....The person who posted the info is completely anonymous, and there is no means to locate the person....
So this sort of vendetta was impossible to pull off before the internet existed? Nobody ever wrote an anonymous letter containing lies and that letter just "happened" to find its way to an admissions or hiring officer? May be the internet makes this sort of thing easier and more likely that the admissions officer will find such lies? The more things change, the more they stay the same. Don't blame the internet. All this happened LONG before there was such a thing.
..actual international government becomes the natural thing...
Why yes, of course! The Bible predicts such a world government and its head will be the anti-christ, also named as the lawless one, the man of sin. He will bring in the mark of the beast 666. That's exactly what the world needs!
All states still allow slavery. It has been renamed --> debt.
If you have lots of debt, you might have to continue working in your current job, even if you hate your slave-driver boss with a purple passion. Otherwise, you might go free and find a better boss.
...This is basic geology. A number of observations today confirm that this is the case....
We go observe the movements, but then project these movements ASSUMING the movements have been constant all those millions or billions of years. We don't KNOW whether these movements were much slower of faster that today.
ALL observations today assume thing to remain constant. There is MUCH evidence that this assumption is FALSE.
All you say is that I am wrong. How do creatures NOT decay? You never answer that. Tell me, if you can, where are fossils being formed today? has anyone ever made a fossil? Don't just say I am wrong. Tell me HOW I am wrong. Maybe you can enlighten me as to where and how fossils are formed today. You cannot cite fossil evidence unless you can show HOW a fossil might form. I told you a plausible theory for fossils that meets ALL criteria for fossil formation. I'd like to hear your side of this.
(..And I have already explained that re-interpreting something after the fact is not a scientific prediction..)
I've given you much more than a prediction. I've given you some evidence that describes scientific knowledge LONG before mankind discovered this. Job tells us of the earth suspended in space long before we had rockets with cameras to show this to us.
As always, all you do is make personal attacks. This shows that you are able to spout forth only predigested evolutionary assumed fairy tales, but have not answered a single of my points. If you cannot tell me how fossils can form today, how can you assert how they formed millions of years ago? The FACT is, there is NO way to make fossils slowly. They have to be made quickly. You cannot counter that, so you tell me to educate myself. Maybe you CAN educate me and tell me how to prevent decay organisms from destroying dead bodies which is what ALWAYS happens today.
(..False. E-coli bacteria turned into non-e-coli, for example..)
OK, tell me what WERE these supposed non-ecoli? Were they coccus, spirochetes or what?
(..Since there is no limit to how proteins can change..)
This all would have merit, if INTELLIGENT scientists managed to make a protein completely from building blocks that were never part of a living organism.
Tell me WHERE the evolution of complex plumbing of a giraffe's neck has been explained. Evolutions cannot have an explanation, because a partially evolved system doesn't help natural selection.
(..You are assuming that the long neck appeared suddenly..)
Yes I am assuming it was designed fully functional. That is an assumption just as you are assuming that it "evolved" over eons of time by natural selection.
The fundamental assumption of evolution is that with enough time to throw the dice, modern humans can come into existence. Here is the evolutions kid story.
When children are small, we often tell them about Santa Claus, fairies, hobbits, trolls, witches, ghosts, goblins and a multitude of other mythical creatures. Some of these have magical powers that can help them accomplish impossible tasks. Magic can spin straw into gold and a kiss can turn a frog into a prince. However, children grow up, and learn that all of these tales are not really true, but imaginative fiction. There is one tale however, that continues to be told repeatedly and with ever increasing imagination and detail all the way through the highest degree a university can bestow. It is a tale that public educators try to make even adults believe that it really happened "once upon a time", not in a galaxy far, far away, but right here on our own planet.
In many of these stories we have magical tools, actions or words, such as wands, kisses, rings, incantations, swords and almost anything else that can help the hero or villain accomplish otherwise impossible tasks. In this modern tale, there are only two magical things. One of these is chance. The other one, by far the most important and powerful magic, is time. Let's exmine, how these magical twins can turn, not only a frog, but ev
....From around 200 million years ago...Around 70 million years ago...
Tell me, exactly who was here to observe all that?
(..Currently the Indian landmass is still moving north at about 2cm a year and the Himalayas are still rising at about half a cm a year...)
So now evolutionists or evolutionary geologists extrapolate this two centimeters per year linearly and come up with some numbers in the millions. How do they know, that the land masses have always moved at only 2 cm per year and not much faster or slower at some point in time?
(..Floods erode mountains and deposit their sediments in valleys..)
Is it not true that most fossils were found in the lower places not on the mountain tops?
(..In many cases, the fossils are in the same positions as they grow in life..)
That is true, but they also find Siberian mammoths frozen in ice, with the last bite they ate still in their mouth. This is evidence of sudden catastrophe.
One of my points, which neither you nor any evolutionists ever addresses about fossils is how to prevent decay. We do not observe any fossils being formed today, because living things no matter where they are found, simply decay. Simply burying organic matter, no matter how deep will not prevent decay. The organic matter MUST be sterilized in some way and then kept sterile and buried. Why do you think we bury dead bodies in the ground today? Fossils are also extremely common. There is hardly an area of this earth where fossils are NOT found. None of the processes you give for fossilization can work in the presence of microbes or oxygen.
(..Sedimentary rock is just one of the three main rock types..) That is correct, but that is the only place, the only kind of rock wherein fossils are found. That means the presence of water.
(..We DO know how fossils are formed..)
That is simply not true. If science did know how fossils were formed, they would be able to make one. The fact is, nobody, yes, nobody ever has made a fossil. Refer me to an article anywhere, that shows someone making a fossil today. It is not good science to attribute things like fossils to the distant past if we cannot demonstrate how they were made. Any PROCESS that cannot be duplicated in the laboratory, is not likely to happen by itself in nature. Science is about evidence we have today, not conjecture what might have happened umpteen million years ago.
(..So you are claiming that fossils CAN'T form?..)
Obviously they can and did. In fact, there are very few places on the entire planet that don't have fossils. The fact is that fossils do NOT form naturally today and nobody has demonstrated a plausible process whereby they might have formed in the distant past.
(..Flywheels are not viruses. They do not "prey" on cells..)
Of course not! They are an integral part of the design of an engine and viruses are integral part installed in living organisms. Both were put where they are intentionally by their designer. Whereas we know the function of a flywheel in an engine, we have not yet discovered the function of these viruses in living cells. Is it not possible for you to just respond to the material at hand, rather than resorting to name calling?
(..the fact is that Evolution makes true predictions..)
Maybe you can give me some predictions evolutionary theory makes and on what observations and experiments these are based. I have already given you some Bible statements and the predictions based on them.
(..Evolution is a gradual process..)
Which has never been demonstrated in our time. When this is pointed out to evolutionists, they always come back with the magic of time, millions and billions of years. Even after millions of generations, no new life forms have ever been produced in the laboratory. It is an incontrovertible fact, that no matter how many generations are applied, the millionth generation of a life form, such as fast multiplying fruit flies or even bacteria, are still no
...a "global flood", which has been refuted a long time ago...
Yes, by evolutionary OPINIONS and beliefs, but not the facts. The facts are that there are very few places, if any, on this planet, that were not at one time covered by water. We find fossils even in the mountains of the Himalaya. Either the waters covered the highest mountains, such as we are told in the Bible, or the mountains arose after the flood. The fact is though, that we find fossils there and fossils are always without a single exception found in sedimentary layers. Dig out one of your geology textbooks and find a drawing of the cross-section of the interior of the earth. Notice how thin the entire crust with its oceans and continents is compared to the other layers? Does it look conceivable to you that the mantle layer could contain more water than all the oceans put together? Even today, if the earth were perfectly smoothed out, over a mile of water would cover the entire planet. The concept of a flood covering the entire planet is not really that far fetched.
(...Just because you don't know how fossils can form doesn't mean that no one knows...)
Even evolutionists will acknowledge that fossils are only found in sedimentary rocks. Fossils so happen to be one of the cornerstones of evolutionary belief and are cited constantly in almost every textbook on the subject as one of the primary evidences for evolution. It is really strange, that evolutionists give fossils as evidence, but have not the foggiest notion how to make a fossil. When was the last time you read a book on evolution? I do know, as I explained in the previous post, that fossils MUST form quickly. There is no way to make a fossil over a period of thousands or even millions of years. It can't happen today and it could not happen in the past either.
