Solar System Fossils Found By Hubble

segment writes "Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered three of the faintest and smallest objects ever detected beyond Neptune. Each lump of ice and rock is roughly the size of Philadelphia and orbits just beyond Neptune and Pluto, where they may have rested since the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. The objects reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, which houses a swarm of icy rocks that are leftover building blocks, or "planetesimals," from the solar system's creation. The results of the search were announced by a group led by Gary Bernstein of the University of Pennsylvania at a meeting of NASA's Division of Planetary Sciences in Monterey, Calif."

Comments

Volkswagen?

[Cliffy03]

That is a big Volkswagen.

Re:Volkswagen?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a big Volkswagen.

This one is larger:
http://ww2.hamarungdom.no/bilder/14602.jpg

I have a strange feeling

[Anonymous Coward]

That the religious zealots will discount this as 'false information' since God created everything and science is all just a bunch of baloney. It happened with carbon dating, dont'cha know?

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have with the religious zealots is the fact that they don't take into account historic religious documents were written before we had much in the way of the math skills to estimate time.

I have the same issue with people like you who assume God didn't create everything. There is no evidence either way, only that hard core zealots have a hard time swallowing any discovery that might differ from dogma.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Pejorative use of the term "Religious" to discount the views of others originates with those who cannot prove their points in any meaningful way.

The case for creation completely embraces the notion that the universe began in a "Big Bang" or similar act of creation. Ironically, Sir Fred Hoyle coined the term "Big Bang" to humiliate those that felt the universe was created in an instant (he favored the Steady State idea that the universe always existed, and hence was not created).

Most people get hung up on the Bible's account of creation because of the use of the word "day" in description of the order of creative events up to the creation of man. However, a close study of the word shows that the sense is not a solar day (24 hrs) but rather a period of time. This is a valid definition then and now (e.g., "back in my grandfather's day..."). In fact, this is the only logical view of the word since time marked by our solar day would have had no definition for much of the creation account (it requires that the sun and earth be created and that there were a cognitive observer who could conceptualize time -- i.e., a human). However, the order of events given in the creation account are absolutely in agreement with modern evolution accounts, and is completely accurate based on current science's view of the order of events. It is important to understand that the Bible explains why things are, not how they were made. Science focuses on how, religion focuses on why. They are, to some extent, orthogonal concepts.

There are many renowned and respected scientists that use the scientific method to disprove the theory of evolution. One such theory is called the "Irreducible Complexity Theory." It argues that living organisms are so complex that they cannot have a singular chemical starting point, but rather come to a point where the intracacies are so interdependent that it becomes a mathematical impossibility for them to form spontaneously. Which leads to a point: Evolution is still a theory and remains unproved. The irony is that no one would argue that a laptop computer ever came into existence on its own, out of the random swirlings of sand and oil (an evolutionist's view), but in the next breath argue that in the case of humans and all other life, which is inarguably inifinitely more complex, did come into existance that way.

This pertains to the main article because "fossils" only prove prior existence of something. They do not prove how those things came into existence. Such a conclusion is an imaginative leap. (As an aside, if fossil hunters had found the proof they needed to unequivocally support evolution, they would not still be looking for "it".) The named article, on the evidence, speaks neither for nor against creation. They just proved that yesterday's beliefs were wrong on the face of the new evidence (there were far fewer "fossils" than expected).

Religionists always get the bad rap of being closed-minded, but I think that parent post shows that evolutionists are just as closed-minded. They too are disparaging towards those who do not accept their theories as fact without question, especially when those very beliefs are actually based on blind faith in the concusions of other like-minded people. It seems to me that evolutionists and creationists are identical in this way: they both depend completely on faith.

Now that's true irony.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[hesiod]

> which is inarguably inifinitely more complex, did come into existance that way.

While I may disagree with your theme, I can't argue much of it, as I don't have "God's viewpoint." One problem, however, arises with this statement you made. Humans are not "inarguably inifinitely more complex." I can argue the point that humans aren't infinitely anything.

Perhaps you chose the wrong words?

We believe we know how almost all parts of the human body work, just as we believe we know how a computer works, but at the very, VERY basic level, computers still hold some mystery, especially in the workings of electricity. We THINK that it's electrons jumping from atom to atom (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not an electrical engineer), but is there any way to directly observe this?

The only part of a human that is inconceivably complex is the nervous system, and we are getting closer to understanding that every year. Well, if you believe in the existence of a soul as a separate entity from the body in which it resides, then that is inconceivably complex as well.

Just by arguing this point, I have proven my statement that it is "inarguable."

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Black Parrot]

> The case for creation completely embraces the notion that the universe began in a "Big Bang" or similar act of creation.

That's why there isn't a case for creation: the arbitrary will of and omnipotent being is compatible with anything, and is therefore lies outside the realm of things that can be studied on the basis of evidence.

> There are many renowned and respected scientists that use the scientific method to disprove the theory of evolution.

Actually there are aren't that many at all, as Project Steve jokingly calls to your attention.

> One such theory is called the "Irreducible Complexity Theory." It argues that living organisms are so complex that they cannot have a singular chemical starting point, but rather come to a point where the intracacies are so interdependent that it becomes a mathematical impossibility for them to form spontaneously.

Actually the major proponent of IC, Michael Behe, thoroughly accepts biological evolution and the common descent of the species. He merely claims that there are some specific biological structures/procesess that could not have arisen by evolution, concluding that something else must have been at work in addition to evolution. Unfortunately for him and his followers, his claims rely on some assumptions that aren't actually a part of the theory of evolution, so the best he can claim is that his strawman version of evolution didn't result in the biological structures/processes that he has called attention to. No evolutionary biologists would dispute that! (More than you could want possibly want to read about all this can be found at the talk.origins archive).

> Which leads to a point: Evolution is still a theory and remains unproved.

Yeah, that's kind of the way science works. Proof, as they say, is for mathematicians, beverages, and gunpowder. The empirical sciences don't have such a luxury. (Perhaps you've heard of "atomic theory", "theory of gravitation", "electromagnatic theory", and a bunch of other scientific discoveries with similar names?)

> The irony is that no one would argue that a laptop computer ever came into existence on its own, out of the random swirlings of sand and oil (an evolutionist's view), but in the next breath argue that in the case of humans and all other life, which is inarguably inifinitely more complex, did come into existance that way.

The intersting thing is that the theory of evolution doesn't say that humans came into existence out of random swirlings of sand and oil. The whole point of a theory is to describe the mechanism that explains why seemingly improbable things happen regularly in the universe. Atomic theory explains why we get the - Wow! - integer ratios between the amount of reactants consumed when we mix chemicals (an amazing improbability if you're unaware of the mechanism), and biological evolution explains why we get the wonderful diversity of life we have out of a mindless universe.

> This pertains to the main article because "fossils" only prove prior existence of something. They do not prove how those things came into existence. Such a conclusion is an imaginative leap.

Fossils are a phonomenon with a curiously non-random distribution, and that demands an explanation. The theory of evolution is the best explanation anyone has ever set forward for it. You're welcome to try going it one better, if you wish.

> (As an aside, if fossil hunters had found the proof they needed to unequivocally support evolution, they would not still be looking for "it".)

Paleontologists don't hunt fossils in search of "proof" of evolution; they search for them in order to fill out the details of biological history.

> Religionists always get the bad rap of being closed-minded, but I think that parent

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Interesting idea, that humans aren't "infinitely anything." Perhaps you have found the boundaries to all things human. If so, my sincere apology, I wasn't aware anyone had...must have missed the /. post.

However, I would argue that we do not know how most parts of the human body work. If we did, we could, for instance, stop aging and death, or accomplish still more mundane things like cure diseases such as AIDS without effort. For certain, there would be a great many researchers out of work by now. Add to that the notion that all man's great "inventions" are simply copies of things found in nature: if it requires intelligence to copy these things, is it not logical to conclude that there was originally an intelligence to think them up in the first place?

Now, as coincidence would have it, I am an electronics engineer. But for the answer to your question on the atomic workings of electricity, I think you meant to say that you are not a physicist, did you not? Nevertheless, I believe that it is safe to say that we do know exactly how electricity works. On the other hand, how electricity relates to the other forces in the universe is not known (see: Einstein's failed attenmpt at a Unified Field theory). While I used a completely acceptable linguistic device to emphasize the [currently] incalcuable difference between two things, you were factually incorrect. I point this out because it seems to be your basis for undermining my position, and not to be a twit and one-up you.

My original point was to highlight the irony that evolutionists and creationists are equally dependent upon faith, and as such, neither can accuse the other of being closed-minded or unscientific, despite the evolutionists' claim that they are of a higher intellectual caliber than creationists. I also underscored the basic difference between science and religion: How? vs. Why?. These two disciplines have different objectives and thus cannot be held to the same metrics. Relevence to the source post is that saying that the existence of ice cubes in space proves that life evolved from non-life requires a bit of an intellectual stretch, to say the least.

If evolution were "fact", then it would be possible to reproduce the process experimentally. To be scientific "fact", we must, by definition, know exactly "how" and thus be able to reproduce the action -- or at the very least prove the observed effect is reproducable, which has never been done, despite the popular folklore-based belief that it has). But this has yet to be done (hence it is still theory). Stanley Miller came as close as anyone when he "created" amino acids from "organic soup". But it was quickly proven that the solution the amino acids were in would prevent them from coalescing into anything, but rather, they could only decompose. He ended his career in utter frustration over this point. But the one pro-creation element in all his experiments that could not be avoided: Who did Miller himself represent in the experiment if not an intelligent creator? In the actual event, who takes the place of Miller?

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people get hung up on the Bible's account of creation because of the use of the word "day" in description of the order of creative events up to the creation of man. However, a close study of the word shows that the sense is not a solar day (24 hrs) but rather a period of time. This is a valid definition then and now (e.g., "back in my grandfather's day..."). In fact, this is the only logical view of the word since time marked by our solar day would have had no definition for much of the creation account (it requires that the sun and earth be created and that there were a cognitive observer who could conceptualize time -- i.e., a human).

That's entirely incorrect. If you actually go and study the word, and how it was used in other contexts in the Bible, you would find that it actually does refer to a 24-hour solar day.

Everyone tries to disprove the presence of God by saying that the Bible is not based on science, or that creation actually took longer than it did, etc. This is just to try and justify that Man is great, and needs no help. I don't believe that for a second. I could go on about how there is scientific fact in the Bible, among other things, but I won't, seeing as how I've already said enough to bias everyone against me.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

The idea that Behe says that evolution as it exists is at best incomplete is itself sufficient to undermine the current basis of the theory of evolution. If Behe is right, that evolution is not responsible for the creation of life, then what might that be?

Here is a bit of scientific and mathematical fact. It is a fact that protiens used by living organisms are comprised of very complex molecules. Now, the odds of forming even the simplest protien by pure chance is 10^113. For sure, mathemeticians draw the line of impossibility at 10^50. Of course, there are some 2,000 protiens that serve as enzymes, which are absolutely required for sustaining life. What are the chances they came together even once in all time? You guessed it: 10^40,000, which is to say, a number rather larger than what it takes for mathematical impossibility. Thus, despite any other conjecture, it has been proven to be mathematically impossible for life to have come about by random chemical action. In his work Evolution from Space, Sir Fred Hoyle concluded that this is an "outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup." He added, "If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated [spontaneously] on Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court." Evolution from Space, p.24

Furthermore, Francis Hitching wrote "Protiens depend on DNA for their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing protien." (The Neck of the Giraffe, Francis Hitching, p.66) This leaves a paradox rasied by chemist Richard Dickerson in the Sept '78 Scientific American, pg. 73: "Which came first," the protien or the DNA? He asserts: "The answer must be, 'They developed in parallel.'" So the answer to the age-old question, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?", according to this logic is -- drumroll, please -- : Neither! They arrived simultaneously! There, problem solved! ...clever...very clever.

Your assertion that it is okay to say that evolution is correct for the most complex things in the universe but takes intelligence to create the far simpler things is illogical. Show me a house or a autombile or a stone arrowhead or a cave painting of a horse that came into existence purely by chance, and then convincingly demonstrate how they came to be by pure chance, and you might just begin to convince me.

Simply saying that creationists have not proven there case with hard evidence and that evolutionists don't have to do the same thing because it's 'obvious by observation that they are correct' is pure intellectual dishonesty, in my view.

As for misrepresenting how scientists think, well, they are not in agreement. There are hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of conflicting ideas on the details of evolution. It is impossible to be an evolutioninst of one school of thought without being in basic disagreement with all the rest. So it impossible to singularly misrepresent how they think. If, alternatively, you are suggesting that I do not know how science works, well I think that if you can't demonstrate how it works by showing that your theory describes it sufficiently well by experimentation, it is a theory and not fact. I do believe that this is the mainstream view.

You have not proven your case.

Re: I have a strange feeling

[Black Parrot]

> The idea that Behe says that evolution as it exists is at best incomplete is itself sufficient to undermine the current basis of the theory of evolution.

No, as I clearly stated in my post, Behe merely shows that a strawman version of evolution is "incomplete". This does nothing whatsover to undermine the actual theory of evolution.

> If Behe is right, that evolution is not responsible for the creation of life, then what might that be?

No scientist believes evolution is responsible for the "creation" of life; evolution merely explains the diversification of life. The study of its origins is called abiogenesis, and the mechanism of abiogenesis is still an open question.

> Here is a bit of scientific and mathematical fact. It is a fact that protiens used by living organisms are comprised of very complex molecules. Now, the odds of forming even the simplest protien by pure chance is 10^113

Assuming your numbers are correct, what has that got to do with evolution? Evolution does not claim that protiens are formed by pure chance. Are you going to type in a long argument against a theory you know nothing about?

> For sure, mathemeticians draw the line of impossibility at 10^50.

No, mathematicians define impossibility as p=0. A probability of 1 in 10^50 is merely a low probability.

> Of course, there are some 2,000 protiens that serve as enzymes, which are absolutely required for sustaining life.

How do you know what the absolute minimum of protiens for sustaining life is? If you have a good argument for this you should rush it to publication before someone else does.

> What are the chances they came together even once in all time? You guessed it: 10^40,000, which is to say, a number rather larger than what it takes for mathematical impossibility.

So you think you can disprove evolution by applying made-up numbers and a bogus mathematical claim to a stawman version of the theory of evolution?

Maybe you should pause and give a little thought to why scientists don't take evolution deniers seriously.

> Thus, despite any other conjecture, it has been proven to be mathematically impossible for life to have come about by random chemical action.

Proven? Enumerate you axioms and convince us that they are accurate descriptions of the universe. Then we can talk about whether your proof is correct.

> In his work Evolution from Space, Sir Fred Hoyle concluded that this is an "outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup." He added, "If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated [spontaneously] on Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court." Evolution from Space, p.24

Yeah, and that's why scientists don't take Hoyle seriously when he starts trying to support his belief in panspermia.

> Furthermore, Francis Hitching wrote "Protiens depend on DNA for their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing protien." (The Neck of the Giraffe, Francis Hitching, p.66) This leaves a paradox rasied by chemist Richard Dickerson in the Sept '78 Scientific American, pg. 73: "Which came first," the protien or the DNA? He asserts: "The answer must be, 'They developed in parallel.'" So the answer to the age-old question, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?", according to this logic is -- drumroll, please -- : Neither! They arrived simultaneously! There, problem solved! ...clever...very clever.

So are you going to give an argument that they didn't develop in parallel, or just rely on schoolboy rhetoric to convince the audience that something's wrong with evolution?

> Your assertion that it is okay to say that evolution is correct for the most complex things in the universe but tak

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, the odds of forming even the simplest protien by pure chance is 10^113. For sure, mathemeticians draw the line of impossibility at 10^50

Damn this massive universe of billions of stars and planets. Now even low probability things can happen.

Surely the arguement should be that in such a massive universe, such a low probability will become a near certainty. Maybe you should talk about the probability of it not happening.

How did you calculate that number anyway? How did you (or anyone else) calculate that number? I have deduced a 10^133 probability that the probability calculations in this arguement are just made up.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Bowling Moses]

Just to sample how far off base you are: "Of course, there are some 2,000 protiens that serve as enzymes, which are absolutely required for sustaining life." You do know that Mycoplasma genitalium with a whopping 468 genes, of which only 265-350 are absolutely required, is the current record holder for smallest genome, right? Come on--besides likely being distorted the material your source(s) quote is 20+ years old. You don't expect anyone to believe you had those quotes all by yourself, now do you? You probably haven't read any of them! Your strawmen are dealt with in detail on talk.origins. Perhaps to prevent yourself from looking foolish you should read some of it, or at least read something from the scientific mainstream, preferrably something that isn't older than you are.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

This is posted as a rebuttal on the length of the Bible's "creative days".

At its first use in Genesis 1:5 ("a"), the use of "day" has the meaning of the lighted portion of the solar day, not 24 hours, whereas the use of the word "day" at Genesis 1:14 has the sense of a 24 hour day. The use regarding the creative days is markedly different from either of these.

The use of the word "day" at Genesis 1:5b, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31 all include the sense of a beginning and and ending. Each includes the concept of an evening and a morning, which marked the progression to the next day. This was true only for the first six "creative days".

The seventh creative day, mentioned at Genesis 2:3 begins, but has no corresponding end. In fact our time is included in the period of the seventh creative day. At the very least, then, a creative day is at least 6,000 years long, and that assumes that each creative day is marked in consistent increments of time and not by the starting and ending of specific tasks. I believe the evidence supports that the duration creative day is not a fixed and equivalent unit of time, but rather the start and completion of a specific set of tasks. This view is not a new view; it is supported by respected reference works such as A Religious Encyclopaedia (Vol I, pg 613), edited by P Schaff, dating back to 1894.

Furthermore, it should be self-evident that the God of the Bible does not mark time in human 24 hour days. For those who need Biblical corroboration, please note the use Ps90:2,4. For Christians, note the illiustration used by the Apostle Peter at 2Pet3:8, and the Apostle Paul at Heb4:1-10.

The beginning of Genesis explains what God did and the order in which he did them. It also explains that these things were accomplished in six successive and distinct waves. This sets the stage to explain the creation of man, and the purpose for doing so. It is not meant as a tutorial on how God did it, nor is it meant to say precisely how long in human terms it took. These two latter aspects are absent because they are not relevant, What has been provided in the account is ample to establish God's authority over man as his Creator and Lifegiver, which is the point. (Evolution, on the other hand seeks to prove that man has no Creator and therefore is responsible to no one other than himself.) Only when assumptions are made respecting the exact length of time (which is done presumptively) do "scientists have create for themselves a basis to refute what is written, because Genesis is in harmony with science on the order of events, and therefore beyond reproach. Given that Moses, the penman of Genesis account, was so well ahead of science on this matter, the account must be refuted at all costs by those who do not wish to be bound by the other ramifications.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[hesiod]

> I think you meant to say that you are not a physicist, did you not?

Eh, I guess I did, but it proves that whatever "IT" is, I am not part of "it." :)

> I believe that it is safe to say that we do know exactly how electricity works.

Please enlighten me then. How does an electron create heat? On such a small scale it would seem that it is a little ball (or whatever) flying around another mess of little balls, in what would basically amount to a vacuum.

