Slashdot Mirror

Let's be real here. Star Wars was a space opera, a caricature of science fiction.

Yeah, let's be real. The "science" is Star Wars is atrocious, no doubt, but the Firefly universe has to top every conceivable list of ludicrously unimaginable futures. It's not even space opera. I don't know what it is, but it sure as hell isn't science fiction. Farse? I mean, it's cowboys in space, playing on holographic pooltables and transporting cattle across galaxies, for Christ's sake. It might just as well be an episode of South Park. I will never understand how anyone could actually take it seriously.

The SF genre, in my own opinion, is one that deals in honest ways with how science impacts our lives on a daily basis. Star Wars wasn't an original story to this genre. It was the same old good versus evil, take down the evil conglomerate story which could have easily been told in a Western.

Western? Funny you should use that word. Seriously though, see above. Neither is really SF, but if one of them takes home the Unimaginable Badness Prize it has to be the one that actually is a Space Western.

As for "a traditional good versus evil" story, I disagree, as does George Lucas. Star Wars is Vader's story. It is primarily the story of his fall from grace, rather than his redemption. Take away Vader, and Luke, and yes, Star Wars would be pretty traditional. But then it wouldn't be Star Wars.

Serenity crossed boundaries in ways Star Wars did not.

Star Wars single handedly revolutionized not only the SF industry, but the whole of Hollywood. It may be easy to forget now how much the first movie changed in the late 70s, but it did.

Serenity and Firefly "crossed boundaries" only in that pathetic way which you recognize as wholly forced --- to make a story "for our time", no matter how contrived. It brought absolutely nothing new to the table. It was a bunch of "good natured outlaws" driving around in a crappy spaceship. Hey, where have I heard that before? Maybe it rings familiar because Mal Reynolds and his Firefly are directly, shamelessly plagiarized from the very 30 year old movie you're criticizing as outdated. Seriously, if you can't see Han Solo in Mal and Firefly in the Millennium Falcon you have to be blind.

It relied on a political back story familiar to those of us not subject to "empires" even as it showed a human side to the struggle. What? Luke Skywalker lost his hand in a lightsaber battle to Darth Vader, only to have it replaced by seamless prosthetic? Malcolm Reynolds got the crap kicked out of him and LIMPED away from his LUCKY defeat of the bad guy.

So what? What kind of incoherent critique is that?

The story itself was more relevant to our society than Star Wars.

Perhaps, but that's utterly irrelevant. "Jackass The Movie" is more relevant to our times than "Ben Hur", but that doesn't mean that the former should be considered "the greatest movie of all time".

I could go on, but what's the point? I don't even understand how this debate is possible. Firefly and its whole franchise is perhaps amusing afternoon entertainment, but critics didn't even bother with it (or thought it sucked), most people have never heard of it, and in a decade from now it won't even be a footnote. The first Star Wars movie, on the other hand, revolutionized Hollywood, became one of the most successful movies of all time, received several Oscars, received rave reviews from all the top critics, and is still fresh in people's mind three decades later. I mean, come on. This is just ridiculous.

This is one of the few topics I feel strongly compelled enough to comment on. For those who voted Serenity topping Star Wars, I understand completely. Let's be real here. Star Wars was a space opera, a caricature of science fiction. The SF genre, in my own opinion, is one that deals in honest ways with how science impacts our lives on a daily basis. Star Wars wasn't an original story to this genre. It was the same old good versus evil, take down the evil conglomerate story which could have easily been told in a Western. Serenity crossed boundaries in ways Star Wars did not. It relied on a political back story familiar to those of us not subject to "empires" even as it showed a human side to the struggle. What? Luke Skywalker lost his hand in a lightsaber battle to Darth Vader, only to have it replaced by seamless prosthetic? Malcolm Reynolds got the crap kicked out of him and LIMPED away from his LUCKY defeat of the bad guy. His crew fared no better. The story itself was more relevant to our society than Star Wars. The primary struggle in Star Wars was Luke not becoming his father and joining the monolithic religion his own version of which was opposed to. It was individualistic, properly suited for the coming 80s decade of similar attitudes of self-preservation. Serenity dealt with issues of survival of minority against a seemingly benevolent majority. It mirrored one man's issues of being on the losing side of a war and contrasted them to the why's and how's wars are won and lost. Given the 14 episodes of backstory from the single season it was on and one comes away with an even better understanding of this movie. In summary, Serenity trumps Star Wars as a sci-fi movie because it is actually more REAL and deals more specifically with real issues. It is not some fairytale fantasy story, able to be retold in any genre without losing anything.

