> I find it terribly amusing how for years the open-source community has used the larger number of holes found in Windows systems as one of their arguments against it. Yet now when the open-source community is also plagued with the same thing the comments tend to be along the line of 'Windows still sux.'...
How many Apache exploits per IIS exploit?
What are the average turnaround times for security updates for Apache and IIS?
How much other stuff gets broken by an Apache update and a IIS update?
> I find it astonishing that the Michaelson-Morley experiment, which was the basis for Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity didn't make the top ten list.
Yeah, M/M is always the first thing that comes to mind when the subject of "classic experiment" comes up.
> This reminds me of those old adventure games where they made the game world seem bigger by putting you into a loop, so you could keep going in the same direction, and just go round the same locations over and over again...
> Its only good point, IMHO, was that it actually had a strong female who was willing and able to join in the fights rather than wimpering in the corner waiting for someone to save her.
> Take Red Dwarf, expand cast 300%. Reduce silly to 20%. Reset universe for human expansion. Add near equal parts western. Shake. Serves about 2 - 3 million.
I took it more as an anti-Andromeda. But with characters in bas-relief rather than the expected bigger-than-life stuff.
And BTW, it will have to be real damn good if I'm going to have to listen to country music to watch it.
> Yes, you're correct about Piltdown Man; he was a fraud perpetrated by a rather small group of British researchers (including, of all people, Arthur Conan Doyle.)
Are you sure about this? I thought there were several hypotheses still in circulation about whodunnit, none of which were rigorously verifiable.
> The point is this: Before you accuse scientists en masse of widespread fraud, lies, and deception, you might want to consider getting your own house in order first. The Piltdown Man debacle demonstrates that scientists are ever skeptical and are willing to admit when they are wrong and have been misled. Are you and yours capable of the same honesty?
Yeah, really. A while back I read the transcript of a debate between a creationist and a scientist. One interesting exchange went like this (though unfortunately I'm paraphrasing from memory) -
Creationist: It's not fair for you to criticise my earlier book for factual errors. We've learned more since then, and I bring everything up to date in my newer book.
Scientist:So how come copies of your earlier book, which you acknowledge to be in error, are being sold out in the lobby right now?
Creationist advocacy tends to be just a wee bit over the top if you try to interpret the leading advocates' behavior in any light other than deliberate dishonesty.
> > I don't understand you reference to Genesis 30. This is the story of Jacob (Israel), his wifes, and 12 sons. Yes Jacob had 4 wifes (well two wifes and two handmaidens as wifes) and yes the culture of the day allowed a wife to claim the children of her handmaiden as her children, if they were fathered by her husband. This in no way claims that they are genetically related to the wife, she just claimed them as the fathers genetics were of the most important of the time.
> Read verses 31-43. You will find the ridiculous assertion that placing striped branches in the water troughs that sheep drink out of while they are mating will make them produce striped offspring.
Heh. Count on a creationist not to grok what the bible says about a topic even when directed to the book and chapter that addresses it. Now we'll see whether specifying the verses helps him get it.
BTW, I have a conjecture that creationism is closely related to problems with reading comprehension. It's not just the scientific literature that they mangle.
> Excellent, another Sci Fi series we get to see canceled prematurely. I say we get a heard start on the "save our show campaign" this time. I'll go start a petition to not cancel it at Petition Online... I figure our chances are much better if we start before it actually canceled this time;).
LMAO. Surely a signature is worth triple if you sign the petition before the first episode airs!
> Criticizing a physical model plays a lot better when you have *some* basic understanding of the model itself. The description you give of the Big Bang model simply isn't an accurate one; it shows that you don't know what you're talking about. The goo you posted furthermore misquotes and misrepresents the references it cites, and makes misstatements a-plenty. I encourage you to actually take the time to learn some of the relevant physics, and then make an effort to learn what cosmologists and astrophysicists really do think, and why they think that; your screed helps you with none of those things.
