...you will still loose unless you can afford good lawyers...
How would a default judgment of a British court in a civil case be enforced against the residents or citizen of California for example? Would the lawsuit not have to be brought under California or federal United States law?
.....UK law prevents a poster from making libelous claims on the web...
How would such a UK law be enforced on a website hosted on a server in California? Is the United States or California or obligated nowadays to enforce laws from other countries? If not, what is special about the UK? Is there a treaty that says a United States citizen must pay even the slightest attention whatsoever in any shape or form to the law of a foreign power? What could happen to a US citizen who simply ignores studiously, any and all legal documents coming from the UK trying to enforce such a law?
...Depending on the degree of change it causes, it will probably require a lot of expensive engineering though....
If the change took place over three or four centuries, all our engineering and infrastructure would have to be renewed anyway. Most man-made things, including durable things like hydroelectric dams generally don't last that long. The United States alone is enough coal, that the present use rate, would last at least 300 years. If we humans don't incinerate ourselves before then, we might have learned to come up with a way to live in peace and develop renewable energy sources or even thermonuclear fusion.
A uniformly warmer Earth would be a blessing rather than a curse. Do you really think that it would be considered a negative if bananas would grow in North Dakota or tomatoes above the Arctic Circle? Increased warmth would allow the entire atmosphere of the earth to hold a huge amount of water, possibly even lowering the level of the world's oceans by more than the melting glacial ice could raise them. Has anyone ever done a calculation how much water would be suspended in the Earth's atmosphere if its average temperature at sea level were, for example, 70 F.?
....the sun was up to 1/3 dimmer.... That is pure conjecture with no evidence whatsoever. What known mechanism is put forth that would reduce the power output of the sun by a third? If the sun is indeed powered by hydrogen fusion, as is commonly assumed today, what would slow down the fusion reaction by one third, or conversely what would make it go faster today? If the power output of the sun were to change by such a large amount, its spectrum also would have to change unless the sun got significantly larger as well. As it turns out, the process of photosynthesis is finely tuned to the wavelengths of light in the solar spectrum. This fine tuning is mainly in the strength of the electrochemical bonds involving the carbon atom, not only in living things simply adopting to the altered spectrum of the sun.
Be that as it may, the fact is that the temperature of the Earth was considerably warmer than it is today, yet well within the parameters of, in fact more favorable to living things than today. With the rate of present-day consumption, it would take centuries for humanity to consume enough of the stored fossil fuels to return all that carbon to the air where it could be used by plants. So even IF global warming is real and caused by people burning fossil fuel, it could only be beneficial for the whole planet, provided it happens slowly and not all at once. As the Earth and its atmosphere became warmer, humidity, everywhere even in deserts would rise dramatically, taking up much of if not all the water now locked up in glacial ice. In fact, taking a look at an undersea map of the whole globe, it is possible to see the course of great rivers such as the Amazon, the Nile, the Mississippi and others carved across the continental shelf and falling into the abysmal depths of the ancient oceans. This means that the ocean levels were much lower than they are today.
(...Once again, the changes from those conditions to today's took place over 3.4 billion years. We are seeing changes occur due to human activity on timescales which are several orders of magnitude shorter than this....) OK, let's assume a factor of 100 speed up, so even then we are still talking about 34 million years, not centuries the global warming alarmists keep talking about. Even with a factor of a thousand, it would still take over 3 million years which is an unimaginable timescale for us humans.
....Why not announce it at the Academy of Very Very Important Climate Scientists?....
Because they already know the truth of this, but desperately do not want it to be true because they have or are paid by others with a political agenda.
Somebody already has published this in a book. The author's name is Dr. Donald E. Scott, the book's name is: "The Electric Sky" and the ISBN number is:0-9772851-1-1
The main premise of the book is that present day astronomers and astrophysicists completely ignore the force and laws of electricity and the fact that 99% of all matter in the universe is electrically charged and therefore subject to these laws of electricity as formulated long ago by Maxwell, Lorenz and many other pioneers in this field. Electric interaction is 49 orders of magnitude more powerful than gravity and can repel as well as attract. If electricity is taken into account and used to interpret the data sent back by Hubble and other modern instruments, the explanations are much simpler and do not require esoteric math nor nonexistent dark matter or energy or black holes and other weird and exotic constructs.
If you are interested, this book will give you a very good introduction into an interpretation of cosmology that is relatively simple and free from weirdness, since these interpretations rely on the well-known, experimentally researched laws of electricity and magnetism.
....There's no question that Hubble has advanced the science of astronomy greatly....
There is no question that the data coming back from Hubble and other space probes as well as newer Earth-based telescopes, is causing mainstream majority astrophysicists to scratch their collective heads more and more, trying to figure out how to fit the new data into their present theories. They have to invent fictitious constructs such as dark matter and energy, black holes and neutron stars, all of which are supposed to exist but have never actually been found. Almost every article reporting the new data have words like "surprising", "unexpected", "unusual" or other puzzling connotations.
Somewhere along the line, the key actor in the cosmic drama has been thrown out of the play. Because of this it is difficult to discern any kind of a plot to figure out what really is going on. That key player of course is electricity and its experimentally well-established laws, as written down over a century ago by Maxwell, Lorenz and other pioneers in the science of electricity and magnetism. If those electrical laws and principles are applied to the data coming back from Hubble and other instruments, good explanations can be put forth without resorting to fictitious constructs, as mentioned above.
Of course, once upon a time the majority of scientists thought the earth was at the center of the universe. The majority of doctors and medical scientists believed that disease was caused by bad air and fought early pioneers and advocates of rigorous cleanliness in hospitals tooth and nail. The majority of cosmologists today believes that electricity plays no role whatsoever in the large-scale operation of the universe. Some of them will desperately oppose anyone who even breathes the word "electric" or "plasma" in connection with cosmology or astrophysics.
Since when has the majority had a corner on truth? Has it ever been? No? Well maybe the majority is wrong here also. When it comes to science, the stupidest thing I know of toward the validity of any scientific statement or argument is to invoke the majority.
In the case of global warming, the majority is clearly wrong, once again, as usual. The Earth has cycled between warmer and cooler for ages. Where, for example, did all that carbon comes from that is stored in the fossil fuel we burn today and have yet to burn? How does the carbon, along with hydrogen become hydrocarbons? Why do we call it fossil fuel? Is that not all solar energy stored as chemical energy? What mechanisms converted and stored this chemical energy, if not photosynthesis? Today, plants get the carbon they need to grow from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Where did the plants of long-ago which we now burn in our gas tanks and power plants get their carbon dioxide they needed for the process of photosynthesis?
