The Glorification and Worship of Torture

and boy were they wrong. They fell for another of Loki's tricks, what a scamp.

Interestingly, astronomers using observatories in orbit and on mountaintops and in many other locations around the planet are looking at the whole electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays and there are some really extreme new telescopes coming on line...and you know what?They are all collecting light from galaxies a billion light years from Earth and many times that distance, this is really extreme science and guess what Sherlock? Light from a billion light years away shows astronomers what the Universe looked like a billion years ago and so onAstronomers are collecting data from telescopes at unprecedented rates and they are also publishing their observations AND THOUSANDS OF BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPHS ALL OVER THE INTERNET AND CALENDARS! Aren't you paying attention? This is as in your face real science as you can find anywhere on this planet that humans are actually doing!They show us exactly how galaxies looked billions of years in the past and your religion is a poor excuse for your ignorance about how science works. Your god in the gaps fades into silly insignificance in the immensity of the Universe and it is silly for your religion to pretend your god created the UniverseOn the human scale I fear that your religion will intentionally incinerate the only planet known to have a biosphere!

Tanypteryx, you wrote:"They show us exactly how galaxies looked billions of years
in the past and your religion is a poor excuse for your
ignorance about how science works."***What the JWST shows us is that the most distant
galaxies are much like the ones nearest to us. The JWST
shows us mature galaxies.There are spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxies that are
as mature as those closest to us.Using triangulation to determine the distance of galaxies
is not reliable with distances of more than 100 light years.Measuring distance of 100 light years is similar to
triangulating the distance from Miami to Juneau, with
the two points in Miami being 18 inches apart.Farther out astronomers calculate distance by
luminosity. It is assumed that the brighter an object appears,
the closer it is to us. Fainter objects are assumed to be
farther away.The degree of brightness of an object could due to
distance, luminosity, or perhaps interferencInterference.Red shift is also questionable.Light travels slower in dense material, and faster in
thinner space.It is nor scientific to assume that light had always traveled
at the same speed.In Isaiah 42:5 God states that He stretched out the
heavens.The same statement is found in Isaiah 40:22 & 44:24.God could have stretched out the heavens at millions of
times faster than the speed of light.God stretching out the heavens could be the source of
"red shift."In any event, regardless of how old the universe is, it does
not rule out God being the Creator.I have stated on this forum several times that the creation
account in Genesis 1 & 2, is a "renewing" of the earth. God
was preparing earth for the creation of man.I believe it was a renewing based on Biblical evidence only.Science and Creation are extremely compatable.

This would be incorrect. The distant galaxies JWST found were very bright, which was not expected because brightness usually corresponds to size, and there should not have been enough time for large galaxies to form. Young galaxies should not be as large as much older galaxies.But as it turns out they weren't as large as the brightness would lead one to expect. Those first galaxies that formed around 450 million years after the Big Bang are much more compact than much older galaxies like the Milky Way, around a thousandth the size with a star formation rate of about one per year. Galaxies about 300 million years later were discovered to be much larger, about a thirtieth the size of the Milky Way with star formation rates of about a thousand a year. This means that the first galaxies were small and bright and then grew at an enormous rate. This is consistent with currently understood astrophysics if black holes formed early, within 50 million years of the Big Bang, leading to early bursts of star formation.Another way in that these early forming galaxies are different from much older galaxies is that their black holes could match or even exceed their stellar mass. In old galaxies like our own the stellar mass exceeds the mass of the central black hole by a thousand to one.Source: JWST’s Puzzling Early Galaxies Bend AstrophysicsActually, triangulation can be applied out to distances of as much as 400 light years. Amazing how accurately measurements can be made and distances calculated, ain't it? Given the enormous difference in the brightness of stars, it's intuitively obvious that what you describe is unworkable. Such measurements are actually made using Cepheid variable stars whose period of variability depends upon brightness. Why do you think that knowledge gained using the scientific method isn't scientific? Is red shift only questionable if God didn't do it? It doesn't rule out a brain in a jar, either. Unless you believe the universe is 13.7 billion years old, they are not compatible.--Percy

Good Grief, you are really trying to bullshit a bunch of science nerds? Sometimes it's better to be thought a fool for your silence, than to open your mouth a remove all doubt.

