Creationist On Speed Of Light And Radioactive Decay Rates

[Eclipse Now]

Hi all,

I'm a lay person, not a scientist, and I'm having trouble with a Creationist at the moment. I'm a Christian, but a theistic evolutionist.

 

I tried sharing this paper by a historian and theologian (and friend of mine) Dr John Dickson which analyses the Genre of Genesis and concludes that it is a polemic response to the Enuma Elish, a Babylonian creation myth that almost read as their National Anthem. Apparently it was written on 7 tablets and read out once a year at a special national day kind of like Christmas, Anzac Day and the 4th of July all roled into one.

 

http://www.publicchristianity.org/creationism1.html

 

Anyway, theology and history aside, I'm just making the point that I'm not threatened by an old universe or evolution, but this guy appears to be. I basically argued that if God did make the world 6000 years ago then he is more like Coyote the trickster god — because the universe and the world certainly appear older.

 

I mentioned the speed of light and 13 billion years to cross the known universe, he mentioned...

 

Speed of light was a problem for me for years, then I learned more about relativity. Big Bang theory assumes the universe is unbounded and centerless, however that requires a fourth dimension in space-time. We only observe 3. If our universe is in fact 3 dimensional, then we’re near the center. If the universe expanded, and relativity proves it has and probably still is, and if we are near the center, then the answer is gravitational time dilation.

 

To which I replied...

 

Gravitational time dilation only occurs near large objects, and to have any *real* effect would have to occur in the vicinity of super-massive black holes like the black holes at the centre of our galaxy. One could, in theory, sit in a spaceship rotating the black hole and watch the universe away from the effect range of the black hole age at about twice the rate you were ageing, but that’s about the best you get for mass-related time distortion as far as I know.

 

The mass of the earth only slows us down by several thousands of a second each day and that’s compared to our satellites.

 

So I’m not sure what you are trying to argue here? Maybe I have misunderstood, but it seems like special pleading to me.

 

I mentioned knowing many Christians who worked in science that said it was simple, the radioactive decay of various elements showed a very old world. He replied:

 

Radioactive decay rates are reliable in the present, however extrapolating backward in time requires several variables which are unknowable. Even geologists do not use radioactive decay dating methods as reliable dating method

 

Any hints where I go from here? I'm just not a scientist, but trained in humanities etc, even in high school.

[geko]

hi,

 

My answer to this isn't probably what you want to hear but i'l give it anyway. And that is that the conversation is over. The reason being is that he's a creationist and therefore the cumulative understanding of our race isn't valid or worth taking on-board from his standpoint. He has a belief that he truly believes because he wants to and that's the end of the matter. You could even win this argument and it wouldn't matter because he'd either claim you weren't correct on a fundamental point or come up with some convoluted argument against your argument that would confuse you with psychobabble. Unfortunately, that's how it works.

 

I think it was dennett who coined the idea that arguing with a creationist (it's any mystic actually), is like playing tennis. Where on your volley the net of reason MUST be up, but on their volley the net doesn't have to be up and, actually, it's just in the way. Further, even asking for it to be up on their volley is just you being anal, pedantic, and worrying over non-essentials. You can't win, even if you win the argument. And the reason being is that they truly believe in what they believe, they aren't pretending.

 

I experienced a great example of this recently with a mate of mine. He's a mystical, epistemological nihilist with a solipsistic bent that throws all of it away whenever it suits him. He volleyed the idea of we should go to space more because we need to find the super-duper elements that will give us the super-duper materials. If my memory serves, i think i frowned over confusion. He caught me on it and asked why i wasn't on-board with the idea. I said it was cavalier to believe something when you have no reason to believe it and you've actually just invented the idea in your thinking. This went back and forth for a couple of minutes as it does. I was even accused of being religious trying to 'convert' him because i was asking for reasons to believe in this super-duper stuff of his. All normal accusations of course. However, at the end he literally put his hands in the air and said i don't care i don't care, i just want to believe it. Which i thought was extremely refreshing, at least he was honest.