If we burned every possible gram a fossil fuel, would that not return Earth's conditions to what they were before the fossil fuels were formed in the first place? If that happened suddenly, it would be rather catastrophic, but not if it took place over many generations of humans.
....The ability to sense one's position on this blue marble is not a physical sense possesed by any animal....
Knowing your position is relatively unimportant. What you really want to be able to do is to get to where you want to go. Knowing your starting point may be important by the methods that humans use to navigate but creatures like homing pigeons will find their way back without knowing their present location. They don't seem to care where they are in order to figure out how to get to where they want to go.
Animals, including insects and fish are superb navigators finding their way in and over trackless oceans. Scientists think that these creatures use the Earth's magnetic field, but that has not been established in all cases. Many species migrate back and forth between very specific localized places. In most cases, the young have never been in the wintering grounds, yet unerringly find their way without guidance from their parents. Figuring out how this programming got installed in their often miniscule brains is a mystery that will keep scientists busy for a long time to come.
....can find its way back to that spot, much like most other mammals....
The Golden Plover raises its young in Alaska but the young birds find their way across thousands of miles of ocean to Hawaii where they spend the winter. These young birds have NEVER been to Hawaii, yet know how to find the tiny spot in the middle of the huge Pacific ocean. Biologists tell us that mammals are supposed to be smarter than birds which have a very undeserved reputation for being dumb bird brains. Even insects, such as butterflies accomplish similar navigation feats. How do evolutionists explain this?
...how current scientists assume.... The basic meaning of "assume", is "to suppose to be the case without proof". The word "belief" is defined as "to accept something as true". There is virtually nothing anyone does on any given day that does not rest on assumptions or beliefs. This is certainly true of scientists as well. They make certain assumptions and then go on from there, which is perfectly normal. It's just that the assumptions evolutionists make are different than someone equally qualified as a scientist makes, but who happens to assume a commonality of design in living things, rather than common descent. The word theory: "A supposition or system of ideas intended to explain something especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained". Evolution attempts to explain the development of life as stemming from a common ancestor, while intelligent design tries to explain the development of life in terms we are familiar with in the development of man-made systems and objects. Both are equally valid and in conformity with the definition of the word "theory". The word dogma: "principle or set of principles set down by an authority as incontrovertibly true". Modern evolutionists set down as "incontrovertibly true" by the authority of labeling themselves "scientists". Today scientists serve the same functions in our culture, as that of the high priests of ancient religions did in those ancient cultures. Thus, what used to be called the "theory of evolution", is now being taught in our public schools as the "fact of evolution". On the authority of our modern cultural "scientific" priesthood, it is no longer allowed to dispute this cultural dogma. The excellent movie "Expelled" documents how this has happened and is continuing to in our society. (...This theory about that life started with RNA...) Observations show, that DNA and RNA come from proteins. The DNA holds the instructions on how to build proteins, but the DNA and RNA themselves are made from and/or by protein. It is the ultimate chicken and egg problem. Which came first, the DNA or RNA or the proteins from which they are made? There is no way this conundrum can be solved by the scientific method. We simply do not know and cannot know. We can only believe, or not, what the Creator who was there and did it, chooses to reveal to us. In the case of the chicken, he tells us he made birds, which includes chickens, such that they could later multiply to make more chickens. There is simply no way this question can be answered scientifically.
....all efforts should be made to falsify the accepted 'best' theory....
The problem is, how do you falsify a belief? Both evolution and intelligent design are philosophical belief systems. Evolution has grasped the mantle of science and desperately wants to monopolize it. The witnesses of the past have to be believed or not in the same way that the witnesses of a criminal act have to be believed by the jury or not. In the study of origins or solving a crime that occurred in the past, we cannot go back in time and re-create the event.
Evolutionists preach their fundamental belief that all species stem from a common ancestor and intelligent design advocates preach common reusable design elements used in the building blocks of life. Creationists go a little bit further and want to identify the designer.
In all cases, the evidence we actually have is the same, but the prosecution (evolution) and the defense (intelligent design) are trying to convince the jury (popular opinion - our culture) to render a verdict in their favor.
When this country was founded, the founding fathers believed that human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Rights can only be given by persons to other persons. A tree, and river, or even mother Earth cannot bestow a right or a friendship to anyone. What individual rights can a mindless principle, such as natural selection, bestow on any human person? If there is no Creator God, then you have no inalienable personal rights. You are merely a slave to the might makes right principle, survival will of the fittest, or as Chinese dictator Mao expressed it: "Power belongs to the one with the best gun". Those who believe in the religion of evolution, should and not give themselves airs about personal liberty and freedom.
...We already know exactly how the plants do it...
I would not use the word exactly, because, for one thing, we have not duplicated this process. The advantage plants have is that they already exist, and are available all over the earth in a wide variety of configurations. They also a self reproduce repair themselves.
Whenever we burn fossil fuels, we are actually using stored solar energy. This means, that before the photosynthesis process took hold, all the carbon in every ounce of fossil fuel burned so far, as well as everything yet left underground, must have been the atmosphere. Except for nuclear fission, all energy mankind has used and is still using today originated in the sun.
The majority of scientific opinion today is that the energy of the sun is derived from thermonuclear fusion. There is however newer evidence that this may not be the case. The idea that the sun is a gigantic ball of plasma and gas dates back to Galileo in the 16th century.
Only in the past decade have we had access to technology that could verify or falsify Galileoís critical assumption that nothing solid exists beneath the photosphere, the deepest layer of the sun that he could see through his relatively primitive telescope. The evidence from the YOHKOH, TRACE and SOHO satellite programs, combined with spectral analysis compiled by the SERTS program, provides very compelling evidence to suggest that the sun has a solid, electrically conductive ferrite surface that sits beneath the visible photosphere, the layer of the sun that Galileo first observed.
Their conclusion of all this may be it is that we really don't know for sure what powers the sun, any more than Galileo did.
....Yes, but that fusion source is both inconveniently large and 93 million miles away...
However, it is a working model and we don't have to build it. It has been running reliably for millions of years and is estimated to last a few million more. Plants have been using its energy reliably and giving us energy to live. What we need to do is to figure out how the plants do it or maybe use plants, such as blue-green algae, to supply us with fuel.
...pumping energy into the system; the sun.... If the goal is to create an ordered system, such as a living cell, a Ferrari or Honda, or only cleaning up your messy room, any available energy must be accompanied by the information arising in an intelligent mind. Randomly throwing around units of energy will never result in any ordered complex system, at least not in the estimated age of billions of years that evolutionists believe to be the age of the universe.
I am sorry when I typed the link, because I gave the directory to a PDF file rather than the normal webpage I was referring to. Below is the corrected link.
