Understanding creationism, III:<br/> An insider's guide by a former young-Earth creationist

For example, a creationist may calculate that the probability of a fish arriving at a particular DNA sequence by chance mutation is some astronomical number like 1 in 10 30. This number, he believes, is far beyond the limits of what he thinks is reasonable... ...Easy-to-understand examples are vitally important.

eric said:

For example, a creationist may calculate that the probability of a fish arriving at a particular DNA sequence by chance mutation is some astronomical number like 1 in 10 30. This number, he believes, is far beyond the limits of what he thinks is reasonable... ...Easy-to-understand examples are vitally important.

In the spirit of simple examples one can use to refute ID creationism, here's one. Whenever a creationist tells you some probability is beyond the limits of what can happen on earth/in the universe (like 1 in 10^30), do this: 1. Take the exponent. (In this case, 30.) 2. Multiply by 1.3. Round up. (So...39.) 3. Roll that number of 6-sided dice. If you don't have physical dice handy, you can always just have Excel produce a random number between 1 and 6, and copy the formula into 39 rows (or however many rows you need). 4. Congratulations. You have just produced an event less probable than what the creationist said the universe couldn't produce, proving them wrong.

[David] For individuals who are not interested in learning about the underlying microbiology, the card game example from earlier is probably sufficient: the chance of one lone individual drawing one exact hand off the top of the deck is very low; the chance of somebody getting the desired hand when there are hundreds (or thousands) of players all constantly exchanging cards is very high.

[eric] 4. Congratulations. You have just produced an event less probable than what the creationist said the universe couldn’t produce, proving them wrong.

callahanpb said: The tiny subspace of viable outcomes is not arrived at by chance but by a convergent process that requires very accurate replication of genes just as much as it requires a small amount of variability.

david.starling.macmillan said: Any creationist worth his salt (as I daresay I was) will immediately point that out. "You're begging the question. No matter what result you got, you'd say it was a 1e-30 chance...but it isn't, because you were bound to get a result. What you need is a meaningful result, one that will accomplish the evolutionary step required by environmental selection pressure."

And, more importantly, you're still reinforcing the idea that evolution is a singular, individual, linear event. It isn't.

While I'll leave the math for someone else, this helps the creationist to see that reproduction is not just a blind dice roll every generation. Every generation is a trade. Every trade is selectable. So the chances of all those sequences converging to at least one all-matching roll is really, really good.

eric said: Perhaps a good approach is to start with your argument, and if they ignore/handwave/are unwilling to consider the complications inherent in a better biological analogy, use mine as a last resort. "Okay, if you insist on treating evolution according to your equation and ignoring population and selection effects altogether, you're still wrong...and here's why."

david.starling.macmillan said: While I'll leave the math for someone else, this helps the creationist to see that reproduction is not just a blind dice roll every generation. Every generation is a trade. Every trade is selectable. So the chances of all those sequences converging to at least one all-matching roll is really, really good.

I don't know if Figure 1 is your original work or not, but I believe that it is very effective and rich with explanatory possibilities.

First, it shows the emergence of properties in populations over time. One canard that I've heard is the notion that "Adam" with mutation "W" has to somehow wait for "Eve" "W" to show up at the exact same time in order to pass on "W" to their children. This shows that it doesn't have to happen that way.

Second, the "out-of-orderness" is critically important. Mutations come and go all the time. Over time, some of these mutations become "fixed" in the child populations. You might expand the width of the "graph" to show specific mutations dying out in some lineages. In addition, one could show individual mutations popping up spontaneously at different times at different points in the graph.

Third, the graph shows that the "parent" population still lives. The child "blue" and "red" populations are there, but there are still "white" fish. Again, a wider graph could make more explicit the parent "white" lineage continuing to exist.

Fourth, the graph shows contingency. Mutation "E" shows up only in a "purple" lineage. We could expand this area of the graph and demonstrate that, in fact, "E" can only show up (or only be selected for) in the presence of "W" and "V", even though "W" and "V" are detrimental to the final sequence "ABCDEF". "W" and "V" provide the scaffolding to support the emergence of "E", even though "W" and "V" are no longer in the direct ancestry of "ABCDEF", nor even in the parent "white". This shows a direct contradiction to IC.

Fifth, it demonstrates (or could demonstrate) that Evolution has no particular "goal" in mind. The down side of this particular graph is that the "goal" appears to be the "intelligent" sequence "ABCDEF". It's the Weasel program all over again. To those of us "in the know", the sequence "ABCDEF" is obviously arbitrary. But it doesn't look arbitrary to those who want to see a purpose in Life.

Sixth, it demonstrates speciation. At some point, the accumulation of "blue" and "red" mutations are such that any combination is truly detrimental to survival, and you now have two separate lineages that cannot interbreed successfully.

Seventh, it blows up a favorite Creationist canard. At no point in time did a Dog give birth to a Cat. No crocodile gave birth to a duck. No "white" parent gave birth to either a "blue" or "red" child.

What could be even more effective might be an "interactive" and "fractal" graph, one showing different levels of detail at different points which one could zoom in on, or showing different "paths" that different mutations take through the graph. Hook it up to a genetic algorithm of some sort (so you don't have to do it all by hand), and you could generate quite an extensive, extensible, and explorable graph. Being interactive, the student could even turn a few knobs, and watch the expression of the various mutations change over time.

If a graph like this is not part of any high school biology text, it certainly should be. I know for certain that any text I had growing up looked more like Figure 2, with the "obvious" linear changes over time.

david.starling.macmillan said: They obfuscate everything because they aren't willing to actually make a decision on how to define "information".

One of the things I touched on in footnote 1 is critical -- you only need four or five human-genome-length individuals before the chance of getting at least one matching 22-codon sequence is better than your chance of getting a speeding ticket in Hampton, Florida.

Most creationists simply have no concept of microbiology...but think they do, which makes them dangerous. Mostly to themselves.

I said: I've been reading these discussions since around the time of the Kitzmiller decision and there is a lot of misunderstanding about statistics on both sides.

Scott F said: I don't know if Figure 1 is your original work or not, but I believe that it is very effective and rich with explanatory possibilities. [snip] What could be even more effective might be an "interactive" and "fractal" graph, one showing different levels of detail at different points which one could zoom in on, or showing different "paths" that different mutations take through the graph. Hook it up to a genetic algorithm of some sort (so you don't have to do it all by hand), and you could generate quite an extensive, extensible, and explorable graph. Being interactive, the student could even turn a few knobs, and watch the expression of the various mutations change over time. If a graph like this is not part of any high school biology text, it certainly should be. I know for certain that any text I had growing up looked more like Figure 2, with the "obvious" linear changes over time.

Beautiful in its clarity. Thank you DSM.

Both evolution and probability require some thought to understand.

Both, if approached in a superficial way, give rise to characteristic misinterpretations.

The ego-serving creationist bias that the correct understanding of these subjects "must be wrong" is, except in rare circumstances, a virtually insurmountable emotional barrier.

Think about it. Imagine doing a difficult assignment, then going over how to solve all the problems correctly with the professor. However, instead of the humbling but rewarding experience of learning how the problems should be approached, you experience the superficial high of convincing yourself that the professor "must be wrong" and that your mistaken, simplistic efforts were superior.

It isn't very mature, but it's a mechanism for avoiding the mild emotional pain of learning that everything you assume isn't always correct.

Of course, you can't listen to closely to the professor, or their explanations might start to make sense.

A surprising amount of science denial is driven by anti-intellectualism, which is itself often insecurity dealt with by excess arrogance and denigration of that which is poorly understood.

david.starling.macmillan said: Any creationist worth his salt (as I daresay I was) will immediately point that out. "You're begging the question. No matter what result you got, you'd say it was a 1e-30 chance...but it isn't, because you were bound to get a result. What you need is a meaningful result, one that will accomplish the evolutionary step required by environmental selection pressure."

harold said: However, instead of the humbling but rewarding experience of learning how the problems should be approached, you experience the superficial high of convincing yourself that the professor “must be wrong” and that your mistaken, simplistic efforts were superior.

callahanpb said: But... I mean... Noah... Seriously?

eric said:

For example, a creationist may calculate that the probability of a fish arriving at a particular DNA sequence by chance mutation is some astronomical number like 1 in 10 30. This number, he believes, is far beyond the limits of what he thinks is reasonable... ...Easy-to-understand examples are vitally important.

In the spirit of simple examples one can use to refute ID creationism, here's one. Whenever a creationist tells you some probability is beyond the limits of what can happen on earth/in the universe (like 1 in 10^30), do this: 1. Take the exponent. (In this case, 30.) 2. Multiply by 1.3. Round up. (So...39.) 3. Roll that number of 6-sided dice. If you don't have physical dice handy, you can always just have Excel produce a random number between 1 and 6, and copy the formula into 39 rows (or however many rows you need). 4. Congratulations. You have just produced an event less probable than what the creationist said the universe couldn't produce, proving them wrong.

Helena Constantine said:

eric said:

For example, a creationist may calculate that the probability of a fish arriving at a particular DNA sequence by chance mutation is some astronomical number like 1 in 10 30. This number, he believes, is far beyond the limits of what he thinks is reasonable... ...Easy-to-understand examples are vitally important.

In the spirit of simple examples one can use to refute ID creationism, here's one. Whenever a creationist tells you some probability is beyond the limits of what can happen on earth/in the universe (like 1 in 10^30), do this: 1. Take the exponent. (In this case, 30.) 2. Multiply by 1.3. Round up. (So...39.) 3. Roll that number of 6-sided dice. If you don't have physical dice handy, you can always just have Excel produce a random number between 1 and 6, and copy the formula into 39 rows (or however many rows you need). 4. Congratulations. You have just produced an event less probable than what the creationist said the universe couldn't produce, proving them wrong.

You have my expert opinion, FL, that it's full of shit. Why have recourse to Paul, to discuss the influence of the mysteries on Early Christianity. Jesus, or rather the author of the signs source--and yes I accept the signs source and will say why if anyone is interested--that is preserved in John already shows the influence of the mysteries. All of the miracles that Jesus does in John are engaged in a dialog with Greek cults. He turns water into good wine--not the cheap stuff that Dionysus caused to run in the fountains in his temples on his birthday (just happens to be the Epiphany), when he heals the lame man on the Sabbath, he sends him to Siloam to tell them there--Siloam was the site of an Asclepius temple, the miraculous multiplication of food is a spell from the Greek magical papyri, etc. Since you accept the NT as gospel true, FL, you have no choice but to accept that Jesus already copied the mysteries. But these are facts that Nash is completely ignorant of.

I can understand someone thinking “I just don’t get evolution. And I know I didn’t come from a monkey.”

In terms of the typing monkey analogy, this means that Romeo and Juliet could be produced relatively quickly if placed under the constraints of a nonrandom, Darwinian-type selection, by freezing in place any letters that happened to match the target text, and making that the template for the next generation of typing monkeys.

The fact that these early steps resemble gibberish for so many generations shows precisely why Darwinian evolution cannot select for structures that provide no useful function or benefit to the organism. Natural selection might be able to fine-tune sequences which are already highly functional, but it has great difficulty evolving new functional sequences of code.

1st Generation (starting point) WDLTMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P 2nd Generation WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZIMQLO P 10th Generation MDLDMNLS ITJISWHRZREZ MECS P

If only one mutation is needed to confer some ability, then Darwinian evolution has little problem finding it. But if more than one is needed, the probability of getting all the right ones grows exponentially worse. --(Behe, The Edge of Evolution).

FL said: Callahanpb wrote,

[omitted]

That's how evolution works.

That's the "massively parallel" business that David M was quoting from PZ Myers.

Now let's see the probability calculation for an agency which is apt to produce more results than what the laws of chemistry can do. The probability is calculated by a ratio: the number of "favorable" outcomes divided by the number of possible outcomes. If you introduce a agency which can do more things (which is what "supernatural" means, vis-a-vis "natural"), the probability ratio is smaller. However improbable that natural causes would do it, it is even more improbable that supernatural causes would.

A lot of us know why the creationist arguments fail. What I do not understand is why after each failure do they go back to their same bogus sources and pick out something else?

What is the mentality that makes the "argument of the moment" viable. Why does stupid junk like the Gish gallop mean anything to them? To try to support their belief in a young earth they might assert that the speed of light was much faster in the past, but they will move on to something else if you point out something like E equals MC squared. They might start claiming that the earth was in some singularity with the universe aging around it, but when asked about radioactive decay on the earth being the same as the radioactive decay in meteorites they just move on to the next stupid senseless argument.

It seems that they only have to lie to themselves in the immediate present to make whatever they claim as problem solving work.

How does that work? What is the mentality that makes something so stupid, sensible for them to do? Virtually nothing they make up has to be consistent. How does that work?

Ron Okimoto said: A lot of us know why the creationist arguments fail. What I do not understand is why after each failure do they go back to their same bogus sources and pick out something else? What is the mentality that makes the "argument of the moment" viable.

Floyd is so cute when he flings his feces around like a monkey and pretends to understand science. Sort of a self defeating argument from the monkey boy.

FL said: Get a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, so they say, and Voila! Somewhere down the road, the critters will hand you a brand-new, error-free copy of Shakespeare's Works. That's how evolution works.

"when in reality they have not demonstrated any reason for unguided natural selection to retain many of the evolutionary steps."

Now Dawkins' pre-selected target (includinga pre-selected number of letters) is METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. The fact that the target phrase and even the number of letters have been intelligently pre-selected should be a red flag for everybody,

So why would unguided, un-teleological natural selection select and retain any of these gibberish phrases? No functional advantage, no extra dollop of fitness, is cited or shown in any of these first 10 generations

No reason is given for each gibberish generation's retention

But if more than one is needed, the probability of getting all the right ones grows exponentially worse. --(Behe, The Edge of Evolution).

Q [Rothschild]. And one last other question on your paper. You concluded, it would take a population size of 10 to the 9th, I think we said that was a billion, 10 to the 8th generations to evolve this new disulfide bond, that was your conclusion? A. [Behe] That was the calculation based on the assumptions in the paper, yes. MR. ROTHSCHILD: May I approach the witness, Your Honor? THE COURT: You may. BY MR. ROTHSCHILD: Q. What I've marked as Exhibit P-756 is an article in the journal Science called Exploring Micro-- A. Microbial. Q. Thank you -- Diversity, A Vast Below by T.P. Curtis and W.T. Sloan? A. Yes, that seems to be it. Q. In that first paragraph, he says, There are more than 10 to the 16 prokaryotes in a ton of soil. Is that correct, in that first paragraph? A. Yes, that's right. Q. In one ton of soil? A. That's correct. Q. And we have a lot more than one ton of soil on Earth, correct? A. Yes, we do. Q. And have for some time, correct? A. That's correct, yes.

Get a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, so they say, and Voila! Somewhere down the road, the critters will hand you a brand-new, error-free copy of Shakespeare’s Works.

harold said:

Get a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, so they say, and Voila! Somewhere down the road, the critters will hand you a brand-new, error-free copy of Shakespeare’s Works.