Since there isn't any way to transfer heat through a vacuum, how does the heat move? Yeah, the electron moves from atom to atom, but moving doesn't imply heat without friction being present. Since it's a virtual vacuum, no friction. Where does the heat come from? Is heat simply electrons flying off and hitting our skin, giving us the sensation of heat?

What makes an electron give off usable energy? And if it does, wouldn't it then be said that the electron has changed, somehow, and is no longer an electron? In that case, we better stop using computers before all the world's electrons are used up. Unless, of course, electrons can just be respawned out of nothingness.

I don't think we "understand" electricity completely, as we can't see it. We can make conjecture, and even possibly very accurate models to explain it, but we cannot be 100% sure.

> evolutionists and creationists are equally dependent upon faith

Of course, despite my little nitpicks, you just summed up what I am trying to say. To say we "understand" electricity is to be blindly faithful to an idea that we are only guessing at, even though our model may act the same as reality, it does not make it reality -- it's still just a model.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[2short]

First of all, you, along with most creationists, seem to think evolution is about the origins of life. It is not. Not even a little bit. Evolution tells us absolutely nothing about how life began in the first place; it doesn't even try. Evolution describes how living things change over time.

"However, the order of events given in the creation account are absolutely in agreement with modern evolution accounts"

Which order of events? Genesis is not in agreement with itself about the order of creation.

"It is important to understand that the Bible explains why things are, not how they were made"

So why do creationists cite the bible on topics of "How"?

"Which leads to a point: Evolution is still a theory and remains unproved"

As with everything in Science. Like the theory of gravity. If you say can prove something, it is not science. If you can back it up, it is mathematics. If not, it is religion.

"The irony is that no one would argue that a laptop computer ever came into existence on its own, out of the random swirlings of sand and oil (an evolutionist's view),"

That is not the view of evolution, partly because, as noted, evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. Let's take you analogy a slightly different direction: We know the laptop is an artifact designed by a human. How did that human go about designing it? No one would argue he sat down with an empty pad of paper and skecthed out designs for every circuit, component, etc entirely from scratch. (a creationists view) Rather he probably started with the design for an earlier model of laptop, and thought about ways to improve it slightly.

"It seems to me that evolutionists and creationists are identical in this way: they both depend completely on faith."

People who beleive in evolution may be depending on faith. But they don't have to. They can examine the evidence themselves. Example: The nerve that controls your larynx emerges between the vertebrae at the back of your neck, travels down into you chest cavity, loops under the aorta, and goes back up to wind up in your neck an inch or two from where it started. So, you don't have to take anybodies word for it, you can make up your own mind: Does this sound like the work of an inteligent creator? Or does it sound like the result of gradual changes which slowly changed the positions of the heart and the larynx, but were never able to make the non-incremental leap of not routing that nerve under the aorta? Perhaps you are not convinced by one example. Good, you shouldn't be. Luckily, the medical and zoological sciences can provide more.

You can probably spend the rest of your life doing nothing but looking up more examples of things for which evolution seems like a good explaination. You will never prove evolution is true, because science doesn't do that. Science says "This seems incredibly likely to be the case. Sufficiently so that if you want to know how something you don't know is going to turn out, you probably want to bet it will turn out the way that is consistant with evolution" Of course, if you found something that wasn't consistant with evolution, you would thereby disprove evolution, or at least part of it.

With creationism, you're never going to prove it either. But you're never going to disprove it, no matter what happens. The potential to be disproved is prehaps the chief halmark of a scientific theory. "It's that way because God made it that way" explains ANYTHING. Hence it useless for explaining evidence and making predictions. That's what science cares about, and in that sense it is equivalent to a falsehood.

Perhaps it is wrong for scientists to say "Creationism is false". Perhaps they should say "Creationism seems really unlikely, since it adds a bunch of assumptions that aren't necessary (or even helpful) in explaining anything, but technically it is possible. What we can say for sure is that regardless of whether it is true or false, there is no reason to care."

Re:I have a strange feeling

[barakn]

the order of events given in the creation account are absolutely in agreement with modern evolution accounts, and is completely accurate based on current science's view of the order of events

Spoken like a true Jehovah's Witness. Their book "Life - How Did It Get Here? By evolution or by creation?" lists the following ten stages in chronological order:

(1) a beginning
(2) a primitive earth in darkness and enshrouded in heavy gases and water
(3) light
(4) an expanse or atmosphere
(5) large areas of dry land
(6) land plants
(7) sun, moon, and stars discernible in the expanse, and seasons beginning,
(8) sea monsters and flying creatures
(9) wild and tame beasts, mammals
(10) man

They then claim that since the chances of randomly guessing the correct order in one try is 1 in 3,628,800, the author must have had help (implying divine help).

Firstly, you'd have to be an idiot not to put "the beginning" at the beginning, nor would it be hard to imagine land appearing before land plants and land animals. A more rigorous reading of Genesis shows that the ancient writer saw the earth born as a water world. Land appears later, and the first life is plant life on land. "[F]lying creatures" is the JW way of hiding the actual word "birds" that appears in Genesis, suggesting that birds appeared before land animals, whilst science thinks that birds descended from land animals (dinosaurs). Also, plants appear before the sun is made (literal reading) or before the "sun [is] discernible in the expanse" (JW interpretation of '"and God made the two great lights'"). There is no hint of here of the scientific theory that the water came with comet bombardment (nor is it thought the entire surface was flooded) or that the moon was formed from the remnants of a collision of the earth and a Mars-sized object.

So in other words, "the order of events given in the creation account are absolutely in agreement with modern evolution accounts, and is completely accurate based on current science's view of the order of events" is a false statement.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[RealErmine]

If evolution were "fact", then it would be possible to reproduce the process experimentally.

I applaud the well-worded post, but the problem is that things get tricky when working on the timescale of evolutionary theory. I can, however, fathom such an experiment where a population of organisms are kept in a controlled and self-sufficient environment and monitored for evolutionary signs. Practically, I cannot monitor such an experiment for the time duration required, nor can I sufficiently control the immensely numerous variables.

But the one pro-creation element in all his experiments that could not be avoided: Who did Miller himself represent in the experiment if not an intelligent creator? In the actual event, who takes the place of Miller?

Can creationism be proven scientifically? As you said, Stanley Miller FAILED at his attempt to create life. If he indeed played the role of creator and failed to create, didn't he just as equally work toward a disproof of creationist theory? Had he succeeded, the next question would have been: "What if some entity did this with the early Earth?" even after religious faith had been shaken to its core. If you are implying that creation on earth requires extra-scientific principles, then why make the argument you made?

Conveniently, the "fact" of creationist ideology has no experiment and can only be disproved by the success of an alternate theory.

Re: I have a strange feeling

[Black Parrot]

> However, I would argue that we do not know how most parts of the human body work. If we did, we could, for instance, stop aging and death, or accomplish still more mundane things like cure diseases such as AIDS without effort.

Does not follow. For example, we know how internal combustion engines work, but we can't cure the ills of friction, imperfect fuel efficiency, waste heat, and noise.

> Now, as coincidence would have it, I am an electronics engineer.

"electronics engineer"? I've never heard of that profession. Would you mind giving your exact degree and the name of the granting institution? (No offense; I only ask because creationists are so prone to inflating their credentials, and I've somehow managed to spend quite a few years association with technical people and reading technical publications, and have never, ever seen anyone described as "an electronics engineer". Frankly, I don't think any such profession exists, but here's your chance to prove me wrong; I've already stated my dedication to the rule of evidence.)

> If evolution were "fact", then it would be possible to reproduce the process experimentally.

We see the process every time a bacterium cleaves or a baby is born. I suppose you actually want to reproduce the evolution from a fish to a human, but no, your claim of reproducibility is not correct for that. There's lots of stuff we know but can't reproduce, such as hurricanes and plate techtonics.

Why don't you just admit that you don't have a clue about science, let alone biological evolution, and quit wasting the bandwidth.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

So, um, how old is Origin of Species? Should I refrain from quoting Newton? Einstein? Archimedes? Bacon? How "new" does basic science need to be to make it credible in your eyes? Do you only quote people younger than yourself or from works published after your birth? Do you yourself never quote anyone? You seem to rely on this talk.origins website rather heavily for someone who claims to be a purely original thinker.

I was unaware that all living organisms are capable of producing 100% of the enzymes they need to sustain life.

Behe's conclusions are recent and unchallenged. While it may be true that Behe, et al. believe that life can evolve from life, they clearly believe that it cannot sponateously create itself from non-life. No one has said in these posts what is responsible for Behe's Irreducible Complexity theory solving problem. Nor has anyone corrected the probabilities offered, nor addressed that the quotes I have given include proper citations from distinguished scientists and respected works and journals. Just replies of sophomoric counter-positions lacking true substance.

As for sticking to "scientific mainstream" you seem to mean sticking only to those writings and authors that agree with you. Well, I choose the path of Galileo, a man who pursued what he himself believed was right, and specifically avoided conforming to populist viewpoints (i.e., "mainstream") simply to "get along". Now, of course, you will no doubt point out that he strayed from religionists, which is true, but the motivation of the religionists of his day was not the defense of scriptural truths per se, but rather to avoid upsetting the status quo. In this, you share the same dogmatic "go along to get along or we'll ruin you" position as the 16th century Catholic church.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[barakn]

the odds of forming even the simplest protien by pure chance is 10^113

Your arguments on probabilties of certain protein sequences occurring are pointless. Consider a protein whose job is to catalyze a particular chemical reaction (a.k.a. an enzyme). It does so by momentarily capturing the chemical reactants at a site on its surface know as the active site, comprised of only a few of thehundreds of amino acids in the protein. The rest of the protein holds it together, and the actual order of the non-active site amino acids is not so important (i.e. any one of a large number of sequences will suffice). It doesn't end there. Even in the active site, one amino acid can be switched with another because there are several families of amino acids with similar properties (polar (itself split into charged vs. uncharged) vs. nonpolar, acidic vs. basic, etc.). The chances of forming any active site that will do the job is thus even larger. Case in point: the serine protease in Bacillus subtilis, subtilisin, has been shown to have only 3 important amino acids (His, Asp, Ser) in common with serine proteases in mammals.

Re: I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

> I have, however, demonstrated that you and Behe don't understand the subject matter you are so doggedly criticizing.

No, you have not demonstrated anything. 10^50 is such a low probability that it is dismissed as being so remote as to never happen in nature unassisted by intelligence. We're talking 10^40,000. And I gave the citation for these numbers. Argue with Hoyle and Wickramasinge if you think they erred. It would make you seem better researched if you supply rebuttal figures and cite your reference.

As for rushing to publication, it seems that since you believe you have perfected evolution theory to the point of fact, knowing in all detail how exactly it works and can no doubt reporduce it experimentally, I suggest the same for you. Publish this before anyone else does. I believe that beyond the mindless parrots of basic Darwinsim, no one serious in science believes that the exact manner and method of evolution has been described in complete harmony and proven to work. Other than you, apparently. It is still a deeply fragmanted theory with lots of conflicts in the details, never experimentally established even in the most basic detail, never mind as a coherent whole. Its proponents are just as guilty of brow-beating dogma as anyone ever has been.

To disprove a theory, one simply needs to point out a case in which that theory is false. Behe does this, Hoyle does this, and do many others. The work-arounds postulated by others to deal with these sad realities (for evolutionists) have never been justified against and never reconciled with the collateral problems they cause to other parts of the sea of conflicting notions of evolution.

To prove a theory is right, the mechanism must be described and then shown to be correct experimentally, otherwise it remains a theory, no matter how uncomfortable that is for its proponents. This is the scientific method.

And clearly you have confused the concepts of scientific method, fact and theory. I have not.

Re: I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

> Yeah, and that's why scientists don't take Hoyle seriously when he starts trying to support his belief in panspermia.

Here's a website that shows support for panspermia. : http://www.panspermia.org/intro.htm . I like the NASA ones, myself. They'll be happy to know you do not consider them to be "serious scientists".

Re: I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

> No one is claiming that any of that stuff comes into existence by pure chance, any more than scientists claim that biological structures and processes are the result of pure chance. The theory of evoltion is about a mechanism.

Okay, so if not by pure chance, then by what mechanisim? Please describe the mechanism on how life began from non-life and describe its proof via experimentation, lest you start sounding like creationist.

By the way, Hoyle is dead, in case you hadn't heard.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The discussion of the creative days then goes on to refer to things on the Earth, as far as I read. So, the sun was present first in the account before the things that took place in the creative days.

I have always read the description of the creative days as though they were written to be understood by a human observer from a human perspective. And the first sea, land and airborne animals came into existence during the fifth creative day. I didn't see a specific order given within that description (Gen 1:20-23)

And, since I am always willing to learn, please give the original Hebrew and or Aramaic words for "birds" and also for "flying creatures", and show how they are different and how they are used, or misused, as you suggest. From my non-expert but well-informed review of translating, context is often required when one word in one language is represented by several words in another language, and some words have complex mappings.

What I am getting at here is that some translations of the Genesis account use "flying creatures" because the context says "let [word describing animals with wings] fly over the earth" and also "and every winged [word describing animals with wings] according to its kind". The word translated "kind" is Hebrew lemi-noh', Greek ge'nos, Latin ge'nus and has a meaniong different from that used by evolutionints, according to linguistic scholars. "Bird" would be too specific because many things that fly are not "birds" in the modern sense of the word. But Genesis was not written using the 17th-21st century sense of the word. See Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary.

And for the record, you seem to have a big problem with Jehovah's Witnesses. I do not believe I cited any of their works in any of these posts. You seem to know them quite well. An axe to grind, perhaps?

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Black Parrot]

> Behe's conclusions are recent and unchallenged.

Get a clue, man. Behe's conclusions have been thoroughly debunked.

> While it may be true that Behe, et al. believe that life can evolve from life, they clearly believe that it cannot sponateously create itself from non-life.

Perhaps you can cite something where they claim that? You were totally unaware that they subscribed to the theory of evolution until we pointed it out to you.

> No one has said in these posts what is responsible for Behe's Irreducible Complexity theory solving problem.

I have clearly explained the major flaws in Behe's argument.

> Nor has anyone corrected the probabilities offered

I have shown that your numbers are irrelevant, whether correct or not.

> nor addressed that the quotes I have given include proper citations from distinguished scientists and respected works and journals.

I addressed that as well.

> Just replies of sophomoric counter-positions lacking true substance.

Pointing out that you don't have an argument is about as substantial as the case requires.

> As for sticking to "scientific mainstream" you seem to mean sticking only to those writings and authors that agree with you. Well, I choose the path of Galileo, a man who pursued what he himself believed was right, and specifically avoided conforming to populist viewpoints (i.e., "mainstream") simply to "get along". Now, of course, you will no doubt point out that he strayed from religionists, which is true, but the motivation of the religionists of his day was not the defense of scriptural truths per se, but rather to avoid upsetting the status quo. In this, you share the same dogmatic "go along to get along or we'll ruin you" position as the 16th century Catholic church.

You have absolutely no clue how much controversy goes on in science, nor how that controversy is exercised. If you know a scientist's name it is almost certainly because that scientist revolutionized some field or sub-field of science without getting ostracized.

However, you are performing one very useful service, by showing the lurkers that the typical evolution denier doesn't even understand what the theory of evolution is, let alone the arguments various people offer for or against it.

Re: I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

One definition of engineer is: "a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering." When I cited my credentials I gave them colloquially, as many do in the field of electrical engineering, and referred to the sub-discipline of electronics engineering. To further contribute to your education, folks in the trade also refer to themselves as digital engineers, analog engineers, and even RF engineers. And then there are software engineers whose diplomas are in electrical engineering. But generally these colloquial references are made to highlight disciplinary specialties and especially differentiate themselves from powerline engineers.

Thomas Edison, that great inventor and engineer, had no university degree that I know of, and many others that I consider fine engineers also have no university eduation (many come from the military or are in the software specialty). And I am quite sure there are many other distinguished engineers also are sans university or college diplomas. Most people I know with this hang-up rely on their sheepskin and not their actual professional performance. The point is it is always about what you accomplish, not about who you learned the basics from. When one is incapable of genuaine acheivement, all they are left with is 'who you learned it from.' The sure sign of an idiot in my book is when the need your resume or insist on giving you theirs as a basis for respect. And while we're on the subect, Jesus never graduated from a university either, and he became rather well-known and well respected, but I digress...

But resume time is upon us. I myself have been creating circuits and systems for over twenty years, and have several US and European "pioneering" patents on devices methods and processes. I have designed fiber optic equipment (linear and digital), digital electronics, RF transmitters and receivers, and so on. I have designed communications networks as with the title of "Chief Engineer" and other similar titles for some of the worlds largest corporations. That should suffice to prove that the title "engineer" exists independently from the concept of a university degree. (I never give the name of the institution of higher learning I attendedc to people I do not know, it makes them focus on where I went to school rather than what I said or did). The things I write stand on their own merit. I do not feel the personal need to receive authority on the basis of the schools I could afford to go to, or that my family had the political connections to get me into.

That said, I feel it is necessary to point out that the abbreviation "IEEE" stands for -- you guessed it -- "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers." Hopefully, this meets your proof criteria and saves me the pain of listing every instution that offers Electronics Engineering degrees. You should really get out more.

Since I have never heard of anyone that has never heard of an electronics engineer or a dgree in said same, perhaps you should give your credentials, inventions, claims to fame, ad nauseum. Frankly, now I'm now a little suspicious of you. So many evolutionists exaggerate their credentials...

To address the matter at hand, bacterial and human reproduction alike, the observation is that life only comes from life, never from non-life. This key aspect of evolution has never been observed in a way that conforms to any present or past evolutionary theory, and not even in a way that doesn't conform (other than one that involves intelligent creation component). The basic claim of modern evolutionists is that life evolved from non-life, even though Darwin himself disallowed this in his book Origin of Species.

Alas, I must take issue with your comparison to the internal combustion engine. These work in part because of friction (otherwise the bolts wouldn't stay in place, for instance). I guess we can rule out mechanical engineering as your profession. As for the other things you mention, they are

Re: I have a strange feeling

[Black Parrot]

> No, you have not demonstrated anything. 10^50 is such a low probability that it is dismissed as being so remote as to never happen in nature unassisted by intelligence.

That claim is simply false, as is easily demonstrated by shuffling a deck of cards.

How many times must we point out that you know nothing about this subject matter, before you stop pontificating on it?

> Argue with Hoyle and Wickramasinge if you think they erred.

I'll be happy to, if they show up here spouting nonsense that I am capable of detecting.

> To disprove a theory, one simply needs to point out a case in which that theory is false. Behe does this, Hoyle does this, and do many others.

No, I have already explained to you where Behe and Hoyle went wrong, and you have simply chosen to ignore facts that don't support your religious beliefs.

> To prove a theory is right, the mechanism must be described and then shown to be correct experimentally, otherwise it remains a theory, no matter how uncomfortable that is for its proponents. This is the scientific method.

Again, you reveal that you know nothing about what science is and how it works.