I have never disputed even once that believing in God is an act of faith, but then so is believing in evolution an act of faith. The belief that reptiles can become birds and apes can become people, given enough time, it's just that they believe, an act of faith. If you had a super wrecking yard, wherein every make and model was represented of all cars that have ever been made since cars were invented, you would never get a Rolls-Royce or BMW if a tornado (random event) went through such a junkyard. This is essentially the dogma that evolution teaches. The high priests of evolution have given themselves scientific sounding titles and have more degrees than a thermometer behind their names.
Children believe in fairy tales, where frogs become handsome princes. Adult Evolutionists believe in a tale where even a rock, given enough time and some randomness, eventually becomes a prince. For details and how this happens you can look here if you dare:
The same way that dried fruit and vegetables are preserved. Microbes need a certain amount of moisture in order to grow, so drying is another well known way to preserve organic matter.
(...Do you not accept that there are conditions that do not favor microbial growth?...) Yes there are isolated places on earth where microbes do not thrive very well, but these places are relatively few. There is virtually no place on earth where you do NOT find fossils of some kind. We have a freezer because that is another well known way to preserve organic matter from microbial attack. People and animals do not generally die in glaciers but are overwhelmed by sudden unexpected, catastrophic snowfalls where they freeze to death very quickly. The snow piles up and forms glaciers in which we do find their remains very well preserved.
(....Do they know that you feel you don't need to cite peer reviewed journals?...) You tell me why it is necessary to quote some journal for an experiment that any sixth-grader can do at any time. Even a semi-intelligent/. reader like you could take any number of dead animals and bury them in any number of places on this planet and then come back in a year or two to check up on each one and see if it has become a fossil or is at least on its way to becoming a fossil. Make sure you do not just pick Arctic are extremely dry desert places, but distribute your samples evenly all over the planet. Try it with 1000 or more animals or plants and then publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal, if any of them are not decayed.
Please, oh please, can't you make just one tiny little fossil? It doesn't have to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex or a saber toothed tiger. A little mouse or even a dragonfly would be an acceptable fossil. In fact, do you know of anyone who can make a fossil today or has made one? I would very much like to read their report on how and where they made any fossils. Of course if such a report is published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, we both might be a bit skeptical.
...There are actually some interesting things that we know about exactly what the Universe looked like several seconds after the big bang...
There are actually some interesting things that we MATHEMATICALLY THEORIZE about exactly what the Universe looked like several seconds after the big bang.
It is possible to come up with mathematically beautiful, coherent models of physical systems by making different underlying assumptions or starting points. And weather forecasting for example several models of atmospheric interactions are used. The weather forecasters feed whatever data they have into each of them and then let their powerful computers churn away. When finished with a run, the computer spits out results that often agree more or less, but not too infrequently are widely divergent. That is why the forecasts are usually made in terms of probabilities.
There are various mathematical models of the Big Bang and its development, but none of them explain very well or predict the formation of clusters of galaxies, galaxies and their spin as well as planets and stars. Nobody knows for sure why the universe is slightly unbalanced between matter and antimatter. Some Big Bang models predict an equal amount of matter and antimatter which should have long since annihilated each other.
The currently accepted models of solar system formation and planets, consistent with Big Bang models are in major disagreement with known observations of the sun and its planets. The current theory that the solar system condensed out of a great rotating gas cloud is beginning to look more and more like a Swiss cheese full of holes made by the avalanche of recent data from telescopes and space probes.
(...confirmed experimentally...)
The problem with all theories of origins is that none of them can be confirmed experimentally, but we must rely on witnesses. Take for example the witness of radioactive dating. One of the assumptions we make about this witness is that the radioactive clock has been ticking at a constant linear rate throughout the great ages of time we wish to measure with it. This may be a valid assumption, (belief, faith) but we do not and cannot KNOW this for sure. There is evidence that this clock may have ticked orders of magnitude faster when it was first wound up at the beginning. If this is true, all testimony of this witness must be discounted entirely or adjusted for the rate of slow down of the clock. Assuming constancy or linearity in nature is an exercise in foolishness, because few things in nature behave in a linearly predictable manner. Exponential decay is a much more common event. If the rate of this clock witness indeed decayed exponentially, the way that almost all processes in nature do, the billions and millions of years collapsed into the thousands.
Analyzing the chemical composition of a rock as we find it today is a relatively straightforward laboratory exercise, where few or no assumptions need to be made. This is not the case in determining its age.
...We both think the other is foolish.... No, I do not think that it all, in fact you make some very good points are very polite, and very much of a contrast to some here on/.
Everybody has a worldview and has little choice when it comes to interpreting observations, scientific or otherwise. Your worldview is clearly limited by the information available to your senses. Even with our telescopic microscopic extensions to our senses, we can only grasp a small portion of reality. When I see a computer or an airliner I know by faith, by belief, that someone with a mind conceived of and made these, even though I never met these persons. When I see an eyeball or even a so-called simple single celled organism, I know by faith that a great mind first thought of these and brought them into being.
Even though I was brought up in a Christian religious home, I rejected all that as a teenager because of the hypocrisy I saw in that religious system. However, in my studies I came to the conclusion that the complexity of what I was studying and the mathematical exactness could not be adequately explained by the mechanism of time and chance. I could see evidence forethought and planning everywhere.
I began to search for the purpose and meaning of it all and realized that science was inadequate to answer my questions. The majestic opening verse of the Bible kept echoing in my mind. If there is such a God as portrayed in the Bible, he ought to be able to communicate with any other being willing to listen. I cannot tell you here the story of my journey, but I can recommend to you the story of someone else's journey as he chronicles it a bestseller book titled: "The Case for Christ". It was written by not a scientist but by an investigative journalist named Lee Strobel.
....Because at some point in our history, we had a common ancestor;...
Exactly why it doesn't have to be a common ANCESTOR and not a common design feature? A garden cart and a Ferrari also have common design elements, such as four wheels and a steering mechanism. However, a Volkswagen has more in common with the Ferrari in that they both have electric headlights, an internal combustion engine and other similar design elements. In neither case is there a common ancestor. If you're going to learn to be a mechanic to fix Ferraris, you might probably pick a Volkswagen rather than a garden cart to practice on.
(...Then look at the fossil record...) Until you can tell me how to make a fossil today, don't even mention fossils as evidence for evolution. Until you can tell me how to make a fossil without killing all microbial life that causes decay, fossils are the biggest evidence against evolution there is.
(...Carbon dating?...) Until you can show the absolute constancy of radiometric dating, all such dating is based on the assumption that clock rate of radioactivity has never changed. That may not be a bad assumption, but it is an assumption nevertheless that is unprovable.