I'd call this a straw man, but that would be too insulting to other straw men.

eric said: So what FL is really arguing is that Dembki's proposed algorithm would not lead to the ecosystems we see today. I agree, it wouldn't. :)

harold said: Both evolution and probability require some thought to understand. Both, if approached in a superficial way, give rise to characteristic misinterpretations. The ego-serving creationist bias that the correct understanding of these subjects "must be wrong" is, except in rare circumstances, a virtually insurmountable emotional barrier. ...Of course, you can't listen to closely to the professor, or their explanations might start to make sense. A surprising amount of science denial is driven by anti-intellectualism, which is itself often insecurity dealt with by excess arrogance and denigration of that which is poorly understood.

I said: You can’t (a) concede that evolution has a certain limited explanatory power and then (b) continue to insist that evolution is equivalent to a model without even that much explanatory power.

FL said: Say No To Monkey Business!

eric said:

harold said:

Get a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, so they say, and Voila! Somewhere down the road, the critters will hand you a brand-new, error-free copy of Shakespeare’s Works.

I'd call this a straw man, but that would be too insulting to other straw men.

Ironically, it aptly describes Dembski's random search algorithm. So what FL is really arguing is that Dembki's proposed algorithm would not lead to the ecosystems we see today. I agree, it wouldn't. :)

FL said: ... But wait! A million monkeys typing on a million typewriters is actually far more likely to hand to you, NOT some brand-new error-free copy of Shakespeare's Works, but instead a million urine-soaked typewriters clogged up with monkey-poop. So various variations of the argument had to be offered... FL

TomS said: And this reveals the real reason for Creationism, whether it's Young Earth, Old Earth, Intelligent Design, and the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Pithecophobia:

callahanpb said:

TomS said: And this reveals the real reason for Creationism, whether it's Young Earth, Old Earth, Intelligent Design, and the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Pithecophobia:

I assume this is meant tongue-in-cheek, but the pathology clearly runs deeper, because there are much easier ways to believe in your exalted state above the animals if that's your thing. Theistic evolution works just fine for this (dust with God's breath or monkey with God's breath, what's the difference?). The monkey thing is a rhetorical tool, not an end in itself. I guess it works on some people.

TomS said: If theistic evolution works just fine, why not choose theistic evolution?

Condorcet said: ... 2.) Perhaps more troubling, I find that many of them are simply unwilling to concede that any amount of evidence ever trumps a strongly and dearly held opinion and that no one, under any circumstances, should ever be called out or criticized for holding an opinion no matter how ill-informed as long as they are sincere and committed to that opinion. The purity of their emotional connection to that opinion is paramount as is their right, Constitutionally derived, to freely express that opinion without censure or judgment from others. Since science (and most other real scholarship) depends on falsifiability and replication of results, rather than deep emotional commitment to opinions, it just follows that anit-intellectual science denial would also be deeply ingrained.

TomS said: There is a difference between dust and monkeys. Monkeys are too much like us to be comfortable. It is too obvious that we are related to monkeys. If theistic evolution works just fine, why not choose theistic evolution?

ksplawn said:

I think part of the problem is that they were exposed to the "controversy!" side of things first. I read Mark Twain's essay on the Not-Shakespeare thing and it did seem to be convincing at the time. Why? Because his account was the only one I'd read. His statements seemed authoritative in the absence of counter-arguments and facts which would refute them. Indeed, part of his argument was that there were no facts which would refute them because we had about six definitive facts about Shakespeare at all, and he spun those in a way to make them seem antithetical to the mainstream view of Shakespeare which he alleged to be built up on generations of ossified assumptions and inferences instead of facts. I a way that I'm sure he didn't intend, Twain's essay essentially poisoned the well by arguing that any "fact" you might read about Shakespeare was really a wild guess that had become dressed up over time and passed along as fact instead. If that's the kind of thing people are introduced to, and if there isn't a ready antidote available, the idea can stick with them and (ironically) ossify itself into a "fact" that they take some pride in knowing. That makes it all the more resilient against being dislodged later.

This is a great commentary. Twain's essay, of course, was inspired by the "work" of the aptly named Looney, one of the first Authorship deniers to publish. There is an irony here in that Twain's own literary reputation (and his concomitant reputation as a myth-debunker) lent all the needed authority to his points. Of course, literary criticism and historical/archival research methods at the time were on a par with Victorian amateur natural history (and Biblical textual criticism, as discussed in the comments of Part One of David's series). The "six facts" situation was also exacerbated by 50+ years of unbridled and uncritical bardolotry (which included hilarious episodes of forgery production as well). Another peculiar feature was that most contemporary thinking about Shakespeare had been guided by the leading Romantics (especially Coleridge, Keats, and Hazlitt, who, although both were cogent and perceptive readers/critics of Shakespeare, constructed an image of him that corresponded exactly with their own Romantic theories of the isolated, self-conscious "poetic genius" that they of course saw themselves being), whose theories of biography and even of individual self-fashioning were the product of the Enlightenment, German Idealist philosophy, and the Fallout of the French Revolution, rather than the more nuanced and complex Early Modern English Renaissance conception of these issues embedded in actual Elizabethan/Jacobian writings. The Romantics built a Shakespeare who was a genius forever absent from his own work (Keats called it "negative capability")precisely because they could find few if any traces of what they conceived of as biographical, personal, self-conscious lyricism in the extant canon.

FL said: Get a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, so they say, and Voila! Somewhere down the road, the critters will hand you a brand-new, error-free copy of Shakespeare's Works. That's how evolution works. That's the "massively parallel" business that David M was quoting from PZ Myers.

Katharine said: First, that it implies that evolution has an endgame, that modern humans in particular (i.e., the works of Shakespeare in this analogy) represent some sort of apex or intended result.

Katharine said:

FL said: Get a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, so they say, and Voila! Somewhere down the road, the critters will hand you a brand-new, error-free copy of Shakespeare's Works. That's how evolution works. That's the "massively parallel" business that David M was quoting from PZ Myers.

Well, there are a couple of glaring problems with the chimps+typewriters=Shakespeare analogy that desperately need to be addressed. First, that it implies that evolution has an endgame, that modern humans in particular (i.e., the works of Shakespeare in this analogy) represent some sort of apex or intended result. Evolution by natural processes does not make this claim, whereas creationism does maintain that modern humans were created in their present form specially and as the pinnacle in a hierarchy of Earthly life (i.e., in god's "image"). Second, the analogy ignores that the English language, like biology and chemistry and all other sciences, operates via its peculiar set of observable, testable rules. (Of course, being a human construct, its rules are far less rigid and are mutable through time, but they nevertheless exist.) Random typing of characters is not directly analogous to gene transfer, or even how proteins and DNA/RNA work on a molecular level. (The same problem exists with the Weasel experiment, which sets no perimeters for acceptable combinations of letters within English.) The continued insistence that evolution operates on "random" processes, which is an argument of creationism, is an oversimplification at its most innocent and a deliberate misrepresentation of biological processes at its most sinister. Lastly, a reminder: both of your examples represent thought experiments. They are symbolic. It would be a fallacy to take them literally. So that would be a big: NO. That is NOT how evolution works.

Condorcet said:

harold said: Both evolution and probability require some thought to understand. Both, if approached in a superficial way, give rise to characteristic misinterpretations. The ego-serving creationist bias that the correct understanding of these subjects "must be wrong" is, except in rare circumstances, a virtually insurmountable emotional barrier. ...Of course, you can't listen to closely to the professor, or their explanations might start to make sense. A surprising amount of science denial is driven by anti-intellectualism, which is itself often insecurity dealt with by excess arrogance and denigration of that which is poorly understood.

Unfortunately, this anti-intellectualism is not limited to science denial. It seems rather to be a feature of life in America these days. David's series immediately brought to mind an analogous, if minor in comparison, problem in my field of Shakespeare studies. You may be aware of the so-called Authorship Controversy, that is, the argument that Shakespeare did not write his own plays and poems but rather functioned as a front for a nobleman (usually today Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford is the preferred candidate) who wanted to publish his work anonymously. This hilarious conspiracy theory can be traced only back to the mid-19th century where its origin was simple snobbery on the part of some Oxbridge people who were incensed that England's greatest writer lacked a university education (which at his time consisted almost exclusively of Latin and theology) AND was a commoner to boot. The idea's "scientific" impetus or evidence was, well, the putative lack of evidence from Shakespeare's life (a lack, incidentally, endemic to ANY 16th century English person who was not royal or noble)such as letters, diaries, obituaries, etc. The "debate" was also fueled by people like Mark Twain, who expressed his personal doubts (as if his position as a very fine writer qualified him in some way to address historical and archival knowledge...his quote [just one] on the subject is still invoked by "Oxfordians" today). Since Twain's time, mountains of scholarship and deep archival work have revealed far more knowledge about Shakespeare's life and times than was ever available in the centuries since his death. There are no reputable scholars or experts that I am aware of, at any college or university that is properly credentialed, who subscribe to the "controversy". Instead, there is a gaggle of modern pundits, a selection of very well-known Shakespearean actors (Mark Rylance and Derrick Jacobi among them), and other non-scholars who continue to present to the media and the public that there is an equivalent validity between their conspiracies and the scholarly work of Shakespeare specialists (see James Shapiro's "Contested Wills" for an outstanding survey of the history and nature of the issue). What I have found instructive is that the same logical fallacies, obfuscation, and willful misreading of evidence so evident in the work of YEC and ID adherents are the methodology of the Oxfordians (and the Marlovians, etc.)Reading one of their treatises or webpages (most are on the web because reputable presses will not usually publish them -- with some exceptions)is pretty much the same exercise in obscurancy and convoluted syntax and logic that I have noticed in, shall we say, certain posts-that-shall-remain-anonymous on these threads. Two simple examples of the absurdity of the position: 1. Oxford died in 1604, before a hefty chunk of Shakespeare's plays were written and published. The theory is that he had already pre-written them (including apparently prophetic references to future historical events like the gun powder plot and subsequent Guy Fawkes trial of 1605-1606) and then had them squibbed out periodically to maintain the secret of his authorship. There is a kind of reverse Occam's razor involved in all of it. 2. Shakespeare did not work in a vacuum. There were dozens of other playwrights and poets in Elizabethan/Jacobean London, even the most well known of whom (Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster) we have even less documentary evidence about than we do for Will S. Yet, there are no authorship controversies surrounding ANY of the other writers (except for the one that Marlowe faked his own death in 1593, moved to Venice, and wrote all of Shakespeare's plays himself--sending them back to the front). The lack of documentary life evidence which drives the Shakespeare denial does not produce any Webster denial or Middleton denial. My students, however, are very inclined to read an indifferently fact-checked article on the web, see an interview with an actor who must be an expert on historical Shakespeare scholarship because he is so great at performing the words, or watch a travesty of a mistake-filled film like "Anonymous"(which can't even get the known facts of Oxford's biography accurately) and conclude that there is indeed a furious controversy over the issue, that experts are suppressing true inquiry into the matter to protect their own careers and the so-called Shakespeare industry. There is a strong current in the thinking of these students that: 1.) experts do not really have expertise and are simply expressing opinions that they have a vested interest in maintaining (a very naive version of postmodern power analysis, for sure). 2.) Perhaps more troubling, I find that many of them are simply unwilling to concede that any amount of evidence ever trumps a strongly and dearly held opinion and that no one, under any circumstances, should ever be called out or criticized for holding an opinion no matter how ill-informed as long as they are sincere and committed to that opinion. The purity of their emotional connection to that opinion is paramount as is their right, Constitutionally derived, to freely express that opinion without censure or judgment from others. Since science (and most other real scholarship) depends on falsifiability and replication of results, rather than deep emotional commitment to opinions, it just follows that anit-intellectual science denial would also be deeply ingrained.

Thanks for commenting, Andrew! Glad you're enjoying this series. I actually followed a path not to far from your own; I minored in history while I was getting my physics degree, and being able to identify fallacies in historical arguments was incredibly helpful when it came to finally rejecting YEC.

eric said:

Ron Okimoto said: A lot of us know why the creationist arguments fail. What I do not understand is why after each failure do they go back to their same bogus sources and pick out something else? What is the mentality that makes the "argument of the moment" viable.

Its: "putting prayer and god back in schools is really important, so if we have to pretend to a secular motive and justification for doing that, we will." Just go back and read the first page of the Wedge document. "[The Center] seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies..." Or just look at the local paper comments defending any attempt to put creationism back in schools, any place the issue crops up; the defenders will basically tell you its about putting God back in schools.

Ron Okimoto said: Why can creationists jump from one stupid argument to another understanding why they have to do it and still expect that they are doing anything reasonable?

When one bogus argument fails why should another bogus argument be any better? Why doesn't it ever occur to them that they have no valid argument?

And to that add the fact that physics has a principle of uncertainty as one of its basic principles!!111!!one! :D

So, what is the probability of the supernatural typist on a supernatural typewriter producing even one sentence of English? Even a few letters of consecutive English letters in one row?

Rolf said: TomS, what about time?

So, what is the probability of the supernatural typist on a supernatural typewriter producing even one sentence of English? Even a few letters of consecutive English letters in one row?

The way I understand all these discussions about what randomness may lead to, the basic premise is that a truely random process operating on a given set of objects will, in due time produce every possible permutation. But wouldn't an unlimited number of parallel processes produce all possible permutations at one fell swoop? At this point, my mind start to boggle and I revert to the theory that we have to stay away from such speculations and stick to what we already have learned about nature, hybridizing it with what conjectures we may make as reasonable projections of what we think it all means? Our basic premise being that we know nothing of supernature and as long as all we know(!) about it is what's found in dubious ancient texts written by people with no knowledge about what makes the world tick, we cannot reliably introduce supernature in our equations. An omnipresent, omniscient and omniscient something is an absurdity. Being everywhere, in every thinkable particle regradless of size from the tiniest boson, quark and whatever, and upwards to galaxies and universes, and able do do anything it pleases with all of that - simultaneously? (A less ambitious concept like the deity we find in the Bible is of course subjected to severe limitations, being more like a hyped up version of a human being and therefore severely limited in his capabilities.) So I know only one possible candidate for that object: The universe itself. It/that is it, the ultimate creator, it's machinations responsible for all and everything within it, and ultimately for itself. Only one question maybe forever will remain open, the ultimate mystery: "How come?" That's it as far as the real world is concerned, the spiritual world is quite another subject. According the the book, the concept of "two kingdoms" was known even to the character "Jesus". (Je suis?)

Rolf said: An omnipresent, omniscient and omniscient something is an absurdity. Being everywhere, in every thinkable particle regradless of size from the tiniest boson, quark and whatever, and upwards to galaxies and universes, and able do do anything it pleases with all of that - simultaneously? (A less ambitious concept like the deity we find in the Bible is of course subjected to severe limitations, being more like a hyped up version of a human being and therefore severely limited in his capabilities.) So I know only one possible candidate for that object: The universe itself. It/that is it, the ultimate creator, it's machinations responsible for all and everything within it, and ultimately for itself.

Yes. I admit I painted my scenario with a wide brush. But even Genetic Algorithms are a problem for creationists.

Rolf said: The way I understand all these discussions about what randomness may lead to, the basic premise is that a truely random process operating on a given set of objects will, in due time produce every possible permutation.

