Summations Only

Given that Faith very probably doesn't have a clue why that should be significant, let's do the math yet again.In applying any test, there is a probability p that it gives us a valid result and a probability q (such that q = 1-p) that it gives us a false result. The probability p is called our "confidence interval" and is usually much more than 95% for most tests. The probability that n independent tests all give us a false result would be qⁿ. As I'm sure that Faith is not aware, multiplying a value less than 1 (and greater than zero) by itself yields a smaller number, so doing it n times makes the result ever smaller. Not to mention that q would be even smaller if you add the requirement that every test gives you the same wrong result, but it would be difficult to arrive at an actual probability for that.Our confidence interval for dating tests would be 90% or greater, giving us a q of 10%. If we use 10 independent tests, the probability of getting a wrong date every single time would be 0.1¹⁰ which would be 1^-10, giving us 99.9999999% probability of having the right date, very close to dead certainty.But let's make it much more difficult for ourselves. Let's assume a 50-50 chance of a valid result, which would give us a q of 50%. 0.5¹⁰ = 0.001 probability of all tests giving us a wrong date, giving us 99.9% confidence that we have the right date, again very close to dead certainty. And as already noted, the probability of all the tests giving us the exact same wrong date would be far lower than 0.1%.{ABE:
Just for sh*ts and giggles, let's try a really bad example, a test that we only have 10% confidence in. q=.9 and q¹⁰ = 0.3487, so we would have 65.13% confidence in getting the right result, better than even odds. 100 tests would get us back to greater than 99.9999%
}This is why having independent tests all giving the same answer is so significant.Of course, Faith will reject that and declare mathematics to be false and the crazy product of a false paradigm that has us all brainwashed. Furthermore, she will declare it to be unbiblical, probably by citing the verse which gives the value of π (the ratio of the diameter to the circumference) as an even 3 instead of the crazy value math teaches us, which any mathematician will freely admit is irrational.Edited by dwise1, : ABE: additional example with really bad odds

Actually, most creationists will use that figure of 10,000 years as a smokescreen, because if they went full-biblical and used 6,000 years, then that would expose the fundamental lie of "creation science" that it's based on science instead of religion. It's legal fact that they cannot have evolution barred from public schools for religious reasons, which is why they created the deliberate deception of "creation science" which claims that they oppose evolution for purely scientific reasons that have nothing to do with religion.Also, many if not most creationists don't really care how old the earth is; they just want to prove science wrong about anything they can find (or think that they have found). On another forum, a YEC used the sea salt claim to show that the earth is millions of years old. When I said that I thought he was supposed to believe that the earth was no older than 10,000 years, he replied that he had no problem with the earth being millions of years old, just so long as it's not BILLIONS of years old as science says it is.That taught me that they don't want to prove creation or other YEC beliefs, but rather they just want to destroy science, or at least render it inert. And to that end, they will attack science at every turn, trying their utmost to prove science wrong about anything and everything.Mileage on individual creationists may vary.

And of course that "everything else {you} know" is the dogmatic beliefs that you hold in spite of the evidence. You keep accusing everybody else of being blinded by an old-earth view and that our scientific findings are fabrications of "the OE/ToE paradigm".The reality is that you are projecting your own failings in that you are yourself being deceived by your own religious dogma which is the only reason you have for rejecting the evidence. Furthermore, that is also what drives you to keep yourself ignorant of the evidence and of the scientific methods which uses that evidence. You claim that all those methods are hopelessly flawed, yet you have absolutely no clue what could possibly be wrong with them, only that you believe that your extreme dogmatism requires them to be wrong. That is exactly what you just told us.So what answers did that geologist give you when you asked him questions about what geology students are taught and how the layers are laid down? You did complain that you have never seen it explained how the layers are laid down, so I told you to ask a geologist, since a geologist would be able to explain it to you. Have you spoken with a geologist? No, of course not! Talking with a geologist would cure you of that portion of your ignorance, which you cannot dare to allow to happen. You depend completely on that ignorance and must maintain it at all costs. The first question, about what they are taught at university, was already answered by edge who had been through those same courses are Steve Austin, but you rejected what he told you and ignored the truth. That proves to us that even if you were to ever talk with a geologist, you would reject everything he would tell you for no other reason than that you believe that it would conflict with your dogma.
 Faith, try to answer an honest question: What would be the consequences of the earth being billions of years old after all?In order to cut you to the quick, I'll answer the counter-question about the consequences of the earth turning out to be no more than 10,000 years old. It would literally change all of science, because we would have to then figure out why everything we had discovered and tested and retested could have possibly been so incredibly wrong. That is because science is not in the least like theology, in which you can cherry-pick and redefine and obfuscate in order to "prove" anything while disallowing any attempts to test your assertions. Instead, in science everything depends on everything else. You cannot ignore any actual evidence, you cannot avoid having your ideas challenged and tested. All the evidence shows that the earth is ancient, so if the earth turns out to instead be so incredibly young, than that would mean that everything we thought we knew was completely wrong. Which would be extremely incredible, since everything else based on our scientific understanding works so incredibly well.OK, your turn: What would be the consequences of the earth being billions of years old after all?

