Thank you for this intelligent post. I never expected my when I posted my original comment that my views would shift so dramatically in only 8 short hours. So, thanks to you and all the other members of the Slashdot community who took time to post intelligent comments. I really appreciate it.
If the argument "The Creator is simply there" is sufficient, then How is that any different to "the conditions required to create the universe were simply there".
It isn't different, really. Flipping your argument around, if the Big Bang was the origin of the universe, what was the origin of the Big Bang?
I thought it was reasonably obvious that I was being flippant.
I know, but I hear this one so often it starts to get annoying.
The whole point of the creation hypothesis is that the creator inhabits a plane of existence beyond our own, and is not bound by the laws of physics, including cause and effect. Thus, your argument kinda misses the point. Could such an entity exist? Why not? It's perfectly conceivable. Should we believe such an entity exists? By Occam's razor, no, unless there is evidence to the contrary.
Thank you for this informative comment, I really appreciate it.
The Grand Canyon is pretty much a poster-child for modern geological theories. It's layering is not consistent with a rapid flood and the canyon its self is best explained by the long slow process of erosion by river. I could probably find some detailed studies if you'd like.
I was under the impression that the layering was, in fact, consistent with deposit by a flood followed by tidal pumping and liquefication. I will have to look into this in greater detail. The hydroplate theory, in its full detail, actually accounts for most of the points in article you link to, but not all of them. The points it does not explain are the interesting ones, from my point of view.
I don't know where you're getting that 6000 years figure.
The 6000 year figure came from the second study. But as your link points out, even if this were true, it would prove nothing. Another person in this thread pointed out that a later study done in 2000 demonstrates a flaw in the Gibbons study and puts the date back at 171,500 +/- 50,000 years.
What about comets causes problems for you.
Comets crash into things quite often, and should be extinct by now if the solar system is millions of years old. The Oort cloud theory suggest that a cloud of matter 50000 AU away is replenishing our supply, but it doesn't provide a plausible mechanism for launching comets out of the cloud and into the inner solar system (at least, from what I have read about it).
You conflate geological evolution, astronomy, abiogenisis and biological evolution. [...] Even if one is disproved it doesn't necessarily invalidate the others because they're all separate theories with their own evidence and implications.
This is a valid point, and one I had not considered until now. I suspect creationists confuse them because their explanation, if true, would account for all four. You are right, though. The independence of these theories from an evolutionary / old universe standpoint does make it harder to refute them. Attempts to disprove biological evolution by referring to astronomy are just sloppy.
If you would like to educate yourself, go through your list of "hundreds more" examples, and look them up in this index of creationist claims.
I will read through this index, even if it takes me all month. Many in this thread have mentioned this site, and it looks quite good.
If that is so, then why do you make claims that are factually incorrect?
I was unaware that this particular fact had been refuted. And, as others in this thread have pointed out, it is actually not that strong, even if it were true. The geologic evidence I mentioned is controversial in my mind, but I have not yet seen an explanation for the abundance of comets, which have a relatively fast decay rate as they crash into things. I am sure the Index of Creationist Claims has refutations for these as well, which I look forward to reading.
Ah, this is the kind of stuff I am looking for! The fulfillment of these two predictions is, in fact, powerful testimony to the theory. The original news article states, "The science of evolution is often misunderstood by the public." If evolution were presented in this ground-up, predictions-and-experiments-proving-true approach, it would be more effective against the general public. It seems the failure is one of communication.
I was actually the second study that provided the 6000 number. They did this by measuring the mtDNA mutation directly rather than using using assumed migration dates. As another commenter pointed out in this article http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html, the "mtDNA" evidence is not as damaging to evolution at it appears at first glance.
When uninformed people have opinions on science that smell of belief and bias, my suggestion to them is to go spend five to seven years to get a PhD in a field of natural science.
