Let's not debate creationism in the News thread
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Basically, a large part of science today is totally worthless. And a lot of what calls itself science just plain isn't.
But you don't make things better by just saying that stuff sucks. If it was that easy, the large collection of random blowhards in the world's bars would have achieved nirvana long ago. No, you gotta also come up with a better suggestion than the current setup, and then we can test that suggestion out and work out if it really is better or if it is just as shitty as what we have now (or even worse).
Big paradigm shifts don't happen very often. That's not all bad; it'd be totally crazy if we were totally upending our understanding of the universe every few years! But if you want to cause big changes, you'd better make super sure that you're proposing something better (as in “it makes more accurate and more timely predictions of reality” because that's a pretty good basic definition of scientific utility, since that enables making better profits from them or at least wasting less money and effort).
Are many scientists full of shit? Sure. Scientists are people, many people are full of shit, and being in science isn't a guarantee of not being full of shit. But at least some of the time, scientists change their minds and try to use real evidence for the basis of their conclusions. That puts them ahead (as a group) than most alternatives. Alas…
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
We make a fundamental mistake when we hold science up as some holy process that has a unique path to truth or a guaranteed path to truth.
I have no idea where this idea comes from. I never heard anyone claim science is "a holy process". The strongest claim I heard (and one I agree with) is that it's the best method we devised so far to reach conclusions as close to truth as we can.
If someone proposes a better process tomorrow (and can show it's actually better) I, for one, will consider the scientific methodobsolete and switch to evaluating things using that new method.
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@onyx said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
We make a fundamental mistake when we hold science up as some holy process that has a unique path to truth or a guaranteed path to truth.
I have no idea where this idea comes from. I never heard anyone claim science is "a holy process". The strongest claim I heard (and one I agree with) is that it's the best method we devised so far to reach conclusions as close to truth as we can.
If someone proposes a better process tomorrow (and can show it's actually better) I, for one, will consider the scientific methodobsolete and switch to evaluating things using that new method.
To the first point--I'm not concerned with what people say. I'm concerned with how they act. And I see a lot of people (including reasonably-well educated ones) who act as if Science was a holy process, the only source of truth, and scientists were its prophets. These are my colleagues who, when a new study comes out on how to teach (education research is notoriously horrible), treat it as holy writ and attack anyone who says otherwise. They chase fads dolled up as science. These are the people who demand that people believe in <topic X>, when belief is not part of science at all. I can use evolutionary methods without believing in their truth one bit. As long as they're useful, that's enough. Heck, most of the go-to methods of many scientific fields are known to be flawed and have been superseded as the working theories. But since they're more useful in areas where their flaws aren't important, they're the ones that get used.
To the second, I'm not claiming that science is wrong. It's great at making useful models to predict repeatable, physical events. It, however, is both limited in scope and not unique. For example, trying to scientifically study morality is doomed to failure and worse. Science worries about what is, not what ought to be. Scientific methods are also limited when you have heavily-interacting, complex systems. Ones that you can't linearize. Like medicine. Most of medicine is not on very firm scientific grounds, nor are its processes "scientific". They use tools from science, but that's only a piece of it. Surgery and psychiatry are the two least-scientific (in process) fields of medicine.
So saying you'd switch to a better one misses the whole point. Science is a tool. A useful tool. But, like a post-hole digger, it's not useful everywhere. Use the right tool for the right job.
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
And I see a lot of people (including reasonably-well educated ones) who act as if Science was a holy process, the only source of truth, and scientists were its prophets.
Some people live their lives inside their own asses. News at 11.
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
It, however, is both limited in scope and not unique. For example, trying to scientifically study morality is doomed to failure and worse. Science worries about what is, not what ought to be.
Ummm... what? I don't know if that's a paragraph there, or if the "ought" part is completely separate point but... yeah, "ought" is something that philosophy deals with, not science. But... mortality? We are pretty much aware of the mechanisms that cause cell replication to start failing, I don't know what more you expect?
Are you saying we should investigate whether we should be mortal or not? Or are you saying that we should find out what happens after we die? In which case, no measurable evidence of anything special happening exists. So it's out of realm of physical world and no one can claim to have any evidence past "I think". And in that case, I don't find claiming to know anything about it is fair.
