zircon. These should potentially have a MASSIVE effect upon the diffusion rates, but Humphreys completely fails to acknowledge this. Even in Humphreys'2008 article, he claims to have answered all critcisms regarding presuure, compressibility and diffusion rates back in his 2006 reply, which is blatently false and approaching deliberate falsehood.
Just as an additional: Humphreys is a useless twat when he comes to physics. His amateur ability in General Relativity enabled him to come up with his creation cosmology, which simply does not work, but unfortunately he is too dumb to acknowledge it despite being taken to task by those immeasurably more gifted and knowledgable than he. And his guesses at the magnetic field strength of the lesser giant planets came with error bounds so broad that it would have been a miracle not to have bracketed the correct value

This message is a reply to:
 Message 199 by Coyote, posted 11-25-2009 12:41 AM Coyote has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 205 by Coyote, posted 11-28-2009 3:15 AM cavediver has not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 205 of 1725 (537279)
11-28-2009 3:15 AM
Reply to: Message 204 by cavediver
11-27-2009 2:09 PM


Re: In the debate thread Slevesque writes...
But could it be that it reveals that there is a common faulty assumption behind all these dating methods ?
Besides, creationist also have multiple lines of evidence that all show a maximum age smaller then the common dates of the earth, solar system, etc. It would seem both sides sit on their 'correlation'.
No. Not even close.
The faulty assumption is that 3,000 year old scriptures suggest or document a young earth.
And the multiple lines of evidence cited by creationists have all been disproved. None of this convinces creationists, who keep pushing the same flawed arguments, though. That's because they don't rely on evidence, just on belief, so evidence that contradicts those beliefs has no effect.
Fine, but don't try to pretend it is science. It is the exact opposite.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 204 by cavediver, posted 11-27-2009 2:09 PM cavediver has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 206 of 1725 (537317)
11-28-2009 6:15 AM


Comment on the Toe Doubt Thread
To those exhibiting quixotic behavior in TOE and the Reasons for Doubt: Everything you're saying has been said before, many times. There's no light bulb to go on. You may as well be conversing with a chatbot.
--Percy

RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 207 of 1725 (537442)
11-28-2009 3:39 PM


Comment on the "Has natural selection really been tested and verified? " thread
In the OP Bolder-dash states:
I read recently where an editor of Discovery Magazine stated that Darwin provided a testable mechanism for evolutionary change, and as such it has stood up to the rigors of such testing.
I am not so sure that this is true. Can people point to tests that have verified that natural selection causes evolutionary change? What tests have they conducted? Do these tests accurately mimic the real world?
In Message 5 I stated:
First you need to define what you mean by "evolutionary change" - so we can see if your meaning is similar to what is used in the science of biology in general and evolution in particular.
In science "evolutionary change" means that the frequency distribution of hereditary traits is different from one generation to the next. I expect you are thinking of something more dramatic than variations on a theme changes.
...
Natural selection is only part of the process of evolution, ...
So, what you mean by "evolutionary change"? What do you expect to see?
In Message 17 he replied:
The supposition made by the magazine editor (not by me)was that Darwin's idea of natural selection has been tested to be the driving force of evolutionary change (including of course changes in body structures, and living systems, etc).
Since then he has devolved into a complaining troll, repeating and repeating that (Message 203 is one example):
I had ABSOLUTELY NO desire to talk of natural selection as it relates to some generic concept that means nothing in terms of evolution-I had every intention to discuss NS as it relates to EVOLUTION!
...
... I wrote very specifically what it was I was asking for three times? NS as it relates to EVOLUTION. Please read that sentence again-Natural Selection as it relates to Evolution. Please address why you continue to fail to see the connection between NS and EVOLUTIONARY Change, as opposed to whatever the heck you want to call NS which does not involve evolutionary change.
What Bolder-dash fails to comprehend is that his total failure to define what he means by "EVOLUTIONARY Change" necessarily leaves us with only the scientific definition and usage, of evolutionary change to mean the change in the frequency distribution of hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation.
Continuing to repeat his complaint, without attempting to further explain what he means, is obviously futile wasted bandwidth. Trying to shout (caps) it doesn't add to the definition of what he means.
Simply put, the problem is his lack of communication for what he means by "EVOLUTIONARY Change" and this needs to be resolved before any progress can be made.
I suggest that this be the top priority when the thread re-opens.
I also think that other sub-topics from Peg and herebedragons should be diverted to new topics in the interim to leave Bolder-dash with his thread to answer his topic.
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 208 of 1725 (537500)
11-29-2009 2:02 AM


Arphy in the Debate Thread
Trying to pinpoint specific years with geological "clocks" has too many assumptions attached.
"Assumption" does not mean "wrong" no matter how many times creationists imply that it does.
And claiming that various dating methods rely on assumptions does not cast their results into doubt--except in the minds of creationists, who rely on belief rather than evidence in the first place.
If you have evidence that these dating methods, that correlate with one another, are actually wrong present that evidence.
Crying "assumptions" is not evidence.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Replies to this message:
 Message 209 by JonF, posted 11-29-2009 8:42 AM Coyote has not replied

JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 209 of 1725 (537536)
11-29-2009 8:42 AM
Reply to: Message 208 by Coyote
11-29-2009 2:02 AM


Re: Arphy in the Debate Thread
"Assumption" does not mean "wrong" no matter how many times creationists imply that it does.
The standard creationist tactic is to cry "assumption!" meaning "taken without proof". Using that definition, there are no assumptions underlying radiometric dating other than the usual one that there is a real world and our senses can convey information about it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 208 by Coyote, posted 11-29-2009 2:02 AM Coyote has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 210 by cavediver, posted 12-04-2009 12:46 PM JonF has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3644 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 210 of 1725 (538196)
12-04-2009 12:46 PM
Reply to: Message 209 by JonF
11-29-2009 8:42 AM


Re: Arphy in the Debate Thread
Ok, I have now gnawed off both my arms in frustration at Arphy completely failing to follow Nosy on Nosy's clock analogies - what the f'ck do I do when we go past the analogies and actually get the real deal????

This message is a reply to:
 Message 209 by JonF, posted 11-29-2009 8:42 AM JonF has not replied

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