Jessica H. Christ! Are you really so utterly incapable of ever learning the most simple things? LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT SCIENCE BEFORE SPOUTING OFF FALSE NONSENSE ABOUT IT! STOP REGURGITATING CREATIONIST LIES, BUT INSTEAD VERIFY THEIR CLAIMS!It is amazing how much real science can be learned by investigating and verifying creationist claims/lies. There's even a very good series of YouTube videos based on that observation; from my own links page:

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How Creationism Taught Me Real Science, a YouTube video series by Tony Reed

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The general format of this series of more than 40 videos is that he starts out "encountering" a creationist claim, which he presents as a creationist would, whereupon he declares that it sounds so convincing that he just has to investigate it. Of course, the claim falls apart upon inspection.

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What first attracted me to this series was the title, since it reflects my own experience. I have always liked science and knew more about science than most people. But I have found that in researching and refuting creationist claims I have also learned so much more about real science. Also, his videos are well researched and presented clearly.

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As long as you mindlessly parrot creationist lies, you verify our impression that your silly false religion is pure bullshit. Thank you for your tireless dedication to your crusade to promote the growth and spread of atheism. If promoting atheism is not your intended goal, then you need to change your evil ways. Until you do that, then thank you for your service to atheism. Your creationist liar's source is seriously out-of-date, which is extremely common creationist practice (eg, Dr. Henry Morris' catastrophic moon dust claim was an attempt to say "nu-uh!" by citing a "1976" NASA study which was actually the 1967 printing of a 1965 symposium; that claim was so bad and obviously false that even the ICR stopped using it, though you will still find it in Morris' book, Scientific Creationism and other creationist continue to push it). By moving the process out beyond the earth's atmosphere, etc, we have pushed that old limit from half a century ago out to 10,000 light years; Wikipediaj: Parallax in_astronomy:

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In 1989, the satellite Hipparcos was launched primarily for obtaining improved parallaxes and proper motions for over 100,000 nearby stars, increasing the reach of the method tenfold. Even so, Hipparcos was only able to measure parallax angles for stars up to about 1,600 light-years away, a little more than one percent of the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy. The European Space Agency's Gaia mission, launched in December 2013, can measure parallax angles to an accuracy of 10 microarcseconds, thus mapping nearby stars (and potentially planets) up to a distance of tens of thousands of light-years from Earth. In April 2014, NASA astronomers reported that the Hubble Space Telescope, by using spatial scanning, can precisely measure distances up to 10,000 light-years away, a ten-fold improvement over earlier measurements.

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In other news of how far we've advanced from old-timey "truths", the "known" dangers of them new-fangled locomotives have been disproven: it is indeed possible for human lungs to function at speeds exceeding 35 miles per hour. Oh, and, yes, manned powered flight does work.If you want to be an idiot, then that's your own silly business. If you want to learn something, then first you need to pull your head out of your ass. Are you trying to claim that the inverse-square law is false? What stupid lying creationist has deceived you into thinking that? And how could you be such a stupid ignorant idiot to believe him?Astronomers and students of astronomy know a lot about light, extremely more than you and your stupid lying creationists do. Study astronomy and learn even a small fraction of what astronomers know.And, yes, I'm imploring you to learn something with the full knowledge that you will never ever consider doing anything to relieve yourself of your willful ignorance and willful stupidity. You will continue unabated to demonstrate to the world what complete and utter idiots creationists are -- there are different levels of creationist, some of whom are the professionals who cook up and serve the deceptive slop and you low level creationist in the pigsty gorging yourselves on that slop. What the fuck are you talking about? Do you know nothing about Bad title - Wikipedia and what could affect it? Are you completely ignorant of the Doppler effect? And of Frauenhofer lines? And of their roles in astronomy's use of spectroscopy?Learn how things actually work instead of mindlessly gorging yourself on stupid lying creationists' deceptions. What the fuck are you talking about? Yes, it is a well-known fact that light travels at different speeds through different media, which is why the speed of light is specified by the medium (eg, 299,792,458 metres per second IN A VACCUM).But that has nothing to do with Setterfield's stupid false claim that the speed of light has been slowing down over time, AKA "c-decay." Every measurement has a margin of error (depicted in graphs as error bars) and as our more modern measurements of the speed of light have become more accurate (ie, smaller error bars) then that means that the earlier measurements were less accurate (ie, larger error bars). Setterfield tried to cook the data to show decay, whereas in reality the speed of light having remained constant throughout the history of those measurements lies well within the margins of error.In addition, many physics phenomenon (including rates of radioactive decay, the very reason for Setterfield's claim) depend on the speed of light. C-decay would cause a plethora of extreme problems (including the heat problem equivalent to thousands of thermonuclear devices simultaneously detonated over every single square mile of the earth's surface and which no creationist has ever been able to answer, as pointed out frequently by Erika "Gutsick Gibbon" on YouTube (look it up!)), plus analysis of the spectra of objects thousands of light years away exhibit none of the nuclear physics effects that c-decay would have to cause, but instead shows that the speed of light was the same as now even those thousands of years ago.Nothing supports c-decay and everything we see contradicts it.Interesting war story (or "sea story" if you were ever Navy). Circa 1990 a creationist opened a fossil shop in a local mall and he also organized open-format (ie, unmoderated) "creation/evolution debates" in which anyone with something to say could get up and present it. Since I made sure to advertise it, the audience was roughly evenly split.From my website:

