Hey, who doesn’t? Nudity is sensual, not sexual, you know!
Not so simple when they incude the Universal Flood.
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview2c.shtml
And from there we had to wait… until early Egyptians began to do rock art. Around 11,000 B.C.
That is a lot of time for a god to suddenly realize it was time for a flood. 
Opinions of when the flood occurred vary a lot, but usually I see a date like 2500 BC as the most likely, problem is that that date is in the middle of the 3rd dynasty in Egypt, of course I have seen some young earth websites going so far as declaring Egyptologists to be frauds, but the biggest problem is explaining how civilizations in the Americas continued like if a flood had never happened.
I guess Darwin found lots of it below the Equator…
But yeah, I meant to say **Naturalist **.
Some YEC’s consider it to be accurate within the last 4000 years, but unreliable in Antediluvian times (before the Great Flood). Supposedly, there was less atmospheric carbon-14 in that epoch, & the usual method assumes an unsupported uniformitarianism.
Others just run the, “nanana, I can’t hear you, you contradict my faith,” internal interference meme.
I majored in Anthropology. I am an atheist. I am a long time fan of talk.origins.
I pretty much do the same thing to the fundies, YEC’s, and whomever wackjob is out there. I either la-la-la my way away from them, or look at them like they are stark raving mad. Just because you choose to believe some cockamaney bullshit does not obligate me in anyway to listen, understand, sympathize or even care. Knowledge is there to use. Get that big ol’ god of yours to give you a few extra cells. Your brain isn’t there as a hat rack.
All the malarky, mumbo-jumbo crap just makes me think that their god must be a real moron if that’s the best he can come up with. Bury bones to confuse us, my fanny.
I tend to try to approach these things as foolsguinea does - what do I really know that can refute their explanation of events?
At the same time, it’s an excellent point that using the bible’s explanation as your presupposed conclusion, and finding evidence to support it, rather than viewing the bible as a set of hypotheses to be tested, is simply not science.
ANYHOO - what do YEC say about plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs and other large sea creatures that disappeared in the fossil record right about the same time as all those land leviathans? Why would “the flood” have killed them?
I don’t think this should be considered a particularly large blip on the radar; I’m not sure where this guy qualified as a geologist, but as others have noted, he doesn’t seem to be in active commercial employment as one; try being a ‘Young Earth Geologist’ and applying for a job in mining or oil drilling industries and prepare for uproarious laughter. It’s easy to preach about YEC, it’s incredibly difficult to use it to yield any kind of useful scientific results in the real world. Might as well be a Flat-Earth Geologist and it would be every bit as valid.
But also, note that this guy doesn’t actually seem to be saying a lot about geology - most of the stuff in the article is the same old creationst PRATT-list items; even in the picture, he’s shown against a projection of Haeckel’s embryology sketches (and presumably parroting the same old nonsense as all the others about this topic. Last I checked, embryology isn’t a branch of geology. Ho Hum.
And when you look up “Straw Man Argument” in the dictionary, the definition ought to be: “if people came from monkeys via frogs and fish, then why does the fossil record not contain a “fronkey”?”
–Sigh–
–Why do we make it harder than it has to be?–
On the one hand there are people who believe the earth is ~6000 years old, on the other hand there are people who believe the earth is > a few billion years old. Both of these groups of people cite references and scriptures and various metrics gleaned from each side of the argument, yet neither can answer one simple question: How long is one day?
–What? What kind of a dumbass question is that? A day is 24 hours moron, stupid question.–
Really? If a day is exactly 24 hours, why do we occasionally have to compensate for a few seconds here or there every so often to calibrate our highly accurate atomic measuring devices? Why have we lost days, weeks, even a month at a time making our clocks and calendars line up with what we perceive as the correct date and time?
–Dude, you are really splitting hairs here, what difference would a few seconds make? Even a day or a month is trivial compared to a billion years.–
True, but one billion seconds is 31.7 years, and that is at today’s rate of measurement. There is no way of knowing how long a day was 2000 years ago in comparison to how long a day is today, let alone how long a year was, and what was the measure of a day a short while after the earth congealed? Did it spin faster or slower, are we speeding up or slowing down? What is the terminal velocity of the rotation of the earth?
