Noah's Flood Came Down. It's Goin Back Up!!

I was attempting to show Buzsaw's misuse of the scientific meaning of "theory".We hadn't covered his use of the scientific meaning of the word, "fact" yet.I agree with basically everything you say, of course.I am quite confident that when Buzsaw said that "Gravity is a fact" he didn't at all realize that there really isn't a single "Theory of Gravity" and that we don't understand much about the mechanism of how gravity works.In pointing this out to him, I was hoping to illustrate that he takes as given, without protest, all that anyone has ever told him about Gravity, even though there is a great deal he doesn't know about it.Then I hoped to juxtapose the ToE over the Gravity analogy to see if he could then see his error in rationalaity.IOW, I was trying to explain to Buz what "theory" means. Jury's still out on if I was sucessful or not.

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Likely your son is still reading about the alleged zillionth aged coelacanth, the alleged Nebraska man and the alleged Java man also. Just because you and the pros theorize differently than I doesn't make me stupid. Imo, I have sounder reasons to theorize what is oberserved and experienced Biblically than you do sciendiculously.

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Most educated professional archeologists and scientists have been programmed in school to believe the theories, I say theories, taught in these schools. They insist on interpreting eveything they see to fit what they've been programmed to believe. They are the vast majority, so everything Biblical folks, who are the minority, teach about what is observed is naturally debunked by the pros.

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I'm talkin about this hiper-snobbish sophisticated arrogancy of claiming to know all this alleged detail about what things were like on planet earth hundreds of millions to billions of years ago. I say HOGWASH!!

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The more educated folks seem to get, the more they seem to stray from truth, imo, and as the Bible states. Men will be "ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (Forgot the text, but it's there.)

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Scientific American sure knows how to out do the National Inquirer.

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And you people are soooo critical of creationists because you think we know so little. Maybe you all are to be proven wrong on a whole lota other stuff you claim to be so down pat on.

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Evolutionists don't like to admit there's proven things, because they teach so much that isn't that they want us all to believe nothing's proven.

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Arrogant? Am I suppose to shut up and let you all spout off stuff that few readers understand to make them think you all have all the answers in a bag? A lot of what this is all about is good ole common sense and imo, you can't annihilate common sense and commonly understood laws of physics with your hi fi formulas.

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YAAAWN..........zzzzzzzzzzzzz

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Pardon, but this's common sense street stuff, n not sure it's the cup o tea for you folks here in this town.

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This list of quotes from you, Buzsaw, indicates that you seem to feel more than a little antipathy towards those with a great deal of education in the sciences.To me, this indicates some insecurity and inferiority you seem to be feeling about your education level in the sciences. This is an accurate assesment, I would say. The great news is, that can be remedied!However, when those more knowledgeable in these areas attempt to provide you with explanations, or give you links so that you might become more educated, you resist learning and reject nearly all information that contradicts your preferred view.Why is it that you accuse scientists of being in some kind of "elite" group, yet you refuse to do even a little bit of the work and study in Geology or Biology that scientists have done to reach their level of understanding and expertise? It's easy to sit back and critisize instead of putting your nose to the grindstone and doing the reading and study to educate yourself.I also notice that you use and accept scientifically-gathered information when you think it agrees with your position, such as your use of statistics about forest fires and global warming. However, when other scientifically-gathered facts contradict your preferred belief, you reject science and insult scientists as "arrogant", "snobby", or "programmed".You can't have it both ways, Buzsaw. Either you must accept the scientific method of investigation (which is devastating to your current position) or you must reject it entirely for all things and use faith alone.Contrary to your opinion, the scientific method is the same for all legitimate science. Since Creation 'science' does not adhere to the scientific method, it is not valid science and is more properly classified as pseudoscience.Read the links on science and Creationism I gave you in message #100 of this thread, if you care to understand what science is. You keep making mistakes which tell us that you don't really understand what science is and how it is done. There is no shame in not knowing something.There is shame in willful ignorance, however.------------------
"Evolution is a 'theory', just like gravity. If you don't like it, go jump off a bridge."

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I wasn't aware that you were proposing supernatural circumvention of natural law until now. If that's the case, why are we talking about science? If your religion compels you to believe in these things, that's fine. They're not scientifically possible. The rest of us believe that means that they won't happen. If you believe something else, that's fine, but you can't support it with science.

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1. You should've been aware that I wouldn't factor in the supernatural in my opening and simply ignore it thereafter to respond to critics.
2. We are talking about science, because my hypothesis involves much of science and physics, such as evaporation, cause and effects, gravity, pressures and so forth.
3. My religion compels me to do nothing. I look at my religion objectively. My faith is the same in my religion as my faith in the bridges on the highways I cross over. They've proven to be reliable so I confidently cross over.
4. You people simply choose to ignore documented supernatural phenomena such as fulfilled prophecy. You choose to either ignore or try to debunk such things as Carl Baughs man made artifacts in coal, etc. The supernatural dimension in the universe is just like any other data. If it is obervable and can be documented to exist it is unscientific to ignore it's existence as you have chosen to do. Maybe your problem is that that you don't want to be held accountable to a higher power. I don't know.