Fred Hoyle of the British Academy of Science and mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe decided to calculate the probability of life coming into existence anywhere in the universe. Their results? Utterly impossible.

Evolutionary theory does not address how life itself came about. Abiogenesis is a distinctly different field. But even so, life exists--we know that already. It's a bit odd to posit that something that has already happened is impossible. We may not know the agency (Hoyle was a fan of panspermia, for example) but that life exists indicates that life can come into existence.

...also attempted to calculate the probability that life sprang into existence spontaneously. His results? Utter impossible.

Again, life exists, so I'd temper the "utter impossible" assessments. Considering that we, along with the men whose assessments you're trumpeting, don't know exactly how life came about, I'd take their calculations with an ounce of salt. You might be overestimating how impossible something is when it's actually just improbable. Shuffle one deck of cards, and the probability of coming out with any particular arrangement is one over a 68-digit number. Two decks of cards? One over a 166-digit number. It is trivially easy to do things at your dining-room table that are mind-staggeringly improbable. That's the problem with trying to assess the probability of something that already happened--it may have been improbable, but now it's a fait accompli, so it no longer makes sense to say it's impossible.

Stephen J. Gould, one of the greatest defenders of evolution, was also troubled by issues that he saw within evolution. As a result, he came up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium. He postulated that there were sudden leaps in evolution that left no transitional forms.

This is false, and is a deliberate mischaracterization by creationists of what Gould wrote. I'm sorry you were duped by this, but you might want to do an internet search for creationism and quote-mining. Here is a good link where you can read what Gould actually thought about those transitional fossils that you've been told he thought didn't exist. Again, I'm sorry you were lied to. It's hard enough to have a conversation about this complex of a subject without some creationist authors basically lying about what some scientist did or didn't say.

Take for example the eye.

I'd love to, primarily because it's one of the most frequently explained examples of how complex structures can evolve piece by piece. Wikipedia has a good article on the subject, and if you search around there are others. I've read good explanations by Dawkins, and others. Even PBS has a decent article. Basically any light-sensetive cell would give an organism an advantage over his competitors, and over time any further advantages would accrue as they develop. You are underestimating the power of accumulated changes.

Another stake in the heart of evolution is the absence of transitional forms.

There are many articles covering transitional fossils. They are real, we have thousands of them, and they can be easily viewe

And you completely ignored my question: what if I put up a website with caricatures of liberal ideas? Wouldn't you call me out on it?

Now, I'm not a liberal, but it would be pretty easy for me to take all of the most extreme, ridiculous ideas of liberalism and put them into a wiki. I could have articles on:

1: all sex is rape
2: all whites are racists - blacks cannot be racist.
3: no one should be allowed to own any property. All your money belongs to the state and we allow you to keep some of it.
4: all rights come from the state. We give you a few rights and expect you to say "thank you"
5: you do not have the right to defend yourself against crime. If someone breaks into your house and you fight them, you should go to jail.
6: if your opinions are wrong (that is, not politically correct) you should be "re-educated" by force.
7: you do not have the right to raise your children as you see fit. Children belong to the state.

And then, after I create this website, people would start quoting it back to you, "OMFG LOOK AT WHAT THESE IDIOT LIBERALS BELIEVE!" Wouldn't you point out that the site was a joke?? What would you say if I came along and declared, "oh no, that site is real."