(..They are viruses that were once separate, but which were embedded into the genome..)
Flywheels on internal combustion engines are also separate and also part of steam engines. They have similar functions in both. Flywheels are also generally added to these engines AFTER the main parts of the engines are built.
(..But they cannot interbreed, which means that speciation has taken place..)
This is the first time I hear that the ability to interbreed or not has anything to do with speciation. It is doubtful that a Chihuahua and a great Dane could successfully interbreed. Even so, they are both considered to be dogs. Are horses and donkeys considered to be of the same species? We know that they can interbreed and make mules which are sterile.
(..Furthermore, the fact is that Evolution makes predictions that turn out to be true..)
Evolutionists make predictions based on opinions, not measured experimentally or observed facts in nature. It is a commonly observed fact that creatures reproduce after their kind. Mice and rats are both rodents, but mice only produce mice and rats only produce rats. Eagles and ostriches are both birds, but make only eagles and ostriches respectively. This is exactly what we read in the Bible. According to that theory of intelligent design, we can predict that chimpanzees will never make anything but chimpanzees and humans will never produce anything but more humans. This prediction turns out to be true.
The God of the Bible also gives us some incidental information about his creation. Long before modern science discovered that the universe to the north of the earth is strangely empty and that the earth is suspended in space, God himself gave this information to Job as part of a science quiz. Many questions on this quiz are still unanswered today. Job 26:7 He stretches out the north over the empty place, and He hung the earth on nothing.
Since God is the eternal Creator, he tells us as part of this conversation with Job that there are springs on the bottom of the ocean. Even today, we know very little about the ocean depths, but we have discovered, that indeed there are springs down there. Job 38:16 Have you gone to the springs
....No, it does not. ERVs, transitional fossils, nylonase, etc. all contradict creationism...
You are making a blanket statement. Would you please explain HOW fossils or ERVs or any FACT of science contradicts the theory that an intelligent designer, a transcendent eternal God is responsible? Maybe you have a reference, such as a link.
(..The designer just happened to insert the same ERVs in the same positions in humans and chimps?..)
What makes you assume that ERVs are flaws? Yes, and the designers of internal combustion engines just happen to put a flywheel at one end of each engine? It's not flaws, but common design elements.
(..Computer models? You really ARE ignorant!..)
ALL mathematical models make assumptions. Please name ONE that does NOT. You don't have to call anyone names. I have not called your integrity or knowledge into question. Don't simply dismiss the issues you have no good reply for as straw men.
(..They are not e-coli when they are completely different and don't have the characteristics of e-coli...)
If e-coli or other organism are altered so they cannot reproduce, that doesn't make them COMPLETELY different. Explain to me how great such differences are. Experiments with fruit flies make all sorts of mutations, but the creature are still essentially fruit files.
(..False. One takes all facts into accounts, makes true predictions and has practical applications. Creationism has NONE of these..)
The theory of an Intelligent designer can explain every single FACT of observational and experimental science. When modern science began two to three centuries ago, scientists believed in a rational intelligent Creator God whose works could be and should be studied.
For example, you mentioned fossils. The only FACT we now have, is that there are fossils. Nobody has ever made one or watched one being made. Today, any living organism decays quickly after death, long before it can be fossilized. So what conditions would be needed today to make a fossil? Oh yes, all decay causing organisms would have to somehow be killed or at least be prevented somehow from causing decay of dead bodies. Oxygen in the air also causes damage to delicate structures of most organic material. So somehow it also has to be excluded. All this has to happen QUICKLY, before there is time for the ever present bacteria, molds, fungi and other microscopic life forms have time to work on the dead bodies. Would you please explain to me how these conditions to make fossils came by any slow evolutionary means?
Here is the explanation , or interpretation, of the fact that we do find fossils, as seen through the eyes of the biblical world view. The Bible relates a terrific catastrophe called the flood of Noah. The Biblical account explains further, that the "fountains of the deep" broke open. Much of the water came from the interior of the earth. Even today there is seismic wave evidence, that there are enormous quantities of water in the mantle. Therefore much of this water was boiling hot. This hot water killed all microscopic decay organisms. Oceans of sediment carrying, often very hot water, rushing across the surface of the earth carried living creatures to a quick burial under mountains of mud. The deterioration from oxygen was also immediately halted. This mud later hardened into the sedimentary rock, where we find ALL fossils today. Coal and oil (fossil fuel) was also formed then and in the same sudden manner.
or bowing to Jesus Christ who is on His way back to earth.
2 Thessalonians 2:8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of His mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming,
or
Revelation 21:2 And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her Husband. 3 And I heard a great voice out of Heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away all tears from their eyes. And there will be no more death, nor mourning, nor crying out, nor will there be any more pain; for the first things passed away. 5 And He sitting on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful.
I wonder how long it will take for this "thing" they saw to get here?
I think this belief beats a belief in an exploding death star!
No, it is an INTERPRETATION of facts based on world view.
It is a fact, that scientists have never been able to make evolution of even simple one celled organisms happen. Nobody has ever transformed an amoeba into a paramecium or an e-coli into a spirochete. Thousands of generations of fruit flies have always without even a single exception produced ONLY more fruit-flies. There is a barrier in reproduction of living things that has never been crossed.
In Genesis we read that the creatures were designed to reproduce after their KIND. That statement has never been shown to be false, but is being proved over and over in labs and breeding farms all over the planet. The Hebrew word translated "kind" is not necessarily the same as what science has termed "species". Dogs and cats are two different "kinds" of animals, as are fruit-flies and house-flies.
For every LINEAR process in nature, I can name at least one or maybe two that are highly nonlinear. Assuming linearity and uniformity in nature is a foolish belief not in accord with the overwhelming evidence. In geology, there is plenty of evidence of sudden catastrophic events making sweeping changes to the surface of the earth. One look at the moon ought to convince you that the earth likely did not escape some of the events that scarred our natural satellite. Can anyone who has ever stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon really believe that the teensy-weensy river at the bottom could have done THAT? It looks more likely that it was formed by an Ocean's worth of water suddenly carving a gigantic gully in the plateau.
There is increasing evidence that some of the so called "constants" of physics also changed in a highly non-linear manner over long time spans. You don't need education, but need to take a look at the evidence staring you in the fact.
....or humans and chimps share a common ancestor....
or that human, chimps and viruses have the same DESIGNER. That is how it works with human designs. Why should it be any different in nature, God's designs? Internal combustion engines are found in motorcycles, cars, airplanes, tractors and who knows what. So the the fact that they all have such engines means they were each others ancestors? How ridiculous!
Just because we don't know the function of a life form doesn't mean it has none. Medial science used to believe that the human appendix and the tonsils have no function and routinely removed them, especially the tonsils. More diligent research finally discovered their purpose. So it is quite likely that these viruses installed on the genome have a common purpose science just has not yet figured out.
(...Your ignorance leads you to believe that all science is, is "laboratory experiments"...)
Modern science came about BECAUSE people began experimenting and observing our world, rather than just speculation and philosophizing about how things worked, as they used to do. The ESSENCE of real science is experimentation and careful observations, not fancy computer models based on ASSUMPTIONS.
(..More straw men. Typical of desperate creationists..)
As always, when the people dislike the message or cannot refute it, they resort to attacks on the messenger. Someone may call the modified e-coli something else, but the still are basically e-coli. The FACT is, no matter what anyone says, the fruit-flies were and are STILL nothing but fruit flies, even after thousands of generations. A good mechanic can weld two motorcycles together into a four-wheled contraption of some sort. Is that now a car or still basically two motorcycles?
Every evolutionary INTERPRETATION of the same facts can and does have a design INTERPRETATION as well. I would REALLY like you to name one, even just ONE scientific FACT, that cannot be interpreted either by the evolutionary belief or the belief in a intelligent designer God. Both are BELIEFS. You have yours and I have mine.
....You're correct that light going through free space is simply a wave propagating through a dialectric medium, but virtual particles aren't part of the issue...
You seem to overlook the fact that light can be represented as waves or as particles, namely photons. Either way you look at it, the dielectric nature of space has changed dramatically if you want to look at it from the wave perspective or there are many more virtual particles now for the photons to interact with than there were at the beginning of the universe.
(...How, exactly, does this work? Where are the calculations?...)