Which is basically my main problem with religion, btw. I don't mind other people's personal beliefs as long as they don't try to claim it's truth. Science at least has some backing to its claims. Religion has none. You can choose to believe it, but it can not be even compared to science on even ground, and saying "Oooh, it's better because it can explain this, and science can't! And the explanation is... BELIEVE!"
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@onyx morality, not mortality. What one ought to do, not the fact of death.
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As far as science and truth is concerned, consider the following hypothetical.
What we observe is a simulation--our minds are (matrix-style) immersed in an illusory world. This world has been tuned to act as if it's real, maintaining consistency perfectly (at least at the levels we can perceive). No test done from inside the system can determine that it's a simulation.
Does science care? No. As far as scientific methods are concerned, the world we perceive may as well be real. All that matters is that actions have predictable results that vary predictably with the inputs. The models generated would have nothing to do with the actual underlying reality, but would work just fine in the simulation.
Science, properly formulated, makes no claims about truth. It makes claims about predictability, about consistency, and about measurable effects of actions. But there's a lot of things out there that aren't measurable in a scientific fashion that are just as, or more important than the scientific ones. People existed just fine for millennia before science was a thing. Yet in every society, there have been claims about a few important questions:
- Who am I? (the nature of the self)
- Where did I come from/Where am I going? (persistence of self)
- Why am I here? (purpose of existence)
and different answers to those questions have led to markedly different societies. Morals matter. They're not scientific, but they matter more than science does. Religion and science, properly constructed, don't conflict. They're not discussing matters that the other handles. One answers why things exist (for what purpose), the other answers what things exist (describing our surroundings).
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
One answers why things exist (for what purpose)
Why does there have to be a purpose?
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@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
One answers why things exist (for what purpose)
Why does there have to be a purpose?
That's one possible answer to the question posed. But it's not a scientific answer, because it's not a scientific question. Doesn't mean it's not an important question.
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@benjamin-hall That's all very fine and well but it's not helpful to the debate at hand.
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Peer review is often more about reinforcing the world-view of the reviewers (checking for heterodoxy) than about truth. Frankly, most peer review sucks. It focuses on the trivial and ignores the larger issues.
One the one hand, you're right, the peer review process is pretty random at times. I've seen ridiculous papers getting published (I had to literally laugh after reading the abstract) and great papers being rejected.
However, after that, the system corrects its mistakes: A bad paper will ultimately receive very few citations or at least be refuted numerous times. Therefore, your roundabout criticism is misplaced - scientist may be opinionated, but the scientific community as a whole still accepts the correct research in the end.
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@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall That's all very fine and well but it's not helpful to the debate at hand.
My point was limited to a response to Onyx. I take no position on the evolution debate--it's rather pointless.
The point was that religion and science aren't different ways of understanding the same things. They're different methods for different purposes. Both useful, both important. But when one tries to supplant the other (in either direction), bad things happen.
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@benjamin-hall As evidenced by creationism.
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@dfdub said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Peer review is often more about reinforcing the world-view of the reviewers (checking for heterodoxy) than about truth. Frankly, most peer review sucks. It focuses on the trivial and ignores the larger issues.
One the one hand, you're right, the peer review process is pretty random at times. I've seen ridiculous papers getting published (I had to literally laugh after reading the abstract) and great papers being rejected.
However, after that, the system corrects its mistakes: A bad paper will ultimately receive very few citations or at least be refuted numerous times. Therefore, your roundabout criticism is misplaced - scientist may be opinionated, but the scientific community as a whole still accepts the correct research in the end.
It's said that science progresses one funeral at a time. The core sciences (chemistry, physics, etc) are generally ok. Many of the other "sciences" are not. Most of their studies don't even replicate or are so shoddy as to be useless. And those are the ones that are wielded as weapons to bludgeon people into submission. No one cares that the true value of <constant a> is <value a>, not <value b that's very slightly different from a>. People do care when they're told that science says they're all racists/sexists/bigots/etc.
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
These are my colleagues who, when a new study comes out on how to teach (education research is notoriously horrible), treat it as holy writ and attack anyone who says otherwise.