[From your second reply:]

> > Yeah, and that's why scientists don't take Hoyle seriously when he starts trying to support his belief in panspermia.

> Here's a website that shows support for panspermia. : http://www.panspermia.org/intro.htm . I like the NASA ones, myself. They'll be happy to know you do not consider them to be "serious scientists".

If you would go back and read carefully you'd see that my comments were about Hoyle's asinine probability argument, not about panspermia and other people who study it. The only reason I mentioned panspermia is that it would have been incorrect if I had left the impression that scientists laugh at everything Hoyle said, so I had to narrow it down. And it was to panspermia rather than creationism, because AFAIK Hoyle didn't have much truck with creationism, and only offered the bogus argument in support of panspermia. I have no problem with panspermia, so long as someone can support it with good evidence rather than asinine creationist-style probability arguments.

[From your third reply:]

> > No one is claiming that any of that stuff comes into existence by pure chance, any more than scientists claim that biological structures and processes are the result of pure chance. The theory of evoltion is about a mechanism.

> Okay, so if not by pure chance, then by what mechanisim?

So you're dismissing the theory of evolution and don't even know what it says? The primary mechanism is a feedback loop involving random mutations filtered by natural selection. Secondary mechanisms include sexual selection, genetic drift, and maybe some others.

The primary mechanism is readily illustrated by genetic algorithms, which work by the same method. Google should find you some free code you can download and play with until you understand it, or should find you lots of books and papers on the topic if you prefer a more theoretical approach. (If you have trouble finding something let me know, because I have just a wee bit more than passing familiarity with the subject.)

> Please describe the mechanism on how life began from non-life

As I mentioned earlier, that is the study of abiogenesis and not evolution, and the mechanism is not yet known.

> and describe its proof via experimentation, lest you start sounding like creationist.

Again, you have a pseudo-scientist's conception of how science works. Do you deny that fusion powers the sun because astrophysicists have not set up a sun in a laboratory to demonstrate it? What about hurricanes - must we create one in the lab before we can say we know what causes them?

Re: I have a strange feeling

[Black Parrot]

> One definition of engineer is...

[snip mucho apolgetics]

Boy howdy, wasn't that a long-winded way of saying "I'm not really an engineer".

BTW, I'm a great admirer of the self-taught, and I think people's claims should be judged on the basis of those claims rather than on their credentials (cf. my comments on Hoyle). But I'm not a big fan of people who try to misrepresent their credentials to their readers. You could have easily stated your field of experience concisely and accurately without labelling yourself as an engineer. Alas, the reason I asked is that creationists have a very bad habit of exactly that kind of misrepresentation.

Lessee if there's anything else in there worth replying too...

> That said, I feel it is necessary to point out that the abbreviation "IEEE" stands for -- you guessed it -- "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers." Hopefully, this meets your proof criteria and saves me the pain of listing every instution that offers Electronics Engineering degrees. You should really get out more.

That's interesting, because I've known and associated with lots of engineers in school, at work, and even at home (my dad is an electrical engineer, as are many others in his social circle), and I have never heard anyone describe themself as "an electronics engineer". I suppose that's because all these were real engineers (PEs) rather than people who worked with electronics and had "engineer" as an inappropriate part of their job title. (Did you know that in some places it is against the law to call yourself "engineer" if you are not a certified and registered PE?)

> Since I have never heard of anyone that has never heard of an electronics engineer or a dgree in said same, perhaps you should give your credentials, inventions, claims to fame, ad nauseum. Frankly, now I'm now a little suspicious of you. So many evolutionists exaggerate their credentials...

I make no claim to any credentials; let the reader judge my words on their value.

Oh, wait. I do occasionally claim to have a bit of experience in some area or another, such as in another branch of this thread where I just mentioned that I know a bit about genetic algorithms. But even there, please evaluate my words rather than my undocumented claims of experience.

> To address the matter at hand, bacterial and human reproduction alike, the observation is that life only comes from life, never from non-life.

No one claims that life is coming from non-life today; it only had to happen once. (And if it did start to happen today, the proto-neo-life would probably be consumed at the bottom of the food chain before developing into anything more complex than an amino acid, if it even got that far.)

> This key aspect of evolution has never been observed in a way that conforms to any present or past evolutionary theory, and not even in a way that doesn't conform (other than one that involves intelligent creation component). The basic claim of modern evolutionists is that life evolved from non-life

For the (n+1)th time, the theory of evolution does not say anything about abiogenesis.

And where does the "intelligent creation component" come in, other than as pure speculation? Which component was the intelligent creation component, and what does intelligent creation involve? (Is there any such thing as non-intelligent creation to contrast it with?)

> And for the record my posts have repeatedly said that belief in evolution and belief in creation were both acts of faith. Neither are provable in a research laboratory, and nothing written here has changed my mind that evolution is still a theory in very much in crisis.

Well, you might convince your classmates at Sunday School, but you certainly aren't going to convince anyone that has even a rudimentary familiarity with the subject matter.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Bowling Moses]

Darwin, Newton, Einstein & Co. all are worthwhile reading, mostly to see where in the past a field came from and how these people revolutionized science. They are not particularly useful for telling where a field is going today. For instance, my last paper had 61 references. To break them down by decade, 13 were from the 2000's, 26 from the 1990's, 11 1980's, 4 1970's, 5 1960's, and two all the way back from 1959. For the field, my paper had an extensive (perhaps overly so) review of the literature before delving into the issues at hand. I did not cite anything earlier because it simply wasn't relevant--reinventing the wheel, so to speak. As far as the field was concerned, earlier works laid the foundations but are compressed and sorted into textbooks. Similarly for the evolutionary biologists, they seldom cite Darwin. Why? Because the field has moved on--his work is no longer on the cutting edge but instead is a part of the foundation of the field. So if you want to attack current thinking in a field, you should do so by using references as current as possible. Fields move rapidly, and what was cutting edge twenty years ago is old hat today. Also when you quote something, it is improper and dishonest to take a reference's quotation and cite it as your own if you have not read the original quoted material youself. A more proper quote would be something like "X said Y, as quoted in Z." Or would you care to demonstrate you actually read those original sources? Just the sentence on either side of the quotes will do--and yes, I have access to the original sources to check up on you.

But maybe before you bother, you should know that "Scientific American" is a popular magazine, not a technical journal (and your quote has no impact on current thinking in either evolution or abiogenesis). Fred Hoyle was an astronomer, not a biochemist, so his views on protein structure and their probabilities of existing are no more informed than any other layman. Francis Hitching it turns out is a writer, mainly on the paranormal, with titles to his credit such as "Dowsing: the Psi Connection." As far as Behe goes he's regarded as a crackpot. Black Parrot's already pointed out talkorigins' thorough debunking of his ides, but if you don't trust the site try the National Center for Science Education and do a search for "Behe". I particularly like the first hit, a review of "Darwin's Black Box." In a nutshell, it's crap. 200 year old rehashed debunked crap, actually.

"Your" (actually Hoyle's, see above) statistical improbabilities: you could read Black Parrot's or barakn's posts, or for something more thorough go here to talkorigins and read. Why do I put trust in the site? Besides being in my own experience an excellent, factually correct, and largely up-to-date source on the topic, it is endorsed by Science, Scientific American, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Smithsonian Institute, and The Geological Society of America, among many others. In other words, the scientific mainstream: the people who work in labs and in the field, who write papers presenting their findings and their ideas, papers which must stand up to the criticism of their peers, persons whose careers are shaped by their abilities to form and support hypotheses and correct past errors of in their field, using evidence and reason. Your concept of "orginal thinkers" seems to be those who would ignore the vast body of know

Re:I have a strange feeling

[barakn]

The JWs have conveniently placed their anti-evolution literature all over the globe, including my own library, so I used them as an example. i think they are a good example, as they believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. That was their own list of the order of creation word for word, not mine. What is really ironic is that Genesis 2:5 claims that man was created even before the plants, while 1:11-13 and 1:26-31 say plants were created on the 3rd day and man on the 6th.

And as for the birds vs. winged/flying creatures debate, the exact meaning is irrelevant, though there is some evidence from Leviticus 11:20-23 that the word owph, commonly translated bird, applies to flying insects as well. The first winged insect came after the first land insect, according to science. The Bible says the flying things came before "cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind." (creeping things widely regarded as including crawling insects)

The real point is that the order of creation events in the Bible is inconsistent, so there is no possible way to claim they "are absolutely in agreement with modern evolution accounts."

Re: I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

I am quite aware of that some states in the US require that you pass a test to certify you as an engineer. But like most of state-based certification tests they are not universal; passing the PE in one state doesn't confer the right to be called an engineer in another with the same requirement. So if you're a certified engineer in Iowa, you're not in Texas? And what of the states that don't require it, are their engineers not "real" engineers? The UK has 5-year progrms for an undergraduate engineering degree. Are US engineers not "real" engineers? Are UK undergraduates "super-engineers"? And to my knowledge, you do not have to be a graduate of a university to take and pass PE tests, again showing that to be an engineer is an independent notion from graduating from a college or university. I think that in some states, if you pass the bar exam you're a lawyer, and you do not have to graduate from a law school. And besides, even if I gave you the name of the university I graduated from, you'd find some reason to dismiss that too. Face it, you can't stay on point because you have no real foundation in any of it. You just repeat the mainstream view because it's safe. Maybe it keeps you from having to think for yourself, maybe it's because you can't think for yourself. What is clear is you cannot deal with the issues like anyone of intelligence or maturity.

You have absolutely no basis for judging my credentials, or reaching the conclusions you have about my education. It is simply a weak attempt at diverting your lack of defensible position.

You said you never heard of an electronics engineer. Fine. I supplied with a AAA reference of people that actively refer to themselves as such. Shame on you for then saying that your daddy never used the term so you're excused for your ingorance. And you never heard of it, not even given your grand circle of acquaintances. Grow up. You are making a diversionary attack because you can't make a cogent defense of your own faith, probably because you don't know what you actually believe. The "my daddy said" defense, very profound. Guess you're not a lawyer either.

More on the "my daddy said" defense. A quick google search reveals a number of universities worldwide that grant bachelor's degrees in "electronics engineering". Maybe you daddy's so old he predates the modern notion of electronics, but that's his problem and your clear misrepresentation of the facts. Thus, you are the one who has deceived readers, not I. I have proven that you do not know what you're talking about, even when a simple google search is all that is needed to get the correct answer. Once again, you cannot clearly articulate your own point of view, which means that you do not understand it yourself. You do not supply your own credentials, or even suggest that you have any at all in any field of endeavor. Your posts lack any real sense of knowledge of mechanics, biology, medicine, electricity, physics, or anything else for that matter. You don't even realize that the principle teaching of evolution is life from non-living matter or understand its implications. You are profoundly unfamiliar with scientific method, which clearly mandates that the transition from theory to fact is only possible through verification of the mechanisms. So, if you say that evolution is fact because you know life came from non-life but you can't say how it happened -- precisely -- and prove it really works that way, well then your just another loser with a theory. And maintaining that it can no longer be proven because it was a once-for-all-time thing and it's a mystery. but you're sure it really happened anyway, you sound foolish, worse even than the most dogmatic religionist.

At least I have the intellectual honesty to say creation will never be proved in a laboratory and therefore will always remain a theory under the tenets of the scientific method. Most who espouse evolution theory say it's no longer a theory because lots of people really, really beleive it, and we can

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Genesis 2:5 simply points out that no plants or vegetation was under cultivation, because man had not been created yet. Genesis to is a detailed review of the creation of man (it says so in verse 4) and adds some detail like there was no rain, as such, yet, and plant life and ground-based animal life received their water through a misting that eminated from the ground. I see no inconsistency here, and I've checked a couple of different translations.

Please supply a scriptural reference for your assertion that the Bible says the flying things came before "cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind." No disrespect intended, but I'd like to see for myself, including the context and then check a few translations for the sake of thoroughness.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

The reason to care is that religion explains why things are, whereas science focuses on explaining how things work.

It is true that Darwin published Origin of Species to explain minor variations in groups of living things, hence the title Origin of Species. Otherwise he would have titled it Origin of Life or some such thing.

Scientific investigation subjects theories to stepwise refinement. As such, the basic theory of evolution is based on random chance that produces endless mutations which are culled through natural selection (aka, survival of the fittest). Therefore it is random chance rather than intelligent design that is responsible for all we know and see. Taken to its logical conclusion, even the transforming of non-living matter to living matter must have been the product of chance. This is why, in my view, all the texts on evolution either explicitly or implicitly include the notion of life evolving from non-life.

I have found a few references over the course of today that make a point to say that strictly evolution theory excludes abiogenesis, but even those references agree that the distiction is immaterial since all modern theories of evolution are based on life from non-life at some level. This is copied directly from the University of Rochester's website regarding the scientific method:

"III. Common Mistakes in Applying the Scientific Method

"As stated earlier, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of the scientist's bias on the outcome of an experiment. That is, when testing an hypothesis or a theory, the scientist may have a preference for one outcome or another, and it is important that this preference not bias the results or their interpretation. The most fundamental error is to mistake the hypothesis for an explanation of a phenomenon, without performing experimental tests. Sometimes "common sense" and "logic" tempt us into believing that no test is needed. There are numerous examples of this, dating from the Greek philosophers to the present day.

"Another common mistake is to ignore or rule out data which do not support the hypothesis. Ideally, the experimenter is open to the possibility that the hypothesis is correct or incorrect. Sometimes, however, a scientist may have a strong belief that the hypothesis is true (or false), or feels internal or external pressure to get a specific result. In that case, there may be a psychological tendency to find "something wrong", such as systematic effects, with data which do not support the scientist's expectations, while data which do agree with those expectations may not be checked as carefully. The lesson is that all data must be handled in the same way.

Evolutionists continually dismiss out of hand evidence that suggests evolution is false or flawed. And they seem satisfied that its most basic tenets remain unproven by experimentation.

Moreover, saying that the route a nerve takes is evolutionary because it doesn't seem to be the shortest path is simply conjecture. To me it would make sense that an organ whose function is dependent on aspiration cycles would loop through the chest, if I were the engineer. But that's just conjecture too.

The simple truth is that without independent verification of the theory by experimentation, both abiogenesis and its codependent theories of evoltion are simply theories. From a scientific method perspective, it is on equal footing with the creation theory. Both require the faith of its adherents. Evolutionists don't tend to care about the "whay" part, and creationists are relatively unconcerned with the "how" part when discussing how the creator did all this -- for now. The material issue is "why" because it leads to an understanding of what happens next. That is what is important to the spiritually minded person.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[barakn]

Birds and sea monsters were created on day 5 (Gen 1:20-23). Cattle, creeping things, wild animals, and humans were all created on day 6 (Gen. 1:24-31). If the scriptures you are reading aren't clear enough on the matter, then you are reading a bastard version of the Bible.

Genesis chapter 2 should merely retell the story from ch.1 if there's any truth to it. But Gen. 2:4-7 says that God made the first man on the same day He made the earth and the heavens, i.e. on what ch.1 calls day 1, not day 6. When you say that before man the existing plant and animal life was watered by a mist, you are basically conflating your own imagination into the story. "[W]hen no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up- for the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground" (Gen 2:5-6) is the way it reads. There is no written evidence for any life at all during this period, and instead of a mist it reads more like a stream periodically floods the entire planet. Also, chapter 1 never mentions God making wild plants first, then making man, and then finally getting around to making the cultivatible plants. I see no evidence in chapter 2 for plant life until after man was created. I'm afraid the Genesis in your head is not the Genesis on paper.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Nicely written post, but I'm not following...first you say that my reference to Scientific American is invalid because it's not a proper scientific journal, but then you list it in your who's who supporting your favorite self-reinforcing website. Either it is or is not a credible source. Make up your mind.

Evolution is a religion -- a philosophy -- in many key areas. For starters, it requires the faith of its adherents because it has not been proven experimentally. I have yet to see the published results of where one species was observed changing into another and it could be completely explained and reproduced. Holding up two bones and saying this one turned into that one just doesn't cut it. Evolution predicts smooth transistions from one species to another, but the fossil record fails to bear it out. So what do we do? Create a theory of punctuated equilibrium to address the sudden emergence of new and different living things. So, when, exactly, based on the current theory should we expect the next wave of new species as predicted by Punctuated Equilibrium? What, not sure? Doesn't actually say? Sorry, not taking anyone's word on it. If you know how it happened, into the lab and prove it. Otherwise you're not complying with true scientific method and it remains merely a hypothesis.

Galileo fought populists that drew their political power from the religion-backed power structure. They were not defending any religious truth, they were merely endeavoring to not upset the status quo, because it would undermine their power base. It is obvious they had no concerns over scriptural truths, they just wanted to remain in political power. But Galileo proved what he said through experimentation, which is more, a lot more, than can be said about evolutionists. Evolutionists insist we take their word for it and accept evolution theory as fact without proof through experimentation. That makes evolutionists the same as Galileo's tormentors, and the opposite of Galileo himself.

If you are saying that you agree with Galileo, then you are saying that you will accept nothing as science fact until it is tested and successfully demonstrated experimentally. If so then evolution is no fact, it is merely an unproven theory like any other unproven theory. Now, if your beloved website calls evolution a scientific fact, it is incorrect, on the basis of scientific method. And you must accept that you are just like the religionists in Galileo's day, saying, "Don't experiment or show me the results. I already know the how it all works and I don't need experiments to prove it."

If life is not irreducibly complex, please bring me to the place where I can see amino acids form and enzymes and proteins and DNA and RNA and all the other components simultaneously create each other and then see the cells come to life. Then take me to the place where I can see Species A turn into Species B, or tell me when and where some new species will suddenly appear on earth so I can get a glimpse.

If you can't tell me these things, then please tell me who can. Otherwise, I'm stuck having to take your word for it. Trouble is, that's just not science.

Having read Miller's review of one of Behe's works, I am unmoved. Each has his own respectable credentials, his list of historical supporters or those on whose work they built. Miller says he agrees with Behe on lots of things. He just disagrees on other things. Miller's positions are equally untested by experimentation. And where Behe suggests that ideas that Miller endorses be tested, Miller turns it around and says that Behe's ideas should be tested first, and since that's not the way Behe presented it, he should be dismissed. Paley's work is 200 years old so it's old and dumb. Darwin's work on the the other hand is 150 years old, but not dumb? Either it's age is relevant or it's not. Miller is simply speaking out of both sides of his Ivy League mouth, saying that when Behe agrees with him he's a genius and when he disagrees he's an

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

> the problem is that things get tricky when working on the timescale of evolutionary theory.

I see your point, but there have been attempts to speed things up. There have been experiments with millions and millions of Drosophila flies (and other things with short generational timespans) that used radiation to scramble DNA, among other things. It was found time and again the mutations produced nothing new, no new advantages, and certianly nothing that lasted for more than a few generations. Of course, one argument is the combination of these things leads to useful new creatures. So, what was the result of a few generations of breeding? Normal, original fruit flies were hatched. This led to some interesting discoveries, like DNA repair systems. Either DNA gets fixed (returned to its original state) or cancer results or other disease or malformations occur. DNA is now generally regarded as a great stabilizer, not the other way around. Using animals whose generational timelines are compressed relative to our own in effect compresses time.