This is not based on abstract calculations, but the actual measurements. Planck's Constant is a measure of the zero point energy. Planck's constant has been measured as increasing right up until 1970 or so, when some decrease in the measurements was noted. It is also interesting, that no change in the product h*c has been observed.
But the changing ZPE resulted in other changes, too. Remember Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2? 'E' is energy and 'c' is the speed of light. The small 'm' is atomic mass. It is pretty widely known that this equation indicates that energy and mass are interchangeable. Mass converts into a lot of energy.
However,not all mass explodes into energy! Instead, what we see at the atomic level with Einstein's equation, is that the energy itself is what is constant. But we have measured the mass of the electron as changing. If energy is constant and the mass is changing, that can only mean the speed of light is also changing.
One of the other observations of the universe that comes into this, is what is known as the red shift. In 1929 Edwin Hubble observed that the light spectrum of the elements from distant stars it is shift towards the red. We still observe this today. Hubble INTERPRETED this red shift to be caused by the well-known Doppler effect.
There is evidence that indicates that this interpretation is incorrect, even though it has been and still is commonly held. If interested, you can look here: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/redshift.html Because the data clearly show that the red shift is quantized, it must be caused by something related to quantum mechanics.
The red shift appears to be related to atomic behavior which is in turn affected by the steadily increasing ZPE. How times do not respond smoothly to the steadily increasing ZPE, but in quantized jumps.
This quantized red shift therefore, is another indication that atomic processes, such as radioactivity have not been absolutely constant as is commonly assumed, but have changed dramatically.
(..civilizations like the Romans were already doing lots of record keeping and taking census data..)
Yes they were, but that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about preventing people from carrying on commerce and trade, unless they are fitted with a numeric identifier. As long as there is an accepted medium of exchange affording anonymity, such as cash or other generic objects, the lack of a numeric identifier would not prevent trade between people. Right now, talk about a cashless society is still theoretical. However, only through computer technology is it actually be possible to impose a cashless trading system on everybody. That is something that no human being, even living only 100 years ago could have imagined or foretold.
That makes free space a medium that affects electromagnetic energy propagation. I used to design antennas and tune them. Space has a characteristic impedance Z0. Any antenna is nothing more than an impedance matching device between an AC generator and free space.
As such, free space affects the speed of light exactly the same way as any other dielectric medium. Free space is not an empty nothing.
I strongly suggest you read at LEAST that referenced article.
(..As you pointed out, they've spent centuries trying to make the prophecy come true..)
Wishing something to come true and actually accomplishing it are two very different things. Even before the time of Jesus, Israel was not in charge of their land, but always under the domination of another power. They had nothing to say about it and it was well outside their ability to change that. Some people think, if it had not been for the World War II Holocaust, there would not have been enough sympathy for these people, among those with power over that piece of real estate would have permitted an independent Israeli state. The history of how all this came about as well-documented for you to study if you feel so inclined.
The other prophecy I mentioned, the controversy over the city of Jerusalem is also not vague, but very definite. Jerusalem and the Israeli control over it is a big thorn in the hide of the Muslim world. There really is a justified fear, that a war over this issue is a distinct possibility.
Up until the coming of the computer age, scholars scratched their heads over a prophecy written in the last book of the Bible. They could not figure out, how a person could be prevented from buying or selling, unless a person had some sort of identifying mark on or in their body. Mankind now has the technology to eliminate cash and by means of modern digital systems track every person and every penny that everybody spends. This sort of thing was not even imagined by John the apostle or anyone else that lived in those days. We are well into the beginnings of such a system. Try to rent a car, fly in an airplane or rent a room in a hotel without that little plastic card. Try to get a job or send in your tax return without your Social Security number.
In the same final book of the Bible, as well in other places, such as in the book of Daniel, we read about a coming world ruler who will have power over the world's people. There are those today in the world who are actively working towards a single government to govern this global village. A single personal identifier for each human being on this planet is not all that far-fetched as it now?
Even if YOU, personally, do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Much of it is history. Some of this history, written in advance, IS taking place right before our very eyes in our time. We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
.....The only utter nonsense is that Apple can't write a driver that doesn't crash the operating system....
I have not heard that this problem occurs on any other operating system besides VISTA. Is that because VISTA is bad or because writing a reliable driver for VISTA is very much harder than for other OS? Apparently, according to countless articles, getting working drivers for VISTA has been a major headache and a large factor in slowing down mass adoption of that particular OS.
The equations for quantum atomic processes such as radioactivity contain a "constant" (h) that has been named in honor of Max Planck, one of the pioneers of quantum theory. This constant (h) is inversely related to the speed of light. When mass is converted to energy in an atomic decay, fission or fusion, the speed of light is involved. You know, E-mc^2. You can look up the math if you want. Another factor involved here is what is called the zero point energy, also called the energy of "the vacuum" (space). Again, you can look that all up.
When the Universe was young, its entropy and the number virtual particles was very small. Entropy of the universe as a whole is still increasing, but much more slowly. A photon is absorbed and re-emitted when it collides with a virtual particle. The more such virtual particles there are, the more such absorptions and re-emissions take place. Each of these takes a quantum of time, a tiny but finite amount of time. Thus, the speed of light through the medium of space can be and was much faster when there were fewer such virtual particles encountered than today.
Because of this, the number radioactive disintegrations in a given amount of time were far greater, but the energy of each one correspondingly less. Another way of looking at this is atomic cross-sections were much smaller. Ye must not violate conservations laws! So the amount of ENERGY per unit time is not changed. There is evidence that the universe expanded from what is called a "Singularity" to its present size. The initial expansion was so quick it is likened to an explosion which has been labeled the "Big Bang". During this expansions, some of what are now labeled "constants" HAD to change very rapidly in order to keep everything in balance, such as the conservation of energy, mass, momentum etc. A photon could cross the entire universe in a tiny fraction of a second at first.
From this expansion it is possible to roughly determine how these parameters we now call constants changed over time, as the universe expanded. The speed of light decayed in a curve that closely matches a cosecant squared function. By applying this function to the radioactive decay clock, rather assuming a straight line over time, it is possible to use such a clock to scientifically date samples.
There is a big problem why this isn't done by "mainstream" science however. It's a philosophical, world view problem. If this non-linear correction factor IS applied, then the times measured are dramatically shortened. The times are so short, that the immense time spans needed for the present evolutionary models to function are no longer available.
(...In my experience, prophecies only seem obvious in retrospect...)
There are thousands of prophetic passages in Scripture, many of them fulfilled by the first coming of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. About 38 years before it happened, Jesus predicted that Jerusalem would be destroyed and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Israel would be scattered to all nations. This is indeed happened when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 70 A.D. and drove the inhabitants that were not yet dead and those from the surrounding country all over the Roman Empire.
This was also predict that in the Old Testament in several places, where we will also read that God will bring Israel back into its own land before the end of history as we know it. For the past almost 2000 years, Jews all over the world have been celebrating their feast of Passover, concluding it with the phrase: "Next year in Jerusalem". In 1948 the nation of Israel was reborn, fulfilling God's promise. At long last, the Jews, who had maintained their national and religious identity against great odds, over all the centuries, at last had a piece of real estate they could once again call their own. At that time however, they did not have control or jurisdiction over their holy city of Jerusalem.
It is also prophesied, that Jerusalem would be returned to them, never again to be taken away and that before Jesus
...why not be properly scientific (as you seem to want to be) and test all your assumptions and not just some....
My point was and is, that the theory of evolution is a belief system in the same way that creationism is. The difference is, that evolution tries to sell itself science, where as creationists freely admit to faith and a Creator.
The bare-bones scientific fact is that we observe radioactive decay. We observe, that elements that decay in this manner exhibit a characteristic time in which half of a given pile of such an element is transformed. This is termed its half-life. To enable an object to be dated by this method, two things have to be known. The first is, how big was the pile of atoms when the radioactive decay began. The second is, how fast the radioactive clock ticks. We can measure this one easily enough.
We can estimate, and any estimate is an educated assumption, how big the pile may have been. So here is the first source of error, namely how good our estimate is. The second assumption, my original premise, is that there is no way to know whether as a clock has always ticked at the rate we observe today.