Why should they treat astronomy any different from the way they treat biology, geology, and every other field they see fit to drag into the argument?
Most of this has been well answered already, but here are a couple more points:
> The global flood happened whether you believe it or not. As I have stated other places in this thread, there are stories in almost every culture of a great flood and a boat with a surviving family and animals (please explain this away).
Easy. Do you base your geology on folklore or on the physical evidence? The physical evidence says "no global flood". We'll leave it to the anthropologists to explain the folklore. (Assuming there's anything to explain. Sure, there are lots of "flood" stories, but how many of them actually agree with the biblical one?)
> As for the "finger in your ears" part, the same could be said of scientist. If they uncover something that proves something in the Bible, they immediate start looking for ways to disprove that it really happened or attempt to explain it away in some way.
Not so. Archaeologists and historians have discovered lots of true stuff in the bible and other scientists don't feel any need to explain those things away. The problem arises when literalists assume that just because a book contains some true stuff then everything in it must be true. That notion is patently false; just consider your favorite historical novel as an example.
> And if you really want to get down to it the Bible proves many scientific things itself. Look at Job 36:27-28 and learn about rain.
Or if you really want to understand biblical science, read the second half of Genesis 30 and learn about bogo-genetics.
(Lurkers, please take the trouble to do this. You'll be amused as well as informed - reading it will be quite worth your time.)
> Just do a google search.
Just get a clue.
And quit relying on creationist Web sites for your "facts" about the world.
FWIW, a quick browse of the site suggests that the Libertarian posters to the site are an odd mixture of a group of people expressing a basic good-sense take on what's going on in the world and another group of people too right-wing for the Republican party.
This isn't really too surprising, since a moment's reflection will reveal that the Republican and Democratic parties are also coalitions of strange bedfellows. I wonder whether any Libertarian watcher would like to share his/her thoughts on the major coalitions that make up the Libertarian party and its supporters in 2002? (Please, no ideological fluff of the sort you'd get if you asked a Democrat or a Republican the same thing about their own party. I'm looking for someone that has watched and read and put some reasonably unbiased thought into it.)
Also, if anyone cares to venture so far off topic, I'd like to hear some opinions about the pros and cons of parliamentarian governments vs. what we practice in the USA. I have some thoughts on this, but I'll hold them to see whether the discussion gets off the ground. (I ask because a parliamentarian government would presumably break up the two-party system and let Libertarians and other "fringe" groups have more direct representation in government.)
> it could be seen as typical, yes: copy large text instead of refering to origin, then use it to state much all at once as fact, include names of many references, but then forget to provide the actual bibliography (note the numbered [x] references)
Most likely just cut-n-paste from some creationist Web site. Creationists are notorious for doing that on talk.origins, and forgetting to mention that they are just regurgitating someone else's screed.
I would wager that you could find the source of this particular screed on some creationist Web site within a minute by using a search engine, if anyone cared enough to try. Or more likely on many creationist Web sites, since they tend to echo each other's screeds indiscriminately.
I presume you're doing a bit of Loki trolling, but here goes anyway:
> Surely, while the discovery of a species of rabbit that no longer walks this Earth may surprise the evolutionists and Science-worshippers
Uhm, yes, that's why I suspect you're just parodying a creationist. Discovery of "new" extinct species doesn't surprise scientists at all. IIRC, we discover a new one every few days, on average. Most aren't cutesy enough to make Slashdot headlines.
> it's plain to see that it fits right in to the Creationist worldview.
Anything fits the creationist worldview, unless there has been a political decision to reject it.
> Extinct species don't have to be our "ancestors." They were just creations that didn't make it through the flood.
So, are you saying the bible is wrong when it claims that Noah actually did save two of everything on the ark?
> Remember the great Scientist Aristotle?
Aristotle wasn't a scientist in the modern sense. (Though he was a damn sight more rational than Plato.) It's probably best to think of him as an encyclopedist.