I think it's sad that your views of conservatives are based on a stereotype that you invented. It's says a lot about you (and other slashdotters) that you take everything negative from a group and put them together to build a boogeyman. I guess that's the only way you can have your two minutes of hate every day. But it's possible to do that to any group. Some slashdotters are virgins. Some live with their parents. So I could put all that together and create this caricature of a nerd and use that to write off everything on the site.

But that would be pretty ignorant of me, wouldn't it.

Well, I think Brian Herbert needs to learn the difference between "character" and "caricature". I admit I did read *all* of the BH Dune books nevertheless, because I'm a sucker, but Frank Herbert's most offhand scribbles are worth more than that crap.

"How about we constantly bash a law for being unfair, unnecessary, and convoluted, and then turn around and expect a corporation to follow it to the letter!"

Let me ask you a serious question, and please please, don't take this the wrong way, but....

Are you retarded? I realize you're trolling, but generally just to get into a university you have to display a stronger grasp of language that you display, so I'm going to assume you were turned down. And I doubt you're shilling for the NFL, unless you're a player still on IR for a head injury.

And then you have a link that points to a penny stock. I mean, you're a caricature of a person. An empty shell, a husk. You did you "goad", but I suspect you think it's some sort of frog.

Why do we have to create mutant mosquitos when we can use good old DDT? All we have to do is get rich, white people to get off their high horses at cocktail parties so the rest of the world can be saved from this horrible disease.

Wow, you paint an impressive caricature of anyone who could possibly disagree with you. However, your suggested solution (and the accompanying ad hominem) is just as simplistic as the opposing view that DDT is an unmitigated evil.

For someone who is not rich, white and at a cocktail party and yet still disagrees with you, I'd point to my wife, who is Nigerian and, like most of her family, has actually had malaria. She still thinks unrestrained use of DDT is a bad idea -- partly because, though much of Silent Spring was discredited, it is still a toxin that builds up substantially over the very long term, and it's a good idea to avoid that if you don't know the effects over the course of a lifetime, but especially because of the point that other responses have made, that if we did that then soon DDT would become useless, even in cases where we really did need it.

It would clearly be a stupid idea to recommend that every human being continuously take antibiotics. It is a similarly bad idea to say that entire ecosystems should be covered with DDT. Right now, use of DDT in moderation can handle particularly bad infestations. Heavy DDT use would lower malaria rates for a few years, before bringing it back up above todays levels because there would be no easy fix at all.

Your caricature of rich white people on high horses perpetuating disease among the poor and powerless is only at all legitimate if you yourself are not also essentially an armchair philosopher on this issue. If you are insulting other people for having opinions on how to effectively protect people, because they have no personal stake and are somewhat removed from the issue, then you'd better have some personal stake or be close to the issue before going on about your own opinions on the issue. Obviously I don't know your personal stake, if any -- but a lot of people who seem to feel the way you do are no closer to the issue than your hypothetical rich white people.

It would also be good to accept that people who oppose heavy DDT use are genuinely trying to protect people's lives, and have reasons for their opinions (even if you disagree with them), and it's not just that all of them freaked out after reading Silent Spring.

That's an obnoxious caricature of the grant process that crops up regularly. It's not as if climatologists didn't get grants before global warming, or that AGW skeptics don't get grants (or don't get published). You get grants on what work you propose to do, not on what opinion you hold. Not to mention that certain industries in the energy sector are happy to fund research into skeptical positions.

Most climate skeptics are famous because they have published skeptical research, not because The Man kept them down and they are struggling to get the word out through unorthodox channels.