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I have actually seen many creationists present a list of old often refuted claims confidently claiming that they "remain unanswered by the evolutionist" (an actual quote from a creationist site that he continues to claim years after learning otherwise), only to be utterly dumbfounded as he watched every single claim get ripped to shreds. For example, at an amateur-night debate I witnessed a young creationist get completely blown away when he got up and announced a "brand-new scientific discovery that will blow you evolutionists away", which turned out to be a then-decade-old claim that was refuted as soon as it was published (Setterfield's claim that the speed of light has been slowing down) and the "evolutionist" half of the audience burst out into uncontrollable laughter while at the same time trying to explain to him why that claim is bogus. It was the young creationist who found himself "completely blown away" by the truth.

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If you weren't so woefully lacking in self-awareness, you would immediately see yourself in that young creationist.Those "debate nights" were also where I learned that creationists are woefully ignorant of their own position. All they can do is to parrot claims that they have heard but do not understand. They literally have no clue what they are talking about. Just like you.

Percy, you wrote:"Actually, triangulation can be applied out to distances of
as much as 400 light years."***I read the same about 400 light years, but considering
how difficult it would be at 100 light years, I find it difficult
to believe with any degree of certainty.Using my head here, but the distance amounts to:
2,400,000,000,000,000 miles (approximately).Even taking measurements at six months apart, when
earth has completed half its trip around the sun, this is
still a huge number.

You're raising an issue of absolutely no significance. The width of a human hair is about .003 inches, a very tiny number, but that's the same as 4,762,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Planck lengths, an absolutely huge number. So what?What matters is the ratio between the triangulation sides. Under ideal circumstances where the star is directly above the Earth's orbital plane and we have an isosceles triangle then that ratio is around 8×10^-8, which is the ratio between 18" and the distance from Juneau to Miami. Given an object that lies in the same line of sight as the star whose distance we're measuring but that is much, much further away (almost any galaxy would do, though of course distant stars are fine, too - the Milky Way is 100,00 light years across and contains billions of stars far enough away), we can detect a difference in distance in degrees of sky as tiny as .01 arcsec. The diameter of Earth's orbit is too small to measure more distant objects.Why are you challenging this science using just "I find it hard to believe" arguments? Despite learning about spooky action at a distance over a half century ago I still find it very hard to believe, yet I believe it because that's what the science tells us. Why do you doubt that astronomers have equipment that can make extremely accurate measurements of very tiny slivers of sky?A better question is why we're discussing this in a thread titled The Glorification and Worship of Torture.--Percy

candle2 is making the typical creationist mistake of applying a naïvely simplistic Kindergarten-level understanding of a scientific principle while ignoring how that principle is actually applied in practice. Restricting himself to tech that's a century old is another common creationist mistake.Distortion from peering through the earth's atmosphere was one limiting factor even half a century ago, but we are no longer limited by that thanks to space-based telescopes. Image processing technology adds even more accuracy. Basing telescopes out into interplanetary space will provide us with a baseline far greater than 2 AU. As I quoted from Wikipedia: "In April 2014, NASA astronomers reported that the Hubble Space Telescope, by using spatial scanning, can precisely measure distances up to 10,000 light-years away, a ten-fold improvement over earlier measurements."A Mexican President remarked c. 1980 in his 60 Minutes interview: "It's been a long time since we've worn feathers." Not only does candle2 think that we still wear feathers, but he also thinks that we're still banging rocks together. Unbeknownst to him, we have made many advancements since then.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

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Galactic newscaster: "And for all you lower lifeforms out there, the secret is to keep banging those rocks together, guys!"

