Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
2 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,817 Year: 3,074/9,624 Month: 919/1,588 Week: 102/223 Day: 13/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Physical Laws ....What if they were different before?
Panda
Member (Idle past 3713 days)
Posts: 2688
From: UK
Joined: 10-04-2010


(3)
Message 136 of 309 (663940)
05-27-2012 9:24 PM
Reply to: Message 134 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 9:16 PM


Re: question unanswered ...
foreveryoung writes:
That's all well and good but you and jar are the ones who are claiming that flying pigs exist.
And once again you sacrifice basic comprehension on the altar of denial and apologetics.

CRYSTALS!!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 134 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 9:16 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
ReverendDG
Member (Idle past 4110 days)
Posts: 1119
From: Topeka,kansas
Joined: 06-06-2005


(2)
Message 137 of 309 (663941)
05-27-2012 9:34 PM
Reply to: Message 127 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 9:02 PM


Re: So let's really look at mass.
You want to claim that the sun could be a sun with lower mass, yet you have no idea how stars form? Or how fusion happens?
Brilliant! Lol
Unless you have proof of a different set of laws in the universe, the only way fusion happens(light,heat etc) is by the gravity of the mass of stars.
Stars have to be that mass or they aren't stars, they would be brown dwarfs.
If you are reduced to shaming people for accepting what we do know over random bullshit You made up, you have lost the argument

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 9:02 PM foreveryoung has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 141 by jar, posted 05-27-2012 10:09 PM ReverendDG has not replied

  
nwr
Member
Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


(2)
Message 138 of 309 (663943)
05-27-2012 9:53 PM
Reply to: Message 128 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 9:05 PM


Re: question unanswered ...
jar writes:
Please provide the link to where you showed that changing the physical laws might not leave evidence.
foreveryoung writes:
My reply to nwr answers this nicely.
Wow!
You are apparently referring to Message 37. I see that as a complete evasion of the point. I don't see how it "answers this nicely."

Jesus was a liberal hippie

This message is a reply to:
 Message 128 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 9:05 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


(2)
Message 139 of 309 (663944)
05-27-2012 10:00 PM
Reply to: Message 127 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 9:02 PM


Re: So let's really look at mass.
What are the physical laws that make it possible for the sun to shine and be a star today?
Quantum mechanics.
Is it possible to tweak those laws in a way that would make it possible for the sun to have the mass of jupiter and still behave as the thermonuclear oven that it is today?
No, Not without leaving easily observable traces.
t would seem so to me
Indeed? What qualifications do you have in the quantum mechanical analysis of nuclear reactions?
We know already. You don't have a clue.
If you want to push this claim, show us the math. Show what would change in order to make a Jupiter-size mass ignite, and why it would leave no trace. Numbers.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 9:02 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 140 of 309 (663947)
05-27-2012 10:07 PM
Reply to: Message 131 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 9:14 PM


Re: So let's really look at mass.
Yes it was a rebuttal.
Wild-ass speculations are not evidence. Physics is a quantitative science; show us the numbers. Anything els isn't a rebuttal.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 131 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 9:14 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(2)
Message 141 of 309 (663950)
05-27-2012 10:09 PM
Reply to: Message 137 by ReverendDG
05-27-2012 9:34 PM