I'm just an ordinary electrial engineer. That makes me slightly more educated than the man on the street and far less educated than the average grad student in the life sciences. Short of going back to college a PhD, I read books to educate myself. Asking for good books or other information on evolution hardly counts as "burdening others with your belief system like you are doing here." If I am wrong, it is because I am the victim of bad science, not because I am grasping at any evidence to support my belief system. My belief system does not require me to believe in evolution at all. I am perfectly comfortable with God existing outside the physical universe and playing no part in the natural evolutionary process that produced us. I have read enough to conclude that this is not the case, but maybe the stuff I have read is junk science.
The problem with the books on evolution I have read is that they assume evolution is true, and then fit the pieces into that assumption. This is different from books on the other branches of science, which start with the basic experiments, and then introduce the theory to explain them. For example, any description of relativity begins with important observed facts, like the null result of the Mitchelson-Morley experiment or the reduced rate of decay of particles traveling at relativistic velocities. Only then do they introduce the theory to explain those facts. Every explanation of evolution I have read basically says, "We evolved from lower live forms, and here is how the facts fit into that assumption," which is exactly the opposite approach. This is not an argument against evolution; it is an argument against the way it is presented.
I cited four examples for creation evidence off the top of my head, but I have read hundreds more. A Slashdot thread could never go into the level of detail I am looking for, which is why I want a good book or something. One that builds the theory from the ground up, citing experiments/observations along the way. If such a book doesn't exist, someone should write one. It would be a devastating attack against honest creationists.
The first item was simply that humans have evolved, period. The evidence is so overwhelming that Relethford feels that any remaining argument is simply between two religious perspectives on that fact; science has moved on.
I keep hearing statements like this from evolutionists. Now, I personally accept the Creation hypothesis, not because of blind religious belief, but because I believe the physical supports it. The question is not whether evolution is possible (given enough time and luck, anything is possible), but whether it actually happened. I think that the physical facts, such as the massive quantities of rapidly-buried fossils, the Grand Canyon, the mitochondrial DNA studies performed at Berkeley in 1987 [1], and the existence of comets (to name a few) are better explained by the Creation and Global Flood hypothesis than the Evolutionary theory. If the evidence actually supports the Evolutionary theory as many scientists claim, I would like to see the facts. Surely, nobody is expected to believe evolution simply "because science said so." Where can I find this conclusive physical evidence? Evidence that is only compatible with an evolutionary origin of the universe? Does anybody know of some good books on the subject?
[1] Rebecca L. Cann et al., "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution," Nature, Vol 325, 1 January 1987, pp. 31-36
Also see Ann Gibbons, "Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock," Science, Vol. 297, 2 January 1998, p. 29 for evidence that our common female ancestor lived approximately 6500 years ago. I'm not making this stuff up; the sources cited are evolutionists.
This standard is designed to work in the Real World. When Real World browsers see a document without a doctype tag, they go into quirks mode and render CSS wrongly. Thus, eliminating the doctype tag would either make HTML 5 incompatible with current browsers or force everyone to use the broken quirks-mode CSS behavior. That would suck a lot. The present solution is not the most beautiful, but it is the most rational and realistic.
> Sophisticated DNA: There is a good chance that...
Careful! You are slipping into faith-based pseudo-scientific speculation here. Until somebody proposes an exact theory about how this happened and *runs the experiment*, the origin of DNA will remain an unexplained scientific mystery. One that the creation theory perfectly accounts for (although the creation theory has other problems of its own).
> Finally, creationism doesn't rely on facts.
Not so. Creation scientists hypothesize that an intelligent being created the universe, and then ask, "What are the implications of that?" They then gather facts to either confirm or deny those implications, the same as any scientist does. Their assumption may be wrong, but at least they play by the rules when it comes to scientific evidence (Well, the ones I've read play by the rules. There are always exceptions).
This is a refreshingly level-headed post. One thing I can't stand is blind faith, on either side. Believing something "because pastor Bob says so" is just as bad as believing something "because a scientist says so." The *only* way to form a belief is to rely on observable facts, whether you are a creationist or an evolutionist.
Unfortunately, I am not sure the observable facts line up with the evolutionary theory. Here are some problems I see:
* Fossils - If evolution is a continuous process, were are the intermediate forms? The only fossils we find belong to recognizable species. There are a lot of species that no longer exist, such as dinosaurs, but even these fit into well-defined categories. If evolution were true, we would expect to a continuous spectrum of fossils between individual species, rather than only the starting species and the ending species.