A number of years ago I wrote and mathematically analyzed two versions of Dawkins’ WEASEL program. One version allows only one site mutation per offspring per generation; the other allows all sites to mutate for each offspring per generation. I have those programs running on an HP Prime graphing calculator in which I can plot multiple runs on top of the theoretically predicted curves, and they match very nicely.

David’s graphical demonstration reminds me of a reinterpretation of the WEASEL program as one changes one's perspective on what the program represents (it is a genetic algorithm that can represent a number of physical and chemical processes if the fitness landscape is turned upside down and becomes a potential well profile).

This other reinterpretation can apply especially to the version of the program in which all cites are allowed to mutate for each offspring for each generation. Each offspring in this algorithm can be seen as a cluster of offspring and the set of clusters are all subjected to the same selection pressures.

One’s first thought of allowing all sites to mutate each generation might be that the convergence is less likely than allowing only one site to mutate per offspring per generation. However, this version converges just as nicely.

Both the theoretical predictions and the actual runs show a rapid decrease in average “distance” of the offspring from the target representing the “best fit” to the new environment and then a leveling off at a fixed distance. Average “distance” is defined as the average of the number of differences between the offspring and the target. It is from this fixed “distance” from the “target” that the “winners” emerge.

The reason why this simple little algorithm is so interesting is that it represents some fundamental processes of objects falling into potential wells in nature. Selection pressures on living organisms can be seen as a phenomenological “force” that is the gradient of a potential energy well.

And when all sites are allowed to mutate each generation, we are watching a sifting operation that gradually “pulls” the set of clusters toward the bottom of the well. The reason that the trend is toward the bottom of the well is that energy is gradually drained out of the system as it sinks deeper into the well and stays there.

Evolution is basically a process of clusters of atoms and molecules finding local minima in a landscape of potential wells. The second law of thermodynamics is required in order for this to happen, otherwise energy would never spread around and allow things to equilibrate by settling into local minima.

And these systems can’t trickle down unless there are energy sources that place them in higher states from which they can sample the potential well landscape.

callahanpb said: So I guess I sort of agree with Rolf (and perhaps disagree with TomS) that the limits of the tornado in a junkyard don't apply to supernatural beings. The tornado could just go faster and faster so it finishes in a finite amount of time, and the supernatural being just stops it when he sees the 747 assemble itself.

I suspect that there are very few genuine biblical literalists out there even among fundamentalist Christians. A lot them probably accept the basic principle of creation and a fall, without thinking about it too hard, because it answers (actually dismisses) questions we all have.

— callahanpb

Frank J said: If you restrict it to strict YECs it’s probably as low as 10%.

And in this case the great majority, maybe even 90% of adult Americans [are unclear on evolution's status as an uncontroversial scientific fact and do not understand its empirical justification.]

callahanpb said:

Frank J said: If you restrict it to strict YECs it’s probably as low as 10%.

Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old? OK, there's literal and there's literal. I would accept non-24-hour creation days as literal, if it made any difference, since the definition of "day" is unspecified. But wouldn't you at least have to have the flood occurring only a few thousand years ago? I mean these as questions, not as a rebuttal. I'm sure there are many ways to believe all kinds of things and still claim it is a "literal" interpretation, so I don't dispute the self-reported figures. (But I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of beliefs of the "I accept it all literally, but I am not a YEC.") The account of Noah seems especially problematic to me, the more I think about it (which has been a lot more since David's second posting, since I failed to appreciate how important it is to the YEC narrative). I accept that the Bible contains accounts of miracles (parting of the Red Sea, Jesus curing a blind man) and someone can believe in this literally as something that happened in historical times with God's intervention. At the other extreme, you have Genesis 1, where every action is the result of an omnipotent God, which suffices to make it internally consistent. But in the case of Noah, the story isn't quite origins and isn't quite history. Noah did not have the power to work miracles, so his handiwork needs to be evaluated with respect to ordinary physical constraints, and yet he is singlehandedly responsible for saving the entire land fauna of earth.

And in this case the great majority, maybe even 90% of adult Americans [are unclear on evolution's status as an uncontroversial scientific fact and do not understand its empirical justification.]

(I hope my paraphrase is accurate, but anyway, I think I get your point.) A lot of people (not just Americans) don't understand science (not just evolution). I'd be interested in knowing for comparison what percentage of Americans could explain reasonably well why astronauts in low earth orbit experience weightlessnesss (i.e. that it's because they're in free fall, not because of their distance from the center of the earth, which is not much different from ground level). I agree that there is a particular crisis with regard to the understanding of evolution (at least nobody is asking to "teach the controversy" about weightlessness), but I'm not sure the 90% number is staggeringly high compared to other scientific topics that really just require a certain amount of curiosity and diligence before you'll ever get them. Most people are at least a little curious about scientific questions, but I think only a small minority is especially concerned about applying the thinking needed to get scientific answers.

callahanpb said: A lot of people (not just Americans) don't understand science (not just evolution). I'd be interested in knowing for comparison what percentage of Americans could explain reasonably well why astronauts in low earth orbit experience weightlessnesss (i.e. that it's because they're in free fall, not because of their distance from the center of the earth, which is not much different from ground level).

I am surprised that she managed to get through school without learning the basic outline of the solar system, though.

AltairIV said: After watching this she turned to me and asked, in all seriousness, whether Mars or the Moon was closer to the Earth.

callahanpb said:

Frank J said: If you restrict it to strict YECs it’s probably as low as 10%.

Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old? OK, there's literal and there's literal. I would accept non-24-hour creation days as literal, if it made any difference, since the definition of "day" is unspecified. But wouldn't you at least have to have the flood occurring only a few thousand years ago? I mean these as questions, not as a rebuttal. I'm sure there are many ways to believe all kinds of things and still claim it is a "literal" interpretation, so I don't dispute the self-reported figures. (But I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of beliefs of the "I accept it all literally, but I am not a YEC.") The account of Noah seems especially problematic to me, the more I think about it (which has been a lot more since David's second posting, since I failed to appreciate how important it is to the YEC narrative). I accept that the Bible contains accounts of miracles (parting of the Red Sea, Jesus curing a blind man) and someone can believe in this literally as something that happened in historical times with God's intervention. At the other extreme, you have Genesis 1, where every action is the result of an omnipotent God, which suffices to make it internally consistent. But in the case of Noah, the story isn't quite origins and isn't quite history. Noah did not have the power to work miracles, so his handiwork needs to be evaluated with respect to ordinary physical constraints, and yet he is singlehandedly responsible for saving the entire land fauna of earth.

And in this case the great majority, maybe even 90% of adult Americans [are unclear on evolution's status as an uncontroversial scientific fact and do not understand its empirical justification.]

(I hope my paraphrase is accurate, but anyway, I think I get your point.) A lot of people (not just Americans) don't understand science (not just evolution). I'd be interested in knowing for comparison what percentage of Americans could explain reasonably well why astronauts in low earth orbit experience weightlessnesss (i.e. that it's because they're in free fall, not because of their distance from the center of the earth, which is not much different from ground level). I agree that there is a particular crisis with regard to the understanding of evolution (at least nobody is asking to "teach the controversy" about weightlessness), but I'm not sure the 90% number is staggeringly high compared to other scientific topics that really just require a certain amount of curiosity and diligence before you'll ever get them. Most people are at least a little curious about scientific questions, but I think only a small minority is especially concerned about applying the thinking needed to get scientific answers.

SLC said: Actually, a better explanation is that the acceleration of gravity is exactly counterbalanced by the centrifugal acceleration so that there is no net acceleration acting on the astronauts.

stevaroni said:

SLC said: Actually, a better explanation is that the acceleration of gravity is exactly counterbalanced by the centrifugal acceleration so that there is no net acceleration acting on the astronauts.

Centripetal acceleration, a small but important distinction (or so my high school physics teacher would constantly claim).

Making the distinction between centripetal force and centrifugal force is of some pedagogical value in introductory physics when introducing the ideas about different reference frames.

However, as students move into more advanced perspectives in physics, the notion of transformations between reference frames becomes important; and one should not get too pedantic about “pseudo forces.”

In relativity, for example, a pure magnetic field in one reference frame will be seen as both an electric and a magnetic field in another frame; neither observer is privileged.

The same goes for pseudo forces. An observer in an accelerated frame can account for his observations using a force, such as gravity or a coriolis force; and if the observer has no opportunity to get out of his frame and see it from another frame, there is little choice but to work with the forces one finds in one’s reference frame.

This becomes especially relevant from our perspective of being embedded in our universe; we can’t get “outside” it and see it from another perspective. The theories that explain what we see have to explain them in terms of what we observers see within our universe; we can get out.

Much of the mathematics of general relativity and modern physics is stated in terms of mappings between manifolds in which observers are embedded.

This is also true of quantum mechanics; and many of the “paradoxes” of quantum mechanics disappear when one realizes that each observer is confined to his/her own reference frame and will never be able to see two reference frames simultaneously or perform two different measurements involving two complimentary variables – e.g., momentum and position - simultaneously.

In general relativity, the person in orbit is in free fall (to a pretty good approximation as the spatial extent of the reference frame becomes small enough so that no tidal forces or coriolis forces are felt).

However, because the orbiting frame is also traveling at a high enough velocity perpendicular to the direction of free fall, it is always falling over the horizon and not crashing into the body about which it is orbiting.

In a free falling reference frame, light travels in straight lines in any direction just as it does in any inertial frame.

However, because the orbiting frame is also traveling at a high enough velocity perpendicular to the direction of free fall, it is always falling over the horizon and not crashing into the body about which it is orbiting.

Henry J said:

However, because the orbiting frame is also traveling at a high enough velocity perpendicular to the direction of free fall, it is always falling over the horizon and not crashing into the body about which it is orbiting.

Or to put it another way, they keep throwing themselves at the ground, and missing. Henry

SLC said: Actually, a better explanation is that the acceleration of gravity is exactly counterbalanced by the centrifugal acceleration so that there is no net acceleration acting on the astronauts.

While the difference in gravity between the ground and NEO is not great, even a relatively small radial distance can be sufficient for gravity gradient stabilization.

I remember an adult wondering why they didn't take some air in the spaceships so that the astronauts would not be weightless.

callahanpb said:

SLC said: Actually, a better explanation is that the acceleration of gravity is exactly counterbalanced by the centrifugal acceleration so that there is no net acceleration acting on the astronauts.

There are different ways of understanding the reason for zero gravity in orbit, but I'm pretty sure there is a common misconception that it has something to do with being "in space", which it doesn't (i.e. you could be in orbit at sea level if you somehow eliminated friction, and you'd still experience zero gravity). I don't have the stats, and I won't speculate how common this is. Speaking only for myself, I didn't really get it until taking high school physics, and even then I'm not sure I matched up what I knew about the inverse square law to the fact that you have almost the same acceleration of gravity in low earth orbit as you do on the ground. Back then I used to like classic science fiction (e.g. Clarke or Asimov) where this kind of thing came up, so I did get exposure, but the popular understanding generally associates zero gravity with space. I've also thought that what people really fail to understand is why they "feel" gravity in the first place, since it pulls on every part of them almost equally. People actually feel the normal force (speaking of fictitious forces) of pushing against whatever surface is preventing them from moving in the direction of gravity. With this in mind, I understand zero gravity as what happens when your surroundings have the same acceleration as you do, so "free fall" seems like a reasonable explanation. Fortunately, this part of science (unlike evolution) is not subject to a well-funded disinformation campaign, so the prognosis is probably better. However, all science requires diligence and not everyone is willing to put the time in.

Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old?

— Callahanpb

I believe that the poor results from the polls on scientific knowledge are due mostly to people like her; people who don't distrust science so much as just lack the curiosity and/or opportunity to really learn.

— AltaitIV

SLC said: Creationism differs only in that most of its promoters appear to be doing it primarily not for financial gain...

SLC said: I entirely agree that it has nothing to do with being in space, other then not being subject to air friction. The whole point is that someone in a space craft in orbit around the Earth is subject to no net accelerations, i.e. is weightless. This is an important point to remember when computing time dilation within the space ship. Essentially, because clocks in the space ship are subject to 0 net acceleration, they would run slightly faster then clocks on the ground as computed from GR. However, the velocity dependent time dilation of SR due to being in orbit causes them to run slightly slower then clocks on the ground. Thus the net effect depends on the height of the orbit. When the satellite is in low orbit, SR dominates and the clocks run slower. When the satellite is in a much higher orbit so that the orbital velocity is lower, GR dominates and the clocks run faster. Of course, if the orbit is elliptical, then the situation becomes more complicated as it could happen that the clocks run faster at apogee and slower at perigee.

callahanpb said: Fortunately, this part of science (unlike evolution) is not subject to a well-funded disinformation campaign, so the prognosis is probably better. However, all science requires diligence and not everyone is willing to put the time in.

Scott F said to SLC: [...] But my limited or intuitive understanding may be wrong in this case.

Mike Elzinga said: ID/creationist “refutations” of science are strictly on an ad hoc, “need-to-know” basis.

SLC said: I entirely agree that it has nothing to do with being in space, other then not being subject to air friction. The whole point is that someone in a space craft in orbit around the Earth is subject to no net accelerations, i.e. is weightless. This is an important point to remember when computing time dilation within the space ship. Essentially, because clocks in the space ship are subject to 0 net acceleration, they would run slightly faster then clocks on the ground as computed from GR. However, the velocity dependent time dilation of SR due to being in orbit causes them to run slightly slower then clocks on the ground. Thus the net effect depends on the height of the orbit. When the satellite is in low orbit, SR dominates and the clocks run slower. When the satellite is in a much higher orbit so that the orbital velocity is lower, GR dominates and the clocks run faster. Of course, if the orbit is elliptical, then the situation becomes more complicated as it could happen that the clocks run faster at apogee and slower at perigee.

KlausH said:

SLC said: I entirely agree that it has nothing to do with being in space, other then not being subject to air friction. The whole point is that someone in a space craft in orbit around the Earth is subject to no net accelerations, i.e. is weightless. This is an important point to remember when computing time dilation within the space ship. Essentially, because clocks in the space ship are subject to 0 net acceleration, they would run slightly faster then clocks on the ground as computed from GR. However, the velocity dependent time dilation of SR due to being in orbit causes them to run slightly slower then clocks on the ground. Thus the net effect depends on the height of the orbit. When the satellite is in low orbit, SR dominates and the clocks run slower. When the satellite is in a much higher orbit so that the orbital velocity is lower, GR dominates and the clocks run faster. Of course, if the orbit is elliptical, then the situation becomes more complicated as it could happen that the clocks run faster at apogee and slower at perigee.

Um, higher orbits have HIGHER velocity.

KlausH said: Um, higher orbits have HIGHER velocity.

Henry J said:

Scott F said to SLC: [...] But my limited or intuitive understanding may be wrong in this case.

You're using Newton's ideas, SLC was putting it in terms of Einstein's ideas.

