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Author Topic:   Creationism Road Trip
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 121 of 409 (680002)
11-17-2012 3:46 AM
Reply to: Message 120 by vimesey
11-17-2012 3:29 AM


Re: One Day / Ananias and Sapphira
Yeah but the picture they created is what you want whether you know it or not. Where everything is run for us, we haven't the right to think for ourselves. Oh yes it's appalling but you don't seem to recognize it since everything you want tends in that direction.
And the absurdity I reduced your attitude to Romney to is a fair reduction. You talk like the man has no right to make his own decisions, you should make them for him, or government should which is the same thing since they'd make the decisions YOU want made.
You'd probably approve a tax return that showed millions spent on pornography or something like that along with a big gift to Planned Parenthood and the Gay Liberation Front or something like that? That's how Romney fails by the Left's moral standards.
There is something hideously wrong with how the Left thinks.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 120 by vimesey, posted 11-17-2012 3:29 AM vimesey has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 125 by vimesey, posted 11-17-2012 5:10 AM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 122 of 409 (680003)
11-17-2012 3:49 AM
Reply to: Message 103 by Faith
11-15-2012 11:17 PM


Re: Dinosaurs and Nautiloids
Such a flood would have dissolved everything dissolvable and apparently sorted it somehow. Of course we don't kow how for sure, it's all speculation, just as your stuff is speculation.
Uh, no, we have actual evidence. This is what makes geology different from stuff you've made up in your head.
But the layering makes far LESS sense on the evolutionist interpretation. Why should eras of time be demarcated by any such geological phenomena? Why shouldn't there be a continuous piling up of mixed sediments over those supposed billions of years? In fact why should there be ANY piling up of sediments whatever? Such phenomena occur in the present for particular reasons in limited locations. The idea that the entire earth would be layered makes NO sense except on the basis of the Flood catastrophe which stirred up everything, dissolved everything and redeposited it in layers.
Um ... the entire Earth is not in fact layered.
There's something particularly stupid about creationists' attempts to deal with geology. At least in biology they have some dim idea of what they're trying to explain. Elephants exist, they know that, and then they've got to find an explanation for elephants (goddidit).
But they know so little about the facts of geology that they turn their efforts to explaining things which are not in fact true.
This is the sort of thing that water does. The scale of the Flood was beyond anything we can imagine but we CAN say that WATER ACTS THAT WAY.
You can say it, but it isn't true. In creationist theology water appears to be a sort of magic bulldozer that can do anything. But it can't. A mere global flood would not produce the phenomena we observe (that's the phenomena we actually observe, not the phenomena you've made up in your head). Your own post is a classic example of this. You write: "Such a flood would have dissolved everything dissolvable and apparently sorted it somehow." I love that "somehow", it says it all.
And again, when you LOOK at the layers in their most undisturbed condition in the Grand Canyon, SO undisturbed for billions of years according to old earth/evolution theory, and THEN subjected to some pretty violent disturbances such as tectonic lifting and twistings (elsewhere, not in the GC) and the cutting of the canyon, how can you even THINK long ages?
I don't follow your argument, which seems to be a succession of non sequiturs, but it seems to be based, again, on a factual error. Haven't you ever heard of the Great Unconformity?
Here's a cross-section of the Grand Canyon. Methinks it has been disturbed at least once.
So, it appears that flood geology can explain why the whole earth is layered, which it isn't, and why the layers in the Grand Canyon are undisturbed, which they aren't. Meanwhile, real geology can explain real things that are actually true.
It would be nice if creationists could get our act together well enough to make some of you have to rethink the foundations you are taking for granted.
Sadly, when creationists get their act together they stop being creationists. It's like the old joke about the farmer who was training his mule to live without food: "... and then, just after I'd succeeded, the durn thing died!"
Well, if you got your act together well enough to talk about geology with any degree of competence, you'd realize that "flood geology" is just so much horse-pucky. But I doubt that this is going to happen. Making stuff up is easier than studying, and appears to bring you greater satisfaction.
No, they are merely in thrall to the accumulated "knowledge" of their discipline.
Yeah, they're "merely in thrall" to knowing that the whole earth is not covered with layers of sedimentary rocks, and that the layers of the Grand Canyon are not perfectly undisturbed. Stuff like that.
I'm not asking for "trust," just a consideration of the evidence as I see it ...
But it's not evidence, and you haven't seen it. It's stuff you've made up. You have not seen that "the whole earth" is covered with layers of sedimentary rocks. No-one has seen this. It isn't. You have not seen a fossil layer which only has nautiloids in it and nothing else. No-one has seen this. It's something you made up.
Well, presumably AFTER they've been formed they could be MOVED and stacked in a layer, couldn't they?
Ah, this must be one of those things that happens "somehow".
What I added was links to Steve Austin's work on the nautiloid layer in the GC and the correction that there ARE other creatures in the layer with the nautiloids, but that nevertheless the nautiloids are found there in prodigious numbers, one to a square meter, or he estimates something like 10 billion over the hundreds of square miles he sampled. Such a dense preponderance of one creature in one layer is good evidence for rapid catastrophic deposition and killing ...
Um, Faith? No. If the fossil nautiloids were killed and deposited in a single catastrophe, and they are one per square meter, then this would require that in life they were one per square meter. The large number of fossils is actually a case against catastrophist doctrines. If all the creatures in the fossil record lived at the same time than it would have been standing room only on planet earth. A dinosaur could hardly have turned round without stepping on a dozen trilobites and knocking over a giant ground sloth.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 103 by Faith, posted 11-15-2012 11:17 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 123 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 3:54 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 123 of 409 (680004)
11-17-2012 3:54 AM
Reply to: Message 122 by Dr Adequate
11-17-2012 3:49 AM