From the way things are now, I'd say the main dogma of the left is to give each and every person the same exact value; whilst the dogma of the right is to give each person a different value according to his/her abilities, knowledge, etc. This would amount to a janitor, an sports star and a rocket scientist getting the same exact pay. Both systems can be socialist: the left would rely on "the regime" to equal everyone out (like in Cuba) and the right would also rely on "the regime" to evaluate the "worth" of everyone (like fascism). Still only the right can be liberal which is not the same as libertarian. Libertarians have been a radical branch of the left that oppose the system as it is: with its traditions, its dogmas and its taboos. In fact, for many libertarians the "liberty" they struggle for is just freedom from work whilst still being fed by the system. Liberals, on the other hand, look for a diminished state to uphold a simple set of laws. They want the interaction among citizens to depend upon a few rules and to have individual contracts for whatever the rules don't cover. In fact, liberals hold the conviction that each law passed by the state is just an attempt to regulate a distortion caused by another law that was passed before. The obvious flaw in this way of thinking has to do with the question: "Which basic rules to write down". Right now in Europe there's lots of intellectuals that have made a small fortune by working in arts, the government, NGOs, etc. which lean strongly to the left. In Spain they're called progres or leftists-on-BMW. They use to live en grande and get along with the bourgeois and still blame the rich people or the big corporations. They are exactly the kind of people that use MS Office to write long articles against Bill Gates, and many of them push for the mandatory use of open software in every level of the government by sending mails through MS Outlook. They've become a caricature of leftism, as shown by the Sokal affair.

By the way, you didn't say what you like about the US constitution, I'd be interested in knowing what you consider the most important parts of that.

First, thanks for the info on the German constitution. Very interesting. I'll have to see if I can dig up an English-language version.

With regard to the US constitution, the first thing I should say (though I think I've already been pretty clear about this) is that I value what the constitution says - not how our sad, degenerate excuse for a government has "interpreted" it.

The obvious place to start for me is the bill of rights; amendments 1 through ten, and the 14th amendment which is used to apply those ten amendments to the states and, theoretically, keep them from doing anything that violates the ten as well as the federal government.

1; freedom of religion, press, and expression. This amendment is unequivocal; free speech is protected. No ifs, no ands, no buts, no "in a crowded theaters", no "at a funerals", no "at a political rally", no "libel", no nothing. Protected. Period. No exceptions. That is something I admire, and something I support wholeheartedly. The government has ignored the constitutional requirements and is operating illegitimately. That I do not admire.

2; Right to bear arms. This is in two phases; a justification, and a statement. The justification, it seems to me, is partial. The statement, however, is unequivocal, and offers up no exceptions. All US citizens have the right to bear arms. No limits on size, effectiveness, or who may bear. I support this but feel that it needs amending; I think when the arms are larger than you can use to defend property you own, they're too large (and you could bring in a technical quibble as well... you can't "bear" a JSOW, for instance.) But I think we should all be armed with at the very least, rifles and pistols, and I think that the amendment was prescient in the sense that right now, the government ought to have those weapons pointed right at its collective noses until they back down and obey the constituting authority, the constitution itself.

3; not a modern issue

4; search and seizure. Good idea; not strong enough, but a good idea. Needs amending to make stronger. Of course, the government has long ago abandoned it even as written.

5; trial and punishment, compensation for takings: hot spot for me. The compensation section needs a complete rewrite. I could go on about this for hours, but basically, the "market value" of a home or property is not sufficient unless you can show that the owner of the property set that price themselves. You can't value a centuries old family homestead by counting its square feet; you can't value where your children were born and raised by the view, and you can't value where you learned at your father's knee by the opinion of some suit from a land office. Trial and punishment is a decent system, not perfect, but unfortunately, like everything else, the government has abandoned it and now pursues a caricature.

6, 7 and 8; Just like 5. Good ideas, not being used, followed or otherwise respected.

9 and 10; these were such great ideas, I can hardly contain myself. Unfortunately, the feds do everything they can to destroy it. Examples: The commerce clause, designed to control commerce between the states, is being used to crush state autonomy on subjects like drugs. Speed limits are forced into uniformity by the feds by using mafia-like bribery tactics - either comply, or we'll cut funding to your state (thus threatening the entire state economy.) Etc. The feds are thugs, using thuglike approaches.

