Darwin - Did He Regret Spreading Evolution?

Apos · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Sorry, but debating EvC is banned in these forums, and even if it wasnt - the debate always turns into ganking. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

It is religion vs. science that is banned, not a frank discussion of evolution or cosmology based on evidence. If you do not accept evidence as a guide to truth, then of course there is little anyone can say, because there is then no common ground against which to compare truth claims.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I demonstrated this point in a previous debate before the ban whereby a man positing that light wasnt constant, and was in fact slowing down was denied publication by a scientific journal because he was a known creationist who was then going to suggest that this could explain the large distances and time light took to travel. They were interested in his piece, until they found out he was a creationist, then he was firmly rejected. Funnily enough, the theory that light slows down was suggested later by an evolutionist, and he got plenty of journal space.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I suspect that your telling of the story is extremely slanted and incomplete. Cite? This story could just as easily be explained if the creationists paper was lousy and unsupported and the other person's was not (and likely they used vey different evidence and came to very different conclusions). But then I also suspect that you probably are mistaking one sort of light slowing for another (i.e. the demonstration that light could be slowed in a special medium, which is not the same thing as it being different across time).

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Scientists everywhere believe that the universe began with the Big Bang - if that is true, then the universe cannot have always existed.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

But if time began with the universe, then the concepts of "always" or "not always" break down: become incoherent.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>The universe is supposedly 6+ billion years old. So what was there 7 billion years ago?</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

While most estimates of the age of the universe put it higher than 6bn, if it was 6bn, then there IS no 7bn years ago.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>If you have a starting point, then you cannot be infinite. This is very simple, basic philosophy.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Actually, Xeno's paradox is simply, basic philosophy.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>It makes a considerable argument for a First Cause.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

No, not really. It could have had a cause, or it could not have. In either case, this gives no support to the idea that the cause was an intelligent creator.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I think few things make a stronger argument for a creator than the universe. Why does it exist? To claim that "it just does" is crazy given that it had a definate starting point.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

And yet we have to admit that something must be without a cause. If so, why not save a step, and have it be the universe?

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Science is the study of the repeatable - and every experience we have here indicates that if something has a starting point, something must have set it off - be it a law of nature or a turn of a key.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Unfortunately, this logic breaks down when we try to apply it TO the universe. That is because all of our experience of causality comes from observed instances of things IN the universe. We cannot apply that logic to the context ITSELF: it is not, in fact, repeatable.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>You dont know - but you seem pretty damn confident nothing outside this universe made it. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

As far as I can tell, the only one claiming to be confident here is you. I have no idea whether anything caused the universe, or even if that term is meaningful outside the context of the universe itself. Either way, however, it just doesn't bring us any closer to any sort of necessity for a "creator" personage.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> You're trying to claim, against the the consensus of scientific opinion, that the universe has always existed. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Except I'm not. I'm merely pointing out that we still haven't really ruled this possibility out at all (we've only pushed it back a step), and indeed scientific opinion would agree with me on that, not with you. The number of different theories on causality, multiverses, and so on, are almost too numerous to note. None are yet nailed down, as you seem to claim, and in fact there seem to be quite a few good arguments to the effect that we may NEVER be able to rule out a multitude of mutual exclusive possibilities, meaning that we'll never be able to, even in theory, know. If you really think they are knowable right now, however, I suggest you make this claim to any serious gathering of metaphysicists. Even the devoutly religious ones will say that you lack a consierable amount of quite warranted humility.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Evolution and Christianity are fundamentally exclusive.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Only if you are among the <i>minority</i> of Christians and Jews who interpret the Bible as an almost always literal, rather than an often poetic, text.

SkulkBait · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Apos @ Feb 3 2005, 10:55 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> </div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I demonstrated this point in a previous debate before the ban whereby a man positing that light wasnt constant, and was in fact slowing down was denied publication by a scientific journal because he was a known creationist who was then going to suggest that this could explain the large distances and time light took to travel. They were interested in his piece, until they found out he was a creationist, then he was firmly rejected. Funnily enough, the theory that light slows down was suggested later by an evolutionist, and he got plenty of journal space.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I suspect that your telling of the story is extremely slanted and incomplete. Cite? This story could just as easily be explained if the creationists paper was lousy and unsupported and the other person's was not (and likely they used vey different evidence and came to very different conclusions). But then I also suspect that you probably are mistaking one sort of light slowing for another (i.e. the demonstration that light could be slowed in a special medium, which is not the same thing as it being different across time).
 </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
No, I'm afraid not. I recall the study (because I was arguing [rather ineptly, way outside my field] with him). It suggested that the speed of light in a vacum was actually slowing down over time.

This is the link he provided: <a href='http://www.ldolphin.org/bowden.html' target='_blank'>http://www.ldolphin.org/bowden.html</a>
The thread where this occured is this one: <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=85131' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....showtopic=85131</a>

Aegeri · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine0I @ Feb 3 2005, 10:13 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Sorry, but debating EvC is banned in these forums, and even if it wasnt - the debate always turns into ganking. The same has been demonstrated in theories submitted And in the event that you prove a point, provide backing for it, then the evolutionist falls back on the "mountains of scientific evidence", while the creationist falls back on faith. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
I can't recall the last time I had to do that in a debate, since...since 4 or 5 years ago when I still hadn't finished high school actually. I can nearly always bring up new arguments to any point these days. Most creationists I've run into typically run out as soon as they can't copy and paste any further garbage from AiG. I'd rather fall back on evidence than faith though, it's a stronger position.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
Just so you know though - it isnt possible for creationists to submit papers to scientific journals. I demonstrated this point in a previous debate</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Which I answered (rather testily at that), as you bought this up as the usual creationist conspiracy theory for why their crackpot ideas are thrown out of journals (again and again and...). I've been over this twice since then, and it turns out creationists don't get publised <i>because they don't do legitimate experiments</i>. Even the technical journal makes gross, and often horifically inaccurate mistakes in some of its papers, like one that claimed inaccuracy of U-Pb dating as an open system, when in fact, it's actually been demonstrated to be a <i>closed</i> system. Critical to what agenda they were putting forward, but not good science. When you have an agenda, you are given an even more careful eye than anyone else (consider what is happening now with journals and research from drug companies for example).

<b>Edit</b>: Wait, different argument, but we've had a discussion on the 'conspiracy' against creationism much earlier than even what skulkbait linked to. I've had THAT argument several times, and it has never stood up to scrutiny every time.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>before the ban whereby a man positing that light wasnt constant, and was in fact slowing down was denied publication by a scientific journal because he was a known creationist who was then going to suggest that this could explain the large distances and time light took to travel. They were interested in his piece, until they found out he was a creationist, then he was firmly rejected. Funnily enough, the theory that light slows down was suggested later by an evolutionist, and he got <b>plenty</b> of journal space.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Yes, and has also been rejected by the peer review structure.

If creationists weren't known for abusing facts, distorting evidence and making fraudulent claims they would be taken seriously. Unfortunately, these are the tactics they use and they don't get published because of it. Their <i>own lack of credibility is their fault</i> and <b>not</b> that of the scientific community.

Also, as has been demonstrated to me earlier, many 'creationists' are published in journals, but usually they are done so as a co-author on topics that have nothing at all to do with evolution. It seems only the "creation scientists" (still an oxymoron incidently) are the ones that can't get published, again, because to meet their agenda they practice bad science. That is why they get rejected. Again, there are scientists that believe in creation and don't accept evolution and do get published (I know one actually). This idea is completely bunk.

The "creation scientists", will not get published until they write credible papers without gross distortions of facts, evidence and poor experimental method. It is that simple and has nothing to do with a conspiracy or any such crap.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Snipped definitive statement that the universe hasn't always existed (no evidence either way actually, but in any event)</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Funny from someone who is claiming the other side is 'certain' of facts without evidence for their assumption, yet doing this themselves.

You realise this is a completely contradictory position don't you? I agree with your position more than "it was always there" (as I've mentioned in the past, I happen to believe in God), but you should be aware that you're just taking the opposite opinion of him and restating it 'with God' (unless this is your intention).

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Evolution and Christianity are fundamentally exclusive.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Not really, I don't need the old testaments parabels to believe in the moral messages and concepts spoken about in it. The rest of your statement is true, those in power never needed to alter the bible, because nobody could read it anyway (that is how they controlled the people).

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Because I have the greatest of confidence that I can defend the Bible, and I enjoy arguing.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

His point is that it's as simple for you to defend the bible against someones inaccurate misconceptions, as it is for us to do the same for evolution against a creationists inaccurate claims and misconceptions.

Apos · February 2005

Malcolm Bowden, who wrote that article, is a well known Young Earth creationist, not a scientist citing actual work (in other words, by reputation, I can almost be sure that if I track down his cites, they either won't say what he claims they do, or they won't actually be from relevant journals). If you actually read the scientific literaute on the subject, you'll find that physcists agree that there isn't any evidence for the speed of light decreasing in anything like the way Bowden claims (more on that later). The paper Bowden cites selectively chooses only 120 of the 193 data points available to get to its conclusion, and ignores the effect of measurement errors almost certianly making past measurements overestimate the speed of light (which is even demonstratble if we use the same methods today to make the measurements). More amusing, however, is that even with these problems, using all the data points STILL gives a constant speed for light.

Even more amusing are the scientific implications of the arguments (again something creationists rarely deal with, since they are not interested in serious science, just in trying to set up a "plausible at the first glance" argument to knock down evolution). If Setterfield is correct, then there should have been 417 days per year around the time of Jesus' birth. Not to mention that the amount of energy that would be CREATED by a changing speed of light would be enough to fry the planet to a crisp.

In fact, with just a little research of my own, it looks like my guessed suspicions about the "journal" submissions were pretty much on point!