There is evidence, that the so-called "constants" which govern the atomic behavior, including radioactive decay are not at all invariant. The intrinsic properties of space MUST affect these constants, so they are no longer constant. The properties of space itself have changed many orders of magnitude in a highly non-linear manner, over the time the universe has been in existence.
(..For example, the assumption that the Bible is actually the word of God..)
Any God, worthy of the name, wishing to communicate with us, would have to have the ability not only to get his message across, but also to preserve it for whatever time periods this message needs to be preserved. So yes, I CHOOSE to believe (assume) that there exists an eternal, intelligent, transcendent Creator God who has communicated to us humans in a message from beyond time and space, in a set of books we call the Bible. He authenticates this message by doing what no human can do. He ACCURATELY writes history before it happens. Some of this in advance written history, called prophecy, is re-told in today's newspapers and the nightly news on CNN.
The Bible is also a chronicle of the result of man's disbelief of God. It records that man was placed into a world which God had termed "very good". We certainly cannot say that of this world today can we? By flouting God's ordinances, man basically calls God a liar. Anyone who disbelieves God's authenticated message, is still calling him a liar today. Do you think that the God of truth is not justified in sending such liars away from him into the outer darkness, into a place called hell?
...and the fact that they visibly and countably run down more than a hundred thousand layers....
Yes they do count these layers, but then they make the ASSUMPTION that each of these layers represents one year. How do they know that each layer is not a successive storm of which there are an unknown number each year?
...The fact that a new limit was discovered doesn't make the technique "flawed"....
Radiometric dating in itself is not and never has been flawed. There is evidence however, that the atomic "constants" which govern all rates of atomic decay, have changed many orders of magnitude over time. The speed of light, and of necessity, its inversely related Planck's constant, government atomic behavior.
We know from measurements and common practice, that the speed of light is affected by the medium it goes through. As the universe expanded, the properties of space itself changed in a highly nonlinear fashion. There is no way, that the electrical and magnetic properties of space could have been the same when the universe was much smaller and denser. Because of this, the radioactive clock has to be adjusted for this. This change in the property of space itself made the radiometric clock ran much faster than what we observe today.
The equations governing gravity do not involve any of these atomic constants. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the run rate of any clocks based on gravity did not change as space expanded.
"Theories" are built upon somebody's INTERPRETATION of "Facts".
There, fixed that for you.
All facts are interpreted according to a certain worldview where basic underlying assumptions are made. An assumption is a fancy word for belief or believe. One of the most common recurring phrases in written evolution literature is: "It is believed that... Check it out some time. Just pick some random articles on any evolutionary paper more than three or four typewritten pages long. Now put an underline in red every time the word believed or assumed or a similar construction goes up.
The theory of evolution assumes that presently observed processes can be extrapolated over immense time periods. In nature, linear relationships are the exception rather than the rule. Over the extremely short time span we have observed a given process, we may not have noticed its nonlinearity. The segment of the curve we have access to is just way too short. Therefore many scientists assume it is not a curve, but a straight line that can be extended back as far as they like.
For example, the process of radioactivity is used to date living and non living objects. Carbon dating is only one of these dating methods based on radioactivity. Science has known about radioactivity for only about 100 years. Over that short time span we observed radioactive decays to be occurring at a quite regular, apparently highly predictable rate. We assume (believe) therefore that this is a linear process, even over immense amounts of time, millions and even billions of years. This assumption of linearity underlies all models of radioactive dating. Even an incredibly small nonlinearity in the rate of the ticking of this atomic clock, would make all dates and numbers obtained totally wrong.
Scientists assume that the basic "constants" of atomic behavior cannot and have never changed. This may be a reasonable assumption, but is an assumption nevertheless.
Another assumption that is made, in some of these measurements, is the amount of radioactive material that was in the sample when the clock started ticking.
Radioactive dating is not the only branch of science that assumes constancy over a long time. Scientists observe geological processes such as erosion, mountain building, continental drift etc. occurring at what appears as rather constant rates. There is plenty of evidence, that the earth has had a rather violent geological past. In spite of such evidence, evolution believing geologists build models based on today's observed rates of change and expect these to produce reliable results reaching back millions or billions of years.
...When you claimed that the big bang created the laws of physics I lost interest in your post, because that is a silly conjecture.
OK, can you tell me where the laws of physics originated? All HUMAN laws originate in a mind. Why is it a conjecture to say that natural laws ALSO originated in a mind?
....When did god create metaphorical language, before or after the creation of "heavens -- space" and "earth -- matter-energy"?...
God used language that can be understood by everybody, including those who lived long before modern science. We still use that kind of language today in everyday conversations. We still talk about sunrises and sunsets, even though science has since shown that this is an illusion created by the rotation of the Earth. God says that we are made of the dust of the ground. That is still true. Your and my bodies are STILL really dirt clods. Our food grows in the soil (dirt) and takes up the elements you are made of. So this is still scientifically true. The elements in your body are the same as the ones in fertile soil. Even the proportions of the elements are roughly the same.
So this language was designed to be understood by the ancients as well as us, who think of ourselves so knowledgeable compared to those ignoramuses who lived a long time ago.
In the book of Job, God finally talks to Job. Read chapters 38-41 sometime. Here the Creator God give Job a science quiz. Job flunked. Modern scientist given this test might be lucky to barely get a "D". The more we discover about nature, the more we realize how little we really know.
...The Great One, a being so complex that humans can only perceive minute and sometimes apparently self-contradictory aspects of it...
What a contrast this is to what Jesus promises to all who accept his message.
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Jesus came so you and I may KNOW this true God. He does represent him as a self-contrdictory enigma, distant, aloof and unknowable. Jesus and the Apostles present God as a loving, merciful FATHER, rather than a distant, unapproachable deity.
(..and when he sleeps at night..)
So this god Brahma gets tired at night? Contrast that with this:
Isaiah 40:28 Have you not known? Have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not grow weak nor weary?
Revelation 22:5 And there will be no night there. And they need no lamp, or light of the sun; for the Lord God gives them light.
1 John 1:5 And this is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
The God of the Bible doesn't need to sleep because he doesn't get tired. He is a God of light and is surrounded by light. The Bible associates darkness with evil. The Devil is called the prince of darkness. Maybe that is who this Brahma really is?
God searched, but could not find an innocent party among humans. We are all liars, thieves etc. and therefore guilty. So now the choice was narrowed down to either enforce the law on us all or become human and then take the decreed punishment Himself as a human. Because of His love for us that is what God did in Jesus Christ.
We are all under the sentence of eternal death, sitting here on Earth, on death row. However, what God did through Jesus Christ enabled him to offer a pardon for those WILLING to accept such a pardon and agreeing to not desire to be a liar, thief, adulterer etc. any longer. This doesn't mean we will no longer occasionally lie, steal, be unfaithful, etc, but that we have change of heart, a change of attitude about the seriousness of these offenses and earnestly strive to avoid them.
God doesn't want to execute the judgment on you or anyone else, but will be forced to in the end, if he desires to maintain justice, which he does. I have accepted his pardon and now He is waiting for you to also accept the pardon he freely offers.
... who would like an updated version of the KJV, keeping the same textual basis....
Check out and compare Green's Modern King James Version to your "normal" KJV. I find the MKJV very readable. The familiar rhythm and meter of the original KJV is mostly retained, but the old, no longer used expression are replaced with their modern equivalents. I have a printed copy as well as well as the electronic copy as part of the free e-sword distribution.
(.. The Greek LXX (Septuagint) version is enigmatic at best..)
It is quite likely that the 70 scholars had better, more accurate manuscripts available to them. It was the common Bible available to Jesus. I believe that an eternal, transcendent God, capable of, and desiring to communicate to mankind, has the ability to keep His message from getting messed up such as to express anything He did not intend.
You echo this with your statement: "Even the substantial differences between Alexandrian and non-Alexandrian manuscript families are somewhat irrelevant to doctrine".
As Mark Twain, a disbeliever once said: "I don't have trouble with the parts of the Bible I don't understand, but the parts of the Bible I do understand very well, but do not wish to be obedient to".
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing apart of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
It has that ability no matter which translation is used.
Slashdot Mirror
....The person who posted the info is completely anonymous, and there is no means to locate the person....
So this sort of vendetta was impossible to pull off before the internet existed? Nobody ever wrote an anonymous letter containing lies and that letter just "happened" to find its way to an admissions or hiring officer? May be the internet makes this sort of thing easier and more likely that the admissions officer will find such lies? The more things change, the more they stay the same. Don't blame the internet. All this happened LONG before there was such a thing.