Re: So let's really look at mass.
I just want to correct the quote foreveryoung used since it lost all formatting it seems.
Here is a quote with the formatting.
quote:
Back in Message 11 foreveryoung said:
foreveryoung writes:
A higher speed of light would not result in greater energy if the mass were less by an amount equal to the square root of its former value.
So what difference would that make?
First, none of us would be here and there would be no star sitting at the center of this solar system.
HUH?
How can that be true?
Well the mass of the Sun is currently about 2 x 1030kg.
If the mass was "less by an amount equal to the square root of its former value" what would the effect be?
Well the mass would be √2 x 1015 or 1.4 x 1015kg.
Now that's still a really big number, BUT, how big is it?
Mass of Jupiter = 1.9 x 1027kg.
Mass of Saturn = 5.7 x 1026kg.
Mass of Uranus = 8.7 x 1025kg.
Mass of Earth = 6 x 1024kg.
Mass of Mars = 6.4 x 1023kg.
It's less than the mass of Jupiter, of Saturn, of Neptune, of Uranus, less than the mass of the Earth, even less than the mass of Mars. Jupiter is too small, has not enough mass to become a Sun. And all the others are real lightweights compared to Jupiter.
So IF the assertion above was true, there would be no sun, likely no solar system, maybe something like the Oort Cloud at best.
It's possible to imagine a Universe where the laws and constants are different than here, but it's impossible to have THIS universe.
What he is proposing is an object with less mass than Mars undergoes nuclear fusion.
So let's place a mass less than Mars, considerably less than Mars, less than Mercury which has a mass of 3.3 x 1023 as the sun for this solar system.
Well, first off, we wouldn't have this solar system.
Sure, we can imagine changing the laws so that something with a mass many orders of magnitude smaller than Mercury is the central star, but something that small even if it could undergo nuclear fusion, is too small to hold anything like Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Oort Cloud.
Of course we can imagine all of them having equally reduced masses.
So again it's possible to imagine a Universe where the laws and constants are different than here, but it's impossible to have THIS universe.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 137 by ReverendDG, posted 05-27-2012 9:34 PM ReverendDG has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


(2)
Message 142 of 309 (663951)
05-27-2012 10:12 PM
Reply to: Message 119 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 8:22 PM


Re: question unanswered ...
This is what I was talking about in my thread about changing constants and physical laws. As steve shows, changing one constant, requires changing them all. He waves his hand and said people have considered the argument carefull and say it just doesn't work.
And provides references to those analyses. Have you read those references?
Does steve understand the underlying reality behind all the constants? Does he really understand what mass or energy is? Does he understand what time or space is? Is space merely a mathematical construct or does it have physical properties? If it is the latter, does steve understand what those properties are?
Yes to all.
If the vacuum of space and the energy associated with it can change, so can the constants. If the mass of sub atomic particles is dependent upon the physical characteristics of the vacuum of space, then their masses can also change.
Show us the math. Physics is a quantitative science.
I don't think steve took the last two concepts into consideration when he said all the experts tried working the "changing physical constants" argument out, and found it unworkable.
It's apparent that you don't think period. What are the exact failures you found in his references? In physics, assertions are meaningless without math.
(If you wish to complain that others have not shown the math, I'm sure they will dig it up for you on request.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 119 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 8:22 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(4)
Message 143 of 309 (663953)
05-27-2012 10:42 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 8:46 PM


Re: copied from RAZD's dendrochronology thread
foreveryoung writes:
I don't believe things just so that it will contradict science. I know that is your impression of creationists. Perhaps that description fits some of them. 4.56 billion years is a ridiculous amount of time for mankind to be around and for the bible to be absolutely silent about most of that time. The bible says all the original animals were created whole and did not come from prior animals. It specifically says they were created in a 2 day period. That does not allow for darwinian evolution. We do know that evolution has occurred and is occurring right now. Darwinian evolution requires millions of years to work. Darwinian evolution is in direct contradiction to the creation of animals in a 2 day period. Created animals that came off the ark with environmentally cued evolution preprogrammed into their genes does not require millions of years to work. 1 million years is sufficient time to get todays diversity from a couple thousand of originally created animals. The 1 million year figure comes from the absurdity of expanding 20 generations in a genealogy to several million generations of humans who are not even mentioned in passing. It also comes from the necessity of providing an explanation for the fossil record and observed evolution that does not contradict the clear wording of scripture regarding the creation of animals.
That's really a great summary of the problem you face.
The answer is really pretty simple, the Creation Myths in the Bible are simply wrong.
The Bible is factually wrong about many things, but then the Bible was written by men, men that simply had far less knowledge then even little kids today.
The problem is that reality and ALL of the evidence is simply in direct contradiction to much of what is written in the Bible.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 8:46 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


