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Author | Topic: Uniformitarianism & Age of Creationists' Earth | |||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
What I don't understand is how they can determine the age of the Earth when a fair portion of it was based on a set of laws of physics that can't be determined. You're missing half of the equation and no way of figuring it out. See Great Debate with Simple The purpose is not to be able to actually determine the age of the earth -- they already "know" what that is -- but to make reality wrong.
Rationally, that would mean you cannot come to an outcome. You're assuming a rational outcome is desired. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
This is stark contrast to creationists, who are loathe to change any of their beliefs. And who complain every time science changes, all the while claiming that science is dogmatic and like a religion ... Enjoy. 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) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hey b0ilingfrog,
Quick question, how do you isolate a phrase from a posting in the light blue box? type [qs]quotes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:
quotes are easy You can also use the peek function to see how other formatting is done.
As for peer reviewed scientific journals, ideas and claims not consistent with uniformity rarely survive the peer review process. Ah the old conspiracy theory. It couldn't be that they are not accepted because they are not scientifically valid, no, there must be some other reason. It surprises me how quickly people jump to a conspiracy motive when they don't understand things: the 9/11 towers, the 2000/2004 elections, the failure of creationists to publish in scientific journals .... An open-minded skeptic should be wary of all conspiracy theories, eh?
I rejected uniformity in the fifth grade. When I learned the Principle of Uniformity You do realize, don't you that you are not talking about uniformitarianism? Uniformitarianism - Wikipedia
quote: That was, of course, based on the evidence available at the time. Note that this means that volcanoes don't occur vastly different from past eruptions, for example, similar in types of eruption. Geology - Wikipedia
Important principles in the Development of Geology quote: You will note that this does not mean that uniformitarianism does not include catastrophic events, just that they will occur according to the known physics and the way things behave today. For instance the meteor impact on the Yucatan Peninsula in ~65million BCE is a catastrophic event, but one entirely "explained by what can be seen to be happening now" - and this is about as catastrophic as one needs, as it caused a mass extinction that included most of the dinosaurs. The geological record is full of instances of mass extinctions, so we know catastrophe was a part of earths history. Let's look at a typical creationist example of uniformitarianism:http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v8/i2/news.asp quote: This comes down to using different definitions for the same words again: Creationist definition of uniformitarianism: the principle that everything happens by slow, gradual, uniform processes, with no changes or sudden events. (The Mississippi River behaves today exactly as it did 35 years ago). Scientific definition of uniformitarianism: the principle that the same processes that shape the universe occurred in the past as they do now, and that the same laws of physics apply in all parts of the knowable universe. (The Mississippi River on any day behaves according to the physics of hydraulics and the energy gradient of the river, the principles that govern the formation of meanders during low flow and the destruction of meanders, and flooding etc. during high flow). Do you agree that they are using two entirely different definitions? The next question is one that really perplexes me, and maybe you can help me understand it: If you are talking about a science and what that science says, shouldn't you use the definitions used in that science to discuss it? What would be the point of using a different definition in such discussion? Is it stupidity - that they don't understand that the definitions are different? Is it ignorance - that they are unaware of the scientific definitions? Is it apathy - that they can't bother to learn them? Is it misinformation - that they have been told a false definition by a trusted source (and failed to fact-check it)? Is it malicious - that they are intentionally lying in order to delude gullible people into believing something false (and to what end)? Is it delusion - that they think their definition is correct and all of science has it wrong? Can there be ANY valid reason to use an incorrect definition in such a discussion? Thanks for your help on this perplexing issue. Now you will excuse me while I walk down to the local fish market where - according to my uniformitarianistic beliefs - they will hopefully have fresh fish, but not the same ones as yesterday ... Enjoy. 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) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... the redbeds in the Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo, Texas. They are hundreds of feet thick and consist of thin little leaves of red sandstone or siltstone with white layers of crystalline gypsum interbedded all through them. Thousands of layers. Formations that look just like them are forming now, ... It's a lake of sorts maybe one month out of the year in wet years, and otherwise a big flat pan. When it rains hard, reddish sand and silt wash into the pan with the rainwater and then settle out. Then the water evaporates in the sun, and the gypsum and other salts it carries crystallize on top of the silt. The cycle repeats year after year ... Has there been any attempt to correlate the layers with annual layers? Has anyone taken core samples of the current vernal lake? Presumably there would be plant if not animal life that would also grow on each layer and that could be c-14 dated. Enjoy. 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) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Is there any chance of finding a small chordate encased in amber, or has such already been discovered? A quick google seems to turn up only bones, but what about hair? http://www.springerlink.com/content/kr562162l7r07l06/
quote: Can you get DNA from hair? also
Mammal bones found in Amberquote: Then there is this - from creationist fraud Harun Yahya Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya | Forbidden Music
quote: Can you get soft tissue from a fishing lure? Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : also Edited by RAZD, : added fraud picture for amusement Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner. 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) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... if they are actual bones, remembering that (most) fossils are not the actual bones of the decedent, but are mineralized remains ... Yes, and it had me wondering if you could find soft tissue inside the bones rather than the hair, might be a little better protected. Note that there are, apparently, a lot of frauds with amber fossils - I found one site dedicated to uncovering them (modern bugs inserted through drilled and refilled holes). Watch out for the hook. Enjoy.