(...That is exactly like saying that primates are all the same species...) This is the first time I read anywhere in primates as a species at all. The term "species" is never mentioned in the Bible. The Bible is not a scientific book, but it uses the word "kind" which appears to be a broader grouping though also genetically unique. We read that all living creatures reproduce after their kind. This idea does not contradict science but is in accord with everyday experience which tells us the dogs only produce more dogs, cats more cats and people more people.
(...Neither of them constitutes science...) Evolution in the sense of reptiles becoming birds and monkeys evolving into people is not science either, but a belief system, a religion that has managed to brand itself as science. No one has ever seen these things happen and extrapolating from the ability of all living things to adapt to their environment, to the enormous jumps required for that kind of evolution is fiction and wishful thinking.
(...then go get a degree in the sciences...) Which I happen to have and because of that, the kind of evolution that posits everything evolved from a common ancestor, is a foolish belief masquerading as science. Having worked in atomic physics at Stanford University for over 30 years, I have learned that certain scientific principles and natural constructs are common design elements throughout the entire universe. I have never heard of or read about a reason why the facts of biology and life science should be an exception to this. What evolutionists attribute to descent, can be just as readily and more logically be applied to commonality of design and reuse of what works. Computer programmers, as a matter of course, regularly reuse working, well debugged sections of code in various places where it might fit. Why should the designer of life not logically do so also in the DNA codes of life?
....Please cite a peer-reviewed journal article...
I don't need to cite a &*^%$##$% journal article written by some evolution believer, but I can do a simple experiment. I could take any number of living organisms of any type size or shape and put it them in any number of places anywhere on the planet and see if any of them becomes a fossil.
If you are honest, you would admit, because the ubiquitous presence of microbial life, you will never get a fossil unless you sterilize the formerly living matter.
(...What I'm saying is that if DNA was different in every organism...)
But the fact of the matter is that the INFORMATION stored in DNA is different, for example, in every human being, making it possible to uniquely identify you out of all 6+ billion people on the planet. The DNA is simply the storage medium for the four level digital codes which are unique to every living creature. It is the increasing information contained in the more complex life forms that falsifies evolution of reptiles into birds and monkeys into people. It's not DNA in and of itself that does so.
There is also a big difference between intelligent design and creationism. ID simply looks at the universe and sees evidence of purpose. We know from our human experience, that purpose is associated with persons. Creationism ascribes such purpose to the person of God for the universe as a whole.
...he case being closed as "divine intervention"...
Apparently you did not get my point. At the end of any forensic investigation the judge and the jury must BELIEVE what the forensic investigator has concluded. In some cases and human witnesses and the forensic investigator are diametrically different. Now the jury must still decide whether to believe the human witnesses or, for example, the witness of the DNA evidence.
...The evolutionists' "witnesses" are extrapolation from known scientific principles...
It is generally best, as we do in our court systems, to include all witnesses, human and forensic. In the end, those who study origins are no different than those trying to find out who committed a crime in the past. They must find a suspect and then try to convince the jury based on human witness and scientific witness, that they have the correct suspect.
When someone studies HOW an amoeba lives, he/she can perform various tests and experiments in present time. However, anyone who wishes to probe the origin of amoebas, that person has to depend on outside witnesses and therefore becomes an effect a forensic investigator. Eventually, a forensic investigator has to come to a conclusion and convince others of the correctness of that conclusion.
(...Is it possible to know experimentally or observationally that a black hole exists? You can't see it, you can only see the way it affects the space around it. And you clearly can't experiment on it. Yet most of us agree that they exist....)
In science it is often difficult to separate the observed effects and how to interpret them. People observe matter and energy behave in certain, often puzzling ways and then try to interpret this behavior through the lens of what we think we know. You can clearly observe not what appears to be a black hole or a quasar, but certain highly energetic phenomena taking place in the distant reaches of the cosmos. The black hole or quasars are human interpretations, as the scientists scratch their heads trying to figure out what it all means. We know a little, very little about how the laws of the universe operate. In the case of black holes and quasars, we assume that the force of gravity is the dominant operator behind the observations. This is an assumption, a belief, but we do not really know. If the electric and/or the strong force is also involved, and that is an if, everything we observe will need to be reinterpreted in terms of those other forces.
(...the Big Bang, and we're starting to understand that, too....)
Boy are you an optimist!! The truth of the matter is that present-day scientists know less about the Big Bang than a gorilla knows about playing the piano. About the only thing they know is that something appeared out of nothing. They even give this proposed nothing or almost nothing, maybe something a name. They call it the singularity. Everything else is convoluted mathematical conjecture based on assumptions. In essence, the Big Bang theory says: "First there was nothing and then it exploded".
...this is different from trying to choose bible vs science...
The Bible and true scientific facts are never at odds and never can be. The differences come in from the interpretation of scientific facts and interpretations of Scripture. Science is primarily tells HOW things in nature work whereas the Bible primarily tells us WHO and WHY. It tells us who is behind nature and our existence and gives us the purpose he has in mind for it all.
Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the expanse proclaims His handiwork.
Where now tell me where is there a conflict between acknowledging what King David wrote so many centuries ago and modern astronomy and astrophysics being able to study the heavens in a way that King David never was able even to imagine.
I recently rented a copy of a DVD named: "The Privileged Planet". If you ever decide to watch it, pay special attention to the part on solar eclipses. I was highly impressed by the entire film where in the name of God or the Bible are never mentioned at all. Even so, the evidence presented speaks volumes, pointing to a purposeful reason why we are here to observe all this.
...It relies on hypotheses that can be tested and retested today....
Can you give me an example of that which does not involve the simple adaptation ability of living things? If that is what you call evolution, then I'd agree with you completely. In that case, the science of medicine is well served by medical doctors knowing about the adaptability of various microorganisms and their susceptibility to antibiotics.
However when the word "evolution" is stretched to include reptiles becoming birds or monkeys gradually evolving into people, you will not be able to find an example of that today. Darwin studied and documented the width and thickness of the beaks of finches and available food sources. In all cases however the birds were still finches.
(...the "theory" of creationism...)
Creationism and intelligent design are two very different things that are thrown into the same pot. Intelligent design simply looks at the evidence and says that this evidence could not have come about by a random processes, but shows evidence of intent and purpose, such as can only be imparted by a mind. That is as far as many proponents of ID will go with the evidence. To become a creationist you have to go beyond this and postulate that this mind is God and that God is behind all creation. This is not what the evidence itself says, but a belief based on the evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
...you will still loose unless you can afford good lawyers...
How would a default judgment of a British court in a civil case be enforced against the residents or citizen of California for example? Would the lawsuit not have to be brought under California or federal United States law?
