Whether Darwin was detached or passionate about it is irrelevant. His words explicitly state that he hoped for it to happen . . . He predicted it, favoured it and provided the rationale. That's advocating it.
Errr... I'm really not reading that the same way you are. As I read it, the statement is something like, "If the white race takes over, one would hope that the resulting society would be better than the one we have now." How do you square your reading of it with the recorded fact that Darwin was a member of abolitionist organizations and has put out a number of writings that come down squarely against slavery. Those aren't the actions of a person who is particularly disposed toward genocide. Why vocally support the freedom of slaves you'd rather have exterminated? I get the strange idea in all of this that your readings of Darwin are limited to the tasty tidbits pulled out by creationist web sites. I'm surprised you haven't brought up the section about the puppy.
The only thing that's contaversial about it is that if this idea were first proposed today, Darwin wouldn't be able to get an audience in any reputable educational institution, so people feel the need to cover it up.
I think that people react poorly to it because it's clearly a misrepresentation of Darwin's positions as a whole, and it's not especially relevant to anything. People generally just tow out the "Darwin was bad man, therefore his ideas are stupid" line when they're trying to get somewhere in a debate or simply get a rise out of people. Certainly, Darwin was a racist. Name a few white male figures of his time who weren't. As mid-19th century wealthy white males went, Darwin was practically a nutty progressive. I could pull out a list of truly racist positions taken by Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson owned a small army of slaves. I don't think that we lend any of their ideas any less credence or consider them "bad people" on the whole, given the societies they grew up in. If I injected into every conversation, "Abraham Lincoln was a racist! There's a conspiracy to cover it up! Spread the word!" one might think that I was trying to get a rise out of people.
I've had this sig for months and never been modded troll. It's unpopular but factually correct.
So you've been trolling with your sig for months and you're complaining about only recently being modded as a troll? Honestly, I'm not a big fan of downmodding anybody who isn't being truly disruptive, but I also don't think that you're too far off of trolling with this one. You're playing fast and loose with the facts to create a misimpression about a historical figure in hopes of inflaming people into a response. Pretty much trolling in my book, and my book ain't that long.
Macroevolution: This doesn't happen. We haven't ever seen it happen, and it's scientifically impossible anyway. To say otherwise flies in the face of the second law of thermodynamics, information theory, and a bunch of other scientific ideas.
I'm afraid I can't sift through the litany of complaints you're bringing up, and I tend to like to focus on the quantifiable, so I'm very interested in how you apply thermodynamics and information theory evolutionary theory. How do you measure "information" in an organism? You're venturing into an area that's essentially purely mathematical, so I think that you should be able to put up some numbers, or at least a model.
I bring this up because a lot of creationists seem to like to shroud their ideas in the rigor of mathematics without bothering to define their terms or even explain how the inherently mathematical models they're using apply to the situation. I'll generally chalk it up to ignorance on the parts of most of the people who bring up statements that they've read on the Internet like "Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics!" but I know that there are a few people out there like Dembski who are educated enough to know better who are clearly bringing up scary-sounding math in order to lend their ideas a bit of undeserved credibility. I just haven't found a better way of dealing with it than simply taking people to task over it. So please, if you can, venture a little bit into this topic. Challenge #1:
I plant a seed. It grows into a tree. Violation of the laws of thermodynamics? If not, please explain how the mechanisms in evolution differ.
Well, if there are indeed only two possibilities, evolution and Creation, and I can discredit evolution to the point of making it seem impossible, then I have succeeded in providing evidence for Creation.
That's an awfully big if. What makes you think that you're not simply presenting a false dilemma?
The third law of thermodynamics is at odds with evolution. Time and chance lead to a loss of genetic information, the accretion of deleterious and deadly mutations.
In the spirit of "not attempting to be exhaustive with this list of problems" I'll start here. Please define "genetic information" in such a way that we can quantify it. Nobody on the creationism side of things has ever been able to do this in a meaningful way, so I'm tempted to ignore the thermodynamic and information theory based arguments entirely. Here's a thought experiment: I plant a seed and it grows into a tree. Did I violate any laws of thermodynamic? If so, how? If not, please explain how evolution differs from this process.
Key term here "calibrate," in other words, we can make a guesstimate at the amount of C-14 there was. If you remember, C-14 is often inhaled by organisms and there would be drastically different figures for each specimen depending upon a myriad of environmental factors. Simply put, they are all just guesses.
No, they're not just guesses. If they were, you'd have a point, but the amount of C14 is measured from samples of known age. Counting down ice cores and tree rings allows scientists to create a catalog of what the atmosphere's C14 levels looked like over the years. You say they're just guesses, but in reality, quite a lot of work goes into standardizing the data. As I said before, though, there are other methods that are even better because they are able to self-check for problems like the ones you describe.