> Meanwhile, the Bible has been through, count 'em, one revision in the same time period.
Actually, bible-based religion has undergone 1000-2000 sect fissions in the past 500 years. That doesn't inspire much faith in the bible as an indisputable source of truth.
> New discoveries poke holes in Scientific theories, while supporting Biblical ones, almost without fail.
Actually, new discoveries almost always reveal a world that's further from the naive conception of the bible's bronze age mythology, rather than closer to it.
> And so the Scienc-ists are reduced to snide comments. I guess I shouldn't expect anything better.
Actually, creationists act as lightning rods for tart comments because they're in the habit of parading their ignorace in public forums. Let the thunder roll, for all I care. If they don't want to be ridiculed, let them quit playing the court jester.
> Oh my, how I'd like that to be true! Unfortunately, ``peer review'' (which is neither) only guarantees that revolutionary findings are suppressed for 30 years or so, and by then those who actually thougth of it, the true scientists, are retired or even dead, and the looters of science `rediscover' those findings and become the new high priests of the departed genious. Then, this new generation of looters and fakers block the new ideas for another 30 years... and so it goes on and on generation of looters following generation of looters that feed on the work of real scientists.
You seem to portray this as the norm for the field. How many examples can you cite?
> The so-called ``peer-review'' also means that skeptics in science never get published. Only those that `get along with the program' are not silenced.
This, along with your earlier assertion that revolutionary findings are suppressed for 30 years, is a sure indication that you've never read much peer-reviewed literature.
Peer review isn't about ensuring orthodoxy; it's about ensuring that you support your claims. We get revolutionary and/or contrarian views expressed in peer-reviewed literature all the time; what we don't get (when the system works) is grandiose claims based on sloppy work and/or handwaving arguments. There's a reason cold nuclear fusion was announced in the news press rather than in a peer-reviewed publication, and it ain't because CNF would have rocked the boat.
> And answer this: why is the review done on things we never get to see.
Actually, almost all of it is plainly visible if you care enough about it to study up in the field and go to conferences where you can talk to people about what they're doing.
> We have had the Inet for a couple of decades now... why is science not published first and reviewed later?
To a certain extent that is in fact happening. Many prominent researchers have non-peer-reviewed articles available at their Web or FTP sites, or at some other centralized repository. The entire "tech report" mechanism uses only lightweight review, i.e. is usually only a grad student's work reviewed by that student's advisor, which is not generally considered a detached enough reviewer or a broad enough review for this to count as peer review proper. Yet huge masses of this stuff is available over the internet. (Hint: google for "university of <state>" and "tech report", and spend the next few years reading the papers you find.)
Unfortunately, this arrangement is not altogether satisfactory. There's just too darn much material out there to allow reading everything written even for a sub-sub-sub-field of some major discipline. Peer review is nice because it filters out most of the stuff that is just text without a point, or without any tangible contribution to the field, or that "discovers" something the experts already knew, or that doesn't follow good experimental procedures, or that makes claims that aren't actually supported, etc. Peer review is ultimately a spam filter; the internet makes peer review more important rather than less important.
> To do it that way costs less than 10%
Yes, several major disciplines are trying to move away from the traditional print journals, partly due to cost issues and partly because the internet will give wider access and thus make science more open.
> and science would be transparent to us all.
Other than weapons research and the direct applications research going on in big companies, science is remarkably transparent. For peer reviewed science all you really need is a library card.
> Yes, fakes---read non-officially santioned fakes---are found out. But others, like Darwinism, are not. Go and ask for any evidence that supports Darwinism... you get called ``Creationist''.
That's because with six nines' accuracy only creationists are asking for evidence that supports the theory of evolution. Scientists realize that in the big picture a theory isn't something you dream up and then try to dredge up evidence to prove. In fact it's almost the reverse of that process: faced with a big pile of evidence, you generate a theory as a model that explains it.