Scott F said: I was going to make that same mistake too, before I looked it up. :-) The dynamics of orbital mechanics is really weird. To gain altitude, you fire your rocket horizontally, perpendicular to the direction you want to go, which actually lowers your velocity in the direction you fired your rocket. I'd have to work out the math, but your trading speed for altitude

stevaroni said:

Scott F said: I was going to make that same mistake too, before I looked it up. :-) The dynamics of orbital mechanics is really weird. To gain altitude, you fire your rocket horizontally, perpendicular to the direction you want to go, which actually lowers your velocity in the direction you fired your rocket. I'd have to work out the math, but your trading speed for altitude

The astronauts of the Gemini project were with you on this observation. As the first American pilots to attempt orbital rendezvous, they were pretty much blindsided about how amazingly counter intuitive "flying" in orbit was. Yes, they had been briefed on how things were going to work but everybody pretty much figured that there would be some "on the job learning', but, being pilots, they would figure it out. The problem was that everything about conventional flying went the wrong way, all of the pilots noted how unintuitive large-scale maneuvers were, with altitude coupled weirdly to speed, and several of the early Gemini test flights quickly ran out of maneuvering fuel and had to cut their rendezvous and station-keeping experiments short. Later flights learned to ignore the "flying there" instinct and think in terms of planning ahead to use altitude as a proxy for adjusting speed. You can see this when a ship leaves the space station to re-enter, it fires retro-rockets to slow down, thus, it looses altitude, and quickly pulls ahead of the station which sometimes gets to watch it re-enter, out there in the distance, and take incredibly cool pictures.

stevaroni said:

Scott F said: I was going to make that same mistake too, before I looked it up. :-) The dynamics of orbital mechanics is really weird. To gain altitude, you fire your rocket horizontally, perpendicular to the direction you want to go, which actually lowers your velocity in the direction you fired your rocket. I'd have to work out the math, but your trading speed for altitude

The astronauts of the Gemini project were with you on this observation. As the first American pilots to attempt orbital rendezvous, they were pretty much blindsided about how amazingly counter intuitive "flying" in orbit was. Yes, they had been briefed on how things were going to work but everybody pretty much figured that there would be some "on the job learning', but, being pilots, they would figure it out. The problem was that everything about conventional flying went the wrong way, all of the pilots noted how unintuitive large-scale maneuvers were, with altitude coupled weirdly to speed, and several of the early Gemini test flights quickly ran out of maneuvering fuel and had to cut their rendezvous and station-keeping experiments short. Later flights learned to ignore the "flying there" instinct and think in terms of planning ahead to use altitude as a proxy for adjusting speed. You can see this when a ship leaves the space station to re-enter, it fires retro-rockets to slow down, thus, it looses altitude, and quickly pulls ahead of the station which sometimes gets to watch it re-enter, out there in the distance, and take incredibly cool pictures.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/JxVN0eQFqtmgoY7wC1cZM44ET_iAanxHQmLgYgX_Zhn8#57cad said:

KlausH said:

SLC said: I entirely agree that it has nothing to do with being in space, other then not being subject to air friction. The whole point is that someone in a space craft in orbit around the Earth is subject to no net accelerations, i.e. is weightless. This is an important point to remember when computing time dilation within the space ship. Essentially, because clocks in the space ship are subject to 0 net acceleration, they would run slightly faster then clocks on the ground as computed from GR. However, the velocity dependent time dilation of SR due to being in orbit causes them to run slightly slower then clocks on the ground. Thus the net effect depends on the height of the orbit. When the satellite is in low orbit, SR dominates and the clocks run slower. When the satellite is in a much higher orbit so that the orbital velocity is lower, GR dominates and the clocks run faster. Of course, if the orbit is elliptical, then the situation becomes more complicated as it could happen that the clocks run faster at apogee and slower at perigee.

Um, higher orbits have HIGHER velocity.

If they had higher velocities they'd shoot off into space. Or at least progress to an even higher orbit. The space shuttle orbited at about 17,500 miles per hour. In geosynchronous orbit the velocity is a little under 6900 miles per hour. The moon orbits the earth at about 2200 miles per hour. Glen Davidson

david macmillan: While I’ll leave the math for someone else, this helps the creationist to see that reproduction is not just a blind dice roll every generation. Every generation is a trade. Every trade is selectable. So the chances of all those sequences converging to at least one all-matching roll is really, really good.

TomS said:

FL said: Say No To Monkey Business!

And this reveals the real reason for Creationism, whether it's Young Earth, Old Earth, Intelligent Design, and the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Pithecophobia: I don't like the idea that my ancestors swung by their tails (even though the only primates with prehensile tails are New World monkeys, which are not in hominin ancestry), and I don't like having a monkey brain.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: David MacMillan, This is what you would expect from a well designed system. Ever notice how each organism has a different reproductive rate; synchronized just right so that each species reproduces successfully and does its part in maintaining the food chain as well? Insects produce thousands to keep hundreds. Snakes produce hundreds to keep several. Rabbits produce several to keep a couple. And everybody eats. See there. That's an effective, successful explanation. Clear, concise, easily understood. Clearly a more desirable explanation than anything neo-darwinian evolution could come up with. So much so, that evolutionists have to borrow so much rhetorically from ID to stay in the game (without of course actually admitting it). You understand how it goes. It looks designed but it isn't really. Its just your eyes playing tricks on you. Who are you going to believe......? David, your evolution addiction will wear off. Just a matter of time. BTW, don't hold a grudge against God's silence. We need to move toward Him, not Him to us. Ergo, the silence.

david macmillan: While I’ll leave the math for someone else, this helps the creationist to see that reproduction is not just a blind dice roll every generation. Every generation is a trade. Every trade is selectable. So the chances of all those sequences converging to at least one all-matching roll is really, really good.

Hiya, Steve, back to undergo another asskicking, I see.

1) The system is not "synchronized just right so that each species reproduces successfully and does its part in maintaining the food chain as well". Nearly all the species that have inhabited the Earth have gone extinct. What SteveP mistakes for stability is simply that all species reproduce to the limit of the resources available to them.

2) Even if the assertion of balance and stability that Steve makes were correct (it isn't, but let's allow it for the moment, arguendo), Steve's imputation that this argues design, hence God, is also false. Balance, if it existed, could be explained by naturally cyclical events and continuous processes. Like, for example, the rainwater-runoff-evaporation cycle.

3) "Everybody eats". Well, yes, if everybody means animals, because eating other organisms pretty much defines "animals". So we animals eat by eating other living things. In fact, that's the only way we can live. Pretty wasteful design, if it was a design. But fortunately, it's not one.

4) "evolutionists have to borrow so much rhetorically from ID".

Hilarious. Even if ID hadn't been specifically conceived to sound sciency by hijacking some terminology from real science, the idea that science borrows anything from ID is trivially falsified by the dating. Evolution, 1859. ID, 1980's.

The rest of it is worse - it doesn't even rise to the level of marginal coherence. Steve, you high or something?

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: David MacMillan, This is what you would expect from a well designed system. Ever notice how each organism has a different reproductive rate; synchronized just right so that each species reproduces successfully and does its part in maintaining the food chain as well? Insects produce thousands to keep hundreds. Snakes produce hundreds to keep several. Rabbits produce several to keep a couple. And everybody eats. See there. That's an effective, successful explanation. Clear, concise, easily understood. Clearly a more desirable explanation than anything neo-darwinian evolution could come up with. So much so, that evolutionists have to borrow so much rhetorically from ID to stay in the game (without of course actually admitting it). You understand how it goes. It looks designed but it isn't really. Its just your eyes playing tricks on you. Who are you going to believe......? David, your evolution addiction will wear off. Just a matter of time. BTW, don't hold a grudge against God's silence. We need to move toward Him, not Him to us. Ergo, the silence.

david macmillan: While I’ll leave the math for someone else, this helps the creationist to see that reproduction is not just a blind dice roll every generation. Every generation is a trade. Every trade is selectable. So the chances of all those sequences converging to at least one all-matching roll is really, really good.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: BTW, don't hold a grudge against God's silence. We need to move toward Him, not Him to us.

No wonder these guys have to deny geologic time. They would have to all of the extinctions and mass extinctions and wild climatic shifts. It's almost as if no one had planned anything. It's almost as if it was just one big natural system going through many different changes, including many speciation and extinction events, with no sign of any planning or foresight whatsoever. You pretty much have to ignore the entire history of the earth in order to make ridiculous statements such as those mad by our good friend the rug salesman (assuming this is him).

And of course the reason why all this is so important is that if there is a magic pixie watching over us, I guess we are free to degrade the environment all we want, without fear of the consequences. On the other hand, if there is no magic pixie, I guess we should be much more ecologically responsible. Your choice.

Even FL hasn't come up with any 'proof of God' that's that stupid: God is 'silent' (i.e., there's no proof of his existence), so there's a God and we should 'move toward him'.

Stevie, if 'silence' isn't evidence against the existence of God, what WOULD constitute such evidence?

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: David MacMillan, This is what you would expect from a well designed system. Ever notice how each organism has a different reproductive rate; synchronized just right so that each species reproduces successfully and does its part in maintaining the food chain as well? Insects produce thousands to keep hundreds. Snakes produce hundreds to keep several. Rabbits produce several to keep a couple. And everybody eats.

daniel.perezarmeria said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: David MacMillan, This is what you would expect from a well designed system. Ever notice how each organism has a different reproductive rate; synchronized just right so that each species reproduces successfully and does its part in maintaining the food chain as well? Insects produce thousands to keep hundreds. Snakes produce hundreds to keep several. Rabbits produce several to keep a couple. And everybody eats.

So what would have kept populations in check if there had been no Fall? If, say, 3000 years had passed before a talking snake convinced a woman to eat from an expressly forbidden fruit, what mechanism would have kept the rabbit population in check if there was no death? Because rabbits produce several to keep a couple right? But in that scenario, they would produce several and keep all of them. And that's just the rabbits... you may only need a couple decades for the garden of eden to have been completely overrun by all the different critters with wildly varying rates of reproduction. Hell, if bacteria never died, they would literally overrun the planet fairly quickly. Hmm.. maybe that was the wisdom in God, right? Maybe he solved the overpopulation problem by causing the Fall... which still leaves the question of why would he make such a flawed system that needed such a cruel fixing if he was omniscient.

daniel.perezarmeria said: So what would have kept populations in check if there had been no Fall?

callahanpb said:

daniel.perezarmeria said: So what would have kept populations in check if there had been no Fall?

Maybe living things would just scale down by a fixed percentage as they aged so that the total space they occupied would be conserved over time. And we would have an Escher-like progression of ever smaller tigers grazing on ever smaller clover fields. Which would actually be pretty cool. Stupid Fall. Stupid Snake. Stupid Adam. Stupid Eve.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: BTW, don't hold a grudge against God's silence. We need to move toward Him, not Him to us. Ergo, the silence.

Even a simple weasel-like demo can work without a specific goal if the functional space models elements that contribute to words.

You can not only evolve words, you can also evolve completely novel strings that look like they could be words, and you can do it in any language. You can even switch the functional space in the middle of a run from one language to another, and the population will begin to look like the new language.

http://itatsi.com

Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old?

Yom (Day) + Ordinal Number + Evening-and-Morning-Phrase

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And **there was evening, and there was morning**, the **first** **day.** (Gen. 1:5)

OK, there’s literal and there’s literal. I would accept non-24-hour creation days as literal, if it made any difference, since the definition of “day” is unspecified.

TomS said: Geneses 1 does not mention the creation of bacteria. For all that is known from the Bible (and, remember, we weren't there, so would we know, unless Someone who was there would tell us), bacteria could have arisen by chance. (And, I remind you, we weren't there, so don't bring up some merely human opinion about what chance could have done.)

FL said: Callahanpb asked,

Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old?

No, there is not. And the Pandas did not offer you any, you'll notice. There is a reason for that. Each day of Genesis Creation events is uniquely and permanently specified as a literal 24-hour day, no more no less. That's what the Bible literally says, and it is never retracted or even watered down at any time. Nor does this particular specification appear in any other ancient religious literature on the planet; this phenomenon is found only in Genesis. In Hebrew, the unique formula goes like this, for each given day of creation events:

Yom (Day) + Ordinal Number + Evening-and-Morning-Phrase

(See Robert McCabe, "A Defense of Literal Days", DBTS, pp 100-109. http://www.dbts.edu/journals/2000/McCabe.pdf ) There's no escape. This formula, taken together, means pure Literal 24-hour day. Nothing else.

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And **there was evening, and there was morning**, the **first** **day.** (Gen. 1:5)

And there's something else. With each of the Genesis Creation Days being only 24 literal hours in length, there's no rational way to calculate an age of the earth -- or even an age of the universe itself-- that ISN'T measured in thousands instead of billions of years old. Just something to think about. Now you know why the Pandas didn't answer your inquiry.

OK, there’s literal and there’s literal. I would accept non-24-hour creation days as literal, if it made any difference, since the definition of “day” is unspecified.

But alas, that definition IS exactly specified, no?

So the escape route has been dynamited. Therefore you, like all of us, must make a choice to believe or not-believe the biblical historical claim that's on the table. And along with that choice, you'll likewise get to make a choice about the truth or falsity of all of those other supernatural historical claims in the Bible (be they Genesis or Gospels, Creation or Cross, Old or New Testament) as well. Because, as with the example of Charles Darwin himself, you'll find those choices to come to you unavoidably.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: How monkeys didnt need to evolve but we did. monkeys like their tails but we didnt. monkey do fine with their pea brains but no, humans just had to have 10 gallon hat brains. monkeys do just fine without opposable thumbs. but no, humans just had to have them, huh. monkeys feel right at home in the trees. but no, humans just had to roam. arrogant little pricks, those humans. too good for us monkeys.

Floyd is just plain lying. He would have you believe that no one but he is capable of interpreting the bible correctly and that if anyone disagrees with his interpretation they are automatically wrong. BFD In reality, most christians accept the evidence for the ancient age of the earth, just as they accept that the earth goes around the sun. Floyd can't do anything about this, except to shout that "it ain't so" at the top of his lungs and hopes someone listens.

If there was an age of enlightenment, why is there still Floyd?

FL, the age of the Earth is not calculated, it is measured. You may not agree with the results, but can you prove that our measurements are wrong? You see, if we are billions of years off, then there are serious problems with atomic clocks and GPS systems; all manned fligt in space should be forbidden because all our science is wrong because that's what FL says.

No amount of science denial can save the inerrancy of the Bible, it just isn't there. Genesis is a fairytale if there ever was one.

To use a favourite creationist argument: Neither of you were there, and we know for certain that the Bible cannot be taken at face value. It was written by ignorant people, they didn't and couldn't know how it really was. That was not any fault of theirs, just the simple fact that nobody had yet studied nature. Thank God for all the smart guys that finally did it, often under severe threats from the fundamentalist Church.

Scott F said:

Henry J said:

Scott F said to SLC: [...] But my limited or intuitive understanding may be wrong in this case.

You're using Newton's ideas, SLC was putting it in terms of Einstein's ideas.

Okaaay, but... You're still experiencing acceleration in "free fall". The only difference is that the stuff around you (your capsule) is experiencing the same acceleration, so it doesn't look like there's any change in velocity, and there's no "surface" force(*) so you don't feel the acceleration. Same with the "vomit comet". SLC's statement was that being "weightless" means or implies there is no acceleration. Sure, there are measurable relativistic effects even at the relatively low orbital speeds. But I don't see how those effects nullify the acceleration due to gravity. Your velocity vector is still rotating. (*)If I can make a distinction between a "surface" force like a push, and a "body" force like gravity.