Well, let's use some pretty common knowledge here... Global Warming is occuring. Everyone can agree to that. So, what are the changes we are seeeing in our environment? As we increase the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and thereby increase the heat, guess what? The rates of decay increase dramatically! We can valid this through observations.
I've said this before in these discussions and I'll probably say it again but, please show your work. Don't take it personally, but the assertion you just made is far too handwavy to be taken at face value, and as far as I know, quantum mechanics gives us no theoretical reason for this to be true in the temperature regimes you're talking about. As far as I can recall (and I don't have copy of Dalrymple with me, so please forgive me from working from memory), changes of over 1000 degrees C don't seem to alter C14's decay constant. I seriously doubt that a few degrees C are going to do it under normal Earth conditions. If you have some numbers to show, I'd be interested.
BTW, I'm having fun debating with you on this subject, so if we could please refrain from Ad Hominem attacks, I think we could both have a more enjoyable time.:)
It should be noted that ad hominem isn't Latin for, "That was a mean thing to say!" I suggest that if you'd prefer that your physics be taken seriously, start doing some calculations and stop inventing physical laws that don't exist. I was already a bit grouchy when you responded to me, and you did so by essentially calling thousands of scientists incompetent, stupid, or frauds. You can't seriously think that the objections that you're bringing up have gone unnoticed by the scientific community until now, can you? Obviously not, so they must either be too thick headed or incompetent to understand them, or the entire community of atomic physicists is involved in a conspiracy to defraud us. I'll leave it to you to decide which one you were suggesting.
It's funny you mention isochron dating, becuase isochron dating and radiometric carbon dating rely on the exact same assumptions. Just look at my arguments above and you can apply them perfectly to ischronic dating as well.
If you honestly believe that, whoever taught you about isochron has sold you a bill of goods. You might seriously consider rethinking whatever other material they sold you while you're at it. What, specifically, are you wrong about? Well:
* Isochron dating does not require that the initial amount of the daughter isotope be known.
* Contamination of either the parent or daughter isotope can generally be detected because the data will no longer be collinear.
To some extent, isochron dating is "self calibrating" in that finding data that are not collinear immediately means that something is wrong, and that finding collinear data is a strong indication that the system is working. Is it foolproof? Certainly not. The ICR's grand canyon dating project shows that sufficiently careful selection of data can break nearly every dating tool. Does it s
The evidence for a world wide flood go together. Most people have heard of the idea that if you put a dam at the Grand Canyon that most of the Midwest would turn into a giant lake. There is even evidence that it could have once been a giant lake, fish bones and such in desert. Basically the idea is that if there has always been a river and then there was a flood, the river could have become blocked as the water left, evaporated, gone down into the Earth, and froze at the poles. Then when the dam broke water rushed out and carved the Grand Canyon. The idea is also supported from the fact that rushing water takes the path of least resistance and thus would explain the randomness of its path.
That doesn't explain the layer upon layer of neatly deposited fossils in the resulting column. That's a big one. How were those layers created?
The idea with lunar dust is that over time dust collects on the moon's surface. That is a fact and because of that when the lunar lander was created they gave it long legs. NASA expected there to be a couple of feet of dust since it would have been collecting for hundreds of millions of years. However once on the moon they found that their was only a couple of inches, only enough for a few thousand years.
This is kind of like pointing out that somebody's fly is unzipped, but I have to tell you that this particular argument has been so well debunked that it's on the list of arguments that even Creation ministries international and Answers in Genesis say are bogus. I think that Kent Hovind and his traveling circus are the only people who really use it anymore. Summary: Dust doesn't accumulate nearly as quickly as once thought.
The Earth's rotation is slowing over time, by about 2 milliseconds a year. This means that billions of years ago when the Earth was so-called created the days were about 13.5 hours. The Earth's rotation would be so great that gravity would make it impossible to live and survive.
Please show your work. Actually, let me show mine:
Earth's circumference: 24,900 miles
Rotational period: 13.5 hours
Tangential velocity: 24,900 / 13.5 = 1844 miles per hour = 824 meters per second
Radius of the earth: 6,378,000 meters
Acceleration due to rotation: 824*824 / 6,378,000 = 0.106455942 m/s^2
So we're seeing a 0.1 m/s^2 reduction in the apparent force of gravity during the "old days". Re-running the numbers with a 24 hour period we get:
Earth's circumference: 24,900 miles
Rotational period: 24 hours
Tangential velocity: 24,900 / 24 = 1037.5miles per hour = 464 meters per second
Radius of the earth: 6,378,000 meters
Acceleration due to rotation: 464 * 464 / 6,378,000 = 0.0337560364 m/s^2
So the difference between now and then is 0.106455942 - 0.0337560364 = 0.0726999056 m/s^2. For the record, per this table, you'll get half that variation by traveling from Oslo to Mexico city. Where do you get your numbers?
