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Author Topic:   Growing the Geologic Column
ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


(3)
Message 721 of 740 (735227)
08-07-2014 2:08 PM
Reply to: Message 714 by Faith
08-06-2014 9:57 AM


Faith writes:
May God help me to leave this place now.
There's a park close to my house with a boulder that I like to sit on and watch the ducks. It's about a cubic yard, a couple of tons, I guess, and eroded smooth and round.
You can see the layers in it as plain as day. They're about a millimeter thick. They're different colours. There are definite grooves where they have eroded at different rates.
I recommend that you go outside and look at a rock.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 714 by Faith, posted 08-06-2014 9:57 AM Faith has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


(2)
Message 722 of 740 (735233)
08-07-2014 4:03 PM
Reply to: Message 714 by Faith
08-06-2014 9:57 AM


May God help me to leave this place now.
I think you are addicted to the attention you get here. You could put this stuff on your blog and hope that four people will read it, or you can post nonsense here and get feedback from anywhere between 3 and 15 people all within an hour

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 714 by Faith, posted 08-06-2014 9:57 AM Faith has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(2)
Message 723 of 740 (735249)
08-08-2014 8:56 AM


Discussion Can Continue
Faith said she'll be responding at her blog. I visited her blog, and she repeats that she will be responding there:
When she posts about this thread or the other thread she was participating in (SCIENCE: -- "observational science" vs "historical science" vs ... science.) I suggest we respond here at EvC, carefully quoting what she says first.
If you read this latest blog entry you can see that Faith feels badly about how things went this time around, but she's caught in a very difficult place that we cannot understand, trapped between two irreconcilable views. On the one hand there is her unwavering faith in the truth of her interpretations of the Bible that tell her the world is young and that a global flood produced all the geology we see today, and on the other hand is the evidence from the real world that says the world is ancient and that the geology we see today took a very long time to happen.
We all agree these two views cannot both be true. Those of us on the science side find the real world to be persistent, uncompromising, and in many ways comprehensible through scientific study. It drives anyone willing to painstakingly follow a chain of evidence toward inescapable conclusions.
Faith believes those who follow this process to conclusions inconsistent with her Biblical interpretations are wrong but can offer no scientific reasons why they are wrong. She says the reasons are obvious to anyone, and she begins by citing a number of reasons, but as each reason is shown to be scientifically untenable she is eventually left only with the declaration, "It's clearly obvious," or sometimes with the dismissive, "Oh, science, blah blah blah, science is wrong." (These quotes are, of course, paraphrases.)
Faith blames us for our refusal to properly consider her evidence and our intractable rejection of the obvious, while we blame her for, well, where does one start? I'm not sure. Certainly Faith is honest and sincere in the extreme, but only by her own highly personal set of rules and guidelines to which we're not really privy. Certainly from the outside her views appear contradictory and delusional, and when she does acknowledge a contradiction it is usually only to dismiss it with a claim it will be worked out one day. If one mentions that not one of these contradictions has been resolved since Henry Morris published The Genesis Flood in 1961, but that in that time man has gone to the moon, invented cell phones, the World Wide Web and MRIs, and wiped out smallpox, Faith is unfazed. Very puzzling.
This analysis leads to no insights that I can see, and we're left only with the fact that Faith is as inexplicable to us are we apparently are to her. But I see no reason the discussion can't continue with Faith participating from the greater distance and comfort of her blog.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Typo.

Replies to this message:
 Message 724 by NoNukes, posted 08-08-2014 12:25 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 725 by Tangle, posted 08-08-2014 1:34 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 726 by hooah212002, posted 08-08-2014 2:33 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 727 by jar, posted 08-08-2014 4:21 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 728 by RAZD, posted 08-08-2014 8:01 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 730 by edge, posted 08-08-2014 8:33 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 734 by dwise1, posted 08-16-2014 1:53 AM Percy has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 724 of 740 (735261)
08-08-2014 12:25 PM
Reply to: Message 723 by Percy
08-08-2014 8:56 AM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
Faith believes those who follow this process to conclusions inconsistent with her Biblical interpretations are wrong but can offer no scientific reasons why they are wrong.
I imagine that everyone is a hero on their own blog.
I can honestly say that I don't give a hoot what Faith posts on her blog. She is free to misrepresent, distort, and completely miss the point if that's what she wants to do there. I've been to her blog before, but the address is no longer in my browser history and I won't be expending even the minimal effort to find a link to her blog.
Faith is a zealot, and not a particularly capable one. And zealots are a dime a dozen on the internet.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 723 by Percy, posted 08-08-2014 8:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(2)
Message 725 of 740 (735264)
08-08-2014 1:34 PM
Reply to: Message 723 by Percy
08-08-2014 8:56 AM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
I'm not remotely interested in reading her ravings elsewhere. It was marginally interesting reading her nonsense here as a way of viewing delusion in action but once the deluded retire to their private pulpits, it's not even mildly interesting - just another internet loon barking at the moon.