So what we have here is a document that I greatly admire, but which has been plowed under by criminal activities in the federal, and to a more limited extent, state governments. There are lots of other points I think are well thought out, I really don't have time to go into why things like forbidding ex post facto activities are important - or how deeply the government has violated those ideas. But suffice it to say, I think that for the time, the document is extraordinarily well thought out. If we were actually following it, I think we'd be a lot better off.

I've been reading that most foreign countries do not use the word "evolution" in their biology texts at all! Can you believe it? Instead, they've been substituting words native to their own languages!!

THIS HAS TO STOP. The entire idea that a concept can be accurately represented by terms not used by the original author of a theory is dangerous, ludicrous, and dangerous. It has to be some sort of religious conspiracy!

It's a good thing we're scientists, or issues such as this might cause ordinary citizens to think we're reactionary and close-minded - just as we accuse those "religious" fanatics of being. Not that we would stereotype several hundred million people into a convenient caricature. We're scientists, after all. Our name has the word SCIENCE in it.

It really is true that the hardest job on the planet is to be a satirist of the pro-Bush Republicans, because it is almost impossible to create caricatures extreme enough to stay ahead of what they actually become in reality.

Are you asserting that in a murder trial, we shouldn't deal with forensic evidence because we can't prove or disprove anything without a time machine?

The standard of proof for a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt". If you want to talk about evolution in those terms, I don't believe it has met that standard.

"but proving it is possible that humans came into existence by (theory of your choice) does not prove that that is what actually happened."

That's something of a caricature, but really, that's what proof IS: showing that something CANNOT be ruled out despite all the other alternatives can be. Totally consistent with all the evidence is the HIGHEST standard of proof, not the lowest.

I agree with your logical analysis, but it does not address my point. I said, "X is possible does not imply X occured". Your statement (as I understand it) is, "X is the only possibility implies X occured".

It's worse than that though. Because you can get specific about the ways in which known intelligences, like us, operate. And when you consider those, it fact becomes clear that biological life constantly defies everything we would expect to see from designers like us: traits aren't treated as "good ideas" that are reused and jump lineages, muck isn't cleared out, design problems aren't so much solved as they are compensated for, and so on.

You clearly don't spend much time reading old code. I see many of those "issues" with the programs I work on every day. It's also difficult to look at someone else's code and know exactly why they did what they did in any program that's more than a couple thousand lines. Maybe "the designer" coded the DNA in a particular way for reasons we don't see because it's hard to analize the potential interactions of every gene in the entire genome.

I don't think it's "nitpicking" to point out that the South played a major role in the foundation of this country. That's not nitpicking - it gets to the heart of the point about what role the South played in the US. More US Presidents have come from my state - Virginia - than any other state in the nation. That's nitpicking?

Mostly, though, I'm just bemused at this new form of bigotry. "All of you fundies are from down there." Nevermind the fact that I'm obviously not a "fundie". They wouldn't have me if I asked. As far as the other statistics go: it's just too simplistic to bother retorting to. You're not controlling for income, education, or anything else that may be correlated with crime, adultery, etc. I also, for the record, don't really follow college athletics of any kind. I prefer pro-football, soccer, and rugby. But of course - that probably doesn't fit into your narrow conception of what to expect from a Southernor.

But I suppose it's a waste of time to point out that you're a caricature of the thigns you claim to hate: judgmental, prejudiced, and hateful.

Oh well. Carry on.

-stormin

Let's start this letter with a little quiz:

1. To what lengths will Google go to gag the innocent accused from protesting isolationism-motivated prosecutions?
2. How long shall there continue shambolic fault-finders to vend and censorious urban guerrillas to gulp so low a piece of Dadaism as its stances?
3. Essay: Compare and contrast its vaporings to those of wily swaggerers, focusing especially on who is more likely to win support by encapsulating frustrations and directing them toward unpopular scapegoats.