One textbook I saw being used in schools still referenced the Nebraska man!
I'd be interested in knowing which one. Given the current state of public schools and textbooks, I suppose it wouldn't be completely impossible, but color me skeptical.
Maybe I can help. First, if you read the quote and the paragraphs surrounding it, Darwin was making more of a detached observation than actually advocating extermination, so that would more or less invalidate the idea that he was "in favor of racial genocide." He did buy into the racism of the day, which just about everybody did. Hell, Darwin was even against slavery. Your sig might more accurately read, "Darwin: Victorian era white guy." But of course, that wouldn't have nearly the emotional impact.
Basically, people were calling you a troll because you were trolling. That's what we call irrelevant personal attacks designed to stir up controversy--especially ones that aren't totally accurate.
1. The amount of carbon-14 (or whatever element used) in the atmosphere has always been the same
That's just not true. The amount of C14 is not assumed to be constant. The values are calibrated using a variety of sources (trees, corals, ice cores, etc.). It should be noted that these generally agree with one another, which would definitely be a surprise if there was something deeply wrong with the system.
2. The rate of decay has always been the same
Ahh the special pleading and crackpot physics of creationists. We've seen evidence of the constancy of decay supernovae, and if decay rates were not constant, it would have very interesting (and completely unobserved) consequences for quantum mechanics. If something we observe (something that's consistent with all of physics and chemistry, not to mention historical observations) upsets creationists, they'll quickly whip out some new laws of physics and ignore the consequences.
I don't see why young earth creationists have so much trouble with C14 dating given that it's not really used to support any of the evidence that devastates their positions. Far more interesting are things like isochron dating.
Here's the flaw in evolution - the great anti-designer theory - you quote exactly what other evolutionists state, the whole concept of *usefulness*. Tell me, how does dirt make a decision? How did the first few molecules of stuff decide that one feature was more desirable than another. If a cell splits and produces some kind of variant DNA (not new genes of information mind you, no one has been able to explain how that could happen yet), how does "it" decide that the new DNA is better than the previous DNA? What is "it"? How did "it" decide? In a purely random manner, "its" decision making process should be completely random. If I flip a coin 10,000 or 1 billion times, I will invariably end up with about 50% heads and 50% tails, therefore not making any progress in any direction - try it, you CAN reproduce this fact.
Simple answer: Selection is the result of different survivability of the two traits. If, for example, the cells live in a junk yard and one of the two child cells acquires a gene that allows it to "eat" nylon, then it's going to do a lot better than its sibling as it has a bunch of food available to it with very little competition for it. That cell reproduces like mad and suddenly you have a small population with a nylonase where one did not exist before.
Of course we can stray into irreducible complexity, but you evolutionists don't like to discuss that since you just state that if you work backwards just enough in the smallest of increments over billions of years you might be able to work around this sticky problem. Not! You still end up with some kind of inherent designer doing some kind of decision making about what is the next best *useful* iteration - dirt doesn't have brains!
IC isn't exactly the strongest of ideas to begin with (for example, there's no meaningful way to show that a structure is irreducibly complex), but it does have one fatal flaw: Even if it's not possible to take away a part of a system without destroying it, it's likely very possible to add a part and then take away one of the original parts without destroying the system. One might say that an arch is irreducibly complex because removing a stone from it makes it collapse. Does it follow that an arch can't be built? No. It simply ignores the fact that the precursor to the arch had more "stuff" attached to it (supports and scaffolding) than we see now. The arch didn't go from N-1 stones to N stones, because with N-1 stones it would have collapsed. It went from N-1 stones + supports to N stones + supports to N stones with no supports, creating the "irreducibly complex" structure we see today.
There is also the problem of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and as well the scientific principle that all things tend to degrade over time - completely opposite of the evolutionary logic. Funny though that the first two things mentioned are observable and reproducible, the latter is not.
I weep for the future of physics if this is the common understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Please explain this to me: How does evolution violate the second law of thermodynamics but a seed growing into a tree not violate the law? What is the difference between the two. Bonus points if you use math or actually quote the second law in a meaningful way.
Micro-evolution is observable, but you cannot extrapolate micro-evolutionary processes out to say it becomes macro-evolution. If you take any micro-evolutionary process that is documented, you will almost always find that DNA information is lost. One good example article to read is http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4343Critics_ Plantcolour.asp [answersingenesis.org] . You can't evolve to a higher state without adding information and no scientist has yet been able to figure out how that can happen in nature.