Just to be a know-it-all pain in the butt, instead of quoting tlak origins or any strictly scientific site, I'll quote a creationist website that STILL debunks this bogus argument:
<a href='http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/speedlight.html' target='_blank'>http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/speedlight.html</a>

In other words, the paper that was scoffed at by scientists was rightly scoffed at: it involved a mangling and selective reading of the data. On the other paper that DID suggest a very minor change in the fine-structure constant of the universe (and hence basic values). But it was supported with solid data, rather than goofball argument, and as it turns out, the amount of variation is _extremely_ tiny, associated with string theory, not a masive shift in the speed of light.

kida · February 2005

darwin did what he did.

it's as simple as that.

Aegeri · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><b>Not being content with these numbers, young earth creationists selected and corrected the values to produce the figure seen to the above</b> (Figure 2). Some of the best values were eliminated because they did "not come under the proposed hypothesis."</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

And there we are, the fatal blow to this argument:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Just so you know though - it isnt possible for creationists to submit papers to scientific journals. I demonstrated this point in a previous debate before the ban whereby a man positing that light wasnt constant, and was in fact slowing down was denied publication by a scientific journal because he was a known creationist who was then going to suggest that this could explain the large distances and time light took to travel. They were interested in his piece, until they found out he was a creationist, then he was firmly rejected.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Well, I guess it didn't quite play out that way after all they just did exactly what I described them typically doing: Manipulating results to meet an agenda and not actual science.

The only difference was they got thrown out straight away by the established scientists who already knew they were full of it from the start.

Soylent_green · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (marine0I)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>It makes a considerable argument for a First Cause. I think few things make a stronger argument for a creator than the universe. Why does it exist? To claim that "it just does" is crazy given that it had a definate starting point. Science is the study of the repeatable - and every experience we have here indicates that if something has a starting point, something must have set it off - be it a law of nature or a turn of a key.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

And every direct experience we have suggests that objects can't tunnel through a potential barrier if they don't have the energy to get over the potential, objects have a definite position, a definite momentum, space is cartesian, enclosing an object does not cause it's energy to be quantized, before and after is allways a valid concept, things can't be in a superposition of different contradicting states(e.g spin 'up' and spin 'down'), there are no indistinguishable objects etc.

In all these cases common sense has had to be beaten down kicking and screaming time and time again to be able to formulate theories that hold up against observations of reality. These theories don't agree with common sense since common sense in it's entirity is based on direct experience with our senses, and we have no direct experience of the extremely large, small, high relative velocities etc.

Following your guidance we have no experience with anything that has no beginning and exists outside space time either which is strong evidence for the lack of a supreme being if you insist that common sense is valid and not self-contradictory and strongly influenced by previous ideas and experiences.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (marine0I)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
Look, if you want to say "Here's my little theory on everything", then you have every right to.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

No, I want to say, here is an equally plausible conjeture that doesn't need God or other complexities and is practically untestable.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (marine0I)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>All theories based around things outside our universe have the same credibility.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

They are nothing more than conjecture as long as they do not have any sort of evidence going for them, and as far as I can see none of them do. And this is part of my argument, even if you argue that the Universe has to have had a cause(which I don't agree with), assuming that cause is sentient, eternal or the only other thing that exists 'outside' is a completely arbitrary position and has to be accepted on faith alone. (Don't confuse theories with 'wild unfalsifyable guesses' or you may end up looking as stupid as some creationists who claim 'evolution is still just a theory, it hasn't got enough proof to be a fact!', because theories never become 'facts', they may however become practically universally accepted and extremely well supported over time. That the Earth is roughly spherical is still a theory, allthough you would have to be a fool to contest it considering the massive amount of evidence you have to show to be invalid).

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (marine0I)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>and your theory is based around something which is patently false, then I'm going to pull you up on it. I just did.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

The thing though is that it is not outright false or tested. Which is why I am perfectly free to conjecture as I wish for the time being. Big bang theory is originally derived from Hubble's observation that everything appears to be moving away from us at a rate linearly dependent on distance from us. i.e. the _observable Universe_ we was at some point in time be very dense.

Nothing, is stopping me from conjecturing that the Universe could be cyclic repeating itself, there's a whole plethora of conjectures about multiple Universes in many different forms. Big bang is a start for what is observable to us now, which is what matters to science, not nessecarilly a start of the Universe itself(if it is cyclical, big bang is by definition not the start because it doesn't have one, similarilly if what we observe now as our Universe is only part of the 'real Universe' nothing is stopping the observable Universe from having had a start ~14 billion years ago while the 'real Universe' did not nessecarilly have a start. When it comes to the observable Universe there is nothing pointing towards it not having started ~14 billion years ago though, but it's certainly valid to conjecture that the Universe didn't start at any particular time.)

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (0I)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Evolution and Christianity are fundamentally exclusive. I concede that some parts of the Bible are not to be taken seriously, but only because they are written for specific people (ie Jewish ritual law is Jew specific), or in a specific style (ie poetry) that isnt meant to be read verbatim. Apart from that, I think the book is 100% solid. I deny it has been altered by the rich and powerful - that claim is one commonly made by those who have never read it. The rich and powerful attempted to keep the Bible out of the hands of the poor who believed in it because it was afraid they would recognise it condemned them. Eventually the Bible got leaked to the masses, and it was the beginning of the end for unrivalled Church power in both state and society - a damn good thing if you ask me.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Depends on who you ask, most christians seem to manage to reconsile them well enough.

And catholic, protestant, the ortodox and other schools of christianity are a result of the struggles the rich and powerfull men had as well as tradition, Luther and other events is it not? Protestants put the bible as the highest authority but tradition will still play some role in how the bible is translated and interpreted.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (marine0I)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
I find it simple to intellectually reconcile the God of the OT and the God of the NT. But yes, the rest we ask as an article of faith. I reject the notion that God doesnt interact with you in your life, and I reject that from personal experience, but I dont think you'll buy into that. If God was created at a certain point, then we are back to Turtle theory. Everything within the known universe had a starting point - what is required is a unstarted starter, something that exists outside our physical reality to start everything. It might not be the Christian God, but it had to be something.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Either type of conjecture is as valid. We have no experience with things that have allways existed or things that keep creating themselves cyclically and I can see no possible motivation to call either more probable other than personal motives: e.g requiring a God adds unnescessary complexity which makes the whole thing more far fetched or other non-intellectual conjectures about the untestable.

And no I won't buy into you having personal experience with God considering the vast number of individuals who have had experiences with whatever deities they happen to believe in as well as experiences being probed in various personal places by aliens, spirits, ghosts, poltergeists, ESP, communicating with the dead/animals and other forms of events. Some of these are mutually exclusive with your beliefs. Wishful thinking has again and again shown itself to be more powerfull than people think.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (marine0I)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (soylent)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Why are you inviting me to waste your time? <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused-fix.gif' /></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Because I have the greatest of confidence that I can defend the Bible, and I enjoy arguing.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Even when it's obvious that I don't put any thought or effort into the argument 'I' am indirectly making with the help of google or even trying to construct a reply to your objections?

Marine0I · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>It is religion vs. science that is banned, not a frank discussion of evolution or cosmology based on evidence. If you do not accept evidence as a guide to truth, then of course there is little anyone can say, because there is then no common ground against which to compare truth claims.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I have always accepted evidence as a guide to truth - but my growing experience with politics and debating has shown that truth in a debate contested by two sides is rarely instantly apparent and completely obvious the whole way throughout, and it has two different meanings to two sides.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>While most estimates of the age of the universe put it higher than 6bn, if it was 6bn, then there IS no 7bn years ago.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I understand that, but the nature of the statement "Why cant I just claim the universe has always existed" is stating that time is infinite for the universe. If time is infinite, then it didnt have a starting point. Starting points defy infinity.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Actually, Xeno's paradox is simply, basic philosophy.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Actually - Xeno's paradox is bs. It states that if a runner passes halfway then the time it took to travel that distance is the time it will take to to arrive at the end. It then states that this sequence should progress infinitely, with the runner needing to travel smaller and smaller half distances taking smaller and smaller amount of half time, and thus should never be able to reach the end. But he does. A clearer example I found on Google.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Named for its cerebral creator, it's the idea that one thing can never reach another -- that something can never reach its end. For example, a bullet fired from a gun soon reaches a point half-way between the gun and its target. And after that, it will halve the distance again... and again. Infinitely. It will continually halve the distance between where it was and where it's going, but since there is always a point half-way between where something is and where it's going, it can never -- logically -- reach that end-point</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

But that is bs, because the bullet does reach its end point. Its not a philosophical princple, its a dumb question. Having a theory like that that doesnt work out in reality is like having a theory on gravity that states that everything dropped should fall upwards. If that doesnt happen, then its not Gravity that needs another look - its your theory. Two answers seemed to make sense to me - either time is digital, and there is a smallest unit that cannot be broken down, and thus the infinite cycle is broken once it reaches that unit. The other answer, and its not my thinking here, is:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>The short answer is that a sum of infinite series can be finite, which is where it might seem confusing. So that if you add an infinite amount of lengths the total length can still be finite. So the original question simply assumes it is not so.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Xeno's has absolutely nothing to do with cosmology.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>It could have had a cause, or it could not have. In either case, this gives no support to the idea that the cause was an intelligent creator.

And yet we have to admit that something must be without a cause. If so, why not save a step, and have it be the universe?</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Because it started, it needed to have a cause. We have no evidence to suggest otherwise - unless there is something that exists outside our universe that does not have a cause, and can start it. The universe is not outside itself.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Unfortunately, this logic breaks down when we try to apply it TO the universe. That is because all of our experience of causality comes from observed instances of things IN the universe. We cannot apply that logic to the context ITSELF: it is not, in fact, repeatable.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Science claims that the universe is expanding. If we can understand anything about the universe because we are in the universe, and we cant use the scientific method to study it, then how did we arrive at that conclusion?