...You'd easily end up with individuals willing to trade in slave-produced goods from the south...
So instead we now have slave-produced goods from China, Indonesia and elsewhere, sold by huge corporations, such as Walmart.
..actual international government becomes the natural thing...
Why yes, of course! The Bible predicts such a world government and its head will be the anti-christ, also named as the lawless one, the man of sin. He will bring in the mark of the beast 666. That's exactly what the world needs!
...It allowed slavery...
All states still allow slavery. It has been renamed --> debt.
If you have lots of debt, you might have to continue working in your current job, even if you hate your slave-driver boss with a purple passion. Otherwise, you might go free and find a better boss.
...This is basic geology. A number of observations today confirm that this is the case....
We go observe the movements, but then project these movements ASSUMING the movements have been constant all those millions or billions of years. We don't KNOW whether these movements were much slower of faster that today.
ALL observations today assume thing to remain constant. There is MUCH evidence that this assumption is FALSE.
All you say is that I am wrong. How do creatures NOT decay? You never answer that. Tell me, if you can, where are fossils being formed today? has anyone ever made a fossil? Don't just say I am wrong. Tell me HOW I am wrong. Maybe you can enlighten me as to where and how fossils are formed today. You cannot cite fossil evidence unless you can show HOW a fossil might form. I told you a plausible theory for fossils that meets ALL criteria for fossil formation. I'd like to hear your side of this.
(..And I have already explained that re-interpreting something after the fact is not a scientific prediction..)
I've given you much more than a prediction. I've given you some evidence that describes scientific knowledge LONG before mankind discovered this. Job tells us of the earth suspended in space long before we had rockets with cameras to show this to us.
As always, all you do is make personal attacks. This shows that you are able to spout forth only predigested evolutionary assumed fairy tales, but have not answered a single of my points. If you cannot tell me how fossils can form today, how can you assert how they formed millions of years ago? The FACT is, there is NO way to make fossils slowly. They have to be made quickly. You cannot counter that, so you tell me to educate myself. Maybe you CAN educate me and tell me how to prevent decay organisms from destroying dead bodies which is what ALWAYS happens today.
(..False. E-coli bacteria turned into non-e-coli, for example..)
OK, tell me what WERE these supposed non-ecoli? Were they coccus, spirochetes or what?
(..Since there is no limit to how proteins can change..)
This all would have merit, if INTELLIGENT scientists managed to make a protein completely from building blocks that were never part of a living organism.
Tell me WHERE the evolution of complex plumbing of a giraffe's neck has been explained. Evolutions cannot have an explanation, because a partially evolved system doesn't help natural selection.
(..You are assuming that the long neck appeared suddenly..)
Yes I am assuming it was designed fully functional. That is an assumption just as you are assuming that it "evolved" over eons of time by natural selection.
The fundamental assumption of evolution is that with enough time to throw the dice, modern humans can come into existence. Here is the evolutions kid story.
When children are small, we often tell them about Santa Claus, fairies, hobbits, trolls, witches, ghosts, goblins and a multitude of other mythical creatures. Some of these have magical powers that can help them accomplish impossible tasks. Magic can spin straw into gold and a kiss can turn a frog into a prince. However, children grow up, and learn that all of these tales are not really true, but imaginative fiction. There is one tale however, that continues to be told repeatedly and with ever increasing imagination and detail all the way through the highest degree a university can bestow. It is a tale that public educators try to make even adults believe that it really happened "once upon a time", not in a galaxy far, far away, but right here on our own planet.
In many of these stories we have magical tools, actions or words, such as wands, kisses, rings, incantations, swords and almost anything else that can help the hero or villain accomplish otherwise impossible tasks. In this modern tale, there are only two magical things. One of these is chance. The other one, by far the most important and powerful magic, is time.
Let's exmine, how these magical twins can turn, not only a frog, but ev
....From around 200 million years ago...Around 70 million years ago ...
Tell me, exactly who was here to observe all that?
(..Currently the Indian landmass is still moving north at about 2cm a year and the Himalayas are still rising at about half a cm a year...)
So now evolutionists or evolutionary geologists extrapolate this two centimeters per year linearly and come up with some numbers in the millions. How do they know, that the land masses have always moved at only 2 cm per year and not much faster or slower at some point in time?
(..Floods erode mountains and deposit their sediments in valleys..)
Is it not true that most fossils were found in the lower places not on the mountain tops?
(..In many cases, the fossils are in the same positions as they grow in life..)
That is true, but they also find Siberian mammoths frozen in ice, with the last bite they ate still in their mouth. This is evidence of sudden catastrophe.
One of my points, which neither you nor any evolutionists ever addresses about fossils is how to prevent decay. We do not observe any fossils being formed today, because living things no matter where they are found, simply decay. Simply burying organic matter, no matter how deep will not prevent decay. The organic matter MUST be sterilized in some way and then kept sterile and buried. Why do you think we bury dead bodies in the ground today? Fossils are also extremely common. There is hardly an area of this earth where fossils are NOT found. None of the processes you give for fossilization can work in the presence of microbes or oxygen.
(..Sedimentary rock is just one of the three main rock types..)
That is correct, but that is the only place, the only kind of rock wherein fossils are found. That means the presence of water.
(..We DO know how fossils are formed..)
That is simply not true. If science did know how fossils were formed, they would be able to make one. The fact is, nobody, yes, nobody ever has made a fossil. Refer me to an article anywhere, that shows someone making a fossil today. It is not good science to attribute things like fossils to the distant past if we cannot demonstrate how they were made. Any PROCESS that cannot be duplicated in the laboratory, is not likely to happen by itself in nature. Science is about evidence we have today, not conjecture what might have happened umpteen million years ago.
(..So you are claiming that fossils CAN'T form?..)
Obviously they can and did. In fact, there are very few places on the entire planet that don't have fossils. The fact is that fossils do NOT form naturally today and nobody has demonstrated a plausible process whereby they might have formed in the distant past.
(..Flywheels are not viruses. They do not "prey" on cells..)
Of course not! They are an integral part of the design of an engine and viruses are integral part installed in living organisms. Both were put where they are intentionally by their designer. Whereas we know the function of a flywheel in an engine, we have not yet discovered the function of these viruses in living cells. Is it not possible for you to just respond to the material at hand, rather than resorting to name calling?
(..the fact is that Evolution makes true predictions ..)
Maybe you can give me some predictions evolutionary theory makes and on what observations and experiments these are based. I have already given you some Bible statements and the predictions based on them.
(..Evolution is a gradual process..)
Which has never been demonstrated in our time. When this is pointed out to evolutionists, they always come back with the magic of time, millions and billions of years. Even after millions of generations, no new life forms have ever been produced in the laboratory. It is an incontrovertible fact, that no matter how many generations are applied, the millionth generation of a life form, such as fast multiplying fruit flies or even bacteria, are still no
...a "global flood", which has been refuted a long time ago ...
Yes, by evolutionary OPINIONS and beliefs, but not the facts. The facts are that there are very few places, if any, on this planet, that were not at one time covered by water. We find fossils even in the mountains of the Himalaya. Either the waters covered the highest mountains, such as we are told in the Bible, or the mountains arose after the flood. The fact is though, that we find fossils there and fossils are always without a single exception found in sedimentary layers. Dig out one of your geology textbooks and find a drawing of the cross-section of the interior of the earth. Notice how thin the entire crust with its oceans and continents is compared to the other layers? Does it look conceivable to you that the mantle layer could contain more water than all the oceans put together? Even today, if the earth were perfectly smoothed out, over a mile of water would cover the entire planet. The concept of a flood covering the entire planet is not really that far fetched.
(...Just because you don't know how fossils can form doesn't mean that no one knows...)
Even evolutionists will acknowledge that fossils are only found in sedimentary rocks. Fossils so happen to be one of the cornerstones of evolutionary belief and are cited constantly in almost every textbook on the subject as one of the primary evidences for evolution. It is really strange, that evolutionists give fossils as evidence, but have not the foggiest notion how to make a fossil. When was the last time you read a book on evolution? I do know, as I explained in the previous post, that fossils MUST form quickly. There is no way to make a fossil over a period of thousands or even millions of years. It can't happen today and it could not happen in the past either.