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Wow, talk about getting lost in the minutiae of distance measurements. It's hilarious how some religious folks cling to the tiniest doubts about scientific methods when it comes to anything that goes against their beliefs. I mean, really, are you trying to dissect every little detail just to find a crack in the scientific explanations?And Candle2, seriously, using your "head" to argue against established scientific methods is pretty comical. It's like saying, "Well, I can't imagine it, so it must not be true." Science doesn't care about your imagination; it's based on evidence, observation, and repeatable experiments.Percy, I appreciate you pointing out how insignificant Candle2's arguments are in the grand scheme of things. We have telescopes and instruments capable of measuring incredibly small angles and distances in the vast expanse of the universe. But of course, some people would rather throw doubt on science than accept the wonders it reveals.So, let me ask you all this: if God created everything, why did he make the universe so vast and complex, only for some of his followers to deny the scientific methods that reveal its mysteries? It's like giving someone a beautifully wrapped present and then watching them refuse to open it because they're too caught up in their preconceived notions. Just doesn't make sense, does it?

Personal incredulity is not an argument.

Tangle, you wrote:"It made me bloody angry, I had to leave the room."
This Christian obsession with and mass glorification
of torture made me squirm."***Just because someone calls himself a Christian does
not make it so.No true Christian takes pleasure in what Jesus
went through.Isaiah 52:14 states that Jesus' visage was marred
(disfigured) more than any man, and His form more than
the sons of men.Isaiah 50:6 (NKJV) "I gave my back to those who struck
Me, and My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard;
I did not hide My face from shame and spitting."In Judea, at the time of Christ, a man's beard was a mark
of honor. To have one's beard plucked out by the roots
was to show total disdain for the victim.Luke 22:64 states that Jesus was blindfolded. They would
then strike Him in His face and head. Then they would
challenge Him by asking: "Prophesy! Who is the one who
hit you?Jesus could not see them; therefore, He could not know
when to move His head to soften the blow.The Roman Licters His body with whips containing
numerous straps. Attached to each ends were pieces of
metal, glass, etc. Each lash tore out chunks of meat. On
top of this, a crown of thorns was drove into His head.Satan, as the current ruler of the world, despised the face
of Jesus. He kindled a rage into those who performed
this filthy deed.Jesus had a kind, tender face. There was no deceit in His
eyes. Satan was intent on marring it beyond recognition.Paul states in 1 Corinthians 7:23 that we were bought
at a price.Many false churches preach that once one accepts
Jesus as his personal that he is then free to commit
sin with impunity.God despises sin so much that the death of His Son
(Jesus is our Creator, His blood is worth more than all
our blood combines) was required to pay the death
penalty in our place.If it were a matter of changing His laws in order that we
be free to sin at will, He could have done that without
suffering such a violent death.To feel entitled to sin at will is every bit as wrong as those
who deny Christ.What Christ did, He did out of love for us. He performed
the greatest act of humility ever recorded.

I'm not interested in your maniacal preachings.

Well, your side has had well over 100 years to provide any evidence that refutes Red Shift and so far nothing. One hundred+ years and nothing. That's why science uses supporting evidence rather than assumptions from creationists. Spouting crap from a bunch of bronze age goat herders who wrote as if the whole planet was an area of only a couple thousand square miles.Your ignorance is stunning! Not according to science.

Slight quibble.On the surface, candle2's mere words are true, but candle2's intent is wrong and his meaning is completely false because his idea of "Creation" is completely incompatible with any possible actual Creation. That is to say that his statement as he intends it is completely false, but it actually says nothing at all about the relationship between science (which includes evolution) and a possible Divine Creation. IOW, candle2 through his creationism denies and opposes the Creation.There is nothing about the natural universe that precludes it having been created supernaturally, it's just that, as attributed to Laplace, there is no need to invoke the supernatural in order to explain the natural. Does not disprove the supernatural; it's just that the supernatural is useless for working with the natural.