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Except I'm not. I'm merely pointing out that we still haven't really ruled this possibility out at all (we've only pushed it back a step), and indeed scientific opinion would agree with me on that, not with you.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

No, we have. By we I mean scientists. And by the way, I was wrong on the 6 billion. I think that might be the age of the Earth, 15+ is the age of the universe. My point is, if they keep telling us the age of the universe, and the universe has always existed, then they are lying to us. To say the universe is 16 billion years old it to claim it started 16 million years ago - if it has always existed, then it didnt start, and it wont end, it is infinite. Infinity is not represented in numbers, its represented in a little 8 on the side. Why oh why if science is backing you on the whole infinite universe theory, are they telling me this. Better yet, get me an article claiming the universe has always existed, and then we can analyse that.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Only if you are among the <i>minority</i> of Christians and Jews who interpret the Bible as an almost always literal, rather than an often poetic, text.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Edgar Allen Poe was a poet. Do you think when he asked a man, his wife, or anyone, to please pass the salt, that they assumed he was being poetic? No, because its easy upon analysis of what someone has written or saying whether they are being poetic or not.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I can't recall the last time I had to do that in a debate, since...since 4 or 5 years ago when I still hadn't finished high school actually. I can nearly always bring up new arguments to any point these days. Most creationists I've run into typically run out as soon as they can't copy and paste any further garbage from AiG. I'd rather fall back on evidence than faith though, it's a stronger position.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Your problem would be that you dont seek worthy opponents. I am a strong supporter of free market capitalism, but were I to enter into debate with the Professor of Economics and Society from UC Berkley, I have absolutely no doubt s/he would make me look a fool. It wouldnt automatically follow that I'm an ignorant minion, or that free market capitalism is completely evil - he will just be making references to things I've never heard of, claiming support from advanced economic concepts that he would then have to explain to me, with his slant, and the entire affair would be futile.

On Setterfield and the decaying speed of light, you missed the point. The point wasnt whether he was right or wrong. Few amazing claim theories from the 80's survived analysis, and rightly so, and further and conclusive proof has been provided that he very likely wrong. The point is he got ganked, or borked, or call it what you want - he was savaged because he made no secret of his creationist views either in his personal life or in the paper. The savaging always takes the same route - you take his work, and you criticise it. Normal stuff in the scientific world. But then you take those criticisms, put them in an article, and say "Here is a massive list of criticisms of Setterfields work, which demonstrate that he is stupid, deceptive and an insult to credible scientists everywhere". Does it bother you that Setterfields research was a draft he had prepared, before the SRI pulled the plug? "Have a look at this guys, its a report I'm prepar WHAM WHAM WHAM!"

But then it gets more interesting - Setterfield deliberately ignored any points disagreeing with his data, but he didnt manage to put that past the ever watchful eyes of scientific review. That would more than likely be related to the hiding spot he chose for that information: Selection of Data. Read the below to see how he cherrypicked the data to get what he wanted:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Our basic approach has been to include the maximum number of legitimate experimental measurements of c (by recognized measurement methods) in order to maximize the credibility of the statistics while minimizing any distortions due to poor data points. Our combined master data set, Table 1, compiled from the above-mentioned sources yielded 193 data points. To be excluded from this master set are values of c for which the original observations are missing or unknown, duplicate values from various reworked observations, dubious values from the earliest measurements of a given method where technique was still poor, values from poor methods, and outliers.

In compiling our selected list of c measurements, Table 2, we kept data even if there was some doubt about the availability of original observations at the time. When measurements by a given experimenter were reworked for the purpose of adjusting for some known defect we selected the reworked values. When reworkings were merely statistical we selected the value most compatible with the values of surrounding data. We then excluded data in cases where the experimenter himself or his peer group was critical of the credibility of the results---especially on initial data of a method or when the experiment was redone by the original experimenter within a short period of time. These data were of lower precision. Measurements of c by certain methods were excluded when accuracy and consistency of data were poor. Since the accuracy and precision of the data varied greatly, outliers were determined from piecewise analysis of 18th century, l9th century, pre-1945 and post-1945 data.

We also felt it necessary to include in our subset three Bradley stellar aberration values in the 1727-1757 era, as different stars or different observatories were involved in the listed data. We excluded the EMU/ESU method of measuring c although we did keep the Rosa/Dorsey datum as it alone seemed to have received general acceptance. We felt at first that the standing wire results should be treated the same way, but after adjusting the values to in vacuo we concluded the average accuracy did not warrant their exclusion. The radar data also posed a special problem. Three data points could not be converted to in vacuo because the conversion factor is affected significantly by water vapor which was not measured. The range of the conversion factor and the accuracy of the data were such that tests were ambivalent over the possible range of the conversion factor. The fourth radar value of c had a systematic error.

As a result of our deselection process, 4 data points were rejected as secondary values, as well as 28 duplicates (reworked), 9 poor initial values (rejected by the experimenter), 26 points due to unacceptable methods (rejected method) and 5 as outliers. (The starred values in Table 1 are the values we selected into Table 2). The deleted data were also analyzed as a check on our procedures. In all, 120 of 193 original data points were selected. The selected list includes about 75% of Setterfield's data and twice as many points as his best 57 values of c.

Finally, the laser method values of c were obtained using atomic clocks as a time standard. These values do not come under the proposed hypothesis since the atomic clock's time would change uniformly with a change in c. They were omitted from our tests unless explicitly stated, although they have not been deleted in compiling Table 2.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Look there, he eliminated 73 data points, all because they didnt agree with his original presupposition, clear and obvious deception.... oh wait. He listed his reasons for eliminating those 70 points of data, to try and present that as creationist data manipulation is deceitful and wrong. But we're bashing a creationist, so anything goes - cause hes a psuedoscientific hack.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Not being content with these numbers, young earth creationists selected and corrected the values to produce the figure seen to the above (Figure 2). Some of the best values were eliminated because they did "not come under the proposed hypothesis."</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Finally, the laser method values of c were obtained using atomic clocks as a time standard. <b>These values do not come under the proposed hypothesis</b> since the atomic clock's time would change uniformly with a change in c. They were omitted from our tests unless explicitly stated, although they have not been deleted in compiling Table 2.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Sorry - but this looks like a clear cut case of outright slandering, using manipulated quotes to make him look like a liar.

The man was wrong, there is no doubt about that, but science is littered with incorrect theories. The difference is when an evolutionist revises his theory or drops one due to lack of evidence, he is an outstanding example of why the march of science has been so successful - when a creationist does likewise, he just got proved a liar, an incompetent and a fool.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>If creationists weren't known for abusing facts, distorting evidence and making fraudulent claims they would be taken seriously. Unfortunately, these are the tactics they use and they don't get published because of it. Their own lack of credibility is their fault and not that of the scientific community.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Those that have deserve to be given a good hounding for it. If the above malicious attacks are an example of a rogue deciever who got his just deserts at the hands of the scientific community - I'm concerned. Sorry, but to say I'm a creationist is suicide in the scientific world, like saying "I'm a Communist" in the American political arena. You are immediately derided as a lunatic, and then you every move is analysed and spun to attack you. I call that ganking. Republicans would call that justice. But they're scientists right, they exist in a sterile world where only facts matter..... yeah right.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Funny from someone who is claiming the other side is 'certain' of facts without evidence for their assumption, yet doing this themselves.

You realise this is a completely contradictory position don't you? I agree with your position more than "it was always there" (as I've mentioned in the past, I happen to believe in God), but you should be aware that you're just taking the opposite opinion of him and restating it 'with God' (unless this is your intention).
</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

That was indeed my intention. I attempted to attack his claim that the universe had always existed - because he left himself open to it. To claim God exists outside this universe is a completely unchallengeable claim - completely unsupported by any evidence, but it cant be proved either way. To claim the universe has always existed is an entirely different matter - as it deals with the universe, something which can be studied. What those studies have concluded is that the universe did, in fact, start. If it had a beginning, then it cant have always existed. Therefore, I assert my belief that God exists is a more solid theory than the Universe has always existed, in the same way saying God exists is a more solid theory than say - "The internet doesnt exist".

BB is just a current theory - if its wrong, then I'm wrong, but if its right, as majority scientific concensus holds, then it seems to preclude you from being right. Unless you feel comfortable with holding BB as "just a theory, not really proven", and then you open yourself to the same criticisms you level at creationists - denying scientific concensus because it opposes your point of view.

Apos · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>If time is infinite, then it didnt have a starting point. Starting points defy infinity.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

"Starting point" is a simplistic aproximation. If you read the current discussions, the whole point of the singularity formulation, you cannot go back in time and reach a starting point. Read a Steven Hawking book sometime if you're interested in the basic problem.

You also have to understand that ontology is a much larger field than science. Answering questions with science can only ever push ontological questions back a step.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Because it started, it needed to have a cause. We have no evidence to suggest otherwise - unless there is something that exists outside our universe that does not have a cause, and can start it. The universe is not outside itself.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

No, it could have started without a cause. Period. The generalization that all things that start require a cause is only know to be true of things internal to the universe: applying it to the universe itself is unwarranted.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Science claims that the universe is expanding. If we can understand anything about the universe because we are in the universe, and we cant use the scientific method to study it, then how did we arrive at that conclusion?</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Because when we say "the universe is expanding" we are talking about what we see happening to all the things IN the universe, not "the universe" itself.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>And by the way, I was wrong on the 6 billion. I think that might be the age of the Earth, 15+ is the age of the universe. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Here you are purporting to know what science has an has not established, and yet you don't even know the age of the earth? (roughly 4.5 billion, by the way)

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> My point is, if they keep telling us the age of the universe, and the universe has always existed, then they are lying to us.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

No, the issue is just more complicated than that when we approach the Big Bang. In the sort of time we understand, the universe "took" roughly 10-15 billion years for the various things we see happening to happen. But as we approach the very very start of the universe, we run into the problem that time is a function of mass and energy. The definition of time that we are used to: as an absolute unchanging scale, breaks down.

The problem is not unlike that of black holes, which are also singularities (as far as we know).