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 723 by Percy, posted 08-08-2014 8:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
hooah212002
Member (Idle past 802 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


Message 726 of 740 (735265)
08-08-2014 2:33 PM
Reply to: Message 723 by Percy
08-08-2014 8:56 AM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
I think it's time to hire a marketing firm, Percy.

Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 723 by Percy, posted 08-08-2014 8:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

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


Message 727 of 740 (735266)
08-08-2014 4:21 PM
Reply to: Message 723 by Percy
08-08-2014 8:56 AM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
Percy writes:
Certainly Faith is honest and sincere in the extreme, but only by her own highly personal set of rules and guidelines to which we're not really privy.
And that is exactly the issue.
Faith (and all Biblical Christians) idea of honest is totally unrelated to anything anyone else could identify as honest. In fact it can only be described as "willful lying" under any normal definition.
I have no doubt that Faith and the typical Biblical Christian are sincere unlike the pastors, evangelists and anyone claiming to be a Creation Scientist but sincere and honest are not synonymous.
The issue is that Biblical Christianity demands personal dishonesty, you MUST lie to yourself constantly in order to even be a Biblical Christian beginning by denying the many contradictions in the various Bible stories, accepting so called prophecies that are claimed but refuted by the facts, placing "source" over "content" and willfully issolating yourself from any threats to your belief system.
What Faith is doing yet again is simply adopting the "avoidance" tactic that is a classic symptom of the Christian Cult of Ignorance. She retreats to her blog just like Christian Radio and TV and most Christian Avoidance Schools and much of Home Schooling and separate peer review groups, wikis, browsers and accrediting boards.
Call Faith sincere and I doubt anyone would even comment but to use the term 'honest" in relation to Faith is to resort to Newspeak.

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

This message is a reply to:
 Message 723 by Percy, posted 08-08-2014 8:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 729 by edge, posted 08-08-2014 8:26 PM jar has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 728 of 740 (735267)
08-08-2014 8:01 PM
Reply to: Message 723 by Percy
08-08-2014 8:56 AM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
Faith said she'll be responding at her blog. I visited her blog, and she repeats that she will be responding there:
When she posts about this thread or the other thread she was participating in (SCIENCE: -- "observational science" vs "historical science" vs ... science.) I suggest we respond here at EvC, carefully quoting what she says first.
She will return -- the cognitive dissonance she experiences drives her back here to try to resolve the results of science vs her beliefs ... she's looking for answers that mesh both the science and the beliefs, and fights against the inevitable result that the beliefs must change to accommodate facts.
This is the tormented result Dawkins mentions in Ignorance is no crime
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 723 by Percy, posted 08-08-2014 8:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 729 of 740 (735268)
08-08-2014 8:26 PM
Reply to: Message 727 by jar
08-08-2014 4:21 PM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
And that is exactly the issue.
Faith (and all Biblical Christians) idea of honest is totally unrelated to anything anyone else could identify as honest. In fact it can only be described as "willful lying" under any normal definition.
I have no doubt that Faith and the typical Biblical Christian are sincere unlike the pastors, evangelists and anyone claiming to be a Creation Scientist but sincere and honest are not synonymous.
The issue is that Biblical Christianity demands personal dishonesty, you MUST lie to yourself constantly in order to even be a Biblical Christian beginning by denying the many contradictions in the various Bible stories, accepting so called prophecies that are claimed but refuted by the facts, placing "source" over "content" and willfully issolating yourself from any threats to your belief system.
What Faith is doing yet again is simply adopting the "avoidance" tactic that is a classic symptom of the Christian Cult of Ignorance. She retreats to her blog just like Christian Radio and TV and most Christian Avoidance Schools and much of Home Schooling and separate peer review groups, wikis, browsers and accrediting boards.
Call Faith sincere and I doubt anyone would even comment but to use the term 'honest" in relation to Faith is to resort to Newspeak.
This is really an interesting subject to me and I hope we are not diverging too far off topic.
I sometimes think that dealing with YECs is like watching a train wreck. You know that you don't want to see it, but you can't take your eyes off the action. It's almost voyeuristic. I find it disorienting, a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland feeling.
I think what Percy is saying is that Faith has no intent to lie, so in that sense it is not a lie. I used to agree with this, but now, after many years in forums such as this, I'm not so certain.
Edited by edge, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 727 by jar, posted 08-08-2014 4:21 PM jar has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 732 by NoNukes, posted 08-08-2014 10:01 PM edge has not replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 730 of 740 (735269)
08-08-2014 8:33 PM
Reply to: Message 723 by Percy
08-08-2014 8:56 AM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
Faith said she'll be responding at her blog. I visited her blog, and she repeats that she will be responding there:
The Fantasy of Evolution
When she posts about this thread or the other thread she was participating in (SCIENCE: -- "observational science" vs "historical science" vs ... science.) I suggest we respond here at EvC, carefully quoting what she says first.
What I find interesting from this blog is that the argument about angular unconformities has been going on for at least 3 years.
And it hasn't gotten any further than back in early 2011. Still no supporting evidence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 723 by Percy, posted 08-08-2014 8:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 731 by Coyote, posted 08-08-2014 8:55 PM edge has not replied