(..They are viruses that were once separate, but which were embedded into the genome..)
Flywheels on internal combustion engines are also separate and also part of steam engines. They have similar functions in both. Flywheels are also generally added to these engines AFTER the main parts of the engines are built.
(..But they cannot interbreed, which means that speciation has taken place..)
This is the first time I hear that the ability to interbreed or not has anything to do with speciation. It is doubtful that a Chihuahua and a great Dane could successfully interbreed. Even so, they are both considered to be dogs. Are horses and donkeys considered to be of the same species? We know that they can interbreed and make mules which are sterile.
(..Furthermore, the fact is that Evolution makes predictions that turn out to be true..)
Evolutionists make predictions based on opinions, not measured experimentally or observed facts in nature. It is a commonly observed fact that creatures reproduce after their kind. Mice and rats are both rodents, but mice only produce mice and rats only produce rats. Eagles and ostriches are both birds, but make only eagles and ostriches respectively. This is exactly what we read in the Bible. According to that theory of intelligent design, we can predict that chimpanzees will never make anything but chimpanzees and humans will never produce anything but more humans. This prediction turns out to be true.
The God of the Bible also gives us some incidental information about his creation. Long before modern science discovered that the universe to the north of the earth is strangely empty and that the earth is suspended in space, God himself gave this information to Job as part of a science quiz. Many questions on this quiz are still unanswered today. Job 26:7 He stretches out the north over the empty place, and He hung the earth on nothing.
Since God is the eternal Creator, he tells us as part of this conversation with Job that there are springs on the bottom of the ocean. Even today, we know very little about the ocean depths, but we have discovered, that indeed there are springs down there. Job 38:16 Have you gone to the springs
....No, it does not. ERVs, transitional fossils, nylonase, etc. all contradict creationism...
You are making a blanket statement. Would you please explain HOW fossils or ERVs or any FACT of science contradicts the theory that an intelligent designer, a transcendent eternal God is responsible? Maybe you have a reference, such as a link.
(..The designer just happened to insert the same ERVs in the same positions in humans and chimps?..)
What makes you assume that ERVs are flaws? Yes, and the designers of internal combustion engines just happen to put a flywheel at one end of each engine? It's not flaws, but common design elements.
(..Computer models? You really ARE ignorant!..)
ALL mathematical models make assumptions. Please name ONE that does NOT. You don't have to call anyone names. I have not called your integrity or knowledge into question. Don't simply dismiss the issues you have no good reply for as straw men.
(..They are not e-coli when they are completely different and don't have the characteristics of e-coli...)
If e-coli or other organism are altered so they cannot reproduce, that doesn't make them COMPLETELY different. Explain to me how great such differences are. Experiments with fruit flies make all sorts of mutations, but the creature are still essentially fruit files.
(..False. One takes all facts into accounts, makes true predictions and has practical applications. Creationism has NONE of these..)
The theory of an Intelligent designer can explain every single FACT of observational and experimental science. When modern science began two to three centuries ago, scientists believed in a rational intelligent Creator God whose works could be and should be studied.
For example, you mentioned fossils. The only FACT we now have, is that there are fossils. Nobody has ever made one or watched one being made. Today, any living organism decays quickly after death, long before it can be fossilized. So what conditions would be needed today to make a fossil? Oh yes, all decay causing organisms would have to somehow be killed or at least be prevented somehow from causing decay of dead bodies. Oxygen in the air also causes damage to delicate structures of most organic material. So somehow it also has to be excluded. All this has to happen QUICKLY, before there is time for the ever present bacteria, molds, fungi and other microscopic life forms have time to work on the dead bodies. Would you please explain to me how these conditions to make fossils came by any slow evolutionary means?
Here is the explanation , or interpretation, of the fact that we do find fossils, as seen through the eyes of the biblical world view. The Bible relates a terrific catastrophe called the flood of Noah. The Biblical account explains further, that the "fountains of the deep" broke open. Much of the water came from the interior of the earth. Even today there is seismic wave evidence, that there are enormous quantities of water in the mantle. Therefore much of this water was boiling hot. This hot water killed all microscopic decay organisms. Oceans of sediment carrying, often very hot water, rushing across the surface of the earth carried living creatures to a quick burial under mountains of mud. The deterioration from oxygen was also immediately halted. This mud later hardened into the sedimentary rock, where we find ALL fossils today. Coal and oil (fossil fuel) was also formed then and in the same sudden manner.
or bowing to Jesus Christ who is on His way back to earth.
2 Thessalonians 2:8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of His mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming,
or
Revelation 21:2 And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her Husband. 3 And I heard a great voice out of Heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away all tears from their eyes. And there will be no more death, nor mourning, nor crying out, nor will there be any more pain; for the first things passed away. 5 And He sitting on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful.
I wonder how long it will take for this "thing" they saw to get here?
I think this belief beats a belief in an exploding death star!
I have to clean the mirrors on my car from time to time. One of them is curved also. So maybe their mirror rather than lens is in need of cleaning.
...Evolution is based solely on facts...
No, it is an INTERPRETATION of facts based on world view.
It is a fact, that scientists have never been able to make evolution of even simple one celled organisms happen. Nobody has ever transformed an amoeba into a paramecium or an e-coli into a spirochete. Thousands of generations of fruit flies have always without even a single exception produced ONLY more fruit-flies. There is a barrier in reproduction of living things that has never been crossed.
In Genesis we read that the creatures were designed to reproduce after their KIND. That statement has never been shown to be false, but is being proved over and over in labs and breeding farms all over the planet. The Hebrew word translated "kind" is not necessarily the same as what science has termed "species". Dogs and cats are two different "kinds" of animals, as are fruit-flies and house-flies.
For every LINEAR process in nature, I can name at least one or maybe two that are highly nonlinear. Assuming linearity and uniformity in nature is a foolish belief not in accord with the overwhelming evidence. In geology, there is plenty of evidence of sudden catastrophic events making sweeping changes to the surface of the earth. One look at the moon ought to convince you that the earth likely did not escape some of the events that scarred our natural satellite. Can anyone who has ever stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon really believe that the teensy-weensy river at the bottom could have done THAT? It looks more likely that it was formed by an Ocean's worth of water suddenly carving a gigantic gully in the plateau.
There is increasing evidence that some of the so called "constants" of physics also changed in a highly non-linear manner over long time spans. You don't need education, but need to take a look at the evidence staring you in the fact.
....or humans and chimps share a common ancestor....
or that human, chimps and viruses have the same DESIGNER. That is how it works with human designs. Why should it be any different in nature, God's designs? Internal combustion engines are found in motorcycles, cars, airplanes, tractors and who knows what. So the the fact that they all have such engines means they were each others ancestors? How ridiculous!
Just because we don't know the function of a life form doesn't mean it has none. Medial science used to believe that the human appendix and the tonsils have no function and routinely removed them, especially the tonsils. More diligent research finally discovered their purpose. So it is quite likely that these viruses installed on the genome have a common purpose science just has not yet figured out.
(...Your ignorance leads you to believe that all science is, is "laboratory experiments"...)
Modern science came about BECAUSE people began experimenting and observing our world, rather than just speculation and philosophizing about how things worked, as they used to do. The ESSENCE of real science is experimentation and careful observations, not fancy computer models based on ASSUMPTIONS.
(..More straw men. Typical of desperate creationists..)
As always, when the people dislike the message or cannot refute it, they resort to attacks on the messenger. Someone may call the modified e-coli something else, but the still are basically e-coli. The FACT is, no matter what anyone says, the fruit-flies were and are STILL nothing but fruit flies, even after thousands of generations. A good mechanic can weld two motorcycles together into a four-wheled contraption of some sort. Is that now a car or still basically two motorcycles?
Every evolutionary INTERPRETATION of the same facts can and does have a design INTERPRETATION as well. I would REALLY like you to name one, even just ONE scientific FACT, that cannot be interpreted either by the evolutionary belief or the belief in a intelligent designer God. Both are BELIEFS. You have yours and I have mine.
....You're correct that light going through free space is simply a wave propagating through a dialectric medium, but virtual particles aren't part of the issue...
You seem to overlook the fact that light can be represented as waves or as particles, namely photons. Either way you look at it, the dielectric nature of space has changed dramatically if you want to look at it from the wave perspective or there are many more virtual particles now for the photons to interact with than there were at the beginning of the universe.