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Edgar Allen Poe was a poet. Do you think when he asked a man, his wife, or anyone, to please pass the salt, that they assumed he was being poetic? No, because its easy upon analysis of what someone has written or saying whether they are being poetic or not.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I don't know what this has to do with anything. The point is, the vast majority of Christians and Jews do not think the OT account of creation is a strictly litterally true story. It's not my job to tell them whether they are wrong or right, but that's the reality.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>On Setterfield and the decaying speed of light, you missed the point. The point wasnt whether he was right or wrong. Few amazing claim theories from the 80's survived analysis, and rightly so, and further and conclusive proof has been provided that he very likely wrong. The point is he got ganked, or borked, or call it what you want - he was savaged because he made no secret of his creationist views either in his personal life or in the paper.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

The fact was, his paper had glaring errors and methodological biases.

The claim that eliminating atomic clock measurements was just a standard good reason is utterly bogus.

So the editors of the journal rightly turned it down: as they do ALL THE TIME to all sorts of papers, even those that are mostly correct but not interesting enough. The fact that he was a creationist that manipulated his data to get the results he hoped to see isn't what got his paper turned down, it's what **** people off after it became clear how bogus it was. Creationists have been lying and slandering their way for yeras, and scientists are rightly **** off when people try to use science to sell their religious beliefs.

Setterfield's only a martyr because creationists love to paint themselves as martyrs without actually telling anyone the real story. It happens time and time again. Tell me: what conference did Setterfield submit his paper to for preliminary review? Who were his first checkers and correspondents? There's a lot more to the process of doing good science for publication than simply turning in a paper and getting ridiculed for trying to prove something that would imply that radiation had to have been blasting out of every rock on earth so fast that it would have torn apart any living creatures like shotgun blast. Tiny little facts like that tend to come up, and have to be addressed in papers of this sort, prior to papers getting anywhere near publication. But that wasn't the point of Setterfield's exercise, apparently.

Sky · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine01)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>But that is bs, because the bullet does reach its end point. Its not a philosophical princple, its a dumb question.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
This made me laugh. You do realize that philosophy quite often comes up with these weird scenarios that are impossible to reason out? Sure, you could look at a bullet hitting its target and disprove Xeno's paradox, but the point of the paradox is that you <u>can't</u> logic your way out of it. If you never observed a bullet being shot at a target at hitting, you'd have no way of proving this paradox false.

And it's not the same as claiming that the Theory of Gravity makes everything fall up. Philosophy and science are two very different fields. Philosophy, for the most part, doesn't trust our senses; it wants to just logic everything out in our heads. Science, on the other hand, <i>requires</i> that we experiment, and ironically a lot of material in the higher level sciences - I'm thinking quantum physics and such - makes exactly zero logical sense. As I said, they're opposite fields.

AvengerX · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Sky @ Feb 2 2005, 01:07 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> they're good for us because our bodies are designed to eat a lot of it.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
designed? who designed our bodies if they evovled?

lemme fill ya in, I was born on the same date as darwin (febuary 12) and he was way off the mark, a foolish anti christ that didn't know what was up

Marine0I · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>"Starting point" is a simplistic aproximation. If you read the current discussions, the whole point of the singularity formulation, you cannot go back in time and reach a starting point. Read a Steven Hawking book sometime if you're interested in the basic problem.

No, it could have started without a cause. Period. The generalization that all things that start require a cause is only know to be true of things internal to the universe: applying it to the universe itself is unwarranted.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Simplistic approximation? Approximation of what? When time came into existance? When time became measureable? What is it approximating? I understand the concept that you cannot pin down the exact moment when time began, but you can pin down the exact moment AFTER time began. But, according to you, time never really.... began... please, link me to something that makes more sense. Show me an article to enlighten my enfeebled brain, because you are making no sense what so ever. You cant make the leap from "We can track time back to a certain point, but no futher" to "Therefore you cannot deny the possibility that the universe has always existed." Unless you wish to claim that the universe existed in a different status from the current - a universe in which time didnt exist, and then you have reached the equivalent of the God theory, unprovable with no relation in any regard to the current universe except in its conception.

In other words, you would have to claim that the universe in the current state we observe now, according to the most widely held scientific theory, has not always existed, but it could have existed previously in a different form unchained by time - and so could be thought of in a sense as eternal. At a stretch, thats the most generous thing I can think of.

EDIT - Found something which puts it in better words than I. If this is your point, then I agree with you.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>“The known universe had its beginning in the Big Bang if the expansion we observe is real, and if the Big Bang is the explanation for the expansion. If that is the case, the known universe is finite and had a beginning, and anything said about the universe before the Big Bang (singularity) can not be proven and therefore is not open to scientific explanation.

We can only discuss the pre-Big Bang universe in terms of possibilities, assumptions, and philosophies.”</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

However, you cannot claim the current, known universe has always existed in the current form. It hasnt, or at least scientists would take issue with you were you to make that claim.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>You also have to understand that ontology is a much larger field than science. Answering questions with science can only ever push ontological questions back a step.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Hrrrmmm - why are you telling me this? You think the metaphysical philosophy of being is a larger field then science? You could have just said "philosophy is bigger than science" and be just as accurate - in the fact that philosophy asks the questions, and science just provides answers to some, which in turn generates more questions... but I fail to see the relevance any of this has to our discussion? Why did you put that there?

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Because when we say "the universe is expanding" we are talking about what we see happening to all the things IN the universe, not "the universe" itself.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

No, those observations of what we see happening to things IN the universe is what led scientists to conclude that the universe is like an expanding bubble, with the BB being the beginning of the bubble or balloon's expansion. Say you tell a scientist that there is a closed container, and the average distance between gaseous molecules within the container is increasing - his immediate answer would be that the container must be expanding. You seem to be claiming that you cannot tell anything about a container by examining what is going on inside. When they say "the universe is expanding", that is the conclusion that they have arrived at by examining the evidence gathered from the universes' (the container's) interior. To claim they are not talking about the universe itself but only its contents is garbage.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>And by the way, I was wrong on the 6 billion. <b>I think that might be the age of the Earth</b>, 15+ is the age of the universe. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Here you are purporting to know what science has an has not established, and yet you don't even know the age of the earth? (roughly 4.5 billion, by the way)</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Emphasis added. I'm on holidays, and while I admitted I was wrong on the 6 billion, I added offhand that I think that might be the age of the Earth. It should be clear to the casual observer that extreme accuracy wasnt a concern of mine, it was a minor point with no relevance to the discussion, with a concrete answer mere seconds away in a search engine were I really concerned about it. Obviously, I wasnt concerned about the accuracy of that statement in the slightests, nor should I have needed to be for any reason other than personal knowledge.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>No, the issue is just more complicated than that when we approach the Big Bang. In the sort of time we understand, the universe "took" roughly 10-15 billion years for the various things we see happening to happen. But as we approach the very very start of the universe, we run into the problem that time is a function of mass and energy. The definition of time that we are used to: as an absolute unchanging scale, breaks down.

The problem is not unlike that of black holes, which are also singularities (as far as we know).</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Well, that definately comes under the heading of what I described above, so I'd have to agree with you here. That there could have been a state of matter existing before time is just as plausible as a God existing before time.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
I don't know what this has to do with anything. The point is, the vast majority of Christians and Jews do not think the OT account of creation is a strictly litterally true story. It's not my job to tell them whether they are wrong or right, but that's the reality.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Only if you are among the minority of Christians and Jews who interpret the Bible as an almost always literal, rather than an often poetic, text. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Now do you see what it has to do with anything? It was in answer to your "rather than an often poetic text" claim. Picking the difference between poetry and recording is pretty easy.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>The claim that eliminating atomic clock measurements was just a standard good reason is utterly bogus. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Please, explain to me how it's bogus, dont just state it.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>So the editors of the journal rightly turned it down: as they do ALL THE TIME to all sorts of papers, even those that are mostly correct but not interesting enough. The fact that he was a creationist that manipulated his data to get the results he hoped to see isn't what got his paper turned down, it's what **** people off after it became clear how bogus it was. Creationists have been lying and slandering their way for yeras, and scientists are rightly **** off when people try to use science to sell their religious beliefs.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Lying? Slandering? Everything he did was completely above board - nothing cloak and daggers. He eliminated 73 points of data, and provided reasons for it. I've heard plenty of criticisms of him eliminating those data points, but no one explaining why the elimination was deceptive and manipulative. The article you provided made it look like he made an underhand attempt to change the data for the specific purpose of conforming it to his assumption - and from reading his reasons, I think that was an unfair and malicious light in which to paint him. I can imagine raising concerns that there was no reason to eliminate those points as opposed to eliminating others, and suggesting that this would radically alter his results - but that wasnt what was done. What was done was an attack on both him and his study, not in the name of genuine scientific criticism but in the intellectual equivalent of being set upon by a pack of thugs.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Setterfield's only a martyr because creationists love to paint themselves as martyrs without actually telling anyone the real story. It happens time and time again. Tell me: what conference did Setterfield submit his paper to for preliminary review? Who were his first checkers and correspondents? There's a lot more to the process of doing good science for publication than simply turning in a paper and getting ridiculed for trying to prove something that would imply that radiation had to have been blasting out of every rock on earth so fast that it would have torn apart any living creatures like shotgun blast. Tiny little facts like that tend to come up, and have to be addressed in papers of this sort, prior to papers getting anywhere near publication. But that wasn't the point of Setterfield's exercise, apparently.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Setterfield never ended up submitting his study. He was invited to produce the study, but decided not to for an administrative reason, not rejected solely on scientific grounds, thought I suspect that administrative reasons were their way of letting him down gently. Bowden claimed as follows, but I guess he's just another creationist scumbag, so I dont know how much of it you'll accept, but I couldnt find any other references online to who examined his drafts:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>The invitation to give this report came from Lambert T. Dolphin, (who was sceptical at first), a member of SRI, where it was given peer revue and also vetted by outside laboratories - all of them approving its publication. Dolphin also gave a lecture on the subject in 1988 to the Batelle Institute where it was well received. The SRI hierarchy tried to rescind the report on an administrative technicality when they realised its implications. Dolphin and his manager were made redundant. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>This made me laugh. You do realize that philosophy quite often comes up with these weird scenarios that are impossible to reason out? Sure, you could look at a bullet hitting its target and disprove Xeno's paradox, but the point of the paradox is that you can't logic your way out of it. If you never observed a bullet being shot at a target at hitting, you'd have no way of proving this paradox false. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

You do realise that philosophy isnt mind games, isnt mental exercises or Xen? It is a credible school of thought because it can be examined, criticised and rationally examined. The point is, you can reason your way out of it, and people have. A famous philosopher once put his hand in front of his face and said "I dismiss any philosophy as false which claims I cannot tell my hand is in front of me". Apos attempted to claim that xeno's paradox was actually real, that it actually played out in real life - he was wrong. It doesnt, and its not useful philosophy in any sense.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
And it's not the same as claiming that the Theory of Gravity makes everything fall up. Philosophy and science are two very different fields. Philosophy, for the most part, doesn't trust our senses; it wants to just logic everything out in our heads. Science, on the other hand, requires that we experiment, and ironically a lot of material in the higher level sciences - I'm thinking quantum physics and such - makes exactly zero logical sense. As I said, they're opposite fields.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Philosophy does not abandon reality, any philosophy that flatly contradicts what is evidently true by experience and experimentation is bad philosophy. Philosophy is defined by rational thought - and if it denies rational thought, rational proofs and rational experimentation, its worthless.