Before you go any further with this line of thought, please define "information" and explain how one would determine how much of it is in a given segment of DNA. If you can do that, I think that this discussion could get very interesting.
That, my friend, is a can of worms. There are a great many problems with carbon dating in particular. I'll leave it up to the scholarly of you to look it up, but isn't the 'benchmark' for carbon dating, carbon dating itself?
Well, no, it's not. Thanks for asking, though.
When you ask a lab to date an object, why does the form ask you what age you 'think the object is', isn't this technique solely based on the speed of light never changing?
It's based on constant rates of radioactive decay, which has consequences for the speed of light. Fortunately, evidence indicates that those constants are pretty darned solid.
Isn't the actual range of carbon dating only a few thousand years due to our ability to measure after a few half lives, yet we use it for millions of years...
It is only good for a few tens of thousands of years, yes. And NOBODY uses it for millions of years. Full stop. Where do you get this stuff?
Wasn't there a case where the carbon dating of an animal's bones showed that it was many magnitudes of age older than the very hair found by the animal (I think it was a tiger, IIRC). Doesn't carbon dating yield results in opposition of something around 94% of other dating techniques?
Do you usually pull unsupported anecdotes and random figures out of your ass to cast doubt on a position you disagree with, or is radiometric dating a particularly touchy subject for you?
Anyone sufficiently versed arguing can convince you of most anything. To be honest, I don't have any of the answers, and I don't pretend to.
You don't seem to have the most basic facts about the topic you just "threw your hat into the ring" on. Millions of years? What? You're clearly parrotting something you read on the web somewhere, but it's pretty clear that you haven't done your homework. You might want to start here.
The reason I'm sounding so grouchy about this is that you're casting aspersions at a lot of professionals here, and it's pretty obvious that you're out of your depth. It's kind of a rude thing to do. It's also clear that you're not looking for answers to your questions (although you clearly don't seem to know the answers), but rather trying to muddy the waters with accusations phrased as questions. That's not especially nice either.
No, I'm not saying you should believe in God because its the safe choice. You should never believe in something based on one reason and one reason only. However, there are some reasons that outweighs others, and when it comes down to believing in God because you don't want to go to hell or not believing simply because you want to live life however you want to and not live under certain rules, you should really think about your choices.
How do the consequences of a fact make it more or less likely to be true? The only reason I "believe" in something is because I think that it is likely to be true. I can't believe in something that I think is not likely to be true, essentially by definition of belief. Perhaps it would be fun or rewarding for me to believe that somebody has deposited $100M into my bank account, but that doesn't have any bearing on the truth of the idea, and I doubt I'd be able to convince myself of it.
Also, it does matter in what God you believe in and whether you believe in one over the other. Hindus and Christians very greatly in their beliefs. Even the differences between the Jewish faith and Christian faith makes a large difference. I mean if you were to have you son go through unbearably amounts of pain for someone to live wouldn't you want that person to at the very least say thank you? Or if you told someone to follow certain traditions as a price for eternal life? Or if you told your people to pray 5 times a day and go on a pilgrimage once in there life in order to get to live in paradise? Ideas are different in each religion and whichever God is the true God he has all the right to judge someone based on their belief in said God.
In that case, I'm likely to believe in the god or gods who appear to be most vindictive. I don't want to piss those types of gods off The kind and forgiving gods can wait in line while I pray to the gods who will roast me over the coals for upsetting them.
...relatively speaking as the "consensus" today. Maybe you aren't old enough to remember, but I am, and it was in the news quite a bit.
Yes, I'm well aware that you claim that there was a large scientific consensus. I just don't believe you because I haven't been able to find evidence of it myself, and because it appears that you got that impression by remembering 30 year old accounts from the popular media. I'm saying that if you really dig into that claim to see the research that the media was referencing, you'll find two things: 1) The ideas were usually describing a larger phenomenon of cyclical warming and cooling and 2) There was nowhere near the amount of scientific activity and consensus there is now. People who claim otherwise are either lying to you or have the same foggy non-expert memories you seems to have. It's hard to take the scientific community's temperature by reading Reader's Digest.
I think you'd have to be just a touch naieve to not see the political angle here from the Gaia crowd, along with the political angle from the pro coal and oil profits crowd. They both exist and both sides have their own tame scientists, who after all are only human and have the same frailties as anyone else and are as much money driven as anyone. The Gaia crowd also seem to want some sort of strange world government and such odd ideas as a carbon tax-like who decided they owned all the carbon so they should be able to tax everyone about it? Sounds a little fascist-takeover-ey to me...