That says more about the state of science journalism than science itself. What a teacher reads in the morning paper is usually very different from the actual scientific breakthroughs.
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@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall As evidenced by creationism.
Again, I take no position. It's not a debate that I think has any point to it, on either side. It's just a bunch of people yelling at each other.
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@dfdub said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
These are my colleagues who, when a new study comes out on how to teach (education research is notoriously horrible), treat it as holy writ and attack anyone who says otherwise.
That says more about the state of science journalism than science itself. What a teacher reads in the morning paper is usually very different from the actual scientific breakthroughs.
These are people reading, if not the actual paper, books written by the authors claiming to accurately represent their work.
Yes, science journalism (and <x> journalism for most values of <x>) is utter crap. But this isn't a journalism problem.
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Most of their studies don't even replicate or are so shoddy as to be useless. And those are the ones that are wielded as weapons to bludgeon people into submission.
Again, says more about science journalism than the science itself. Of course sensationalist papers full of ridiculous claims are more likely to end up in a morning newspaper than actual, boring research. That's hardly surprising.
This really doesn't mean that social sciences are useless. They actually make useful observations. You just won't read about them in some internet discussion about politics.
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall As evidenced by creationism.
Again, I take no position. It's not a debate that I think has any point to it, on either side. It's just a bunch of people yelling at each other.
That's a cop out. You just stated that mixing religion and science is a bad thing and yet, when I point out a prime example of this very thing happening, you don't have an opinion on that?
Sorry, that won't fly.
"So, dudes, you are wrong and that's how the rules are!"
"Okay then. So what do your rules say about this thing then?"
"I don't have an opinion on that!"That doesn't really strengthen your argument.
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@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall As evidenced by creationism.
Again, I take no position. It's not a debate that I think has any point to it, on either side. It's just a bunch of people yelling at each other.
That's a cop out. You just stated that mixing religion and science is a bad thing and yet, when I point out a prime example of this very thing happening, you don't have an opinion on that?
Sorry, that won't fly.
- "So, dudes, you are wrong and that's how the rules are!"
- "Okay then. So what do your rules say about this thing then?"
- "I don't have an opinion on that!"
That doesn't really strengthen your argument.
Uh, what?
No, I made no claim about your point 1 at all. If pressed, I'd say that most creationist claims about the actual scientific parts are non-scientific (but pretend to be). That is, those particular arguments are wrong. But then I'd say the same when evolutionists try to take their claims beyond what's measurable and venture into the realms of morality or proper behavior (or start making claims about underlying truth). That is, they're both wrong, just in different ways.
It's not that science and religion can't mix, it's that one can't do the other's job. Both are important, both influence each other, but they're separate fields.
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@benjamin-hall Again with the copout. And seriously, you're twisting things quite a bit here.
Let me walk you through what you're telling me here:
a) Most creationists are wrong. That's an absolutel statement if you didn't notice.
b) Eolvutionists are wrong if they venture beyond science. That's a conditional statement.And then you tell us in the next sentence that both are equally wrong. That will not do. There's a difference in quality between the two points you yourself brought to the table and I will not accept your bashing of scientists here.
Yes, you can now make excuses but please watch your language because that's exactly what fuels the anti-science brigade.
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
And I see a lot of people (including reasonably-well educated ones) who act as if Science was a holy process, the only source of truth, and scientists were its prophets.
Having seen plenty of scientists doing science, the process isn't holy. It's mostly about trying to figure out how you fucked up idiotically this time and figure out ways to stop yourself from doing the same blunder next time. Or it certainly seemed that way in microbiology (specifically metabolomics and genetic engineering) where getting anything reproducible (or even persuading the stupid microbes to reproduce instead of sitting there and dying in the test tube) is a major challenge.
The world's full of useless blowhards who pontificate on stuff like they know it all when they actually know bupkis. Doing real experimental work (and tying it to theory so that both the theory and the understanding of the experiment can co-evolve) is really difficult, so those blowhards skip that step and go straight for pulling shit out of their asses. But good scientists at least try to keep contact with reality: if there is a creed of science, it's that reality always trumps theory no matter what the theorists say or what previous experiment says. Eventually the jerks retire from being senior professors and the “young turks” kick some of the shit which doesn't work to the kerb. And become senior professors…
Another key thing is that the people who manage to force through a paradigm change tend to be the people regarded as total scientific greats. Most cutting-edge scientists would give their left arm to get that level of fame.