[JMJones0424]

Unfortunately I am tempted to agree with geko. The arguments that he is using to support his position are so blatantly false, that if he was truly open-minded and able to be influenced by facts, then there would not be an issue, as he would have corrected his errors rather than falsely reinforced his beliefs. In my small sample size of the creationists I know, no amount of evidence is enough, because if it contradicts their world-view, then there must obviously be a problem with the data. However, I was raised in a "creationist" household, and for some reason, was able to escape from that self-delusion. So in the off chance that this person is willing to rationally dissect his worldview, I think the first step is to show him the obvious flaws in his thinking.

 

1) Dimension - I don't know if bad SF has changed the common perception of what a dimension is, but it seems like a lot of people think a dimension is something more than it actually is. Basically, any measurement that can be placed on a number line can be described as a dimension. If one wishes to precisely locate an object in space, one must use three spatial coordinates and one time coordinate, thus there are three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. To deny that time is a dimension is to demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of what a dimension is. Without the temporal dimension, it is impossible to accurately describe the location of objects or events.

 

An example:

I call you up and say, "Let's go have lunch." You ask, "Where?" I say, at "Descarte's Diner, which is at the corner of Mission Street (first dimension) and Elm Street (second dimension)." (Omitted is the obvious, on the surface of the Earth, which is the third dimension.) Now, you could go to that diner and wait for me until I show up, never knowing when I would arrive or if I came and left before you got there. Or, you could do what every normal person would do, and ask, "What time?" I would reply, "1 PM." The precise location of the event of our lunch is not known until a fourth dimension, time, is used.

 

2) Hubble's Law - It is trivially true to note that we APPEAR to be at the center of the expansion of the universe. It is more accurate to say that all observers see themselves as the center of expansion.

 

3) "Radioactive decay rates are reliable in the present." This statement is false. If a medical examiner wishes to establish the time of death of a recently deceased person, he/she does not turn to carbon dating, as the date lies within the margin of error, so that dating method is worthless (if not technically impossible, since too little time has passed to give a measurable value).

 

4) "...extrapolating backward in time [using radiometric dating] requires several variables which are unknowable." According to whom? How convenient it is to throw out an entire chunk of established science that directly contradicts one's beliefs by claiming that there are unknowable variables. (Is this person also an AGW denier?)

 

5) "Even geologists do not use radioactive decay dating methods as reliable dating method." This statement, too, is false. That geologists use many different dating methods to calibrate different radiometric datings shows that they are persuing accuracy, not that the tests they use are unreliable. I would argue instead that using the "biblical dating method" of counting genealogies back to the beginning of the Earth, whatever that beginning might have been, is far more deserving of scrutiny, as it relies on only one source of data that is contradicted by every other dating method available, and contradicts all of evolutionary biology, geology, cosmology, and geochemistry.

 

Fundamentally, the problem is that creationists claim to use reason to come to their conclusions, and are convinced that those who do not see the world their way are denying reason. In actual fact, the opposite is the case. In order to maintain their worldview, they must (seemingly willfully) either misunderstand, misstate, or ignore the evidence before them.

[Moontanman]

Hi all,

I'm a lay person, not a scientist, and I'm having trouble with a Creationist at the moment. I'm a Christian, but a theistic evolutionist.

 

I tried sharing this paper by a historian and theologian (and friend of mine) Dr John Dickson which analyses the Genre of Genesis and concludes that it is a polemic response to the Enuma Elish, a Babylonian creation myth that almost read as their National Anthem. Apparently it was written on 7 tablets and read out once a year at a special national day kind of like Christmas, Anzac Day and the 4th of July all roled into one.

 

http://www.publicchristianity.org/creationism1.html

 

Anyway, theology and history aside, I'm just making the point that I'm not threatened by an old universe or evolution, but this guy appears to be. I basically argued that if God did make the world 6000 years ago then he is more like Coyote the trickster god — because the universe and the world certainly appear older.