.....UK law prevents a poster from making libelous claims on the web...
How would such a UK law be enforced on a website hosted on a server in California? Is the United States or California or obligated nowadays to enforce laws from other countries? If not, what is special about the UK? Is there a treaty that says a United States citizen must pay even the slightest attention whatsoever in any shape or form to the law of a foreign power? What could happen to a US citizen who simply ignores studiously, any and all legal documents coming from the UK trying to enforce such a law?
...Depending on the degree of change it causes, it will probably require a lot of expensive engineering though....
If the change took place over three or four centuries, all our engineering and infrastructure would have to be renewed anyway. Most man-made things, including durable things like hydroelectric dams generally don't last that long. The United States alone is enough coal, that the present use rate, would last at least 300 years. If we humans don't incinerate ourselves before then, we might have learned to come up with a way to live in peace and develop renewable energy sources or even thermonuclear fusion.
A uniformly warmer Earth would be a blessing rather than a curse. Do you really think that it would be considered a negative if bananas would grow in North Dakota or tomatoes above the Arctic Circle? Increased warmth would allow the entire atmosphere of the earth to hold a huge amount of water, possibly even lowering the level of the world's oceans by more than the melting glacial ice could raise them. Has anyone ever done a calculation how much water would be suspended in the Earth's atmosphere if its average temperature at sea level were, for example, 70 F.?
....the sun was up to 1/3 dimmer....
That is pure conjecture with no evidence whatsoever. What known mechanism is put forth that would reduce the power output of the sun by a third? If the sun is indeed powered by hydrogen fusion, as is commonly assumed today, what would slow down the fusion reaction by one third, or conversely what would make it go faster today? If the power output of the sun were to change by such a large amount, its spectrum also would have to change unless the sun got significantly larger as well. As it turns out, the process of photosynthesis is finely tuned to the wavelengths of light in the solar spectrum. This fine tuning is mainly in the strength of the electrochemical bonds involving the carbon atom, not only in living things simply adopting to the altered spectrum of the sun.
Be that as it may, the fact is that the temperature of the Earth was considerably warmer than it is today, yet well within the parameters of, in fact more favorable to living things than today. With the rate of present-day consumption, it would take centuries for humanity to consume enough of the stored fossil fuels to return all that carbon to the air where it could be used by plants. So even IF global warming is real and caused by people burning fossil fuel, it could only be beneficial for the whole planet, provided it happens slowly and not all at once. As the Earth and its atmosphere became warmer, humidity, everywhere even in deserts would rise dramatically, taking up much of if not all the water now locked up in glacial ice. In fact, taking a look at an undersea map of the whole globe, it is possible to see the course of great rivers such as the Amazon, the Nile, the Mississippi and others carved across the continental shelf and falling into the abysmal depths of the ancient oceans. This means that the ocean levels were much lower than they are today.
(...Once again, the changes from those conditions to today's took place over 3.4 billion years. We are seeing changes occur due to human activity on timescales which are several orders of magnitude shorter than this. ...)
OK, let's assume a factor of 100 speed up, so even then we are still talking about 34 million years, not centuries the global warming alarmists keep talking about. Even with a factor of a thousand, it would still take over 3 million years which is an unimaginable timescale for us humans.
....Why not announce it at the Academy of Very Very Important Climate Scientists?....
Because they already know the truth of this, but desperately do not want it to be true because they have or are paid by others with a political agenda.
...Go ahead. Publish your findings...
Somebody already has published this in a book. The author's name is Dr. Donald E. Scott, the book's name is: "The Electric Sky" and the ISBN number is:0-9772851-1-1
The main premise of the book is that present day astronomers and astrophysicists completely ignore the force and laws of electricity and the fact that 99% of all matter in the universe is electrically charged and therefore subject to these laws of electricity as formulated long ago by Maxwell, Lorenz and many other pioneers in this field. Electric interaction is 49 orders of magnitude more powerful than gravity and can repel as well as attract. If electricity is taken into account and used to interpret the data sent back by Hubble and other modern instruments, the explanations are much simpler and do not require esoteric math nor nonexistent dark matter or energy or black holes and other weird and exotic constructs.
If you are interested, this book will give you a very good introduction into an interpretation of cosmology that is relatively simple and free from weirdness, since these interpretations rely on the well-known, experimentally researched laws of electricity and magnetism.
....There's no question that Hubble has advanced the science of astronomy greatly....
There is no question that the data coming back from Hubble and other space probes as well as newer Earth-based telescopes, is causing mainstream majority astrophysicists to scratch their collective heads more and more, trying to figure out how to fit the new data into their present theories. They have to invent fictitious constructs such as dark matter and energy, black holes and neutron stars, all of which are supposed to exist but have never actually been found. Almost every article reporting the new data have words like "surprising", "unexpected", "unusual" or other puzzling connotations.
Somewhere along the line, the key actor in the cosmic drama has been thrown out of the play. Because of this it is difficult to discern any kind of a plot to figure out what really is going on. That key player of course is electricity and its experimentally well-established laws, as written down over a century ago by Maxwell, Lorenz and other pioneers in the science of electricity and magnetism. If those electrical laws and principles are applied to the data coming back from Hubble and other instruments, good explanations can be put forth without resorting to fictitious constructs, as mentioned above.
..a majority of the scientists...
Of course, once upon a time the majority of scientists thought the earth was at the center of the universe. The majority of doctors and medical scientists believed that disease was caused by bad air and fought early pioneers and advocates of rigorous cleanliness in hospitals tooth and nail. The majority of cosmologists today believes that electricity plays no role whatsoever in the large-scale operation of the universe. Some of them will desperately oppose anyone who even breathes the word "electric" or "plasma" in connection with cosmology or astrophysics.
Since when has the majority had a corner on truth? Has it ever been? No? Well maybe the majority is wrong here also. When it comes to science, the stupidest thing I know of toward the validity of any scientific statement or argument is to invoke the majority.
In the case of global warming, the majority is clearly wrong, once again, as usual. The Earth has cycled between warmer and cooler for ages. Where, for example, did all that carbon comes from that is stored in the fossil fuel we burn today and have yet to burn? How does the carbon, along with hydrogen become hydrocarbons? Why do we call it fossil fuel? Is that not all solar energy stored as chemical energy? What mechanisms converted and stored this chemical energy, if not photosynthesis? Today, plants get the carbon they need to grow from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Where did the plants of long-ago which we now burn in our gas tanks and power plants get their carbon dioxide they needed for the process of photosynthesis?
If we burned every possible gram a fossil fuel, would that not return Earth's conditions to what they were before the fossil fuels were formed in the first place? If that happened suddenly, it would be rather catastrophic, but not if it took place over many generations of humans.