Re: Dinosaurs and Nautiloids
I'm not going to deal with you tonight, maybe tomorrow, but there are layers ALL over the earth even if technically they don't cover every square inch of the earth. The layers are in Asia, they are in the Americas, they are in the Alps, they're everywhere. You see them buckled in all the high mountains. The Flood didn't HAVE to lay down layers but it did "all over the earth" even if in some places they washed away leaving no trace and in other places they didn't form for whatever reason,

This message is a reply to:
 Message 122 by Dr Adequate, posted 11-17-2012 3:49 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 124 by Dr Adequate, posted 11-17-2012 4:19 AM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(2)
Message 124 of 409 (680006)
11-17-2012 4:19 AM
Reply to: Message 123 by Faith
11-17-2012 3:54 AM


Re: Dinosaurs and Nautiloids
I'm not going to deal with you tonight, maybe tomorrow, but there are layers ALL over the earth even if technically they don't cover every square inch of the earth.
Apart from not being everywhere.
I shall just have to settle for being "technically" correct, whereas you are wrong.
And real geology does explain the deposition of sediment as we find it. Making-stuff-up geology, not so much.
The layers are in Asia, they are in the Americas, they are in the Alps, they're everywhere.
So when you say "the whole earth" is covered in layers of sedimentary rock, you mean that there is sedimentary rock in every continent?
By the same token, you might as well say that the whole earth is covered with Japanese people. There are some of them on every continent, but the whole earth is not in fact covered with them.
Do try to cultivate a little accuracy of speech and thought.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 3:54 AM Faith has not replied

  
vimesey
Member
Posts: 1398
From: Birmingham, England
Joined: 09-21-2011


Message 125 of 409 (680013)
11-17-2012 5:10 AM
Reply to: Message 121 by Faith
11-17-2012 3:46 AM


Re: One Day / Ananias and Sapphira
Except, of course, that's not how we think. So you're knocking down straw men - another hallmark of a pathetic argument.

Could there be any greater conceit, than for someone to believe that the universe has to be simple enough for them to be able to understand it ?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 121 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 3:46 AM Faith has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(1)
Message 126 of 409 (680014)
11-17-2012 5:16 AM
Reply to: Message 111 by Faith
11-17-2012 1:47 AM


Re: age of archaeological finds / carbon dating
I think there's a little tension in your objections here.
On the one hand you claim that scientists are wrong because they hold on to preconceived ideas and thus interpret the evidence incorrectly.
On the other hand you complain very loudly that they don't interpret the evidence on the basis of your preconceived ideas. (And as we,ve seen elsewhere this includes the invention of implausible ad hoc excuses to explain away evidence contrary to your views and even a refusal to accept truths that you dislike)
There's an inconsistency here. If it is a methodological error to cling too tightly to preconceived ideas then it is an error even if the ideas are ones you believe or like.
Edited by Admin, : "if" => "of"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 1:47 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 127 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 6:05 AM PaulK has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 127 of 409 (680019)
11-17-2012 6:05 AM
Reply to: Message 126 by PaulK
11-17-2012 5:16 AM