* Non-decomposable structures - According to Darwin, his theory would only work if every biological structure could be derived from some other, simpler biological structure. You can't evolve a complex system in a single step. Unfortunately, there are many biological structures, such as winged flight, eyes, and the cellular machinery for reproducing DNA, which cannot be derived from simpler biological structures. Consider DNA reproduction. Without this basic mechanism, the first DNA-based life form in a prehistoric ocean would not have been able to reproduce and pass on its "invention." Reproducing DNA, however, is a complicated process that requires the right building-blocks (G, A, C, T), and a protein enzyme that can unwind the original DNA strand and copy it onto the new one. Thus, the first DNA-based organism would have needed three complicated things *at the same time*: an original DNA strand, the protein enzyme, and a concentration of free building-blocks. In addition, these things would have had to create an evolutionary advantage in their first iteration. What are the odds of that happening? The fact that we observe DNA-based reproduction in all creatures on earth seems to rule out evolution as the origin of the first life-form.
There are plenty of smart people here on Slashdot, and I'm sure someone has an answer to these observations. All I'm trying to say is the the creationists do have a point - observable facts are not 100% in favor of either theory, and there is room for additional research. As long as the discussion stays focused on facts and not faith, there is no reason to ridicule the creationists. Ridicule is the mark of blind faith, and people who claim to hold a "scientific" belief should not resort to it.
IE7 may have its user interface flaws, but it does offer increased support for standards. Not enough, mind you, but better than its predecessor. As long as people hold back on the upgrade to IE7 (or Firefox / Opera), the Internet at large will remain stunted. Simple things, like using transparent PNG's, will suddenly become possible once enough people switch. I'm tired of writing ugly, hackish HTML and CSS just to work around the flaws in IE6.
This is how I code, at least in C-like languages. You can set your tab length to whatever you want, and my sources still look pretty:
int foo () { //Every line starts with tabs: if ( some_really_long_expression && some_other_really_long_expression ) { DoSomethingClever(42); DoSomethingComplex( param1, //Tabs start the line, spaces between param and comment param2, //Comments line up, thanks to spaces param3 //Tab can be any length, whole line moves in or out ); return -1; } else { return rand(); } }
My thoughts exactly. Why buy either when both will be replaced by direct download? Until then, the DVD is good enough. In fact, DVD will probably be around much longer than that, just as the floppy is still around today.
People keep comparing the BluRay vs HD-DVD war to the VHS vs Betamax war, but I think the comparison is flawed. This is more like the Zip-disk vs LS120 "war." Remember that? People wanted to know which format would replace the floppy disk, but both are now irrelevant. The difference is simple - VHS and Betamax both competed in a market where there was no existing alternative, while the Zip-disk and LS120 competed in a market with a well-entrenched but less-capable alternative. In the end, better technologies like flash drives, email, and networks destroyed the market for the high-capacity floppy replacements. Meanwhile, the floppy itself still lives on for the few things it can still do well, like system recovery. For the same reason, the DVD wil still be with us years after the HD-DVD and BluRay are forgotten. How else will we watch our massive collections of "old DVDs?"
It would only work if your spreadsheet had a few million cells in it. Now that you mention scientific modelling, though, I feel stupid. That is probably the single biggest user of repetetive floating-point operations around.
Memory fetch, multiplication, addition... where have I heard this before? Oh, I know. 3D graphics. Typically, those results go right to the screen and don't cause much damage if they get corrupted. I would be more worried about video or audio encoding, though, since those results do make a difference. Otherwise, I can't think of much else that would trigger this bug.
A little {border-bottom: 1px solid #066;} action on the story headline? Good idea. I'll see how it looks.
Also, the slashboxes are represented by those two polls. On the articles pages, that is also where the meta-info boxes such as User ID and Related Articles will go.
After hearing about the contest, I spent several hours with Inkscape trying out some desings. I'm somewhat comfortable with my concept art at this point, and am just starting to convert it to CSS. The concept JPEG can be seen here: http://www.deviantart.com/view/32444534/.
