Now looking at your example of Atlantis, just consider if an archaeologist actually found Atlantis, and it demonstrated that an incredibly advanced civilization existed 10,000 years ago. Which one would that be? I see an announcement that Atlantis has been discovered about every six months.
The religious argument is that God has always existed and will always exist and therefore does not need a creator and does not raise the question of what came before..
While unprovable, it is at least consistent. Actually, it isn't. What it boils down to is "my arguments against your explanation don't apply to my explanation".
Positing a supreme being explains the universe but the explanation introduces even more complexity that in turn has to be explained. It doesn't get you anywhere. Yes, it's possible, but it's not a useful hypothesis. It's the ultimate example of Ockham's "multiplying entities needlessly".
If you were God, I don't see why you couldn't initialize the universe simulation at a point 6000 years ago with all the evidence in said universe pointing to a cosmological creation point 13.73 billion years ago What's amazing is how many people will accept that God faked the evidence, but will never consider that He faked the account Genesis I. If God is decpetive, *all* bets are off.
We should remember that within this universe, God is omniscient and omnipotent. People who actually read the bible realize that he is portrayed as neither.
Make no mistake, what I am saying here is that an open mind be kept on BOTH sides. Yes, it's perfectly clear that your private interpretation of an arbitrary mythic tradition should be put on equal footing with our evidence-based understanding of the universe.
Do you know what a hassle it is to reset my sun dial twice a year? And you thought you're digital clocks were a pain to reset. What I hate is when you're setting the time and you turn it a little further than you intended. Then you have to turn it all the way around again to get it right.
how about you follow our (Saskatchewan's) example and have DST year-round? How 'bout we all just set our clocks forward to the weekend every Monday morning.
From TFA: "One study of the situation in Indiana cannot accurately asses the impact of [daylight-saving time] changes across the nation, especially when it does not include more northern, colder regions," the congressman (Mr. Markey) notes. Of course, it misses Florida and Texas too.
DST seems like a pain. However, after I moved to Japan, I realized how nice it actually is. The sun coming up at 4am is not a cool thing. So you can make it rise at 6am... by letting it set at 2am?
When you allow for more than 24 hours to happen in one of God's days, the only thing that comes up against the face of modern science is that the birds came before the dinosaurs. Long before you get into the conflicts with science, you have the conflicts with the second version of the story in chapter 2.
I fear that people without guidance can really get confused when reading the Bible. If you want the most basic tip of all, read the New Testament first. And if you want to understand the New Testament, read the Koran or the Book of Mormon first? A centuries-later add-on from a different culture isn't likely to provide much insight into the original.
The Theory of Evolution is still a theory because, by definition, it has yet to be proven by any method. The theory of evolution is and always will be, "still a theory", because it's an *explanation* of how evolution happens.
In the natural sciences, a theory is not a hypothesis waiting in the queue for confirmation.
After all, there is a large resistance to evolution, mainly from creationists but also from others. Who are these 'others' you speak of? When you scratch an evolution denier you infallibly find a creationist.
Even though it is being force fed to kids in school, many still choose to dismiss evolution. This alone is reason enough to not dismiss alternatives outright, but atleast give them the time of day. Kids don't like to take baths or eat their vegetables either. Should our second grade curriculum be bases on what second graders believe about the universe?
the ID "theory" does nothing of the sort. the only "innovation" it has over the overtly religious stories is the simple substitution of "god" with "intelligent designer". Literally! (Cf. "cdesign proponentists".)
Except that there really isn't that much diffrent between evolutionary theory and intelligent design. Except that evolution is the fundamental theory of biology and intelligent design is a steaming heap of pseudoscience concocted to make people feel good about believing contrafactual creation myths.
Only real diffrence is that evolutionary theory suggests that everything is completely random and the best pops out as successful. Intelligent design just says that a god pushed the specis to be successful and it wasn't completely random. Evolution isn't any more random than intelligent design would be. The whole point of the theory of evolution is that there are *reasons* the species we observe are the way they are.
