Peanut Gallery

Sounds like there would be no problem if they called it the "String hypothesis" then.The common usage of "theory" invades most all of the sciences.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Welcome!I'm sure you'll be able to contribute a lot with that background.There are a lot of highly edjumacated folks here, which makes for good discussions.My fields are archaeology and physical anthropology.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Here's a deal for you.You stick to the cities, where you have police, and hope they arrive in time.I'll stick to the hills where I can have guns for self protection.You mind your business, and I'll mind mine.Deal, eh?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The rules pertaining to guns that apply to the inner cities don't necessarily apply to the outback.For example, what would with a horse that just broke its leg in the wilderness miles from the nearest road? Edited by Coyote, : Grammar. Time to call it a night.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Sorry, no. Wrong answer. Very wrong answer.Better you just stay in the city and leave the wilderness to those of us who are capable, eh?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Good essay, RAZD.But you left out "willful ignorance."The simple definition: deliberately ignoring anything that doesn't fit with one's a priori beliefs.This is similar to willful blindness in law:

quote:

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Willful blindness (sometimes called willful ignorance or contrived ignorance) is a term used in law to describe a situation in which an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable (from Wiki).

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Creationists simply ignore, and thus can deny, that which doesn't fit their a priori beliefs. They tend not to study science for that very reason, and frequently dispute the scientific method because it leads to the "wrong" answers.They don't have to study science--they just know its wrong. Believing this, they don't need to confront evidence. The evidence or assumptions or something there is wrong because the answer is wrong. That's all one needs to know.Willful ignorance leads to such gems as "the second law of thermal documents" and "the odds against evolution are 1⁷²⁰" (examples from another website).If it wasn't so funny it'd be laughable!

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

In the debate thread Arphy writes: You've got to be kidding!A global flood about 4,350 years ago is among the most thoroughly discredited ideas in history!It has been disproved worldwide by many different fields of investigation.Data from my own archaeological research disproves it based (at minimum) on: 1) continuity of human cultures; 2) continuity of genetic lineages; 3) continuity of fauna and flora; and 4) continuity of stratigraphy.The only folks who believe in the flood are biblical literalists practicing religious apologetics.You mention geological evidence: that doesn't work because geological strata are older than 4,350 years! Forget the Cambrian explosion and all the rest of geology; for evidence of what happened 4,350 years ago you need to look to the soils, not the rocks. And there is no evidence for a global flood in the 4,350 year old soils.You also mention anthropological evidence, presumably myths of floods. Fine. All you have to do is prove that all of those myths refer to the same flood, then explain how those folks are alive to tell the tales after such a flood. (Don't you realize that most of the world's population lives very close to water? Don't you think floods are common? Just ask the folks in New Orleans, or along the Mississippi River.)Sorry, the battle to document a global flood about 4,350 years ago was lost in the early 1800s.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

In the debate thread Arphy writes: Your use of the term, "big assumptions" is meaningless unless you can show that those assumptions are inappropriate. Calling the assumptions supporting radiometric dating "big assumptions" is not scientific evidence of any kind. It is nothing more than "well, I don't believe it so its not true." In other words, of no value whatsoever. Don't cite the RATE project in support of a young earth. The RATE project concluded that there was evidence for several hundred million years of radioactive decay--and this is from their own data!They could not support the "young-ness" of the earth with their study, but they fell back on that religious belief even when their data showed a much older earth than they wanted or expected to see. They showed that they were doing religious apologetics, not science.Face it: a young earth is as discredited an idea as the global flood about 4,350 years ago.Two reviews of the RATE project:

Assessing the RATE Project: Essay Review by Randy Isaac:
Assessing the RATE Project

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Do the RATE Findings Negate Mainstream Science?:
Page not found - Reasons to Believe

Arphy--Are you going to respond to any of these posts or is this going to be a monologue?Edited by Coyote, : Post directed to Arphy, not RADZ

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

No. Not even close.The faulty assumption is that 3,000 year old scriptures suggest or document a young earth.And the multiple lines of evidence cited by creationists have all been disproved. None of this convinces creationists, who keep pushing the same flawed arguments, though. That's because they don't rely on evidence, just on belief, so evidence that contradicts those beliefs has no effect.Fine, but don't try to pretend it is science. It is the exact opposite.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

"Assumption" does not mean "wrong" no matter how many times creationists imply that it does.And claiming that various dating methods rely on assumptions does not cast their results into doubt--except in the minds of creationists, who rely on belief rather than evidence in the first place.If you have evidence that these dating methods, that correlate with one another, are actually wrong present that evidence.Crying "assumptions" is not evidence.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Two good reviews of the RATE project:

Assessing the RATE Project: Essay Review by Randy Isaac:
Assessing the RATE Project

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Do the RATE Findings Negate Mainstream Science?:
Page not found - Reasons to Believe

Those RATE boys found that science is correct, but refused to believe their own data, falling back to dogma and scripture instead. So much for creation "science"!

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

And shorter. When the reply goes on for three pages, quoting every line in the previous post and responding in detail, I just ignore it all.Brevity...

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The original thread, and this Peanut Gallery thread, have both become so pickily pedantic or pedantically picky that I have given up following them.If you want your stuff to be read, make it readable and interesting.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Made up data--frauds, hoaxes, deceptions, fakes and pseudoscience, eh?Sounds like the basis of theology.Or as Heinlein noted:

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.

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Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

What you are doing is stretching logic beyond all reason to support your particular brand of woo.It pays to remember Kettering's Law:

Logic is an organized way of going wrong, with confidence.

In all of these debates you have not once provided any evidence for supernatural critters, large, small, or otherwise.Don't you think that would be a good place to start?Logic is great, but it is no substitute for evidence. So far you have none, so all the logic dripping from the philosophers' fevered brains isn't going to help your case.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.