–You’re an idiot–
Also true. People toss about axioms of science like “the speed of light is constant” and “the rate of carbon decay is predictable” without knowing what either mean, they just use them as a handy arsenal against those who think differently than themselves. These people and their prideful biases seem to believe that there is no knowledge that is unattainable; their downfall is their failure to realize that the Theory of Evolution is a Theory. For evolution there is ample evidence of the key components and their effects on each other, but there are still gaping holes that are unexplained and irreproducible. Creationists fall into the same trap, faith and scripture guides them along a logical progression, but their prideful biases keep them from seeing the correlation between empirical evidence in the physical world and any form of spiritual relevance.
–So, evolution remains a Theory, creationism remains Dogmatic, and never the twain shall meet, correct?–
For the time being, while people argue about who is right and who is wrong and who should not cooperate with whom or compare findings. As for myself, I have two questions: For the Fundamentalist, if we are as we always were, where is the geological evidence of modern breeds of dog (breeds only around for the last hundred years or so)? Did Noah have teacup poodles on the ark? What about glow in the dark mice, were they there too? And for the Evolutionist, if we are an accident, a lucky roll of the dice that two inert proteins combined to form a self-replicating organism and spawn life, why can’t we reproduce this in a lab? Surely we have the chemistry and equipment by now that we can take two sterile proteins, combine them in a sterile environment and make them start reproducing themselves, right? Come see me when we can. People can take a hard line on each side of the issue, call each other egotistic pinheads or superstitious Jesus freaks but, seriously, when has taking a hard line ever overcome paradigm and established views to make genuine progress? Those who stand to challenge what is accepted will fight back the tide of ignorance, and those who hold to their self-righteousness, be it pious or secular, while failing to grow, will perish. Now that’s natural selection at work.
Gratuitous links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
I’m trying to figure out what weird point you’re making here. Aside from the fact that the length of the day is known to exquisite precision, it’s also quite possible to compute the length of the day at various epochs by examining the growth rings of various sea creatures.. Not only do these results support the idea of an Earth billions of years old, they also support the accuracy of radiometric dating as the figures derived from that agree substantially with calculations based on extrapolation of the Earth’s rotation based on its current speed and rate of change.
Your argument about replicating life is a lab is laughably naive. We’ve been working on the problem for what? 100 years? (And realistically, very few biologists are actually employed to try to create life – there’s no money in it.) Evolutionists hypothesize that the mechanisms that underlie life emerged by chance over a period of a billion years in a planet-sized environment under unknown conditions. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there’s a huge difference in scope between those time periods and environments. It’s like playing one round of poker and concluding that a royal flush can never happen.
And what is pointing to the bible, if not an argument from authority?
The point I was trying to make is that it is one thing to “assume” a theory is fact and use that knowledge to explain various phenomenon. It is possible, when the end product is ultimately proven or disproved, to reverse the process and validate or invalidate the theory. It is something else entirely to declare a base theory as empirical fact when the end product is still unproven and is, itself a theory.
The argument I was making about time is that time is only as accurate as the method used to measure it. Even in your link it says:
Note that the “fixed” is in quotation marks. The theory of a sidereal day is based on the star being “fixed” and, as far as I know, there is no such “fixed” star. Whether moving away from us or toward us or somewhat parallel to our path, a “fixed” star is moving and , as the article alludes, provides a slight variation in measurement. We can postulate that 0.9999 = 1 all day long, but in the case of a billion years, 0.9999 represents a 100,000 year margin of error (0.99999 = 10,000 year margin and so on) So, however slight the variation is, there is a variation and this needs compensated for. The Julian calendar knocked off 90 days when it was first used, the current Gregorian calendar dropped 10 days when it first came up, then again for Protestant Germany in 1752 and again for Russia in 1918.
All of this is a moot point really, what it boils down to is: these are theories, based on assumptions. Observations lead to theories, but until the final tally is in and all points accounted for, they remain theories. “The Earth is Flat” was a theory for a long time, not many buy into that one now that there are more solid facts to observe. “Evolution”, although I do not doubt its validity as a theory, is still a theory. There are still too many gaps to fill in, too many questions unanswered, and too many people willing to just accept the assumptions as “Gospel to be Defended” for there to be too much progress.
Creationism, outside of the rhetoric of the church and each church’s individual dogma, is also a valid theory. But defenders of this theory close themselves off to alternatives and are willing to accept the scripture as “Gospel to be Defended” (ok, so perhaps that was a little melodramatic).
I think that, without more solid evidence either way, without more information on the transitions between species (a fronkey if you will) time is better spent forwarding one theory or the other (or both if applicable, I do not believe they are exclusive of each other but that’s neither here nor there). Time spent simply trying to rebuke a theory without building into an existing one is time wasted.