For example, trying to scientifically study morality is doomed to failure and worse.
I'd characterise that as an area where data is still being collected. It's full of windy theory and insufficient actual known correlations for the scientific method to really work well. So people gotta go with the best approximations they've got for now (which includes religions) since waiting for more data in the area is silly. Maybe as we get to understand psychology and sociology better (i.e., how people think as individuals and as groups) we'll be able to work out better ways of evaluating the effectiveness of moral systems, though I suspect the answer is likely to be “there's many good approaches; pick one”.
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@rhywden is it better to be right about an inconsequential fact and wrong about an important one or vice versa?
Unless you're specifically engaged in studying those particular areas, beliefs about the exact origin of the universe or the origin of species are quite irrelevant. In fact, most people can lead great lives knowing only the very basics of science, and mostly at the phenomenological level.
And that bit about not tolerating badmouthing of scientists? Yeah, that's religious thinking. Scientists, like all of us, aren't perfect. In fact, like everything else, 80% of their work is crap. And a good scientist is skeptical of everything, most of all himself and his work.
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@benjamin-hall 90%. Your 80% comes from Pareto's, but you're quoting Sturgeon's.
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@remi said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
If all of the daughter isotope is assumed to have come from the parent element, then the resulting calculation would be the maximum possible age since the last thermal closure. Assuming some of the daughter isotope originally existed in the sample in some ratio with the parent element and/or a non-radiogenic isotope reduces that maximum.
This assumes that the sample is igneous; other types of rock are eroded in some way, which makes the assumptions clearly invalid, since breaking pieces off of the sample will change the ratios of matter composing the rock.
Radioactive datation on most sedimentary rocks is tricky anyway, because they are made of reused material and the age you'll get is not the depositional age. But that's not the point here, you can still perfectly well look at individual minerals in the rock.
Nonetheless, while your first assertion is fine, the second one is not at all. The breaking up of rocks by mechanical erosion doesn't change the chemical composition of the minerals. And when there are some chemical changes going on, then, well, the chemical composition change means the actual minerals change, which is fairly easy to see as well. So there is no issue about knowing whether the material that you are examining has been modified since closure of the chemical system.
You're assuming that the materials in the sample are evenly distributed. That's not always going to be true, especially the larger the sample is.
Unless you're assuming some form of "erosion" that actually changes the amount of one specific (daughter) element, while leaving the rest of the chemical balance of the mineral unchanged (including the amount of parent element). But you'll have to first point me to such a process, then show me that this process is not accounted for in datation.
The type of erosion would include anything that breaks pieces off of the sample, so... every type of erosion. If there's any type of variance of the composition across the sample, then any erosion will affect the ratios. And accounting for that is impossible, because there is no way of knowing what was in the pieces that aren't there any more.
But even igneous rock has its own similar issues. A sample of melted igneous rock can partially crystallize as it cools slowly
Yes, partial crystallization is a core process in the formation of the Earth crust. Congratulations on discovering one of the basic processes of geology. There is a trivial answer to that problem, which you would know if you had read about anything on actual datation studies. It's even mentioned in most press releases about geological datation, so you don't need to be an expert to have heard about it. Try to find out what are the actual samples on which datation is done (hint: I've actually given you the answer above).
I can think of only two things: uneroded samples or samples with an already known age. If the first, how can it be known that there was no erosion as the sample cooled? If the second, why is it being dated radiologically? (And even dating rocks that we know exactly when they cooled and closed can give dates extremely far afield of the expected, known date. If we can't get those right, then why should we expect to get the dates right for ones we don't already know the age?)
There's really no way around the fact that the original composition has to be assumed, and that assumption invalidates the results.
True, but for one thing you haven't until now shown anything that really causes any reason to reject our current assumptions.
But that flaw is such a serious one that the dating system affected by it is fundamentally unusable.
There are also (at least) two other arguments for it, that are again basic geology principles. Why would the original composition be different from similar original compositions that we see nowadays?
Different availability of the elements in different locations, different processes affecting the sample, different availability of the elements at different times, etc.