If you have a better model for biology than the theory of evolution, you should write it up and submit it to Nature for publication. But sitting around and asking "where's the evidence" merely makes you look ignorant, not only of the evidence but of what science is all about.
> Be a skeptic, be a scientist, and get labeled as ``Creationist''.
Sorry, but your post indicates that you don't even know what science is. Spend a few years of intense study learning what observations the theory of evolution was created to explain, then come back and post your alternative model and explain why it is better - then, and only then, will I acknowledge you as a scientist. Meanwhile you differ from creationists only in the details, not in the important dimension, cluelessness.
Sorry to sound so harsh, but you need to think things out a bit. Try going to a construction site and convincing everyone that there aren't enough anchor bolts in the steel columns, or go to an operating room and try convincing everyone that the incisions should be made elsewhere, or go to a racetrack and convince the drivers to swing wider on the curves, or any of a million other examples. You can't just sit in your armchair and proclaim "I don't believe the experts, let them prove me wrong!", and expect to be labeled a scientist for your trouble. Science isn't in the business of convincing recalcitrant deniers; science is in the business of understanding nature. For that we observe nature and construct models; the rhetoric of denial is irrelevant.
> You claim that there was a regional flood, because you can see evidence that it happened. I claim that the flood covered the entire earth because I have faith. There is evidence in the stories and evidence in the earth (flood of the Black Sea area, flooded plains of North America, etc), it just needs to be connected with faith.
The problem is, you can connect anything with faith. Thus one claim is exactly as good as another, and as a result they're all worth exactly nothing for understanding what really happened.
That's why those of us not blinded by religious beliefs prefer to stake our claims on evidence rather than faith. We can still be wrong, but at least the evidence puts some constraints on what we can claim.
> The Big Bang theory concerning the origin of the universe was spawned about 50 years ago, and soon became the dogma of the evolutionary establishment.
If, as your subject line suggests, you were intending to paint a portrait of creationism, you did a damn fine job, because the big bang theory doesn't have anything to do with evolution, and the ignorant assertion in your first sentence is bang-on as a portrayal of the way creationists think.
> I've always wondered if the earth was "created" with these fossils in place.
Some creationists actually invoke that argument in a last-ditch attempt to preserve their beliefs in the face of the masses of contrary evidence. Unfortunately they end up binding themselves to a theology that requires a Divine Deceiver as the creator of the universe, with a result that divine revelation is no more trustworthy than the faked physical evidence, so they end up without a leg to stand on anyway.
> IOW, these things never lived, that would explaing the dinasaurs that seem to defy the laws of physics and common sense.
This seeming is presumably in the eye of the beholder. Think how incredibly strange a turtle, a penguin, an elephant, or any of a thousand other species would seem, if we had never seen the like before.
> I can just se the Supreme Being up there laughing his ass off at us trying to imagine how these ceatures lived.
> Not all creationists are trolls who go into science forums and talk about non-science.
Yeah, we really need some more precise terminology. There seem to be concentric rings of belief, from those who think God set up the system to obtain the desired result, such that cosmology and evolution are the divine mechanism of creation, through those who believe in a 6000 year old universe because they learned it in Sunday School as a child and never had that belief challenged, down to those who aggressively push a very narrow literalist interpretation of Genesis I in front of legislatures and school boards, spewing all manner of bullshit in support of their claims. Recent comments in talk.origins indicate that even the former consider themselves "creationists".
The reason we need more precise terminology is because a statement to the effect that "All creationists are idiots" would be true if "creationists" refered only to the latter group, but quite false if if referred to the former. By the former definition, certain "creationists" rank among the most sensible posters to talk.origins.
Slashdot Mirror
> I find it terribly amusing how for years the open-source community has used the larger number of holes found in Windows systems as one of their arguments against it. Yet now when the open-source community is also plagued with the same thing the comments tend to be along the line of 'Windows still sux.'...
> I find it astonishing that the Michaelson-Morley experiment, which was the basis for Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity didn't make the top ten list.
