But, according to Bob and the Esquire guy, since you’re not there now you have zero knowledge of the alleged place (and don’t you just wish that were true?)
Well, I didn’t and it was STILL obvious he didn’t know how probability works. However, that would make him a prime [del]mark[/del] opponent when gambling.
Evolution is as much a fact as that the sun will rise tomorrow. To state otherwise is to show ignorance of reality.
This is certainly true, as evidenced by creationists’ stubbornly clinging to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming facts to the contrary.
Because the statement that it might be true is simply incorrect. To claim that “the Earth is less than 10,000 years old” has as much possibility of being true as “the Earth is billions of years old” is wrong. The two are in no way equivalent; the former has no evidence to support it, the latter has overwhelming evidence to support it. The only way one can believe that both have equal probability is to somehow deny that the evidence has meaning. Thus we get the OP’s twisted logic of it’s proven if I experience it, it can’t be proven if it happened in the past.
I actually said something like that in response to the OP’s basic “nothing can be proven” stance. If you go with the extreme of nothing can be proven, so what? You’re nowhere. If, on the other hand, you accept reality for what it is, then the proof that the Earth is far more than 10,000 years old is overwhelming, and any statement to the contrary can quite fairly be called “wrong” by any rational defintion of the term.
Meaning that you have to take information on faith to know it in the first place?? I don’t understand.
A Seventh Day Adventist once tried to convince me that the evidence we have for estimating the age of our planet-- specifically dinosaur fossils-- had been skewed by the effects of the Great Flood.
I asked her how being under water, even a vast quantity of water could cause fossilization; especially species specific fossilization. She asked if I had studied hydrodynamics. I had not, nor had she, but because I could not prove that the flood did not cause the conditions we see around us, she was sticking with her version. Her ignorance outweighed mine.
I think this is a similar situation. Our inability to disprove that G-d didn’t create the world exactly as we see it right now in the very recent past doesn’t add to the claim that he did. I think the debate and ridicule has more to do with the reason people choose to believe one explanation or the other rather than the explanations themselves.
And while it might amuse you that people debate the question, I believe that even if we were to get absolute proof one way or the other people would continue to kill each other over the matter and ignore the proof.
While I sort of agree with the OP wrt making fun of people or hammering on them because of their beliefs, what it boils down to is…the evidence is pretty much overwhelming that the Earth is not less than 10,000 years old. Sure, this is ‘evidence’, not ‘proof’…but said evidence is more than compelling and crosses multiple scientific disiplines. Unless our entire scientific understanding is flawed pretty much across the board (i.e. unless there is magic or some other hocus pocus happening via some all powerful god), there is simply no way the earth COULD be less than 10k years old. As reasonable people we have to go with the best evidence and not speculate on all powerful dieties that can change all the laws of the universe at whim, can create whole universes full of stuff AND all the evidence pointing to billions of years, all last thursday at 9:05am…because that way leads no where.
While there is plenty of evidence that the earth/universe is far older than 10,000 years, there is and can be NO evidence that it was yanked out of the ass of an all powerful godling, or blown out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure (fear the coming of the Great White Handkerchief!).
If we can use our science to observe the universe as it is today, and make predictions based on that knowledge (such as the prediction based on ‘evidence’ that the earths core is molten, say), then we can make those same predictions, with the same level of confidence about the aproximate age of the earth (or at least whether or not its less than or greater than 10,000 years). If we can’t, then we can’t make predictions about ANYTHING, and NONE of our science is worth a damn. Might as well go back to living in caves…
All that said, and being pretty much an agnostic here, I still don’t think its cool to hammer on folks who believe such tripe…as long as they aren’t trying to use my tax money to teach said tripe in the public schools that is. What they do in the privacy of their own homes though…more power to em I say. Means my own well educated offspring SHOULD have a competetive advantage when they grow up! 
-XT
No offense intended, just volunteering part of my own educational background in which I took university courses in statistics as part of a Commerce/MIS degree. A major element is that one’s “Null Hypothesis” is never provably true, but through careful study and analysis of data points in a process of inductive reasoning, one can decide with confidence to reject or not reject it. I object to the OP’s notion that this means accepting a hypothesis and building a larger theory based on it is an act of faith indistinguishable from, say, choosing to believe the bible literally.
Also, I don’t get why DSYoungEsq is defending the OP, nor do I see any “considerable invective and outrage” in the replies. They actually range from simple mockery to well-reasoned statements (that contains hints of simple mockery). I’m going to assume he’s chosen his position simply as an intellectual exercise along the lines of moot court until proven otherwise.
The OP seems to take issue with Cecil asserting that something is proved, in the absolute mathematical sense, but the word “prove” or “proof” does not appear in his column, nor does any other way to phrase that idea. So what was the OP about?
-
If you take an absolutist definition of “proof,” then sure an old Earth is not proven, but neither is the idea that the Earth existed earlier than last Thursday, nor that the Earth is not flat, nor that the Sun will rise tomorrow. So what? That definition of proof is useless in science, because nothing can possibly ever be proven.
-
If you back off to a more reasonable definition of proof, the old Earth is every bit as proven as the fact that WWI actually happened.
So what is the point again?
Didn’t Steven Wright claim that happened to him? But of course he couldn’t prove it.
Well, one of Garrison’s key witnesses in the JFK assassination trial of Clay Shaw (immortalized in the movie JFK) would fingerprint his daughter when she left for college, and then again when she returned, to make sure that the CIA/FBI/police had not substituted a fake.
"So I called my friend over and said ‘Look, everything’s been stolen and replaced with exact duplicates.’ He said, ‘Do I know you?’ "
The fact that Wright was able to get a good laugh from an audience while describing this is to me solid evidence of the absurdity of the claim.
