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Wrong, wrong, wrong. It does not in any way require anyone to ignore evidence,, they can perfectly well accept the evidence as part of a more grand scheme that happens to not be scientific.

What's the evidence for YEC? Specifically which evidence is there that the "Earth is 10,000 years old"? Give one example that is not a folk tale. To believe that one must actively avoid all the media, courses, books, and basically everything in our culture that supports evolution.

And BTW, I have to note that back in Darwin's day most naturalists knew that evolution took place, but the debate was over the method by which it happens (whether Lamarck was right or not) and since then, the debate is always over smaller and more precise ways over how it works. YECs look at this debate as if it's a weakness of science and that "well, hurr, they don't actually know anything do they?" Which is an oversimplification and just plain wrong.

As i already pointed out, the evidence being part of the creation for whatever reason is how that can happen. Its no different that 2(1+1) and 2+2 both equalling 4.

Both of your math examples are observationally (in this universe) true irrespective of any folk tales. Claiming that each are equal to 4 can be tested. The claim that the Earth is 10,000 years old cannot - because for every challenge there are excuses made by those that support YEC; not any excuses that can be tested, either. There is absolutely bupkis in evidence outside of fairy tales.^1

Read this: "The Dragon In My Garage." http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LI...

Science can do nothing about that either because science cannot falsify it.

But there is a difference between unscientific claims and being anti-science, and the people who obstinately believe that YEC is true are truly anti-science. It's exhibited through their actions - that not only do they not believe that the Earth is OLD but you must also believe it's only 10,000 years old (or ~6000 years old (4004 BCE) depending on which lunatic you're talking to). This includes various arguments of the "dragon in my garage" style as exhibited above and such nonsense as the Dover PA school board idiocy. It's the active opposition that makes them anti- something and not just un- something. That's what the actual dictionary definition of "anti-" means.

Anyone trying to claim science disproves religion

What has been done is that evidence has been presented that the Earth is older than 10,000 years notwithstanding evidence to the contrary. It's a fine distinction, but an important one. It's that scientific conclusions are always contingent on whatever evidence there is, not dogma. YECs have to show at least some evidence that the Earth is as young as they say it is for their point to have any standing. And they can't. Because they have no evidence outside of circular "logic" and outright fraud. I mean, come on, the whole Noah's Ark thing in KY and Discovery Institute BS is all about grift and fleecing the marks (the "true believers")

And what YECs really don't understand is allegory, when you get down to it.

>I'm simply wrong

No, I'm not actually. You're just a troll and IHBT. But whatever. An unused blade becomes rusty.

--
BMO

Footnotes:

1. And yet every Sunday I turn on the television set, and there's a priest or a pastor reading from my book, and interpreting it, and their interpretations, I have to tell you, are usually wrong. It's not their fault, because it's not their book. You never see a rabbi on the TV interpreting the New Testament, /do you?/ If you want to truly understand the Old Testament, if there is something you don't quite get, there are /Jews who walk among you,/ and THEY - I promise you this - will take TIME out of their VERY JEWY, JEWY DAY, and interpret for you anything that

Greenpeace does not oppose GMO crops

They destroy research and lie about lifesaving GMOs. What do you call the destruction of scientific research? There's a reason I referred to the as book burning thugs. These people actually think destroying basic research is a good thing.

Greenpeace has concerns about the co-existence of GM and non-GM crops

No they don't. Thousands of varieties of crops co-exist just fine with the proper seed saving techniques. A transgene does not change that. To give an example in some GMO crops, yellow flesh is dominant over red flesh in papaya, and yellow kernels are dominant over white in corn, yet there is still white corn and red papaya. Why is it then that these varieties can co-exist? Proper seed saving techniques. The transgenes operate on the exact same principles, it's just that no one makes a fuss until genetic engineering is involved and Greenpeace relies on you not understanding the basics principles and understanding the background context of seed saving to spread that excuse. They are lying to you.

calls for more precautionary research and monitoring of GMO's before widespread adoption.