You still making that absolutely ludicrous false claim? Even somebody with only a quarter of a functioning brain could see how false that is and how utterly stupid it is.When a layer of sediment is laid down, it is laid down over a particular period of time starting at one specific point in time and ending at a later specific point in time. Duh?Layers of sediment are laid down over the layers below it and before the layers that will end up above them. Therefore, a given layer is younger than the layers beneath it, which were laid down in a previous period of time. Similarly, a given layer is older than the layers above it, which were laid down in a later period of time. Duh?Therefore every layer does indeed represent the period in time at which it was laid down. Duh?Everything deposited in a particular layer, both organic and inorganic, were present during the period in time that the layer was deposited. Duh?Those simple facts that you deny hold true regardless of the lengths of those time periods and at exactly what in time each time period started and ended. Whether the earth is young or old, those simple facts do still hold true and are obvious. Duh?Clearly, your false claim that strata do not represent time periods is complete and absolute blithering nonsense. What is wrong with you that you continue to spout something so utterly stupid?Has your theology really inflicted such a high degree on brain damage on you?

IOW, there are so many things you could learn. Of course, you can never allow that, so you can never learn anything. La, LA,LA, LA.LA.

Such as YOU?

What a fucking hypocrite you are!

{Content hidden (use "peek" if you feel the need). 48 hour suspension. - Adminnemooseus}Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Content hidden (use "peek" if you feel the need). 48 hour suspension.

Tanypteryx to Faith's Message 2002: Faith already told you that in the message you're replying to: So she is stating that they are ordered by size. That would be the expected result of hydrodynamic sorting. For example, here is part of my notes on that creationist movie on Netflix, "Is Genesis History?" (starts with the timemark into the movie):

quote:

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0:50 -- Arthur Chadwick, paleontologist
interviewed at a dig of the Lance Formation
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he described a one-meter thick bone bed
from his description of it, the burial had to have been a single event
because the bones are sorted as we would expect from hydrodynamic sorting
with large bones to the bottom and small bones to the top
that also means that the bones must have already become disarticulated,
meaning that the soft tissue had to have already rotted away

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So two of the basic questions for Faith would be (in which "you" and "your" refer to Faith):

1. Which way is up? In your fossils having been sorted by the flood according to size, are the large ones found consistently at the bottom and the small ones at the top? Or is it the other way around?
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2. Is that really the order that we do actually find, sorting by size? What are your sources so that we can see for ourselves?

You need to take much more care to make your posts very clear. As it is, it looks like you're weasel-wording all the time. IOW, if you made yourself more understandable, you wouldn't have to complain so much about being misunderstood. Or would that be counter-productive for your goals here?So just how would your magic flood sort by number of eyeballs? Or by any other trait? Since you don't know how water works, nor physics, nor geological processes, and you refuse to try to learn, you end up having nothing. How could you ever expect yourself to replace that big nothing with a something? Why would you expect to be able to convince anybody by presenting nothing but your big nothing, the product of your willful and self-imposed ignorance?We're not trying to make you give up, but rather we're trying to get you to stop wasting your time in dead-ends. And to get you to stop completely discrediting your own religion.

As much good as it will do the world for Christianity to shrivel up and die out, I would very much rather that that happen from its own lack of merit instead of from internal sabotage by its adherents.

I think that raises a far more important question for this discussion: Does Faith even have any clue at all what order we objectively observe the fossils to be in? Or is that just yet another thing of which she keeps herself ignorant?She keeps making appeals to hydrodynamic sorting. Since that depends on size, shape, and density of the objects (eg, plants and critters) being buried, we know what effect that would have. For example, as I've posted from my notes of Is Genesis History?, that 1-meter thick fossil deposit had all the bones sorted out with large bones at the bottom and small one at top, which is exactly what we would expect from hydrodynamic sorting during a single event. Yet that is not what we observe in the entire fossil record.If Faith had actually seen the how fossils are distributed, how could she possibly think that hydrodynamic sorting would explain the lack of ordering by size and shape?She also cites that locality argument, that marine animals would be buried deeper than land animals because they would have been buried first. Yet we have marine fossils deposited in layers above land fossils, not just occasionally but almost everywhere.If Faith had actually seen the overall distribution of marine and land fossils throughout all the formations, how could she think that the locality excuse could possibly hold any water?And there's the good old "fleetness of foot" gaff which is always good for a laugh. If the "more advanced" organisms were able to run faster and so got buried later in the upper layers, what about the sloths? I've seen sloths move, so why don't we find them buried in the lower layers? Plus, how is it that the more advanced plants were likewise able to outrun the Flood? Has anybody here ever seen a plant run? (Ents don't count, because they are imaginary)So the basic problem that we've been overlooking in any discussion of the fossil order is that it is obviously yet another thing that Faith works hard to keep herself ignorant of just so she can continue to make silly false assertions about it.