None taken, just volunteering that even somebody who had no formal education in Statistics and done precious little reading in it could see right through his coin-flipping example and show how it was wrong. 
Vaguely apropos of Steven Wright, from Stephen Bates, via PZ Myers, we have this account of Ken Ham’s museum:
In deference to the OP, I will refrain from making (any more) fun of Ken’s project.
Oh, and here’s how they know that. Note that it’s no closer to “absolute proof” by directly experiencing the Platonic ideal of Earth’s core than is our knowledge that Earth is four-point-something billion years old and not 10,000 years old.
I can’t quite decide whether this thread is interesting or tiresome.
What we think of as “facts” are - if they are not true by definition - theory dependent at some level. It’s a fact that all electrons have a particular mass, but that fact depends on us trusting our measuring devices and that depends on us thinking that we can tell when we can trust our measuring devices, and we do because we think we can tell when we should because it fits with our experience of how stuff appears to us to work.
Sure, accepting the current consensus that the planet is more than 10 000 years old involves belief. But it is one thing to be cautious about what we really know and it’s another to suppose that any arbitrary story deserves to be taken as seriously as what has come out of methodical enquiry. That’s how it seems, anyway.
This is the sort of topic that would normally attract Spiritus Mundi and Liberal/ libertarian. The latter’s left and the former’s slacking off. That’s a shame.
A part of the OP that has drawn little attention is the last bit:
Isn’t that kind of the meat of the post? Cecil made a call. It looks like he was right and it was made by a smart guy going on the way we think things work - but it was still a call.
Context.
When you take a quote out of context you can make it work for your argument or ridicule it for contradicting you.
Everyone should be able to make his own judgement on other people’s work without being ridiculed. However, ridicule happens and is often expected when making a non-popular claim.
Trust.
The body of knowledge we have today is based on trust alone. Trust comes from our opinion of someone’s intentions, not their intentions themselves. If we trust a source, we tend to agree with it. If we have doubts, we may change our opinion on a source.
Is YOUR opinion correct? No. The more research one personally undertakes to understand a subject, the more he can rely on his own opinion. It is a fact that people’s opinions will clash.
My point is, it’s always personal. You can respect someone’s views or ridicule them. That doesn’t mean they will change. If an outside source can change your views, your opinion wasn’t that meaningful to YOU in the first place.
Having said all that, some people believe God has given evidence through the writers of the Bible. Some believe that scientists have given evidence through studies and experiments. It all depends who you trust more when it comes to a discrepancy between two sources you trust.
I speak in abstract because it’s not the subject that matters.
It’s the ideas behind it.
“Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People.”
rofl. You throw one whif of creationism in this place. One tangential, irrelevant drop. And these people turn mad.
And wtf is up with you fn assholes calling “cite” when bob55 said he was a scientist? Man, you guys are real idiots. And assholes. Idiot assholes, who react on reflex and do not read or think. And then who go on to criticize creationists.
Shame on all of you.
None of you should have had hostile reactions.
Bob55 brought up a valid philosophical point, and it is a correct one. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CREATIONISM. We can’t really prove anything. Doubt and uncertaintainty trail us at every corner, even when we’d like to take comfort in certainty. It is a bit scary, if you really think of it. For example, the possibility of eing created this very second with time as an illusion… It is as valid and observationally supported as any other hypothesis. Scary stuff, but I think you guys turned hostile not because you were afraid to ponder such existentialist matters. But because you’re closed-minded, emotional assholes.
Creationists surely do not exercise much cool reasoning. But it is moments like these that illustrate beautifully that their opponents can be just as stupid, emotional, and hostile. Perhaps if you people behaved appropriately and with intellectual honesty, fewer creationists would spin conspiracy theories about you.
Er, I apologize, my last post is really directed at a minority. Many of you did not just assume bob was a rotten, dispicable creationist trying to discredit science, and perhaps a few even felt that it wouldn’t matter to this debate if he were.
Anyway. I think the miracle behind all our explanations and theories, even if they do not correspond with “the real,” is that they all make sense with each other and combine to paint an awe-inspiring dynamical machine. Whether or not that machine ever existed is even almost besides the point. It is mind-blowing that it could!
That’s something that should be focused on, especially when talking with religious people who would rather not see the body of assumption we call science exist. Hell, even if the Earth was created 10k years ago, I doubt God wouldn’t want us to have unraveled the mechanisms by which the miracle-machine could have gotten to that point all on its own. I also think it’s unreasonable for God to expect us to throw all that out and just believe Genesis. If it is some sort of test, then God’s got one sick plan for us.
Er… did you think about the implications of that?
Chill the fuck out, Alex. Geez.
You’re dropping a line of the same bullshit that’s been around here quite a bit lately; disagreement = seething white-hot unreasoning fury. That’s crap, and it’s a lame debate method (“your response to my statement is unreasonable, therefore my statement is reasonable, QED”).
Creationism completely aside, the premise of the OP is that a body of reasoning is meaningless, regardless of supporting evidence, if it isn’t perfect and therefore is just as good as an alternate theory for which no supporting evidence exists or can ever be shown to exist. Want to argue the world was created 10,000 years ago? Okay. What method do you propose to test that theory? If there’s a competing theory that the world was created only 1,000 years ago, what theoretical test can be performed to prove one, or both, is false? Want to argue that life is an illusion? Feel free. Care to give us a thought experiment that could prove or disprove it?
Shame on you for leveling accusations without putting even a minor effort at thinking first. Take this to the Pit for the response you truly deserve.