The precautionary principle is idiocy. It says that unless you can prove something will not happen, you do nothing. Imagine if I tried to ban vaccines or wifi on the same principles, demanding that someone prove they will not, through a currently unknown mechanism, cause autism in X+1 years, demanding that you prove a negative. How foolish would it be to say that? Why does that suddenly make sense once GMOs are involved? This precautionary principle excuse is the agricultural equivalent of Russell's teapot. I suggest you read Carl Sagan's Dragon in my Garage analogy to understand why the precautionary principle is completely irrational. GMOs are extensively studied. A rational risk assessment would say there is nothing wrong with using them.

It might be helpful to search out their position papers on these things

Okay. Here they say, quote: "We continue to work with governments to get rid of genetic engineering once and for all." Here they say: "Greenpeace has been an advocate for keeping Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) out of our food supply and encouraging consumers to only buy foods that are GMO-free." They use lots of fearmongering imagery. That's not anti-GMO? The hell it isn't. Greenpeace is one of the biggest anti-GMO organizations out there, they've got no science to back them, and their work has helped hold my field back by at least a decade and a half, as well as contributed to hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation, and climate change.

I had always assumed he did exist, then I looked into it.

So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him?

here ya go.

An applicant might methodically go through the copious evidence demonstrating the geological age of the earth is billions of years old. Or expound on the multiple plausible ways that abiogenisis (life) may have occured. Or how evolution is both a fact and theory supported by multiple strands of evidence. Or that there is no evidence supporting the biblical creation story. Or that there are many similar creation myths of which the Bible is just one.

And after this exhaustive presentation they still would not have proven biblical creation did not happen. They might have demonstrated beyond all doubt to a reasonable person that it was extremely implausible and unlikely, but they haven't proven it didn't happen. And if this "judge" is biased or following exact letter of the challenge, then the money will not be won.

Carl Sagan's "The Dragon In My Garage" essay demonstrates this point with a deliberately absurd example just to hilight the point. And contrast this challenge James Randi's $1 million challenge where applicants are not required to employ tortured logic - they perform a paranormal feat in a self evident way under agreed controlled conditions and they win.

Putting it simply, your opinion about how good or bad something has been engineered has no real impact on whether or not that Creator exists. The equivalent is to say that I do not believe in the person that coded a line of script because I could make it better or because I can perceive flaws in it.

Oh, don't misunderstand me. My mockery of the supposed engineering abilities of your deity are not the basis of my disbelief. The bit where there is zero evidence of a deity is the part where we deviate on that point.

Regarding the rest, its is all supposition that you believe and I don't. I claim God as fact and you don't. Neither of us can prove the other wrong because we see the evidence and arrive at different conclusions.

No. I can't prove you wrong because you offer nothing to disprove. Perhaps you need some remedial Sagan to catch up, like this.

However, the fact that you can consider a particular object good or bad depending upon who made is is a bit intellectually dishonest. If it is crude, it is crude, whether by Creation or Evolution.

If my toddler draws a somewhat anatomically correct picture of a dog, I'd be thrilled. If a professional artist drew the same picture, I'd critique it as crude. Do you really not understand the basic difference here?

Additionally your understanding of crude will change as your understanding of things change, so it only goes to show that we as humans constantly judge things with the shortest possible sight we can muster, while believing we have considered all that should be considered.

Given that you can't prove the relevance of the mythological framework that you think makes these deeper understanding valid, you are left with nothing to prove. Again.

I Believe in God but I have no qualms with Science until it starts to posit unrealistic things like, Science and Christianity are at odds. The only Christians at odds with Science are the ones that have problems with their own Faith. And the only Scientists that have problems with Christians are the Pseudo Scientists.

I believe in science(no capital letters, it's not a being in itself). I have no qualms with Christianity(or any other religion) until makes unrealistic claims about the universe. Even then,if it is not trying to push those mythological ideas on the rest of society, I'm content to let them wallow in their own ignorance. But, somehow, they always show up and try to do just that....

Nope. Religion stills takes the cake.

When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Carlin_on_religion.htm

[Gödel] only claimed that a consistent theory could not prove itself true: he said nothing about using another (possible consistent) theory to prove the first one.

