It is absolutely possible to have a good observation and make a poor conclusion. That is why scientists don't just make one observation, they make thousands if not millions of them. And, they only ever claim that the best possible explanation at any given time is a theory, not a law. We cannot ever know for sure and don't pretend otherwise. That doesn't change that there are many discoverable findings that would cause serious ramifications to the modern theory of evolution and nothing remotely like them has ever been discovered. So, we assume the sunken ship is the age of the newest coin. We don't assume that some magical figure went and added new coins to the sunken ship hundreds of years after the fact just to make our dating methods wrong. And when we find thousands of ships from all areas of the world that line up geologically with the dates we've found, we trust our best reasoning and reach the conclusion that they're stratified into various layers that align with respective geological dates. The alternative would be to assume that someone moved them, which needless to say has no evidence whatsoever.

The vast, vast majority of creationists (especially those cited in this thread) who talk about geology, archaeology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, etc. have no experience or qualifications in these fields. This is not hard to check. With extremely limited exception, they have never done any serious work in those fields, have no respect from people actually in the fields, and have never published any scientific backing to their opinions. They are simply frauds selling books to the choir and are the very definition of unqualified. I have no doubt that if I graduate with a PhD. I could write a creationist bestseller just by virtue of sticking that title at the end of my name, adding a flashy and controversial book title, and rehashing Jack's weak copy+pasted arguments in high language. Unfortunately, I have a basic level of respect for both myself and the truth.

As I said earlier, there is no smoking gun that will prove evolution, that isn't how science works and it's pathetic to even suggest it. There are thousands of discoveries, many more happening every year, which fall neatly in line with the theory. As these continue to happen, evolution in its current form becomes more and more obvious and tweaks, nevermind outright rejection, becomes ever less likely. If the evidence you've been shown isn't sufficient for you, perhaps you should research the topic. There is a wealth of publicly accessible material described and summarized by people far more knowledgeable than me- I can't make you read it.

You could use this to support your argument, except for the fact that the leading scientists and intelligentsia in those days all knew that the earth was round; Eratosthenes had proved this as far back as ancient Greece. I think your example is useful, however: it shows that an indoctrinating body can convince large amounts of people of something utterly foolish even when the most knowledgeable scientists of the time, those who actually spend their days studying the subject in question, say something completely different and publish numerous academic works to that effect.

First, while this is directed to Lathanide, I know quite a big deal of the mechanics behind evolution. I've made that pretty clear in this topic and in the posts you saw fit to delete. I've also made it very clear that the people opposing it generally don't have a clue what they're talking about. For example, anyone mentioning carbon dating as having anything to do with evolutionary proof is simply utterly wrong and has never done the most basic research into the topic. Human evolutionary fossils are not dated using that method, never have been, and never will be. The hypocrisy here is a bit biting: you demand knowledge of creationism, (which I'd argue is quite irrelevant, since the details of it can be modified on the fly and most creationists don't even agree with each other) but show utter disregard for simple fact-checking or basic scientific method, nevermind the intricacies of something as complex as evolution.

Ignoring your serious misunderstanding of evolution- am I correct in reading this that the only reason you refrain from murdering people is because the Bible tells you not to?

Also, please stop citing religious sites for evidence please. Just a quick skim of the "100 religious scientists" gives a bunch of names that I know offhand are not religious at all. Einstein, for example:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein

There are no doubt others that are similarly debunkable, but it's not worth the time- sites of this nature twist facts and ignore contrary evidence, they don't actually try to determine the truth. There have been many scientists who are religious and many who are not. I don't see any reason to correlate the achievements of these men to their religion or lack thereof any more than we attribute it to their governments.

While I suppose this is your dark side, if you concede that brain size beyond a certain point has little to do with intelligence, then coupled over a long period of time, the little amount adds up to a lot, which is the whole basis of evolution. No I can't prove it. Nobody can. It's my best guess. It makes sense to me. Obviously there are other factors which affect intelligence much more, like education.

Thousands of ships (fossils?) that line up into their various layers that align with their respective geological dates? No observations that contradict what the proposed age of the earth is according to evolution? Okay, according to Creationism the flood happened about 4500 years ago. So, how old is the oldest tree? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees - The oldest tree in the world is an estimated 4800 years old. The oldest desert in the world is about 4000 years old: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/390097.stm . You claim for thousands of pieces of evidence, but you show none. Also, you say the other side has no evidence, but don't show this in any way either. There is a rule in the SD to not merely assert your beliefs or claims as true.