 

I mentioned the speed of light and 13 billion years to cross the known universe, he mentioned...

 

 

 

To which I replied...

 

 

 

I mentioned knowing many Christians who worked in science that said it was simple, the radioactive decay of various elements showed a very old world. He replied:

 

 

 

Any hints where I go from here? I'm just not a scientist, but trained in humanities etc, even in high school.

 

 

He is misleading you, either intentionally or because he was lied to by someone else and he believed it, radioactive decay rates are indeed used by geologists every day and they are consider quite accurate to very small degrees of accuracy. We can measure such tiny discrepancies of time that if decay rates were changing somehow we would notice but it has not been shown to be true, as you said if indeed god or who ever created an old in appearance universe then he is indeed trickster to say the least. But it bears mentioning that we do have other ways to dating things and those methods do indeed agree with radioactive dating. His argument is not valid in any sense of the word.

 

Try this video

 

[Turtle]

good grief!! physics & math with this crap!!!??? :rant: it's a non-discussion; DOA. it's bad enough this mystic/biblical/creationist mumbo-jumbo is promoted & swallowed like pablim so widely elsewhere, but it is decidedly a crock of s**t that we have to read it here @ hypog week after week. none of it stands on its own so y'all got to try & piggy-back it on science. i don't know about the rest of you but it is not what i come here for. good grief!!! stop already!

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/29/usa

The world's first creationist museum, which tells visitors the Earth is only about 6,000 years old, has opened its doors in the American midwest.

 

The Creation Museum claims dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex lived alongside ancient civilisations but were strictly vegetarian before the Fall of Man and that the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood.

 

Some 4,000 people visited the Kentucky museum on its first day yesterday while demonstrators protested outside and a plane towing a banner reading "Thou shalt not lie" circled overhead.

 

Critics say the $27m (£14m) centre, whose motto is "Prepare to believe!", will be the first museum in the world whose exhibits are almost entirely fake.

 

It is seeking to convince visitors of the truth of its belief in the account of the world's creation in the book of Genesis through a mixture of animatronic models and tableaux.

...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Museum

[Moontanman]

good grief!! physics & math with this crap!!!??? :rant: it's a non-discussion; DOA. it's bad enough this mystic/biblical/creationist mumbo-jumbo is promoted & swallowed like pablim so widely elsewhere, but it is decidedly a crock of s**t that we have to read it here @ hypog week after week. none of it stands on its own so y'all got to try & piggy-back it on science. i don't know about the rest of you but it is not what i come here for. good grief!!! stop already!

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/29/usa

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Museum

 

 

Oh hell turtle, everyone has to believe in something, i believe I'll have another beer...I do admit it's about the most expensive piece of male bovine excrement I've ever seen, creationist are nothing but liars, it's demanded by the faith, they have to lie to support their beliefs.

 

 

[Turtle]

Oh hell turtle, everyone has to believe in something, i believe I'll have another beer...I do admit it's about the most expensive piece of male bovine excrement I've ever seen, creationist are nothing but liars, it's demanded by the faith, they have to lie to support their beliefs.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoZW7-3YSns&feature=related

 

let's not conflate the word "belief" here as we have hashed that grundy ad nauseum in other threads. my point is that none of it belongs here@ hypography. at the most basic level this point is not rocket science, it's principles & rules @ a kindergarten level. this is a science site, creationsism is not science, ergo creationism does not belong here. period. fini. full stop. how much time & space have we wasted by letting any of this go beyond a first post? what legitimate science discussions have we missed because of it? it doesn't matter that legitimate science may come to the fore in this piffle as it is out of context & tainted by association.

 

while you all outside of the us may find this all amusing, these creationist/biblical folk here in the us are running for & taking government offices with their religious beliefs bannered high in the front. don't be surprised that the more of it gets in that the more of it will affect your country's relations with us. sometimes i wish i were french.