Rolf said: Genesis is a fairytale horror story if there ever was one.

Just Bob said:

Rolf said: Genesis is a fairytale horror story if there ever was one.

That's more nearer the reality.

jlesow said: Even a simple weasel-like demo can work without a specific goal if the functional space models elements that contribute to words. You can not only evolve words, you can also evolve completely novel strings that look like they could be words, and you can do it in any language. You can even switch the functional space in the middle of a run from one language to another, and the population will begin to look like the new language. http://itatsi.com

Callahanpb asked,

Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old?

No, there is not.

SLC said: The fact that the astronaut is inside the space craft is irrelevant. Outside the spacecraft during a spacewalk, the astronaut is still weightless because there is no net acceleration acting on him/her. The acceleration due to gravity is exactly balanced by the centrifugal acceleration due to moving in a curved path. If this were not the case, the astronaut would fall out of orbit, either falling toward the earth or away from the earth depending on whether his/her velocity was less then or greater then the orbital velocity. If there is no net acceleration, there is no acceleration based time dilation. Period, end of story.

Rolf said: FL, the age of the Earth is not calculated, it is measured.

xubist said:

SLC said: The fact that the astronaut is inside the space craft is irrelevant. Outside the spacecraft during a spacewalk, the astronaut is still weightless because there is no net acceleration acting on him/her. The acceleration due to gravity is exactly balanced by the centrifugal acceleration due to moving in a curved path. If this were not the case, the astronaut would fall out of orbit, either falling toward the earth or away from the earth depending on whether his/her velocity was less then or greater then the orbital velocity. If there is no net acceleration, there is no acceleration based time dilation. Period, end of story.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that the term "acceleration" refers to a change in speed. In reality, the term "acceleration" refers to a change in velocity—and velocity is a vector, which includes both speed-of-motion and direction-of-motion. An object (a satellite, astronaut, whatever) is in a stable circular orbit doesn't experience any significant change in its speed-of-motion, but that object's direction-of-motion is continually changing; therefore, an object in orbit is, in fact, continually accelerating.

xubist said: sez fl:

Callahanpb asked,

Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old?

No, there is not.

Yes, there is. Ex-YEC Glenn Morton came up with a literal interpretation of the Bible that accepts the old-Earth timeline favored by real scientists. Morton's interpretation is summarized in this webpage, and presented in great detail in his book Foundation, Fall, and Flood (ISBN 0-9648227-1-7). This book is currently out of print. Well, that's why God invented libraries and used-book dealers, right? There may or may not be other literal interpretations of the Bible which reject YEC, but seeing as how FL is asserting that there ain't no old-Earth-accepting literal interpretation of the Bible whatsoever, the single example of Morton will suffice to refute FL.

Just Bob said: Even FL hasn't come up with any 'proof of God' that's that stupid: God is 'silent' (i.e., there's no proof of his existence), so there's a God and we should 'move toward him'. Stevie, if 'silence' isn't evidence against the existence of God, what WOULD constitute such evidence?

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: easy JB, No evidence of organization in the universe. No evidence of law like regularity. No evidence of order. No evidence of process. Evidence of life being a mundane property of matter; i.e. life teaming in all corners of the universe, based on many different materials like silicon, nitrogen, hydrogen, methane, etc..

Just Bob said: Even FL hasn't come up with any 'proof of God' that's that stupid: God is 'silent' (i.e., there's no proof of his existence), so there's a God and we should 'move toward him'. Stevie, if 'silence' isn't evidence against the existence of God, what WOULD constitute such evidence?

(vis-a-vis "Yom")

OFFS...

Hey, you know what "mene mene tekel upharsin" really means?

It was an admonition to the palace builders:

"Measure twice, cut once."

phhht said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: easy JB, No evidence of organization in the universe. No evidence of law like regularity. No evidence of order. No evidence of process. Evidence of life being a mundane property of matter; i.e. life teaming in all corners of the universe, based on many different materials like silicon, nitrogen, hydrogen, methane, etc..

Just Bob said: Even FL hasn't come up with any 'proof of God' that's that stupid: God is 'silent' (i.e., there's no proof of his existence), so there's a God and we should 'move toward him'. Stevie, if 'silence' isn't evidence against the existence of God, what WOULD constitute such evidence?

You argue that the way things are entails the existence of gods. Want to explain that vaporware a little further?

Dave Luckett said: Hiya, Steve, back to undergo another asskicking, I see. 1) The system is not "synchronized just right so that each species reproduces successfully and does its part in maintaining the food chain as well". Nearly all the species that have inhabited the Earth have gone extinct. What SteveP mistakes for stability is simply that all species reproduce to the limit of the resources available to them. 2) Even if the assertion of balance and stability that Steve makes were correct (it isn't, but let's allow it for the moment, arguendo), Steve's imputation that this argues design, hence God, is also false. Balance, if it existed, could be explained by naturally cyclical events and continuous processes. Like, for example, the rainwater-runoff-evaporation cycle. 3) "Everybody eats". Well, yes, if everybody means animals, because eating other organisms pretty much defines "animals". So we animals eat by eating other living things. In fact, that's the only way we can live. Pretty wasteful design, if it was a design. But fortunately, it's not one. 4) "evolutionists have to borrow so much rhetorically from ID". Hilarious. Even if ID hadn't been specifically conceived to sound sciency by hijacking some terminology from real science, the idea that science borrows anything from ID is trivially falsified by the dating. Evolution, 1859. ID, 1980's. The rest of it is worse - it doesn't even rise to the level of marginal coherence. Steve, you high or something?

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: Mr. Luckett...

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: 2) Processes are evidence of intelligent design.

A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design.

Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?.

Think, man. Think.

1) the number of species going extinct is irrelevant. Notice how used the word organism, not species. the species concept is a convenient sorting tool. nothing more. second, insects, mammals, reptiles have been unchanged for millions of years and their reproductive habits have not changed either. there is a logical reason for that. third, if there are not enough resources, the number of populations shrink due to less frequent reproduction, not the quantity of individuals reproduced.

This is wrong in twenty seven different ways. Try again. This time, provide some references from the scientific literature, not just ignorant, incorrect guesses about stuff you want to be true. Until then, piss off.

Yep, hoot is right.

Steve's attempts at rebuttal are up to his usual standard.

1 is a random selection of nonsensical assertions like "species is a convenient sorting tool", plus a ripe example of mental confusion: "populations shrink due to less frequent reproduction, not the quantity of individuals reproduced." And the first does not necessarily imply the second, because...

2 is simply ridiculous: "Processes are evidence of intelligent design". Gods, man, what are you smoking?

3 is questions, the answer to which is "evolution", in each case. All reproductive strategies are thus explained. The fact that Steve is ignorant of the explanations is testament only to Steve's ignorance.

4 is a flat untruth. Divine creation, not "intelligent design", was the explanation commonly adopted until Darwin provided the explanation from natural cause. But I suppose Steve should be thanked for his public concession that "intelligent design" is in fact divine creation wearing a lab coat. Of course we always knew that, but it's good to have it from the horse's mouth.

Or even from the other end of the horse.

Scott F said:

Henry J said:

Scott F said to SLC: [...] But my limited or intuitive understanding may be wrong in this case.

You're using Newton's ideas, SLC was putting it in terms of Einstein's ideas.

Okaaay, but... You're still experiencing acceleration in "free fall". The only difference is that the stuff around you (your capsule) is experiencing the same acceleration, so it doesn't look like there's any change in velocity, and there's no "surface" force(*) so you don't feel the acceleration. Same with the "vomit comet". SLC's statement was that being "weightless" means or implies there is no acceleration. Sure, there are measurable relativistic effects even at the relatively low orbital speeds. But I don't see how those effects nullify the acceleration due to gravity. Your velocity vector is still rotating. (*)If I can make a distinction between a "surface" force like a push, and a "body" force like gravity.

Luckett,

1. 26 definitions of species ensures that the concept of species is pretty much arbitrary and useless except as a way to classify variations. Nothing more. I guess thats why Charles called his book "On the origin of species". He was was clever enough to understand he would have lots of leg room.

2. nice rebuttal.

3. evolution has no strategies. see what i mean? your need to anthropomorphosize evolution. Its like a drug. You can't seem to explain evolution without recourse to strategies. Yeah, yeah. I know. Just a figure of speech.

4. False. your nemisis Casey Luskin has a nice take down of the falsehood that ID is recent. just posted a couple of days ago at DI. Hold your nose, then go.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: 3. evolution has no strategies.

Steve:

1) Definitions that specify various aspects of the defined entity are not arbitrary. A definition which implies fractal boundaries is nevertheless useful. Species are fractally bounded; there are not hard, fast, bright lines between them. Evolution predicts and explains that fact; fiat creation, aka "design" would predict the opposite, which is one of several hundred reasons why "design" is an inadequate explanation, if it can be called an explanation at all, when it explains absolutely nothing. Darwin knew what he was talking about. You don't, and your guess is wrong.

2) Thank you. It was heartfelt. It is also ineluctably correct. “Processes are evidence of intelligent design” is merely a blindingly obvious and risible non-sequitur, an advertisement of simple ignorance. Ridicule is the only appropriate response.

3) No, evolution has no strategies. It has no consciousness. Neither are the organisms who apply various reproductive strategies aware of them consciously (except for us, of course). A falcon does not consciously apply the principles of flight, either. It simply flies. It flies because evolution has given it the means to exploit an environment; it reproduces in the way it does from the same cause. Evolution thus explains the principles of the flight of the falcon and the differential reproductive strategies of living things; fiat creation explains neither.

3) Casey Luskin is a paid liar, and he's competent in his profession, one of the principles of which is "always lie by half-truth". "Intelligent design" is used occasionally to mean "fiat divine creation" from the nineteenth century. That's what you mean by it, too. Sure, "fiat divine creation" predates the Theory of Evolution; but science borrows no terms and no rhetoric from it. That's a lie. What's happened is that the DI uses "intelligent design" as a term with a totally different meaning, and absolutely disavows "divine creation". You're doing them no favours by announcing that their little word-game is meaningless, you know. They wouldn't like you doing that, because their whole strategy is to disavow religion, so as to get out from under Edwards vs Aguillard. If they admitted that what they advocate is actually "divine creation", it would also get in the way of their plagiarising and perverting terms from science - which is what has happened, and it's precisely the opposite of what you said.

SLC said: The fact that the astronaut is inside the space craft is irrelevant. Outside the spacecraft during a spacewalk, the astronaut is still weightless because there is no net acceleration acting on him/her. The acceleration due to gravity is exactly balanced by the centrifugal acceleration due to moving in a curved path. If this were not the case, the astronaut would fall out of orbit, either falling toward the earth or away from the earth depending on whether his/her velocity was less then or greater then the orbital velocity. If there is no net acceleration, there is no acceleration based time dilation. Period, end of story.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: 2) Processes are evidence of intelligent design. A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

Scott F said:

SLC said: The fact that the astronaut is inside the space craft is irrelevant. Outside the spacecraft during a spacewalk, the astronaut is still weightless because there is no net acceleration acting on him/her. The acceleration due to gravity is exactly balanced by the centrifugal acceleration due to moving in a curved path. If this were not the case, the astronaut would fall out of orbit, either falling toward the earth or away from the earth depending on whether his/her velocity was less then or greater then the orbital velocity. If there is no net acceleration, there is no acceleration based time dilation. Period, end of story.

I'm still having trouble with this. Acceleration is the change in velocity over time. If there is no net acceleration, then the velocity vector is not changing. If the velocity vector is not changing, how do you maintain a curved path? Relativistic effects are measurable (hence the need for corrections to GPS signals), but at the low orbital speeds we're talking about and the relatively low gravity of Earth, they're only very minor modifications to classical Newtonian mechanics. No? Yes?

Scott F said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: 2) Processes are evidence of intelligent design. A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

I'm not sure what your point is. There's rain on Titan. All you need for rain is a liquid, the right temperature and atmospheric pressure, and an unevenly distributed source of heat to evaporate and condense the liquid. Perhaps you are arguing that evaporation and condensation do not happen without the direct intervention of a God? Perhaps thunder and lightening do not exist without Thor and Zeus?

callahanpb said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: BTW, don't hold a grudge against God's silence. We need to move toward Him, not Him to us.

This is what, the Church of God, your sullen BFF? In my experience, silence never worked that well in human reconciliation. I'm having trouble taking this seriously as an explanation for anything attributed to God.

"Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God." - The two chief teachings of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

Acceleration is a vector quantity; it has both magnitude and direction (There are more general definitions of vectors that involve transformation properties between reference frames; but for this example, it isn’t necessary to go into that here.)

A vector can be changed by changing its direction or/and its magnitude. Velocity is a vector; the magnitude of a velocity vector is usually called speed. So a velocity vector can change direction and not magnitude, and that change will be an acceleration – which is also a vector, by the way.

So a weight being swung in a circle at the end of a rope is accelerating even if its speed is constant – its direction is constantly changing. The acceleration vector always points toward the center of the circle of rotation.

Note that, in this case – called a central force case – the acceleration vector is also constantly changing direction as the weight moves around the circle. The direction of the acceleration is from the weight – wherever it is on along the circle – toward the center of the circle.

Mathematically, suppose the position vector from the center of a circle of constant radius to a point on the circle is

r = r (i cosθ + j sinθ),

where i and j are constant unit vectors along the x and y axes respectively and r is the magnitude of r. Bold font means a vector.

The velocity vector is

v = dr/dt = r (- i sinθ + j cosθ) dθ/dt,

using the chain rule, and where dθ/dt = ω is the angular velocity in, say, radians per second. Let’s suppose this angular velocity is constant.

Note that the velocity vector in this example is always tangent to the circle of radius r; and it is constantly changing direction.

Then, taking another derivative with respect to time and assuming that ω is constant, the acceleration is

a = dv/dt = - ω²r (i cosθ + j sinθ)

or

a = - ω²r;

it always points in the opposite direction to r, i.e., towards the center of the circle.

If we multiply this by the mass, m, of the particle, we get the centripetal force.

If one is shaky with the math, just remember that velocity is a vector, and any change in velocity, magnitude and/or direction is an acceleration; which is also a vector.

Scott F said: In such a space, then gravity does not actually impart a "force" on a body, does not actually cause an "acceleration" at all, but "merely" changes the shape of space-time so that, to us in a Euclidian-bound frame, the object simply "appears" to undergo an acceleration.

As Dave Luckett and others have repeatedly explained to you, the phrase “day” need not be taken literally. Especially when the only support you can cite to back up your claim is the bible, a book of myth and campfire supervillian stories.

Consider the grammar and what is actually said in Genesis 1 and I think you will have to agree that the Bible is perfectly consistent with evolution. --from his article "Gen 1:11 Why the Bible Teaches Evolution"

And "God said." What did he say? "Let US make man in our image" That is, God is ordering HIMSELF to make mankind. This is the only place where God actually says HE is going to do something directly. Which is why my interpretation holds to the special creation of mankind as I describe elsewhere. The important point is that all these verses here (previous verses, other than humans) clearly indicate SECONDARY causation. God was the prime cause, but he USED matter to create life, with the exception of mankind. It is what the Bible says. It is the plain reading of scripture.