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Your statements (I'm paraphrasing, btw) that future conditions would lead to a significant fraction of the Earth's water being suspended in the atmosphere were refuted by the fact that the temperatures needed to suspend that much water would render the Earth uninhabitable by life. Since this is not an outcome predicted by your prophecy, but one that would have to occur, we can assume your prophecy is wrong.

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But I've refuted that and nobody, imo has proven otherwise. When you have an expanded less dense atmosphere, you are going to be able to compute in much more water vapor without increasing the psi on the surface of the earth. Why? because the ratio of square inches on the surface of the earth to the square inches of the atmosphere diminishes the higher, less dense and greater the expanse of the atmosphere becomes.

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Now, if you circumvent natural law wth supernatural interference, well, like I said, all bets are off. There's no way to predict what will happen then. At that point it's just your religion vs. mine. But if we're going to talk about natural laws, then you have to understand that they conclusively demonstrate that the kind of events you're referring to can't ever happen.

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If you know things are going to get hotter; you know the climate is going to change for the better eventually and you know what existed before the flood; you factor in natural laws, etc, you do have some data to go on. In fact you have far more data to go on than say, the silly snowball earth hypothesis. I can't believe people who are regarded as mainline scientists can even dream of such a remote improbability and try to pass it off as science.[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-07-2003]

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However, when those more knowledgeable in these areas attempt to provide you with explanations, or give you links so that you might become more educated, you resist learning and reject nearly all information that contradicts your preferred view.

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When these explanations ingnore basic fundamentals of physics I've cited, they are unacceptable. For example, my contention is that the higher more expansive atmosphere equals less psi on the surface of the earth which means the expanded atmosphere can contain more water vapor without condensing and falling back to earth.

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Why is it that you accuse scientists of being in some kind of "elite" group, yet you refuse to do even a little bit of the work and study in Geology or Biology that scientists have done to reach their level of understanding and expertise? It's easy to sit back and critisize instead of putting your nose to the grindstone and doing the reading and study to educate yourself.

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Haven't I provided as many links of "elite" scientists in this thread as anyone else? And hasn't the response to some of these been generally negative, because they support my position?

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I also notice that you use and accept scientifically-gathered information when you think it agrees with your position, such as your use of statistics about forest fires and global warming. However, when other scientifically-gathered facts contradict your preferred belief, you reject science and insult scientists as "arrogant", "snobby", or "programmed".

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Well then, if folks here don't like my rejection of such obvious myths as the "snowball earth," post, they should stop insulting the intelligence of our readers by posting this stuff. At least Jack and the Beanstock would be more entertaining. [This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-07-2003]

But this "refutation" is simply wrong. You arithmetic is wrong.As explained a couple of times before you only have so many square inches of earth's surface to hold up what ever you're going to have hanging over it. The area is constant.If the air and water vapour weigh a certain amount they weigh that amount no matter what the denisty. Remember the pound of feathers and pound of lead?Therefore the air and water push down with the same pressure whether they are dense and low or less dense and high.I really don't know how to make it any simpler. Can anyone think of a way?Again, you are demonstrating arrogance. You have told us you don't know much (or any it appears) physics. We are telling you that you've got the physics wrong. You actually think that you can "refute" this from a position of abject ignorance?I may not have a doctoral degree in atmospheric science but we aren't dealing with anything very fancy here at all. My BSc in physics enables me to understand this prefectly well. I figure that 4 years of pretty hard work (well so I played a little bridge and skiied a bit too ) entitles me to an opinion here. Just what do you think entitles you to an opinion? Does ignorance count?

This was explained to you. The "snowball earth" idea was put forward, as I see it, as an attempt to help you. It is much more than a myth. I've been rather astonished at it myself but apparently there is some reasonable evidence. For this reason it seems to be gaining some favor. Let's call it an hypothosis for now.You're rejection of it out of hand again demonstrates an arrogance that will not enable you to learn a damm thing. It also is an example of why there is a tendancy for some of us to consider creationist to be a general sterotype for a rather pitiful sort of mind. You don't like that? Don't act the part.edited to correct grammer[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 06-07-2003]

According to my dictionary, a theory can be anything from a mental contemplation based on certain abservable factors to a mere guess. Scientists are clearly involved in the whole spectrum of this definition -- some more consertavtive and some more liberal. The same can be said for Biblicalists.

No, I despair. An old Spanish proverb comes to mind: "God preserve me from a man of only one book!"