So the "Gaia crowd" who, by and large, don't seem to be able to get anything done politically have managed to get the majority of the world's climate scientists the to engage in a conspiracy with them because they hate coal and oil? That seems a lot more likely than the fact that there is significant evidence to support the position. It's almost as sensible as the claim that the environmentalist crazies don't actually support the environment--they just hate money and want a communist world government!
Science has always had politics and faddism attached to it, it has never been "pure", and it certainly isn't now. And in the future, don't you think we'll look back at the science of today and see a lot of flaws?
That's certainly true, but that fact by itself doesn't mean that global warming is bad science. Again, the fact that scientists have been wrong in the past doesn't immediately invalidate modern theory. Doctors used to think that tomatoes would kill you, so they must be full of garbage when they say that smoking is dangerous? Not so much. My problem isn't with skepticism per se. It's more an issue with armchair scientists who think that their "common sense" along with a few minutes on the web and fuzzy memories of Time magazine from a generation ago somehow makes it easy for them to see how literally thousands of of climate experts are completely wrong in their field of expertise. It's like the creationist video on YouTube that claims that evolution can't be possible because they weren't able to spontaneously create life in a jar of peanut butter. It's folksy and cute, and it makes you sound like a no-nonsense decisive type of guy who hates all that egghead stuff, but it's ultimately still just crap.
Here you go Coped, Try Google, this is only one reference there are plenty more including papers in "peer reviewed journals" of the time for whatever that is worth.
That's not what I was asking for. I know that you claim that there was some sort major "global cooling" movement in the 70's. I was asking you to cite actual evidence that there was. If you had read the article that you linked to, you might have come across the line, "The point to remember, says Connolley, is that predictions of global cooling never approached the kind of widespread scientific consensus that supports the greenhouse effect today" for example.
My point is that the various claims of decades past don't come near the broad consensus and quantities of data we have today. The fact that some scientists have been wrong in the past doesn't mean that most scientists are wrong now.
Yeah..... Maybe if the politicians didn't get involved that might actually happen. The bankers take money out by increasing interest rates... Which makes the economy tank because there's less money around. Which makes politicians look bad. You see our monetary system is based on debt, the national debt to be precise.
You mentioned that you live in Scotland, and I'm not totally familiar with how the central bank works over there, but in the US it's not exactly that simple. In the US, our central bank is a quasi-government system administered by government appointees who aren't answerable to politicians once they're appointed. The government could borrow money (and usually does), and if the central bank sees it as necessary to take upward pressure off of interest rates, the central bank may, at its discretion, increase the money supply. There are a lot of factors that go into the decision, but the immediate approval of Congress isn't typically one of them.
And of course the bankers make money from lending money so the more they have to lend the more they make... I'll leave it up to you to decide how wise it is for them to be left in charge of the production of money.
Again, I'm not sure how your system works (although all of the modern banking systems I'm aware of are relatively similar), but the US central bank isn't a profit making entity. It's essentially there to regulate the money supply so that it grows at a rate that safely correlates with the US economy. Allowing bankers to print money and loan it out for a profit with no restrictions wouldn't be a particularly clever thing to do, and if that's actually what was happening, I imagine our economy would have tanked a long time ago.
In the late 70s they were yelling about global cooling. Sorry, that's LESS THAN forty years ago.
Challenge! References, please. Three papers (other than some overblown sensationalist popular media misinterpretation of actual scientific results) would be a good start, although evidence of anything like a broad consensus would be better.
I don't believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, but I also don't believe we're significant enough to have that much impact on the planet.
It's called booby-trapping, and yes, it's illegal. (I know cause I wanted to do it once and looked it up)
A good halfway measure: Buy food coloring powder. The stuff is intensely bright and a big pile of it should sit quietly in the middle of a sandwich without raising any suspicious. It's nontoxic and it will turn the culprit's mouth, lips, and possibly clothing/hands a nice blue color. IANAL, but I'm guessing you'd get away with that one. "Me? Oh, I just like my food to be blue."
I can maybe accept that definition, as long as "harm other people" is interpreted broadly enough. Getting drunk a lot harms other people. Simple case: you're a dad, and every minute you're at home you're either asleep or drunk. What are you teaching your children? Do they feel loved and accepted? etc. etc. A big mistake we make is when we act like what we do doesn't affect anyone else when in reality it does. I really think "immoral things" has to include harming yourself, unless you could justify how your value is less than everyone else's. What was the question again?
That's a good point, but I think it confuses cause and effect. In this case, being drunk causes the person to shirk his duties as a father. Shirking those duties is the immoral act. Similarly, shooting a person is an immoral act because it hurts or kills that person. It doesn't follow that shooting a gun is always an immoral act.