True, you need another, broader system of things to prove a given system of things. But as I understand it, at some point, you run out of consistent theories that you can comprehend, and you have to have faith that the theories that you do understand are consistent.

the universe is not reductible/homeomorphic to "arithmetic" or any other equivalent formal construct

Some people disagree with that. See digital physics and "it from bit".

Faith/religion is the antithesis of this: it involves choosing an arbitrary explanation/model and just sticking to it, regardless of its merits/complexity/explanatory power of said model.

Don't immediately discount the explanatory power of scientific passages in the Bible. The Bible says the earth is round (Proverbs 8:27, Isaiah 40:22); science later discovered the same. The Bible says the earth "hangs on nothing" as opposed to turtles all the way down (Job 26:7); science later discovered the same. The Bible tells how the water cycle works (Job 36:27-28, Ecclesiastes 1:6-7); Marcus Vitruvius later discovered the same. The Bible says the stars are beyond human capacity to count (Genesis 15:5; Jeremiah 33:22); astronomers up through Johannes Kepler consistently underestimated this. And the hygiene rules of the Jews were darn good at preserving their health. But I agree with you that various religious organizations' handwaving interpretations of holy texts, that is, "this is literal but that is symbolic", isn't rigorous enough to be worth much.

Apples and oranges.

Are both delicious fruits.

*sigh* Slashdot... you really need to get your Unicode support working

Slashdot's Unicode support used to work until people started abusing it with bidirectionality control characters to screw up the layout of other comments on a page. Is it a coincidence that bidirectionality is used mostly by the languages spoken in the holy lands of the major monotheistic faiths?

i know this ain't going anywhere.. but, in good fun, here goes:

"The Dragon In My Garage" - Carl Sagan.

Or this:

"Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them."
— Steve Eley

You are correct in that just because you can't observe something at your command doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But the burden of proof falls on the one claiming something exists to demonstrate the existence. In the case of lightning, it's been demonstrated. In the case of $YOU_FAV_DAITY, not so much. If the burden of proof fell on disproving the existence, I got one mean dragon in my garage.

bbhhh my friend.

I was about to discuss this topic when I realized that Carl Sagan has already done so, and far more eloquently than I can manage.

The Dragon in my Garage

The moral of the story is that not all hypothesis are equally likely to be true, and so it makes no sense to give them equal weight. Doing so merely legitimizes those who try to further hypothesis for ulterior reasons.

Your faith in god is no different from faith that elephants exist? (Argument From We All Got Faith).

I know that you are capable of a more well-formed argument than simple name-calling

Sure I am, but what's the point of arguing with someone who insists on starting from an absurd premise?

Got anything that's not already right here?

Looks like your position is somewhere around #411 on that list.

Am I being unreasonable?

Yep. That's why I'm not taking you seriously.

-jcr

Of all audio gear, speaker cables and power cables are probably the ones that have the least effect, if any, on sound quality. I'll grant right off the bat that any difference probably won't be audible. But before everyone gets all comfy in their religous prejudices, consider the history of absolutism - it usually fails in the long run.

We saw it with CD players. 25 years ago it was easy to find hordes and hordes of scientifically-minded folks who proclaimed that CD players were all identical and perfect. They reproduced as high a frequency as the ear could hear. They did so with perfect digital repeatability. They were perfect and identical. That was an unassailable scientific fact. It was even a marketing slogan for Phillips; "Perfect Sound Forever" was their first ad campaign for CDs.

Audiophiles said different. They said they heard differences. When challenged to do double blind, ABX testing, they often failed. They offered up only feeble excuses about how such tests are never structured properly, always being too short and normally using switchboxes that degraded sound. The skeptics and scientists had a field day exposing audiophiles as frauds and hucksters, as (at best) deluded simpletons.

Eventually, though, a funny thing happened. Research got done by audiophiles who were also engineers. They discovered various CD player problems (like jitter) that could be measured and fixed. When those problems were fixed, the audiophiles said the players sounded better. The audiophiles still failed ABX tests and still held to the same excuses, but changes were made, anyway.