I made the claim that there are three concepts which raise problems for those who claim to follow the literal reading of the Bible without concession to mere human opinion.

I have not seen any correction to this. Nor have I heard from anyone who follows the literal reading of the Bible including these these three concepts.

1. Geocentrism.
2. Omphalism.
3. Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy 34.

The smug little smarm above relates to one premise only: that the Bible actually means that the days of creation were really, truly, literally twenty-four hour days, and that it happened, literally, just like that.

All right, let's consider this very narrow - and pretty meaningless - proposition. Notice, please, that we are not arguing about what actually happened. Most people will immediately lose interest, when told that, but still, we're not. We're arguing two, fundamentally futile, ideas:

One, that the Bible says that the days of creation were meant as literal twenty-four hour days.

Well, does it say that?

No, it does not. It says that they were days, yom, and that they had an evening and a morning. It does not say that they lasted twenty-four hours. I am in the evening of my own days, but I can recognise a metaphor when I see one. FL, of course, can't.

Two, that the Bible in this instance must be read as literal history. Not as fictive narrative in which days are mentioned, with their attendant mornings and evenings, but as literal history.

Well, does it say that it must be read as literal history?

No, it does not, and that's flat. Nowhere does Genesis tell us that this is literal history. Nowhere is it implied. It doesn't say it's fiction, either, but there's damn-all fiction that does. There's no reason at all to suppose that Genesis isn't fiction, every reason to think it is, and every reason to think that the originators never meant it as anything but mythos - stories told to make a point.

So FL's premise, that the Genesis days of creation are meant as literal twenty-four hour days, fails on two separate grounds. The Bible doesn't say that, two layers deep.

Of course, the Bible also doesn't say what really happened, because the people writing it didn't know. But that's another argument altogether, one that's as far beyond FL as the physics itself.

Re: acceleration. As Mike has said above, a body which has no non-gravitational forces acting on it travels along a geodesic of space-time. A geodesic is a generalisation of the idea of a straight line in Euclidean geometry. A straight line between two points in space is the shortest distance between those two points; a geodesic joining two points (called "events") in space-time gives the longest time interval between those two events measured by any observer travelling from one to the other.

It is reasonable to refer to geodesic motion as being unaccelerated, because it is motion along a generalised straight line. This is an extension of the usual idea of acceleration, but it is a reasonable one. It's true that the velocity as usually defined is constantly changing - but so what? In General Relativity there are no preferred reference frames, and so quantities such as velocity and acceleration are arbitrary. In contrast, geodesic motion to one observer is geodesic motion to all observers (just as a straight line gives the shortest distance between two points in any coordinate system) and so the distinction between geodesic and non-geodesic motion has a real physical significance.

In the Newtonian picture there is a special set of reference frames (called inertial frames) in which Newton's Laws take a particularly simple form and in which an object far removed from any other objects moves in a straight line at constant speed. In these inertial frames an object orbiting the Earth is indeed constantly accelerating, as many people have correctly pointed out. Both pictures give a complete description of what is going on, but they are based on fundamentally different ideas and so the concepts internal to each one do not necessarily match up with each other.

I think that this isn't as clear as I would like it to have been, but never mind. It's rather off-topic anyway! I come here to learn about Biology; some of the recent discussions have been absolutely superb. Thanks to David for this excellent series of posts.

Nigel (UK)

Once again Floyd has gone to great pains to point out that, according to him, the bible is incompatible with reality. Once again, fine, he is the only one who loses. I guess he really is incapable of learning.

DS said: Once again Floyd has gone to great pains to point out that, according to him, the bible is incompatible with reality. Once again, fine, he is the only one who loses. I guess he really is incapable of learning.

Test post~~

Scott F said:

Scott F said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: 2) Processes are evidence of intelligent design. A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

I'm not sure what your point is. There's rain on Titan. All you need for rain is a liquid, the right temperature and atmospheric pressure, and an unevenly distributed source of heat to evaporate and condense the liquid. Perhaps you are arguing that evaporation and condensation do not happen without the direct intervention of a God? Perhaps thunder and lightening do not exist without Thor and Zeus?

We know how snowflakes are formed through entirely natural processes. Are you saying that God intelligently designs every single snowflake? Fire is a process. Does God intentionally consume the wood and intelligently create ash in its place?

Scott F said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: 2) Processes are evidence of intelligent design. A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

I'm not sure what your point is. There's rain on Titan. All you need for rain is a liquid, the right temperature and atmospheric pressure, and an unevenly distributed source of heat to evaporate and condense the liquid. Perhaps you are arguing that evaporation and condensation do not happen without the direct intervention of a God? Perhaps thunder and lightening do not exist without Thor and Zeus?

callahanpb said: Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old? OK, there's literal and there's literal. I would accept non-24-hour creation days as literal, if it made any difference, since the definition of "day" is unspecified. But wouldn't you at least have to have the flood occurring only a few thousand years ago? I mean these as questions, not as a rebuttal. I'm sure there are many ways to believe all kinds of things and still claim it is a "literal" interpretation, so I don't dispute the self-reported figures. (But I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of beliefs of the "I accept it all literally, but I am not a YEC.") The account of Noah seems especially problematic to me, the more I think about it (which has been a lot more since David's second posting, since I failed to appreciate how important it is to the YEC narrative). I accept that the Bible contains accounts of miracles (parting of the Red Sea, Jesus curing a blind man) and someone can believe in this literally as something that happened in historical times with God's intervention. At the other extreme, you have Genesis 1, where every action is the result of an omnipotent God, which suffices to make it internally consistent. But in the case of Noah, the story isn't quite origins and isn't quite history. Noah did not have the power to work miracles, so his handiwork needs to be evaluated with respect to ordinary physical constraints, and yet he is singlehandedly responsible for saving the entire land fauna of earth.

AltairIV said: Even though I've been visiting sites like this one for years, and I'm fully aware of the pervasive lack of scientific knowledge that's out there, this was to me a shocking reminder of just how little some people really do know about the world around them. I believe that the poor results from the polls on scientific knowledge are due mostly to people like her; people who don't distrust science so much as just lack the curiosity and/or opportunity to really learn. *She is a rather superstitious person, however, which was a big factor in our eventual break-up. I am surprised that she managed to get through school without learning the basic outline of the solar system, though.

stevaroni said:

SLC said: Actually, a better explanation is that the acceleration of gravity is exactly counterbalanced by the centrifugal acceleration so that there is no net acceleration acting on the astronauts.

Centripetal acceleration, a small but important distinction (or so my high school physics teacher would constantly claim).

Mike Elzinga said: Making the distinction between centripetal force and centrifugal force is of some pedagogical value in introductory physics when introducing the ideas about different reference frames. However, as students move into more advanced perspectives in physics, the notion of transformations between reference frames becomes important; and one should not get too pedantic about “pseudo forces.” An observer in an accelerated frame can account for his observations using a force, such as gravity or a coriolis force; and if the observer has no opportunity to get out of his frame and see it from another frame, there is little choice but to work with the forces one finds in one’s reference frame.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: [snipped] That's an effective, successful explanation. Clear, concise, easily understood. Clearly a more desirable explanation than anything neo-darwinian evolution could come up with. So much so, that evolutionists have to borrow so much rhetorically from ID to stay in the game (without of course actually admitting it). You understand how it goes. It looks designed but it isn't really. Its just your eyes playing tricks on you. Who are you going to believe......? David, your evolution addiction will wear off. Just a matter of time. BTW, don't hold a grudge against God's silence. We need to move toward Him, not Him to us. Ergo, the silence.

DanHolme said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: David, your evolution addiction will wear off. Just a matter of time. BTW, don't hold a grudge against God's silence. We need to move toward Him, not Him to us. Ergo, the silence.

(The Silence isn't there to draw you towards God. It's there to keep the Doctor away from Trenzelore).

xubist said: sez fl:

Callahanpb asked,

Is there a way to interpret the Bible literally and not believe the earth is under 10000 years old?

No, there is not.

Yes, there is. Ex-YEC Glenn Morton came up with a literal interpretation of the Bible that accepts the old-Earth timeline favored by real scientists. Morton's interpretation is summarized in this webpage, and presented in great detail in his book Foundation, Fall, and Flood (ISBN 0-9648227-1-7). This book is currently out of print. Well, that's why God invented libraries and used-book dealers, right? There may or may not be other literal interpretations of the Bible which reject YEC, but seeing as how FL is asserting that there ain't no old-Earth-accepting literal interpretation of the Bible whatsoever, the single example of Morton will suffice to refute FL.

prongs said: Natural Selection will ultimately prevail. FL and his kind will die out. It may take a long, long time but they will eventually die out. That's what the fossil record shows.

FL said: Just a note for Xubist: You say that "Ex-YEC Glenn Morton came up with a literal interpretation of the Bible that accepts the old-Earth timeline favored by real scientists." But no, Glenn Morton doesn't. Very specifically doesn't. Glenn wrote:

Consider the grammar and what is actually said in Genesis 1 and I think you will have to agree that the Bible is perfectly consistent with evolution. --from his article "Gen 1:11 Why the Bible Teaches Evolution"

...and then Morton totally fails to address the repeated occurrences of the unique and literal Hebrew "Yom + Ordinal Number + Evening-and-Morning-phrase" Formula.

Finally, just for fun, I will point out that Morton fails this specific claim at another spot too. This one will be totally obvious to you. (Emphases mine.) This comes from Morton's article "Plain Reading of Genesis 1".

And "God said." What did he say? "Let US make man in our image" That is, God is ordering HIMSELF to make mankind. This is the only place where God actually says HE is going to do something directly. Which is why my interpretation holds to the special creation of mankind as I describe elsewhere. The important point is that all these verses here (previous verses, other than humans) clearly indicate SECONDARY causation. God was the prime cause, but he USED matter to create life, with the exception of mankind. It is what the Bible says. It is the plain reading of scripture.

So as you can see, Glenn Morton TOTALLY abandons both the evolutionary "apelike common ancestor claim" AND the evolutionary time-line, when it comes to human origins. He just throws it all away, in broad daylight, in front of evolutionists and creationists alike... ...and he does it in favor of special direct creation straight outta Genesis. But if you allow that special creation stuff with humans, why not allow it throughout the Genesis creation account?

DS said: Once again Floyd has gone to great pains to point out that, according to him, the bible is incompatible with reality.

Thank you, David, for a wonderful series! I'm really looking forward to today's offering.

Speaking as an atheist, I find it very amusing that Floyd et al are so frequently trying to get the other pro-evolution posters on this board to reject you because you're religious. Obviously, given that you are a Christian and I am an atheist, the contents of our religious beliefs are quite different. But as far as I can tell, the philosophy of religion that underlies your religious beliefs epistemologically is quite similar to my own.

I would say that we all exist in a shared natural world, regardless of what religious beliefs we have about what does or doesn't lie beyond it. It is a world of material processes, discernible by empirical evidence. The only reliable way to understand this natural world in a cognitively significant way is science. That said, science makes no claims at all about what does or doesn't lie beyond the natural, and insofar as cognitive meaning is not the only kind, there may be other non-cognitive ways to understand the world, too. The only thing science can say about such matters is, if there is anything supernatural, and if there are other viable or valuable ways to understand the world, all these must be consistent with the knowledge about nature that science can provide us.

And there are lots of options for such consistency. I think that the best arguments are on the side of atheism, but I'm willing to concede (having taught philosophy for many years) that there is plenty of room for rational disagreement once we leave the realm of empirical evidence behind. Hence disagreements about the existence of God, the possibility of an afterlife, and whether miracles inexplicable in principle via natural scientific means ever occur. Like I said, I'm an atheist, so I'd answer all such questions negatively, for a variety of reasons. But if someone else answers such metaphysical questions differently than I, I really have no problem with that at all -- so long as (a) they extend the same courtesy to me, and (b) they don't abandon what we can know scientifically about our shared natural existence in the name of a transcendent metaphysical position that cannot qualify as knowledge.

The problem with creationists is that they always fail to do (b) and far more often than not fail to do (a). But you seem quite successful with regard to both. Like I said, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it does appear that your philosophy of religion is formally similar to that of many other evolutionists on this board, even if your particular religious beliefs are substantively different from many of them, too (myself included). I would be curious to hear any thoughts you might have on the topic (maybe they're coming in the final installment?).

All that said, I find Floyd's attempt at sowing strife amusing. Because it misses the extent to which, despite substantive disagreements, we nonetheless agree on other important points -- that is, we agree on much, while our disagreements are at least irrelevant to the matter at hand on this board, and where they are relevant they would be handled with full respect and appreciation for diversity of opinion. And the most amusing point is that, as far as I'm aware from my own encounters with religion growing up and since, actively sowing strife amongst persons -- and especially actively sowing strife in the form of getting people to persecute Christians for their beliefs -- is a characterization of Satan's own handiwork! Floyd is doing a great job of helping the Devil accomplish his goals. Amusing to say the least.

Anyway, great series, and I look forward to more.

Morton explicitly accepts ape-like ancestry but argues that Genesis 1-2 describe the special creation of humanity out of ape-like ancestors, probably around the Australopithecine stage. I disagree, personally, but that’s beside the point.

david.starling.macmillan said: If I wanted to be mildly pedantic, I could simply define "literal" by reference to "literary sense", in which case a "literal" interpretation takes genre and context into account. Of course, that's not what most people mean when they say "literal".

FL said: And there's a specific reason why you disagree. You and I both know that even a "special creation of humanity out of ape-like ancestors" is sufficient to violate the theory of evolution itself.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: Ever notice how each organism has a different reproductive rate; synchronized just right so that each species reproduces successfully and does its part in maintaining the food chain as well? Insects produce thousands to keep hundreds. Snakes produce hundreds to keep several. Rabbits produce several to keep a couple. And everybody eats.

See there. That's an effective, successful explanation. Clear, concise, easily understood. Clearly a more desirable explanation than anything neo-darwinian evolution could come up with.

So much so, that evolutionists have to borrow so much rhetorically from ID to stay in the game (without of course actually admitting it). You understand how it goes. It looks designed but it isn't really. Its just your eyes playing tricks on you. Who are you going to believe......?

prongs said: Great pains indeed.

mattdance18 said: Except that the whole point is, NOT everybody eats.

Before you expect anyone to “address” this, we will expect you to explain why this “Formula” has any significance at all.

Whenever I see the comments of FL or someone like him, something starts beating inside my head: How can you possibly have a literal interpretation of a translation?

Such a stupid thought can be immediately dismissed by anybody who understands more than one language. (Unless FL is conversant in ancient hebrew and hellenistic greek, which I rather doubt).

But of course your average YEC is also extremely unlikely to know anything beyond his/her particular dialect of English.

FL said:

Before you expect anyone to “address” this, we will expect you to explain why this “Formula” has any significance at all.

Really? This is the actual Scripture text we're talking about.