Re: age of archaeological finds / carbon dating
I think there's a little tension in your objections here.
On the one hand you claim that scientists are wrong because they hold on to preconceived ideas and thus interpret the evidence incorrectly.
On the other hand you complain very loudly that they don't interpret the evidence on the basis if your preconceived ideas. (And as we,ve seen elsewhere this includes the invention of implausible ad hoc excuses to explain away evidence contrary to your views and even a refusal to accept truths that you dislike)
There's an inconsistency here. If it is a methodological error to cling too tightly to preconceived ideas then it is an error even if the ideas are ones you believe or like.
No, I'm not merely objecting to preconceived ideas as such, I know we all have them, I'm trying to get it noticed that they actually exist on your side and make a barrier to this discussion that's frustrating to a creationist who is coming from a completely other frame of reference. I'm just saying your iron grip on your paradigm makes it hard to get another perspective into your thought processes, another way of thinking about exactly the same facts that explains them just as well or better. It's like having to dismantle the entire system before even one single point can be made. Or something like that.
And by the way, I have your post 105 next on my agenda after responding to Coyote's 104, if I don't get swamped by the other posts in the meantime.
ABE: But in the context of laboratory tests, which I just realized was the context of the post you are replying to, that's one place where it could possibly be recognized as an interference in a more direct way than in the theoretical discussions, since I'm sure you all agree it would be an interference with the principles of science itself if it were shown to be the case. Objectivity, scientific neutrality, all that.
Edited by Faith, : add last thought.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 126 by PaulK, posted 11-17-2012 5:16 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 128 by PaulK, posted 11-17-2012 6:48 AM Faith has replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(1)
Message 128 of 409 (680022)
11-17-2012 6:48 AM
Reply to: Message 127 by Faith
11-17-2012 6:05 AM


Re: age of archaeological finds / carbon dating
quote:
No, I'm not merely objecting to preconceived ideas as such, I know we all have them, I'm trying to get it noticed that they actually exist on your side and make a barrier to this discussion that's frustrating to a creationist who is coming from a completely other frame of reference.
I didn't say that you were objecting to preconceived ideas as such. I said that you claimed that scientists were making errors became they were following preconceived ideas.
And I have to say that the ideas that you object to are themselves founded in strong evidence.
quote:
I'm just saying your iron grip on your paradigm makes it hard to get another perspective into your thought processes, another way of thinking about exactly the same facts that explains them just as well or better. It's like having to dismantle the entire system before even one single point can be made. Or something like that.
But you can't explain the facts as well. That's why you had to invent a super-genome. That's why you have to insist that radiometric dating will be disproved, and why you have to refuse to accept it as science even though it is. Hell it's why you had to complain that i was looking at the "wrong" part of a geological diagram because it showed evidence that didn't fit your views. And, quite obviously, expert geologists will know a whole lot of facts that you don't, so they are in a far better position to work out which explanation.best fits the facts, which is why the Flood idea was rejected in the first place.
I suppose you are right that you have a lot of work to do, but that is because the evidence is massively against you.
And really you have no idea how arguing with creationists seems from the other side of the fence.
Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 6:05 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 129 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 7:05 AM PaulK has replied
 Message 131 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 8:05 AM PaulK has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 129 of 409 (680024)
11-17-2012 7:05 AM
Reply to: Message 128 by PaulK
11-17-2012 6:48 AM


Re: age of archaeological finds / carbon dating
Well all you've done here is recite the Creed as usual, PaulK. Yes, you really believe you have the evidence and that I've never said anything that really challenge its, and that's the barrier I'm talking about.
Of course geologists will know a lot of things I don't know but I reserve the right to consider their interpretation of the geological column wrong, in fact silly. I mean really really silly for the many intuitively obvious reasons I've given which anybody ought to be able to see if you'd just make the effort.
As for the super genome, that was a first attempt to make sense of what must have happened since the Flood, or even since the Fall. Since those first thoughts I've come to see that the reduction of genetic diversity I kept talking about all the time is in fact a reduction to more and more homozygosity, so that the further back you go the more heterozygosity you should see in the genome.
That idea was prompted by a look through one of my old creationism books. It's a far more satisfying idea than the idea of a genome with a different structure such as polyploidy which was one thing I wondered about.
This way the original created genome is simply the same genome as we know it now only with all that junk DNA actually functioning and some great percentage of heterozygosity in the whole that has since also been lost. The percentage of heterozygosity today is something like 6%, I don't know if it could have been as high as 100% ever but say 80% at least in the original genome. As death and disease entered the Creation. genes began to die too, starting with some of their alleles until finally whole genes no longer functioned and became dead DNA.
The 95% of dead DNA now in the genome seems to fit rather nicely with the bottleneck of the Flood, and the small percentage of heterozygosity in the remaining functioning part as well. Reduced genetic diversity is a condition of increased homozygosity and can ultimately lead to dead genes. All the same process.
Oh I know how offensive this all is, but I'm not going to give up. Maybe some day something I say will make sense even to you.