Don't worry; I'll give you all the answers throughout the course of this letter as well as a wealth of other information about Google. Some background is in order: I deeply believe that it's within our grasp to present a clear picture of what is happening, what has happened, and what is likely to happen in the future. Be grateful for this first and last tidbit of comforting news. The rest of this letter will center around the way that in asserting that the kids on the playground are happy to surrender to the school bully, it demonstrates an astounding narrowness of vision. If you think that denominationalism is a viable and vital objective for our nation's educational institutions, then think again. Considering that I must, on principle, rise to the challenge of thwarting Google's biggety plans, I offer that Google may caricature and stereotype people from other cultures right after it reads this letter. Let it. Before long, I will criticize the obvious incongruities presented by Google and its subordinates.

While it is essential -- and among my highest priorities -- to warn the public against those self-indulgent underachievers whose positive accomplishments are always practically nil, but whose conceit can scarcely be excelled, ignorance is bliss. This may be why Google's hangers-on are generally all smiles. Although oleaginous Philistines are relatively small in number compared to the general population, they are increasing in size and fervor. Although Google has unfairly depicted me and those who share my beliefs as used-car salesmen and soi-disant do-gooders, we are neither. Yes, all of its ideas share elements of traditional, uncompanionable conspiracy themes in which mad yutzes secretly etiolate its enemies, but I, speaking as someone who is not a brown-nosing nutcase, hate it when people get their facts wrong. For instance, whenever I hear some corporate fat cat make noises about how we have too much freedom, I can't help but think that Google has planted its shills everywhere. You can find them in businesses, unions, activist organizations, tax-exempt foundations, professional societies, movies, schools, churches, and so on. Not only does this subversive approach enhance Google's ability to stir up trouble but it also provides irrefutable evidence that there is no compelling moral or economic reason why it should bring about a wonderland of anarchism. Regular readers of my letters probably take that for granted, but if I am to carve solutions that are neither huffy nor stuck-up, I must explain to the population at large that I'm simply trying to explain its grotty tendencies as well as its villainous tendencies as phases of a larger, unified cycle. Sadly, lack of space prevents me from elaborating further. My message is clear: Google presents one face to the public, a face that tells people what they want to hear. Then, in private, it devises new schemes to seize control over where we eat, sleep, socialize, and associate with others.

It is my greatest and most solemn pleasure to give the needy a helping hand, as opposed to an elbow in the face. Now take that to the next level: It takes more than a mass of twisted spongers to place blame where it belongs -- in the hands of Google and its stupid spokesmen. It takes a great many thoughtful and semi-thoughtful people who are willing to summon up the courage to feed the starving, house the homeless, cure the sick, and still find wonder and awe in the sunrise and t

"My point is that science has NOT observed major evolutionary change - from a fish to a bird, or a dog to a cat or whatever the theory is these days. It has not been observed in the lab, we have not seen punctuated equilibrium, or any other major change. We have seen minor changes in the form of adaptation."

We also haven't seen the continents together in a supercontinent Pangea. That doesn't mean that we don't have clear and unequivocal evidence that they were once that way. We have large vein patterns of mineral deposits that match up on Africa and South America like jigsaw puzzles for goodness sakes.

What you are basically asking for is that we MUST see, with eyeballs, something that takes millions of years, even though it leaves tons and tons of physical evidence. But this is silly: there is no "eyeball" rule in science. What matters in science is evidence, period. Strong physical evidence is in many respects superior to eyewitness.

The fact that you aren't even familiar with what evolution describes as major transitions (and has described, not just "these days") certainly doesn't make you sound like you are informed enough to say that you've seen the evidence and aren't convinced. If you haven't even bothered to find out what a theory says, how can you possibly claim to find it implausible?