(1)
Message 144 of 309 (663954)
05-27-2012 10:55 PM


References

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 145 of 309 (663955)
05-27-2012 11:14 PM
Reply to: Message 134 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 9:16 PM


Re: question unanswered ...
That's all well and good but you and jar are the ones who are claiming that flying pigs exist.
No, not even metaphorically.
We are suggesting that something for which we have no evidence didn't happen.
You are suggesting that something for which we have no evidence did happen.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 134 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 9:16 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 146 of 309 (663956)
05-27-2012 11:16 PM
Reply to: Message 127 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 9:02 PM


Re: So let's really look at mass.
Yes, the sun would have less mass than jupiter currently has. Under the currently laws of physics, the sun would be unable to even be a sun with that amount of mass. We need to consider the matter a little deeper then, don't we?
What are the physical laws that make it possible for the sun to shine and be a star today? Is it possible to tweak those laws in a way that would make it possible for the sun to have the mass of jupiter and still behave as the thermonuclear oven that it is today? It would seem so to me. The problem you have is that you limit your possibilities to only what you can perceive physically happening today.
No, we can imagine the possibility. We can imagine lots of possibilities. We can imagine pigs with wings. What we can't do is see any evidence for pigs with wings.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 9:02 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(2)
Message 147 of 309 (663957)
05-27-2012 11:19 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 8:46 PM


Motivation
I don't believe things just so that it will contradict science. I know that is your impression of creationists.
No, you believe things that contradict science in order to cling to your favorite interpretation of your favorite book.
4.56 billion years is a ridiculous amount of time for mankind to be around and for the bible to be absolutely silent about most of that time. The bible says all the original animals were created whole and did not come from prior animals. It specifically says they were created in a 2 day period. That does not allow for darwinian evolution. We do know that evolution has occurred and is occurring right now. Darwinian evolution requires millions of years to work. Darwinian evolution is in direct contradiction to the creation of animals in a 2 day period. Created animals that came off the ark with environmentally cued evolution preprogrammed into their genes does not require millions of years to work. 1 million years is sufficient time to get todays diversity from a couple thousand of originally created animals. The 1 million year figure comes from the absurdity of expanding 20 generations in a genealogy to several million generations of humans who are not even mentioned in passing. It also comes from the necessity of providing an explanation for the fossil record and observed evolution that does not contradict the clear wording of scripture regarding the creation of animals.
See?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 8:46 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 148 of 309 (663958)
05-27-2012 11:23 PM


Physics And Metaphisics
This interchange is copied at foreveryoung's request from the Age Correlations thread:
foreveryoung writes:
This is what I was talking about in my thread about changing constants and physical laws. As steve shows, changing one constant, requires changing them all. He waves his hand and said people have considered the argument carefull and say it just doesn't work. Oh really? Does steve understand the underlying reality behind all the constants? Does he really understand what mass or energy is? Does he understand what time or space is? Is space merely a mathematical construct or does it have physical properties? If it is the latter, does steve understand what those properties are?
But do we have to be able to answer these downright metaphysical questions to think about what things would be like if various weights and times and speeds and so forth were different?
Without "really understanding what mass is", you can say what would happen if you weighed 500lb. Without "understanding what time and space is" you can say how long it would take you to drive to Los Angeles if Los Angeles was only ten miles away from you. You don't need to know if space is "merely a mathematical construct" to figure this out. Why would you?
And, after all, physicists have done quite well at doing physics without doing any metaphysics. You ask them to put a man on the moon, they don't sit around scratching their heads and saying .... well, we can't do that, we haven't figured out what space really is. So why should this question be any different, except that creationists don't like the answer? Is this not just a bit of special pleading?