Okay, so some don't have a PhD in their respective fields. So? That doesn't mean they're wrong. Maybe you should show why them being unqualified makes their arguments or proposals wrong. You should try showing why Jack's arguments are weak, rather than insulting them.

There is no smoking gun? So there is no cold-hard evidence? I haven't even been shown any warm and wet evidence yet. Link to something specific, not a search bar, if you want me to read something.

Yeah, so who are the indoctrinating ones of today, and who are the actual scientists? That is the question.

You're right. For the longest time fossils were dated by the layers in which they were found. The layers were also dated by the fossils found in them. This was how it was done until radiometric dating came along. But honestly radiometric dating in general comes up different dates on the same object between different methods all the time. One method may yield billions of years, when another method results in thousands. I'm not going to take things like the wikipedia page on the age of the earth seriously, because I can't simply rely on what these people tell me for truth.

I said Einstein was Jewish, that's all. You know, the ethnicity. I said he was Agnostic. And just because you think a website is "religious" doesn't mean they aren't right.

I don't know if Creationism is true, and I don't know if Evolution is true. I'm just trying to get you to understand that simply because someone makes a claim doesn't make it true, even if they are qualified. Similarly, just because someone isn't qualified, doesn't mean they are wrong. You also made quite a few claims like religious people make no advancements and evolutionists do. You sorta ignored it all, but I assume that's because it's still sinking in that you were pretty wrong on that one.

Too often do we all have to rely on what others tell us as truth. During Leonardo's days the "scholars" of the time were religious figures that could spout quotes from their religious texts at will, and because of that they were revered as intelligent leaders and respected figures by society. Leonardo disliked this and set out to figure things out for himself. Leonardo wasn't qualified during his time to say much of what he said, but we all know today that he was right on a lot of things. I feel like I hardly know anything due to a lack of experience, and I bet my feelings are correct. I just wish you could admit the same instead of saying that since evolutionists are qualified and plentiful, and government funded that they are likely to be right.

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory." - Leonardo da Vinci.

Did you even bother to read the article you linked to? Here's some quotes for you:

I was also going to add that the Antarctic is actually the world's oldest desert, and also a source for all those lovely ice cores which point towards a world considerably older than 6,000 years.

What would you like me to show you as evidence of evolution? It's not a process that's going to be explained by simply saying here's exhibit A and B, and thus evolution is true. If I asked you to provide evidence of gravity in a discussion, how would you do it? Thus, you hopefully see the absurdity of such a request.

There are dozens of phenomena that are explained concisely by evolution and any of them can be provided as evidence, but none of them are proof. I can give you a list of human transitional fossils, or a list of radiometric dating methods that agree with each other on various old discoveries, phylogenetic trees explaining interconnectedness among organisms, evolutionarily poor traits shared by related species like humans and apes, or likewise for vestigial structures, or I could show the frequency of common traits emerging in convergent evolution, or I can show examples of recent speciation like the LUM that both Will and I have already linked to earlier in this thread. I've done much of this earlier within these pages and it was largely ignored or "refuted" with a link to a clueless author. As I said, I can't do research for you. It's pretty pointless for me to write a work that would be thesis-length when people who've studied this far more intensely than I have have already done so.

As for me providing evidence that the other side has no evidence... that's an even sillier request. If there is published evidence by scientists supporting creation theory, I'd love to see it.

It also means that I have no reason to take any of their deductive (and inevitably uncited) arguments as any more than fantasy. They're not practicing science, they're practicing persuasion: they already know their position and are looking for ways to make it fit the facts, they aren't trying to find the most likely position given the facts. For probably the dozenth time in this thread: that is not how science works. You still fail to see this: it's not my job to show proposals are "wrong." It is not hard to craft extraordinary claims that are wholly without evidence, like that the rate of carbon decay has changed over time. I could go into why that's wrong, and a simple test of geological layers shows quite clearly that it is, but that's not the point. The point is that evolution explains things as they are, without having be be finagled with ridiculous assumptions that we have no reason to believe.

I repeatedly showed the weakness of Jack's arguments by showing how poorly he understood basic evolutionary concepts and how dramatically he misused the scientific method. It's rather hard to build an argument without a base.

There is plenty of "cold-hard evidence", but no one piece of it is anywhere near definitive. It is the collection of all of these things, many of which I listed above or have described previously in this thread, that makes evolution such a foregone conclusion. If you'd like a summary of all of them, the best single thing to read would be an introductory evolutionary biology textbook.