And if the original composition was wrong in one given sample, what is the likelihood that all original compositions would be wrong in all samples above and below and next to it, in such a way that the "wrong" ages paint a consistent global picture (and that the age obtained by totally different chemical elements are consistent)?
They don't. The publicized ones have been chosen to maintain the illusion of uniformity in dating methods. The authors will undoubtedly give various reasons for the excluded samples not meeting some criteria or another, but it ultimately comes down to which samples match their preconceptions. Unconscious bias is a terrible drug.
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@benjamin-hall I just realized what my problem with your statements actually is: You're perfectly fine with lambasting social sciences and calling them bullshit.
And yet, when I ask you why you're not equally capable of condemning creationism in the same way, suddenly you have "no opinion" and want to "take no sides".
I think in the future I'll take any of your suggestions on what science is with a very big grain of salt.
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@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall I just realized what my problem with your statements actually is: You're perfectly fine with lambasting social sciences and calling them bullshit.
And yet, when I ask you why you're not equally capable of condemning creationism in the same way, suddenly you have "no opinion" and want to "take no sides".
I think in the future I'll take any of your suggestions on what science is with a very big grain of salt.
Your reading comprehension is not very good.
First, I am not just lambasting social sciences. I think that a large chunk (varying by discipline) of everything is crap. Because it's done by humans, using very flawed systems and institutions (and the current higher education system is corrupt to the core, at least in the US). This very much includes young-earth creationists. I'm an equal-opportunity hater.
In my original point, I was specifically pushing back against a specific comment. Anything else, including creationism, was out of scope.
Another point you missed--not all errors are the same. What you're wrong about and how much influence you have in that area matter as well. Someone being wrong about the rules of a game doesn't matter at all unless I'm playing it with them at that point. Same thing goes here. If a civil engineer believes the earth was created 6000 years ago but still builds good bridges, his views about the age of the earth are wrong but irrelevant. A education administrator who holds wrong views about how to discipline kids and can enforce those on others, now, that wrongness matters.
I will stipulate that young-earth creationism is false and that people who believe it are wrong on that fact. On the flip side, they have approximately zero power over anything related to that belief, and errors of fact are reasonably easy to unlearn later. So while it sucks for kids to be taught that evolution is false, that can be fixed later.
Many ideas from social sciences have much larger effect because they're believed by uncritical believers and implemented in ways that actually get kids hurt. CF the US Department of Education's Dear Colleagues letter on school discipline under Obama, which is still causing all sorts of problems.
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@Rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
It seems that it doesn't necessarily depend on the strength of the gravitational field. Special relativity says that something moving at speeds nearing the speed of light is subject to a distortion of time such that a clock with such a traveler will tick more slowly than the clock with a distant observer. But if the thing moving is itself light (and thus moving at the speed of light), and it is towards the observer, then time dilation theoretically could cause hugely distant things to appear to be vastly older than the observer.
I don't know (and probably wouldn't fully understand) all the math involved, so I can't make a solid claim one way or the other. I just think it's an interesting thing to consider.
No, the clock for both will tick at the same rate for each within their specific reference frame. I know what you meant but with something like relativity you have to be very specific about which reference frame you're talking about at the moment.
And you got the bit about light dead wrong.
Like I said, I don't know the math, but the guy who's proposing this (Dr. Russell Humphries) seems to know his stuff. But even he admits that even though it appears to account for some of the challenges in cosmology (or provide better alternate explanations than the current Big Bang models), it's still just his theory and it may be wrong.Here's a couple videos in which he's talking about it. Please note that the target audience is Bible believers who are curious or wondering about the huge distances of the stars and whether there's any other explanations than the simple "creation with appearance of age" proposal (which is basically the same as Last Thursdayism with "last Thursday" being ~6k years ago), so there's a lot of references to passages in the Bible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCK8y4RBeWIIn this presentation he goes a bit more in-depth into explaining the theory and some developments he's made to it, and he takes some pretty good questions at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r85wpZkY6sTL;DW:
The theory posits that there is a fourth dimension of space (time being a "fifth" dimension) in the direction of which the three common dimensions are "thin". The universe is accelerating uniformly in the fourth dimension (possibly in a "circular" "path", resulting in tension on the "fabric", like with a trampoline), but physical masses cause "dents" in the "fabric" of space, which manifests as gravity as space accelerates.