Clearly, Slashdotters have strong opinions about the site's appearance. Odds are, you probably think my design is shit. That's fine. Go ahead and tell my exactly what you hate about it, and I'll make the improvements.:)
Actually, the goal is to redesign the web site without touching the HTML. That's what CSS is for. Just switch the stylesheet, and the entire design changes. You really should see the CSS Zen Garden at http://www.csszengarden.com/ for an example of what good artists with a few CSS skills can do.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for this intelligent post. I never expected my when I posted my original comment that my views would shift so dramatically in only 8 short hours. So, thanks to you and all the other members of the Slashdot community who took time to post intelligent comments. I really appreciate it.
It isn't different, really. Flipping your argument around, if the Big Bang was the origin of the universe, what was the origin of the Big Bang?
I know, but I hear this one so often it starts to get annoying.
The whole point of the creation hypothesis is that the creator inhabits a plane of existence beyond our own, and is not bound by the laws of physics, including cause and effect. Thus, your argument kinda misses the point. Could such an entity exist? Why not? It's perfectly conceivable. Should we believe such an entity exists? By Occam's razor, no, unless there is evidence to the contrary.
Thank you for this informative comment, I really appreciate it.
I was under the impression that the layering was, in fact, consistent with deposit by a flood followed by tidal pumping and liquefication. I will have to look into this in greater detail. The hydroplate theory, in its full detail, actually accounts for most of the points in article you link to, but not all of them. The points it does not explain are the interesting ones, from my point of view.
The 6000 year figure came from the second study. But as your link points out, even if this were true, it would prove nothing. Another person in this thread pointed out that a later study done in 2000 demonstrates a flaw in the Gibbons study and puts the date back at 171,500 +/- 50,000 years.
Comets crash into things quite often, and should be extinct by now if the solar system is millions of years old. The Oort cloud theory suggest that a cloud of matter 50000 AU away is replenishing our supply, but it doesn't provide a plausible mechanism for launching comets out of the cloud and into the inner solar system (at least, from what I have read about it).
This is a valid point, and one I had not considered until now. I suspect creationists confuse them because their explanation, if true, would account for all four. You are right, though. The independence of these theories from an evolutionary / old universe standpoint does make it harder to refute them. Attempts to disprove biological evolution by referring to astronomy are just sloppy.
Ah, this is the kind of stuff I am looking for! The fulfillment of these two predictions is, in fact, powerful testimony to the theory. The original news article states, "The science of evolution is often misunderstood by the public." If evolution were presented in this ground-up, predictions-and-experiments-proving-true approach, it would be more effective against the general public. It seems the failure is one of communication.
I was actually the second study that provided the 6000 number. They did this by measuring the mtDNA mutation directly rather than using using assumed migration dates. As another commenter pointed out in this article http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html, the "mtDNA" evidence is not as damaging to evolution at it appears at first glance.
I'm just an ordinary electrial engineer. That makes me slightly more educated than the man on the street and far less educated than the average grad student in the life sciences. Short of going back to college a PhD, I read books to educate myself. Asking for good books or other information on evolution hardly counts as "burdening others with your belief system like you are doing here." If I am wrong, it is because I am the victim of bad science, not because I am grasping at any evidence to support my belief system. My belief system does not require me to believe in evolution at all. I am perfectly comfortable with God existing outside the physical universe and playing no part in the natural evolutionary process that produced us. I have read enough to conclude that this is not the case, but maybe the stuff I have read is junk science.
The problem with the books on evolution I have read is that they assume evolution is true, and then fit the pieces into that assumption. This is different from books on the other branches of science, which start with the basic experiments, and then introduce the theory to explain them. For example, any description of relativity begins with important observed facts, like the null result of the Mitchelson-Morley experiment or the reduced rate of decay of particles traveling at relativistic velocities. Only then do they introduce the theory to explain those facts. Every explanation of evolution I have read basically says, "We evolved from lower live forms, and here is how the facts fit into that assumption," which is exactly the opposite approach. This is not an argument against evolution; it is an argument against the way it is presented.