Between people taught a belief by their parents before they can even speak compared to those... actually doing science ... I don't think there's much of a question. If you really think there's some massive indoctrination of academia that somehow has managed to convince hundreds of millions of college students of something that has no evidence, I'm afraid there's not much I can say other than that your worldview will be taking a pretty massive hit in the next year or two. If religion was not introduced to children until their teens, you might have an argument. But if religion was not introduced to children until their teens, I don't think we'd be having this argument.

Source? One by someone who actually dates things would be preferable.

... "major advancements in society came from people who were religious. Einstein was Jewish, yet Agnostic (there is some uncertainty)." Yeah, I can definitely see how you mean "Jewish" as an ethnicity and not a religion in that context... my mistake. In any case, I wasn't talking about what you said, I was talking about what the site says, and the site just flatly lies by saying that his religion is Jewish. That is unquestionably not true.

I've never denied that, it's quite obvious. However, It seems kind of silly to go to someone who doesn't have any experience in a field and expect them to give as good of an explanation on a topic as someone who's spent half of their life studying that topic. It would be like going to your priest when you're sick and asking him for a diagnosis while ignoring the doctor that's next door.

Also, no single scientist makes arguments that are immediately taken at face value. If someone believes they have a new explanation for a phenomenon, they document their findings and submit them to a peer-reviewed journal. Only after those claims are reviewed by various other people who have spent their careers dealing with the topic at hand is the explanation published. After that, if it is controversial it will be examined and critiqued in writing, which the author is obliged to respond to. If his data is experimental, various other labs will repeat his process and let their results be known.

Compare that to Bob from Mississippi who writes things on his website. Neither of them is guaranteed to be right, but I'm pretty sure I know who's more worthwhile to listen to.

I've never made such a claim, you're welcome to try to quote me. What I said was that the majority of creationist writers are not scientists and have done nothing for any scientific fields. There are very clear distinctions between that and your strawman.


Da Vinci's work was largely observational, he didn't do much work disproving or contributing to contemporary theories. He is a genius, but rather irrelevant. A more applicable analogy would be to Galileo, where you can see how the church reacts to competing theories. In case you've somehow missed it, I have a rather distinct lack of respect for authority who can't defend their actions and positions logically. I am among the least likely to take someone at face value and the simple fact is that my understanding of the evolutionary process is very good. I've explained every facet that's been questioned in depth and have offered to explain others further if they are pointed out. You deleted that post, though.

This same debate has been raging on now for 150 years. I found this satirical poem quite an amusing summary of the arguments back then, and it shows how little some of them have changed even now. I omitted some of the stanzas because they were less relevant. (picture that came with the poem - http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/comm/Punch/Monkey.gif - it's a play on antislavery: http://www.ulove.org.uk/images/Slave.jpg?331)

Also, see a similar cartoon about 5 years later - we see progressively more bestial representations of blacks from this point on: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/blackquestion.jpg


It's kind of odd that religion still in some places holds out against the arguments of science. 150 years is a long time. I hope this isn't too off-topic.

Jack, check the "Read the Bible" topic. I hope you can prove me wrong without avoiding the questions or employing balantly obvious logical fallacies. Furthermore, I hope God may grant you the courage to answer my questions intelligently and with logical arguments. I'm sure if he wishes us to know the truth, He will lead us to the pure light of His Holiness. And if He does, I will admit the mistakes of the past. And if He doesn't, I will continue to search for the truth on my own, not via His local representative.

-----

Iron is a magnetic metal.
Earth has a magnetic field.
When iron cools from molten rock to solid rock, the tiny particles align themselves with the Earth's magnetic field.
For the past hundred thousand years, the iron particles coming out of the sea floor have been aligned with the Earth's current magnetic field.
Other times, the iron particles have been aligned with the opposite polarity of the current magnetic field.

What does this mean? The Earth's magnetic field has flipped in the past. In the past 180 years (since we've started measuring the magnetic poles accurately), the north magnetic pole has moved hundreds of miles around northern Canada (magnetic north is not actually at the exact geographic north pole). Currently, the theory is that convection currents in the Earth's core change and reverse the Earth's magnetic field. This could change in light of new evidence. But for now, we have to make do with what we have observed.

Let's assume that Earth is only 6500 years old. If the Earth's magnetic field has flipped in the past, then the Earth has not stayed the same for the past 6500 years. Whenever the magnetic field drastically changes, birds have a difficult time migrating, and aurora can be seen at different latitudes.

Quick lesson (skip if you understand aurora borealis): Aurora borealis is caused by charged particles entering the atmosphere where the magnetic field is the strongest (near the magnetic poles). These charged particles excite the matter in the earth's atmosphere (mostly gases) and cause the atmospheric particles' electrons to go to higher energy levels. When these electrons jump back down from their unstable states, they give off energy in the form of light, creating the visual display of aurora.