[qs]Scientists are clearly involved in the whole spectrum of this definition

That I consider the Bible as the foundational truth based on it's proven supernatural nature does not mean I don't use other books. I have a rather extensive library in my own home, all of which is non fiction, including many of authors with whom I disagree.

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You're rejection of it out of hand again demonstrates an arrogance that will not enable you to learn a damm thing.

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Obviously we all can't study the details of every wild idea down the pike. A theory/idea/hypothesis must make enough sense at the onset to warrant further study. Life is too short for everybody's ideology. Obviously this hypothesis of mine has drawn enough interest for these 12 pages, simply because both sides of the debate have produced enough sensible responses to feed an interesting and challenging debate. Though I don't believe most of my posts have been adequately refuted, I have learned much from my ideological counterparts. Hopefully I have provided some informative data by expressing my views also.

In which section do you keep your Bibles, fiction or non fiction?------------------
Remembering events that never happened is a dangerous thing!

Wait, now I don't understand. Are you resorting to supernatural circumvention of natural law in your model, or aren't you? To be fair, "resorting" is perhaps the word you object to. I will substitute "involving" to be more fair. Are you involving supernatural circumvention of natural law in your model, or not? First you said you were, and now it looks like you're implying you aren't. I'd honestly like a plain statement about this. Sure, those are science. But if you circumvent them with supernatural influence then we're not talking about science. We're talking about something else. Science doesn't play well with religion because science makes predictions on what can and can't happen based on universal natural laws. If those laws cease to be universal - some supernatural entity causes them not to apply to such and such a situation - then that situation is removed from the purview of science. Now, I'm of the opinion that the supernatural simply doesn't exist, so this isn't something I really worry about. But you have a real problem when you try and combine science and the supernatural, because by definition they don't mix. Faith is different than trust. You trust bridges, you don't have faith in them. You don't have faith in them because the bridge is avaliable for analysis, testing, inquiry. Can the same be said of your god? I doubt it. Lord knows (if he exists) that I've tried. Actually, it's more that I don't like the idea of being held accountable to somebody else's nonexistent higher power. I'm all about being held accountable to some greater power, so long as I know that power is itself held accountable too. This is why I submit to the laws of a just government, for instance. Prophecy if natural, non-supernatural events is not itself supernatural. For instance, it could be after-the-fact redaction, self-fulfilling prophecy, or even a lucky guess - none of which are supernatural.Now, if there was a well-known prophecy of an impossible event, and then that event occured supernaturally, that would get my attention. That would be impossible to fake assuming the event in question was truly supernatural. Honestly if that happened I'd believe in your prophets and god. The resurrection of Jesus doesn't count, however (if that's what you were thinking), because there's no way to really know that happened. There's no evidence of supernatural stuff. There's no evidence for god, there's no evidence for ghosts, there's no evidence for any of that. Next!I'm not familiar with any coal-borne artifacts. I'm certainly not familiar with any that have been truly substantiated as non-fraudulent. Like we said, though, that doesn't change the pressure of the atmosphere. Pressure is not related to density or volume - it's weight over area (hence, psi - pounds per square inch). No matter how much the atmosphere expands, it still weighs the same and still covers the same amount of the Earth's surface (all of it). Hence the atmospheric psi is 14.7, no matter how large it expands or how hot it gets.Anyway, atmosphere isn't measured in square inches, it's measured in cubic inches. Such a mistake suggests you don't understand the difference between area and volume. But you don't know those things. Sure, the bible may say them, but the bible is wrong.One thing that's been bothering me the most - you've described the pre-flood envrionment as being really good for life - in fact, you've described it as being like a greenhouse, I believe - all hot and balmy and humid. There are areas like this on Earth, already - tropical areas. Now, despite being the most like your perfect pre-flood environment, these areas of the Earth are known for the most diseases, the most parasites, and the shortest lifespans for human beings. Why would that be? Could it be that hot, humid conditions aren't the best for human habitation? I know nothing about this hypothesis. I won't defend it. As far as I see it's irelevant to our discussion; the merits (or lack thereof) of your model.Sorry this post is so long; you gave me much to reply to.

You gotta be kidding. All your side of the discussion has demonstrated is how little science you know, and how resistant you are to learning any. It's still not clear that you understand that global warming is not synonymous with global drought, or that the temperatures necessary to hold the volume of water necessary for the flood would wipe out life on the planet, or that the evidence for an ancient earth contained in the oceans is unequivocal.It is now clear that you're resorting to the supernatural, so I repeat an earlier question that you didn't address. How do you know in what way God is going to circumvent natural laws? For example, why does he need a vapor canopy? The Bible doesn't mention one. Why can't God just say, "Let it rain for 40 days and 40 nights," and have it be so?--Percy

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In which section do you keep your Bibles, fiction or non fiction?

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You didn't read well, did you Brian? I said I don't have any fiction.