If the matter in space is concentrated around a central "axis" (instead of spread fairly "evenly" as the Big Bang theory predicts), then the edge of matter would cause a heavy dent in space, and as space is spread out and expanded, the gravitational dent would deform, essentially causing time to stop in the center until the expansion slows down.
If there's a significant mass at the "edge" of the observable universe (with space expanding greatly further than it) and the earth set near the center, then the edge-mass could distort gravity down to near the event horizon of timelessness, where the distortion then levels off. Then if the stars were added in a wave starting near the earth and spreading outward, the extra mass would drop the flat section down below the time horizon, causing time to stop, and then the tension on space would cause space to pull back up above the line, restarting time with the near-earth system emerging last. The shrinking event horizon would cause all the light from the billions of stars from all the various distances to arrive at earth at the same instant that the earth "emerges" back into time.
This explains several known issues in cosmology, including the surprisingly even "background" radiation detectable in every direction, the cosmological constant problem. It also explains the universal red-shift of the universe without requiring continual expansion, and may also explain the Pioneer anomaly (though it seems that has already been solved as a bit of extra thrust from thermal radiation).
Math from the second video
If a 4D membrane contains 3D space, then it produces Newtonian gravity with the equation
g2/τ = 4πG
where g is the acceleration in the 4th dimension,
τ is the tension on the membrane, and
G is Newton's gravitational constant.The speed of waves or vibrations in the 4th-dimension membrane is given by the equation
c = sqrt(τ/(ρm))
where c is the wave speed,
τ is the tension (same as the previous equation) and
ρm is the mass density of the membrane.
If c = the speed of light, then it also fits Einstein's relativity.Black body radiation can be described by the equation
T = ħg/(2πck)
where T is the temperature of the black body,
ħ is the reduced Planck's constant,
g is the acceleration (from the first equation),
c is the speed of light, and
k is the Boltzmann constant.The background radiation detected by satellites and observatories is consistent with a material that is at 2.725°K.
Plugging in that number and calculating, we end up with an acceleration of 6.672e20 m/s2, the tension on the membrane is 5.309e45 Bar, and the density of the membrane is 5.907e24 metric tons/cc.
This density fits in the quantum vacuum range calculated by quantum scientists, which is 107 tons/cc < ρm < 1091 tons/cc.
And his explanation for how this could explain the problem of distant starlight visible to a young earth:
https://youtu.be/3r85wpZkY6s?t=35m17s
I will note that I am a bit uneasy with his apparent approach to Scripture in taking certain verses and looking for hidden implications in them. I have nothing against the science itself if it's correct or even in using Scripture in conjunction with science. There may be those hidden implications, but I will not be dogmatic that Dr. Humphries has got them right.
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
First, I am not just lambasting social sciences. I think that a large chunk (varying by discipline) of everything is crap.
Well, sorry, then, but if you insist on that particular idiocy then I think I'll just stop listening to you. I don't like people who think that it's okay to broadly smear people and insist on wanton destructive criticism. I'm sorry if your experiences have jaded you so much but seriously, you come across as someone who had a bad experience and now thinks that everything is crap just because he had a bad experience somewhere.
I don't take such people seriously. Just as I won't take you seriously in that regard in the future. Show some signs of growing up and I'll change that.
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@djls45 I won't watch two hours of video. Still, if he proposes that time ticks differently within their frame of reference then he didn't really understand the Theory of Relativity.
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@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@onyx morality, not mortality. What one ought to do, not the fact of death.
Derp. I blame the world cup and the noise coming through the window at the time of reading.
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Science, properly formulated, makes no claims about truth.
Ok, fair, on semantic / philosophical level. I'd say that it's true that two objects with mass exert gravitational pull on each other. Should I use the word "truth"? For me it's close enough, I guess I'd change it if I were talking to an epistomologyst or something. For regular use it's close enough for cookie, IMHO.