Never have the peoples of the Earth seen aurora below the arctic latitudes. According to the iron alignments of both oceanic and continental crust, the Earth's magnetic field has flipped dozens of times. To put this into the "Young Earth" theory, let's say that the Earth has flipped its magnetic poles one hundred times in the past. If the Earth is 6500 years old, that means that the Earth's magnetic field should have reversed on average every 65 years. I don't know about you, but all the compasses I've seen have all been pointing to the same magnetic north since the early Chinese used iron needles to navigate at sea.

A graph and some basic information can be found at this source. Also, you can read The Scientists by John Gribbin, and that explains who and how many western scientific discoveries were made, including almost every scientific fact discussed in this topic. I read it last summer, and I recommend it to those who like that sort of intellectual reading. If you dislike the people who wrote it, or don't trust these specific facts, cross-reference the information with other sources. My data may be wrong, and my argument may have holes in it. Please point them out to me so we may better understand the natural world.

Wait just a second. Who says the earth is only 6500 years old?
The Bible doesn't.
And who said the magnetic pole changed over 100 times? Seriously though I have no clue where you got that statistic or if it is even relevant.

I happen to have a thery of my own.
Imagine a world where every word in the Bible is not taken as literal. (after all, it was written to be understood by people who had no knowledge of modern science.)

Could I not assume that the 7 days refered to in the Bible are just a metaphor to explain how God created the world and everything in it?
After all, God is, at least, a fourth dimensional being; He exists outside of time.
Perhaps this God created chemistry, physics, and eventually biology. Perhaps this was done all in an instant to the creator of it all.
It could have taken any number of millions of years.

And my point.
You can't disprove science with religion just as you cant disprove religion with science.
This is what makes it so hard for people to believe because it is something that cannot be seen or measured.

I'm likely to get a lot of critisism for this, but it is something that has been on my mind for quite some time.
Now jack I'm sure you wont agree with me.
Faz, you might not agree either.

I don't claim to know everything, but I can be reasonable, and I will do so for the rest of my life.
If you plan on arguing about this that's fine, or we could all speculate about what could possibly have happened in the past although we can't prove anything.
Have any of you ever tried to come up with your own theory or do you all just go with evolution because it was taught to you in school?

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Apr 7 2011, 12:33 am by K_A.

If you try to track back the lifespans of all living things mentioned in the Bible, you get 6000 something (some priests did this). Also, I think I've read somewhere that the Christian calendar (seriously I don't even know whether such a thing exists) states that the world was created just about a hundred years away from said priests' calculations.
Ray was saying that the magnetic pole is constantly moving, that people've proven that it has flipped lots of times since the earth was born, and if the Earth was ~6500 years old, the poles would flip like crazy.
Then, this god might not be the Biblical god at all, and he might not have created the Earth, nor any of the life on it. Also, this is the kind of being agnostics believe in.
Hm...Now that you mentioned it, having a reasonable explanation for something in your head makes it harder to accept any contradicting theories =/

Creationists, i.e. Jack.

It does, ask a creationist.

I linked a site and referenced a book I had read. Just google "magnetic reversal" if you're still not convinced.

What a great world that would be!

Exactly. People who take the word of the Bible literally, they think the world was made in seven days. Those who don't take the Bible literally, the more reasonable Christians, more often believe this.

True, but you can prove the Bible to be partly false.

Evolution is the best theory we have at the moment.

A good question to ask is this: if a reasonable person had no knowledge of creationism, God, or evolution, and they looked at the evidence available on the planet Earth today, what sort of theory would they think of? It's unlikely that they'd think of a theory that says, "Exactly 6500 years ago, give or take a decade, the Earth was created over 6 days, with each thing being created in this order: A, B, C, ... , and they were all created by an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent being. A few months/years later, two humans ate an apple and gained knowledge, therefore condemning them to a mortal life on the planet Earth. From there, people did bad things, things so bad (is it just me, or do today's humans sin much more than Noah's time? Theft, torture, rape, genocide, brainwashing...) that their Creator was displeased and put a bunch of water to cover the Earth, and only let a few people survive. Somehow, two of every animal lived on a boat for 40 days without eating each other, and they came back to dry land and repopulated the Earth."

Or is it more likely might they think "The earth must be millions of years old, because <insert continental drift, magnetic reversal, rock layers, radiometric dating, DNA samples, vestigial organs> all take a long time to happen. They gradually happen over long periods of time, so the change isn't noticeable to a single generation."