Aegeri · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine0I @ Feb 5 2005, 06:10 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Your problem would be that you dont seek worthy opponents. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
Not really, I've debated with the creationist here on campus (who has a degree in Chemistry in fact) who still makes the exact same mistakes as every other creationist I've argued with. I've also done it enough to easily see through most of the usual arguments, incorrect assumptions and more. It isn't about finding a worthy enough opponent, creationists can't be considered in this regard because I'm never arguing science vs science. I'm merely arguing science vs their belief. That's a parallel debate and really doesn't go anywhere.

Of course, you'd know who I've debated with seeing as I'm on the internet and all /sarcasm.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>On Setterfield and the decaying speed of light, you missed the point. The point wasnt whether he was right or wrong.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

He fraudulently manipulated data (no matter how you attempt to pass it off) and got caught. The fact he was a creationist just make the whole thing predictable, rather than surprising.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Look there, he eliminated 73 data points, all because they didnt agree with his original presupposition, clear and obvious deception.... oh wait. He listed his reasons for eliminating those 70 points of data, to try and present that as creationist data manipulation is deceitful and wrong. But we're bashing a creationist, so anything goes - cause hes a psuedoscientific hack.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

If omitting data that would change what your results would predict isn't 'data' manipulation, then I'm not sure what is. Again, creationists have a history of manipulating data, making fraudulent results or just plain out lying to meet their agenda. Drug companies are getting a history of doing this as well, and now research from pharmaceutical companies requires much more stringent review processes as well as conflicts of interest.

Oh! But according to you, manipulating data is fine so long as you do it <i>creativly</i> enough. I'll remember to bring up the fact that I 'justified' dropping out points and manipulating data to meet my agenda after the drug I develop kills several people. Why bother giving the full data when we can just 'eliminate' the data points that show 'harmful effects' because, who needs to see those anyway?

But go on, defend the kind of manipulation he did, but I want you to defend drug companies doing the same thing, only one kills people when you 'disregard' results.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Sorry - but this looks like a clear cut case of outright slandering, using manipulated quotes to make him look like a liar.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

He did however manipulate data (which, IMO and many other scientists, IS LYING) and not do any legitimate science,re-read it again, especially the whole of what you quoted:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Not being content with these numbers, [/b]young earth creationists selected and corrected the values[/b] to produce the figure seen to the above (Figure 2). <b>Some of the best values were eliminated because they did "not come under the proposed hypothesis</b>."</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Finally, the laser method values of c were obtained using atomic clocks as a time standard. These values do not come under the proposed hypothesis since the atomic clock's time would change uniformly with a change in c. <b>They were omitted from our tests unless explicitly stated</b>, <b>although they have not been deleted in compiling Table 2</b>.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

There isn't any problem, the site make the claim that the creationists corrected and manipulated the data to produce table 2, which they did in fact do. The site then states that the creationists eliminated values because they didn't come under their proposed hypothesis, which they did in fact do (see above for the omission of certain aspects on their tests).

Your crusade against the scientific establishment that 'oppresses' 'creation science' is completely groundless.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>But then it gets more interesting - Setterfield deliberately ignored any points disagreeing with his data</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Thank you, unless you still don't understand the scientific method or why scientists publish papers in peer reviewed journals (AND state conflicts of interest), we don't need to discuss this further.

UltimaGecko · February 2005

Sorry to hop on the bandwagon a bit late, but a few things:
</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Sky @ Feb 5 2005, 03:20 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine01)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>But that is bs, because the bullet does reach its end point. Its not a philosophical princple, its a dumb question.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
This made me laugh. You do realize that philosophy quite often comes up with these weird scenarios that are impossible to reason out? Sure, you could look at a bullet hitting its target and disprove Xeno's paradox, but the point of the paradox is that you <u>can't</u> logic your way out of it. If you never observed a bullet being shot at a target at hitting, you'd have no way of proving this paradox false.

And it's not the same as claiming that the Theory of Gravity makes everything fall up. Philosophy and science are two very different fields. Philosophy, for the most part, doesn't trust our senses; it wants to just logic everything out in our heads. Science, on the other hand, <i>requires</i> that we experiment, and ironically a lot of material in the higher level sciences - I'm thinking quantum physics and such - makes exactly zero logical sense. As I said, they're opposite fields.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

This paradox assumes the bullet has no length (or, at most: an infinitely small length - which is impossible, because the smallest units of matter must have length) and therefore doesn't have to collide with its surroundings. If you keep halving everything (...which I have no idea what purpose it would serve you), you'll eventually get to a point where half the length of the object is larger than your 'half distance' and then it reaches its destination.

Next on the list:
There's also the theory that the universe expands and contracts on intself (that whole...'Big Crunch' thing. Which would present an infinite timeline (like a breathing universe for eternity in either direction)...I'm not sure why I bring this up, as the current accelerating expansion of the universe seems to disprove it. Unless we somehow start decreasing entropy.

Something Else:
It seems (to me anyway) that Darwin didn't recant evolution, but I'm not sure what purpose the question serves - as someone else would have proposed it even if he didn't. It could just be washed away as one of those "What's after this?" things that many people have at death.

I'm actually a fairly staunt believer in the enlightenment Age type 'Clockwork' God; who sets up the universe just how he wants it and lets it go (and while God does in a way, give freedom; since it's 'God' it knows what the results will be). Of course, it's completely unprovable, which is why I generally choose not to discuss it. As illogical as it may seem, it does support evolution (with that ...psuedo-randomness discussed on page 2 or something), since you can't prove it's not random.

It's also my most curious thought, wondering what happens after you die. One of my reasons for not really fearing death is the whole "Well, at least I get to find out what happens when it happens."...along with that whole "it's inevitable" thing.

And to somewhere else in this thread:
The 'Dark Ages' are called the 'Dark Ages' because peoples of the enlightenment era saw them as unrefined and focused on religion, not because they were necessarily stupid or unadvanced. Add to that the fact that historians can't put a definite timeframe on the end of the ancient era and the beginning of the middle ages (a term that first came about before the Renasissance), and you've got a arbitrary label from people who thought they were better than those before them.

...Just like that part in Futurama where Leela says "He's just a poor kid from the Stupid Ages." Futurama also has my favorite philisophical, theistic related show, "If you're doing things right, people wont know you're doing anything at all." (or something like that).

And finally, for somewhere else in this thread:
The bible's creation account is actually [or if you want to be defensive about it: probably] drawn from earlier Sumerian and Babylonian creation accounts (creating some unnecessary imagery in the bible - such as God's 'bow' [which I think is after Noah's flood]). If you want to go back with Genesis' creation account, we might as well use theirs. And since I'm sure no one practices it as the main part of their religion; here's the <a href='http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm' target='_blank'>Enuma Elish</a> ('When on High'), where you can make comparisons to Genesis for yourself.

Apos · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I understand the concept that you cannot pin down the exact moment when time began, but you can pin down the exact moment AFTER time began. But, according to you, time never really.... began... please, link me to something that makes more sense.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

To understand the problem, read up on relativity and black holes (which are in some ways like the start of the universe, only backwards)

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>However, you cannot claim the current, known universe has always existed in the current form. It hasnt, or at least scientists would take issue with you were you to make that claim.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

But no one claimed that: all anyone has been discussing are philosophical posibilities. Myself I am quite comfortable with the idea that the universe had a beginning. But I don't think it's case closed on what happened or how it can be described: trying ot nail it down at this point is simply unwarranted.

BB theory is solid: as solid as evolution. But like evolutoin, BB only explains a certain scope. And the scope the BB explains is that everything we see in the universe appears to have exploded away from everything else. If we were to look backwards in time, we'd see the opposite: everything zooming towards everything else. That part is solid science. But past the inflationary period, our knowledge breaks down. As the universe approaches a singularity, the basic assumptions and predictions of physics break down. The closer we get to a prsumed point, the less and less we can say about what's going on. And because of entropy, we may never, no matter how powerful our technology, be able to "look" past a certain point to see the "start" of the universe or really anything past where tempertures and physical laws fail us.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>You seem to be claiming that you cannot tell anything about a container by examining what is going on inside. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

No, what I said was that you cannot be sure about the rules that govern the behavior of the container just by looking at its contents.

Another way to think of this is that because the universe was once a singularity, it would have been governed by the strange world of Quantum Mechanics rather than our normal physical assumptions. And what sorts of things can happen in QM? Well, for one... the spontaneous appearance of particles (the 1st law isn't voilated because they appear with anti-particles and ultimately re-annilihate). The singularity of the universe is something for which we have no experience, and no data to go on. It thus becomes silly to try and generalize about what rules might govern it.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Obviously, I wasnt concerned about the accuracy of that statement in the slightests, nor should I have needed to be for any reason other than personal knowledge.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Of course you'd need it. You are acting as if you speak with authority on this subject, and calling everyone nasty names for disagreeing with you or presenting ideas you have never heard of. And yet, the fact that you don't know the basic estimates of the age or the earth or the universe demonstrate that you don't have very much knowledge in this area at all. Those times are very very basic knowledge to anyone that knows even a little bit about these subjects.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Now do you see what it has to do with anything? It was in answer to your "rather than an often poetic text" claim. Picking the difference between poetry and recording is pretty easy.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Is it? The vast majority of Jews see it as a poetic interpretation. And heck, their people wrote it, so you'd think they'd know. You claim its literal, but your view is a minority view. Is everyone else just off their rocker?