 

my position is & has been so clear as to make sense to a 5 year old. i will continue to restate it when provoked to do so.

 

history, i believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. this marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

~ thomas jefferson

[geko]

The world's first creationist museum....

 

Awsome!

 

 

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/06/27/creationist-school-appears-out-of-nowhere/

CREATIONIST SCHOOL APPEARS OUT OF NOWEHRE!

 

Scientists are said to be ‘baffled’ after a school teaching Creationism suddenly appeared overnight in a Hampshire field complete with a full retinue of teachers and pupils.

 

St Usshers Junior Mixed Infants is being heralded as the world’s first truly Creationist school, miraculously emerging out of the dust in what is believed to be the first recorded example of educational genesis.

 

‘I was as surprised as anyone to find myself here,’ said newly created headmaster, Dr William Jennings Bryan. ‘We haven’t seen anything quite like this since the beginning of the Earth in 4004 BC.’

 

Dr Bryan ran through the St Usshers curriculum. ‘Today the kids have Intelligent Design and Technology in which they have to devise and build their own ark. Then, this afternoon, it’s double pseudoscience followed by flat earth geography.’

 

The arrival of the school has been welcomed by Education Secretary Michael Gove. ‘St Usshers has set a magnificent example in appearing fully formed out of nowhere and at no cost to the taxpayer,’ he said. ‘This is just the kind of ‘free school’ I want to see more of. And what’s more, the teachers never threaten to go on strike.

‘Of course I realise that some people are uncomfortable with religious schools but surely it’s worth putting up with a few extra bible classes in return for this gift from God.’

 

However, Hampshire County Council has already raised concerns about St Usshers. ‘It’s all very well getting a shiny new school,’ said councillor Jeremy Spigot, ‘but at no stage did anyone run this past us. I don’t care if it is all part of God’s grand design. He should have sought planning permission first.’

 

Meanwhile, St Usshers is facing a bullying problem from neighbouring school St Dawkins. ‘The boys from St Dawkins are an absolute nightmare,’ said Dr Bryan. ‘Only last week some of them came by and deliberately threw fossils into our playground, shouting ‘Explain that!’ before running off giggling.’

 

Local parents remain sceptical after a recent Ofsted report revealed that everyone attending St Usshers was an idiot. ‘I admit we don’t have the brightest pupils,’ said Dr Bryan, ‘but that’s hardly surprising since we don’t believe in selection.’

[Eclipse Now]

creationist are nothing but liars, it's demanded by the faith, they have to lie to support their beliefs.

 

< rant > The sad thing is they don't have to lie and it isn't demanded by the faith! Reading Genesis 1 as scientific account is just plain bad reading! It's not giving the passage the same dignity and discipline that we'd give other ancient texts, or even modern Shakespeare or poetry! We don't get to treat Genesis 1-11 as either scientific dogma or unscientific crap, because BOTH outcomes are biased against the true nature of the texts involved — science is simply not the concern. These are largely creative metaphors discussing why, not how, purposes not processes.

 

Most Anglican Ministers I know in the Sydney Australia region are theistic evolutionists, and just cringe with embarrassment at the largely American Creationist movement. (Although it seems to be getting stronger here! Yuk!)

 

So when Turtle says:

while you all outside of the us may find this all amusing, these creationist/biblical folk here in the us are running for & taking government offices with their religious beliefs bannered high in the front. don't be surprised that the more of it gets in that the more of it will affect your country's relations with us. sometimes i wish i were french.

...please understand that many professional ministers and indeed, most of the faculty of Moore Theological college training the next generation of Anglican ministers, all basically hear you loud and clear! It's just plain scary! What is it now, 47%?