Nowadays, anyone who knows what music sounds like (and, yes, that eliminates 98% of the populace right there) can easily tell the difference between a first-gen Sony CDP-101 and a current high-end CD player. There really are differences. Those people who absolutely knew that it was scientifically impossible for any difference to exist turned out to be painfully, embarrassingly wrong. (Nowadays, they tend to fall back on revisionist history: "Oh, we never really said you guys were wrong, just that testing didn't bear you out...etc., etc.")

My point is not to construct an elaborate straw man. My point is that keeping an open mind is a good thing. We have previously seen lots of folks loudly and authoritatively proclaim that a given phenomena does not exist and cannot possibly exist. They cite scientific reasoning (as they spout it) as unquestionable. But that is nothing more than a religous devotion to a position and I reject it.

Sure, the burden of proof is on the people who make claims that cable A sounds better than cable B. I doubt they'll ever succeed. But the vituperative, out-of-hand rejection of alternate views is more than just unseemly; it argues against (indeed, belittles) an inquisitive spirit.

Perhaps some Carl Sagan would be in order. His essay The Dragon in My Garage is right on point. When considering unverifiable and seemingly insane assertions, his advice is that: "...the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the ... hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion."

We've seen the mocking, "scientific" approach to audiophile claims turn out to be wrong in the past. We might do well to be a little less sure of ourselves when considering audiophile issues in the future.

Side note: Just to show that there's blame to go all around, note that the offer of the James Randi Educational Foundation folks is, as I have stated elsewhere, disingenuous as all hell. (See Rule 12, a proviso that makes it clear that the offer is only open to whoever they want to make it open to and gives the JREF multiple, too-easy excuses to reject any attempt to claim the reward.) The rules are set up so that the test will never happen. This is little more than a minor publicity stunt that's gotten picked up by too many 'net outlets and given far too much virtual ink, already.

Certainly such discrimination is not codified into law:

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/StateConstitutions.htm

The U.S. Constitution forbids quite a lot of things, including religious tests to hold office. However, these are routinely violated in state or local laws.

Article 19, section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution: Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness.

No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court.

There's many many more, and you can find them all here. And people say that liberals have all these unconstitutional restrictions in place in order to keep God-fearing Christians from public office. Last time I checked, most elected representatives I read up on, especially Presidential candidates, identify themselves as Christians...

Disclaimer: Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Oh, and as for your "24 major arguments for the existence of god", I'll raise you over three hundred. All just as specious as any medieval wanker could dream up.

-jcr

Actually, Dawkins talks about the millions of Christians who don't oppose science all the time.

You obviously don't read many of his books (such as the latest one, The God Delusion), nor listen to many of his speeches (most of which can be found on YouTube or at RichardDawkins.net), because Dawkins has made that seemingly benign group of people the target of many of his criticisms.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins examines how he thinks these people are able to compartmentalize their lives in such a way that makes belief in God possible while also having a natural and healthy skepticism about other, non-religious claims. For instance, most people scoff at the idea that idea that there should be evidence of God's existance before they believe in him, yet would demand just such evidence if I were to claim I had a dragon in my garage.

While Dawkins certainly loves picking the low hanging fruit (the right-wing religious wackos), he is more than happy to address what he views as the hypocritical moderates. In fact, he has said numerous times that he almost has more respect for people who are steadfast in their religious beliefs than those who are willing to blend modern life with religious dogma.

It gets worse. In Arkansas, an atheist can't even serve as a witness in court. You're right though, a law barring any other minority group from holding office would be struck down the day it passed, but for some reason it's perfectly acceptable (and even encouraged) to discriminate against atheists like myself.

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/StateConstitutio ns.htm

To be fair, I don't know how much the laws are actually enforced, but they are on the books. Any candidate that openly declares himself as an atheist has absolutely NO chance of being elected anyway. What's really irritating is that Christians claim they are the ones being persecuted. Funny, I don't see too many of them having to hide their (lack of) beliefs for fear of not being hired or passed over for raises or promotions.