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Please, explain to me how it's bogus, dont just state it.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Because you have to have some reason better than 'because my hypothesis presupposes that they would throw my prediction off." As I noted, one immediately obvious problem with any claim that the atomic clocks might be "thrown off" is that all radioactive sources would have been releasing so much radiation all at once as to litterally rip apart life, matter, everything. Not only is that absurd on its face, but there is no evidence that that happened. A scientist can't just make an assumption like that and pass over it as if it were a trivial matter.

In any case, it seems like the original story you told: that a creationist paper got turned down while a "evolutionist" paper (eh?) got accepted even though they said the same thing, is just bupkiss. The situations were completely different. I guess you also missed the bit about my cite being a creationist website, not an "evolutionist" one.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>. Apos attempted to claim that xeno's paradox was actually real, that it actually played out in real life - he was wrong. It doesnt, and its not useful philosophy in any sense.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I gave Xeno's paradox as a way of thinking about the problem, not as a claim that it itself was a real problem. But in grasping at even that silly straw, you go way too far: the claim that it is not "useful" philosophy is bizarre. It's still considered one of hte more important thought problems in the philosophy of the natural world.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Philosophy does not abandon reality, any philosophy that flatly contradicts what is evidently true by experience and experimentation is bad philosophy.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

This is precisely why things like a young earth or special creation must be rejected as bad philosophy.

Sky · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (UltimaGecko @ Feb 6 2005, 05:12 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Sorry to hop on the bandwagon a bit late, but a few things:
</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Sky @ Feb 5 2005, 03:20 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine01)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>But that is bs, because the bullet does reach its end point. Its not a philosophical princple, its a dumb question.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
This made me laugh. You do realize that philosophy quite often comes up with these weird scenarios that are impossible to reason out? Sure, you could look at a bullet hitting its target and disprove Xeno's paradox, but the point of the paradox is that you <u>can't</u> logic your way out of it. If you never observed a bullet being shot at a target at hitting, you'd have no way of proving this paradox false.

And it's not the same as claiming that the Theory of Gravity makes everything fall up. Philosophy and science are two very different fields. Philosophy, for the most part, doesn't trust our senses; it wants to just logic everything out in our heads. Science, on the other hand, <i>requires</i> that we experiment, and ironically a lot of material in the higher level sciences - I'm thinking quantum physics and such - makes exactly zero logical sense. As I said, they're opposite fields.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

This paradox assumes the bullet has no length (or, at most: an infinitely small length - which is impossible, because the smallest units of matter must have length) and therefore doesn't have to collide with its surroundings. If you keep halving everything (...which I have no idea what purpose it would serve you), you'll eventually get to a point where half the length of the object is larger than your 'half distance' and then it reaches its destination. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
That's only if you look at the bullet as a whole, but if you just look at the point of the bullet, you could theoretically never reach the destination. This is, of course, because a point has no length, so to some extent you are correct that it would have no mass, but then again since this isn't science it doesn't have to make sense.

Note that this paradox can be "disproved" just by observing a daily situation of something arriving to a destination. That's not the point of the paradox; it's just to get you to think. In the end, arguing with a paradox is rather silly, because it's not like the philosopher is trying to prove some deep truth of the universe with it. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' />

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (sky)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>they're good for us because our bodies are designed to eat a lot of it.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
designed? who designed our bodies if they evovled?

lemme fill ya in, I was born on the same date as darwin (febuary 12) and he was way off the mark, a foolish anti christ that didn't know what was up </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
God you're dumb.
1) If the only thing you could find in my entire post to argue about was a word choice, that's pretty sad. If it pleases you, replace "are designed" with "have evolved to expect". Same meaning, no argument from people who take "designed" to always mean "designed by conscious hands". I bet you take the Bible literally as well.

2) What the hell does your birthday being the same day as Darwin's have anything to do with this discussion?

3) If you were reading any of this thread, you'd know that Darwin was a Christian, not a anti christ bent on killing religion

4) By your logic, science and religion are mutually exclusive, however the preponderance of religious scientists the world over proves that false.

5) Read up on the science before bashing it as a Christian fanatic. You're making the rest of us Christians look bad (by this I mean me and most of my friends).

6) Happy Birthday in advance.

Wheeee · February 2005

About Zeno's paradox, it's really not paradoxical. It's true that to move a distance x, you must first move a distance of 1/2x.

It also follows that this is an infinite series. Fortunately, an infinite series that converges (as this one does) is summable and finite. And when you deal with motion, you also deal with time. It seems to me that, in order to really make it paradoxical, you must assume that time is not relative and that true simultaneity exists. So in a theoretical universe where time was fixed like the set of integers, then it would quite possibly be a paradox, but not in ours.

HBNayr · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (aonomus @ Jan 31 2005, 07:07 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Despite my belief in creation, what is the theory of evolution? Theory, that is all.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
As I said exactly <i>three</i> posts earlier, there is no "Theory of Evolution." Evolution is a generally accepted truth in science. It's the "Theory of Natural Selection."

And you say that it is a theory as though that is a bad thing. You need to understand that a theory is dubbed as such because it stands up under close scrutiny. The second that the theory of natural selection fails, it will become the "Mythology of Natural Selection." After all, we can see life closer than ever with microscopes today, and yet we continue to call it "Cell Theory," as we have for the previous 400 years.

<a href='http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/' target='_blank'>For those interested in where evolution actually conflicts with creationism.</a>

-Ryan!

"Simply stated, it is sagacious to eschew obfuscation."
-- Norman R. Augustine

"The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."
-- George Bernard Shaw

HBNayr · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Pepe Muffassa @ Jan 25 2005, 07:23 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> It violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics - at its core, evolution must always violate this law. It is the "origin of life" equivalant to falling up hill.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
The second law of thermodynamics applies to a closed system. An important distinction to make, because evolution is not occurring in a closed system. You are correct when you say that evolution could not occur in a closed system. That is, no energy being added to the system. But plants are able to synthesize sugars through a process called photosynthesis. The Earth, and all life on the planet, is not a closed system. The entire wonderful machine is powered by the sun.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Genetic mutation has never been observed to improve, modify or make an organism more complex.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Influenza mutates into different forms with each successive generation. Some mutations definitely make the virus weaker, but it only take one success to renew the virus's virulence and send a new strain of flu sweeping across the nation.

Or what about anemia? A genetic mutation transferred from generation to generation. Sickle-celled anemia happened recently, happened swiftly, and while it did interfere with the ability of hemoglobin to transport oxygen efficiently, it bestowed all those with the mutation the vastly superior advantage of being immune to malaria.

There are further examples, but to say that genetic mutation has <i>never</i> been observed to improve, modify or make an organism more complex is insanity. A more correct statement would be "Genetic mutation has rarely been observed to improve, modify or make an organism more complex." A great, great majority of mutations are deficient to the organism. But we only need a single beneficial mutation in a generation to help the species as a whole.

-Ryan!

"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history."
-- Robert Heinlein

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
-- Robert Heinlein

AvengerX · February 2005

the big bang theory... hehe.. thats allways a good one... ok , let me give you a tid bit of information....

the big bang theory is about as plausible as this..... An ink factory explodes, and a 500 page novel is created..... yeah, when that happens, then I'll believe in big bangs

Spacer · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Feb 7 2005, 03:31 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> the big bang theory... hehe.. thats allways a good one... ok , let me give you a tid bit of information....

the big bang theory is about as plausible as this..... An ink factory explodes, and a 500 page novel is created..... yeah, when that happens, then I'll believe in big bangs  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
It's certainly more plausible than a big man in the sky creating everything in a week.

Apos · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> the big bang theory... hehe.. thats allways a good one... ok , let me give you a tid bit of information....

the big bang theory is about as plausible as this..... An ink factory explodes, and a 500 page novel is created..... yeah, when that happens, then I'll believe in big bangs</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

The BB is not only plausible, it's supported by all the evidence we have. Not only acn we still see the telltale radiation from the intial "explosion," but its simply undeniable that in general all objects we see in the universe are moving away from us: and those that are farther are moving faster. Run that process backwards in time, and you get the unavoidable conclusion that all these objects were once occupying the same place "in space."

The universe isn't like a 500 page novel anyway. It's almost entirely chaotic in form. It's just that, as chaos theory predicts, there will be small patches of partial order generated because of natural forces like gravity congealing stuff together and making it interact in complex ways.

Apos · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>As I said exactly <i>three</i> posts earlier, there is no "Theory of Evolution." Evolution is a generally accepted truth in science. It's the "Theory of Natural Selection."</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Well, the terminology is sort of messy, and you can actualy refer to the "Theory of Evolution" or "Darwin's Theory of Evolution" or "the modern synthesis" or whatever without raising any biologists hackles.