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Who am I? (the nature of the self)
Where did I come from/Where am I going? (persistence of self)
Why am I here? (purpose of existence)See, I technically could answer all of these just using the observations of natural sciences (the answers also tend to align with my personal convictions, even though I reached them using reasoning that's outside the realm of science, but my mind could be changed given good enough arguments). But most people find those answers, and my stances on those questions in general, to be inadequate or depressing, so I get accused of just worshiping science at times. Which, again, I contend is false, in my case at least
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
I take no position on the evolution debate--it's rather pointless.
I disagree. Like every debate, it's unlikely to change the opinions of the participants, yes. It's the potential audience who is on the fence about things that benefits from the debate.
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
It's not a debate that I think has any point to it
Other than the fact that in a certain country there are people who are trying to be equate and teach both sides as equal in schools, and since the public has a huge say in it, maybe some of us find that presenting the standpoint which we find more meritous and more correct to people could be a worthwhile cause?
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
evolutionists
TRIGGERED! I'm a gravitationalist myself!
Seriously, why in the fuck is this the only part of science that I heard referred to as an -ism? Or am I just uneducated and it's a common thing? Anyway, for the full statement:
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
But then I'd say the same when evolutionists try to take their claims beyond what's measurable and venture into the realms of morality or proper behavior (or start making claims about underlying truth).
Nothing in the theory of evolution says anything about morality. There are people who study how some parts of what we consider morality can stem from evolutionary principles, yes, but that's outside of the scope of theory of evolution. And if you're talking just about people who subscribe to evolutionary theory considering morality... Well, those people also subscribe to theory of gravity, so why aren't those two correlated as well?
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Unless you're specifically engaged in studying those particular areas, beliefs about the exact origin of the universe or the origin of species are quite irrelevant.
Look, I don't care if you think everything poofed into existence last Thursday and the entire Universe is just snot from that time out the Great Green Arkleseizure was dusting his apartment. As long as you don't try to discredit the well established theories we have at the moment and trying to diminish them in education and thus potentially turn away someone's kid from pursuing those careers.
Yes, I'm harping on that point, because that's the impact of those "irrelevant" beliefs on the real world. And while it seems kinda localized to the US at the moment, I heard some rumblings about introducing creationism into schools in my county. And whether I have kids of my own at some point or not, I do not want to see that happen. As for what you believe in the privacy of your own gray matter, I couldn't give less of a rodent's left buttock.
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
On the flip side, they have approximately zero power over anything related to that belief
See above.
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@onyx said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
But then I'd say the same when evolutionists try to take their claims beyond what's measurable and venture into the realms of morality or proper behavior (or start making claims about underlying truth).
Nothing in the theory of evolution says anything about morality. There are people who study how some parts of what we consider morality can stem from evolutionary principles, yes, but that's outside of the scope of theory of evolution.
Not necessarily. If said behaviour stems from evolutionary principles then that's a pretty big deal. And extends the scope of evolution by just a bit.
I find it fascinating that some people want to reduce evolution to a mere biological mechanism when you can also make a very clear case that it extends to behaviours as well (mating rituals, swarm behaviour, pack mentality... all that jazz). I'm of the opinion that several of our basic morals come from such principles and, naturally, we only added on top of them and gilded them with deisms.
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@rhywden I agree with you, it's just that this is not, to my knowledge, in scope of the theory. I may be wrong. There's evolutionary psychology and fields such as that, but they are separate fields.
And yes, I am aware of the concept of memes, and how it was conceived by an evolutionary biologist, but I'm not sure if that ever reached the stage of theory. It certainly is compelling, though.
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@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Again with the copout. And seriously, you're twisting things quite a bit here.
Someone is twisting things.
@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
And then you tell us in the next sentence that both are equally wrong. That will not do. That will not do. There's a difference in quality between the two points you yourself brought to the table and I will not accept your bashing of scientists here.
Never go full blakey.
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@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall I just realized what my problem with your statements actually is: You're perfectly fine with lambasting social sciences and calling them bullshit.
And yet, when I ask you why you're not equally capable of condemning creationism in the same way, suddenly you have "no opinion" and want to "take no sides".
And you say this after you read and acknowledged in a comment that he said they were wrong.
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@boomzilla said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall I just realized what my problem with your statements actually is: You're perfectly fine with lambasting social sciences and calling them bullshit.