Yeah, M/M is always the first thing that comes to mind when the subject of "classic experiment" comes up.
> This reminds me of those old adventure games where they made the game world seem bigger by putting you into a loop, so you could keep going in the same direction, and just go round the same locations over and over again...
You are in a maze of shutty little doors.
"Drill" does not work here.
> So what if the system fingers someone as a potential threat - you still can't lawfully detain them based on information provided by such a system.
Oh, like that matters these days.
> Its only good point, IMHO, was that it actually had a strong female who was willing and able to join in the fights rather than wimpering in the corner waiting for someone to save her.
Oh, and that's novel in 2002.
> Not to geek out here but:
Not much need to blush about geekiness on Slashdot.
> though, it was an excellent way to get me to start watching john doe
Feh, a Pretender clone. Did they give us any reason to care if Mr. Doe stepped in a manhole and died?
> Take Red Dwarf, expand cast 300%. Reduce silly to 20%. Reset universe for human expansion. Add near equal parts western. Shake. Serves about 2 - 3 million.
I took it more as an anti-Andromeda. But with characters in bas-relief rather than the expected bigger-than-life stuff.
And BTW, it will have to be real damn good if I'm going to have to listen to country music to watch it.
Creationist advocacy tends to be just a wee bit over the top if you try to interpret the leading advocates' behavior in any light other than deliberate dishonesty.> Yes, you're correct about Piltdown Man; he was a fraud perpetrated by a rather small group of British researchers (including, of all people, Arthur Conan Doyle.)
Are you sure about this? I thought there were several hypotheses still in circulation about whodunnit, none of which were rigorously verifiable.
> The point is this: Before you accuse scientists en masse of widespread fraud, lies, and deception, you might want to consider getting your own house in order first. The Piltdown Man debacle demonstrates that scientists are ever skeptical and are willing to admit when they are wrong and have been misled. Are you and yours capable of the same honesty?
Yeah, really. A while back I read the transcript of a debate between a creationist and a scientist. One interesting exchange went like this (though unfortunately I'm paraphrasing from memory) -
> > I don't understand you reference to Genesis 30. This is the story of Jacob (Israel), his wifes, and 12 sons. Yes Jacob had 4 wifes (well two wifes and two handmaidens as wifes) and yes the culture of the day allowed a wife to claim the children of her handmaiden as her children, if they were fathered by her husband. This in no way claims that they are genetically related to the wife, she just claimed them as the fathers genetics were of the most important of the time.
> Read verses 31-43. You will find the ridiculous assertion that placing striped branches in the water troughs that sheep drink out of while they are mating will make them produce striped offspring.
Heh. Count on a creationist not to grok what the bible says about a topic even when directed to the book and chapter that addresses it. Now we'll see whether specifying the verses helps him get it.
BTW, I have a conjecture that creationism is closely related to problems with reading comprehension. It's not just the scientific literature that they mangle.
> Excellent, another Sci Fi series we get to see canceled prematurely. I say we get a heard start on the "save our show campaign" this time. I'll go start a petition to not cancel it at Petition Online
LMAO. Surely a signature is worth triple if you sign the petition before the first episode airs!
> Criticizing a physical model plays a lot better when you have *some* basic understanding of the model itself. The description you give of the Big Bang model simply isn't an accurate one; it shows that you don't know what you're talking about. The goo you posted furthermore misquotes and misrepresents the references it cites, and makes misstatements a-plenty. I encourage you to actually take the time to learn some of the relevant physics, and then make an effort to learn what cosmologists and astrophysicists really do think, and why they think that; your screed helps you with none of those things.
Why should they treat astronomy any different from the way they treat biology, geology, and every other field they see fit to drag into the argument?
> Some Libertarian you are. Are you really looking for a government regulatory solution?
The challenge: Pick another political party and describe a situation that would be a similar paradox for a member of that party.