....The ability to sense one's position on this blue marble is not a physical sense possesed by any animal....
Knowing your position is relatively unimportant. What you really want to be able to do is to get to where you want to go. Knowing your starting point may be important by the methods that humans use to navigate but creatures like homing pigeons will find their way back without knowing their present location. They don't seem to care where they are in order to figure out how to get to where they want to go.
Animals, including insects and fish are superb navigators finding their way in and over trackless oceans. Scientists think that these creatures use the Earth's magnetic field, but that has not been established in all cases. Many species migrate back and forth between very specific localized places. In most cases, the young have never been in the wintering grounds, yet unerringly find their way without guidance from their parents. Figuring out how this programming got installed in their often miniscule brains is a mystery that will keep scientists busy for a long time to come.
....can find its way back to that spot, much like most other mammals....
The Golden Plover raises its young in Alaska but the young birds find their way across thousands of miles of ocean to Hawaii where they spend the winter. These young birds have NEVER been to Hawaii, yet know how to find the tiny spot in the middle of the huge Pacific ocean. Biologists tell us that mammals are supposed to be smarter than birds which have a very undeserved reputation for being dumb bird brains. Even insects, such as butterflies accomplish similar navigation feats. How do evolutionists explain this?
...how current scientists assume.... ...)
The basic meaning of "assume", is "to suppose to be the case without proof". The word "belief" is defined as "to accept something as true".
There is virtually nothing anyone does on any given day that does not rest on assumptions or beliefs. This is certainly true of scientists as well. They make certain assumptions and then go on from there, which is perfectly normal. It's just that the assumptions evolutionists make are different than someone equally qualified as a scientist makes, but who happens to assume a commonality of design in living things, rather than common descent.
The word theory: "A supposition or system of ideas intended to explain something especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained".
Evolution attempts to explain the development of life as stemming from a common ancestor, while intelligent design tries to explain the development of life in terms we are familiar with in the development of man-made systems and objects. Both are equally valid and in conformity with the definition of the word "theory".
The word dogma: "principle or set of principles set down by an authority as incontrovertibly true".
Modern evolutionists set down as "incontrovertibly true" by the authority of labeling themselves "scientists". Today scientists serve the same functions in our culture, as that of the high priests of ancient religions did in those ancient cultures. Thus, what used to be called the "theory of evolution", is now being taught in our public schools as the "fact of evolution". On the authority of our modern cultural "scientific" priesthood, it is no longer allowed to dispute this cultural dogma. The excellent movie "Expelled" documents how this has happened and is continuing to in our society.
(...This theory about that life started with RNA
Observations show, that DNA and RNA come from proteins. The DNA holds the instructions on how to build proteins, but the DNA and RNA themselves are made from and/or by protein. It is the ultimate chicken and egg problem. Which came first, the DNA or RNA or the proteins from which they are made? There is no way this conundrum can be solved by the scientific method. We simply do not know and cannot know.
We can only believe, or not, what the Creator who was there and did it, chooses to reveal to us. In the case of the chicken, he tells us he made birds, which includes chickens, such that they could later multiply to make more chickens. There is simply no way this question can be answered scientifically.
....all efforts should be made to falsify the accepted 'best' theory ....
The problem is, how do you falsify a belief? Both evolution and intelligent design are philosophical belief systems. Evolution has grasped the mantle of science and desperately wants to monopolize it. The witnesses of the past have to be believed or not in the same way that the witnesses of a criminal act have to be believed by the jury or not. In the study of origins or solving a crime that occurred in the past, we cannot go back in time and re-create the event.
Evolutionists preach their fundamental belief that all species stem from a common ancestor and intelligent design advocates preach common reusable design elements used in the building blocks of life. Creationists go a little bit further and want to identify the designer.
In all cases, the evidence we actually have is the same, but the prosecution (evolution) and the defense (intelligent design) are trying to convince the jury (popular opinion - our culture) to render a verdict in their favor.
When this country was founded, the founding fathers believed that human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Rights can only be given by persons to other persons. A tree, and river, or even mother Earth cannot bestow a right or a friendship to anyone. What individual rights can a mindless principle, such as natural selection, bestow on any human person? If there is no Creator God, then you have no inalienable personal rights. You are merely a slave to the might makes right principle, survival will of the fittest, or as Chinese dictator Mao expressed it: "Power belongs to the one with the best gun". Those who believe in the religion of evolution, should and not give themselves airs about personal liberty and freedom.
...We already know exactly how the plants do it...
I would not use the word exactly, because, for one thing, we have not duplicated this process. The advantage plants have is that they already exist, and are available all over the earth in a wide variety of configurations. They also a self reproduce repair themselves.
Whenever we burn fossil fuels, we are actually using stored solar energy. This means, that before the photosynthesis process took hold, all the carbon in every ounce of fossil fuel burned so far, as well as everything yet left underground, must have been the atmosphere. Except for nuclear fission, all energy mankind has used and is still using today originated in the sun.
The majority of scientific opinion today is that the energy of the sun is derived from thermonuclear fusion. There is however newer evidence that this may not be the case. The idea that the sun is a gigantic ball of plasma and gas dates back to Galileo in the 16th century.
Only in the past decade have we had access to technology that could verify or falsify Galileoís critical assumption that nothing solid exists beneath the photosphere, the deepest layer of the sun that he could see through his relatively primitive telescope. The evidence from the YOHKOH, TRACE and SOHO satellite programs, combined with spectral analysis compiled by the SERTS program, provides very compelling evidence to suggest that the sun has a solid, electrically conductive ferrite surface that sits beneath the visible photosphere, the layer of the sun that Galileo first observed.
Their conclusion of all this may be it is that we really don't know for sure what powers the sun, any more than Galileo did.
....Yes, but that fusion source is both inconveniently large and 93 million miles away...
However, it is a working model and we don't have to build it. It has been running reliably for millions of years and is estimated to last a few million more. Plants have been using its energy reliably and giving us energy to live. What we need to do is to figure out how the plants do it or maybe use plants, such as blue-green algae, to supply us with fuel.
...pumping energy into the system; the sun....
If the goal is to create an ordered system, such as a living cell, a Ferrari or Honda, or only cleaning up your messy room, any available energy must be accompanied by the information arising in an intelligent mind. Randomly throwing around units of energy will never result in any ordered complex system, at least not in the estimated age of billions of years that evolutionists believe to be the age of the universe.
I am sorry when I typed the link, because I gave the directory to a PDF file rather than the normal webpage I was referring to. Below is the corrected link.
http://www.waterfreeclean.com/rock-time/rock-time.htm
...Instead it is simple an act of faith...