And yet, when I ask you why you're not equally capable of condemning creationism in the same way, suddenly you have "no opinion" and want to "take no sides".
And you say this after you read and acknowledged in a comment that he said they were wrong.
So he does have an opinion? And yet he states that he doesn't? That's another issue here: His arguments are so inconsistent that any counter-arguments will be as well.
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@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@boomzilla said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall I just realized what my problem with your statements actually is: You're perfectly fine with lambasting social sciences and calling them bullshit.
And yet, when I ask you why you're not equally capable of condemning creationism in the same way, suddenly you have "no opinion" and want to "take no sides".
And you say this after you read and acknowledged in a comment that he said they were wrong.
So he does have an opinion? And yet he states that he doesn't? That's another issue here: His arguments are so inconsistent that any counter-arguments will be as well.
Are you familiar with the concept that time passes? He was declining to state one until the post where he eventually did. What arguments of his do you think were inconsistent?
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@boomzilla said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@boomzilla said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@benjamin-hall I just realized what my problem with your statements actually is: You're perfectly fine with lambasting social sciences and calling them bullshit.
And yet, when I ask you why you're not equally capable of condemning creationism in the same way, suddenly you have "no opinion" and want to "take no sides".
And you say this after you read and acknowledged in a comment that he said they were wrong.
So he does have an opinion? And yet he states that he doesn't? That's another issue here: His arguments are so inconsistent that any counter-arguments will be as well.
Are you familiar with the concept that time passes? He was declining to state one until the post where he eventually did. What arguments of his do you think were inconsistent?
This is exactly right. I never said I didn't have an opinion, I said that my opinion was irrelevant to the point I cared about. I only responded to a small fragment of the debate, the rest is, in my opinion, pointless. Have whatever opinion you want, it doesn't really matter.
When asked specifically, I gave my (still irrelevant) opinion.
And considering that I have no expectation of good faith from you on this topic @Rhywden, I think I'll leave that at that.
I was a fool to get involved, so I'll stop being a fool now.
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@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
What data do you think creationists ignore?
srsly?
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@jaloopa said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
What data do you think creationists ignore?
How about the mountains of evidence that the universe is billions of years old?
God created that evidence mountain to only LOOK that old to fool people.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
What data do you think creationists ignore?
srsly?
ys.
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@lorne-kates The evidence mountain itself is less than 6000 years old for the most part, we haven't been gathering it for as long as it's existed.
Alternately, it's gone, a capricious god removes it whenever you're not looking.
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@gribnit We cannot prove that God didn't just create everything last Thursday, our memories and our records included. We just choose to not believe that that is what happened because we don't want to believe that God is a fucking jerk f a cosmic troll.
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@dkf It's not looking good for alternates to perpetual and ongoing last-Thursday-ism, by a few subthreads here. If free will exists, predestination is severely challenged. Anywhere between the poles of predestination and continual creation would show some divine interventions. We don't get any of those, though.
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@dkf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@gribnit We cannot prove that God didn't just create everything last Thursday, our memories and our records included. We just choose to not believe that that is what happened because we don't want to believe that God is a fucking jerk f a cosmic troll.
How do you know we're not just pre-living the memories from before creation, and the world is created next Thursday?
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@dkf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
because we don't want to believe that God is a fucking jerk f a cosmic troll
That's the only kind of god I could get behind, personally. I mean, imagine existing for an eternity and being serious all through it. That's enough to make anyone and anything go insane.
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@dkf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
We just choose to not believe that that is what happened because we don't want to believe that God is a fucking jerk f a cosmic troll.
Speak for yourself. As a Discordian, that's exactly what I believe Eris to be
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@dkf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@gribnit We cannot prove that God didn't just create everything last Thursday, our memories and our records included. We just choose to not believe that that is what happened because we don't want to believe that God is a fucking jerk f a cosmic troll.
Also I still wonder why on Earth would Glod create a universe and then fudge everything to make it look older than 6,000 years? Unless, of course, the troll hypothesis is correct.
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@rhywden To test our faith, which He knows perfectly anyway due to being all knowing. It's still disturbing if there's a lack of it
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@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@Lorne-Kates said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
What data do you think creationists ignore?
srsly?
ys.
n