Yes, I know that it and other plants use runners to plant a new plant, etc.The humor of the remark aside, is even kudzu fast enough to outrun the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami that swept over the Japanese countryside at automobile speeds? And yet that tsunami is extremely smaller and slower than the proposed Fluddye is supposed to have been.In SoCal, the transplanted nemesis was ice-plant. It's a succulent that needs very little care or watering and grows into a thick sheet that covers the slopes next to freeways, which made it look like a good idea. What the planners didn't realize was that that thick mat of vegetation would become so heavy that the slope could no longer support it and it would come crashing down taking the slope with it. On top of that, it's very difficult to remove and eradicate -- I had first-hand experience with that on one job site.I did live in the South for 8 months in Biloxi, Missisloppi -- my 2 previous months outside of San Antonio, TX, don't count because we were kept isolated. The main road between Biloxi and Gulfport, Pass Road, was constantly being worked on and in less than a year would be filled with potholes again.

A demonstrably false statement and a testimony to your ignorance of the subject.The earliest geologists were creationists. Even they started to see that the details of the evidence they were finding did not quite line up with Genesis, leading them, for example, to postulate a series of floods instead of just one.Modern geology got its start around 1800. One prominent group was the Scriptural Geologists (AKA "diluvialists"), two members of which, William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick, argued in 1820 that river valleys and certain other sedimentary deposits were the results of a recent worldwide flood.Therefore, creationists have been in the game for two centuries, the same amount of time as other geologists.As it turns out, it only took a few years for Buckland's own field work to start to undermine diluvialism and then, with the publication of Lyell's Principles of Geology, both Buckland and Sedgwick not only abandoned diluvialism, but even became strong opponents.The creationists kept chugging along, still getting nowhere. In the 1920's and 1930's, there was George McCready Price, a "self-taught geologist" who didn't know what he was doing. Henry Morris' 1961 The Genesis Flood, which is the foundational document of "Flood Geology", is basically a rehash of Price's ideas without acknowledging Price as their source.What followed is what Price had been doing nearly a century ago: search through the legitimate geology literature for anything that you can misrepresent and distort into some kind of support for your position. Since the 1970's, the heyday of "creation science", creationists had been trying to recruit people with actual credentials in geology, who then are bound to go apologetics instead of science even to the point of subverting the evidence and the truth in the service of their ideology.In stealing from Price's work, Morris made a mistake. Two competing groups in the early 1800's were "catastrophists", who held that most geological formations were formed by catastrophic events, and "uniformitarians", who held that most formations were formed gradually over time. Please note that the two positions were not mutually exclusive as creationists currently misrepresent them, since both groups acknowledged that both catastrophic and gradual processes had operated in the past; they just disgreed over the degree to which the two processes had contributed (gradual processes won that argument).In contrast, creationists think the two positions to be mutually exclusive, such that they will "disprove" uniformitarian geology by pointing out evidence for a single catastrophic event. The problem is that George McCready Price had changed the meaning of "catastrophism", which Morris unthinkingly copied. Henry Morris didn't know what he was doing, but Price did know:

quote:

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"The theory of 'catastrophism' as held a hundred years ago, had no resemblance to the theory here discussed, except in name."

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(The Geological Ages Hoax, George McCready Price, 1931, Fleming H. Revell Co., pg 101)

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It should be noted that the meaning of "uniformitarianism" has also changed, something lost on most creationists, including the creationist experts in that film, "Is Genesis History?". It doesn't refer to strictly uniform rates of gradual processes, but rather it's the idea that "the present is the key to the past." Well, that's what happens when you work with the evidence. You examine it, analyze it, try to understand it (ie, develop hypotheses and theories), follow it to find even more evidence, etc. You end up learning a helluva lot.Your problem is that your side decided to ignore the evidence. You had all those centuries to accumulate evidence and explanations, yet you wasted it all!And now you have the audacity to complain that you haven't had enough time? You had just as much time as science, more even, and just as much access to the evidence. You could have done something with all that time and evidence, but you didn't. You took all that time and opportunity and you wasted it! You have nobody to blame but yourselves.Of course, what this also shows us is how intellectually bankrupt creationism is and how at odds with reality it is.

It occurred to me today that I had read an article in BYTE about this. It's an AI experiment called "travesty" (AKA "parody generator"):

quote:

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Parody generators are computer programs which generate text that is syntactically correct, but usually meaningless, often in the style of a technical paper or a particular writer. They are also called travesty generators and random text generators.

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Faith has to be a POE who's been using a parody generator in order to prank us all these long years. I mean, nobody could really be that stubbornly and terminally clueless.Edited by dwise1, : "... POE who's been using a parody generator in order to prank us..."