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 731 of 740 (735270)
08-08-2014 8:55 PM
Reply to: Message 730 by edge
08-08-2014 8:33 PM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
Still no supporting evidence.
Evidence to creationists is like garlic to vampires: to be avoided at all costs as it almost always contradicts their beliefs.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?--Robert A. Heinlein
It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers
If I am entitled to something, someone else is obliged to pay--Jerry Pournelle
If a religion's teachings are true, then it should have nothing to fear from science...--dwise1
"Multiculturalism" does not include the American culture. That is what it is against.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 730 by edge, posted 08-08-2014 8:33 PM edge has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 732 of 740 (735271)
08-08-2014 10:01 PM
Reply to: Message 729 by edge
08-08-2014 8:26 PM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
I think what Percy is saying is that Faith has no intent to lie, so in that sense it is not a lie. I used to agree with this, but now, after many years in forums such as this, I'm not so certain.
I'm not so certain either. But on balance I do not believe that Faith intentionally lies. I believe she has actually managed to convince herself.
I was going back over posts of mine that Faith responded to, and I came across this gem (emphasis added by me):
The state of geology today is mostly a matter of radiometric dating. Otherwise it's still the same science of interpretation of past events that cannot be tested or proved. Hutton's interpretation of Siccar Point is that the bottom part had to have been made vertical before the upper part was laid down, but there is no way to test that and I hope to prove it eventually with a real test, which I hope is possible for the idea that the lower strata were buckled while the upper were in place.
How do you type inconsistent tripe like that without having deceived yourself?

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 729 by edge, posted 08-08-2014 8:26 PM edge has not replied

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


Message 733 of 740 (735272)
08-08-2014 10:06 PM


Remember Feynman: the easiest person to fool is yourself.

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


Message 734 of 740 (735462)
08-16-2014 1:53 AM
Reply to: Message 723 by Percy
08-08-2014 8:56 AM