"America is a police state? News to me. This is a land where buying books about Nazi regalia, purely for the historical context, is legal, or you can buy books about explosives, or drugs, or books critical of our government, even books saying it should be overthrown....because we don't ban books here. Unlike in certain other "Free, Western" nations. This is a country where citizens can legally own M-16s. This is a country where anyone can express any political opinion they wish, even call the leadership evil...without being jailed. This is a country where people can vote for or join whatever political party they wish (even if it has a snowball's chance in hell), including the Nazi or Communist parties....without being jailed. And this is a country where people can be any religion they wish, there are various Neo-Pagans, Jews, Muslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Vodunists, and people of many other faiths...there's no law against it, there's no government oppression. Sure most are Christians of some sort or another...but most of those aren't even Fundamentalists of any stripe."

Yes, but if you're an atheist, you can't hold office in some states.

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/StateConstitutio ns2.htm

And in some states you even redefine science to fit better with Christianity.

"Where? Where is the fucking "police state" you are bitching about? I don't see it. If it were here, we'd overthrow it because Americans are culturally intolerant of tyranny."

No, you are a country living in constant fear, because that's the way you control a supposed democracy. You're not even a working democracy since your system doesn't allow for a third party to ever get any control over congress. What happens if both parties are wankers? And even if the majority, votes for one guy, crooked voting machines, brothers, crooked voting officials, TV-station chiefs and Judges can sway the vote so the other guys wins. Or you could just buy a polititian.

Have you tried to come into the US as a non US citizen. You'll notice the changes that have occured the last years. Have you tried to take a picture of a bridge as a tourist? Have you tried to put you bags away in a locker when you are visiting New York? Do you know how many cameras have spied upon you, a la 1984, when you transported yourself from one part of town to the other?

And what about your censored media? You learned your lesson in the Vietnam war. If you show body bags with US soilders on TV you loose the war. How many of the 1900+ soldiers dead in Iraq have you seen in a body bag on TV? And isn't there something basically wrong with a TV network (FOX), where the majority thinks the world around you actually like the US, even though reality is completely opposite?

And most important. You went against the Constitution when you gave the President power to start war and took that power away from congress.

Me, I'm never going back. I refuse to leave my finger print as a common criminal.

but it's proven ! really, it is !
see, here they have a lot of proofs -
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Jefferson.jpg
I knew about that, and i'm British!

The most comrehensive list of such arguments I can find is here: http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm. Enjoy!

I got good mileage out of this, which lists 350 "proofs" of deity existence. On the flip side is this page giving the other side.

You know what I'd really like to see, is a debate neutrally arbitrated by an expert semantician or logician between a deist and an agnostic. It seems like deists of all stripes only gain ground when they use fallacies (like appeals to emotion and authority). Now, these fallacies may be consistently effective on the lay populace, but in any respectable conversation they amount to "This may not be believeable, but you're on our side, aren't you? *wink*" I've seen several instances of fundamentalists addressing the larger population and it always seems to boil down to either an emotionalistic "Oh why do you persecute me" (by not accepting my fantasy as fact) or "You're either one of us or you're not" high-school peer pressure.

Now, I have my opinion, but I wouldn't presume to force someone who disagrees with me to take my side "or else" like many christian mouthpieces do. I would however love to see a solid block of the people who get away with every trick in the book to infuse non-religious topics with fundamentalist fervor.

I got good mileage out of this, which lists 350 "proofs" of deity existence. On the flip side is this page giving the other side.

You know what I'd really like to see, is a debate neutrally arbitrated by an expert semantician or logician between a deist and an agnostic. It seems like deists of all stripes only gain ground when they use fallacies (like appeals to emotion and authority). Now, these fallacies may be consistently effective on the lay populace, but in any respectable conversation they amount to "This may not be believeable, but you're on our side, aren't you? *wink*" I've seen several instances of fundamentalists addressing the larger population and it always seems to boil down to either an emotionalistic "Oh why do you persecute me" (by not accepting my fantasy as fact) or "You're either one of us or you're not" high-school peer pressure.

Now, I have my opinion, but I wouldn't presume to force someone who disagrees with me to take my side "or else" like many christian mouthpieces do. I would however love to see a solid block of the people who get away with every trick in the book to infuse non-religious topics with fundamentalist fervor.

You know, I miss those days!