 

However,

history, i believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. this marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

~ thomas jefferson

I'm not so sure it's that clear cut. Many historians I know thing that the modern germ of democracy began in the Reformation, where Protestant thought became convinced of an individual's responsibility to define their own interpretation of the bible. This lead to a more democratic, less priestly, and far more academic approach to the bible than just believing something because "The Pope said it!" Secular Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey basically argues that the Reformation led to modern democracy. "Short history of the world".

 

< / rant >

 

Now, scientific question (just because I'm a lay person and haven't got my head around something, not because I'm a creationist! I'm not!)

 

An Astrophysicist Anglican Minister I know explained that the universe was like a balloon covered in dots. As the balloon expands, all the dots move away from each other. So from the perspective of any one dot it looks like you are in the centre of the universe. How does that actually work out? I'm trying to visualise it but can't. Way back when I was in the army and threw grenades. I'm trying to imagine grenade shrapnel expanding outwards in slow motion. Surely if we had video of it playing back in slow motion we'd see the fragments approaching a watermelon, hitting it, and the watermelon exploding in roughly the same direction as the blast wave? Surely we could triangulate back to the centre of the explosion?

 

So is my creationist friend right when he says Astrophysics relies on a 4th dimension to try and suggest that the universe is expanding generally — everywhere — and not just expanding away from the Earth which again becomes the centre of the universe (and the magical time-dilation effect which explains away 13 billion light years). This sounds to my humanitarian / arts / non-technical ears like a new form of the old Copernican debate.

[JMJones0424]

The balloon analogy only works conceptually when you adhere to the constraints of the analogy. In the balloon analogy, all of the universe (three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension) are represented by the two dimensional surface of the balloon. Nothing else exists. That there is volume inside the balloon is an inadequacy of the analogy, and the reason why it is referred to as an analogy rather than a model. Exactly the same effect would occur if one were to imagine an infinite rubber plane with a one cm by one cm square grid with a dot representing a galaxy at each intersection. As the plane expands two-fold in both dimensions, FOR EVERY DOT, each dot that was one cm away is now two, and each dot that was two is now four, etc. There is no center of expansion. All galaxies observe all other galaxies to be receding away from them.

 

For a three dimensional analogy, imagine an infinitely large loaf of raisin bread. As the loaf bakes and the bread rises, all raisins get further apart from each other. Pick any one raisin, and it would see itself as standing still while all other raisins were receding, and the farther away the raisin was to begin with, the faster it is receding.

 

Remember, when we discuss the Big Bang, we are not referring to an explosion "into" anything. There is no reference frame outside of which you can see the explosion. In fact, explosion and bang are not accurate descriptors, and were originally applied by detractors of the theory in order to show its (to them) absurdity. The term has stuck because it is catchy, but the Big Bang is not an explosion of any kind.

 

So is my creationist friend right when he says Astrophysics relies on a 4th dimension to try and suggest that the universe is expanding generally — everywhere — and not just expanding away from the Earth which again becomes the centre of the universe (and the magical time-dilation effect which explains away 13 billion light years). This sounds to my humanitarian / arts / non-technical ears like a new form of the old Copernican debate.

 

Absolutely not. Again, your friend is so wrong, and so clearly has no clue what he was talking about, that I would doubt any assertion he were to make. Time is a dimension, whether he likes it or not. The Big Bang does not rely on there being four dimensions, it would apply if there were 11, 3, or any number. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the notion that the Earth, or any other point, is the center of the Universe. His notion of gravitational time dilation is quite ridiculous due to the inverse square law. Your friend is full of crap and either is horrendously misinformed or intentional deceiving, your choice.

 

Here is a brief youtube video by an astromer that deals with your conceptual problem of the expansion of the universe and the absence of a center of expansion.

 

[Turtle]

So when Turtle says:

while you all outside of the us may find this all amusing, these creationist/biblical folk here in the us are running for & taking government offices with their religious beliefs bannered high in the front. don't be surprised that the more of it gets in that the more of it will affect your country's relations with us. sometimes i wish i were french.