Re: Discussion Can Continue
Faith said she'll be responding at her blog.
Which means that she'll be ignoring what she easily can. Which is cool, kind of, since that's the only way she can avoid the corner that she keeps painting herself into. Or rather that her theology keeps painting her into whenever she makes any attempt to reconcile her theology with reality.
... but she's caught in a very difficult place that we cannot understand, trapped between two irreconcilable views. On the one hand there is her unwavering faith in the truth of her interpretations of the Bible that tell her the world is young and that a global flood produced all the geology we see today, and on the other hand is the evidence from the real world that says the world is ancient and that the geology we see today took a very long time to happen.
We all agree these two views cannot both be true. Those of us on the science side find the real world to be persistent, uncompromising, and in many ways comprehensible through scientific study. It drives anyone willing to painstakingly follow a chain of evidence toward inescapable conclusions.
Faith believes those who follow this process to conclusions inconsistent with her Biblical interpretations are wrong but can offer no scientific reasons why they are wrong. She says the reasons are obvious to anyone, and she begins by citing a number of reasons, but as each reason is shown to be scientifically untenable she is eventually left only with the declaration, "It's clearly obvious," or sometimes with the dismissive, "Oh, science, blah blah blah, science is wrong." (These quotes are, of course, paraphrases.)
Faith blames us for our refusal to properly consider her evidence and our intractable rejection of the obvious, while we blame her for, well, where does one start?
We have seen oh so many go down that path. Faith has chosen to bail out in order to not face the truth, an anticipated path since the preservation of one's own ignorance is paramount in these situations.
Another case was Glenn R. Morton who hired several creationist geology graduates who had been trained by the Institute for Creation Research, hence directly or indirectly by the very Father of Modern Flood Geology, Dr. Henry Morris, PhD Hydraulic Engineering. Later, Morris' son, John Morris, challenged Morton's presentation at the 1986 International Conference on Creationism, presenting himself as a petroleum geologist solely on the basis of having once taught a class on the subject at the University of Oklahoma. Remaining safely enveloped within academia's distance from the real world, one can feel safe in ignoring everyday realities. But Glenn R. Morton and the creationist-trained geologists had no such luxuries to buffer them from reality. Every single day, they had to deal with the multitude of rock-hard geological facts that their teachers, the ICR, had repeatedly taught them did not exist and could not exist for Scripture to have any meaning. Oh, yes, Faith can run away from those facts and maintain her precious ignorance -- she will not believe this of me, but I fully realize how exceedingly valuable that ignorance is to her religious beliefs. But what of those who do not share her luxury? Every one of those creationist geologists Morton had hired suffered severe crises of faith. Not because of geology, but rather because of creationism. Morton himself was driven to the verge of atheism, only able to pull himself back because of an unorthodox harmonization.
And I have presented a view that Faith completely poo-poo'ed away, that since creationists must believe that God created the earth, then God also created the geological evidence. So ignoring or denying the rock-hard geological evidence in favor of a Man-written document (namely, the Bible) should be considered a form of apostasy.
And, of course, I have hard-earned experience with Faith's blog entries, in which she lied about our email exchange.
She approached me with geological questions, mainly concerning her misbegotten notions of mud drying out to become rock. I strongly recommended that she turn to microscopic examination of rocks, along with talking with actual geologists about that kind of information. Her response was to scream at me hysterically, as evidenced by the very greatly enlarged font sizes, colors, etc.
Later, I visited her blog and found her reference to our "correspondence". She mentioned a "question that she had asked me" about the composition of a rock layer and made much to do about my "inability to answer that question." That question and its answer are trivial, but it turns out that the lying ***** had never ever asked me that question. How could anyone ever possibly be able to respond to a question that they are never ever asked?
To quote the thoroughly lamented late Robin Williams from his infamous late 70's Roxy performance in front of John Ritter, when in improve-mode Ritter told Williams to kneal before him:
quote:
Oh,no, I did that once before and you taught me oh-so-well!
That was followed by Ritter having been splattered with the contents of a water bottle, whereupon he exclaimed, "I'm wet!", to which Robin Williams exclaimed, "Then you must be ready!"
Faith, we know all too well what kinds of dishonest tricks you pull on your blog.
We do not expect the leopard to change its spots.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 723 by Percy, posted 08-08-2014 8:56 AM Percy has not replied

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


Message 735 of 740 (735463)
08-16-2014 3:34 AM
Reply to: Message 484 by Faith
07-31-2014 2:16 PM


Re: Good for evil and evil for good, black for white and white for black, bitter fr swt..
Why did it take so long for the human race to arrive at any decent scientific understanding of anything in the natural world?
I thought you'd never ask!
Disregarding earlier glimmerings, decent scientific understanding of anything didn't happen until a couple/few centuries ago.
According to BBC's James Burke, "Connections" and all, we should be able to thank Protestants for that. But that worm has most definitely turned against us on that.
What really drove the Protestant Revolution? Martin Luther posted some protests on a church door. Totally local event! But at the same time Gutenberg had this little printing press thingee. And somebody took that local protest and printed unlimited copies of it all over the region and it became an entire revolution.
OK, as James Burke presented it, you go into a Catholic church and you have all kinds of graphic art, since that graphic art is meant to recall all the stories for you, whereas in a Protestant church you have very abstract art, since you are expected to already know the stories from your own reading -- Story One, the first Sunday Schools were intended to teach the members how to read so that they could indeed read the Bible for themselves; Story Two, family friends, one parent Catholic with the other Protestant, the Catholic parent took their son to service, in the middle of which the kid suddenly yelled out, "Hey, who's that guy up on that cross?" Needless to say, that was the last time he ever attended a Catholic service (as far as I know).
Now here's the "weird" part. The basic part of that entire Renaissance thing was that people were now free to sample and test reality on their own and no longer have to rely on authorities to tell them what they had to believe.
Now the final irony is that while the Protestants may have earlier triggered the shift towards normalcy, now they are trapped in the sewage.
Now the "true Christians" have to insist on "evidences" that are contrary to the evidence,

This message is a reply to:
 Message 484 by Faith, posted 07-31-2014 2:16 PM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 736 by herebedragons, posted 08-16-2014 9:02 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
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