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(7)
Message 149 of 309 (663967)
05-28-2012 1:44 AM
Reply to: Message 123 by foreveryoung
05-27-2012 8:46 PM


Re: copied from RAZD's dendrochronology thread
I don't believe things just so that it will contradict science. I know that is your impression of creationists. Perhaps that description fits some of them.
That is not just my impression of creationists, but my opinion. Keep in mind that an opinion is formed, not just assumed; if one's opinion is just assumed without any actual thought having been put into it, then it is not an opinion. My opinion of creationists has been formed through study and through direct discussions with creationists over decades, with the studying having started in 1981 and the discussions around 1985. I had gone into those discussions with assumptions about creationists which proved to be wrong and which I abandoned in favor of what I have learned through direct experience. As I am always ready to do again.
While my opinion of creationists informs me of what to expect, I also realize that there are individuals within that group who may think and believe differently than that group. I watch for that, but have very rarely encountered it.
The reasons why most creationists look for claims that they will cleave to just because they contradict science is because of the "warfare between science and religion" mentality that they have been taught. Science is not at war with religion nor wants to attack religion, but apparently religion thinks that science is attacking them because the findings of science contradict some of religious beliefs (most of which are not biblical, but rather are the result of fallible human interpretation). Finding themselves self-caught in that situation, one of creationists' responses is to try to invalidate the science that they feel is attacking their religion, and certainly most PRATTs are indeed attempts to discredit science or at the very least to erode public confidence in science. Indeed, practically the entirety of "creation science" has proven to consist of nothing else other than attacks against science, such that no creationist is ever known to have ever presented any scientific evidence for creation, even though they continuously claim to have mountains of such evidence, but rather all they have ever presented has been attacks against evolution and the rest of science. That is not prejudice speaking, but rather decades of personal experience.
I most certainly do hope that you are not a creationist who believes things just so that it will contradict science. I am still observing to see how that eventually turns out.
4.56 billion years is a ridiculous amount of time for mankind to be around and for the bible to be absolutely silent about most of that time.
What? Just what are you talking about? Just who the frak has ever proposed that mankind has been around for 4.56 billion years?
I am anti-creationism, with the proviso that I'm talking about "creation science" style creationism -- I'm cool with belief in Divine Creation so long as you don't start dictating how the world has to be as a result and then getting your panties in a huge twist when the world turns out to different. My position which I have held for decades and proclaim for decades is that, if you really want to oppose evolution, then go ahead and oppose it. However, I must insist that you do so honestly and truthfully. That means that you cannot lie about anything and that you cannot make false claims. That also means that you need to address evolution itself and not some false and misleading caricature that some creationist has dreamed up; creationists never address evolution itself, but rather always attack a strawman caricature. The same holds for any scientific idea that creationists may choose to oppose and, yet again, they don't fail to attack a strawman caricature. "Creation science" violates all of my provisions.
So just where did you get that strawman caricature from? Homo sapiens sapiens only dates back about 200,000 years, the genus Homo about 2.5 million years back, and Australopithecus about 4 million years back. So just what the hell are you talking about, mister?
If you want to oppose or refute a position, then oppose or refute that actual position, not some strawman bullshit that you just make up!
I continue to observe you. And so far, more and more, I'm just seeing a typical creationist. Show me that you're something else.
The bible says all the original animals were created whole and did not come from prior animals. It specifically says they were created in a 2 day period. That does not allow for darwinian evolution. We do know that evolution has occurred and is occurring right now. Darwinian evolution requires millions of years to work. Darwinian evolution is in direct contradiction to the creation of animals in a 2 day period.
I'll take a wild stab and assume that you've read some of the Bible, such as the New Testament.
Would you feed a baby meat or milk? Milk, of course. And to a new convert to your religion, would you feed him spiritual meat or spiritual milk? Spiritual milk, until he has grown and matured enough to be able to handle spiritual meat.