He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 128 by PaulK, posted 11-17-2012 6:48 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 130 by PaulK, posted 11-17-2012 7:38 AM Faith has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(1)
Message 130 of 409 (680027)
11-17-2012 7:38 AM
Reply to: Message 129 by Faith
11-17-2012 7:05 AM


Re: age of archaeological finds / carbon dating
quote:
Well all you've done here is recite the Creed as usual, PaulK. Yes, you really believe you have the evidence and that I've never said anything that really challenge its, and that's the barrier I'm talking about.
Of course I pointed to evidence that what I said was correct. So no, I wasn't reciting any creed, I was pointing to the truth as I saw it - and without any reliance on preconceived ideas.
quote:
Of course geologists will know a lot of things I don't know but I reserve the right to consider their interpretation of the geological column wrong, in fact silly. I mean really really silly for the many intuitively obvious reasons I've given which anybody ought to be able to see if you'd just make the effort.
You have the right to your opinions, and I have the right to find your opinions as being based in nothing more than arrogance and false dogma.
quote:
As for the super genome, that was a first attempt to make sense of what must have happened since the Flood, or even since the Fall. Since those first thoughts I've come to see that the reduction of genetic diversity I kept talking about all the time is in fact a reduction to more and more homozygosity, so that the further back you go the more heterozygosity you should see in the genome.
But that obviously doesn't work. Many of the arguments assume maximum heterozygosity in the ark population, and two individuals - as is the case for all "unclean" species have a maximum of four alleles at any locus even under that assumption - it will produce a bottleneck and we don't see it. If we add in your other idea that the pairs in the ark are the ancestors of multiple species under the modern definition it gets even worse for you because you need a single pair to account for the genetic diversity of multiple species. That's WHY you needed the super genome.
quote:
As for the super genome, that was a first attempt to make sense of what must have happened since the Flood, or even since the Fall. Since those first thoughts I've come to see that the reduction of genetic diversity I kept talking about all the time is in fact a reduction to more and more homozygosity, so that the further back you go the more heterozygosity you should see in the genome.
But it doesn't. Bottlenecks don't create junk DNA, they drastically reduce the variation in DNA across the board - and it's the amount of variation in non-junk DNA that you have to explain. And you would have to consider the structure of junk DNA as well to make an actual argument. This is a prime example of you jumping to a conclusion without considering the evidence properly.
quote:
Oh I know how offensive this all is, but I'm not going to give up. Maybe some day something I say will make sense even to you.
But I bet that you don't understand WHY I find it offensive.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 129 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 7:05 AM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 131 of 409 (680030)
11-17-2012 8:05 AM
Reply to: Message 128 by PaulK
11-17-2012 6:48 AM