(...How, exactly, does this work? Where are the calculations?...)
This is not based on abstract calculations, but the actual measurements. Planck's Constant is a measure of the zero point energy. Planck's constant has been measured as increasing right up until 1970 or so, when some decrease in the measurements was noted. It is also interesting, that no change in the product h*c has been observed.
But the changing ZPE resulted in other changes, too. Remember Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2? 'E' is energy and 'c' is the speed of light. The small 'm' is atomic mass. It is pretty widely known that this equation indicates that energy and mass are interchangeable. Mass converts into a lot of energy.
However,not all mass explodes into energy! Instead, what we see at the atomic level with Einstein's equation, is that the energy itself is what is constant. But we have measured the mass of the electron as changing. If energy is constant and the mass is changing, that can only mean the speed of light is also changing.
One of the other observations of the universe that comes into this, is what is known as the red shift. In 1929 Edwin Hubble observed that the light spectrum of the elements from distant stars it is shift towards the red. We still observe this today. Hubble INTERPRETED this red shift to be caused by the well-known Doppler effect.
There is evidence that indicates that this interpretation is incorrect, even though it has been and still is commonly held. If interested, you can look here:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/redshift.html
Because the data clearly show that the red shift is quantized, it must be caused by something related to quantum mechanics.
The red shift appears to be related to atomic behavior which is in turn affected by the steadily increasing ZPE. How times do not respond smoothly to the steadily increasing ZPE, but in quantized jumps.
This quantized red shift therefore, is another indication that atomic processes, such as radioactivity have not been absolutely constant as is commonly assumed, but have changed dramatically.
(..civilizations like the Romans were already doing lots of record keeping and taking census data..)
Yes they were, but that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about preventing people from carrying on commerce and trade, unless they are fitted with a numeric identifier. As long as there is an accepted medium of exchange affording anonymity, such as cash or other generic objects, the lack of a numeric identifier would not prevent trade between people. Right now, talk about a cashless society is still theoretical. However, only through computer technology is it actually be possible to impose a cashless trading system on everybody. That is something that no human being, even living only 100 years ago could have imagined or foretold.
...Free space is not the same as a medium...
Tell that to an antenna designer. Free space DOES have definite electrical and magnetic properties. you can look that up here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_space
That makes free space a medium that affects electromagnetic energy propagation. I used to design antennas and tune them. Space has a characteristic impedance Z0. Any antenna is nothing more than an impedance matching device between an AC generator and free space.
As such, free space affects the speed of light exactly the same way as any other dielectric medium. Free space is not an empty nothing.
I strongly suggest you read at LEAST that referenced article.
(..As you pointed out, they've spent centuries trying to make the prophecy come true..)
Wishing something to come true and actually accomplishing it are two very different things. Even before the time of Jesus, Israel was not in charge of their land, but always under the domination of another power. They had nothing to say about it and it was well outside their ability to change that. Some people think, if it had not been for the World War II Holocaust, there would not have been enough sympathy for these people, among those with power over that piece of real estate would have permitted an independent Israeli state. The history of how all this came about as well-documented for you to study if you feel so inclined.
The other prophecy I mentioned, the controversy over the city of Jerusalem is also not vague, but very definite. Jerusalem and the Israeli control over it is a big thorn in the hide of the Muslim world. There really is a justified fear, that a war over this issue is a distinct possibility.
Up until the coming of the computer age, scholars scratched their heads over a prophecy written in the last book of the Bible. They could not figure out, how a person could be prevented from buying or selling, unless a person had some sort of identifying mark on or in their body. Mankind now has the technology to eliminate cash and by means of modern digital systems track every person and every penny that everybody spends. This sort of thing was not even imagined by John the apostle or anyone else that lived in those days. We are well into the beginnings of such a system. Try to rent a car, fly in an airplane or rent a room in a hotel without that little plastic card. Try to get a job or send in your tax return without your Social Security number.
In the same final book of the Bible, as well in other places, such as in the book of Daniel, we read about a coming world ruler who will have power over the world's people. There are those today in the world who are actively working towards a single government to govern this global village. A single personal identifier for each human being on this planet is not all that far-fetched as it now?
Even if YOU, personally, do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Much of it is history. Some of this history, written in advance, IS taking place right before our very eyes in our time. We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
.....The only utter nonsense is that Apple can't write a driver that doesn't crash the operating system....
I have not heard that this problem occurs on any other operating system besides VISTA. Is that because VISTA is bad or because writing a reliable driver for VISTA is very much harder than for other OS? Apparently, according to countless articles, getting working drivers for VISTA has been a major headache and a large factor in slowing down mass adoption of that particular OS.
The equations for quantum atomic processes such as radioactivity contain a "constant" (h) that has been named in honor of Max Planck, one of the pioneers of quantum theory. This constant (h) is inversely related to the speed of light. When mass is converted to energy in an atomic decay, fission or fusion, the speed of light is involved. You know, E-mc^2. You can look up the math if you want. Another factor involved here is what is called the zero point energy, also called the energy of "the vacuum" (space). Again, you can look that all up.
When the Universe was young, its entropy and the number virtual particles was very small. Entropy of the universe as a whole is still increasing, but much more slowly. A photon is absorbed and re-emitted when it collides with a virtual particle. The more such virtual particles there are, the more such absorptions and re-emissions take place. Each of these takes a quantum of time, a tiny but finite amount of time. Thus, the speed of light through the medium of space can be and was much faster when there were fewer such virtual particles encountered than today.
Because of this, the number radioactive disintegrations in a given amount of time were far greater, but the energy of each one correspondingly less. Another way of looking at this is atomic cross-sections were much smaller. Ye must not violate conservations laws! So the amount of ENERGY per unit time is not changed. There is evidence that the universe expanded from what is called a "Singularity" to its present size. The initial expansion was so quick it is likened to an explosion which has been labeled the "Big Bang". During this expansions, some of what are now labeled "constants" HAD to change very rapidly in order to keep everything in balance, such as the conservation of energy, mass, momentum etc. A photon could cross the entire universe in a tiny fraction of a second at first.
From this expansion it is possible to roughly determine how these parameters we now call constants changed over time, as the universe expanded. The speed of light decayed in a curve that closely matches a cosecant squared function. By applying this function to the radioactive decay clock, rather assuming a straight line over time, it is possible to use such a clock to scientifically date samples.
There is a big problem why this isn't done by "mainstream" science however. It's a philosophical, world view problem. If this non-linear correction factor IS applied, then the times measured are dramatically shortened. The times are so short, that the immense time spans needed for the present evolutionary models to function are no longer available.
(...In my experience, prophecies only seem obvious in retrospect...)
There are thousands of prophetic passages in Scripture, many of them fulfilled by the first coming of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. About 38 years before it happened, Jesus predicted that Jerusalem would be destroyed and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Israel would be scattered to all nations. This is indeed happened when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 70 A.D. and drove the inhabitants that were not yet dead and those from the surrounding country all over the Roman Empire.
This was also predict that in the Old Testament in several places, where we will also read that God will bring Israel back into its own land before the end of history as we know it. For the past almost 2000 years, Jews all over the world have been celebrating their feast of Passover, concluding it with the phrase: "Next year in Jerusalem". In 1948 the nation of Israel was reborn, fulfilling God's promise. At long last, the Jews, who had maintained their national and religious identity against great odds, over all the centuries, at last had a piece of real estate they could once again call their own. At that time however, they did not have control or jurisdiction over their holy city of Jerusalem.
It is also prophesied, that Jerusalem would be returned to them, never again to be taken away and that before Jesus
...why not be properly scientific (as you seem to want to be) and test all your assumptions and not just some....
My point was and is, that the theory of evolution is a belief system in the same way that creationism is. The difference is, that evolution tries to sell itself science, where as creationists freely admit to faith and a Creator.
The bare-bones scientific fact is that we observe radioactive decay. We observe, that elements that decay in this manner exhibit a characteristic time in which half of a given pile of such an element is transformed. This is termed its half-life. To enable an object to be dated by this method, two things have to be known. The first is, how big was the pile of atoms when the radioactive decay began. The second is, how fast the radioactive clock ticks. We can measure this one easily enough.