Winners will receive an appropriate amount of karma from their peers. (So will whores, but that's not part of the contest.)
Most of this has been well answered already, but here are a couple more points:
> The global flood happened whether you believe it or not. As I have stated other places in this thread, there are stories in almost every culture of a great flood and a boat with a surviving family and animals (please explain this away).
Easy. Do you base your geology on folklore or on the physical evidence? The physical evidence says "no global flood". We'll leave it to the anthropologists to explain the folklore. (Assuming there's anything to explain. Sure, there are lots of "flood" stories, but how many of them actually agree with the biblical one?)
> As for the "finger in your ears" part, the same could be said of scientist. If they uncover something that proves something in the Bible, they immediate start looking for ways to disprove that it really happened or attempt to explain it away in some way.
Not so. Archaeologists and historians have discovered lots of true stuff in the bible and other scientists don't feel any need to explain those things away. The problem arises when literalists assume that just because a book contains some true stuff then everything in it must be true. That notion is patently false; just consider your favorite historical novel as an example.
> And if you really want to get down to it the Bible proves many scientific things itself. Look at Job 36:27-28 and learn about rain.
Or if you really want to understand biblical science, read the second half of Genesis 30 and learn about bogo-genetics.
(Lurkers, please take the trouble to do this. You'll be amused as well as informed - reading it will be quite worth your time.)
> Just do a google search.
Just get a clue.
And quit relying on creationist Web sites for your "facts" about the world.
FWIW, a quick browse of the site suggests that the Libertarian posters to the site are an odd mixture of a group of people expressing a basic good-sense take on what's going on in the world and another group of people too right-wing for the Republican party.
This isn't really too surprising, since a moment's reflection will reveal that the Republican and Democratic parties are also coalitions of strange bedfellows. I wonder whether any Libertarian watcher would like to share his/her thoughts on the major coalitions that make up the Libertarian party and its supporters in 2002? (Please, no ideological fluff of the sort you'd get if you asked a Democrat or a Republican the same thing about their own party. I'm looking for someone that has watched and read and put some reasonably unbiased thought into it.)
Also, if anyone cares to venture so far off topic, I'd like to hear some opinions about the pros and cons of parliamentarian governments vs. what we practice in the USA. I have some thoughts on this, but I'll hold them to see whether the discussion gets off the ground. (I ask because a parliamentarian government would presumably break up the two-party system and let Libertarians and other "fringe" groups have more direct representation in government.)
> it could be seen as typical, yes: copy large text instead of refering to origin, then use it to state much all at once as fact, include names of many references, but then forget to provide the actual bibliography (note the numbered [x] references)
Most likely just cut-n-paste from some creationist Web site. Creationists are notorious for doing that on talk.origins, and forgetting to mention that they are just regurgitating someone else's screed.
I would wager that you could find the source of this particular screed on some creationist Web site within a minute by using a search engine, if anyone cared enough to try. Or more likely on many creationist Web sites, since they tend to echo each other's screeds indiscriminately.
I presume you're doing a bit of Loki trolling, but here goes anyway:
> Surely, while the discovery of a species of rabbit that no longer walks this Earth may surprise the evolutionists and Science-worshippers
Uhm, yes, that's why I suspect you're just parodying a creationist. Discovery of "new" extinct species doesn't surprise scientists at all. IIRC, we discover a new one every few days, on average. Most aren't cutesy enough to make Slashdot headlines.
> it's plain to see that it fits right in to the Creationist worldview.
Anything fits the creationist worldview, unless there has been a political decision to reject it.
> Extinct species don't have to be our "ancestors." They were just creations that didn't make it through the flood.
So, are you saying the bible is wrong when it claims that Noah actually did save two of everything on the ark?
> Remember the great Scientist Aristotle?
Aristotle wasn't a scientist in the modern sense. (Though he was a damn sight more rational than Plato.) It's probably best to think of him as an encyclopedist.