Re: the offense of the debate
About the other side of the fence, which you first wrote as "offence" which I decided to take as a pun though I see now it wasn't. I probably can't really know what it's like to be on that side but I've seen how many silly ideas on the creationist side come through here, and I can easily imagine that being confronted with ANY ideas, silly or not, that come from nonscientists and don't follow scientific protocols and treat well-trained scientists as wrong about their own field on what seems like such a flimsy basis, must be felt as an extreme offense by those on the inside, going back to that word. But how should we deal with that if we DO think you're wrong? Say a lot of polite respectful words? I don't think so.
I've seen some good creationist arguments, however, that you guys treat as trash, and I think my own arguments are good, even though the work of an amateur. And it seems to me that it's a combination of your being intellectually paradigm-bound, along with the expectable pride in your trainnig and your work that closes you to even a reasonable idea from a creationist, in other words it IS an offense, to your pride. That's understandable.
But all this started with an offense to Christians and to the true God way back there somewhere, Hutton for sure whose ancient earth contradicted the Bible, followed by evolution which contradicts the Bible. But I do have to keep coming back to the fact that the creationist ideas in Hutton's day and in Darwin's day had already taken leave of the Bible, they were really unbiblical ideas, like strange ideas about fossils and the Flood that bore no relation to the Biblical account or the character of God, and the idea that God continued to create new species for this or that purpose long after the Creation week which ended with His resting, after which there was no more creating which the creationists somehow failed to take into account. Such denials of the word of God by supposed Christians DESERVED God's raising up unbelievers like Hutton and Darwin. Darwin's thinking was necessary just to answer all that nonsense about whimsical creations, and again, I think God allowed that because the creatonists WEREN'T true to His word.
If we don't obey God He'll turn us over to the anti-God forces we follow in our hearts anyway. Judgment begins at the house of God says scripture.
So we're the ones who are responsible for evolutionism and all the anti-God stuff that goes with it. We want to bring it down because it is an offense to the true God, but until WE change it probably isn't going to happen, so my own efforts are probably going to keep meeting with resistance too until something different happens in my own outlook. I don't really know what that is. I guess I could take time out and fast and pray for a week or two. Maybe I should do that. Bringing people to God is the most important thing, I just keep thinking that if evolution could be shown to be the house of cards I know it is the result would be people returning to God. But again maybe that's not the method God has in mind.
Oh well, I guess this is a science thread and I just went off on a tangent. But it IS related to science at least. If I get banned that will give me a reason to fast and pray.
Just posted this and saw your line about not knowing why it's offensive toyou. Could be. Will have to think about it later.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 128 by PaulK, posted 11-17-2012 6:48 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 133 by PaulK, posted 11-17-2012 8:41 AM Faith has not replied

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


(4)
Message 132 of 409 (680031)
11-17-2012 8:07 AM
Reply to: Message 110 by foreveryoung
11-17-2012 1:27 AM


Re: One Day / Ananias and Sapphira
foreveryoung writes:
That isn't what modern american conservatism is about. It is "I've got mine and I am going to do with it AS I WISH and NOT as the government wishes."
Isn't that what Ananias and Sapphira did, keep some of their wealth to do with as they wished? Didn't Jesus say to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's? Didn't Jesus say that merely being rich denied heaven? Doesn't this passage from the Bible speak against keeping one's wealth to oneself:
Acts 2:44-45: And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
Like the antebellum south where few possessed the wealth required to own slaves but most defended a slavery that provided them little benefit, few modern conservatives are rich yet defend policies that are antithetical to their own best interests. Often too poor to effectively save for their own retirement or access healthcare, they nonetheless vote for policies and politicians that will forever keep these out of their reach.
Conservatives can legitimately argue that Jesus was pro-life and pro-marriage, but he definitely was not pro-rich. He was for sharing and community, not for mansions walled off from the poverty and squalor produced by their own selfishness and neglect.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 110 by foreveryoung, posted 11-17-2012 1:27 AM foreveryoung has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(1)
Message 133 of 409 (680036)
11-17-2012 8:41 AM
Reply to: Message 131 by Faith
11-17-2012 8:05 AM


Re: the offense of the debate
quote:
About the other side of the fence, which you first wrote as "offence" which I decided to take as a pun though I see now it wasn't.
It was an iPad spelling "correction" - and you had to get in fast to even see it.
quote:
I probably can't really know what it's like to be on that side but I've seen how many silly ideas on the creationist side come through here, and I can easily imagine that being confronted with ANY ideas, silly or not, that come from nonscientists and don't follow scientific protocols and treat well-trained scientists as wrong about their own field on what seems like such a flimsy basis, must be felt as an extreme offense by those on the inside, going back to that word. But how should we deal with that if we DO think you're wrong? Say a lot of polite respectful words? I don't think so.
Oh, the silliness of the ideas is the least of it. I would say that the arrogance - and the frequent appearance of dishonesty are far worse.
quote:
I've seen some good creationist arguments, however, that you guys treat as trash, and I think my own arguments are good, even though the work of an amateur. And it seems to me that it's a combination of your being intellectually paradigm-bound, along with the expectable pride in your trainnig and your work that closes you to even a reasonable idea from a creationist, in other words it IS an offense, to your pride. That's understandable.
I won't dare to speak for everyone but I certainly try to be fair and I believe I succeed more often than not. If you can find a genuinely good argument that I've "trashed"I'd be willing to take another look at it.
But again you're wrong about the source of the offence. It's the pride of the creationists which I find offensive.
quote:
But all this started with an offense to Christians and to the true God way back there somewhere
And this is really the heart of it. You complain about "thought police" - but here you are considering dissenting views an offence. Can't you see that that view is inherently offensive to anyone who wants to think for themselves?
And let me repeat one thing that I've said before - if you want us to accept your arguments based on your theological beliefs you have to get us to accept your theological beliefs first. It is odd then that you are so adamant in refusing to discuss the theology.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 131 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 8:05 AM Faith has not replied