We can estimate, and any estimate is an educated assumption, how big the pile may have been. So here is the first source of error, namely how good our estimate is. The second assumption, my original premise, is that there is no way to know whether as a clock has always ticked at the rate we observe today.
There is evidence, that the so-called "constants" which govern the atomic behavior, including radioactive decay are not at all invariant. The intrinsic properties of space MUST affect these constants, so they are no longer constant. The properties of space itself have changed many orders of magnitude in a highly non-linear manner, over the time the universe has been in existence.
(..For example, the assumption that the Bible is actually the word of God..)
Any God, worthy of the name, wishing to communicate with us, would have to have the ability not only to get his message across, but also to preserve it for whatever time periods this message needs to be preserved. So yes, I CHOOSE to believe (assume) that there exists an eternal, intelligent, transcendent Creator God who has communicated to us humans in a message from beyond time and space, in a set of books we call the Bible. He authenticates this message by doing what no human can do. He ACCURATELY writes history before it happens. Some of this in advance written history, called prophecy, is re-told in today's newspapers and the nightly news on CNN.
The Bible is also a chronicle of the result of man's disbelief of God. It records that man was placed into a world which God had termed "very good". We certainly cannot say that of this world today can we? By flouting God's ordinances, man basically calls God a liar. Anyone who disbelieves God's authenticated message, is still calling him a liar today. Do you think that the God of truth is not justified in sending such liars away from him into the outer darkness, into a place called hell?
...and the fact that they visibly and countably run down more than a hundred thousand layers....
Yes they do count these layers, but then they make the ASSUMPTION that each of these layers represents one year. How do they know that each layer is not a successive storm of which there are an unknown number each year?
...The fact that a new limit was discovered doesn't make the technique "flawed"....
Radiometric dating in itself is not and never has been flawed. There is evidence however, that the atomic "constants" which govern all rates of atomic decay, have changed many orders of magnitude over time. The speed of light, and of necessity, its inversely related Planck's constant, government atomic behavior.
We know from measurements and common practice, that the speed of light is affected by the medium it goes through. As the universe expanded, the properties of space itself changed in a highly nonlinear fashion. There is no way, that the electrical and magnetic properties of space could have been the same when the universe was much smaller and denser. Because of this, the radioactive clock has to be adjusted for this. This change in the property of space itself made the radiometric clock ran much faster than what we observe today.
The equations governing gravity do not involve any of these atomic constants. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the run rate of any clocks based on gravity did not change as space expanded.
..."Theories" are built upon "Facts".....
"Theories" are built upon somebody's INTERPRETATION of "Facts".
There, fixed that for you.
All facts are interpreted according to a certain worldview where basic underlying assumptions are made. An assumption is a fancy word for belief or believe. One of the most common recurring phrases in written evolution literature is: "It is believed that... Check it out some time. Just pick some random articles on any evolutionary paper more than three or four typewritten pages long. Now put an underline in red every time the word believed or assumed or a similar construction goes up.
The theory of evolution assumes that presently observed processes can be extrapolated over immense time periods. In nature, linear relationships are the exception rather than the rule. Over the extremely short time span we have observed a given process, we may not have noticed its nonlinearity. The segment of the curve we have access to is just way too short. Therefore many scientists assume it is not a curve, but a straight line that can be extended back as far as they like.
For example, the process of radioactivity is used to date living and non living objects. Carbon dating is only one of these dating methods based on radioactivity. Science has known about radioactivity for only about 100 years. Over that short time span we observed radioactive decays to be occurring at a quite regular, apparently highly predictable rate. We assume (believe) therefore that this is a linear process, even over immense amounts of time, millions and even billions of years. This assumption of linearity underlies all models of radioactive dating. Even an incredibly small nonlinearity in the rate of the ticking of this atomic clock, would make all dates and numbers obtained totally wrong.
Scientists assume that the basic "constants" of atomic behavior cannot and have never changed. This may be a reasonable assumption, but is an assumption nevertheless.
Another assumption that is made, in some of these measurements, is the amount of radioactive material that was in the sample when the clock started ticking.
Radioactive dating is not the only branch of science that assumes constancy over a long time. Scientists observe geological processes such as erosion, mountain building, continental drift etc. occurring at what appears as rather constant rates. There is plenty of evidence, that the earth has had a rather violent geological past. In spite of such evidence, evolution believing geologists build models based on today's observed rates of change and expect these to produce reliable results reaching back millions or billions of years.
...When you claimed that the big bang created the laws of physics I lost interest in your post, because that is a silly conjecture.
OK, can you tell me where the laws of physics originated? All HUMAN laws originate in a mind. Why is it a conjecture to say that natural laws ALSO originated in a mind?
....When did god create metaphorical language, before or after the creation of "heavens -- space" and "earth -- matter-energy"?...
God used language that can be understood by everybody, including those who lived long before modern science. We still use that kind of language today in everyday conversations. We still talk about sunrises and sunsets, even though science has since shown that this is an illusion created by the rotation of the Earth. God says that we are made of the dust of the ground. That is still true. Your and my bodies are STILL really dirt clods. Our food grows in the soil (dirt) and takes up the elements you are made of. So this is still scientifically true. The elements in your body are the same as the ones in fertile soil. Even the proportions of the elements are roughly the same.
So this language was designed to be understood by the ancients as well as us, who think of ourselves so knowledgeable compared to those ignoramuses who lived a long time ago.
In the book of Job, God finally talks to Job. Read chapters 38-41 sometime. Here the Creator God give Job a science quiz. Job flunked. Modern scientist given this test might be lucky to barely get a "D". The more we discover about nature, the more we realize how little we really know.
...The Great One, a being so complex that humans can only perceive minute and sometimes apparently self-contradictory aspects of it...
What a contrast this is to what Jesus promises to all who accept his message.
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Jesus came so you and I may KNOW this true God. He does represent him as a self-contrdictory enigma, distant, aloof and unknowable. Jesus and the Apostles present God as a loving, merciful FATHER, rather than a distant, unapproachable deity.
(..and when he sleeps at night..)
So this god Brahma gets tired at night?
Contrast that with this:
Isaiah 40:28 Have you not known? Have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not grow weak nor weary?
Revelation 22:5 And there will be no night there. And they need no lamp, or light of the sun; for the Lord God gives them light.
1 John 1:5 And this is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
The God of the Bible doesn't need to sleep because he doesn't get tired. He is a God of light and is surrounded by light. The Bible associates darkness with evil. The Devil is called the prince of darkness. Maybe that is who this Brahma really is?
God searched, but could not find an innocent party among humans. We are all liars, thieves etc. and therefore guilty. So now the choice was narrowed down to either enforce the law on us all or become human and then take the decreed punishment Himself as a human. Because of His love for us that is what God did in Jesus Christ.
We are all under the sentence of eternal death, sitting here on Earth, on death row. However, what God did through Jesus Christ enabled him to offer a pardon for those WILLING to accept such a pardon and agreeing to not desire to be a liar, thief, adulterer etc. any longer. This doesn't mean we will no longer occasionally lie, steal, be unfaithful, etc, but that we have change of heart, a change of attitude about the seriousness of these offenses and earnestly strive to avoid them.
God doesn't want to execute the judgment on you or anyone else, but will be forced to in the end, if he desires to maintain justice, which he does. I have accepted his pardon and now He is waiting for you to also accept the pardon he freely offers.
... who would like an updated version of the KJV, keeping the same textual basis....
Check out and compare Green's Modern King James Version to your "normal" KJV. I find the MKJV very readable. The familiar rhythm and meter of the original KJV is mostly retained, but the old, no longer used expression are replaced with their modern equivalents. I have a printed copy as well as well as the electronic copy as part of the free e-sword distribution.
(.. The Greek LXX (Septuagint) version is enigmatic at best ..)
It is quite likely that the 70 scholars had better, more accurate manuscripts available to them. It was the common Bible available to Jesus. I believe that an eternal, transcendent God, capable of, and desiring to communicate to mankind, has the ability to keep His message from getting messed up such as to express anything He did not intend.
You echo this with your statement: "Even the substantial differences between Alexandrian and non-Alexandrian manuscript families are somewhat irrelevant to doctrine".
As Mark Twain, a disbeliever once said: "I don't have trouble with the parts of the Bible I don't understand, but the parts of the Bible I do understand very well, but do not wish to be obedient to".
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing apart of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
It has that ability no matter which translation is used.