Now, to a pre-scientific people, do you feed them scientific meat or scientific milk? You tell them what they can understand in terms that they can understand; ie, scientific milk. They could not possibly understand the full science; when it has been tried, they just reinterpreted it in terms of their own mythology, most often incorrectly *.
A common example would be the question of where babies come from and how parents might explain it to their young children (like pre-Kindergarten). If the parents tried to explain it with complete scientific accuracy, would that make any sense to the children? Would that even be the answer that was being sought? So we get stories of storks and cabbage patches and whatever else, but the details don't matter. What does matter is what the stories say, not the details that it uses. Each of those stories tell the young children the same thing, that their parents love each other so much that they wanted a child to share their love with. That is the real story, the real answer that the child wants and needs to hear.
So what's the story of Genesis? Is it in the details? Or in the actual answer it gives, that God created all this and is very much involved in His Creation? Which matters, the actual answer or the measly details?
That does not allow for darwinian evolution. We do know that evolution has occurred and is occurring right now.
Yes, evolution does take time, which is another reason for creationists to try to deprive it of that time -- not my own opinion, but rather that has been proclaimed by creationists.
One famous opponent of evolution was Baron Georges Cuvier, a pioneering natural scientist and the Father of Paleontology. One of his pioneering efforts was the reconstruction of an entire animal from a few bones. He was an outspoken opponent of evolution because of his work with the newly discovered Egyptian mummies brought to Paris by Napoleon's army. He found the human and animal remains from thousands of years ago to be virtually identical to modern humans and animals, thus showing him that there had not be any evolutionary change during that time. Since he still believed in a young earth, that was sufficient evidence for him. And OBTW, it was Lamarckian evolution he opposed, not Darwinian, since Darwin was only about 22 years old and not yet published when Cuvier died -- indeed, he had just left on his voyage on the Beagle the year before.
But at least you do acknowledge that evolution is observed to be happening.
Created animals that came off the ark with environmentally cued evolution preprogrammed into their genes does not require millions of years to work.
Hmm, a whole new can of worms. Other creationists have come up with such claims. Oh, I'm not trying to discourage you. You should research what other creationists have come up with, but then you also need to research the responses and criticisms of those ideas.
OK, maybe I should introduce you to Ed, a creationist I met on-line. He had been a young-earth creationist, describing himself as being addicted to creationist materials and video tapes. Here's how he described his epiphany moment after having popped in a new tape as a "fix" for his addiction:
quote:
One day, being psyched-up for a new fix, I popped in a video I had received from a young man at Church. The tape was a series of debates (about eight), between a famous "young-earther" and various evolutionists. After viewing them, I found my jaw on the floor. I truly expected these evolutionists to roll over and die after being presented with this battering of "facts" - they didn't! I was truly numbed and frankly, pretty upset with the manners of this "young-earther." I was forced to come to some serious conclusions that day.
1. Scientists have answers for each point raised, e.g., shrinking sun, polystrate fossils etc., they were not surprised at all!
2. Creation Science is not science. I watched as this creationist fellow was repeatedly being cornered, relying on miracle after miracle to answer their questions. Yes, God can and does perform miracles, but these were miracles that were not even in the Bible - that's not science!
3. I have been a hypocrite! My favorite reasoning with skeptics is to challenge them to examine both sides of an issue before reaching their conclusions. "How can we dialogue fairly if we only have one point of view?" I would ask. But I have NEVER given an evolutionist nor an old earth creationist the opportunity to present their case!
Please note his second observation, that the only way the creationist could fight his way out of the corner was to invoke one miracle after another. That is what made me think I should introduce you to Ed. That is what I see you having to start to do.
Ed disappeared for a while, during which I mirrored his webpages on my former site, but then he reappeared and continues to host his own pages at http://home.comcast.net/~whatrymes/index.html; he leads in by quoting 1 Thessalonians 5:21: "Test all things; hold fast what is good" -- one that I like to throw back into creationists' faces. In particular, read his My Search page, from which I had quoted. He repeats my decades-old message, also repeated by Don Batten and Safarti at Answers in Genesis, that creationism has to deal in real and truthful claims instead of in lies.