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


(5)
Message 134 of 409 (680037)
11-17-2012 8:52 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by vimesey
11-17-2012 1:53 AM


Re: One Day / Ananias and Sapphira
My dear Old Stoney Face the error you are making here is viewing the world through your lense of ultra Marxist socialistic/communism of the British loony left wing ideology currently promolgated by the loony Torys.
Like you I've been cursed with an upbringing that views other people as generally good sorts who I would be happy to give a bit of my hard earned wages to if it would lift their family out of poverty. The various happenstances, flukes, accidents of birth and circumstance that led me to have a good education and a decent job which I enjoy were actually down to my own work ethic: proof that if you are not successful it is because one is a feckless, lazy scrounger who wants to destroy the nation.
The grant I had at uni given to me by the government had nothing to do with it, nor the money my folks gave to me or the friends I made at uni helping me find a place to live. I don't count that as anything other than my own hard work.
You need to purge you self of this foolish notion that you should help anyone simply because it's a good thing to do.
What the Torys should really do is gut all the publicly ran institutions and open it up to the beneficent power of market forces. Then the institutions would be well run morally vituous concerns putting profit first to the benefit of all. Then the country would be in a better state, more jobs, happy people and a growing economy all down to market forces.
Oh, wait.....
Sad face.

The above ontological example models the zero premise to BB theory. It does so by applying the relative uniformity assumption that the alleged zero event eventually ontologically progressed from the compressed alleged sub-microscopic chaos to bloom/expand into all of the present observable order, more than it models the Biblical record evidence for the existence of Jehovah, the maximal Biblical god designer.
-Attributed to Buzsaw Message 53
The explain to them any scientific investigation that explains the existence of things qualifies as science and as an explanation
-Attributed to Dawn Bertot Message 286
Does a query (thats a question Stile) that uses this physical reality, to look for an answer to its existence and properties become theoretical, considering its deductive conclusions are based against objective verifiable realities.
-Attributed to Dawn Bertot Message 134

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by vimesey, posted 11-17-2012 1:53 AM vimesey has not replied

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


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Message 135 of 409 (680052)
11-17-2012 12:13 PM
Reply to: Message 111 by Faith
11-17-2012 1:47 AM