Face it: no one who has never heard of the Christian God has ever theorized a creationist story. Certain cultures might have creation stories/myths, but only the Jewish culture had that one story that Christians love so dearly.

What we attribute today as Religion was an explanation for things which, in the past, could have no other explanation. To still have 'faith' in religion - in the literal and blind sense - is ultimately wrong and I would argue that you are un-evolved if you hold this viewpoint. The literal creationist aspect wherein the words of the Bible are the absolute truth of God. To hold such a view in the 21st century is akin to fundamentalism, bordering on insanity.

However, it is possible to have 'faith' in religion - in the metaphysical and abstract sense. But to do so, requires you to admit that religion is flawed. God didn't create the world in 7 days, because the world has been here for billions of years and the flora and fauna found today have evolved over these billions of years also. God simply could not have created Adam and Eve in a day (or two - Genesis isn't really my forté), since we have empirical evidence suggesting that humans have evolved into what they are today, from something completely different.

So, why would the Bible say that God created the Universe and all things within it in 7 days when we know in absolute terms that this is not true? Could it be that the Bible (and all other religious texts) are actually the creation of man? That people actually collated stories and wrote them down and said that 'This is the word of God'? That's a bit presumptuous of those people, and makes me question the true purpose and intended goals of religion, specifically 'organised religion'.

All religions have things in common, a creation myth, a key figure, or figures around whom the general 'story' relates, and an apocalypse/afterlife scenario.

So, all religions tell us (in more or less certain terms) how we came to be here, who created us, why we are here - the creation 'myth'. They tell us how to live our lives, what is right and what is wrong, what laws must be observed, what pleases god and what displeases god - through the 'key figure'. And then we are told of what happens when we die, or what will happen 'in the end'.

Are these 3 questions not a part of human nature? And is it so hard to attribute religion as merely a part of 'human nature'? Have we not left nature and gone into nurture - as we can now rely on science more than murky and abstract religion?

Religion is a lie. God loves atheists the most. She told me herself. Stick that in your fundamentalist crackpipe and smoke it.

I don't think all the Bible should be taken literally, some of it is clearly poetic. But genealogies are not poetic in any way, and it's from those that we deduce that the world is 6014 or whatever years old. And why aren't we discussing this in thebelieve the Bible thread?

Because the theory of evolution as it is currently stated requires a long time to work, much longer than 6000 years. Hence why creationists go all-out to attack the age of the earth, because if they can discredit the earth being older than 6000 years, they can discredit evolution, and that allows them to keep believing that the bible is literally true when it says God create man and woman as they are in their current form.

I already explained this earlier in the thread.

Because by your believing that the world is only 6014 years old, you effectively say that evolution is a myth and that God created all the living animals, plants, insects and humans found today.

Well it is hard for one thing to exist if it contradicts another such as people working in the field of evolution have a higher chance for being atheist, This is a fact and can't be argued. But this doesn't mean they out right attack creationism. Pseudoscience and Creationism are both contradictions but both are solid beliefs to some.

Well I'm a atheist but i still believe that there could be a god that i have never found yet. I'm still young like many and i know i'm not being attacked or being in a bubble. But any higher power like the belief of aliens is yet another contradiction and fact.

Ever heard of ancient astronaut theory?
They think that the God referred to in the Bible is actually an alien presence who genetically altered primapes to become humans with the intention of slavery. I saw it on the discovery channel. It's pretty scary stuff.

I'm still waiting for a refute to my argument of magnetic reversal.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 13 2011, 1:11 am by CecilSunkure. Reason: Don't point out Creationists like that, it's non-contr

I read your source, and all I got from it was that the poll is moving, and that they think reversals happened in the past. There were no sources cited in the article that I could find that verified that reversals even happened. From my understanding, you can look at crust plates at the bottom of the ocean and observe which direction the iron in it is pointing. However, that assumes that the iron was both molten in that position and didn't move until now. Perhaps it was molten, and then that particular region of crust was somehow flipped? I've read into this before and the idea of magnetic reversals is very unknown territory, in that nobody has any idea how a reversal could happen or why it would.

In my personal opinion this is a case of a good observation (iron at the bottom of the ocean in various locations is pointing the opposite direction), though the conclusion is far-fetched. Perhaps the people publishing and studying these articles could detail as to all the possibilities of why they are reversed, rather than assuming that they formed their in a molten state and stayed in their current position for millions of years. If there really was a catastrophic flood in the past currents and quakes could easily toss around very large portions of plates, and flip entire gigantic segments of rock.

Also I found that some researchers found that if lava cools very rapidly within another layer of lava it can record a reversal of the Earth's magnetic field x.