...please understand that many professional ministers and indeed, most of the faculty of Moore Theological college training the next generation of Anglican ministers, all basically hear you loud and clear! It's just plain scary! What is it now, 47%?

 

However,

history, i believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. this marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

~ thomas jefferson

 

I'm not so sure it's that clear cut. Many historians I know thing that the modern germ of democracy began in the Reformation, where Protestant thought became convinced of an individual's responsibility to define their own interpretation of the bible. This lead to a more democratic, less priestly, and far more academic approach to the bible than just believing something because "The Pope said it!" Secular Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey basically argues that the Reformation led to modern democracy. "Short history of the world".

 

< / rant >

 

unless those clergy are actively doing something to combat the problem, like speaking out against the fundamentalists & in support of science, their hearing is of little consequence. but then there is no scientific evidence or logical argument pointing to the existence of spirits, so i guess that would be shooting themselves in the feet.

 

the jefferson quote is clear cut enough inasmuch as he's a founding father and a principle author of our united states constitution. part of the fundy chant is to get back to the christian principles the nation was founded on & the facts of the founders be damned.

 

Now, scientific question (just because I'm a lay person and haven't got my head around something, not because I'm a creationist! I'm not!)

 

An Astrophysicist Anglican Minister I know explained that the universe was like a balloon covered in dots.

...

 

i have read many if not most of your posts here eclipse and on the most part to your credit you keep the theology out of it. you may just as well have kept it out of your questions here, but for whatever reason you seem determined to put it up front as the title and re-introduce it at every post. you'll get better results if you check your cross at the door.

[Eclipse Now]

His notion of gravitational time dilation is quite ridiculous due to the inverse square law.

Yes, I didn't have the term but I tried to argue that one had to be ridiculously close to a super-massive black hole just to watch time outside ground zero travel at double your speed through time, let alone 2.17 million times faster! (13 billion / 6000).

[Eclipse Now]

unless those clergy are actively doing something to combat the problem, like speaking out against the fundamentalists & in support of science,

They are teaching their students a proper hermeneutic and the history of the ancient world as they cover Genesis, and as many of them were also in peer-reviewed science (not creationist whacko stuff) then I'd say yes, they are doing their jobs!

 

their hearing is of little consequence. but then there is no scientific evidence or logical argument pointing to the existence of spirits, so i guess that would be shooting themselves in the feet.

It sounds like you don't really understand the Christian position on many of these matters, so I suggest that you're starting to sound as uninformed on theology to me as if I WERE a raving Creationist arguing rubbish to you! (Without knowing it you've set up a false dichotomy about what we teach, but as this is not a theology forum I'm not going there.) As it is I have tried to be polite and simply state where I was coming from for the purposes of some specific questions, and I thank everyone above for their answers!

 

the jefferson quote is clear cut enough inasmuch as he's a founding father and a principle author of our united states constitution. part of the fundy chant is to get back to the christian principles the nation was founded on & the facts of the founders be damned.

I see — well, probably a good corrective to the modern church mood in America then. Keep that quote handy! However I don't think it's necessarily in conflict with the history of the origins of democracy as described by Blainey.

 

i have read many if not most of your posts here eclipse and on the most part to your credit you keep the theology out of it. you may just as well have kept it out of your questions here, but for whatever reason you seem determined to put it up front as the title and re-introduce it at every post. you'll get better results if you check your cross at the door.

 

That's a bit unfair isn't it? I was just explaining where I was coming from, and why I'm not threatened by evolution and an old universe. If you feel we have unfinished business on the more theological stuff, then please start a new thread in another forum and link me to it, and we can take it up there.

 

As it is, I wanted to thank contributors above for their time in explaining the Big Bang and "New Copernican" argument the Creationists are trying to assert. Cheers all. I've got to watch that youtube clip now.