But in the end the pure philosphical idea that it happend by chance or by intervention doesn't really matter to the science or data. Therefore we should teach schoolchildren that an Invisible Sky Man explains biology?
Yeah, I am aware that hard-core materialists postulate this. Until this concept has proven itself by creating life from non-life in the lab, I would be a bit more cautious with the judgment that there really isn't anything more to it. And when we do, people like you will say that the man-made stuff isn't "really" alive. It will lack some imaginary unobservable property, such as the 'soul' that makes a fertilized egg 'a person'.
PZ Myers put it pretty distinctly: PZ doesn't speak for everyone. IMO, he's simply wrong: biological evolution depends on the existence of life, but does *not* depend on where life came from. All that's required is that the self-replication is error prone.
Creationists also tend to conflate "darwinism" with big bang theory; we need to educate them on that confused conflation of ideas as well.
Median and mean are both a type of average. Only for an unusually broad notion of what "average" means.
And anyway, assuming that intelligence has a normal distribution, median and mean are the same. Or any other symmetrical distribution, though normal is what we would (naively) expect.
The speakers spent most of their time discussing why Intelligent Design is wrong, and getting into semi-religion-bashing. Unfortunately, science his come under a concerted religious/political attack, and scientists can't just sit back and ignore it anymore.
(Not that that invalidates your points. Scientists need to find a middle ground.)
Where can I find this conclusive physical evidence? Evidence that is only compatible with an evolutionary origin of the universe? Does anybody know of some good books on the subject? a) Start with a freshman biology textbook. Or visit talkorigins.org if you don't want to dive in that deep. [*]
b) Biological evolution has nothing to do with the origin of the universe.
[*] Notice that some of talkorigin.org's features are not up to date, because it got haxored and the maintainer hasn't had the time to harden the interactive features.
Getting people to change their opinions, beliefs, or conclusions is just difficult all over. To a big extent it's a Catch-22 situation. The vast majority of anti-evolution arguments are based on misconceptions of what the facts are and/or what the theory says. But you can't educate the deniers on these matters, because they believe those flawed arguments prove the whole thing is wrong, and won't listen long enough to be corrected. (And try to prevent the next generation from listening, too.)
The article does actually detail that Darwin's theory of evolution doesn't cover the origin of life. What's interesting is that the fact that evolution is happening doesn't depend on whether the first life forms were created by abiogenesis, aliens, or even God.
I hope they enjoined the Sun as a co-defendant.... If anything is substantially responsible for increasing the earth's temperature, it's that nuclear-reactor-in-the-sky. Are denialists still singing that tune? Scientists - i.e., the people who base their explanations on actual evidence - rejected it years ago.
I've been working so hard to warm the planet up, with my CO2 belching truck If you were a *real* redneck you'd have some methane farting cows for support.
Would believe raw data? Not in the absence of competence to interpret it.
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on. Meanwhile both poles are melting faster than anyone feared.
Perhaps you're not aware that climate change doesn't mean a uniform increase of temperature everywhere.
A collection of a dozen anecdotes doesn't mean squat for a global phenomenon.
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While unprovable, it is at least consistent. Actually, it isn't. What it boils down to is "my arguments against your explanation don't apply to my explanation".
Use your bail-out money to dig the hole deeper.
"One study of the situation in Indiana cannot accurately asses the impact of [daylight-saving time] changes across the nation, especially when it does not include more northern, colder regions," the congressman (Mr. Markey) notes. Of course, it misses Florida and Texas too.
In the natural sciences, a theory is not a hypothesis waiting in the queue for confirmation.
Creationists also tend to conflate "darwinism" with big bang theory; we need to educate them on that confused conflation of ideas as well.
(Not that that invalidates your points. Scientists need to find a middle ground.)
b) Biological evolution has nothing to do with the origin of the universe.
[*] Notice that some of talkorigin.org's features are not up to date, because it got haxored and the maintainer hasn't had the time to harden the interactive features.
Perhaps you're not aware that climate change doesn't mean a uniform increase of temperature everywhere.
A collection of a dozen anecdotes doesn't mean squat for a global phenomenon.