The 1 million year figure comes from the absurdity of expanding 20 generations in a genealogy to several million generations of humans who are not even mentioned in passing.
Let's assume a new generation every 20 years, kind of a lower limit that will yield too many generations.
Homo sapiens sapiens, been around for about 200,000 years: 10,000 generations.
Genus Homo, been around for about 2.5 million years: 125,000 generations.
Genus Australopithecus, been around for about 4 million years: 200,000 generations.
Where the frak is this fracking "several million generations of humans" that you're talking about?
Also, what's history? It's what's been written down. Before writing, there's no history. Case in point: Japan. Around 600 CE (AD to you), Buddhist missionaries from China reached Japan and brought much knowledge to the Japanese, including writing -- even today, most Japanese writing is in Kanji, Chinese characters, with some phonetic Kana that they invented about around 800 CE. So in Japan, pre-history is up until about 600 CE. No writing, no history. Oh, sure, there was oral tradition, but despite Romantic Era romanticism, it doesn't actually go back that many generations nor is it immune from new information getting incorporated into it **.
As for history, well, that only goes back about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. Everything before that would be pre-history. And pre-history could have lasted an indeterminately long time. Your concern of no historical record (assuming the Genesis genealogies could be considered historic), going back beyond history is ... well, meaningless. No offense intended; just trying to provide you with some perspective.
It also comes from the necessity of providing an explanation for the fossil record and observed evolution that does not contradict the clear wording of scripture regarding the creation of animals.
The fossil record stands on its own. No universal flood. Very long history.
"clear wording of scripture regarding the creation of animals" Mmm! Na, also, wie knnte ich dies denn mal sagen?
What languages do you know? I would assume only English. Tja! Das sagt ja alles! "clear wording"? Of scripture? And just what the frak language was that written in? Certainly not in English!
Do you know any languages other than English? Do you have any experience with other languages? "clear wording"? Seriously?
I'm going to let you in on a secret. Ok, not really a secret, just something that fundamentalists like to gloss over.
Humans are fallible. All human efforts are fallible. No, that's also what fundamentalists teach. But what they don't tell you is that human interpretation is also fallible, because you're supposed to believe that their own fallible human interpretations of Scripture is somehow infallible, but it's not. I guess that's the secret.
Now let's take the next step. Have you ever performed an act of translation? Do you know what translation is? It's interpreting what is being said in one language and expressing it in another. The key word there is "interpret". A fallible human act.
Different languages are ... well, different. Some languages group several ideas together, while others differentiate between them. "know". That's only one word in English, but German diffentiates between knowing a fact, knowing a person, and knowing how to do something (wissen, kennen, and knnen). Greek is renowned in diffentiating between four or five different kinds of love, where English only has one word.
Obviously, "clear wording" can only have any real meaning in the original language.
Oh and BTW, the fossil record is relatively well known. And the dates for the various strata are also well known via tie-points ****. Sorry, but the fossil record does not in the least support any creationist scenario that I am aware of.
It also comes from the necessity of providing an explanation for the fossil record and observed evolution that does not contradict the clear wording of scripture regarding the creation of animals.
Sorry, but here's where it becomes heartless.
The fossil record is what the fossil record is. The record is what it is. You cannot do anything about it.
The only necessity of providing an explanation for the fossil record that meets your specifications are if what we find were to not contradict our own specific and fallibly human interpretation of the humanly fallibly translated humanly produced writings about the creation of animals, ... . I'm sorry, but I myself got lost in my having to bend over backwards multiple times in order to set up your incredible scenario.
OK, let's face it. The fossil record does not even begin to start to support your scenario.
The tie-points in the geological column (please, please, please do not embarrass yourself here) go much more than a mere million years back in time.