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"I had no need of that hypothesis."
("Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là", allegedly as a reply to Napoleon, who had asked why he hadn't mentioned God in his book on astronomy.)

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The natural universe is as it is regardless of how it had come into existence (or whether it had even had a beginning). Whether by supernatural means, including having been created by some supernatural Creator (whether of the thousands of Creators created by Man, or an actual Creator beyond Man's feeble imagination to create), or by purely natural processes (or a combination of natural and supernatural), the natural universe is as it actually is and works as it actually works. Whether created or not does not matter one whit.Science is the study of the natural universe, what its nature is and how it works, based on physical evidence. Since there exists no known evidence of the supernatural, the supernatural plays no part in science -- this is not a denial of the possibility of the existence of the supernatural, just recognition of the reality that supernatural speculations cannot contribute anything at all in science. Again, this does not mean that the supernatural does not exist, but merely that it serves no purpose and hence is useless.The natural universe works the same way whether created or not. Scientific discoveries and experiments and engineering products are not affected one whit by the religious beliefs of the scientist or operator or customer nor by any invocations to any of the 288,000 gods that we have created throughout human existence: everything in the natural universe works the same without any gods as it would with any gods (indeed, if any gods were involved, then invoking or not invoking them would have an effect, and yet there is no such effect). If the natural universe were an actual Creation create by an actual Creator, then it was created to be what we actually find it to be and to work as we actually find it to work. What we have discovered about that Creation and how it works is exactly the same as if it were not a Creation. Created or not created: it makes no difference whatsoever. It is what it is.With those caveats in mind, I will use the language of it being an actual Creation created by an actual Creator. Furthermore, I say "actual Creator" to differentiate that Creator from the imaginary "creators" made up by religionists and creationists (eg, candle2 and his handlers) who seek to deny the actual Creator in order to replace It with their own false gods (sorry for that redundancy).Since science studies the Creation, the findings of science cannot contradict the Creation -- yes, we will make mistakes, but we work to detect and correct those mistakes, which eliminates the scenario of us being completely wrong about everything. Therefore, there is no inherent conflict between science and Creation (ie, the actual Creation).Evolution is not only part of science, but it is an integral part of Life and of how Life works. Evolution is the cumulative consequence of Life doing what Life does, such that it is impossible for life to exist without it evolving. Therefore, there is no inherent conflict between evolution and Creation.Science observes and describes the Creation and accepts it as it actually is. In sharp contrast, creationism rejects how the Creation actually is, but rather demands that It conform to their made-up stories which contradict the realities of what the Creation is like and of how it works. Creationists insist that the Creation cannot be as it actually is, and furthermore, they insist that if the Creation is as it actually is, then that disproves the Creator (whom they confuse with their own god).For example, all the evidence shows that the earth is ancient, but YECs insist that if the earth is indeed ancient then that disproves their religion with the implication that that would also disprove their god. For example, when at the 1986 International Conference on Creationism (ICC) practicing petroleum geologist and then-YEC Glenn R. Morton (his deconversion from YECism was in its early stages at the time) asked ICR's John Morris the age of the earth, Morris' response was:

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"If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning."

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("The 1986 International Conference on Creationism" by Robert Schadewald, Creation/Evolution Newsletter, Volume 6, Number 5, September/October 1986, NCSE, pp 8-14.)

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Since the earth is of course obviously more than 10,000 years old, then John Morris has "proven" that Scripture has no meaning, which in his creationist theology "disproves God." Does that mean that an ancient earth actually disproves God? No! Instead, it proves that his creationist theology is wrong about that, as well as his willful stupidity of demanding that his highly fallible Man-made theology is more important than God, that his stupid false theology must be infallible in order for God to exist. Thus, creationism not only denies and rejects the Creation, but it also denies and rejects the Creator.

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Verily, candle2 and his creationism is anti-Creation and anti-Creator. Hence, back to the [qs] thesis, Science and Creation are indeed compatible. It's creationism that is completely incompatible with both science and with Creation.