There is also the theory regarding punctuated equilibrium. The observation in nature is the sudden appearance of great numbers of new species and then a period of great stability, which repeated every so often. This theory was advanced to explain it. Add to that the fact that no gradual shift could be proven in the fossil record ("links" were separated by millions of years in most cases, and millions of miles too, and a real lack of numbers and complete skeletons is also a problem). And radiocarbon dating is also known to be unreliable beyond about 2,000 years which adds to the problem of establishing timelines. So, evolutionists advanced this thoery to explain it. Something in nature, governed by random chance, creates a new species explosion every so often. So we should see it at some point, or be able to set the establish the initial conditions and cause a new explosion in new species. But it hasn't happened, either by chance or on purpose. The only logical conclusion is that at best we have no idea how evolution happens (and hence we have only hypotheses or theories, not fact), or at worst, the evolution theorists just plain got it wrong, there's no such thing.

No one has ever tried to prove creationism directly that I know of, probably because of the intuitive obviousness of why it wouldn't work. Ironically, the failures of the various evolution experiments haven't undermined creation's theoretical predictions. Rather creation theory has been supported by deduction: Even with the combined intelligence of our brightest and most focused minds working on this for a hundred years or so, no one has changed one species to another, new or previously seen, nor have they been able to reproduce even the smallest and simplest elements in the theory (e.g. Miller). Time adds to the emergence of new and competing theories on the details, most of which can't be reconciled into a coherent singular whole. Creationism holds that an intelligence, far greater than our own, made all this, and that it did not happen by random pointless chance, but rather for a reason. The entire "intelligence greater than our own" part makes it obvious that we won't be able to duplicate it, which thus far has been the case. Some say this is a convenient excuse, but certainly no more convenient than the "it takes way too long" defense of evolutionists.

> As you said, Stanley Miller FAILED at his attempt to create life. If he indeed played the role of creator and failed to create, didn't he just as equally work toward a disproof of creationist theory?

Ah, yes, Miller's failures. Miller failed to create proteins because his theory was wrong, and in the end couldn't be used as part of the greater evolution theory. But Miller is not God, nor did he possess the intelligence of a god. He was just a man, thus restricted to failure in trying to become one. But the point is that he was needed to stage the events, carefully guiding the ex

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Cujo]

Scientific investigation subjects theories to stepwise refinement.

And to radical revision, thorough rethinking, obsolesence and complete dismissal. However, if you have a theory that did a very good job of explaining a whole mountain of evidence, you're not going to throw the babyout with the bathwater when a problem arises - first, you see if you can fix the theory. Or, you may layer a more sophisticated theory on top. We still teach Maxwell's Equations, for example, because they're great for explaining a wide range of important phenomena. Or even further back, most astrodynamicists still use Newton's theory of gravity, not so much Einstein's.

As such, the basic theory of evolution is based on random chance that produces endless mutations which are culled through natural selection (aka, survival of the fittest).

A non-sequitur on a good day. The random chance merely provides the local variation: babysteps to explore the near neighborhood in genome space. The more important aspects of evolution is why certain trajectories through this space are taken, and how and how fast, and how this influences related populations. But wait, it gets better:

Therefore it is random chance rather than intelligent design that is responsible for all we know and see.

No it's not. Evolution is highly NON-random. This tired anticoncept has been brought up time and time again and it's never been even close to an interesting argument. Read Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker for a good background on this silly strawman.

The simple truth is that without independent verification of the theory by experimentation, both abiogenesis and its codependent theories of evoltion are simply theories.

Not that "only a theory" shibboleth again! You're not doing your school's reputation any good by raising that hoary old battle cry. Show me how it is possible to do better than a good theory. Our scientific theories are right up there with music and art as the greatest achievements of civilization. The difference is that they're never finished.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Wow, thou art a bit tetchy this fine morn. Art thou on thy female cycle?

The King James translation of Gen2:6 refers to a "mist" not a "stream". The Bible in Living English does likewise, as do the American Standard Version, the New World Translation and The Revised Standard Version. The paraphrased The Living Bible says water "welled up from the ground." I don't have a translation that says "stream" in these verses.

The seven creative days, in the sense they take on from Gen1:1 ends clearly with Gen2:3. The verses beginning with 2:6, there is a context switch to centering on the creation of the first man Adam. Here is made the reference to there being not yet any cultivating of the ground. All the translations that I have say 'bush of the field' and 'vegetation of the field' or similar, rather than saying all plants of all kinds. Rather, verse 5 specifically limits the statements about the plants being 'of the field'. This is said because there were no men to farm the land. So the context is clear that the plant life spoken of here refers to cultivated crops, not to the creation of "wild" plant life created on the third day (Gen1:11-13). It establishes, in effect, that the whose creation is about to be described is indeed the first man. It also sets that stage for the God's establishing ("planting") the first garden, Eden, for the man so he could learn from it and perpetuate it (Gen2:8).

That's all pretty straightforward. Gen2:4 seems to be a problem for you because of the use of 'creating of the heaven and earth' idea. Clearly, God couldn't make man before the literal universe and before turning the earth into a suitable, living planet. Even if the Bible were made up, even an moron wouldn't get that part wrong in the span of a few hundred words. So I think we can dismiss this level of disharmony out of hand. Nevertheless, let us see if there is a reasonable interpretation.

Throughout the Bible, the term "heaven" can mean several things, like most words we use today have several meanings. Specifically, "heaven" can mean God's place of dwelling, the physical universe observable by humans, the earth's atmosphere, and even a governmental organization over mankind, whether based in God's realm or here on the earth. Similarly, "earth" can mean the planet, the ground and even the human society that inhabits it.

The sense that the earth and the heavens mean social-structure sense seems to be born out by the rest of the context in Genesis, especially chapters 2-5. Here man is created and given instructions on what he is to do. He is later given a woman as a compliment and a helper and a companion. Then they rebel, declare independence and the founding of the imperfect word occurs. This same sense of the heavens and the earth is used in Psalms, most of the Prophets, especially Isaiah, and continues (for Christians) throughout the gospels (lit. declarations of the good news), the letters, and the book of Revelation. (Ps2:1-12;Isa65:17,66:1;Mt11:11;2Pet3:13;Rev21:1)

It is interesting to note that in this regard, The Bible in Living English translators chose to render "heaven" and "earth" as "sky" and "earth" and then uses that to create the proper backdrop to the act of creating Adam. Here is the way it renders Gen2:5-7:

"On the day that God Jehovah made earth and sky, when there was not yet in the earth any field bush, or any field herbage sprung up, becauseGod Jehovah had not made it rain on the earth and there were no men to work the soil, and a mist used to come up out of the earth and water all the surface of the soil, God Jehovah shaped man in clay from the soil, and blew into his nostrils breath of life, and the man became a living person."

Here the idea is that it is referring to immediate physical earth and sky that the man Adam was born into, rather than the sense of stricter translations, which make reference to the generational history (See KVJ, AS, RS, NWT). Either way, it is clear that even allo

Re: I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Your problem is you believe the theory of evolution deserves a special exception to the Scientific Method. I already posted what this is, and the fourth step in the process from hypothesis to fact must include independent verification by experimentation.

I don't know a single creationist that does not understand and accept the intuitive obviousness of variation within a species. We now know at least some of the mechanisms at work, but we don't know them all (with the possible exception of you, of course). And such variations are completely compatible with creation. In fact, varitions beyond specie boundaries and life from non-life are the only basic points in contention between evolutionists and creationists that I'm aware of. Which is why it is essential that evolutionists demonstrate these two elemens. Hence the focus on the fossil record and the hunt for the non-creation solution to the origin of life question. Abiogenesis, schmabiogenesis. Even the most anal of eveolutionary websites say this is some kind of purist i'm-more-correct-than-you-are smog that is meaningless now, because it is an ideological imperitive for evolutionists to prove life from non-life without the influence of an intelligent creator. But you knew that, didn't you.

Perhaps you can point me to the website that explains to me which came first, the chicken or the egg? Or did they both appear together? Was it male or female? Or did all three appear at once? Or maybe it was just the male and the female? Explain, please why sexual reproduction "evolved" in the first place? Or at least explain the environmental imperitive involved. Did a couple of chickens just say, "Hey, this cloning stuff is for the birds," and then dreamed it up? How did this work? Or was it the genome quietly working this out in secret and then it just sprung it on them? Was it earier in the evolutionary tree? If so, which was the species responsible, and why? How? Please, some answers, not some redirection as to why I am not qualified to ask.

For the record, the models for hurricanes and nuclear fission can be compared to the actual events, and routinely are. Measurements are made and compared with the model, which is then refined. Weather patterns are routinely used to predict hurricanes, and after-the-fact analyses are routinely run by researchers to refine the models even more. So you are unequivocally dead wrong when you say these theories are not verified experimentally. I know you're not very hot on proof -- we should all just take your word for it because, well, it's you -- BUT this little slip-up proves you know nothing of how science works. NASA's Ulysses space probe mean anything to you? NOAA's HRD program?

Why must you persist in name-calling of me and of world renowned scientists? Is your position that weak? Must be. If evolution has been proved, show me the proof. And that doesn't mean holding up a jaw bone and an inner ear bone proclaiming, See! This one turned into that one! If panspermia was the way it all happened, show me the proof with the demonstrable linking model that goes all the way to modern man. If it was Punctuated Equilibrium, show me the model of the initial conditions and tell us when we can expect the next ocurrance. Imagine! Seeing a sudden explosion of thousands of new species onto the scene. Surely if you knew, you would tell us right? If gradual change slowly over time filtered by natural selection is the method, show me how to change a fish to a monkey, or a lion into a tiger or a monkey into a man. Then set up the initial conditions and get to it. If you need something with a shorter generational span and a simpler genome, use the humble Drosophila fly. Others have failed applying your "facts" but hey, you've got it sorted, so it should be a snap. Do something other than flap your mouth about it.

Hey, that's it, stand there and flap your lips until your genome gets the idea you'd be better off a bird. Then you can also prove the part about org

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Bowling Moses]

Scientific American: Again, it is a popular magazine, not a technical journal. The distinction between the two is straightforward: a technical journal is where scientists report their current findings and conclusions, representing the cutting edge of the field, provides an idea for future directions, and is written explicitly for those who are working in the field. A popular magazine provides a summary of a field and a summary of recent research, for an audience primarily of interested amateurs. Criticizing your use of a quote from Scientific American is appropriate because it has no impact: everything reported in the magazine has already been presented in technical journals. Meanwhile using Scientific American's endorsement of talkorigins' website is perfectly valid as Scientific American is a well thought of clearinghouse of mainstream scientific ideas written for a broad audience comprised largely of interested amateurs. Likewise, talkorigins is a well regarded source of information about evolution and related fields with a similar audience. Now besides your quote being from Scientific American, it represents a summation for an interested amateur of what was going on in the field in the 1970's: the field has moved on since. For instance, in the early 80's Thomas Cech demonstrated that some RNAs can actually catalyze reactions--that is, it is possible that RNA could be both a carrier of genetic information and an enzyme. Was all the old work dumped? No but Cech's finding certainly had impact on new work, as around the same time the "RNA World" hypothesis was born.. For your source to be ignorant of a discovery of this magnitude is astounding.

Francis Hitching: You didn't even skim his book, did you? I did. Besides (again) being only a writer on the paranormal, Hitching has a poor grasp of the subject and his book is mostly a (poor) attempt at bridging the gap between evolution and creationism. Since you stubbornly refuse to read anything on talkorigins, perhaps you would read what the creationists at Answers in Genesis have to say: "Its main interest to creation scientists is its broad critique of the accepted processes of evolution from one who has found the foundation of his belief in evolution to be crumbling in parts, and at times even non-existent. [new paragraph] Perhaps many will have difficulty with Hitching's credentials. He is a populariser [sic] of 'unexplained phenomena' - yet his writing is mostly clear, and very readable. Although his journalistic style can be frustratingly general or occasionally misleading, he is largely an excellent educator and expounds his points well." So in addition to not being a champion of evolution and being endorsed by AiG, they note that Hitching has no real scientific standing. Hitching is only well-regarded by creationists.

Fred Hoyle: Let's illustrate this with another personal example. I'm a biochemist studying a particular enzyme. I want to inhibit this enzyme, and so when I was looking at its catalytic site I began drawing out various potential inhibitors. Naturally, I wondered how I could make them, but while I have some familiarity with organic chemistry and that field is closely related to my own, I am no expert in it. So I get help from an organic chemist so I can obtain my inhibitors. Note how much closer biochemistry and organic chemistry are than astrophysics and biochemistry. Fred Hoyle was only showing off the limits of his knowledge (and his hubris) when he was pontificating on the probabilities of a particular protein existing.

Illustrating further, Hoyle ignored the fact that a great many different proteins are capable of performing the same function. Taking yet another example from personal experience, the enzyme that I work on is 700 amino acids long. There are other examples of this protein found in other organisms, varying slightly in length and in composition--the sequences may be as little as 5

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Well, I just reviewed the site that takes up against Hoyle's statistics. Interesting stuff. I was immediately hit with the distinct impression that the author was intentionally making it more complicated than need be, with twisting references to other references. I seemed the main point was to wear me out before I got to the end so I would flat-out accept what he said. But, not so fast.

First, I desperately want to know the difference between a "modern protein" and an "ancient" one. After that, I'd like to understand the difference between the creationists' view of abiogenesis and that of a "true" abiogenesist. As far as I could tell, the site says [stupid, simple-minded] creationists misrepresent it as the tranformation of simple chemicals to bacteria. Then it points out that the "real" process starts with simple chemicals and ends up with a bacteria. Huh?

Okay, the author did add a bunch of intermediary chemical reaction steps, but that is extra detail, not difference. But it says that even the more detailed one is "simplified". So, if I were to make a site that added the details glossed over on this "reference" site, would the "reference" site become wrong and I would be the bigger expert? I dismissed this nonsense out of hand as a silly HTML trick designed to discredit something that is actually correct.

From what I can tell, the added detail serves as a basis for metabolising Hoyle's large number into smaller bits that can be considered reasonable (but these smaller bits are only supplied for the simplified model; we are left wondering what numbers have been omitted). And the author does that quite handily. But the odds of each step, however manageble by itself must be multiplied by the managable odds of all the other steps, even the ones he leaves out. I didn't see where he did that. By the author's reckoning, one can make all the biological precursors you need by the truckload in somewhere between week and a year.

Great, so now we've got truckloads of the stuff, statiscally speaking of course. And we're just a few weeks from the big bang. But are they all in the right place at the right time? How do they mix? And if we're making them at such a phenominal rate, why is the universe not one big vat of amino acids? Or entirely all one single bacterium type?

And then there is this: If it's all so simple, and it takes maybe a year or two to get it all done, and the initial conditions are known, why not just reproduce it in the lab and put the thing to rest already (like when the author flipped heads four times in a row in defiance of the great odds against)?

Clealry he cannot, nor can anyone else. And the best part of all: Having all the right ingredients does not bring a protein pile to life. The author is silent on this, even though the most gap-toothed corn-pone creationist could tell you that if it ain't alive, it ain't life from non-life, it's just a buncha goo. You get an "F".

So what about Hoyle's calculations? Were they wrong? The author never says that, he just says that he felt as though, in his opinion, that they showed the most extremely remote case. But I got the impression he didn't find a flaw in the answer itself. The author seemed to use exaggerated opposition as his literary device to show his disapproval for Hoyle's position. But that doesn't mean that Hoyle was wrong. Indeed, Hoyle's calculations say that we should essentially never see bacteria spontaneously create (on the earth, if memory serves) from raw chemicals. The rebuttal author says we should be producing all the precursors by the truckload, week after week, year after year, and for millions and millions of years. Great, so where is all this stuff? That it is not here proves the author's calculations are materially wrong (though correctly solved for the conditions given, just like Hoyle's). Was Hoyle wrong? Who knows, he said it would be impossible, and no one has ever proved it is possible, so it remians a valid theory in my bo

Re:I have a strange feeling

[2short]

Evolution is not random. Nor is it responsible for "all we know and see", only for changes in populations of living, reproducing things over time. I would guess the transition from non-living matter to living matter did indeed happen by chance, but whether it did or not has no bearing on evolution.

"Evolutionists continually dismiss out of hand evidence that suggests evolution is false or flawed"

No, they don't. Now that we've both made blind assertions, how about an example?

"Moreover, saying that the route a nerve takes is evolutionary because it doesn't seem to be the shortest path is simply conjecture. To me it would make sense that an organ whose function is dependent on aspiration cycles would loop through the chest, if I were the engineer. But that's just conjecture too."

Yours is a fine theory. But the nerve dosen't connect with anything in the chest, so it's out. We could probably come up with several theories that explained this nerves routing. Evolution would be only one of them. At that point, picking any one theory would indeed be conjecture. But say we had hundreds, or even thousands of similar little facts, each of which could be explained in various ways. But they all had one particular possible explanation in common. It could be coincidence, but the safe bet is it's not.

"The simple truth is that without independent verification of the theory by experimentation, both abiogenesis and its codependent theories of evoltion are simply theories"

Evolution is not dependent on abiogenesis. Period.

Evolution is indeed "just a theory". But Creationism is not a theory. Theories explain, predict, and have the potential to be shown false. Creationism explains nothing, predicts nothing, and no matter what happens, can not be shown to be false (or true).

Finally, while obviously the theory that evolution occurred in the past can not be tested experimentaly, the theory that it works now can and has. Numerous people have tried this experiment: Take a bunch of fruit flies. The kind that hatch, are active for a few hours, lay eggs and die. You'll find that they only do this within a certain 1 or 2 degree temperature band. So put them in a box, and keep it right at that temperature all the time. The flies will reproduce again and again, several generations a day. Change the temperature very slowly; say, 10 degrees over 6 months. You will now have flies adapted to an entirely different temperature, incapable of surviving at the original one.

If you have a bit more patience, convince a lot of people that the King Charles Spaniel was a fine breed of dog, and it's really a shame they all got killed off along with King Charles. Have these people find dogs that look kind of King-Charlesish, and breed them. Then have them take the puppies, and only allow those to breed that look most King-Charlesish. Repeat for about a hundred years, and you will have a whole new distinct breed of dog.
(Not to mention the really long term dog experiment "Lets breed only the least aggressive wolf pups.")

Evolution works today. It seems fairly reasonable to assume it worked in the past. It fairly neatly explains a stupefyingly vast number of things (bone structure of marine mammals and bats; why birds in totaly different ecological niches in the galapagos are similar; why fossils of homonids look less and less like us the further back in time you go; etc. I could fill a whole page with weird things explained by evolution, just off the top of my head. Still waiting for one thing that contradicts it, or one thing explained by Creationism)

Evolution does not require faith. Faith is beleiving something even when you don't have evidence. Evolution has huge heaping mounds of evidence.

If creationist are so unconcerned about the "how" part when making shit up about the "why" part, why do they feel the need to say evolution is wrong?