"The fossil record contains the cambrian explosion, which in my view is evidence for a large number of kinds/species/types/diverse life/etc which appear suddenly as if they were created simultaneously."

Again, this isn't the same evidence viewed differently, it's basically a caricature of the evidence, ignoring most of it.

I don't want to insult you because you seem like a nice guy, but do you even understand what a clade is or how it factors into the descriptive system of "kinds/species/phyla" etc.? If you don't understand these concepts, then it is very easy to be fooled by sloppy arguments about terminology, such as thinking it significant that higher level groups appear all around the same time (though very far from "simultaneously"). If you understand how taxonomy works though, you then realize that this is an artifact of definition, not a significant element in and of itself about reality (simply put, it's a factor the way that clades work: new groups are _always_ defined as subsets of old groups, and we built our system based first on the classification of modern animals)

"Regardless of the terminology used to describe the different kinds of animals we see, we DO see different types."

So then why are all these "types" just morphological nested subsets of each other? Evolution PREDICTS isolated types, and not just any pattern of them either: a pattern in which every gene, trait, and so on in each individual all matches the same overall nested hierarchy. This pattern then for some reason is reflected in the fossil record. Which in turn paints a picture constrained by geography in a way that makes no sense for an all powerful creator: why would a creator respect, say, the influence of a mountain range or an ocean when determining what traits appear where and when? All of this is the evolutionary pattern, which is one of very specific kind, and just keeps turning up everywhere we look.

"As I explained in my posting above, if you are an adherent to Christianity, it's not logical to make the Eden story an allegory. You have to torture the text and twist the logic to make it work."

That's assuming that you are of the minority of Christians in the world and in history who believe that the text must be read literally.

"If Genesis was allegory, why would He appeal to the creation account as if it was fact? Sure, he spoke in parables sometimes, but other times He spoke in a direct way. The marriage response is NOT in the form of a parable."

That's a pretty weak argument. Jesus was often cryptic and poetic. Furthermore, if you aren't a literalist in the first place, then why would you demand the recorded words of Jesus be taken literally in every respect as well?

"Secondly, carbon dating is based on three things:
a) the amount of C14 present today in the sample
b) the rate of decay of C14 being constant, and
c) the original amount of C14 in the sample"

No, it's based on a heck of a lot more than that. The accuracy of carbon dating isn't just something we assume: we calibrate it based on a whole host of other independently derived timelines, ALL of which must match up in fine detail. I mean, what you describe is a creationist caricature of the field of radiocarbon dating. People spend their whole careers becoming experts in it. Do you REALLY think they spend all their time just repeating those three points over and over to themselves?

I never understand these sorts of creationist arguments. They don't "get" how science works. It's NEVER just "oh, here's this set of assumptions that give us a result, la de da." There are always more and more ways to test something, over and over, from every angle, and that is EXACTLY what scientists do, constantly.

Carbon dating is of course, not what is used for dinosaurs since carbon dating only works on recent things (this is the previous poster's mistake, not yours). With other forms of radio-isotope dating there are all sorts of neat tricks like isochron analysis that actually show, straight out, whether the assumptions you note are broken or not for a particular sample. And again, there isn't just one way of dating things: there are MANY ways. The evidence from plate movement HAS to match all the different radio-dating methods, which HAVE to match the record of magnetosphere switches which HAVE to match the record from matching rings on modern and petrified trees which HAVE to match ice-core samples, and so on and so on. All of these different independent methods have to match up with each other. And the fact that they give the SAME answer is a very powerful form of evidence. Is it possible to be in error to some degree or even a fundamental degree when using a dating method? Sure, it's possible, though very unlikely given how rigorously these things are tested for plausibility in almost every respect. But for dinos to have lived with humans, for instance, you'd have to explain not only why each and every dating method and piece of evidence points to an old earth, but why they all give the SAME ages and timelines in fine detail. Truth coordinates things in a way that error simply cannot. If you used seven different methods to calculate something, and got them all wrong, what is the likihood that all the different errors (each of which is for a totally different reason) came out with the SAME erroneous answer?