{ * FOOTNOTE:
In areas of New Guinea where cannibalism was practiced, there's a degenerative brain disease that is spread by a virus that is acquired by eating infected brain matter. The natives believed that it was caused by evil spirits, so modern doctors trying to treat it showed them the real culprit through a microscope. The natives walked away even more convinced that it was caused by evil spirits, because now they've see those evil spirits with their own eyes!
}
{ ** FOOTNOTE:
When I was growing up, I would have envied your knowing what you want to do. I had been so pummeled down in my youth and thoroughly convinced that I couldn't do anything that I had no idea what to do with my life. I just skated through school, being able to learn everything with no effort, but never exerting any effort to achieve anything. But then I became interesting in learning a foreign language and high school German was the first class where I had ever applied myself (BTW, I also took science every year and just ate it up; in junior high I was always a year ahead of everybody else), so that is what I pursued going into college. After receiving my first degree, BA German, I married and enlisted in the Air Force as a computer technician, which led to my other two degrees, BS Computer Science and BA Applied Math, which led to my civilian career as a software engineer.
OK, back when I was a kid, I would have envied you. But now, I kind of ... I don't want to say "pity you", but it's kind of like that. It's a sorrow at an opportunity that is lost to you. Part of learning another language is also learning the culture that that language is a part of. So in our German program we studied the literature and arts in the different periods, which was also to some degree a history of the development of European culture through the centuries. Basically, a liberal arts education that most technical and science majors don't have much chance to get a taste of; I know that engineering degrees can be extremely rigorous and offer their students virtually no free time.
OK, coming out of the Baroque, which emphasized order (and during which most of music theory had been worked out), we went into the overly ornate Rococo. Then we went briefly into the "Sturm und Drang" (Storm and Stress) of extreme emotions -- a young Goethe wrote an emotion-charged book, "The Sorrows of Young Werther", that touched off an epidemic of young suicides throughout Europe. That quickly developed into the Classical Period which again emphasized order, symmetry, rational thought, etc; it was during this time that the Enlightenment developed, whose crowning glory was the founding of the federal government of the United States of America.
But then in the early 1800's came the Romantic Era. Again, it reacted against the previous period by embracing the emotional, the irrational, even the macabre. Ghost stories and the supernatural abounded, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It was also during this time that there was an upsurgence of nationalism and an interest in folk stories. The brothers Grimm, linguists studying the history and development of the German language, collected folk stories which later were published as "Grimm's Fairy Tales" (the German version is much bloodier and more violent than the sanitized ones we were told in the USA).
Now this is the important part and the reason for this footnote. Part of the conceit of that time was that these folk stories had been passed down for countless generations, unchanged. That is clearly false and instead changes happen which a few generations or even more rapidly.
For example, in Africa there is/was an isolated tribe whose mythology included a god associated with the star Sirius (the "Dog Star", because it is the brightest star in the constellation Canus Major, "Big Dog"; indeed, it is visually the brightest star in the sky, outside of Sol). A few decades ago, astronomers discovered that Sirius is a binary system with a much fainter companion that can only be detected with a telescope, absolutely not with the naked eye. After that discovery, anthropologists visiting that isolated tribe were astonished to hear the Sirius myth talk of a small companion to that god. How could they have known that? But then when they examined the notes of the anthropologists who had previously visited that tribe before our discovery of Sirius' companion, and the myth as told to those anthropologists did not contain any mention at all of any companion to Sirius. Obviously, news of that discovery had reached the tribe, whereupon that new information became incorporated into its mythology.
Creation/Evolution, Issue 32, Summer 1993 (http://ncse.com/webfm_send/1162) contained an article starting on page 20, Creation Science and Creation Myths: An Ethnological Perspective by Jeffery JR. Hanson and Jerry E. Hanson, which examined the creation myths of the Mandan Indians (located around Bismarck, ND; Lewis & Clark's party had wintered over with them). Repeatedly, as the knowledge and life-style of the tribe changed, so did its mythology, and radically so (as befitting the radical changes in its life-style).