I am not concerned about "why" because I have yet to be convinced that there neces

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Actually, I thought this was a nicely worded reply, I enjoyed your point of view. On most points we agree. There are a few that I think need some clarification. For the record, I didn't [mean] to say evolution was "wrong", although by now it is clear I am not a believer in its precepts and theories. What I am endeavoring to say is that it is still at best a theory, and according to the accepted process of Scientific Method, in that it has not been proved. Even in the replies to these posts on /. there is broad disagreement on what proof is and even whether it is actually needed at all. I challenge these assertions and am highlighting the inconsistencies. When challenged about what I beleive I have made the appropriate defenses, but I have specifically tried to not drag religion into this discussion.

> "...this experiment: Take a bunch of fruit flies...You will now have flies adapted to an entirely different temperature..."

I think key item here is that you started with fruit flies and ended with fruit flies. I believe that evolution requires jumps across the Domain Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus boundaries for proof that it is correct. I also suspect there was no change to the genetic code of the flies either, also a key requirement for proving evolution. For example, evolution attempts to explain how man and monkeys came from a common ancestor. If you took a fly and put it in a box and raised the temperature slowly to, say, 180F and they all lived and their genetic code changed so that the change was permanent and the latter were no longer able to breed with the former, then I think you'd have proof of evolution. Likewise, if you took the resulting flies from the experiment and reversed it, you'd have the original flies, which proves they never lost their original identity, and thus not proof of evolution.

This simple temperature experiment just happened in Europe this summer with humans. All sorts of people in northern Europe faced record temperatures, and many died as a direct result of the heat, which was by no means anywhere close to even the typical temperatures in equatorial earth, where humans live quite nicely. The point is that they were still humans, they did not jump even sub-species boundaries, which is what is predicted by evolution. And there are plenty of French guys living in Thailand and plenty of Thai guys living in France, who prefer the climates in their new homes over their native lands. Doesn't prove evolution.

Another key misconception in your post was the part about cross-breeding. What you discuss is straining a species for particular variations within that species, which is in no way whatsoever in conflict with creation theory or the Bible (which says that reproduction according to kind -- which means species -- is permitted, along with normal variations. The line is drawn at the specie boundary, which is why evolution must prove it can cross specie lines.). The point is when you allow only mild-tempered dogs to breed, you generally end up with mild-tempered dogs. No crossing of specie boundaries, they are still dogs, free to breed with anything else called a dog. When you cross a Husky with a Wolfhound, you still have a dog. This is not proof of evolution. Breed a fish with a money and come out with a bird, well, now you're talking evolution. Dropping cats from tall buildings until they realize they need to fly and sprout wings, and they change their genetic code so that that happens -- evolution. Simply holding up a bird and a cat and saying, "See some ancient living thing that we've never seen, nor can prove the existence of, long ago realized we needed something to eat mice and something else to eat worms and fly, and so here we have them, millions of years later. I proved evolution," is not really proof at all, it's simply conjecture.

> Evolution does not require faith. Faith is beleiving something even when you don't have evidence. Evolution has huge heaping moun

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Look, you cited Scientific American as a credible source too, I just pointed it out. When I use them as a reference they are a popular journal, irrespective of the writer of the piece being quoted or his credentials. When you use them as a reference it's because they are a world-class scientific institution. Make up your mind.

Hitching? Who cares what you think of his scientific credentials? What he said was interesting on its own merit and worthy of consideration. He's not my hero either. Hoyle believed the bumble bees were the perfect interplanetary panspermia transport vehicle (or some such nonsense). He was clearly an evolutionist, and a certainly a world renowned scientist, a guy you should love. Does that mean that everything he said was worthless or to be dismissed as wrong? or right? No one seems to think so, except for you when his ideas disagree with you. What a person says stands on its own merit. Only people with the weakest of arguments ever look beyond the merit of a position for who said it as the principle basis for rejecting it.

What about Dawkins? What a dork. Get this (from the Blind Watchmaker):

How did wings get their start? Many animals leap from bough to bough, and sometimes fall to the ground. Especially in a small animal, the whole body surface catches the air and assists the leap, or breaks the fall, by acting as a crude aerofoil. Any tendency to increase the ratio of surface area to weight would help, for example flaps of skin growing out in the angles of joints...(It) doesn't matter how small and unwinglike the first wingflaps were. There must be some height, call it h, such that an animal would just break its neck if it fell from that height. In this critical zone, any improvement in the body surface's ability to catch the air and break the fall, however slight the improvement, can make the difference between life and death. Natural selection will then favor slight, prototype wingflaps. When these flaps have become the norm, the critical height h will become slightly greater. Now a slight further increase in the wingflaps will make the difference between life and death. And so on, until we have proper wings.

So let's get this right, if I take a bunch of frogs and drop them from high hieghts that don't quite kill them I eventually get a changed genome and frogs are now birds? And you think Hitching is a whacko?

And what about Behe? He's an evolutionist. He's just another guy you seem to think is an idiot because he differs on how evolution works from the way you do. Send me the reference where his theory on IC have been specifically disproven by experimentation. Besides, for someone who says that abiogenesis is not part of evolution, you are sure getting hung up on an author whose work basically says life from non-life is impossible. Behe, after all, claims to be an evolutionist.

One thing is absolutely inescapable: You simply cannot present a cogent incontrovertible proof that evolution is a fact. You simply keep droning on about how you don't need to because everyone that disagrees with you is a boob. Such a simple-minded cheezemo usenet bully-the-correspondent tactic will not work here. Not with me. And for a person who writes so emphatically against "dogma" you sure have a notable disrespect for the Scientific Method, especially the independent verification through experimentation part. Which, by the way, is the part that is widely regarded as the part that protects science from dogma.

As for what I have read or not read, you have no clue. Pretending that you know simply points out that you will say anything to support your view which undermines your credibilty to below that of Hitching's. It is what you say that counts here. At least he researched Darwin before writing his book, and for a single sentence, you're spending way too much time on it. Thou dost protest too much. Saying you're right because Hitching is this, or Behe is that, or my favorite website says Hoyle g

Re:I have a strange feeling

[Bowling Moses]

Sci. Am. & Hitching: What you have him quoted as saying is: "Protiens depend on DNA for their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing protien." To which anyone who's taken entry level biology says "duh." You then link it to "your" Scientific American quote, which in my previous message I showed why it was inappropriate--both becuase it is a popular journal and becuase the field has moved on. Besides that, the Scientific American quote is taken out of context, as it is part of a rhetorical device: following the quote the author then proceeds to explain how (it was thought in the 1970's) protein and DNA might develop in parallel. Of course, you would know this had you read the article.

All that aside, it's not just me who knows that Hitching is an amatuer, it's both evolutionists and creationists as evidenced by his description on talkorigins and on the creationist Answers in Genesis. For two diametrically opposed camps to agree on this should tell you something. At least you've started to distance yourself from it by saying that he's not your hero either.

Hoyle: Do not attempt to put your words into my mouth. You were the one, not I, who claimed that because Hoyle's an expert on astrophysics he is an expert on biochemistry: "To suggest that he was a stargazer without the faintest clue how evolution might work or protiens might form, well, not so fast, he was rather qualified as an expert in this area." Recognize those words? You should, they're yours. I on the other hand said that he was not qualified and gave an argument by analogy (experience with biochemistry not transferring over to organic chemistry, two fields much more closely related than biochemistry and astrophysics) explaining why being expert in one area does not mean being expert in another. Then I proceeded to give an example of something obvious to any biochemist that Hoyle failed to take into account, and provided a weblink further debunking his calculation, defeating the argument on its merits (and not saying a thing about his ideas on astrophysics). Either you didn't read, understand, or simply chose to ignore this.

Behe: You won't read/can't understand talkorigins debunking (that's on the merits, again), won't read/can't understand the National Center for Science Education's (the premier science education organization in the land, also attacking on the merits), well how about Nature, the premier academic biology journal? They likewise came out with a scathing review in 1996, Volume 383, pages 227-228. They (like talkorigins and NCSE) noted that Behe's "irreducable" complexity had internal inconsistencies, preposterous claims, and suffered from a lack of testability--it is not science. Far from being "recent and unchallenged" Behe's "irreducable" complexity was DOA.

You refuse to read either my arguments or ones I refer you to, you're out of arguments (as evidenced by your repeating ones already defeated and bringing up issues unrelated to the applicability and veracity of your quotes to current thinking in evolution or abiogenesis) and your language and debating tactics are more appropriate for an elementary school playground than an intellectual discussion. This and since I've reached my aim of removing those quotes from their apparent support of creationism, there is no further value in this discussion for me.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[2short]

"What I am endeavoring to say is that it is still at best a theory, and according to the accepted process of Scientific Method, in that it has not been proved"

Evolution has been "proved" in every sense that any scientific fact has been proved.

"Great, now what", the evolutionists said. "What we've found thus far makes the case for creationism equally well."
You complimented me on my writing but did you read it? ANYTHING makes the case for creationism just as well as anything else. There's no conspiracy of evolutionists out to discredit creationism. They're too busy trying to explain things, and creationism just doesn't add anything to that.

"I also suspect there was no change to the genetic code of the flies either, also a key requirement for proving evolution."

You suspect wrong.

"If you took a fly and put it in a box and raised the temperature slowly to, say, 180F and they all lived and their genetic code changed so that the change was permanent and the latter were no longer able to breed with the former, then I think you'd have proof of evolution"

Great, then you think we have proof of evolution, because that's what was done and that's what happened (except you only have to go from 70 to 80 or 90).

"Has the missing link ever been found?"
Yes. Every early homonid fossil we have found has had a skeletal structure somewhere between those that preceded it and those that came after.

"Prior to the creation of man -- which did happen according to specific Bible chronology 6,000 years ago"
So human remains more than 6000 years old would disprove the bible? Or prove that God is a trickster? Are you under the impression that there aren't any human remains from more than 6000 years ago?

"Without abiogenesis, you're a creationist,"
No. You can also say "I don't know", as any good scientist will frequently.

"The fact that people still debate the wording of the Bible's Genesis account itself is proof that abiogenesis is still unproven."

People can talk about whatever they want. The fact that they do proves nothing. Heck, I don't beleive in Genesis as anything but a somewhat disjointed old story, but I'll still ask a question about it, just because I like baiting you:
According to Gen 1:20-27 God creates the animals, and then Adam and Eve. According to Gen 2:7-22 (the SAME PAGE in my copy) it's Adam then the animals, then Eve. You're holding this up as a scientific source? It contradicts itself in the first two pages.

Finally, as far as Creation theory making predictions. What you describe sounds like The Bible making predictions. I said creationism didn't because I was trying to leave religion out and not assume you were equating creationism with only one particular creation myth. I have on my shelf a book containing 57 creation myths. I see no reason to consider yours superior to the others. Any of them could be true. None can possibly be disproved.

So far the only prediction you've offered is the bible predicting events later in the bible. Well there's a shocker. I kind of had in mind an independantly verifiable prediction. Something I could go out and check myself. Like say, "Marine animals that breathe air exclusively probably evolved from land dwellers, so you'd expect them to have hard, bony skeletons instead of cartilage, and for the bones in the fins to bear some resemblance to hand and foot bones." See, that's a prediction. I could go out and cut up some whales and check.

"Hey, look.. It's an object that keeps time synchronized with the rotation of this planet around it's sun, and conveniently it fits right around my wrist. It's very pretty -- in particular I like the random markings that almost seem to form the words, "Hand made in Switzerland". I wonder how many billions of years it took for this thing to evolve into this highly efficient (for telling time) form."

Ahh, that silly analogy. You see, I'm horrendously inefficient at all sorts of things I'd expect

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

> had internal inconsistencies, preposterous claims, and suffered from a lack of testability

This statement applies exceptionally well to evolution. You have supplied no verifiable proof on evolution of converting one species to another viable species, and without it, your belief is based upon faith. Plain and simple. This is what this discussion is about.

Preposterous claims? How about saying a some kind of fish no one has ever seen turned into a bird millions of years ago, and that's why we have cats and dogs today? Never seen any of that happen (natural selection) nor anyone do it by artifical means (artificial selection). Neither has anyone else -- unless you are ready to supply proof, which would be refreshing, to say the least. In short, there is no verifiable proof that one species has turned into another, and ergo, it is a theory, not a fact, no better and no worse that the creation theory. I'd say that until someone proves it, organisims crossing species boundaries is a pretty preposterous claim.

Internal consistencies? Where can I read the complete theory of evolution from start to finish that is cohesive, coherent and universally agreed to by all adherents to the theory of evolution? Outside of the word "evolution" itself, I haven't found anything that evolutionists agree on -- even creation. I have had it made abundantly clear to me that abiogenesis is independent from evolution. So some evolutionists believe in creation while others believe in abiogenisis. In short, it is rife with "internal consistencies."

Clearly, the easiest way to prove that evolution is internally inconsistent, beyond all doubt, is that Behe is an evolutionist, and you think he's an idiot and think his ideas on evolution are crazy. Under the scientific method his theories deserve the chance to be worked on and improved in an unbiased manner until they are proved or disproved. That is the Scientific Method. But what is your stace? To believe he got a few details wrong just assisinate his character and throw his work out. My guess is you yourself have never had the kind of intellectual horsepower, nevermind the courage to say anything beyond what is popular or in the mainstream. For that alone I think Behe desrves acclaim.

As for DNA-protein-DNA paradox, it really comes down to starting with raw chemicals and and starting from an initial condition defined by evolutionary theory, creating strands of viable DNA -- that is DNA that results in a living thing that can survive in the environment (of your choosing). Do that, and you will have proved what Hitching said is incorrect. Oops forgot -- YOU don't need proof.

This does propose an interesting defense in legal situations though. Think of it: When police find DNA at the crime scene, one could argue that it was "evolution" at work and the DNA simply "evolved" from random chemicals and protein fragments into the alleged perpetrator's DNA. Case dismissed. Can this be supported? Yes, because according to the experts DNA can spontaneously apper -- it is "evolution fact"! I guess prosecutors could use it the concept too: Even though DNA at the scene doesn't match the suspect's, they could always argue it evolved already, to ensure survival of the source organism, "but trust me, because evolution is a fact and thus DNA spontaneously changes, at one time it really did match, I'm sure of it. Trust me. I've even read /. where proof of this sort of thing is not necessary anyway."

At the very least, then we cannot be sure how DNA came to be at any one location, who or what it came from, if it came anything at all.

So, once again, simply submit experimental proof that one species can change into another without the benefit of arifical selection (lest you take the position of an intelligent creator in the experiment). Unless of course you're claiming the "it's believed by lots of people already so we don't have to supply proof" exemption to the Scientific Method.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Neither have you submitted one shred of evidence that evolution has been proved. You missed the point of the flies experiment -- they were still flies. Evolution must prove jumps across specie boundaries.

I do not believe that there are modern human skeletal remains over 6,000 years. Of course you will cite radiocarbon dating and other mechanisims but there are tons of data that prove radiocarbon dating over about 2,000 years gets pretty unreliable. Some recent examples have shown how comically flawed these methods can be. Like the rocks created in the Mount St Helens eruption that dated back a few millenia, and the mammoth carcass whose truck dated a few dozed thousand years different from its rump. There are a great deal of cautions and concerns about radiometric dating methods and practices, and it is well covered in the mainstream literature, that is what can go wrong and what does go wrong. For the record, I don't expect that you will consider any opinion against your own as valid.

I figured you would mock the watch analogy, people always do, because it so obviously points out the falicy of evolution. No one thinks a stone arrowhead could "evolve" into existence, but the living organism that made the arrowhead, well, no problem there.

And I did read your post, thought you made some good points, but disagreed on others.

Evolution is Religion. You have supplied no proof that one species has ever been demonstrated to turn into another. Showing bones from two different species and saying one turned into another is a theory that requires proof. Not only do you need the two bones, but you have to demonstrate the source species and the destination species, or prove that species boundaries can be crossed by today's livig organisims. Starting with a fly and ending with a fly has not shown that (and I challenge the notion that the genome changes in your cited experiment to the point where it is a new species. Please supply your reference).

As for the prior issues you had with Genesis, it seems that I proved my case, because you've moved on. So I'll handle the latest one here:

Gen 2:7-22 details the creation of the first man, the creation of the first woman, the creating for man the garden paradise ("Eden"), and also talks how God led the animals to the man for the purpose of having the man name them. It mentions that God made the animals formed 'out of the ground' but doesn't say that they were created at that instant in time -- it is silent at that point on "when". No conflict there...

Anfd the thing about predictions, well, of course they're in the future. And there are many proofs in the Bible of past predictions that came true right on schedule. I think that you will remain unconvinced, but for completeness sake, consider the prophecies in Daniel or Isaiah for starters. Daniel might be easier; it is more specific and more detailed, shouldn't be too tough to understand. Especially the progression of the world powers or the 70 weeks of years (which had to do with the time the Messiah would appear and other details of his ministry.

If both evolution and creation are theories, why teach either one to children? Or why not teach both? I have no particular problem with that. Only the really weak position would argue against hearing alternatives...

Re:I have a strange feeling

[2short]

"Neither have you submitted one shred of evidence that evolution has been proved"

Indeed, I have claimed that neither evolution, nor any other scientific theory, can ever be proved. They can be disproved. They can be shown to be highly probable because they fit with a lot of different evidence. In particular, there should be a large number of facts that support them such that they would not be supported if those facts turned out a different way. My complaint is that you have not offered a single peice of evidence that supports creationism that would not support creationism if it had turned out differently. In fact, you cannot do so, because there is no such thing.

I have thrown out a number of facts that are explained by evolution. Facts you can check yourself, without having to take anyones word for it, not even an apostle. Facts that would call evolution into question if they turned out differently. For example, if I cut up a marine mammal and didn't find a hard bony skeleton, I'd worry about my theory that marine mammals evolved from land-dwellers.

"I do not believe that there are modern human skeletal remains over 6,000 years."
Then you are beyond hope. I was about to launch into explaining why you're wrong about radiocarbon dating, and note that you haven't addressed the dozen or so other dating methods that all mysteriously agree. But I won't bother; anyone capable of beleiving humanity is 6000 years old in this day and age has already closed their eyes to more than I could present.

Hell, I can't help myself: Was it possibly a creationist that bothered to radiocarbon date the rocks from Mount Saint Helens? I mean, I took one semester of geology in high school, and I could have told them they'd get a date thousands of years old (if not tens of thousands). Nobody radiocarbon dates rocks. That would be stupid. Radiocarbon dating works because cosmic rays produce C14 in the upper atmosphere, which circulates down to the lower atmosphere. You breathe it in. When you die, you stop breathing (or photosynthesizing if you're a plant), and thus stop taking in C14. C14 decays into C12 at a (statistically) predictable rate, so by looking at the percent of carbon in a previously living thing and comparing it to the fairly constant percent in the atmosphere you can figure out (within a calculable error range) how long ago the thing died. Rocks don't breathe. And volcanic eruptions throw up a whole lot of carbon (mostly in CO2) that hasn't seen the upper atmosphere in a very very long time (if ever), so it's going to be practically pure C12. Really, the only reason I can see to run a radiocarbon date on a Mount Saint Helens rock is because you know it works, so you know what you'll get, and you know you can use that to lie and say it doesn't work.