> Meanwhile, the Bible has been through, count 'em, one revision in the same time period.
Actually, bible-based religion has undergone 1000-2000 sect fissions in the past 500 years. That doesn't inspire much faith in the bible as an indisputable source of truth.
> New discoveries poke holes in Scientific theories, while supporting Biblical ones, almost without fail.
Actually, new discoveries almost always reveal a world that's further from the naive conception of the bible's bronze age mythology, rather than closer to it.
> And so the Scienc-ists are reduced to snide comments. I guess I shouldn't expect anything better.
Actually, creationists act as lightning rods for tart comments because they're in the habit of parading their ignorace in public forums. Let the thunder roll, for all I care. If they don't want to be ridiculed, let them quit playing the court jester.
> In one sentence you made fun of Muslms, Jews, and Christians. That's what, half the world population?
Are all Muslims, Jews, and Christians creationists?
Are all creationists Muslims, Jews, or Christians?
Did you have a point, other than to score rhetorical points with an unfounded insinuation of ethnic prejudice?
> Oh my, how I'd like that to be true! Unfortunately, ``peer review'' (which is neither) only guarantees that revolutionary findings are suppressed for 30 years or so, and by then those who actually thougth of it, the true scientists, are retired or even dead, and the looters of science `rediscover' those findings and become the new high priests of the departed genious. Then, this new generation of looters and fakers block the new ideas for another 30 years... and so it goes on and on generation of looters following generation of looters that feed on the work of real scientists.
You seem to portray this as the norm for the field. How many examples can you cite?
> The so-called ``peer-review'' also means that skeptics in science never get published. Only those that `get along with the program' are not silenced.
This, along with your earlier assertion that revolutionary findings are suppressed for 30 years, is a sure indication that you've never read much peer-reviewed literature.
Peer review isn't about ensuring orthodoxy; it's about ensuring that you support your claims. We get revolutionary and/or contrarian views expressed in peer-reviewed literature all the time; what we don't get (when the system works) is grandiose claims based on sloppy work and/or handwaving arguments. There's a reason cold nuclear fusion was announced in the news press rather than in a peer-reviewed publication, and it ain't because CNF would have rocked the boat.
> And answer this: why is the review done on things we never get to see.
Actually, almost all of it is plainly visible if you care enough about it to study up in the field and go to conferences where you can talk to people about what they're doing.
> We have had the Inet for a couple of decades now... why is science not published first and reviewed later?
To a certain extent that is in fact happening. Many prominent researchers have non-peer-reviewed articles available at their Web or FTP sites, or at some other centralized repository. The entire "tech report" mechanism uses only lightweight review, i.e. is usually only a grad student's work reviewed by that student's advisor, which is not generally considered a detached enough reviewer or a broad enough review for this to count as peer review proper. Yet huge masses of this stuff is available over the internet. (Hint: google for "university of <state>" and "tech report", and spend the next few years reading the papers you find.)
Unfortunately, this arrangement is not altogether satisfactory. There's just too darn much material out there to allow reading everything written even for a sub-sub-sub-field of some major discipline. Peer review is nice because it filters out most of the stuff that is just text without a point, or without any tangible contribution to the field, or that "discovers" something the experts already knew, or that doesn't follow good experimental procedures, or that makes claims that aren't actually supported, etc. Peer review is ultimately a spam filter; the internet makes peer review more important rather than less important.
> To do it that way costs less than 10%
Yes, several major disciplines are trying to move away from the traditional print journals, partly due to cost issues and partly because the internet will give wider access and thus make science more open.
> and science would be transparent to us all.
Other than weapons research and the direct applications research going on in big companies, science is remarkably transparent. For peer reviewed science all you really need is a library card.
> Yes, fakes---read non-officially santioned fakes---are found out. But others, like Darwinism, are not. Go and ask for any evidence that supports Darwinism... you get called ``Creationist''.