And per life in the lab, IIRC diamonds also require millions of years and tons of pressure, yet they are at least somewhat reproducible in a laboratory environment. And, with the growth of bio-tech industries and continuous research (and social qualms about that research) I fail to understand how synthesizing life in a lab could not be lucrative.
Secret? What secret? Every bio of Darwin I’ve ever read, even short ones, mentions this. Plus, he had a good bit of money, and so was never going to have to really work. His heart clearly wasn’t in the ministry, even before he turned agnostic.
And I agree that there was no religion/science conflict for many clergymen in those days.
I’ve never understood this need for blinders on the part of the faithful. If you’re going to believe (a) God is all-powerful, and (b) he created the earth in 6 days about 6,000 years ago, how much more of a step is it, really, to © he created the earth billions of years old rather than brand new, with a geological record and everything?
The first two assumptions are so ginormous that the third one is kinda trivial, like the meme…
- Come up with a new idea.
- ???
- Profit!
nd_n8, it’s hard to know where to start with you. There’s just too much.
“The Earth is Flat” was never a theory. Ever.
It’s clear that you don’t understand what a theory is. Don’t feel bad, you’re far from alone in this.
It is. foolsguinea’s point is that one shouldn’t use the same sort of flawed logic creationists use.
You’re making two different points here, neither of which are germane to the Evolution argument except in the very, very weak way of arguing that nothing can be Proven and therefore Science is no more valid than Religion. But what it really seems to be proving out is that you should have stayed awake in science class in high school.
While it is true that stars will display slight movement over time in relation to their distance, we have the ability to choose an star we wish to measure sidereal time. Choose stars very, very, very far away and they display pretty much no apparent motion over the course of a year. Not enough to make any significant difference in the measurement of sidereal time. Not to mention that we have the ability to average the measurements over many stars.
The comments about the various calendars are just distractions. Neither a few weeks in a calendar nor a few thousand years in sidereal measurement inaccuracy are going to somehow turn 4 billion years into 8 thousand. Basically these are just desperate arguments from a side that confuses correctness with perfect accuracy.
An Appeal to Authority is not a fallacy when the authority is an authority on the subject under discussion.
Except that Darwin didn’t graduate in theology. His Cambridge degree was a standard Bachelor of Arts, which at the time was a sort of catch-all affair covering the topics an educated gentleman was expected to know. There was a theological component to this, but that just involved being questioned on the works of Paley (including, famously, Natural Theology).
Now it’s unarguably true that this degree was, more or less, invariably a necessary first step towards becoming ordained in the Church of England and that this was the reason he was taking it. But it wasn’t in any specialised sense a training in theology. That was supposed to follow the passing of this basic degree.
Not that this changes the point that he embarked on the Beagle as, more or less, a conventionally educated devout Anglican.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_087.html
So, a theory is devised to explain stuff, it is speculation, a belief that guides, an assumption. Which one of these am I not getting? My basic point is, if you take a theory as given fact, then shut out all other possibilitys (reguardless of popular opinion or how much sense they make) there is no room to grow.
Christians who wear blinders and think Jesus spoke english annoy me as much as athiests who claim that they should be free to believe how they wish (and they should) but that I should not be free to believe how I wish without denegration. Both groups are evangelical and persistant in their imposition of their beliefs upon others. Both groups wear the same blinders, and both groups latch onto the evolution/creation arguement as a weapon to use against the other with blind and ignorant fervor.
It is quite possible that God exists (at least not definatively provable that He doesn’t) and created the universe and “theorys” like The Big Bang and Evolution are simply explainations as to how He did it. Could have taken billions of years too, Genisis was oral history long before it was written down. Six days is an interesting metaphor if you try to imagine what a day was before the earth started spinning.
If we accept theory as fact and allow no other constant, it makes the math easier (and quite predictable) but does not mean that it is right or that it is the end of the line. Our technology grows, becomes more precise, and unless we let it we choke ourselves out like a weed. Without questioning what is accepted but not absolutely proven, we cut our own throats with Occam’s razor.
I don’t have a cite but watched a program not long ago about the Shroud of Turin that showed the original dating about 1200 years ago (not exact, I’m drawing from memory here) but when newer techniques were used it dated about 2000 years ago. One story shows the materials used correspond with the original theory, another shows the materials correspond with the older date. If we refuse to accept change we will stifle and if we refuse to question the established theorys we will likewise stifle.
This is why there can be a Creationist Geologist, the two are only mutually exclusive when each are locked into their definition. Jeeze, I thought we were here to fight ignorance, not propagate it.