SOX compliance costs at least $6 billion in direct costs and possibly up to $1 trillion in indirect costs per year. I'd rather take an Enron or two every now and then...
You're missing the big picture here. We can quibble over whether SOX could be designed better to impose lower costs on the market players (it almost certainly could), but the point is this: The cost to investors is not just the money lost when a huge company like Enron goes bust and all of its investors are soaked. The bigger indirect cost is to the markets in general: Should I invest in a company that may be defrauding me? How do I know who is a fraud and who isn't? That uncertainty is enough to bring down entire markets.
The whole point of government intervention is to maintain faith in publicly traded companies to keep those capital markets working. If the players in those markets aren't forced to provide accurate information to investors, the whole thing comes tumbling down. When that much money changes hands every day, it's guaranteed that there are going to be a lot of unethical players who are willing to cheat to make money. The only way you can keep the system from deteriorating into uselessness is to regulate it, even if those regulations are a pain to deal with.
It already was illegal, there's no need for a new law to make it even more illegal.
The point of the law was not to make it more illegal. The point was to make it harder to get away with it in the first place, reducing the chances that the government will have to clean up the mess at all. The costs of an Enron-like failure are tremendous, and throwing a few executives in prison and confiscating a few multi-million dollar homes don't come anywhere near repairing the damage any more than throwing an arsonist in prison rebuilds a torched apartment building.
Remember, we recalled a governor in California basically for being the governor when the shit hit the fan. Never mind that a sizable chunk of our shortfall was crazy referendum spending that our elected government had no real power over. Not that things were particularly well managed to begin with, but I don't think that the voters of California really remembered how much they had to do with the budget snafu.
And someone who didn't use deodorant that day should be put in the slammer? Where do we stop? What about babies with poopy diapers? What about people who offend me just because they're so ugly? You, for example?
Yes, a line needs to be drawn somewhere. A line always needs to be drawn somewhere. That's what makes slippery slopes like the one you're proposing silly arguments in most cases. Let's go the other way with the slippery slope. What if I stand in a high traffic area and drop stink bombs or blast an air horn 24 hours a day? If you let me do whatever I want in a public place with the only restriction being that I don't cause any permanent physical damage to people, I bet I can come up with something to do that would have you clamoring to have me hauled off, or at least ready to punch me in the face.
You know, I just reread the article, It even suggest that the potsmoking measure passed because of the more liberal areas. Isn't that strange?
I can't say that it's particularly strange. "Conservative" has gone from meaning "cautious about expanding government functions" to mean something more akin to "authoritarian" over the past generation or so, so I would be surprised if conservative areas passed a measure that reduces police authority or criminal penalties for just about anything.
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I think that people react poorly to it because it's clearly a misrepresentation of Darwin's positions as a whole, and it's not especially relevant to anything. People generally just tow out the "Darwin was bad man, therefore his ideas are stupid" line when they're trying to get somewhere in a debate or simply get a rise out of people. Certainly, Darwin was a racist. Name a few white male figures of his time who weren't. As mid-19th century wealthy white males went, Darwin was practically a nutty progressive. I could pull out a list of truly racist positions taken by Abraham Lincoln. Thomas Jefferson owned a small army of slaves. I don't think that we lend any of their ideas any less credence or consider them "bad people" on the whole, given the societies they grew up in. If I injected into every conversation, "Abraham Lincoln was a racist! There's a conspiracy to cover it up! Spread the word!" one might think that I was trying to get a rise out of people.
So you've been trolling with your sig for months and you're complaining about only recently being modded as a troll? Honestly, I'm not a big fan of downmodding anybody who isn't being truly disruptive, but I also don't think that you're too far off of trolling with this one. You're playing fast and loose with the facts to create a misimpression about a historical figure in hopes of inflaming people into a response. Pretty much trolling in my book, and my book ain't that long.
I bring this up because a lot of creationists seem to like to shroud their ideas in the rigor of mathematics without bothering to define their terms or even explain how the inherently mathematical models they're using apply to the situation. I'll generally chalk it up to ignorance on the parts of most of the people who bring up statements that they've read on the Internet like "Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics!" but I know that there are a few people out there like Dembski who are educated enough to know better who are clearly bringing up scary-sounding math in order to lend their ideas a bit of undeserved credibility. I just haven't found a better way of dealing with it than simply taking people to task over it. So please, if you can, venture a little bit into this topic. Challenge #1: I plant a seed. It grows into a tree. Violation of the laws of thermodynamics? If not, please explain how the mechanisms in evolution differ.