"As for the prior issues you had with Genesis, it seems that I proved my case, because you've moved on"
Yeah, when they give up in the face of your total inability to reason, it means you've convinced them. Definitely.

"And there are many proofs in the Bible of past predictions that came true right on schedule."
The Bible is not evidence for itself or anything else. Evidence is something I can go check myself.

"If both evolution and creation are theories, why teach either one to children? Or why not teach both? I have no particular problem with that.

Gravity is only a theory, should we teach that? Yes, because it is supported by all available evidence. Evolution is a theory that is supported by all available evidence. Creation is not a theory at all. It is not supported by any evidence, because it cannot be unsupported by any evidence. I've got a problem with teaching creation in science class, because it isn't science.

"Only the really weak position would argue against hearing alternatives..."
So you won't have a problem if I want to teach your children that Joe the Giant Turtle barfed up the universe last Tuesday? That's my "theory", and it has every bit as much evidence going for it as any other creationism.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Well, I agree whole-heartedly with your view that neither evolution nor creation is yet proved, according to the Scientific Method, athough there are some isolated proofs for each. I assert that, for example, that when archaeologists find cave paintings of a horses, or find a stone arrowhead, they argue it is irrefutable evidence of intelligent life. Thus, if a painting of a horse is proof of intelligent life, then what of horse itself? I realize that you do not accept this logical conclusion.

Evolution predicts that there will be common DNA (and other biological) constructs present in organisms across specie boundaries, an assertion which has been confirmed. But, the game isn't over yet. Consider this example: common programming code appears in Linux, Unix, BSD and even Windoze. While it could mean that a Solaris box evolved into a BSD box all on its own according to the precepts of natural selection, it [far more than] probably didn't. SCO argues correctly that at some point this commonality is beyond coincidence (purposefully done vs by pure happenstance). Thus, when we try to resolve how the windoze box changed to a Linux box, we look for an intelligent life cause; it is not heralded as undeniable, or even probable, proof of natural selection and Darwinian evolution.

This real-life example, which we all reject as evidence for Darwinian evolution, is rather better seen as evidence that the re-use of complex components is most likely the result of intelligent design, and not of random input filtered by some theoretical version of the Darwinian evolutionary process. The simple fact is that nothing -- outside of life and living organisms, which are by far the most complex, intertwined interdependent system we know of -- that exists for a specific purpose is credited with coming into existence on its own by evolutionists and aboigenetisists.

It's understandable why the general case opinions are thusly biased, to some extent. Peer pressure, pressure and bias from the educational system, why, even our everyday language reinforces this learned predisposition towards evolution. We commonly speak of computer programs evolving -- an improper use of the concept, as they are not synonomous in this application. Computer programs are refined, changed, re-purposed, but none of them do so as a product of natural selection. They do so as a result of artifical selection and intelligent design, which is not "evolution" at all, most certainly not in the sense we have been discussing here.

As for the rocks from St Helens, they are not dated using C14 methods. C14 works better with things that were at one time alive, but granted, the general idea is the same. Most of the errors come from the assumptions of how the tested-for compounds came to be in the sample, and also what the specific environmental concentrations were at that time (it is not constant) and a host of other details that must be assumed. The values that get assumed are influenced, of course, by preconceived notions. As for a thorough, bibliographied work on K-Ar dating methods, and the idea of "excess argon", please see http://www.icr.org/research/sa/sa-r01.htm It is a nice collection of fully accredited, contemporary (most 1990's+) resources. The upshot is that the dating model makes assumptions -- used all the time -- that are known faulty. 10 year old rock from St Helens tested to between 350,000 and 2.8 million years old. This fault has been demostrated time and again with known geologic samples from around the world with various known-by-direct-observation ages. C14 dating has similar flaws, but it is rather easier to know when a volcano last erupted then when a bone in a found in dirt mound stopped living. It is certainly not helped when the C14 assumptions are harmonized to [known-faulty] geologic dating methods.

That does not mean to say that all creation accounts are correct. All but the Bible's (that I am aware of) are written independent of time and provide no facts

Re:I have a strange feeling

[2short]

"It's understandable why the general case opinions are thusly biased, to some extent. Peer pressure, pressure and bias from the educational system, why, even our everyday language reinforces this learned predisposition towards evolution."

Before "Origin of Species" everyone beleived in creation. There was a huge bias against evolution. Evolution overcame this bias because the theory had merit. So creationists can suck it up. If your theory has merit, bias won't stop it. The fact that it has largely fallen by the wayside despite starting out with almost universal bias in its favor might be seen as an indication of its merit...

"That is why in this discussion I need -- must -- to see proof of ... species crossing specie boundaries and becoming new, viable organisims of a new kind"

Which you know you're safe from, because evolution says it will take thousands, even millions of years.

I direct you for a third time to the bony skeletons of marine mammals. Let us consider the explaination for this under three different hypotheses:

Biblical Creation: God made them that way.
Joe-The-Giant-Turtle: Joe barfed them that way.
Evolution: The distant ancestors of these creatures lived on land, and thus needed rigid skeletons.

Now let us imagine that marine mammals had skeletons of flexible cartilage, like everything else that lives exclusively in water, yet still had air-breathing lungs, like land dwellers:

Biblical Creation: God made them that way.
Joe-The-Giant-Turtle: Joe barfed them that way.
Evolution: That doesn't make sense.

See the difference? The Creationisms (whether biblical or giant turtle) work regardless of the evidence, while evolution does not. This is why evolution is a theory and creationism is not.
Bring up all the contorted reasons you like why evolution might be wrong even though it seems right. Evolution is still a theory. It may be "just" a theory, but gravity is "just a theory". Why doesn't anyone get up in arms about our teaching that bodies attract each other in proportion to their mass? Don't you think we should be teaching the alternate explanation that things fall because God makes them fall, that planets orbit the sun because that's where God wants them to be? Gravity is just a theory after all, it's never been proved.

Certainly evolution should be taught as a theory, just like gravity should be taught as a theory. Creationism is not a theory, and should not be taught as one.

Re:I have a strange feeling

[CaptainFrito]

Interesting thoughts. Although this points out one of the original issues with the "solar system fossils."

I direct you for a third time to the bony skeletons of marine mammals. Let us consider the explaination for this under three different hypotheses:

Biblical Creation: God made them that way.

Joe-The-Giant-Turtle: Joe barfed them that way.

Evolution: The distant ancestors of these creatures lived on land, and thus needed rigid skeletons.

I think your comparison breaks down under logic and reason. Here's a slight re-wording: Why do mobile computers have their own display screens?

Intelligent Creation: Engineers made them that way according to the present need.

Joe-The-Giant-Turtle: Joe barfed them that way.

Evolution: The distant ancestors of these computers were located near CRT's, and thus did not need displays. The mobile ones realized they would become extinct without integrated displays, and so they were filtered, not by random chance but by natural selection.

Now, before you scoff, give this some thought. The planet earth and all its living things are profoundly interdependent, and operate in perfect balance if left alone. We see this all the time, and is why man has decided to leave parts of the earth, large parts, operating without their intervention. This equilibrium is hard to account for in evolution, especially if one must reconcile it with all the other elemental sub-theories of evolution. For a tree to "evolve" because it senses the need for less carbon dioxide and more oxygen for all the other living things is certainly no easier to imagine than the desktop/laptop scenario above. When applied to anything other than life, evolution sounds nonsensical, even to evolutionists.

I do disagree that various creationism accounts are not theories. Some have been disproved, others lack enough detail to bring them beyond hypothesis stage. But, speaking of what I know well, the Bible's account is in general agreement with the archaeological evidence, enough that, as a historical record, it is considered to be among the best. As for the general discussion of creation, it too survives scrutiny of truly unbiased reviewers. The Bible correctly detailed for example, that the earth is a sphere and is suspended in space, many centuries before it was "discovered" by science.

But to be a valid theory, it must predict something that can be proved in the future. Evolution predicts that species change from one to another based on random changes filtered by a deterministic process (natural selection). The argument that evolution is "unprovable" because of the timespans involved, and thus self-evidenct is a nonsequitur. Now, archaeological evidence is that new species explode onto the scene over relative short periods of time, and then stabilize for a [relatively] long period of time, likely because of abrupt environmental changes -- "puntuated equilibrium." So, it predicts that we should see a sudden explosion of new species at some point. Okay, simple enough, let's test it (Scientific Method). Bio-dome an ecosystem and then change the environment: heat, light, soil composition, basic mixtures of chemicals and compunds in the general non-living environment. Good, now let's go and see all the new species. If, alas, there are none, then I would submit prima facie that the theory is horked, back to the hypothesis stage.

Creation -- in particular, the Bible's creation account -- details enough about creation to establish this point: it is the work of an intelligent creator, who chooses to be called [literally] "He Causes to Become." The account provides much more detail about man's fall from perfection than creation's howto's, and then makes bold predictions on what the outcome will be. All this is contained in the first three chapters of the Genesis account. At some point, creation theory, as proposed in the pages of the Bible predict the rebuilding of human society under a government run, not

Creation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Creation, you say? Interesting...

What can we do with them

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we invade them for oil? take over their population, oust their government and continue to wage war on their surface for another decade?

no?

pfft. what use are they then?

Re:What can we do with them

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the fuck did I mention iraq?

zealots read what I say and their messed up guilty minds add their own meanings on top of it. couldn't help yourself could you.

Re:What can we do with them

[pubjames]

Despite certain false claims put out by the left-wing media, that is not what is happening in Iraq (where oil had nothing to do with it).

That's right. It was actually because Saddam was in league with Bin Laden in the plotting of the Sept11 atrocity ...

That's apparently what 70% of Americans believe according to a recent poll. Forgive us in the rest of the world for being a bit cynical and believing the American public has been deceived by its administration and media.

Re:What can we do with them

[Anonymous Coward]

So what was the reason then?

Re:What can we do with them

[popeyethesailor]

I for one welcome our Useless Icy Floating rock overlords.

Re:What can we do with them

[Anonymous Coward]

You are SO right. Its not about the oil. Its about the military contracts for haliburton. (over 30% of the total cost of the war thus far. munitions included)

Re:What can we do with them

[Cyno]

no?

Well what use are they then? I agree with the parent, hubble should be looking for more oil to improve the economy! That's why we built the thing, isn't it?

Re:What can we do with them

[Black Parrot]

> what oil have we taken?

Moot point, since most of it is still in the ground or else spilling into a big burning puddle where a pipeline used to be.

> i for one am sick of listening to you spineless jackasses try to justify not supporting this war and trying to save face by making up motives for us.

Quit your republican fantasizing. I didn't support the war, don't support it now, and am proud of both facts. I don't feel the slightest need to save face, except when I tell people I'm an American. (But I can easily save face by pointing out that I voted against Bush in both the primary and the general election, so I can save face without making anything up.)

But apparently a lot of people who did support it feel a need to save face, since they're making up yarns about humanitarian intentions to cover the glaring absence of the WMDs and terrorist connections that were used to justify it.

Re: What can we do with them

[Black Parrot]

> i dont care if he knew bin laden. the mass murder was enough for me to support kickin saddam out.

Shouldn't we have invaded the Congo first?

Interesting...

[Azadre]

The objects reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, which houses a swarm of icy rocks that are leftover building blocks, or "planetesimals," from the solar system's creation.

Why are the scientists sure that the Kuiper Belt holds reminants of the big bang? Comets are made of ice, but they aren't considered building blocks. This is interesting nonetheless and I hope we can use this to help prove(or disprove) a theory or two.

Re:Interesting...

[boesOne]

Not remnants of the BigBang, remnants of the first days of our solar system.
The intresting part of the search was the discovery of lots of big icy rocks there compared to the relatively very low amounts of small ones.
Its not yet known why there is a lack of the small rocks..

Re:Interesting...

[snake_dad]

Why are the scientists sure that the Kuiper Belt holds reminants of the big bang? Comets are made of ice, but they aren't considered building blocks. This is interesting nonetheless and I hope we can use this to help prove(or disprove) a theory or two.

First, creation of the solar system happened about 10 billion year later than the big bang. Second, planets do not just magically appear, they slowly form when smaller particles and rocks lump together because of either gravity or impact. Therefore small blocks of "ice" can be considered building blocks.

Re:Interesting...

[JoeRobe]

Actually, comets are considered building blocks of the solar system. That's why there's a large push from NASA and the ESA to send spacecraft to comets and land on them and/or gather samples from them. Here are a few links:

Stardust

Contour (failed)

Rosetta (to be launched)

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Therefore small blocks of "ice" can be considered building blocks.

NASA can come study my freezer in that case. It'll save them money.

Size of Philadelphia

[bartyboy]

In case you didn't read it, the article says:

"The three small objects the astronomers spotted - given the prosaic names 2003 BF91, 2003 BG91 and 2003 BH91 - range in size from 15 to 28 miles

Hence the size of Philadelphia varies from 15 to 28 miles. Oh, and Philadelphia is a also an irregular sphere.

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[John_Booty]

They may be roughly the same size as Philadelphia, but I'm sure they'll win a Stanley Cup before WE do.

Not that I'm a jaded Philadelphia fan or anything...

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[digidave]

But how many elephants is that?

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong audience dude, the people here want it in LOCs.

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[tcdk]

My first thought was to try it in googles calculator:

1 cubic Philadelphia in cubic meters

Didn't work though...

I love these invented-for-the-moment units.

The next time I need to order something I'll try make up my own and wait with excitement for what I'll get. Use an area unit for a room mesurement must give bonus points (and vise-versa).

"Hello, I would like 10 keyboard units of sand, please".

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[EvilTwinSkippy]

It one of the standard canonical Astronomical units:

• Breadboxes (0.25 m)
• Elephants (3.0 m)
• Empire State Buildings (443.2 m)
• Philadelphia (40 km)
• Texas (1600 km)
• Radius of the Earth (6400 km)
• Light Second (299,792.458 km)
• Distance from the Earth to the Sun (149,597,870.691 km)
• Light Year (9.461 e+15 m)
• Parsec - (3.016 e+16m)

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[G-funk]

But how many volkswagons per library of congress is it travelling at?

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[catman]

Sooner or later someone will go to have a look
at the rocks. Perhaps they will find that -
".. on the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[PetoskeyGuy]

We need to put this into units people can understand.

I was planning on posting an answer myself, but my math skills are a little rusty. Does anyone remember the fomula's for Elephant Packing an Irregular Sphere?

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[ShavenYak]

Hence the size of Philadelphia varies from 15 to 28 miles.

Did you notice this fact?

The results of the search were announced by a group led by Gary Bernstein of the University of Pennsylvania

I imagine if it had been an MIT group, they would have said the objects were the size of Massachusetts. Thank heavens they weren't from Alaska!

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hello, I would like 10 keyboard units of sand, please".

Err, ok... whatever you say, sir. You do know buyer pays shipping, don't you sir?

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[ccnull]

Hmmm, the story is from the University of Pennsylvania and the objects are coincidentally the size of Philadelphia? Sorry, but I smell a pretty hefty conspiracy here!

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[Bohnanza]

Last winter, Philadelphia was more or less just a lump of ice and rock anyway.

Re:Size of Philadelphia

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooner or later someone will go to have a look
at the rocks. Perhaps they will find that -
".. on the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."


I find that rather difficult to believe

creation of the solar system

[jlemmerer]

I would fond it interesting how the scientists can be sure that there objects have originated when our solar system was created. Wouldn't it be also possible that the asteroids traveled vast distances, having originated in stellar events far away, and eventually gor captured by sub's gravity? This would be even more interesting for us, wouldn't it. I just would like to know if it would be feasible to launch a probe to one of those objects, as to look of what materials it is composed. But can you hit an object that small across this distance and, even more land a probe safely there?

Re:creation of the solar system

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be also possible that the asteroids traveled vast distances, having originated in stellar events far away, and eventually gor captured by sub's gravity

Because the universe is big, really really really big, our solar system in contrast is really really small. A grenade blast fragment from New York hitting an ant in Sydney more likely as an object from Andromeda making it to Sol. I'm sure it is possible for some mater to be trans-stellar in orgin, but I would *guess* they would be isolated chunks of ice/rock in big eliptical orbits, far less circular then a planatary orbit.

Re:creation of the solar system

[Timesprout]

They are sending one to have a look around in 2006 but it will take a few years to get there.

Re:creation of the solar system

[snake_dad]

They are sending one to have a look around in 2006 but it will take a few years to get there.

This New Horizons mission was hit by a big funding cut early this year, although that decision has now been reversed. However it is still not certain that the mission is going to happen, which is a shame because this really is a mission to go where none has gone before...

Re:creation of the solar system

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. What really gets me is the ridiculous expenditure involved in getting people up there when the money could be FAR more usefully spent in both the sending of unmanned craft and the research into making unmanned craft more effective (both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial)

Re:creation of the solar system

[ramk13]

Can't you say something about the origin because of the orbit of the rock and the other rocks around it? Isn't it unlikely that all the rocks in the belt entered the sun's orbit from the same direction with and with the same velocity? If not, they'd be orbiting all over the place, like comets, not organized in a neat belt.

Re:creation of the solar system

[Anonymous Coward]

In short.... No.

Re:creation of the solar system

[Eccles]

I would fond it interesting how the scientists can be sure that there objects have originated when our solar system was created.

I doubt they can truly have a 99.9% confidence level, but the orbital patten would probably be a strong indicator. A relatively circular orbit in the plane of the planets may be their indicator.

I just would like to know if it would be feasible to launch a probe to one of those objects, as to look of what materials it is composed.

It would take a long time (consider that we're talking about distances close to where Pioneer and Voyager are, and consider when they were launched), and the extremely low gravity would mean that such a probe would have to carry considerable fuel to slow itself down as it neared the object, and to make course corrections.

Re:creation of the solar system

[gustgr]

We can not be sure about landing a probe safely in Mars, which is our neighboor. I think doing that sucessfully on the 'strange objects near Neptune' will be a little more difficult.

Welcome !

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new Plutonian overlords. We are very thankful that our new rulers did not come from Uranus.

Expected more

[KingRob]

The article goes on to say:
"Discovering many fewer Kuiper Belt Objects than was predicted makes it difficult to understand how so many comets appear near Earth since many comets were thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt," ... "This is a sign that perhaps the smaller planetesimals have been shattered into dust by colliding with each other over the past few billion years."
Wasn't there a NASA theory about space junk threshold and how big bits collide and divide into smaller bits which in turn divide etc...
could this be what happened at the edge of our Solar System?

"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[mirko]

Excuse me, Sir :
In Armageddon, the meteor was "as big as Texas", now, this one is "roughly the size of Philadelphia".
Now, for the non-US guys here, could you translate ?

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[Anonymous Coward]

The metric equivalents are

Texas : Think 21 Million Fat Americans

Philadelphia: Think 6 Million Fat Americans

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, Sir :
In Armageddon, the meteor was "as big as Texas", now, this one is "roughly the size of Philadelphia".
Now, for the non-US guys here, could you translate ?

About the size of a quarter billion elephants. HTH.

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[Zocalo]

That's roughly 6,000 to 11,000 elephants. Or would you prefer it in something more sensible like the "15 to 28 miles" (24 to 45 km) mentioned in the article?

