new creation/evolution debate forum

That quote looks extremely familiar, like what Kent Hovind had written in one of his own articles for his site. Or, being a professional regurgitator, had stolen from some other creationist.Hovind was the only creationist I found who would throw in that solar mass-loss claim, which he refused to support in any fashion. Since this guy is repeating it, I wonder if he's ready to defend it.

Is that anything like a "full-body latte"?(Idiocracy, where in the future Starbucks has become a "gentlemen's club")

Or as it was called on talk.origins, sock puppets. That was where a dishonest poster (always a creationist, as I recall) would join in under a different name and then have discussions with himself. Either the sock puppet would be a syncophant and thus be the only one there agreeing with the puppeteer, or the sock puppet would be a strawman opponent that the puppeteer could then defeat decisively.Hopefully, that's not what's happening in this case.

May I ask you where on that site you had gotten your quote from? That solar-mass-loss claim would be a very good one to start with. And as for the moondust claim, since I have personally pulled that NASA documument off the library shelf and gazed upon its cover, the very act of which disproves Henry Morris' claim, that would be good for seconds.

I have described that as the "sucker born every minute" effect. Most creationists drop like flies as they learn that everything their religious leaders have told them was nothing but lies.More insidiously, the same old false creationist books and materials and claims remain unchanged, so every new generation of creationist just gets fed the same old tired lies. The problem of PRATTs is that each new generation of creationist needs to be taught the truth, because any refutation or disclaimer is completely unknown to the new generations.For example, in the early 1980's, Henry Morris' book, Scientific Creationism, had a footnote claiming that a "1976" NASA document, published "well into the space age", showed that the depth of the meteoric dust on the moon should have been over 200 feet thick. Well, I personally pulled that "1976" NASA document off the university shelf: it was actually a 1967 printing of a 1965 conference. And the actual calculation was a "back of the envelope" calculation by Harold Slusher which threw in a combinded factor of 10,000 that had no mathematical basis. The end result was that after the billions of years that science expects the moon to have been in existence, we should only expect about a third of an inch of dust.Though that solar-mass-loss claim is far less common, so I'm much more interested in observing their heads implode as the truth hits them.

But don't they consider their Christ to be Truth Incarnate, as in "I am the Truth and the Way."? Seems odd that they would oppose and hate the truth so strongly.I've registered and have posted my question about that solar mass loss claim. We shall see.PS
The thing about that NASA document. In a 1985 debate I attended, Morris and Gish vs Thwaites and Awbrey, part of H. Morris' response to their using outdated sources was to point out this "1976" NASA document written "well into the space age" (an incantation that just about every creationist would make when referring to it). I followed up by writing to the ICR asking about that and Gish responded with a copy of a letter by Harold Slusher that described that claim. When I later stumbled upon that document while looking for something else, it all be came instantly clear.Morris cited that NASA document in his book, Scientific Creationism in a footnote to his misuse of a 1960 Scientific American article. Although he cited that NASA document as his source, he obviously had never even seen it. Rather, his real source was Slusher, who also cites that same document even though he obviously had never seen it either -- he also cites it as Volume II of a series, whereas it was actually Volume 11. IOW, they routinely lie in their bibliographies too.When I made my discovery, I responded to Gish asking why they don't verify their sources and enclosed a xerox of the front of that document. He responded that the document most definitely was from 1976 (denying the solid evidence before him) and that they don't have the funds to do actual research (well, words to that effect). I replied back, again with a xerox of the front cover, and he refused to reply. Months later, I read in their Acts & Facts that Gish was appearing locally, so I attended and afterwards respectfully asked him about that claim. He pretended to know nothing at all about it, but took down my name and address to get back with me. Immediately, my subscription to Acts & Facts was cancelled; even Eugenie Scott was shocked at that one.Around 1991, I told my fundamentalist brother-in-law about that and he volunteered to be my front and wrote to the ICR asking about that claim. This time it was a graduate student who responded that they no longer used that claim, citing the intro to a newer book by H. Morris.My point was that, even though the claim has been soundly refuted and the ICR has disavowed it, Scientific Creationism has not been corrected and is still on sale as are their other books which have that "Uniformitarian Ages of the Earth" appendix that includes Slusher's false moondust claim. And almost every creationist who reads those books still thinks that that false moondust claim is true.Edited by dwise1, : PS

Too many times even on this forum I've lost a detailed reply by the board going down or whatever else. I have learned to compose my reply in a text editor and then copy-and-paste it in for the final submission.Just passing on that pearl of wisdom.