That's an awfully big if. What makes you think that you're not simply presenting a false dilemma?
No, they're not just guesses. If they were, you'd have a point, but the amount of C14 is measured from samples of known age. Counting down ice cores and tree rings allows scientists to create a catalog of what the atmosphere's C14 levels looked like over the years. You say they're just guesses, but in reality, quite a lot of work goes into standardizing the data. As I said before, though, there are other methods that are even better because they are able to self-check for problems like the ones you describe.
I've said this before in these discussions and I'll probably say it again but, please show your work. Don't take it personally, but the assertion you just made is far too handwavy to be taken at face value, and as far as I know, quantum mechanics gives us no theoretical reason for this to be true in the temperature regimes you're talking about. As far as I can recall (and I don't have copy of Dalrymple with me, so please forgive me from working from memory), changes of over 1000 degrees C don't seem to alter C14's decay constant. I seriously doubt that a few degrees C are going to do it under normal Earth conditions. If you have some numbers to show, I'd be interested.
It should be noted that ad hominem isn't Latin for, "That was a mean thing to say!" I suggest that if you'd prefer that your physics be taken seriously, start doing some calculations and stop inventing physical laws that don't exist. I was already a bit grouchy when you responded to me, and you did so by essentially calling thousands of scientists incompetent, stupid, or frauds. You can't seriously think that the objections that you're bringing up have gone unnoticed by the scientific community until now, can you? Obviously not, so they must either be too thick headed or incompetent to understand them, or the entire community of atomic physicists is involved in a conspiracy to defraud us. I'll leave it to you to decide which one you were suggesting.
If you honestly believe that, whoever taught you about isochron has sold you a bill of goods. You might seriously consider rethinking whatever other material they sold you while you're at it. What, specifically, are you wrong about? Well:
* Isochron dating does not require that the initial amount of the daughter isotope be known.
* Contamination of either the parent or daughter isotope can generally be detected because the data will no longer be collinear.
To some extent, isochron dating is "self calibrating" in that finding data that are not collinear immediately means that something is wrong, and that finding collinear data is a strong indication that the system is working. Is it foolproof? Certainly not. The ICR's grand canyon dating project shows that sufficiently careful selection of data can break nearly every dating tool. Does it s
This is kind of like pointing out that somebody's fly is unzipped, but I have to tell you that this particular argument has been so well debunked that it's on the list of arguments that even Creation ministries international and Answers in Genesis say are bogus. I think that Kent Hovind and his traveling circus are the only people who really use it anymore. Summary: Dust doesn't accumulate nearly as quickly as once thought.
Please show your work. Actually, let me show mine:
Earth's circumference: 24,900 miles
Rotational period: 13.5 hours
Tangential velocity: 24,900 / 13.5 = 1844 miles per hour = 824 meters per second
Radius of the earth: 6,378,000 meters
Acceleration due to rotation: 824*824 / 6,378,000 = 0.106455942 m/s^2
So we're seeing a 0.1 m/s^2 reduction in the apparent force of gravity during the "old days". Re-running the numbers with a 24 hour period we get:
Earth's circumference: 24,900 miles
Rotational period: 24 hours
Tangential velocity: 24,900 / 24 = 1037.5miles per hour = 464 meters per second
Radius of the earth: 6,378,000 meters
Acceleration due to rotation: 464 * 464 / 6,378,000 = 0.0337560364 m/s^2
So the difference between now and then is 0.106455942 - 0.0337560364 = 0.0726999056 m/s^2. For the record, per this table, you'll get half that variation by traveling from Oslo to Mexico city. Where do you get your numbers?
Maybe I can help. First, if you read the quote and the paragraphs surrounding it, Darwin was making more of a detached observation than actually advocating extermination, so that would more or less invalidate the idea that he was "in favor of racial genocide." He did buy into the racism of the day, which just about everybody did. Hell, Darwin was even against slavery. Your sig might more accurately read, "Darwin: Victorian era white guy." But of course, that wouldn't have nearly the emotional impact.
Basically, people were calling you a troll because you were trolling. That's what we call irrelevant personal attacks designed to stir up controversy--especially ones that aren't totally accurate.
Ahh the special pleading and crackpot physics of creationists. We've seen evidence of the constancy of decay supernovae, and if decay rates were not constant, it would have very interesting (and completely unobserved) consequences for quantum mechanics. If something we observe (something that's consistent with all of physics and chemistry, not to mention historical observations) upsets creationists, they'll quickly whip out some new laws of physics and ignore the consequences.
I don't see why young earth creationists have so much trouble with C14 dating given that it's not really used to support any of the evidence that devastates their positions. Far more interesting are things like isochron dating.