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[John_Booty]

What's worse?

a. Americans who use geo-centric descriptions like "roughly the size of Philadelphia
-or-
b. People from the rest of the world who don't bother to read the article and find out the actual size of the objects and instead simply bitch about the geo-centric descriptions?

Actually, the answer is actually:
c. People like me who live in the Philadelphia suburbs but have no idea how big the city actually is in terms of miles/km/whatever.

/me thumps self over head with brick; passes out :P

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[spektr]

That's roughly 6,000 to 11,000 elephants.

You mean 0.03 to 0.055 fluffy cumulous units or 65 to 120 little clouds? This is a gross underestimation I think. Has to be rather around 20 fluffies I feel. Can a NASA engineer appove these numbers?

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[slackr]

Uh, actually isn't the problem more that we're using geographic references to two-dimensional areas in descriptions of 3-dimensional objects? In other words, even we Americans (and I a Philadelphian, as a matter of fact) have to wonder how deep is Philadelphia??

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Actually it's not a US centric thing. The machines first awoke at the University of Pennsylvania in the form of Eniac. Ever since they have been conspiring to make Philadelphia the center of the Universe. Just look at the disproportionate number of news stories about Philly on Fark.

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[RCO]

Based on my experience, I would have to say that Philly is probably just as shallow as the rest of the US.

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[hesiod]

> Texas : Think 21 Million Fat Americans
> Philadelphia: Think 6 Million Fat Americans

So Texas is less than four times the size of Philadelphia? Granted, I've never been to Texas, but that seems a bit off. (I can ruin any joke)

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[hesiod]

> Philly is probably just as shallow as the rest of the US.

Mod Up, that's damned funny.

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[hal9000]

/me thumps self over head with brick; passes out :P

That's one less ignorant suburbanite to poison the city I love. :-D

Re:"roughly the size of Philadelphia"

[Rand Race]

Somethiong sensible would be mass, not volume or surface area.

Slashdot Effect

[Cavalkaf]

I hope this helps....

Contact: Steve Bradt bradt@pobox.upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania

Solar system 'fossils' discovered by Hubble Telescope

PHILADELPHIA -- Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered three of the faintest and smallest objects ever detected beyond Neptune. Each lump of ice and rock is roughly the size of Philadelphia and orbits just beyond Neptune and Pluto, where they may have rested since the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. The objects reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, which houses a swarm of icy rocks that are leftover building blocks, or "planetesimals," from the solar system's creation.

The results of the search were announced by a group led by Gary Bernstein of the University of Pennsylvania at today's meeting of NASA's Division of Planetary Sciences in Monterey, Calif.

The study's big surprise is that so few Kuiper Belt members were discovered. With Hubble's exquisite resolution, Bernstein and his co-workers expected to find at least 60 Kuiper Belt members as small as 10 miles in diameter -- but only three were discovered. "Discovering many fewer Kuiper Belt Objects than was predicted makes it difficult to understand how so many comets appear near Earth since many comets were thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt," said Bernstein, associate professor of physics and astronomy at Penn. "This is a sign that perhaps the smaller planetesimals have been shattered into dust by colliding with each other over the past few billion years." Bernstein and his colleagues used Hubble to look for planetesimals that are much smaller and fainter than can be seen from ground-based telescopes. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys was pointed at a region in the constellation Virgo over a 15-day period in January and February. A bank of 10 computers on the ground worked for six months searching for faint moving spots in the Hubble images. The three small objects the astronomers spotted - given the prosaic names 2003 BF91, 2003 BG91 and 2003 BH91 - range in size from 15 to 28 miles and are the smallest objects ever found beyond Neptune. At their current locations, these objects are a billion times fainter than the dimmest objects visible to the naked eye. But an icy body of this size that escapes the Kuiper Belt to wander near the sun can become visible from Earth as a comet as the wandering body starts to evaporate and form a surrounding cloud. Astronomers are probing the Kuiper Belt because the region offers a window on the early history of our solar system. The planets formed more than 4 billion years ago from a cloud of gas and dust that surrounded the infant sun. Microscopic bits of ice and dust stuck together to form lumps that grew from pebbles to boulders to city- or continent-sized planetesimals. The known planets and moons are the result of collisions between planetesimals. In most of the solar system, all of the planetesimals have either been absorbed into planets or ejected into interstellar space, destroying the traces of the early days of the solar system. Around 1950, Gerard Kuiper and Kenneth Edgeworth proposed that in the region beyond Neptune there are no planets capable of ejecting the leftover planetesimals, so there should be a zone, now called the Kuiper Belt, filled with small, icy bodies. Despite many years of searching, the first was not discovered until 1992; nearly 1,000 have since been discovered from telescopes on the ground. Most astronomers now believe that Pluto, discovered in 1930, is in fact a member of the Kuiper Belt. Astronomers now use the Kuiper Belt to learn about the history of the solar system, much as paleontologists use fossils to study early life. Each event that affected the outer solar system -- such as possible gravitational disturbances from passing stars or long-vanished planets -- is frozen into the properties of the Kuiper Belt members that we see today.

If the Hubble telescope could search the entire sky, it would find perhaps a half-million pla

Re: Slashdot Effect

[Black Parrot]

> I hope this helps....

Well, it certainly helped your karma...

Re:Slashdot Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Steve gets called Brad alot...

Religious zealots on the atheist side, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have the same issue with people like you who assume God didn't create everything."

Or people like the original poster who can twist any subject into a platform to bash people who do not have the same religious views as the poster.

Re:Religious zealots on the atheist side, too.

[Shaklee39]

Or maybe because science has proven time and time again to be accurate while religious claims aim for something so far-fetched that it cannot ever be proven. Bashing people is one thing, having no evidence but taking everything on "faith" is another.

Re:Religious zealots on the atheist side, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bashing people is one thing, having no evidence but taking everything on "faith" is another."

Yet, those of the Atheist faith do just this.

"....religious claims aim for something so far-fetched that it cannot ever be proven"

There is no reason that certain claims cannot be proven or disproven.

" Or maybe because science has proven time and time again to be accurate"

Do you know anything about the history of science? If you did, you will know that science is often proven time and again to be inaccurate, and things are revised. Look at "spontaneous generation" (barnacle geese) and phrenology.

Re:Religious zealots on the atheist side, too.

[gpinzone]

There is no reason that certain claims cannot be proven or disproven.

Okay, prove a miracle was indeed a miracle and not some kind of misunderstanding or natural phenomenon. Any miracle at all.

Re:Religious zealots on the atheist side, too.

[clarkc3]

I have faith that God was the ultimiate mathemitician/physicist - how else could he have written the laws of nature

Re: Religious zealots on the atheist side, too.

[Black Parrot]

> Do you know anything about the history of science? If you did, you will know that science is often proven time and again to be inaccurate, and things are revised. Look at "spontaneous generation" (barnacle geese) and phrenology.

Neither the belief in spontaneous generation nor phrenology were the product of science. Spontaneous generation was an ancient belief about where maggots and mice come from, and phrenology was the ignorant conception of a German physician, neither derived from nor supported by scientific enquiry.

Re: Religious zealots on the atheist side, too.

[CaptainFrito]

The breadth and depth of your lack of knowledge about science and the scientific method are awe-inspiring.

Science is a process of involving the quest for the true way something works, mainly involving stepwise refinement of theories until they can be proved through experimentation to be correct.

If a theory turns out to be false, it doesn't mean it was never "science" in the first place. Such a statement is idiotic. Once a theory emerges as proven correct via the scientific method, it can be considered fact, until otherwise disproven by a more rigorous application of the scientific method (e.g., cold fusion).

Your sad condition is probably due to a lack of a university degree, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. Thats it! Your theme song should be "If I Only Had a Brain..."

No Blood for Neptune!

[Anonymous Coward]

" Where the fuck did I mention iraq?"

The handful of protesters and their allies in the left-wing media made quite clear their idea that the retaliation against Iraqi aggression was really "invading them for oil".

Guilty mind? What is there to be guilty about!

Re:No Blood for Neptune!

[Anonymous Coward]

What Iraqi agression?

We said, "Let the inspectors in." They did; the inspectors found nothing. We said, "Let the inspectors take your scientists out of the country for further questioning." They did nothing; we invaded. Where is this "agression" of which you speak?

Re:No Blood for Neptune!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because 20 years of a mentally unstable dictator blocking out U.N. weapons inspectors doesn't make anyone worried that he might be doing something... rash.

I know you may believe that there was no aggression, but there is something called 'Passive Aggression', and THAT is what was being displayed by S.H.

Trying to paint the Iraqi Leadership as poor innocent bistanders who got bullied by big, bad America seems to me to be an ignorant and uninformed stance.

Re:No Blood for Neptune!

[Anonymous Coward]

dont bother, these are the same people who would wonder why bush didn't do anything if saddam did attack someone. go hug a tree.

Re:No Blood for Neptune!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to further the O/T trollishness here, but invasion necessarily implies aggression, does it not

Re:No Blood for Neptune!

[cas2000]

> Where is this "agression" of which you speak?

they clearly demonstrated their agression and expansionist/imperialist designs by having obscenely large numbers of their children die from leukaemia caused by the depleted uranium shells left behind by America in the 1991 Gulf War.

Also, half a million dead due to the US-sponsored UN sanctions against Iraq just proves how evil Iraqis are. if they weren't evil, we wouldn't be slaughtering them, would we?

if you believe any of the above, here's some more "truth" for you:

might makes right
fox news
war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
arbeit macht frei

those of you who are offended by the above lies might like to take a look at http://www.studentsfororwell.org/

For you non-US guys

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now, for the non-US guys here, could you translate ?"

That's roughly 5 miles wide, give or take a few feet. Weighs a lot of hogs-heads too. If you hold on, I can get you the measurements in furlongs.

Aha!

[Fex303]

So that's where Darl McBride and the rest of SCO are from!

Re:Aha!

[spektr]

So that's where Darl McBride and the rest of SCO are from!

Philadelphia?

Re:Aha!

[glenebob]

No no, it's where they're headed.

Re:Aha!

[xphread]

No, closer to Uranus!

Better check the Hubbard

[Anonymous Coward]

Hadn't we better start checking what we see in that Hubbard Telescope?

Comets

[Nyphur]

Comets are as much the remnants of the formation of teh solar system as the belt is. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the belt is in face a string of comets whicha re being held in place by centripetal forces. Asteroid belts and such tend to hang around for that very reason. It's the natural order of things. Everything is in a constant state of transition and by definition, once it reaches a more stable state, it is inclined not to leave that state, but remain in a state of stability. Thus, when the comets which reach the state of being in this belt, they are in a mroe stable state and tend to stay in it, compelled by the centripetal force to orbit regularly. Other comets which don't reach that state are more likely to collide with planets and such, since the stable belt is mainly stable due to the non-interferance of other spatial bodies such as the gravity of planets and their moons or other comets or meteors, asteroidsa and the other celestial "brik-a-brak" floating around in space. So when they are in the belt, they tend to remain in the belt and not to collide and be subsequently absorbed by planets and such. That's why we see these belts. They have stood the test of time. There are so many comets out there that if it weren't for these glimpses into the huge belts that lie in and outside of our solar system, we could nearly assume that the comets are as dense everywhere. Of course, that's not true because planets and moons invariably have gravity which attracts them, which is why you'll see quite a large number of craters on planets and very few regular comets which come close to them. Maybe that's why it's such a big occasion for us, when a regular comet like Halley's comet. Well, that's just my 0.02 money units.

Re:Comets

[Nyphur]

I appologise for the lack of paragraphing. I really did paragraph it, but I forgot to add the br tags. I should preview in future

Space Hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

" They may be roughly the same size as Philadelphia, but I'm sure they'll win a Stanley Cup before WE do. "

But of course. They will change the face of the NHL forever, as they have had millions of years of hockey experience: these icey planetoids are really nothing but hockey rinks.

In other news, Mike Illitch has launched a space probe that is expected to drop a dead octopus on one of these icy surfaces by the year 2017.

Pluto express..

[adeyadey]

This could be bad news for the New Horizons (Pluto-Kuiper Belt) mission, which plans to visit some as-yet undiscovered Kuiper belt objects after swinging by Pluto - but if there are a lot fewer than first thought..

Discovering many fewer Kuiper Belt Objects than was predicted makes it difficult to understand how so many comets appear near Earth since many comets were thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt,..

Re:Pluto express..

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Or worse, it's a dust cloud resulting from Kupier belt objects that collided with each other over the billions of years. Single objects you could avoid, but how would you like to slam into a sandstorm at 26,000 mph?

I didn't see it stated, but is this cloud expected to lie in the orbital plane only, or does it envelope the Solar System like a sphere? If the latter, and it is a dust cloud, it could make extra-system exploration very difficult...

Re:Pluto express..

[adeyadey]

If the cloud was that dense, wouldnt Voyager I/II have hit it? They are still working fine..

Unit conversion

[Anonymous Coward]

Each lump of ice and rock is roughly the size of Philadelphia

Does the Google calculator convert between Philadelphia's and metric units for us non-Americans? :P

Re:Unit conversion

[sakarada]

Why bother, google is far more advanced than this. When it can acuratly calculate "the answer to life the universe and everything" why would you bother which such trivial conversions.

Re: Unit conversion

[Black Parrot]

> Does the Google calculator convert between Philadelphia's and metric units for us non-Americans?

It's 1,000 milliPhillys.

Because it is true

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's right. It was actually because Saddam was in league with Bin Laden in the plotting of the Sept11 atrocity ...That's apparently what 70% of Americans believe according to a recent poll"

The bad thing is that it is not 100%.

"Forgive us in the rest of the world for being a bit cynical and believing the American public has been deceived by its administration and media."

That are just cynical because they do not know the facts.

Re:Because it is true

[pubjames]

That are just cynical because they do not know the facts.

You mean the type of facts that don't have any supporting evidence? The current administration in the USA seems to like those type of facts.

Re:Because it is true

[Anonymous Coward]

"You mean the type of facts that don't have any supporting evidence?"

No, the facts that have overwhelming proof, of course.

"The current administration in the USA seems to like those type of facts."

You have this administration confused with the last one. The current one is truthful. But, fear not, Howard Mujaha-Dean is campaigning hard to make sure that get a liar back in the white house in 2004.

Re:Because it is true

[Troed]

The bad thing is that it is not 100%.

... because ... why? You want 100% of americans to appear clueless?

The US government readily admits that they've found no connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda - as do others.

Re:Because it is true

[Anonymous Coward]

Condalisa? Is that you?

Re:Because it is true

[Anonymous Coward]

I can show you many sources inside and outside the US government.

Really? You can show demonstrable facts that link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda from reliable sources? Please post your evidence, I am genuinely interested.

I can supply evidence of the British Prime Minister and ally of the USA, Tony Blair, saying there is no link. Also other presidents of other countries. Also people within the intelligence communities of both the USA and other countries. Please supply your evidence.

You sell them crap..

[Anonymous Coward]

Coca-cola , McDonalds etc until they get all nice and fat.

To stop terrorism, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

To stop terrorism, of course, as Saddam Hussein was a major source of it. Anti-imperialism was also a goal too, given Saddam's track record of attacking neighboring countries with the goal of annexing them. (he still claimed Kuwait as his own land, and still was committed to the goal of conquest of Israel and extermination of the Israelis).

Re:To stop terrorism, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-imperialism was also a goal too

!

I don't think I need comment on this.

Re: To stop terrorism, of course

[Black Parrot]

> To stop terrorism, of course, as Saddam Hussein was a major source of it.

The sad irony is that the only terrorists operating out of Iraq were the Ansar al Islam, which arose in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region under the no-fly zone, and could not have existed without American bombers to hold Saddam in check. (FYI, terrorists hated Saddam almost as bad as they hate us.)

> Anti-imperialism was also a goal too, given Saddam's track record of attacking neighboring countries with the goal of annexing them.

Novel concept: combat imperialism by overthrowing other governments and setting up your own in their place. I suppose we should applaud the Romans for fighting imperialism in their many wars with the Parthians, Sassinids, and various Hellenistic empires.

> (he still claimed Kuwait as his own land, and still was committed to the goal of conquest of Israel and extermination of the Israelis).

He certainly wasn't making much progress at those goals, was he. If we're going to deploy force against big-talking fuckwits, Saddam is far from the only person who needed to worry about it. Yet somehow I'm missing all the others in the news...

Re: To stop terrorism, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

"The sad irony is that the only terrorists operating out of Iraq were the Ansar al Islam"

A blatant lie. Or are you just talking about stuff you know nothing about? You forget a certain terrorist named Saddam Hussein, was funding terrorism against Israel, and ordering assassinations of foreign diplomats. He also tried to assassinate a former US president, but I guess that is OK since you did not like that president.

"Novel concept: combat imperialism by overthrowing other governments and setting up your own in their place."

It is not novel, it is tried and true in instances where the government to be overthrown is extremely aggressive and refuses to stop attacking other countries. This is exactly what happened to Japan and Germany after WW2, and in these cases as with Iraq it was anti-imperialism to stop these aggressive governments.

"I suppose we should applaud the Romans for fighting imperialism in their many wars with the Parthians, Sassinids, and various Hellenistic empires."

No, they were fomenting imperialism, not creating it. You cannot find one actual example of US imperialism since before WW2.

Philadelphia?

[Dazhel]

...Each lump of ice and rock is roughly the size of Philadelphia...

Yeah but how much would they weigh at sea level in metric elephants?

Re:Philadelphia?

[tinrobot]

If they're from Philadelphia, they would weigh a lot more than normal asteroids.

It's all the cheese steaks, you know...

Re:Philadelphia?

[bourne]

Yeah but how much would they weigh at sea level in metric elephants?

African or European?

Philadelphia

[jalet]

How large is this in Libraries of Congress ?

Re:Philadelphia

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Library of Congress is a unit of information storage. Its somewhere in the Terabytes range.

In other news

[OpenSourcerer]

The objects reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, which houses a swarm of icy rocks that are leftover building blocks...

In other news, Bob Vila will be demonstrating how to build a solar system from scrap in his series This Old House. Also, a hotel chain in Sweden has threatened to sue God for patent infringement citing illegal use of icy blocks for construction.

Media Size Scale

[Sr. Zezinho]

Official Media Size Scale:

• 1 - VW Beetle
• 2 - Schoolbus
• 3 - Football Field
• 4 - Philadelphia
• 5 - Texas
• 6 - ??????
• 7 - Profit!

Re:Media Size Scale

[Photon Ghoul]

You forgot elephants.

Re:Media Size Scale

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Elephants have replaced VW beetles. It's getting harder to find beetles. Besides, most English speakers (by population) live in India.

wow!

[-noefordeg-]

"The objects reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt"

So?... They found slightly bigger rocks between all the other rocks?

Re:wow!

[glenebob]

Earth shattering, isn't it? The scientific community has been rocked by this far out and chilling news.

Not big bang. Our sun is 2nd generation.

[MickLinux]

The reminants of the big bang (or universal black hole collapse, as I like to think of it... but that's nonstandard) would be the background radiation, nothing more.