Re: age of archaeological finds / carbon dating
As the topic is the Creationism Road Trip, during which experts explained their methods and data to creationists, I'm going to venture into what otherwise might be off-topic and attempt the same approach here. Even so, I'm only going to hit the most pertinent points.
...The fact that you chose the most experienced lab means that there are other inexperienced ones and that it TAKES experience, which implies a subjective component to the test, or at least I have to wonder what kind of experience is needed. Where to look in the bone fragment for the best carbon 14 or are you looking for the decay products? Anyway extracting whatever you're looking for so you can measure it sounds like it must involve some trial and error, subjective judgment, etc. The neec for experience also implies that all the less experienced labs could be regularly producing unreliable results, which doesn’t inspire confidence in the method overall.
But since all 31 samples we submitted for this project went to the most experienced laboratory, which as done over 300,000 samples last I looked, your objections are unfounded in this case.
Further showing the uncertainty involved is that you sent so many other samples. I’m sure you’re convinced that your final result is trustworthy and that the further tests are a guarantee of greater trustworthiness, but you should understand that from the point of view of a nonscientist it doesn’t look all that trustworthy if it takes so many trials and errors to get a result that makes sense to you. And the idea that you might not understand what was going on from earlier readings and have to have additional tests until you did understand doesn’t inspire confidence either. Of course I understand that 100% reliability in almost anything is a lot to ask but it sounds like there’s an awful lot of slippage in this department of science, a lot more than I expected for sure. All this doesn’t prove your results are wrong, it just raises doubts.
It raises doubt because you are predisposed to not accept either the method or the results. The reason for sending so many samples is we were dealing with a large and complex site. There were four separate components there, and we wanted to establish the age and range of each one.
And we prefer to submit too many samples rather than too few. For the kind of work we do we want to understand what's going on, and that's one of our best tools for doing so.
Apparently the inventor of the process had amazing results with some organic items of known date but it sounds like that’s the exception rather than the rule and, well, it makes a person wonder. Seems to me the lab technicians could wonder how come their own results aren’t all that predictably perfect, since his were, his name was something Libby I think?
Willard Libby, of the University of Chicago. And no, the testing of materials of known dates is done all the time as a means of correcting for atmospheric variation and other potential problems. That's what the calibration curve that RAZD posted above is! By taking items of a known age, and dating them, you can see the variation from actual ages that results from atmospheric fluctuation. Tree rings are a perfect material for this; they are organic, nicely wrapped up to limit contamination, come with actual down-to-the-year ages, and are plentiful. This lets you repeat the process in a variety of different areas. Using standing dead bristlecone pines from the White Mountains of southern California they have counted tree rings back some 12,000 years and dated them in 10-year increments. They have done the same for European oaks going back about twice as far. The two calibration curves agree! And those curves agree with several others using entirely different materials. Corals, for example.
And then there’s the human factor. Are the samples totally blind at the labs or do the technicians know things about them such as where they’re from and the history of work at that site or whatever? I can easily imagine a technician saying "OK we’re looking for a date somewhere in the range of" whatever that site has been finding. And it would be quite kosher to do that, no fraud involved, no conscious fraud anyway, just a help in doing the work, but it could skew things without anyone intending to.
When we submit our samples to the laboratory we send in the site number, the type of material (bone, shell, charcoal), and the weight. (And money.) That's all, and that information is for our own records. The laboratory has no way of checking on the site and it wouldn't do them any good anyway as there is no information in the literature on most of the sites we test anyway! That's the reason we are doing the test, is to find out those things. So the laboratory technicians have no idea what date to "produce." They just run the test and come up with the date and we have to live with what they find.
Perhaps the same date could keep turning up for a particular site just because the particular technician who happens to have been the one testing the samples from that site has a particular way of working peculiar to himself, a particular kind of experience and whatnot, and without having the slightest intention to do so just keeps turning up a certain kind of result due to his/her style of working, extracting, or whatever is involved And so on and so forth. There’s just a LOT of room for slippage
No. You are just looking for doubt, any doubt, to try to bolster up your beliefs. Grasping at straws would be a better description of what you're doing. These large laboratories process 50 or more samples a day, every day. The technicians have a method they follow, and they are only concerned with their part of the operation--making sure the sample is clean, appropriate for the tests they are doing, pretreating as needed to remove contamination, and processing it correctly. They are not interested in archaeology at all! Nor do they have any training in it. They don't care what the dates are! They just send us the information they come up with.
In the end you are asking me to take on faith something that involves so many ifs and buts even the best scientists must have trouble sorting it all out. I can get some grasp on DNA and of other things in science, but how this process could work with all the variables involved leaves me mystified and frustrated. And always your dates are older than the Bible’s, if even only by a thousand years or so, but you want me to abandon the Bible for such an unreliable way of measuring time as yours.
Our dates have run from as recent as the mid-1800s back past 12,000 years. (The oldest few were not cultural, but were done to establish the age of a particular mud flow.) Some of the more recent dates are on materials from early missions, and I'm sure you would have no problem trusting those. I think what you are really trying to tell me is that you'll accept recent dates but after a certain age you won't accept them. This is what I meant by picking and choosing--for entirely non-scientific reasons you are rejecting older dates produced by the exact methods as more recent dates. That's not science. In fact, that's the exact opposite of science.
So far you have not raised any accurate objections to the C14 method, just spurious "what-ifs." I've seen this tactic on the part of creationists for years now, and it's whack-a-mole. When one objection is explained and put to rest, another pops up. Round and round we go and eventually we'll be back at the first one again.
The problem is that you're neither looking for evidence, nor willing to accept evidence, unless it supports your existing beliefs. When it contradicts your beliefs your defense mechanisms cut in and you start producing "what-ifs."

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by Faith, posted 11-17-2012 1:47 AM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 137 by RAZD, posted 11-17-2012 8:07 PM Coyote has seen this message but not replied

  
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