Marine0I · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>But no one claimed that: all anyone has been discussing are philosophical posibilities. Myself I am quite comfortable with the idea that the universe had a beginning. But I don't think it's case closed on what happened or how it can be described: trying ot nail it down at this point is simply unwarranted. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Absolutely. No one did claim that, and I was mistaken in believing so. You're possibility that there could have been a preuniverse precursor that didnt require a divine kick start is just as rational as claiming there is a First Cause.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>No, what I said was that you cannot be sure about the rules that govern the behavior of the container just by looking at its contents.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I'm still not 100% convinced of that. Examining the contents and the actions of the contents can certainly tell you what the container is doing ie contents all moving away = universe is expanding bubble. You cant be sure of course, but you can certainly make a case for it.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Another way to think of this is that because the universe was once a singularity, it would have been governed by the strange world of Quantum Mechanics rather than our normal physical assumptions. And what sorts of things can happen in QM? Well, for one... the spontaneous appearance of particles (the 1st law isn't voilated because they appear with anti-particles and ultimately re-annilihate). The singularity of the universe is something for which we have no experience, and no data to go on. It thus becomes silly to try and generalize about what rules might govern it.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Agreed. Outside our reality and our universe, anything goes. God, spontaneous matter generation and purple rabbits.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Of course you'd need it. You are acting as if you speak with authority on this subject, and calling everyone nasty names for disagreeing with you or presenting ideas you have never heard of. And yet, the fact that you don't know the basic estimates of the age or the earth or the universe demonstrate that you don't have very much knowledge in this area at all. Those times are very very basic knowledge to anyone that knows even a little bit about these subjects.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Rubbish. That was an offhand post made by a tired man where his argument was not about the specifics of time, but using times to demonstrate a point about "pre-time". Being mistaken on what I thought might have been the currently accepted age of the Earth is in no way a good judge of my credibility and knowledge in the area we are discussing. For your information, I just completed the first year of my BaSci - I got a distinction in Genetics and Evolution, a distinction in Animal biology, and a credit in Plant biology. Would my lecturer's be proud? Not at all, but for all three courses I had to know the age of the Earth as potential examination questions. At the time I did (it only came up in G+E, but still), because I was concentrating hard at the time, and I wasnt making a post on the internet using time as a mere example.

I wondered why you were turning that mistake into a personal attack - until I read that line about me calling eveyone nasty names for disagreeing with me or presenting ideas I'd never heard of. Reread everything I have written in this post - not once have I said anything nasty about anyone. You are taking my attacks on your arguments personally, might I suggest you calm down and realise this isnt aimed <b>at</b> you before you continue?

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Is it? The vast majority of Jews see it as a poetic interpretation. And heck, their people wrote it, so you'd think they'd know. You claim its literal, but your view is a minority view. Is everyone else just off their rocker?
</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

You are going to have to prove that. There is nothing poetical about Genesis, it is not written in either a lyrical or poetical style. Few books have been subjected to the extreme literay analysis the Bible has - so if it is clearly poetry, then you should be able to find Hebrew language and literature scholars expounding upon that point of view. <a href='http://www.ldolphin.org/genmyth.html' target='_blank'>Genesis myths: Poetry</a>. That's my side. For your side - there was a site called ancient hebrew research site or something such that took issue, but this is not a "you are denying the mass concensus of experts".

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Because you have to have some reason better than 'because my hypothesis presupposes that they would throw my prediction off." As I noted, one immediately obvious problem with any claim that the atomic clocks might be "thrown off" is that all radioactive sources would have been releasing so much radiation all at once as to litterally rip apart life, matter, everything. Not only is that absurd on its face, but there is no evidence that that happened. A scientist can't just make an assumption like that and pass over it as if it were a trivial matter.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I'm not sure I follow why the entire universe should collapse, but I'm sure you'll explain. The hypothesis didnt presuppose that they would throw his prediction off, at least not as I understood it - they merely claimed that they were irrelevant if their hypothesis was correct, that the clock/laser combo wouldnt reveal anything because if c was slowing as per their hypothesis, then the time would slow in exact proportion. Their hypothesis was that light was slowing down in an exponential manner, and that the last 10+ years of atomic clock/laser experiments wasn't rejected because it didnt fit, but because it wasnt helpful, as they were considered the tail end of the exponential function, where the decrease becomes so small as to be almost unnoticable.

<a href='http://www.ldolphin.org/setterfield/report.html#3i' target='_blank'>Have a read</a>, this is the report. Scroll down through the links for the pictures, they might explain what I said above a little better:

<img src='http://www.ldolphin.org/setterfield/fig3.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

<a href='http://www.ldolphin.org/setterfield/fig4.jpg' target='_blank'>Figure 4</a>

So - it would appear that your claims that their elimination of current data for not falling under the proposed hypothesis is clearly bogus.... is also bogus. The difference is that I assume you claimed it was bogus because you made a mistake, while you assumed their claim was bogus because you believed them liars, cheats and frauds. Given the information you had studied though, I fail to see how you could have arrived at any other conclusion. That "creationist" website is old earth creationism - its like comparing the Republican party and the Libertarians, they are both conservative, but Libs and Repubs dont agree on that much. Quoting the Libertarians as evidence that conservatives dont like GWB either is a little sketchy..... I feel that the website you linked to unfairly painted Setterfield as a deciever and a manipulator when he was not. It's good that it exists so as to ensure Creationists dont try and claim that science believes that light is slowing down, because his work has been rejected by the scientific community, but to slam him like that was uncalled for.

I couldnt help but laugh when I read the foreword to Setterfields report:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>In all honesty I can say that it has taken me four years to get comfortable (and enthused about) their findings. It has been very good for me to do my homework in the process of evaluating what they have written. I have had to dig out my Quantum Mechanics, Nuclear Physics, Relativity and Cosmology textbooks from graduate school at Stanford University, and get up to date a bit by reading more recent works. When I learned recently that Norman and Setterfield had now carried their work to the stage where a thorough report had been drafted, I offered my assistance in hopes their findings could be better known.

If indeed the velocity of light has changed or is changing, a certain set of related other physical "constants" have changed as well. <b>The authors have not set out to "prove" that this is indeed the case. They have however amassed and carefully studied a great body of data that suggests that the some of most "sacred" of the physical constants are not constant after all.</b> Their report is written in accord with perfectly orthodox scientific standards. That is, they have collected and analyzed the available data and formed a hypothesis. This hypothesis (that the velocity of light has decreased with time) is testable. It is a perfectly valid hypothesis until further data proves otherwise. I believe it is timely and appropriate to call wider attention to this hitherto little known investigation. <b>This report is therefore presented to invite discussion, comment, rebuttal, and hopefully to provoke researchers to look for further evidence which could support or refute the authors' conclusions.</b>

...

Lambert T. Dolphin
Senior Research Physicist
Geoscience and Engineering Center
SRI International
August 1987 </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Poor fools, they had no idea what was coming...

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>In any case, it seems like the original story you told: that a creationist paper got turned down while a "evolutionist" paper (eh?) got accepted even though they said the same thing, is just bupkiss. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

They didnt just say the same thing - the guys that came later had a different line of reasoning. Both got rejected - only one got ganked and slandered.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I gave Xeno's paradox as a way of thinking about the problem, not as a claim that it itself was a real problem. But in grasping at even that silly straw, you go way too far: the claim that it is not "useful" philosophy is bizarre. It's still considered one of hte more important thought problems in the philosophy of the natural world.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

That's not how it looked to me:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Just like Xeno's paradox, you can never actually reach a "beginning" of time or track the universe back to a discrete beginning.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
If you have a starting point, then you cannot be infinite. This is very simple, basic philosophy.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Actually, Xeno's paradox is simply, basic philosophy.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Your use of Xeno's paradox as the direct counter to me stating that if you have a starting point, then you cannot be infinite gave me the clear and distinct impression you actually believed Xeno's paradox to be a reality, a logical concept against which I was attempting to argue. You were claiming that the universe had always existed, and at the same time tying in a paradox claiming that you can never actually reach an end point - surely you can understand where I would get the impression you were attempting to use it to prove the possibility of an eternal universe. Xeno's is only useful philosophy in explaining, as said above, that you can have an infinite series of equations that converges in a finite matter. I'd be interested in understanding why this is one of the more important thought problems.....

Apos · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>You were claiming that the universe had always existed, and at the same time tying in a paradox claiming that you can never actually reach an end point - surely you can understand where I would get the impression you were attempting to use it to prove the possibility of an eternal universe. Xeno's is only useful philosophy in explaining, as said above, that you can have an infinite series of equations that converges in a finite matter. I'd be interested in understanding why this is one of the more important thought problems.....</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Because it forces people to think seriously about the metaphysical issues of space/time.

I used Xeno's as an illustration of exactly the sort of problem we face when talking about getting back to the "start" of the universe. And that problem is this: time is not an absolute: it is a function of mass. So the issue is that while you can plot out a discrete, objective scale of time whereby you might be able to definitively say that the was no universe before it, actual time isn't absolute: past a certain point it too begins to noticeably lengthen relative to the sort of time we are used to. And this problem just gets exponentially worse as we look backwards. We're left with, in some sense, a time that curves off and away from the absolute time scale. In Hawking's book, he graphs the time line as ending not in a point, but in a soft curve before it reaches the hypothetical "start" of time.

But then this isn't just a problem of the universe. It's part of the general issue of time being just another somewhat relative dimension. A similar thing happens when talking about black holes: we start to realize the true meaning of temporal relativity.
Check out this page to see how weird some of this gets:
<a href='http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/fall_in.html' target='_blank'>http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Rela...es/fall_in.html</a>

You can start to see why it becomes more and more doubtful that we can talk about discrete beginnings and endings in a universe where time is non-objective and eternities can be compressed into seconds. Black holes aren't exactly like the singularity of the universe, but they definately give you a sense of the weirdness of the problem in trying to claim that the universe "starts." The reality is, once we get past the event horizon of a black hole, or try to think beyond Plank time, we're stuck with the fact that things are, quite litterally, too weird for the laws and regularities we are used to measuring the world by to have much meaning. Temporally derived concepts like "starts," in other words, seem like quaint little concepts without obvious application when yuo get right down to it.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>So - it would appear that your claims that their elimination of current data for not falling under the proposed hypothesis is clearly bogus.... is also bogus.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Or so says a creationist site's interpretation of the controversy. I note that Setterfield also speaks of "secular" science and then his own contrasting sort of science. He speaks not of trying to find the truth without preconceptions, but rather that the Bible is true, and his job is simply to find the evidence to establish that. His report begins with the goal of reconciling "the observational problems of astronomy and Genesis creation," as well as the idea that reality was created 6000 years ago. Again, sceintists are generally not all that amused when scientists start off by boldly contradicting all known facts without presenting any serious account for htis considerably huge claim. This is not something scientists tend to be impressed with. If I litter my articles on cuttlefish reproduction with "and this suggests that Oswald couldn't have killed Kennedy" I can be guaranteed a fairly harsh response, especially if my work is painfully sloppy to begin with. If I then submit another painfuly tortured paper in which I never explictly say anything about Oswald, but purport to prove that people cannot be killed from book depositories... what do youtihnk the response is going to be? Are people going to be either fooled or amused?