I have never disputed even once that believing in God is an act of faith, but then so is believing in evolution an act of faith. The belief that reptiles can become birds and apes can become people, given enough time, it's just that they believe, an act of faith. If you had a super wrecking yard, wherein every make and model was represented of all cars that have ever been made since cars were invented, you would never get a Rolls-Royce or BMW if a tornado (random event) went through such a junkyard. This is essentially the dogma that evolution teaches. The high priests of evolution have given themselves scientific sounding titles and have more degrees than a thermometer behind their names.
Children believe in fairy tales, where frogs become handsome princes. Adult Evolutionists believe in a tale where even a rock, given enough time and some randomness, eventually becomes a prince. For details and how this happens you can look here if you dare:
http://www.waterfreeclean.com/forms/rock-time.htm
...Then how do mummies work?...
The same way that dried fruit and vegetables are preserved. Microbes need a certain amount of moisture in order to grow, so drying is another well known way to preserve organic matter.
(...Do you not accept that there are conditions that do not favor microbial growth?...)
Yes there are isolated places on earth where microbes do not thrive very well, but these places are relatively few. There is virtually no place on earth where you do NOT find fossils of some kind. We have a freezer because that is another well known way to preserve organic matter from microbial attack. People and animals do not generally die in glaciers but are overwhelmed by sudden unexpected, catastrophic snowfalls where they freeze to death very quickly. The snow piles up and forms glaciers in which we do find their remains very well preserved.
(....Do they know that you feel you don't need to cite peer reviewed journals? ...) /. reader like you could take any number of dead animals and bury them in any number of places on this planet and then come back in a year or two to check up on each one and see if it has become a fossil or is at least on its way to becoming a fossil. Make sure you do not just pick Arctic are extremely dry desert places, but distribute your samples evenly all over the planet. Try it with 1000 or more animals or plants and then publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal, if any of them are not decayed.
You tell me why it is necessary to quote some journal for an experiment that any sixth-grader can do at any time. Even a semi-intelligent
Please, oh please, can't you make just one tiny little fossil? It doesn't have to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex or a saber toothed tiger. A little mouse or even a dragonfly would be an acceptable fossil. In fact, do you know of anyone who can make a fossil today or has made one? I would very much like to read their report on how and where they made any fossils. Of course if such a report is published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, we both might be a bit skeptical.
...There are actually some interesting things that we know about exactly what the Universe looked like several seconds after the big bang...
There are actually some interesting things that we MATHEMATICALLY THEORIZE about exactly what the Universe looked like several seconds after the big bang.
It is possible to come up with mathematically beautiful, coherent models of physical systems by making different underlying assumptions or starting points. And weather forecasting for example several models of atmospheric interactions are used. The weather forecasters feed whatever data they have into each of them and then let their powerful computers churn away. When finished with a run, the computer spits out results that often agree more or less, but not too infrequently are widely divergent. That is why the forecasts are usually made in terms of probabilities.
There are various mathematical models of the Big Bang and its development, but none of them explain very well or predict the formation of clusters of galaxies, galaxies and their spin as well as planets and stars. Nobody knows for sure why the universe is slightly unbalanced between matter and antimatter. Some Big Bang models predict an equal amount of matter and antimatter which should have long since annihilated each other.
The currently accepted models of solar system formation and planets, consistent with Big Bang models are in major disagreement with known observations of the sun and its planets. The current theory that the solar system condensed out of a great rotating gas cloud is beginning to look more and more like a Swiss cheese full of holes made by the avalanche of recent data from telescopes and space probes.
(...confirmed experimentally...)
The problem with all theories of origins is that none of them can be confirmed experimentally, but we must rely on witnesses. Take for example the witness of radioactive dating. One of the assumptions we make about this witness is that the radioactive clock has been ticking at a constant linear rate throughout the great ages of time we wish to measure with it. This may be a valid assumption, (belief, faith) but we do not and cannot KNOW this for sure. There is evidence that this clock may have ticked orders of magnitude faster when it was first wound up at the beginning. If this is true, all testimony of this witness must be discounted entirely or adjusted for the rate of slow down of the clock. Assuming constancy or linearity in nature is an exercise in foolishness, because few things in nature behave in a linearly predictable manner. Exponential decay is a much more common event. If the rate of this clock witness indeed decayed exponentially, the way that almost all processes in nature do, the billions and millions of years collapsed into the thousands.
Analyzing the chemical composition of a rock as we find it today is a relatively straightforward laboratory exercise, where few or no assumptions need to be made. This is not the case in determining its age.
...We both think the other is foolish.... /.
No, I do not think that it all, in fact you make some very good points are very polite, and very much of a contrast to some here on
Everybody has a worldview and has little choice when it comes to interpreting observations, scientific or otherwise. Your worldview is clearly limited by the information available to your senses. Even with our telescopic microscopic extensions to our senses, we can only grasp a small portion of reality. When I see a computer or an airliner I know by faith, by belief, that someone with a mind conceived of and made these, even though I never met these persons. When I see an eyeball or even a so-called simple single celled organism, I know by faith that a great mind first thought of these and brought them into being.
Even though I was brought up in a Christian religious home, I rejected all that as a teenager because of the hypocrisy I saw in that religious system. However, in my studies I came to the conclusion that the complexity of what I was studying and the mathematical exactness could not be adequately explained by the mechanism of time and chance. I could see evidence forethought and planning everywhere.
I began to search for the purpose and meaning of it all and realized that science was inadequate to answer my questions. The majestic opening verse of the Bible kept echoing in my mind. If there is such a God as portrayed in the Bible, he ought to be able to communicate with any other being willing to listen. I cannot tell you here the story of my journey, but I can recommend to you the story of someone else's journey as he chronicles it a bestseller book titled: "The Case for Christ". It was written by not a scientist but by an investigative journalist named Lee Strobel.
....Because at some point in our history, we had a common ancestor;...
Exactly why it doesn't have to be a common ANCESTOR and not a common design feature? A garden cart and a Ferrari also have common design elements, such as four wheels and a steering mechanism. However, a Volkswagen has more in common with the Ferrari in that they both have electric headlights, an internal combustion engine and other similar design elements. In neither case is there a common ancestor. If you're going to learn to be a mechanic to fix Ferraris, you might probably pick a Volkswagen rather than a garden cart to practice on.
(...Then look at the fossil record...)
Until you can tell me how to make a fossil today, don't even mention fossils as evidence for evolution. Until you can tell me how to make a fossil without killing all microbial life that causes decay, fossils are the biggest evidence against evolution there is.
(...Carbon dating?...)