That's because with six nines' accuracy only creationists are asking for evidence that supports the theory of evolution. Scientists realize that in the big picture a theory isn't something you dream up and then try to dredge up evidence to prove. In fact it's almost the reverse of that process: faced with a big pile of evidence, you generate a theory as a model that explains it.
If you have a better model for biology than the theory of evolution, you should write it up and submit it to Nature for publication. But sitting around and asking "where's the evidence" merely makes you look ignorant, not only of the evidence but of what science is all about.
> Be a skeptic, be a scientist, and get labeled as ``Creationist''.
Sorry, but your post indicates that you don't even know what science is. Spend a few years of intense study learning what observations the theory of evolution was created to explain, then come back and post your alternative model and explain why it is better - then, and only then, will I acknowledge you as a scientist. Meanwhile you differ from creationists only in the details, not in the important dimension, cluelessness.
Sorry to sound so harsh, but you need to think things out a bit. Try going to a construction site and convincing everyone that there aren't enough anchor bolts in the steel columns, or go to an operating room and try convincing everyone that the incisions should be made elsewhere, or go to a racetrack and convince the drivers to swing wider on the curves, or any of a million other examples. You can't just sit in your armchair and proclaim "I don't believe the experts, let them prove me wrong!", and expect to be labeled a scientist for your trouble. Science isn't in the business of convincing recalcitrant deniers; science is in the business of understanding nature. For that we observe nature and construct models; the rhetoric of denial is irrelevant.
> You claim that there was a regional flood, because you can see evidence that it happened. I claim that the flood covered the entire earth because I have faith. There is evidence in the stories and evidence in the earth (flood of the Black Sea area, flooded plains of North America, etc), it just needs to be connected with faith.
The problem is, you can connect anything with faith. Thus one claim is exactly as good as another, and as a result they're all worth exactly nothing for understanding what really happened.
That's why those of us not blinded by religious beliefs prefer to stake our claims on evidence rather than faith. We can still be wrong, but at least the evidence puts some constraints on what we can claim.
> The Big Bang theory concerning the origin of the universe was spawned about 50 years ago, and soon became the dogma of the evolutionary establishment.
If, as your subject line suggests, you were intending to paint a portrait of creationism, you did a damn fine job, because the big bang theory doesn't have anything to do with evolution, and the ignorant assertion in your first sentence is bang-on as a portrayal of the way creationists think.
Or fail to think, to be more precise.
> I've always wondered if the earth was "created" with these fossils in place.
Some creationists actually invoke that argument in a last-ditch attempt to preserve their beliefs in the face of the masses of contrary evidence. Unfortunately they end up binding themselves to a theology that requires a Divine Deceiver as the creator of the universe, with a result that divine revelation is no more trustworthy than the faked physical evidence, so they end up without a leg to stand on anyway.
> IOW, these things never lived, that would explaing the dinasaurs that seem to defy the laws of physics and common sense.
This seeming is presumably in the eye of the beholder. Think how incredibly strange a turtle, a penguin, an elephant, or any of a thousand other species would seem, if we had never seen the like before.
> I can just se the Supreme Being up there laughing his ass off at us trying to imagine how these ceatures lived.
Yeah, me too.
> Not all creationists are trolls who go into science forums and talk about non-science.
Yeah, we really need some more precise terminology. There seem to be concentric rings of belief, from those who think God set up the system to obtain the desired result, such that cosmology and evolution are the divine mechanism of creation, through those who believe in a 6000 year old universe because they learned it in Sunday School as a child and never had that belief challenged, down to those who aggressively push a very narrow literalist interpretation of Genesis I in front of legislatures and school boards, spewing all manner of bullshit in support of their claims. Recent comments in talk.origins indicate that even the former consider themselves "creationists".
The reason we need more precise terminology is because a statement to the effect that "All creationists are idiots" would be true if "creationists" refered only to the latter group, but quite false if if referred to the former. By the former definition, certain "creationists" rank among the most sensible posters to talk.origins.