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner. 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) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Welcome to the fray gregrjones.
Something else interesting about the article is that it states that one problem with the theory is that it would shatter the Copernican notion that our corner of the universe is no special place. Which has been "shattered" for some time.
There is a line in the article that states that if we DID live in such a bubble objects in space would be closer than they appear. The logical implication for such a universe would be that it would be younger. Curiously I saw no reference to age of the universe in the article, so it appears that you are interpreting things from an article written by fox news. Have you read the source article by the scientist/s?
Light travelling from supernovae outside our bubble would appear dimmer, because the light would diverge more than we would expect once it got inside our void. Curiously that would not change the location of SN1987A at a mere 168,000 light years away, so the "bubble" is pretty big ... IF it exists.
But epistemologically speaking, we KNOW very little when it comes to origins. There is a difference between not knowing and not having any idea, ideas that are testable and provide predictions. There is also a difference between making stuff up and having testable ideas that make predictions that can invalidate the ideas.
My point is simply that an evolutionist has as much faith as a creationist given the nature of origins and epistemology. As long as you make up stuff about what evolutionists have faith in so that you can conclude you are correct. What I have "faith" in involves the nature of objective reality being a true measure of that reality. There is a big difference between accepting ideas completely and using ideas as tentative explanations until better ones come along. Does your faith mean that objective reality doesn't exist, can't be measured, observed, etc and used to test the validity of ideas? Enjoy. ps - as you are new here, some posting tips: type [qs]quotes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:
quotes are easy or type [quote]quotes are easy[/quote] and it becomes:
quote: also check out (help) links on any formating questions when in the reply window. For other formating tips see Posting Tips 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) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Thanks gregrjones,
I hope you are not implying that I'm making stuff about what evolutionists believe. If so, please be more specific. Well the easiest way to avoid that is to ask 'evolutionists' what they think, rather than make claims with, perhaps, insufficient knowledge. Scientists understand a fundamental difference between "faith" as applied in religion and what they deal with in science.
In science we start with objective evidence, evidence that other people can observe and describe and agree with other described observations of the same evidence. Then we base theories on that objective evidence, but these theories are not taken as being true, just as being the best explanation of the evidence that has been developed so far. Then we make predictions to test the theory and see how well it does at explaining reality. Those that don't work are discarded or reworked, and those that work are tested again. After many a number of such tests, especially when there have been no failures, the tested success of a theory to explain reality can lead one to have a high degree of confidence that the theory is true, but never give complete assurance. At best you get a set of proposed principles and tentative beliefs, that are used as a working model until better ones come along, but ready to be tossed in the garbage if a better theory comes along. I don't define that as faith, but as skepticism.
Why would the bubble have to be unreasonably huge to skew our perceptions of the distance of SN1987A? SN1987A is something of an oddity in astronomy: it is far enough away that parallax using the earth orbit cannot determine the distance, but the same principle applies. In this case there is a ring around the star that is several light years across, large enough that we can measure the angle subtended by the ring. When the star went nova the explosion was observed on earth by the light of the explosion (common to super nova), and then several days later the astronomers observed the effect of when the light hit the ring, causing it to glow brightly. So we have three legs of a triangle: light travels directly to earth = A, light travels to ring =B and light travels from ring to earth = C, and we have the angle AC. All we need is the distance of any one leg and we can solve for the others with trigonometry. That distance is B, recorded in light years by the difference in time it took for light to reach us along A and the time it took light to reach us along (B+C) and using A=C. This results in a distance of 168,000 light years.
How could we interpret the statement about things appearing farther than they are in any other way than that this would imply a younger age of the universe? After all, isn't the distance that light has to travel across the universe from the stars a chief reason why we believe in an old universe? No, the chief reason is based on the decay of energy over time, as observed by the No webpage found at provided URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMAPWilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and the background energy levels detected.
Of course I believe in objective reality. And I believe in such an objective reality because I believe in objective truth. For instance, as a creationist, I see no conflict with believing in an old universe and my Christian faith. Then you should have no problem with understanding that the objective evidence shows that the earth is old, regardless of where a bubble may exist in space.
You may ask this question because of a common straw man about faith, or at least about Christian faith. No, I'm just making sure we are talking about the same reality. Enjoy. 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) • • •
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