I cited four examples for creation evidence off the top of my head, but I have read hundreds more. A Slashdot thread could never go into the level of detail I am looking for, which is why I want a good book or something. One that builds the theory from the ground up, citing experiments/observations along the way. If such a book doesn't exist, someone should write one. It would be a devastating attack against honest creationists.
I keep hearing statements like this from evolutionists. Now, I personally accept the Creation hypothesis, not because of blind religious belief, but because I believe the physical supports it. The question is not whether evolution is possible (given enough time and luck, anything is possible), but whether it actually happened. I think that the physical facts, such as the massive quantities of rapidly-buried fossils, the Grand Canyon, the mitochondrial DNA studies performed at Berkeley in 1987 [1], and the existence of comets (to name a few) are better explained by the Creation and Global Flood hypothesis than the Evolutionary theory. If the evidence actually supports the Evolutionary theory as many scientists claim, I would like to see the facts. Surely, nobody is expected to believe evolution simply "because science said so." Where can I find this conclusive physical evidence? Evidence that is only compatible with an evolutionary origin of the universe? Does anybody know of some good books on the subject?
[1] Rebecca L. Cann et al., "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution," Nature, Vol 325, 1 January 1987, pp. 31-36
Also see Ann Gibbons, "Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock," Science, Vol. 297, 2 January 1998, p. 29 for evidence that our common female ancestor lived approximately 6500 years ago. I'm not making this stuff up; the sources cited are evolutionists.
This standard is designed to work in the Real World. When Real World browsers see a document without a doctype tag, they go into quirks mode and render CSS wrongly. Thus, eliminating the doctype tag would either make HTML 5 incompatible with current browsers or force everyone to use the broken quirks-mode CSS behavior. That would suck a lot. The present solution is not the most beautiful, but it is the most rational and realistic.
> There are plenty of smart people here on Slashdot, and I'm sure someone has an answer to these observations.
Wow! And they have. Thank you for the top-notch post. You have put these concerns well to rest, especially with the discussion of foraminifera.
> Sophisticated DNA: There is a good chance that...
Careful! You are slipping into faith-based pseudo-scientific speculation here. Until somebody proposes an exact theory about how this happened and *runs the experiment*, the origin of DNA will remain an unexplained scientific mystery. One that the creation theory perfectly accounts for (although the creation theory has other problems of its own).
> Finally, creationism doesn't rely on facts.
Not so. Creation scientists hypothesize that an intelligent being created the universe, and then ask, "What are the implications of that?" They then gather facts to either confirm or deny those implications, the same as any scientist does. Their assumption may be wrong, but at least they play by the rules when it comes to scientific evidence (Well, the ones I've read play by the rules. There are always exceptions).
This is a refreshingly level-headed post. One thing I can't stand is blind faith, on either side. Believing something "because pastor Bob says so" is just as bad as believing something "because a scientist says so." The *only* way to form a belief is to rely on observable facts, whether you are a creationist or an evolutionist.
Unfortunately, I am not sure the observable facts line up with the evolutionary theory. Here are some problems I see:
* Fossils - If evolution is a continuous process, were are the intermediate forms? The only fossils we find belong to recognizable species. There are a lot of species that no longer exist, such as dinosaurs, but even these fit into well-defined categories. If evolution were true, we would expect to a continuous spectrum of fossils between individual species, rather than only the starting species and the ending species.
* Non-decomposable structures - According to Darwin, his theory would only work if every biological structure could be derived from some other, simpler biological structure. You can't evolve a complex system in a single step. Unfortunately, there are many biological structures, such as winged flight, eyes, and the cellular machinery for reproducing DNA, which cannot be derived from simpler biological structures. Consider DNA reproduction. Without this basic mechanism, the first DNA-based life form in a prehistoric ocean would not have been able to reproduce and pass on its "invention." Reproducing DNA, however, is a complicated process that requires the right building-blocks (G, A, C, T), and a protein enzyme that can unwind the original DNA strand and copy it onto the new one. Thus, the first DNA-based organism would have needed three complicated things *at the same time*: an original DNA strand, the protein enzyme, and a concentration of free building-blocks. In addition, these things would have had to create an evolutionary advantage in their first iteration. What are the odds of that happening? The fact that we observe DNA-based reproduction in all creatures on earth seems to rule out evolution as the origin of the first life-form.