FL said: You and I both know that even a "special creation of humanity out of ape-like ancestors" is sufficient to violate the theory of evolution itself.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: It is something to wonder about, isnt it. How monkeys didnt need to evolve but we did.

monkeys like their tails but we didn't.

monkey do fine with their pea brains but no, humans just had to have 10 gallon hat brains.

monkeys do just fine without opposable thumbs. but no, humans just had to have them, huh.

monkeys feel right at home in the trees. but no, humans just had to roam.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: Evidence of life being a mundane property of matter

i.e. life teaming in all corners of the universe,...

based on many different materials like silicon, nitrogen, hydrogen, methane, etc..

FL said: See the following science cartoon? THAT is precisely what Glenn Morton is doing. http://socsci2.ucsd.edu/~aronatas/project/cartoon.math.miracle.3.12.htm

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: 1) the number of species going extinct is irrelevant.

second, insects, mammals, reptiles have been unchanged for millions of years and their reproductive habits have not changed either. there is a logical reason for that.

third, if there are not enough resources, the number of populations shrink due to less frequent reproduction, not the quantity of individuals reproduced.

2) Processes are evidence of intelligent design. A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

Arguing around the obvious is counter-trend trading. You'll get burned more often than not.

3) The point is the design achieves more than a single goal. The excess reproductive rate ensures natural selection produces results. It also ensures there are enough resources.

You have to ask yourself the question, why do rabbits NOT produce only one offspring.

And why don't humans produces 8 offspring. It's not that humans are not capable of it. We see that it can be induced through drugs. Why not naturally? Its because humans are designed to carry one at a time.

4) Sorry but..er... ID has been around for way longer than Darwinian evolution. You are the newbie here. You've claimed squatters rights. And cant fault you there. So now ID is back to reclaim.

This gets really nasty among some birds, where multiple chicks hatch in a staggered order. If the first to hatch ends up weak or sick, then the parents will feed the second preferentially. But if the first is fine, it frequently kills the second, right there in the nest, and sometimes as the parents look on. Herons do this routinely, for example.

Am I my brother’s keeper?

david.starling.macmillan said: School models in which scale is off by a factor of billions don't help. They really need to make a scale poster of the solar system with unambiguously-displayed magnification so students can see just how far apart everything is.

Argghh.... hit submit rather than preview...

s/sand/stand/

s/write/right/

mattdance18 said: We don't brachiate, very much do we?

A Masked Panda said: 4) Sorry but..er... ID has been around for way longer than Darwinian evolution. You are the newbie here. You've claimed squatters rights. And cant fault you there. So now ID is back to reclaim.

Like I said design has the rhetorical/explanatory advantage. And its a huge advantage.

phhht said:

FL said: And there's a specific reason why you disagree. You and I both know that even a "special creation of humanity out of ape-like ancestors" is sufficient to violate the theory of evolution itself.

Yet the theory of evolution is true. It works, Flawd. It explains. It all fits together with everything else we know, from organic chemistry to mathematics to genetics to cosmology. It is only deniers of reality who cannot see this. What do you have that explains sickle cell anemia and those finch beaks in the Galapagos Islands and those peppered moths and Mendel's peas and acquired bacterial immunity to antibiotics and blind cave fish and our simian cousins' similarity and I can go on and on and on, FL. But you got nothing. All you have is repeated denial. All you have is your religious fanaticism. You got less than nothing.

W. H. Heydt said:

david.starling.macmillan said: School models in which scale is off by a factor of billions don't help. They really need to make a scale poster of the solar system with unambiguously-displayed magnification so students can see just how far apart everything is.

Thirty-some years ago there was a young man at an SF convention with a 12" globe of the Earth and a globe of the Moon to the same scale. He would sand in a corridor with the Earth at his feet holding the Moon and challenge people to set the Moon down the correct (scale) distance from the Earth. Now this being at an SF con, one might expect most people to get it write, but not so. When I discussed it with him, he said that most people put the Moon down about 5 to 6 feet from the Earth. The irony was that he thought the correct figure was 10 feet. When I showed him his error (the correct figure being 30 feet), he said that the batteries may have been low in his calculator when he ran the numbers for his challenge. Personally, I think he used the Earth's circumference instead of its radius and was off by a factor of pi. This would probably be a good school exercise, but it would take care. I'm not sure I'd trust the average elementary school teacher to really beleive that the separation is really 30 diameters.

mattdance18 said: Speaking as an atheist, I find it very amusing that Floyd et al are so frequently trying to get the other pro-evolution posters on this board to reject you because you're religious. Obviously, given that you are a Christian and I am an atheist, the contents of our religious beliefs are quite different. But as far as I can tell, the philosophy of religion that underlies your religious beliefs epistemologically is quite similar to my own.

Like I said, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it does appear that your philosophy of religion is formally similar to that of many other evolutionists on this board, even if your particular religious beliefs are substantively different from many of them, too (myself included). I would be curious to hear any thoughts you might have on the topic (maybe they're coming in the final installment?).

FL said:

Morton explicitly accepts ape-like ancestry but argues that Genesis 1-2 describe the special creation of humanity out of ape-like ancestors, probably around the Australopithecine stage. I disagree, personally, but that’s beside the point.

And there's a specific reason why you disagree. You and I both know that even a "special creation of humanity out of ape-like ancestors" is sufficient to violate the theory of evolution itself.

While I did get it wrong about Morton not accepting apelike common ancestors, the fact remains that Glenn Morton STILL clearly abandoned ... the evolutionary time-line, when it comes to human origins.

FL said:

Before you expect anyone to “address” this, we will expect you to explain why this “Formula” has any significance at all.

Really? This is the actual Scripture text we're talking about. A defense of a literal interpretation of that textual six-creation-days data has now been offered, based on the actual (and unique) formula given in the Hebrew text and English text, as has been shown in the example of Gen 1:5.

Stevie, my dear, I've asked you this before and never received an answer or even acknowledgement, IIRC. Usually, you've chosen that moment to disappear. I'll try again. Maybe you've come up with a substantive answer in the last few months:

If we abandoned the 'materialistic' assumptions of science and adopted 'intelligent design' as our foundation, HOW WOULD SCIENCE BE BETTER? What problems would we be able to solve that have so far been beyond our (present) capacity? What new, PRODUCTIVE, theories would open up to us? From the practical angle, what new cures, or products, or processes, or inventions would be likely to flow from an ID-centered science that are unobtainable with our present paradigm? And how would one go about doing science differently to achieve at least the current rate of progress, if not a radical increase?

The point is, if you can't make a believable argument for how the PERFORMANCE of science will improve by overthrowing 'materialism' in favor of supernaturalism, then WHY CHANGE? Why give up methods that have been working pretty damn well for what seems like merely a throwback to methods and assumptions that DIDN'T work nearly so well?

Convince us of what we'll gain by adopting ID. (Or at least try, rather than running away.)

Scott F said:

SLC said: The fact that the astronaut is inside the space craft is irrelevant. Outside the spacecraft during a spacewalk, the astronaut is still weightless because there is no net acceleration acting on him/her. The acceleration due to gravity is exactly balanced by the centrifugal acceleration due to moving in a curved path. If this were not the case, the astronaut would fall out of orbit, either falling toward the earth or away from the earth depending on whether his/her velocity was less then or greater then the orbital velocity. If there is no net acceleration, there is no acceleration based time dilation. Period, end of story.

I'm still having trouble with this. Acceleration is the change in velocity over time. If there is no net acceleration, then the velocity vector is not changing. If the velocity vector is not changing, how do you maintain a curved path? Relativistic effects are measurable (hence the need for corrections to GPS signals), but at the low orbital speeds we're talking about and the relatively low gravity of Earth, they're only very minor modifications to classical Newtonian mechanics. No? Yes?

phhht said:

FL said: And there's a specific reason why you disagree. You and I both know that even a "special creation of humanity out of ape-like ancestors" is sufficient to violate the theory of evolution itself.

Yet the theory of evolution is true. It works, Flawd. It explains. It all fits together with everything else we know, from organic chemistry to mathematics to genetics to cosmology. It is only deniers of reality who cannot see this. What do you have that explains sickle cell anemia and those finch beaks in the Galapagos Islands and those peppered moths and Mendel's peas and acquired bacterial immunity to antibiotics and blind cave fish and our simian cousins' similarity and I can go on and on and on, FL. But you got nothing. All you have is repeated denial. All you have is your religious fanaticism. You got less than nothing.

Scott F said: Relativistic effects are measurable (hence the need for corrections to GPS signals), but at the low orbital speeds we’re talking about and the relatively low gravity of Earth, they’re only very minor modifications to classical Newtonian mechanics. No? Yes?

Rolf said: There's one aspect of most(?) multicellular life that always pops up in my mind when dealing with the concept of special cration of "immutable species", and that is sexual reproduction. Why is there sexual reproduction? For ourselves I presume the creationists find what they need to support that fact in the Bible. But for all other species, plants, trees, fish and so on, why do they bother, isnt' that just a wasted effort? And blending of genes is a threat to immutable species!

DS said:

Rolf said: There's one aspect of most(?) multicellular life that always pops up in my mind when dealing with the concept of special cration of "immutable species", and that is sexual reproduction. Why is there sexual reproduction? For ourselves I presume the creationists find what they need to support that fact in the Bible. But for all other species, plants, trees, fish and so on, why do they bother, isnt' that just a wasted effort? And blending of genes is a threat to immutable species!

The short answer seems to be that there is a long term advantage to producing new combinations of genes if the environment is changing in certain ways over certain time scales. If you are looking for a field where we don't yet have all of the answers, this would be a good choice. There is still much to learn about the evolution of sex and the selection pressures that maintain it. Of course the creationist never attack this one, at least not past the incompetent level of asking how both males and females could evolve at the same time. Suppressing all imagination and all desire to learn must really have an adverse effect on brain function.

Rolf said: There's one aspect of most(?) multicellular life that always pops up in my mind when dealing with the concept of special cration of "immutable species", and that is sexual reproduction. Why is there sexual reproduction? For ourselves I presume the creationists find what they need to support that fact in the Bible. But for all other species, plants, trees, fish and so on, why do they bother, isnt' that just a wasted effort? And blending of genes is a threat to immutable species!

david.starling.macmillan said:

Rolf said: There's one aspect of most(?) multicellular life that always pops up in my mind when dealing with the concept of special cration of "immutable species", and that is sexual reproduction. Why is there sexual reproduction? For ourselves I presume the creationists find what they need to support that fact in the Bible. But for all other species, plants, trees, fish and so on, why do they bother, isnt' that just a wasted effort? And blending of genes is a threat to immutable species!

That's just it -- creationists don't see reproduction as the blending of genes. They don't see speciation as the emergence of a novel population with new traits. Their "kinds" are bounded, but not immutable. So a given "kind" can split into multiple sub-kinds each adapted to different environments, which can each split into multiple sub-sub-kinds, and so forth. That, they explain, is the purpose of sexual reproduction: adaptation to environment. However, they simultaneously insist that this speciation process is always accompanied by specialization and a loss of diversity. No new traits emerge; you just get more concentrated versions of traits already present in the original population. That's where they miss the point.

TomS said:

DS said:

Rolf said: There's one aspect of most(?) multicellular life that always pops up in my mind when dealing with the concept of special cration of "immutable species", and that is sexual reproduction. Why is there sexual reproduction? For ourselves I presume the creationists find what they need to support that fact in the Bible. But for all other species, plants, trees, fish and so on, why do they bother, isnt' that just a wasted effort? And blending of genes is a threat to immutable species!

The short answer seems to be that there is a long term advantage to producing new combinations of genes if the environment is changing in certain ways over certain time scales. If you are looking for a field where we don't yet have all of the answers, this would be a good choice. There is still much to learn about the evolution of sex and the selection pressures that maintain it. Of course the creationist never attack this one, at least not past the incompetent level of asking how both males and females could evolve at the same time. Suppressing all imagination and all desire to learn must really have an adverse effect on brain function.

IANAS, but this answer does not explain, it seems to me, the first appearance of sexes. The long-term advantages will not be realized unless there is a short-term mechanism. And I wonder whether the many mating types of some fungi might suggest a clue to the answer: That there is a way of evolving many sexes, and that then the long-term advantage is realized in reducing the number of sexes to two.

TomS said: But then how do they account for existence of the taxonomic rank, species? Species are distinguished from genera and from varieties, as having (mostly) objective existence, while all other ranks are mostly in the eyes of the taxonomist. A genus means something different for an entomologist than for a herpetologist or for a botanist. But for a baraminologist a species is just a sub-kind, just as are genera and varieties.

david.starling.macmillan said:

TomS said: But then how do they account for existence of the taxonomic rank, species? Species are distinguished from genera and from varieties, as having (mostly) objective existence, while all other ranks are mostly in the eyes of the taxonomist. A genus means something different for an entomologist than for a herpetologist or for a botanist. But for a baraminologist a species is just a sub-kind, just as are genera and varieties.

Oh, they admit to the existence of the species as a valid taxonomic rank. Not much of a difference there. They simply add the caveat that a series of descendant species can never have more genetic diversity than the original ancestral species.

Every three base pairs codes for a particular amino acid; the cell creates new proteins using chains of amino acids. There are 21 amino acids, usually represented using various letters: R, H, K, D, E, S, T, N, Q, C, U, G, P, A, V, I, M, F, Y, and W. Let's say that in order to perform a new function, like digesting rubber, you need to add a new seven-amino-acid sequence -- CCDYDPA, for example -- onto the end of an existing protein. Now, most of the genome is random, and you only have 21 amino acids to work with, so there will be millions of places where you already have pieces of this sequence floating around. There will be tens of thousands of places where "CCDY" appears in the middle of a nonsense string, tens of thousands of places where "DYDPA" appears in the middle of a nonsense string, and tens of thousands of places where "CDYD" appears in the middle of a nonsense string. So there are tens of thousands of different ways that a single mutation can generate the sequence CCDYDPA. In a large population -- say 200 million or so -- any given seven-codon sequence will pop up multiple times every generation. Then, it only takes one individual with the CCDYDPA sequence having a chromosome crossover at the end of another individual's existing protein (not hard when you have 200 million x 200 million possible combinations), and you end up with a completely new gene. If that individual ends up needing to digest rubber, the gene will offer an advantage and be passed on. If not, it probably won't. But that's the nature of natural selection. New proteins and abilities and traits are continually emerging throughout any population; you just need slight selection pressure for one of these new traits to be selected for.

david.starling.macmillan said:

TomS said: But then how do they account for existence of the taxonomic rank, species? Species are distinguished from genera and from varieties, as having (mostly) objective existence, while all other ranks are mostly in the eyes of the taxonomist. A genus means something different for an entomologist than for a herpetologist or for a botanist. But for a baraminologist a species is just a sub-kind, just as are genera and varieties.

Oh, they admit to the existence of the species as a valid taxonomic rank. Not much of a difference there. They simply add the caveat that a series of descendant species can never have more genetic diversity than the original ancestral species.

mattdance18 said:

Oh, they admit to the existence of the species as a valid taxonomic rank. Not much of a difference there. They simply add the caveat that a series of descendant species can never have more genetic diversity than the original ancestral species.