After the big bang, you had the cooling out of our different forces, the formation of subatomic particles, the formation of Hydrogen atoms, and then the formation of giant stars.

Those stars all exploded long ago, creating the wealth of other elements that we see today. Life may or may not have formed at that time, but if it did, it is my guess that all such lifeforms would have been destroyed in the supernovaes of the first generation of stars. Our solar system formed from the exploded remains of one or more of those.

All of which makes these fossils impressively old, the moreso because it is not inconcievable to me that bacteria could predate planetary formation. It would indeed be interesting to look at them, and see what we see.

What an anti-climax.

[mantera]

"Solar System Fossils Found By Hubble"
When I saw this in my newsfeed I thought they'd found an alien fish or lizard.

Re:What an anti-climax.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

No, just the cast of Space Cowboys

Re:What an anti-climax.

[glenebob]

Yeah, but you DID get an anti-climax from reading slashdot. All I got was icey disappointment.

Well, this could be a potential goldmine...

[Channard]

.. for anyone with a Cobra, a mining laser and a fuel scoop. I'm sure we'll be seeing chunks being sold off online. With 'OMG! BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM! WOW!' listings on E-Bay fifty years from now. Each with their own certificates of authenticity, of course.

Re:Well, this could be a potential goldmine...

[ReadErr]

Don't forget the Cargo Scoop Conversion, or you'll blow up trying to scoop up the minerals.

Re:Good. then don't comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the US administration be strongly opposed to US imperialism ?

Imagine...

[MarcQuadra]

A BeetleWulf cluster made out of these!

Millions of beetle-sized rocks hurtling through space in our direction to the tune of the 'Pods Unite' commercial (Light & Day by the Polyphonic Spree).

conversion probs

[r3n0x]

So how much does that weigh in clouds?

Re:Good. then don't comment

[Anonymous Coward]

" Why would the US administration be strongly opposed to US imperialism ?"

It certainly is. That is why there is no US imperialism since before World War 2.

solar system is one messy ass place

[gelfling]

When I was a kid there were 9 planets, the asteriod belt a few moons and we were happy with it. Now with this new fangled Hubble stuff they're finding new spitwads everyother damn day. This ones' the size of Bangor Maine, that one's the result of two K Mart parking lot sized iceballs crashing into each other. What the f---?

Re:solar system is one messy ass place

[BgJonson79]

Bagor... I hardly know her!!

LOL

[dnixon112]

Very funny :D Keys to making a funny post on /. 1. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of funny posts 2. In Soviet Russia funny posts make you! 3. I for one welcome our funny posting overlords... 4. ??? 5. Profit!!

Another planet?

[Alif]

It seems than it is an indication of an another planet. What else could kick out the commets from the Belt if there are so few of the candidates? I wander if this possibility is excluded from gravitational influences on Pluto's trajectory.

Semi Offtopic mass summation and star birth

[theolein]

I just wondered while reading this article, for no particular reason, what it would take to make Jupiter (or any massive gas giant circling a star) gain enough mass to ignite into a star? The collision of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with Jupiter? The sum of all the rest mass of all the solar system? I was wondering this as I'm tired as hell and not thinking clearly and came across the thought that that could be how binary and ternary stellar systems are created: With a gas giant gaining enough mass (Jupiter acts as a giant comet screen for the inner planets in any case) to eventually ignite.

Re:Semi Offtopic mass summation and star birth

[Eccles]

According to Wikipedia, Jupiter is 2.5x as massive as the other planets combined, so they probably wouldn't have much effect on pushing Jupiter towards being a star.

Extrasolar planets (planets discovered around stars other than our sun) have been found with masses estimated as much as 11 times that of Jupiter, so that would seem to indicate you need quite a few Jupiter-sized planets to create a star.

Misnomer

[g_goblin]

Were any of you under the impression they might have found fossils of organisms not of some rock?

I challenge the idea of calling these fossils. If that is the case, I have a bunch of fossils in my driveway.

no, it does not

[Anonymous Coward]

" Not to further the O/T trollishness here, but invasion necessarily implies aggression, does it not"

Not if the invasion is in retaliation for repeated attacks.

Or do you also think that the allies were aggressive during the 1940s when they pushed the Nazis past the German border?

As big as Philly

[bilsaysthis]

But are the cheesesteaks any good?

Re:Good. then don't comment

[hesiod]

> It certainly is. That is why there is no US imperialism since before World War 2.

Pfft, don't cloud the argument with facts! Let us continue with our ignorant use of the word "imperialism" without anything to back it up! What's wrong with you, man?

From the horse's mouth

[Gary Bernstein]

Some answers to posted questions from the one who did the research & wrote the press release:

How do we know these things came from our Solar System and not another one? The response about the directions of orbits is good; all the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and all the known planets orbit in the same direction around the Sun. Wouldn't happen if things were falling in randomly, so almost certainly reflects the rotation of the disk of gas & dust from which our solar system formed. Also, why would it be any easier to make a chunk of ice/rock around another star and have it accidentally caught be our star thousands of light years away, then to just make it around our star? There are grains of dust moving through our Solar System that appear to come from interstellar space, but no big chunks.

Another posts said that comets are the true fossils; in fact short-period comets (including the ones targeted by the spacecraft) are believed to be escapees from the Kuiper Belt. Comets are being evaporated by the Sun (that's why they look so big, they have clouds around them) and so they'll evaporate to nothing but rubble in 10,000 years or so. Not very long by astronomy standards. So there must be unborn comets in "cold storage" somewhere far from the Sun.

The New Horizons mission to Pluto & Kuiper Belt object(s) is alive & kicking. Our discovery means it will be a little harder to find a Kuiper Belt target for them to hit, but it should still be possible. There probably is a dust cloud associated with the Kuiper Belt (debris from collisions), which is doughnut-shaped, but this cloud is not very dense and won't be a threat to the spacecraft. Space is very empty, even in a "crowded" neighborhood like the inner Solar System.

Re:From the horse's mouth

[JamesGoldman]

Gary, I've always wondered just how an object in a stable orbit that far out could suddenly fall towards the Sun in such an elongated trajectory. This may be somewhat offtopic for this article, but could you shed any light on that?

Re:From the horse's mouth

[Gary Bernstein]

There are two general possibilities here, and we don't know which is more important. First, the orbits aren't really stable---the entire solar system is chaotic, but the instabilities can take billions of years to manifest themselves. The KBO orbits can slowly evolve to become Neptune-crossing, then once this happens Neptune can catapult the object on its way to the inner solar system.

Alternatively, KBOs get redirected into less stable orbits when the encounter Pluto or each other. This would also be a rare event.

Funny You Should Mention That.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nazis used "terrorism" as an excuse to invade Austria. They claimed invasion was the only way to secure Germany's defense. Amusing parallel, I think.

Re:Funny You Should Mention That.

[Xaoswolf]

And godwin rolls over in his grave...

How big is Philadelphia, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, on most maps it is two-dimensional, but it must have some depth. After all, the planetesimals are three-dimensional. We need to establish volume.

Do we just consider the surface elevation variation, plus the height of any buildings?

What about the airspace overhead? I'm pretty sure we wouldn't consider outer space, but how much of the atmosphere should be included?

What about depth? Only as deep as the deepest subterranean pipeline? The depth of the earth's crust? Does it go all the way to the core? If it's the latter, then it's quite large after all.

Everything Has a Price

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it worth shelling out an additional 87 billion dollars? With the economy on the rocks? Consumer spending in hole. How about the lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians?

When things get bad enough, people rebel. Things obviously weren't bad enough.

Meanwhile, at home, we'll get to see if things are bad enough here to throw the Bush Administration out. Maybe, and maybe not.

But how will Iraq ever pay us back?

[Anonymous Coward]

They owe us for their liberation and all. I would recommend cheap oil. They have so much of it and all. In fact, it's the second largest known oil reserve and is mostly untapped. I'm sure Haliburton could help them get it out of the ground and everything. Come on Iraq... play ball!

Re: But how will Iraq ever pay us back?

[Black Parrot]

> They owe us for their liberation and all. I would recommend cheap oil. They have so much of it and all. In fact, it's the second largest known oil reserve and is mostly untapped. I'm sure Haliburton could help them get it out of the ground and everything. Come on Iraq... play ball!

Wasn't that part of the spin the Administration offered when trying to convince us the invasion was a good idea and wouldn't be very expensive?

Americans love doing good deeds... so long as they don't have to pay taxes for it.

Re: But how will Iraq ever pay us back?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wasn't that part of the spin the Administration offered when trying to convince us the invasion was a good idea and wouldn't be very expensive?"

Spin? You are confusing this administration with the last one. This administration likes to deal only in facts.

"Americans love doing good deeds... so long as they don't have to pay taxes for it."

How does this show? Americans spend more money than anyone else on "good deeds" and are badly overtaxed.

What's that in Volkswagons?

[HopeOS]

How many volkswagons to a Philadelphia anyway? Or do we only use Volkswagons if it enters the earth's atmosphere? This is so confusing. I can't help but think that metric would be useful here.

-Hope

The Nazi Parallel

[Anonymous Coward]

" The Nazis used "terrorism" as an excuse to invade Austria. They claimed invasion was the only way to secure Germany's defense. Amusing parallel, I think."

The only Nazi-era parallel is that of Bush and Blair to FDR and Churchill.

Re:The Nazi Parallel

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha ha. Ostrich syndrome at it's best.

"My leaders know what's good for me! They can only be compared to the 'good guys' from past wars! LALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU NANANAANANANA"

Re:The Nazi Parallel

[Anonymous Coward]

""My leaders know what's good for me! They can only be compared to the 'good guys' from past wars! LALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU NANANAANANANA""

Compared to the "goog guys" from past wars, they come off even better. The U.S. gave Saddam many chances to stop his aggression, which he refused. Blair and Bush have shown a care in reducing civilian casualties above that of the allies in World War II. (No Dresden in Iraq: make sure all of the bomb targets are military).

Once you look at the facts on things, nothing is like what you claim it is.

Re:The Nazi Parallel

[Anonymous Coward]

Blair and Bush have shown a care in reducing civilian casualties above that of the allies in World War II.

Lip service can be fun.

Once you look at the facts on things, nothing is like what you claim it is.

You mean, once you look at the facts presented to you by a biased media, nothing appears like what it actually is.

The USA regularly kicks up these little wars in order to keep the populace staggeringly supportive of their government. No other way could they make a complete frigging retard the most popular president ever.

Re:The Nazi Parallel

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lip service can be fun."

Ignore what they say, and look at the facts on the field.

"You mean, once you look at the facts presented to you by a biased media, nothing appears like what it actually is."

I tend to steer clear of the dominant left-wing media, and go to the source.

"The USA regularly kicks up these little wars in order to keep the populace staggeringly supportive of their government."

When was the last time the U.S. kicked up a war? Been many years.

"No other way could they make a complete frigging retard the most popular president ever."

He's popular because he is really quite smart. The reason that nothing in the world works the way you think it should is because you know little about the world.

Re:The Nazi Parallel

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignore what they say, and look at the facts on the field.

Right. The facts on the field. So you were standing in Iraq watching who was bombed, I suppose? You saw every US military operative present taking special care to distinguish a civilian from a soldier?

I tend to steer clear of the dominant left-wing media, and go to the source.

What source? The only accurate source was BEING THERE, seeing it with your own eyes, unedited.

When was the last time the U.S. kicked up a war? Been many years.

Umm, no, it's only been a few. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq again. Sure, you can try and blame the two towers incident for starting the Afghanistan war, but that's disingenuous at best, given the actions of your country.

He's popular because he is really quite smart.

Now I just KNOW you're trolling. 'Really quite smart' people don't accidentally blow the fact that their entire press conference is scripted, for one thing.

Nothing to do with Haliburton either

[Anonymous Coward]

" You are SO right. Its not about the oil. Its about the military contracts for haliburton"

It has nothing to do with that either. If you knew anything about Haliburton or oil, you would know that they are the best company for cleaning up Saddam's mess.

It's the orbits

[JetJaguar]

The orbital charactistics of an object coming in from outside the solar system would be very different from Kuiper Belt objects, and while it would be somewhat more difficult to tell the difference between an Oort cloud comet and an external comet/asteroid, there would be differences. Most notably, objects captured or "scattered" into the solar system will have higher orbital energies. eg. They will likely be coming in at velocities large enough to escape from the solar system to begin with, while objects in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud are firmly bound to the sun.

Finally, you don't need to land a probe on these objects to figure out what they are made of. Optical spectroscopy has done a pretty good job of figuring out what these things are made of, you don't need to send a probe to figure it out. I can tell you right now, the composition is most likely 95-98% water with the rest being a smattering of carbon and nitrogen bearing modules with some silicate particles thrown in to the mix.

You need to stop reading pseudo-science comic

[mkofron]

books like the Jehovah's Witnesses Creation book.

Philadelphia

[BryanL]

Oh great another unit of measurement. I already have a hard time converting US Standard to metric, much less elephants, LOCs, and VWs. Now this.

Interesting technical data?

[zonx lebaam]

The article didn't say if the orbits are particulary eliptical (I mean eccentric). That would be interesting.

Are these -very faint- planitesimals actually plutinos (in pluto-like resonant orbits with the gas-giants)?

It didn't even say how far out they are. Are they in the range of Quauor, or more likely, Hubble couldn't resolve them if they were even that far out. Are they in the kind of range as pluto?

Does anyone know of a source with further information than the little linked blurb?

Re:Interesting technical data?

[Gary Bernstein]

The three new discoveries are about 42 AU from the Sun, in orbits that are about the same distance but less inclined (tipped) to the rest of the Solar System than Quaoar. They are not "plutinos".

Press releases are always skimpy on the real information; if you want the gory details, read the scientific paper. There will be some articles in Science News, maybe other places, at an intermediate level.

Re:Interesting technical data?

[zonx lebaam]

I really appreciate the link to the paper. Thanks.

Based on the paper, it looks some important high level things were left out of the press release, which would nonetheless be of value to an interested non-specialist like myself, and doubtless many /.ers, or even newspaper subscribers. What wasn't found is as significant as what was (~85 objects predicted but only 4 (counting the previously known one) were found).

Based on this finding, an outer radius of the Kuiper Belt can be predicted at ~50AU, and there does not appear to be an "outer Kuiper Belt". That's good stuff!

Any Toynbee Tiles?

[pikester]

The big question is whether they could spot any Toynbee Tiles inlaid in the remnants?

Re:Good. then don't comment

[Black Parrot]

> Why would the US administration be strongly opposed to US imperialism ?

I think he meant to say "opposed to competing imperialism".

Oh, really? You're sure...

[dublin]

The objects reside in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, which houses a swarm of icy rocks that are leftover building blocks, or "planetesimals," from the solar system's creation.

This is nothing but pseudo-scientific drivel. These objects *may* be "leftover building blocks" from the formation of the Solar system, or they may not.

The fact is that we have no way of knowing. It's sloppy, unsubstantiated claims like this that (justifiably) undermine the credibility of those making such claims. Such bogus science consequently leads many of us to question the validity of the church of evolution on purely scientific grounds, if nothing else...

What would...

[Anonymous Coward]

What would Mohammed Al-Saheef "Baghdad Bob" say?

"The earth is flat! I have seen it with my own eyes! The infadels spread lies! Look at the moon at night, thus everyone knows the moon is shaped flat like Iraq's golden coins! Every star in the sky is the award Alah gives his people for following him! Even the infadels confirm this truth when their Hubble Telescope discovers more of Alah's stars in the sky! This confirms everything; our planet and the moon is flat and round like Iraq's golden coins, and as well all the stars in the sky are the awards of Alah's servants! Praise to Alah! We will cut out the tongues of every infadel that speaks!"

I think NASA should create...

[Anonymous Coward]

The worlds largest ASTEROIDS game.
That'll give the world some incentive to fund space research.
Just make some space ships with powerful lazers and blow away some asteroids.
Now that is something worth funding!
-- not something as boring as "space research" and pseudo-scientific thinking of looking for life on other planets so that "we can find out where we came
from" -- my gosh, what a stupid religion. It's amazing what weierd religions scientists come up with.

Just like Philly

[Some Dumbass...]

Each lump of ice and rock is roughly the size of Philadelphia and orbits just beyond Neptune and Pluto. ... making them roughly the temperature of Philadelphia around the time the observations were made (January?)

You should preview in past

[leonbrooks]

I should preview in future

Yah, in the future of some long-forgotten past. (-:

It was science

[Anonymous Coward]

"Neither the belief in spontaneous generation nor phrenology were the product of science."

Yes, they were part of the history of science. Just because they look so embarassing today does not mean that they were not.

You support the war

[Anonymous Coward]

"Quit your republican fantasizing. I didn't support the war, don't support it now, and am proud of both facts."

You support the war, but it is clear that you only support Saddam's side, and think it was fine that he killed 10,000+ people a year. Why else would you oppose effective efforts to stop him and his war.

"save face....I voted against Bush in both the primary and the general election"

That only shows you are a moron and voted for the much worse candidate. Well, perhaps you were ignorant instead.

" since they're making up yarns about humanitarian intentions"

Nothing to make up here; that has been the main goal.

"the glaring absence of the WMDs and terrorist connections that were used to justify it."

He had the WMD's just before the US retaliation. The only question is where they went. Terrorist connections? These are quite evident, from his hosting of terrorist camps to his aggression against Israel.

Thankfully, your "pro-Saddam" wing with its glaring ignorance of foreign affairs is in a minority and has little influence, even at a time when people like Howard Dean gain some celebrity with their bold and bald-faced lies about Iraq.

Re:Good. then don't comment

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think he meant to say "opposed to competing imperialism"."

No, the US administration is opposed to any imperialism of any kind, including its own (the latter is easy enough, since the US government has not been imperialist in any way for decades)

Re:Oh, really? You're sure...

[Cujo]

I looked at that website, and its the same old young-Earth creationism drivel taht's been making the rounds for decades. No integrity, no credibility, and no science.

We are trolls

[barakn]

A natural, intuitive understanding, sans any self-justifying nit-picking shows that a clear, harmonious exists within the Genesis account, one that is not particularly vulnerable to specific translations.

The text I use is The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha (aka the New Revised Standard Version). It is a direct descendent of the Revised Standard Version, the Bible with the distinction of being officially authorized by all major Christian churches: Protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox. It is the translation preferred by biblical scholars. In the commentary on Gen2:4b-25, the editors say "This is a different tradition from 1.1-2.3 as evidenced by the flowing style and the different order of events of creation." So when you argue that there are no inconsistencies, you are disagreeing with the National Council of the Churches of Christ, the body that authorized this translation. If it comes to a choice between believing either a body of scholars from the major Christian Churches and a Jewish scholar (for the Old Testament) or a /. troll, I'll side with the scholars.

Re:Oh, really? You're sure...

[dublin]

I looked at that website, and its the same old young-Earth creationism drivel taht's been making the rounds for decades. No integrity, no credibility, and no science.

Then you didn't look at all. There's quite a bit there, and the first time through, it took me over a week to read through just the archives of the Disclosure articles. There is indeed quite a bit of science there, much of it quoted form evolutionist journals...