[Turtle]

...It sounds like you don't really understand the Christian position on many of these matters, so I suggest that you're starting to sound as uninformed on theology to me as if I WERE a raving Creationist arguing rubbish to you! (Without knowing it you've set up a false dichotomy about what we teach, but as this is not a theology forum I'm not going there.) As it is I have tried to be polite and simply state where I was coming from for the purposes of some specific questions, and I thank everyone above for their answers!

 

ah that old dodge. obviously it's my presumed lack of knowledge that is responsible for your mistake in including creationism in your title & topic. :doh: as to not going there, you just went. if you're part of a "we", then you have set the dichotomy just as well as i, and i'd argue that it isn't a false one. where you are coming from is of no consequence to your questions from a scientific view.

 

 

I see — well, probably a good corrective to the modern church mood in America then. Keep that quote handy! However I don't think it's necessarily in conflict with the history of the origins of democracy as described by Blainey.

 

jefferson's quote -just one of many similar admonitions of his against religion- stands on its own, blainey et al or no.

 

 

That's a bit unfair isn't it? I was just explaining where I was coming from, and why I'm not threatened by evolution and an old universe. If you feel we have unfinished business on the more theological stuff, then please start a new thread in another forum and link me to it, and we can take it up there.

 

no; i don't think it is unfair to admonish you to leave the cross @ the door. our rules on this religious business are quite clear. i have started a number of legitimate theologic threads and you are welcome to take up your sticks there. again, where you are coming from is of no consequence to the science questions you posed and you would have done better to leave it off. at the very least you certainly would not have had to listen to me or the others challenge you, your questions would have been answered, and you could have gone on your merry way no worse for the wear.

[Moontanman]

Turtle, you old hard shell you, you know there are soft shell turtles don't you? I see no reason to give Enow such a hard time, he asked a legitimate question and we all tried to give him legitimate answers. the only disconnect I can see is that this thread should have been in the religion forum, possibly a moderator could correct that?

[Turtle]

Turtle, you old hard shell you, you know there are soft shell turtles don't you? I see no reason to give Enow such a hard time, he asked a legitimate question and we all tried to give him legitimate answers. the only disconnect I can see is that this thread should have been in the religion forum, possibly a moderator could correct that?

 

yes i know about soft-shells. i sometimes bring them home for lunch. :omg: as to giving E a hard time, it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. i've shown you no less courtesy when i found you in error. i have been as tactfull as hard-shelled hard-time-giving allows. the facts are the facts and the rules are the rules. hypograph is science for everyone, not spiritualism for everyone. you gave E a push not because he was within the rules, but because he is a long-time-well-respected contributing member.

 

so again, there is no legitimate reason here to preface or annotate this or any scientific question with one's -or others'- religious beliefs, leanings, holdings, or any and all weasel words standing in for those terms. E has been here long enough to know how these creationist and similarly themed discussions go & i can scarcely believe that he didn't have some inkling of that when he titled this one. strikers me as a bit of a provocation.

hypog rules (boldenation & colloration mine.)

How do I avoid normal argument fallacies?

Take our advice: If you post theories which are untestable, ideas which are obviously based on bad logic, arguments which appeal to faith but fail when faced with reason, you will meet opposition in these forums. This is not because we are unfriendly. It is because we want to learn, try theories, understand, and most of all, discuss.

 

 

 

yes, i know i am perpetuating a thread that i think doesn't belong. wry, aint it? :lol: nonetheless, until my point is taken, and taken without equivocation, i will continue to restate it in as direct & unambiguous terms as i can muster. don't want to read any more of my barking, then don't further provoke me.

[Eclipse Now]

you gave E a push not because he was within the rules, but because he is a long-time-well-respected contributing member.

 

Hey, you're ruining my bad-boy image! I resent that! I've blown up with the best of them! I've received warnings and infraction points. ;) I especially lose my temper with anti-climate trolls! (Who are probably anti-climate because climate science implies an old earth. :P )