...which is simply false. Observably, demonstrably, provably. And in fact, observed, demonstrated, proved. Seriously, David, this is what I'm most curious about, in a way: doesn't truth or falsity matter to creationists? They're just making stuff up!!!

And I would think that this is the sort of thing that, when discovered by those who've been on the receiving end of the fabrications, it tends to turn people away from creationism, and even away from religion itself. Ergo a further curiosity: don't they worry about the counter-productivity of their own endeavor?

david.starling.macmillan said: And every time someone leaves YEC and Christianity as a result of this foolishness, they take it as confirmation of their view and resolve to "try harder".

prongs said: If you travel with the astronauts, inside their spacecraft, there is weightlessness and the appearance of no forces upon them. But that is not quite correct. The reference frame inside the spacecraft is not an inertial reference frame - because it is orbiting the Earth. It is a non-inertial, accelerating reference frame subject to a centrifugal force that exactly counterbalances the gravitational force. When the astronauts look out their window they see the ponderous Earth. With the passage of time they see movement of its surface. Even if they were in synchronous orbit, they could infer that they were in orbit around a ponderous object.

david.starling.macmillan said: Indeed. But they don't see it that way. They're already certain that evolution CAN'T be possible, so "new" traits CAN'T emerge, so anything that looks like a new trait must have been hidden in an abstract information packet somewhere in the parent genome. Or, if it's undeniable that a new gene has arisen by a specific mutation, then that mutation must have been "programmed in" to the parent. It's just starting with your conclusion and shaping your premises to fit. Worst of all, they project this pseudoscientific "presuppositionalist" approach onto mainstream science. Since I erroneously supposed that "secular scientists" were just making stuff up too, I found it easy to ignore the evidence they presented.

Morris further elaborates, “Scripture tells us what the right conclusion is. And if science, momentarily, doesn’t agree with it, then we have to keep working until we get the right answer. But I have no doubts as to what that answer will be.”

callahanpb said:

Morris further elaborates, “Scripture tells us what the right conclusion is. And if science, momentarily, doesn’t agree with it, then we have to keep working until we get the right answer. But I have no doubts as to what that answer will be.”

This betrays an insecurity that science can only be reconciled with faith if it is rigged to produce the expected answer. Even that view would be consistent if you just came out and said that you don't trust science. But Morris seems to want to have it both ways. I imagine he had some way to rationalize it away and claim he was honest, but I don't see it.

mattdance18 said: ...which is simply false. Observably, demonstrably, provably. And in fact, observed, demonstrated, proved. Seriously, David, this is what I'm most curious about, in a way: doesn't truth or falsity matter to creationists? They're just making stuff up!!!

callahanpb said: But I think the answer to "Why do they believe this stuff?" isn't really any harder than answering why people might have believed it 500 or more years ago.

callahanpb said: Some young upstart running their new-fangled "experiments" was the one "making stuff up" (or worse, spreading Satanic lies).

david.starling.macmillan said: It's just starting with your conclusion and shaping your premises to fit. Worst of all, they project this pseudoscientific "presuppositionalist" approach onto mainstream science.

I think you're taking it as self-evident that empirical reasoning is the gold standard of truth. I agree with you that it is, but that's a fairly recent notion. People have always been able to apply some sort of reasoning to mundane things, but the truth with a capital T was something found in old books, or the stories of elders, etc. Some young upstart running their new-fangled "experiments" was the one "making stuff up" (or worse, spreading Satanic lies).

It doesn't even bother me that some religious people want to engage in pre-scientific thinking. The part I find offensive is when they give lip service to science at the same time.

But I think the answer to "Why do they believe this stuff?" isn't really any harder than answering why people might have believed it 500 or more years ago. If creationists were actually learning science in the process of giving it lip-service, then there might still be a mystery, but I think the answer is that they don't understand empirical reasoning in the first place, and all the creationist communication that uses scientific-sounding terminology is purely a form of apologetics that sometimes helps them avoid being laughed out of the public debate.

Mike Elzinga said: Miller reports Morris as saying, “Ken, you’re intelligent, you’re well-meaning, and you’re energetic.

mattdance18 said: Nice choice of words, "projection." I've always thought that when fundamentalists complain about secular schooling "brainwashing" their kids, their problem isn't with brainwashing, just with who's doing it. They characterize education all education as brainwashing because it's how they do it.

The very terms themselves express contradictory concepts. The word "evolution" is of course derived from a Latin word meaning "out-rolling". The picture is of an outward-progressing spiral, an unrolling from an infinitesimal beginning through ever broadening circles, until finally all reality is embraced within. "Entropy," on the other hand, means literally "in-turning." It is derived from the two Greek words en (meaning "in") and trope (meaning "turning"). The concept is of something spiraling inward upon itself, exactly the opposite concept to "evolution." Evolution is change outward and upward, entropy is change inward and downward

Mike Elzinga said: It’s a facile trick; and it’s basically the old “Music Man Argument.” “Oh we got TROUBLE; right here in River City. With a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stand for POOL!”

mattdance18 said: I've always thought that when fundamentalists complain about secular schooling "brainwashing" their kids, their problem isn't with brainwashing, just with who's doing it.

St. Francis Xavier: “Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterwards.”

mattdance18 said: For me, the stuff that's worrisome is the casual acceptance of complete inconsistency. It goes well beyond creationism. I once tried to read conservative theologian Wayne Grudem's "Systematic Theology." Aside from the fact that there's little truly systematic about it -- he utterly destroys any narrative structure to the books of the Bible in order to extract proposition after proposition, allegedly placed in some kind of "systematic" order -- about twenty or thirty pages in, he acknowledged and then excused his practice of taking the statements made in the Bible as the proof of their own veracity. Some claim to the extent that in the end, every claim of reason rests upon an appeal to authority that someone takes as absolute, so taking the Bible as an ultimate authority is no different from what scientists do with reason. It never occurs to him that maybe there is no need to ground things in ultimate authority in the first place, that everything is revisable, etc, etc. And he just makes a convenient excuse for some of the most bluntly circular and question-begging crap I've ever had the misfortune to read. But I'm with you on the science side. Loved watching the Ham-Nye debate. Ham's every reference to the Bible, over and over, made it impossible to claim that his position was anything but religious. Still offensive, but at least amusingly so. I would pay good money to see a "scientific" debate between Ham, and a Muslim creationist, and a Hindu creationist.

callahanpb said: The big difference in my view is this. Given two debaters, both may use words very well and sound convincing, but reach entirely different conclusions. One may argue a little better than the other and be declared the victor, but all that is settled is the debater's performance. Given two scientists, they may differ in ability, in the quality of their equipment, in their ability to express their findings, but if they keep working on the same topic, they must reach consistent results (of course, the poorly equipped one may not find anything conclusive). When you evaluate the truth of an assertion, it is actually more compelling to conclude "This is poorly expressed, but does seem to follow from the data." than "I was blown away by the razzle-dazzle of this brilliant thinker." In the latter case, you may want to have a less brilliant (but honest) thinker walk you through the same result and see if it still seems to hold.

TomS said: As far as Ham's references to the Bible, what struck me is that Ham only said that the Bible had the answers, and did not supply chapter and verse for what that answer was.

david.starling.macmillan said: School models in which scale is off by a factor of billions don't help. They really need to make a scale poster of the solar system with unambiguously-displayed magnification so students can see just how far apart everything is.

Dave Luckett said: This has always been incredible to me, this ready propensity to alter, add to, and subtract from the words themselves. We have seen this here many times with the resident trolls. To do that should be utmost anathema to them, on their own stated beliefs - but they simply deny doing it, and defend each other when they do, and when absolutely confronted with their alterations, ignore it. And fundamentalists have absolutely no curiosity at all about who exactly wrote the scriptures, nor where, when, or why. Any but the traditional ascription is not so much rejected as not even entertained as of no importance. It doesn't matter that the text itself usually says nothing about its origins. It does not seem to occur to them to question, not the text, but the authority of the traditional ascription, no matter how late, nebulous or anonymous that authority might be.

ksplawn said:

Dave Luckett said: There is absolutely nothing in the Bible, or even any of the apocrypha, about the Devil being a musician.

Clearly, you did not live through the era of disco, or this would be self-evident.

ksplawn said: There is absolutely nothing in the Bible, or even any of the apocrypha, about the Devil being a musician.

ksplawn said: There is absolutely nothing in the Bible, or even any of the apocrypha, about the Devil being a musician.

Years later Green asked Lewis: "Are you still playing the devil's music?" Lewis replied "Yes, I am. But you know it's strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I am playing for the devil and they don't."

stevaroni said: Clearly, you did not live through the era of disco, or this would be self-evident.

callahanpb said: WAY off topic...

If I'm going to hell, I'm going there playing the piano. -- Jerry Lee Lewis

Dave Luckett said: And fundamentalists have absolutely no curiosity at all about who exactly wrote the scriptures, nor where, when, or why. Any but the traditional ascription is not so much rejected as not even entertained as of no importance. It doesn't matter that the text itself usually says nothing about its origins. It does not seem to occur to them to question, not the text, but the authority of the traditional ascription, no matter how late, nebulous or anonymous that authority might be.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

Helena Constantine said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

I realize this is late, but did anyone else notice this? This is surely a new contender for being the stupidist thing on the internet. And look at how he sells it as if he is calling on the reader to think for himself with this nonsense.

I agree completely… that quote about rain being for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals belongs in the FSTDT database. How can we nominate it?

Helena Constantine said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

I realize this is late, but did anyone else notice this? This is surely a new contender for being the stupidist thing on the internet. And look at how he sells it as if he is calling on the reader to think for himself with this nonsense.

By the way, it may only be carbon dioxide snow that occurs on Mars.

Maybe some life there needs carbon dioxide snow.

Glen Davidson

david.starling.macmillan said: Technically, they're right. Newly-emerged genes are just pre-existing information in the genetic code.

Helena Constantine said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

I realize this is late, but did anyone else notice this? This is surely a new contender for being the stupidist thing on the internet. And look at how he sells it as if he is calling on the reader to think for himself with this nonsense.

One common creationist example of why mutations "don't actually add new information" is the "duplicate manual". Let's say you have an instruction manual for assembling a new bicycle. If there's a copying error at the printer and the manual is printed twice in the same binding, you don't actually have anything new; you just have two copies of the same thing.

Sure, fine, whatever.

But if there's a copying error at the printer causing only the "wheel assembly" page to be duplicated...then, holy crap, you don't have a bicycle any more; you've just built yourself a quad bike.

Someone else apparently had the same idea regarding the graphic depiction of evolution on this page. The graphic itself is here. Amusingly, the author here also used "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey."

david.starling.macmillan said: If there's a copying error at the printer and the manual is printed twice in the same binding, you don't actually have anything new; you just have two copies of the same thing. Sure, fine, whatever.

I goofed horribly: On average, that requires N bits (some choices of N will have lower Kolmogorov complexity, but almost all will not).

Dave Luckett said: I've had a fundy tell me that the words in red in his KJV mean that they were the very words spoken by Jesus Himself. Pointing out that the words in red were English words produced not even a puzzled frown; he simply repeated it. When informed that Jesus was speaking Aramaic, not even the Greek of the Testament, he didn't even blink. It meant nothing. The fact simply didn't exist. Asked when he thought the words had been first written (in Greek) he didn't know, or care, nor when they had been translated into English, nor who had translated them, nor who had caused them to be printed in red. It didn't matter. The version he held in his hand was the Authorised Version. Period. End of discussion.

We’re (FL and I) arguing two, fundamentally futile, ideas: One, that the Bible says that the days of creation were meant as literal twenty-four hour days. Well, does it say that? No, it does not. It says that they were days, yom, and that they had an evening and a morning. It does not say that they lasted twenty-four hours. I am in the evening of my own days, but I can recognise a metaphor when I see one. FL, of course, can’t. Two, that the Bible in this instance must be read as literal history. Not as fictive narrative in which days are mentioned, with their attendant mornings and evenings, but as literal history. Well, does it say that it must be read as literal history? No, it does not, and that’s flat. Nowhere does Genesis tell us that this is literal history. Nowhere is it implied. It doesn’t say it’s fiction, either, but there’s damn-all fiction that does. There’s no reason at all to suppose that Genesis isn’t fiction, every reason to think it is, and every reason to think that the originators never meant it as anything but mythos - stories told to make a point. So FL’s premise, that the Genesis days of creation are meant as literal twenty-four hour days, fails on two separate grounds. The Bible doesn’t say that, two layers deep.

Helena Constantine said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/UZTyNgIV2NoJdpo6Kaxq0gI.KQ--#90715 said: A symbiosis between the environment and life is evidence of design. Whats the point of rain, evaporation, rain if not for watering trees and hydrating thirsty animals? Is there rain on Mars? The moon?. Think, man. Think.

I realize this is late, but did anyone else notice this? This is surely a new contender for being the stupidist thing on the internet. And look at how he sells it as if he is calling on the reader to think for himself with this nonsense.

A fellow named John Pantana got up to tell us about God’s pharmacy. To anticipate in advance your natural question: Yes, he’s serious. I know that because someone asked him precisely that after his talk, and he bluntly answered in the affirmative. Read it and weep: Here’s God’s amazing pharmacy. We can see the creativeness of God in the colors of food and the shapes of food that we put into our bodies. … Did you know that the sliced carrot looks like a human eye. The pupil, the iris, the radiating lines look like a human eye. Science shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to the function of the eyes. A tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All the research shows that tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure food for the heart and the blood. Grapes and the heart. Grapes hang in a cluster that look like the shape of a heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell. All the scientific research shows that both red and green grapes are profound heart and blood vitalizing food. A walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles and folds are just like the neo-cortex. They have shown that walnuts help develop more than three dozen neuron transmitters to the brain. So everybody eat some walnuts. Kidney beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function. Yes, they look exactly like the human kidney. Celery, bok choy, rhubarb and many others look like the bones. These food specifically target bone strength. Bones are twenty-three percent sodium and these foods are twenty-three percent sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body. Avocados, eggplants and pears target the health and function of the womb and the cervix of the female. They look just like these organs and the latest research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week it balances hormones … and prevents cervical cancers. It takes exactly nine months to grow an avocado from the blossom to the ripened fruit. Figs and male sperm count. Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm as well to overcome male sterility. Sweet potatoes and the pancreas. Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics. Olives and ovaries. Black and green olives assist the health and function of ovaries. One last. Oranges, pomegranites, grapefruits and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts. Onions look like body cells. Today’s research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.

callahanpb said: I'm not sure if the above is counterintuitive or not. It seems obviously true to me. But regardless, it demonstrates that just knowing the number of copies of something is information.

No creationist was ever persuaded by Reason, by evidence, or by facts.

Matt Young said:

No creationist was ever persuaded by Reason, by evidence, or by facts.

Not even Mr. MacMillan?

Matt Young said:

No creationist was ever persuaded by Reason, by evidence, or by facts.

Not even Mr. MacMillan?

"But if there's a copying error at the printer causing only the "wheel assembly" page to be duplicated...then, holy crap, you don't have a bicycle any more; you've just built yourself a quad bike."

Not only is Evolution "Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey", but The Doctor also invented the quadricycle.