"Carbon dating is not infallible. Many times radically different dates are estimated for samples from the same thing. Dates that are too close to now are thrown out as error, because of the preconceived notion that the earth is REALLY old."

Again, while we've come to trust carbon dating enough that we CAN treat it that way, we've come to that trust based not on "notions" but on constant and ongoing evidence of its reliability. There are any number of known reasons for various dates to be regularly in error or for one "thing" to have carbon samples from several different times (m

"How can the statement "humans evolved (through many, many generations) from single-celled organisms" be falsifiable and the statement "humans were created by a supernatural being" not be falsifiable? How would you disprove either without a time machine to go back and see what happened?"

Uh.... by looking at the evidence. When things happen in the natural world, they have all sorts of predictable consequences. We figure out what those are, and we test to see if we can piece together what happened.

Are you asserting that in a murder trial, we shouldn't deal with forensic evidence because we can't prove or disprove anything without a time machine?

The idea that the only standard that matters is seeing things with eyeballs is just nonsense: it's not an idea that scientists treat seriously, and with good reason. Eyeballs aren't even all that reliable compared to convergence of evidence. Give me a good DNA sample and several convergent chains of custody over an eyewitness any day.

Supernatural events, on the other hand, do not necessarily provide anything predictable or discoverable at all. If God commits a murder, he could make it look like just about anything happened. Heck, he could even make it look like the person is still alive! Especially if a supernatural claim is vague enough that it could be consistent with anything, we can't possibly test or distinguish it from anything else.

"but proving it is possible that humans came into existence by (theory of your choice) does not prove that that is what actually happened."

That's something of a caricature, but really, that's what proof IS: showing that something CANNOT be ruled out despite all the other alternatives can be. Totally consistent with all the evidence is the HIGHEST standard of proof, not the lowest. But, like I said, it's pretty much a caricature to simply say that all we can do is show it's "merely" possible in the colloquial sense. The sheer amount, consistency, quality, and convergence of the evidence we can amass not only for how, but for a very particular set of events and their cascading effects (all of which much match up exactly right... and do!) is not something one can brush aside as "merely possible."

"How do you make predictions based on the theory "an organism can evolve (over several generations)""

If you really think that is all evolutionary theory says, then you really need to learn a heck of a lot more about it. Evolution requires a very specific set of circumstances that work in a very particular way to get a very particular result.

"And, for the record, Intelligent Design is a theory that states that humans (and all other living things) were designed by a supernatural being. It does not specify how those designs were implemented (creation, evolution, or something else"

That's exactly the problem! The whole point of a SCIENTIFIC theory is that it DOES specify a how. In the case of biological evolution, it's a very specific, almost absurdly specific (compared to the number of possible other options) pattern and set of events. Intelligent design claims basically say "something that we can't explain did it in a way we can't explain." In terms of logical meaning, however, that statement is pretty much exactly identical to "we don't have any idea how it was done."

It's worse than that though. Because you can get specific about the ways in which known intelligences, like us, operate. And when you consider those, it fact becomes clear that biological life constantly defies everything we would expect to see from designers like us: traits aren't treated as "good ideas" that are reused and jump lineages, muck isn't cleared out, design problems aren't so much solved as they are compensated for, and so on. The only real escape from these obvious problems is to jump back to the idea that the designer ISN'T like us at all, which is to say that we have no idea at all what it is like, what it's motives are, or how it works. Which is to say, we jump out of science and basically say nothing much at all.

Why don't the American people storm their buildings with pitchforks?

Oh yes! Like those outstanding citizens in other countries storming buildings when they do not agree with a caricature, religous leader mentioning a 250 year old quote or when they find annoying that tourists are dancing all night in clubs.

The exact example the U.S. should follow, it should make them better as a civilization!