Until you can show the absolute constancy of radiometric dating, all such dating is based on the assumption that clock rate of radioactivity has never changed. That may not be a bad assumption, but it is an assumption nevertheless that is unprovable.
(...That is exactly like saying that primates are all the same species...)
This is the first time I read anywhere in primates as a species at all. The term "species" is never mentioned in the Bible. The Bible is not a scientific book, but it uses the word "kind" which appears to be a broader grouping though also genetically unique. We read that all living creatures reproduce after their kind. This idea does not contradict science but is in accord with everyday experience which tells us the dogs only produce more dogs, cats more cats and people more people.
(...Neither of them constitutes science...)
Evolution in the sense of reptiles becoming birds and monkeys evolving into people is not science either, but a belief system, a religion that has managed to brand itself as science. No one has ever seen these things happen and extrapolating from the ability of all living things to adapt to their environment, to the enormous jumps required for that kind of evolution is fiction and wishful thinking.
(...then go get a degree in the sciences...)
Which I happen to have and because of that, the kind of evolution that posits everything evolved from a common ancestor, is a foolish belief masquerading as science. Having worked in atomic physics at Stanford University for over 30 years, I have learned that certain scientific principles and natural constructs are common design elements throughout the entire universe. I have never heard of or read about a reason why the facts of biology and life science should be an exception to this. What evolutionists attribute to descent, can be just as readily and more logically be applied to commonality of design and reuse of what works. Computer programmers, as a matter of course, regularly reuse working, well debugged sections of code in various places where it might fit. Why should the designer of life not logically do so also in the DNA codes of life?
....Please cite a peer-reviewed journal article ...
I don't need to cite a &*^%$##$% journal article written by some evolution believer, but I can do a simple experiment. I could take any number of living organisms of any type size or shape and put it them in any number of places anywhere on the planet and see if any of them becomes a fossil.
If you are honest, you would admit, because the ubiquitous presence of microbial life, you will never get a fossil unless you sterilize the formerly living matter.
(...What I'm saying is that if DNA was different in every organism...)
But the fact of the matter is that the INFORMATION stored in DNA is different, for example, in every human being, making it possible to uniquely identify you out of all 6+ billion people on the planet. The DNA is simply the storage medium for the four level digital codes which are unique to every living creature. It is the increasing information contained in the more complex life forms that falsifies evolution of reptiles into birds and monkeys into people. It's not DNA in and of itself that does so.
There is also a big difference between intelligent design and creationism. ID simply looks at the universe and sees evidence of purpose. We know from our human experience, that purpose is associated with persons. Creationism ascribes such purpose to the person of God for the universe as a whole.
...he case being closed as "divine intervention" ...
Apparently you did not get my point. At the end of any forensic investigation the judge and the jury must BELIEVE what the forensic investigator has concluded. In some cases and human witnesses and the forensic investigator are diametrically different. Now the jury must still decide whether to believe the human witnesses or, for example, the witness of the DNA evidence.
...The evolutionists' "witnesses" are extrapolation from known scientific principles...
It is generally best, as we do in our court systems, to include all witnesses, human and forensic. In the end, those who study origins are no different than those trying to find out who committed a crime in the past. They must find a suspect and then try to convince the jury based on human witness and scientific witness, that they have the correct suspect.
When someone studies HOW an amoeba lives, he/she can perform various tests and experiments in present time. However, anyone who wishes to probe the origin of amoebas, that person has to depend on outside witnesses and therefore becomes an effect a forensic investigator. Eventually, a forensic investigator has to come to a conclusion and convince others of the correctness of that conclusion.
(...Is it possible to know experimentally or observationally that a black hole exists? You can't see it, you can only see the way it affects the space around it. And you clearly can't experiment on it. Yet most of us agree that they exist....)
In science it is often difficult to separate the observed effects and how to interpret them. People observe matter and energy behave in certain, often puzzling ways and then try to interpret this behavior through the lens of what we think we know. You can clearly observe not what appears to be a black hole or a quasar, but certain highly energetic phenomena taking place in the distant reaches of the cosmos. The black hole or quasars are human interpretations, as the scientists scratch their heads trying to figure out what it all means. We know a little, very little about how the laws of the universe operate. In the case of black holes and quasars, we assume that the force of gravity is the dominant operator behind the observations. This is an assumption, a belief, but we do not really know. If the electric and/or the strong force is also involved, and that is an if, everything we observe will need to be reinterpreted in terms of those other forces.
(...the Big Bang, and we're starting to understand that, too....)
Boy are you an optimist!! The truth of the matter is that present-day scientists know less about the Big Bang than a gorilla knows about playing the piano. About the only thing they know is that something appeared out of nothing. They even give this proposed nothing or almost nothing, maybe something a name. They call it the singularity. Everything else is convoluted mathematical conjecture based on assumptions. In essence, the Big Bang theory says: "First there was nothing and then it exploded".
...this is different from trying to choose bible vs science...
The Bible and true scientific facts are never at odds and never can be. The differences come in from the interpretation of scientific facts and interpretations of Scripture. Science is primarily tells HOW things in nature work whereas the Bible primarily tells us WHO and WHY. It tells us who is behind nature and our existence and gives us the purpose he has in mind for it all.
Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the expanse proclaims His handiwork.
Where now tell me where is there a conflict between acknowledging what King David wrote so many centuries ago and modern astronomy and astrophysics being able to study the heavens in a way that King David never was able even to imagine.
I recently rented a copy of a DVD named: "The Privileged Planet". If you ever decide to watch it, pay special attention to the part on solar eclipses. I was highly impressed by the entire film where in the name of God or the Bible are never mentioned at all. Even so, the evidence presented speaks volumes, pointing to a purposeful reason why we are here to observe all this.
...It relies on hypotheses that can be tested and retested today....
Can you give me an example of that which does not involve the simple adaptation ability of living things? If that is what you call evolution, then I'd agree with you completely. In that case, the science of medicine is well served by medical doctors knowing about the adaptability of various microorganisms and their susceptibility to antibiotics.
However when the word "evolution" is stretched to include reptiles becoming birds or monkeys gradually evolving into people, you will not be able to find an example of that today. Darwin studied and documented the width and thickness of the beaks of finches and available food sources. In all cases however the birds were still finches.
(...the "theory" of creationism...)
Creationism and intelligent design are two very different things that are thrown into the same pot. Intelligent design simply looks at the evidence and says that this evidence could not have come about by a random processes, but shows evidence of intent and purpose, such as can only be imparted by a mind. That is as far as many proponents of ID will go with the evidence. To become a creationist you have to go beyond this and postulate that this mind is God and that God is behind all creation. This is not what the evidence itself says, but a belief based on the evidence.