Setterfield's work was chock full of obvious holes, methodological flaws, and statistical monstrosities right from the start, plus was filled with copious indirect references to a Biblical timeline that he was trying to squeeze into the data.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Their hypothesis was that light was slowing down in an exponential manner, and that the last 10+ years of atomic clock/laser experiments wasn't rejected because it didnt fit, but because it wasnt helpful, as they were considered the tail end of the exponential function, where the decrease becomes so small as to be almost unnoticable.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Good grief: why did the tail end of the function just happen to occur right when the most accurate measurement methods are available, right at the time when we might want to test his hypothesis? How did he choose THAT very particular situation, when the very question first at hand was which data points should be used to construct the curve? Do you see the problem? Do you see why this would raise immediate suspicion?

The whole thing is constructed under the assumption that it is now untestable: that we must rely on past measurements of more dubious value. The curve Setterfield picks is the one that would produce JUST this situation. Never in the article is any other experimental justification given other than that the values wouldn't fit IF and only IF the exact curve Setterfield chose was in play. And how does this exact curve get picked? Well he even gets his "original" value of c not by any observation, but simply extending his arbitrarily chosen curve back to when he believes Biblical creation started. In fact, here's his "scientific" reasoning for how all this inexplicably stuff works out, stuff that wasn't included in his article but underly his particular and otherwise inexplicable choices made in the article: "I will assume that this value held from the time of creation until the time of the fall, as in my opinion the Creator would not have allowed it to decay during His initial work." What sound science: because of his own interpretation of what HE thinks God might have done according to the Genesis account, he can arbitrarily decide when c began to decay so that it would fit his curve where c would decay in JUST such a way that it couldn't be tested for today! In other words, his whole curve, from which to derive the approximate age of the universe, is depedant on him arbitrarily deciding what God would have done during the creation week. A little presumptuous of Setterfield, no, to think Setterfield knows best what God was up to?

And given all that, you'd really have us believe that scientists were wrong for thinking that he might have a rather disreputable agenda? Someone in Russia litters their scientific papers with constant references to Marxist theory and clearly twists data in order to fit some Marxist prediction. Scientists are rightly skeptical and have some prettyharsh words for such behavior. This guy does the same, and he' supposed ot be given a free pass?

Here's a YOUNG Earth Creationist site coming to the same conclusion:

<a href='http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-179.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-179.htm</a>

Here's what THEY have to say about the quality of the analysis:
"Unfortunately, even a cursory glance at the data reveals that the above analysis is inappropriate for the given data set, and, hence, the conclusions drawn from it are not valid."

Hmm, cursory glance? Doesn't sound so watertight to me.

And, of course, as it happened, there were countless other ways to test the hypothesis that c had decayed the way Setterfield claimed. Not only did he not address any of them, but their abscence from discussion is particuarly glaring given that the tests would imply looking for the sorts of things I noted above: I didn't say that the universe would collapse: I said that radiation would have to be shooting out of radioactive isotopes so fast and so hard that it would rip everything we know to pieces. You think you can't last long near radioactive uranium: imagine Noah sailing around being bombarded by radiation a thousands times stronger, his every cell pummeled by charged particles ripping apart every chemical bond he's got.

Indeed, there are so MANY different things that would be different in a universe with a rapidly decaying c that it could not look almost anything like we imagine or observe today.

It's much the same with seafloor spreading. In the atlantic, there is a place in the crust that is welling up new seafloor from the depths as the plates head away from each other: a couple of centimeters each year, give or take. It was this that pushed South America and South Africa apart, and thus we have a fairly amazing thing on our hands: a record of the past earth that's almost like the rings of yearly growth on a tree. We can radioactively date the rocks farther and farther from the trench, and they get older as we head away from it. But even if you don't buy radioactive dating (which is absurd in itself, but whatever), the process extrapolated from current rates gives us more than a hundred million years of slow movement recorded in cooled volanic seafloor between African and SA. Now, creationists could indeed claim that the rate of this seafloor expansion was much faster in the past, and that would solve the problem, even though there is no known mechanism for this to have happened. But could that really have happened? And the answer is: no. If it had happened even a couple times as fast, let alone as fast as creationists would need to fit their 4,000-10,000 year timeline, the plates would have had to have moved so fast, and so much force would be required, that the surface of the planet would shatter, buckle, explode, and all sorts of other crazy stuff. And on a smaller scale, we can actually tell by looking at the seafloor how fast it once spread anyway, because the molten rock cools in very different ways depending on how fast it wells up.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>You are going to have to prove that. There is nothing poetical about Genesis, it is not written in either a lyrical or poetical style.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Look: that's what YOU claim, and I understand that. But my point is that this is a minority view among Christians and Jews. Literalists are a minority among Christians, not least of all because Catholics are not literalists, and they are the largest sect worldwide. If you think the Genesis account is literal one, your primary argument is with them, not with myself, an atheist. I just think it's one of the many creation myths of early peoples that got codified and then worshiped with the advent of writing. But they aren't so crazy either. Their arguments aren't so easy to knock down as simply citing a couple of literalists who misrepresent the objections and knock down what is simply a straw man (that the story was not litterally poetry is not an argument against it being poetic in a more general sense).

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>That was an offhand post made by a tired man where his argument was not about the specifics of time, but using times to demonstrate a point about "pre-time"</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

The point is, anyone who knows anything about the universe or earth history would have this number ready tospit out at a moments notice no matter how tired they were. It is so heavily tied in with other elements of these fields that it's like claiming to know what the founders wanted but not knowing any of their names.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I'm still not 100% convinced of that. Examining the contents and the actions of the contents can certainly tell you what the container is doing ie contents all moving away = universe is expanding bubble. You cant be sure of course, but you can certainly make a case for it.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

But none of this speaks to understanding the rules that govern the container (and actually container is perhaps a weak analougy, but I cant think of a better one). Say for instance that we lived in a container full of blue balls. We might then develop a science where one law was that all balls are blue. Then we discover that the "universe" we live in was itself ball-like in some way. Would we thn be justified in assuming that it was blue? No: the logic doesn't generalize like that.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Agreed. Outside our reality and our universe, anything goes. God, spontaneous matter generation and purple rabbits.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

QM isn't outside: it's just really, really weird. There are clear regularities that govern QM. And if our universe was once the "size" of a QM particle, then it too could have been the subject of sponteneous generation without violating any natural law.

Wheeee · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Because it forces people to think seriously about the metaphysical issues of space/time.

I used Xeno's as an illustration of exactly the sort of problem we face when talking about getting back to the "start" of the universe. And that problem is this: time is not an absolute: it is a function of mass. So the issue is that while you can plot out a discrete, objective scale of time whereby you might be able to definitively say that the was no universe before it, actual time isn't absolute: past a certain point it too begins to noticeably lengthen relative to the sort of time we are used to. And this problem just gets exponentially worse as we look backwards. We're left with, in some sense, a time that curves off and away from the absolute time scale. In Hawking's book, he graphs the time line as ending not in a point, but in a soft curve before it reaches the hypothetical "start" of time.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I'm confused by what you're saying here. You propose the existence of some objective time scale, by which our observed time is a mere approximation. In that case, wouldn't it be that "light is slowing down" is actually the case? So you're saying that since our observed time asymptotically approaches "the beginning", we can't actually observe it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. For example, in your link, they have the always-popular example of someone falling into a black hole. If, as you claim, we can never observe the actual point of the person falling into the black hole because it takes time t->infinite for the light (information of the event) to escape the gravitational well and reach our eyes, then we cannot be sure that the person actually did fall in. That's retarded. There are other effects that are easily found out; for example, the increase in mass to the black hole immediately changes the size of the event horizon, which can be observed. Similarly, just because we can't "see" the beginning of the universe does not mean it did not, in fact, have a definite starting point.

@the "universe was a QM particle" - QM doesn't support spontaneously generating jillions of kg of matter or ergs of radiation. In fact, QM is as we know it only part of the story; the high-energy physics that would be required in a "universe-infinitesmal point" are quite different than QM. What do you think the whole GUT search is about?

Epidemic · February 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Apos @ Feb 7 2005, 12:30 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> </div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> the big bang theory... hehe.. thats allways a good one... ok , let me give you a tid bit of information....

the big bang theory is about as plausible as this..... An ink factory explodes, and a 500 page novel is created..... yeah, when that happens, then I'll believe in big bangs</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

The BB is not only plausible, it's supported by all the evidence we have. Not only acn we still see the telltale radiation from the intial "explosion," but its simply undeniable that in general all objects we see in the universe are moving away from us: and those that are farther are moving faster. Run that process backwards in time, and you get the unavoidable conclusion that all these objects were once occupying the same place "in space."

The universe isn't like a 500 page novel anyway. It's almost entirely chaotic in form. It's just that, as chaos theory predicts, there will be small patches of partial order generated because of natural forces like gravity congealing stuff together and making it interact in complex ways.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
More like a question since I'm not into it. Couldnt BB not actually be an older universe destroyed by gravity? And thus no argument for a start of the universe. Also natural laws seems to have no origin.

Wheeee · February 2005

Why would such an "older universe" follow the rules of gravity that we have? Chaos theory predicts that repeating patterns emerge on a large scale, but they are never the same.

Epidemic · February 2005

Why wouldnt it? I thought gravity governed matter fairly constantly. Again, this is hypothesis.

Wheeee · February 2005

Again, physical laws break down at high energies.

*edit* more specifically, most modern theories of physics predict that newtonian gravity breaks down on the Planck scale (basically 10^-34m or so, a few orders of magnitude around there)

Darwin - Did He Regret Spreading Evolution?

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