I did understand that and we will see if that happens again.What I'm saying is that, regardless of the reason for lost replies, it's good practice to compose a detailed reply off-line.

Took 5 days with me trying to get him to join in and do the math along with me and him trying to avoid it with hand-waving pronouncements, but we're finally at the point of the effect on the earth's orbit being miniscule, earth "sucked in" by the ancient sun by less than 38,000 miles. Now we've pointed out that the earth each year gets 1.5 million miles closer to the sun and I asked him to guess what time of the year that happens.Share and enjoy!

He says he's 20. I've asked him about his academic background, whether he's a student and what subjects, but no response.It looks like he's mainly grabbing what he can from other creationist sites and plopping them in his forum with no attributions whatsoever. Basically, plagarizing everything. Nothing new about that among creationists, especially professional creationists who just take another creationist's "work" and reprint it as their own, original bibliographies and all -- that's the main thing I saw in my moon dust research where everybody was citing a NASA document without ever having actually seen it.

Which means he's about 20. When I went through USAF tech school in '77, we were told that everything was written at an 8'th grade level because that was the average reading level for young adults. Who knows what it is now.Yes, his own writing is very poor. I've just addressed with him that he's obviously plagarizing.

quote:

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the numbers are irrelavent,

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I think he's avoiding it. Though it could be the typical fundamentalist trait of turning a blind eye to anything that might contradict their beliefs, even though they may do it unconciously.

Actually, I wasn't even using algebra, but rather only arithmetic. OK, so I also used direct and indirect proportional relationships and scientific notation and negative exponents, but in the last case I always made sure to translate the values to decimal fractions. And I even translated my metric source values to US units for his benefit, though he got quite pissy about it.My understanding of what Hovind was trying to do was to support the "shrinking sun" by also bringing in mass loss. He would try to invoke both gravitational collapse and fusion at his slightly inflated rate, whereas they contradict each other. If the rate of loss through fusion is 4-5 million tons / sec, then the sun's entire energy output is due to fusion and none is due to gravitational collapse. If gravitational collapse is involved, then the mass lost through fusion will be less. You can't have it both ways as Hovind tried. All that Hovind would say about where that 5 million ton figure came from was "I found it in a book." He had no clue. For that matter, I've also found statements of his that indicate that he didn't even understand that the sun wasn't "burning its fuel" through combustion on the sun's surface.PS
Now I've presented Hovind's repeating of Walter Brown's old "leap seconds" claim. Let's see whether he bites and if he's started to learn.Edited by dwise1, : PS

Actually, I did work out that problem the first time around. But then I tried to use the browser's find (new IE9) to change one word (angular size vice angular displacement) and it shot me to Google, dumping my entire post. So, by not having followed my own advice, I got to write it a second time.But, hey, he got extremely pissy at me for trying to go easy on him, so if he says he can handle the math, let him eat trig! No, it would be a problem. Gravitational collapse would heat up the sun's core via the Kelvin—Helmholtz mechanism, which was proposed in the 19th century as a mechanism for the burning of the sun. If that were happening, then some of the energy emanating from the sun would be from gravitational collapse; ie, only some of the energy would be from thermonuclear fusion.Our mass-loss figure is calculated with E=mc². First we measure the total energy output of the sun per second, and then we plug that value in for E and solve for m. If less than the total energy output is due to fusion, then less mass is being lost.QED Only those weren't written by him. He's out there plagarizing the shit out the Internet.And he quite obviously doesn't understand what he's stealing and pasting. In the human-population-growth topic (under Origins), we had to keep pressing him for the model that his charts were based on, so he stole an entire article and pasted it as his own words. It's an article from the NCSE's old Creation Evolution Journal doing a follow-up on David Milne's classic "Bunny Blunder" article. It's decidedly highly critical of the creationist claim and this guy is posting it to defend the claim. Hoisted on his own petard! Gotta love poetic justice.

They're still there. My saved link in is http://creationvsevolution.freeforums.org/index.php