There are plenty of smart people here on Slashdot, and I'm sure someone has an answer to these observations. All I'm trying to say is the the creationists do have a point - observable facts are not 100% in favor of either theory, and there is room for additional research. As long as the discussion stays focused on facts and not faith, there is no reason to ridicule the creationists. Ridicule is the mark of blind faith, and people who claim to hold a "scientific" belief should not resort to it.
IE7 may have its user interface flaws, but it does offer increased support for standards. Not enough, mind you, but better than its predecessor. As long as people hold back on the upgrade to IE7 (or Firefox / Opera), the Internet at large will remain stunted. Simple things, like using transparent PNG's, will suddenly become possible once enough people switch. I'm tired of writing ugly, hackish HTML and CSS just to work around the flaws in IE6.
I use Yahoo. I find that it works better.
Office 2007 runs great on Windows XP. I've been using the beta for months.
While many little rendering bugs have been fixed, the IE rendering model is still fundamentally broken: http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html
This is how I code, at least in C-like languages. You can set your tab length to whatever you want, and my sources still look pretty:
//Every line starts with tabs: //Tab can be any length, whole line moves in or out
int foo ()
{
if (
some_really_long_expression &&
some_other_really_long_expression
) {
DoSomethingClever(42);
DoSomethingComplex(
param1, //Tabs start the line, spaces between param and comment
param2, //Comments line up, thanks to spaces
param3
);
return -1;
} else {
return rand();
}
}
I hope this never takes off.
My thoughts exactly. Why buy either when both will be replaced by direct download? Until then, the DVD is good enough. In fact, DVD will probably be around much longer than that, just as the floppy is still around today.
People keep comparing the BluRay vs HD-DVD war to the VHS vs Betamax war, but I think the comparison is flawed. This is more like the Zip-disk vs LS120 "war." Remember that? People wanted to know which format would replace the floppy disk, but both are now irrelevant. The difference is simple - VHS and Betamax both competed in a market where there was no existing alternative, while the Zip-disk and LS120 competed in a market with a well-entrenched but less-capable alternative. In the end, better technologies like flash drives, email, and networks destroyed the market for the high-capacity floppy replacements. Meanwhile, the floppy itself still lives on for the few things it can still do well, like system recovery. For the same reason, the DVD wil still be with us years after the HD-DVD and BluRay are forgotten. How else will we watch our massive collections of "old DVDs?"
It would only work if your spreadsheet had a few million cells in it. Now that you mention scientific modelling, though, I feel stupid. That is probably the single biggest user of repetetive floating-point operations around.
Memory fetch, multiplication, addition... where have I heard this before? Oh, I know. 3D graphics. Typically, those results go right to the screen and don't cause much damage if they get corrupted. I would be more worried about video or audio encoding, though, since those results do make a difference. Otherwise, I can't think of much else that would trigger this bug.
A little {border-bottom: 1px solid #066;} action on the story headline? Good idea. I'll see how it looks.
Also, the slashboxes are represented by those two polls. On the articles pages, that is also where the meta-info boxes such as User ID and Related Articles will go.
After hearing about the contest, I spent several hours with Inkscape trying out some desings. I'm somewhat comfortable with my concept art at this point, and am just starting to convert it to CSS. The concept JPEG can be seen here: http://www.deviantart.com/view/32444534/.
Clearly, Slashdotters have strong opinions about the site's appearance. Odds are, you probably think my design is shit. That's fine. Go ahead and tell my exactly what you hate about it, and I'll make the improvements. :)
Actually, the goal is to redesign the web site without touching the HTML. That's what CSS is for. Just switch the stylesheet, and the entire design changes. You really should see the CSS Zen Garden at http://www.csszengarden.com/ for an example of what good artists with a few CSS skills can do.