IC isn't exactly the strongest of ideas to begin with (for example, there's no meaningful way to show that a structure is irreducibly complex), but it does have one fatal flaw: Even if it's not possible to take away a part of a system without destroying it, it's likely very possible to add a part and then take away one of the original parts without destroying the system. One might say that an arch is irreducibly complex because removing a stone from it makes it collapse. Does it follow that an arch can't be built? No. It simply ignores the fact that the precursor to the arch had more "stuff" attached to it (supports and scaffolding) than we see now. The arch didn't go from N-1 stones to N stones, because with N-1 stones it would have collapsed. It went from N-1 stones + supports to N stones + supports to N stones with no supports, creating the "irreducibly complex" structure we see today.
I weep for the future of physics if this is the common understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Please explain this to me: How does evolution violate the second law of thermodynamics but a seed growing into a tree not violate the law? What is the difference between the two. Bonus points if you use math or actually quote the second law in a meaningful way.
It's based on constant rates of radioactive decay, which has consequences for the speed of light. Fortunately, evidence indicates that those constants are pretty darned solid.
It is only good for a few tens of thousands of years, yes. And NOBODY uses it for millions of years. Full stop. Where do you get this stuff?
Do you usually pull unsupported anecdotes and random figures out of your ass to cast doubt on a position you disagree with, or is radiometric dating a particularly touchy subject for you?
You don't seem to have the most basic facts about the topic you just "threw your hat into the ring" on. Millions of years? What? You're clearly parrotting something you read on the web somewhere, but it's pretty clear that you haven't done your homework. You might want to start here.
The reason I'm sounding so grouchy about this is that you're casting aspersions at a lot of professionals here, and it's pretty obvious that you're out of your depth. It's kind of a rude thing to do. It's also clear that you're not looking for answers to your questions (although you clearly don't seem to know the answers), but rather trying to muddy the waters with accusations phrased as questions. That's not especially nice either.
In that case, I'm likely to believe in the god or gods who appear to be most vindictive. I don't want to piss those types of gods off The kind and forgiving gods can wait in line while I pray to the gods who will roast me over the coals for upsetting them.
So the "Gaia crowd" who, by and large, don't seem to be able to get anything done politically have managed to get the majority of the world's climate scientists the to engage in a conspiracy with them because they hate coal and oil? That seems a lot more likely than the fact that there is significant evidence to support the position. It's almost as sensible as the claim that the environmentalist crazies don't actually support the environment--they just hate money and want a communist world government!
That's certainly true, but that fact by itself doesn't mean that global warming is bad science. Again, the fact that scientists have been wrong in the past doesn't immediately invalidate modern theory. Doctors used to think that tomatoes would kill you, so they must be full of garbage when they say that smoking is dangerous? Not so much. My problem isn't with skepticism per se. It's more an issue with armchair scientists who think that their "common sense" along with a few minutes on the web and fuzzy memories of Time magazine from a generation ago somehow makes it easy for them to see how literally thousands of of climate experts are completely wrong in their field of expertise. It's like the creationist video on YouTube that claims that evolution can't be possible because they weren't able to spontaneously create life in a jar of peanut butter. It's folksy and cute, and it makes you sound like a no-nonsense decisive type of guy who hates all that egghead stuff, but it's ultimately still just crap.
My point is that the various claims of decades past don't come near the broad consensus and quantities of data we have today. The fact that some scientists have been wrong in the past doesn't mean that most scientists are wrong now.
Again, I'm not sure how your system works (although all of the modern banking systems I'm aware of are relatively similar), but the US central bank isn't a profit making entity. It's essentially there to regulate the money supply so that it grows at a rate that safely correlates with the US economy. Allowing bankers to print money and loan it out for a profit with no restrictions wouldn't be a particularly clever thing to do, and if that's actually what was happening, I imagine our economy would have tanked a long time ago.
I suppose that, like most things, that depends on if you read up on it in textbooks or random sites on the Internet.
And you're basing this on...?
The whole point of government intervention is to maintain faith in publicly traded companies to keep those capital markets working. If the players in those markets aren't forced to provide accurate information to investors, the whole thing comes tumbling down. When that much money changes hands every day, it's guaranteed that there are going to be a lot of unethical players who are willing to cheat to make money. The only way you can keep the system from deteriorating into uselessness is to regulate it, even if those regulations are a pain to deal with.
Remember, we recalled a governor in California basically for being the governor when the shit hit the fan. Never mind that a sizable chunk of our shortfall was crazy referendum spending that our elected government had no real power over. Not that things were particularly well managed to begin with, but I don't think that the voters of California really remembered how much they had to do with the budget snafu.