As I had been taught, the Torah (AKA "First Five Books of Moses"; ie, the first five books of the Bible) were at first oral tradition, which is what we've been talking about here. These were the stories told around the campfires, memorized and retold and memorized by each generation as per oral tradition ***. As I had been told, it was not until their first captivity that, in order to avoid assimilation in Babylonian, they finally wrote down their oral tradition. Of course, by that time, how much had they assimilated into that oral tradition? Gilgamesh, which tells of a universal flood, comes to mind.
}
{ *** FOOTNOTE:
If you have never watched Mel Gibson's "Mad Max" movies, do so. At the very least, watch the last one of three, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Post-apocalypse Australia (OK, that hadn't happened until the second movie, the first one just showing a break-down in society), in the desert Max falls in with a group of kids living in a oasis in that desert, having been stranded there when the plane they were on to escape the apocalypse crashed nearby and the pilot, Captain Walker, went out into the desert for help, only to have died. The kids kept alive the story -- "We kept it straight, Captain Walker!" -- , an oral tradition telling the story of where they had come from and why they were there. Watch that and listen to it. It always follows the same format, starting by telling them to listen close and remember the words for when it's their turn to tell the story to the others.
Similarly, author Alex Haley wrote of his genealogical research into his family, trying to work his way back to his ancestor, Kunta Kinte, who had been captured in Africa and brought here as a slave. His book, and the award-winning TV mini-series, was named Roots. In a pivotal point in the story (not the one in the Library of Congress where he cried out, "Kunta Kinte, I have found you!"), he was able to trace back to the location in Africa where his ancestor had been taken into captivity. As depicted in the mini-series, a tribal elder who had memorized the oral tradition of the tribe was asked about Kinta Kinte, but he could only tell the entire story from the beginning. After many hours, even days, he got to the point where a boy going through the passage rites of manhood went into the forest to gather the materials to make a drum but never returned, which matched the oral tradition in Alex Haley's own family about Kunta Kinte.
}
{ **** FOOTNOTE:
I know that you want to stereotype anti-creationists in a specific way, that they are close-minded and wouldn't ever question their assumptions, but you are dead wrong.
For example, when I read Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, especially the third chapter (WEASEL), I questioned it, immediately! It was just too good to be true! So I wrote my own WEASEL program, which I named MONKEY in honor of A. S. Eddington's famous quote about an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters pounding out Hamlet -- actually, he was talking about thermodynamics, not evolution. So I wrote my own program to test it out. Which was so phenomenally successful that I had to calculate the probabilities and do all the math. And that math showed me that the probability of failure was so much less than success, that the probability of an evolution-driven process of succeeding was virtually inevitable. My pages on that start at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/monkey.html.
Here's another case where I started to question what I had thought. Here in Southern California, we have mile-high mountains very close by. Driving up to a weekend event with my sons, I looked at the strata I was driving past and I got to thinking. Just how are strata dated? Most strata are sedimentary, so they consist of bits and pieces of older rock. Just how are they dated when they consist of older rock?
OK, back in the early 1800's, William Smith in England learned to identify strata by their distinctive features, which included what I understand to be called "index fossils". This led to various strata being identified. OK, but how old were they? I didn't learn that during that drive up to the mountains, but I found it later on in a textbook. We cannot intrinsically date a sedimentary layer, but through biostratigraphy or other methods we can identify what era it belongs to. The only things we can radio-date are igneous formations -- if you have not already, read the isochron article at talk.origins at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html -- though I did not learn this until further research, even though this suspicion had fueled my further research.
So then, basically we have worked out the relative ages of the strata in relationship with each other, and then have gotten more specific dates from igneous intrusions, volcanic layers, etc.
}

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by foreveryoung, posted 05-27-2012 8:46 PM foreveryoung has not replied

  
godsriddle
Member (Idle past 4310 days)
Posts: 51
From: USA
Joined: 12-20-2007


Message 150 of 309 (664155)
05-29-2012 2:14 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by Taq
05-24-2012 11:29 AM


Re: question unanswered ...
Taq wrote: What are the assumptions and how are they contradicted.
I wrote a response but it is lengthy so I posted it on my blog here
http://www.godsriddle.info/2012/05/sn-1987a.html

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by Taq, posted 05-24-2012 11:29 AM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 151 by Theodoric, posted 05-29-2012 2:25 PM godsriddle has replied
 Message 154 by Taq, posted 05-29-2012 3:44 PM godsriddle has replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024