Thread: Grinds my gears

Ok first off I'll say how this started. I've recently seen my cousin, who I hadn't seen in about 5-6 years. He tells me he found ''God''. So, I just move on and we jump from subject to subject as we end on environmental problems. After discussion several topics he comes with his mighty biblical words saying no worries, God promised us a new world, so don't worry about this one being destroyed.

So we keep talking, even thought I was quite annoyed by these comments. I feel ''they'' just wait out life to this...promised land of heaven. Anywho, so he shows me this site he likes to read on.

www.drdino.com

I come upon this one (The Grand Canyon, Things That Make Evolutionists Look Stupid article that just strikes me.

I love these non-scientific no evidence backing analysis of these people trying to prove their views. So, the theory so far (yes Theory, but much better analysis with evidence), you look at this geologic map of the type of rocks in North America (map showing lots of sedimentary rocks in the grand canyon area and a lot of the middle of North America it seems. The theory is that long ago the continent was much submerged under water, certainly since the center of America is very low (the prairies and such extending from the Arctic Ocean to the Golf of Mexico)

A long with this are the theories of a Dr. Ron Blakey of the University of Northern Arizona

(Dr. Ron Blakey personnal site)

His maps placed together in a gif (Geological evolution of water level in North America)

Stratification layer is part of sedimentry rock. Of course different layers different different material (maybe some volcanic ash from a major erupition, red is usualy iron deposits, etc.)

It could have been done fast ( like the Mt. St-Helaine article on that same site, www.drdino.com or the crack in Eastern Africa that is opening faster then expected)or in geological time.

Point is, he seems to me, he is saying that god did flood the world (Noah and his Ark) and that the Grand Canyon is probably a result of this. Isn't this flood 40 days or so? (ignoring the 2 of every animal on this Ark) How can 40 days deposit so much sediments? We know how sedimentary rocks are formed, they don't accumulate this much (unless of great and I mean insanely high level of erosion, that would have deposited in one specific area) in 40 days.

I just don't like when people give explanations backed up by only this ''good'' book and their faith with no concrete evidence. Science doesn't have all the answers, its normal we recently started and are learning very quickly though. At least there is more evidence to back up our story, not to say we are 100% sure of the beginning of it all, we've better theories that are backed by concrete evidence.

My PoV is that if you truly need to believe in a creator, well I'd say he's more of an observer of his ant colony or actually maybe he's a fine wine maker would be a better analogy. He placed the ingredients (Laws that the physical world abides by ex: gravity) in the container (the universe) and sat back and he observes it mature.

No listening to individual prayers, that is like believing in Santa.
No interfering, he observes his universe in a ...bottle? and see what planet flourishes the best, how his ''rules'' affect the growth, chances and all other aspect of life.

IF he truly is there, above all he hates us humans because we don't respect some basic rule (we belong to the world and the world doesn't belong to us) No matter, since his rules are there and eventually he who doesn't follow the rules is extinct. So his universe does function quite well.

So don't pray, respect

Sorry had to vent, these sites are horrid with ridiculous texts.

Originally Posted by Rick Scarf

You might be interested in reading up on the "Watchmaker" idea of God - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...earch&aq=f&oq=

Basically, it's the popular idea in philosophy circles that God is a watchmaker, he built the watch, wound it, then sat back and let it tick. Plenty of good reading out there on it and the arguments associated with that idea.

The proper name for this is Deism. Please use it from now on.

I actually lean much toward this school of thought. For God to be both omniscient and omnipotent far surpasses my bi-dimensional thought.

To abide by the more Evangelical schools of thought revolves around this sole idea: if God is all-knowing then He is aware of every human being, what they think, what they do, the wars they fight; He is aware of the hungry, the murderers, the poor, and the insane and therefore is content with the world as it stands. But the question is, if He is aware of such things and has done nothing to stop them.... is He punishing us?

Is the creator a grand experimenter creating the world and finding out where it goes on from that 7th day? Perhaps.

I would rather think the suffering of the less fortunate world-wide is simply a result of chance and not a "grander plan" because no one deserves starvation or genocide or the like.

I can understand you being annoyed with someone ignoring obvious facts like evolution and the actual age of the earth, but I've never understood why people get so mad because people believe in a god. I mean, I have no problem with people believing whatever they want to believe. There is no reason to be aggressively bitchy with your atheism and no point in trying to convince people what they believe is wrong. What good does it do?

Note: This isn't directed specifically at anybody, just a general thought from my experience.

I have troubles with this because I find religion a destructive force and that it keeps us from advancing as a species. Also that religion tends to avoid logic, illogical and Irrational individuals are...delusional? therefore dangerous?

when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

-Richard Dawkins

i don't give a shit if people believe there are gods or faeries or buddhas or saints or elves or kamis or whatever as long as their beliefs allow them to treat other people with compassion and as long as they don't make the integrity of science suspect

Bicameralism, of the mind, is certainly a topic of debate. Religion--being a result of this bicameral mind--evolved only recently (300 y.a.) to move beyond this state of mind.

Julian Jaynes states his case for this: "According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state would function in a manner similar to that of a modern-day schizophrenic. Rather than making conscious evaluations in novel or unexpected situations, the person would hallucinate a voice or "god" giving admonitory advice or commands, and obey these voices without question; one would not be at all conscious of one's own thought processes per se. Others have argued that this state of mind is recreated in members of cults."

Of course this is only a theory, but it stands to reason that some perhaps are still fervently stuck in this school of thought.

Amazon.com: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (9780618057078): Julian Jaynes: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41FlFSjt2OL.@@AMEPARAM@@41FlFSjt2OL

Originally Posted by TheOriginalGrumpySpy

To abide by the more Evangelical schools of thought revolves around this sole idea: if God is all-knowing then He is aware of every human being, what they think, what they do, the wars they fight; He is aware of the hungry, the murderers, the poor, and the insane and therefore is content with the world as it stands. But the question is, if He is aware of such things and has done nothing to stop them.... is He punishing us?

He's aware of such things, but He is being just. The fact of the matter is that we are responsible for all of this. We made it and we have to fix it. I don't think He's punishing us. I think he's making us learn a lesson. Christ called upon the church to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, etc...which the church has not done. It's man that created such travesty...and now we're reaping the benefits.

(Disclaimer: These are from my beliefs. I don't know what your beliefs are.)

Originally Posted by Rick Scarf

I've always taken the Genesis version of creation to not be actual "days" of creation but rather symbolic of eras. It jives pretty well with actual science, and apparently fits nicely onto a logarithmic curve as the "days" get shorter and shorter headed towards our 24 hour day as we know it.

Somewhere in the letters in the NT there's a verse that says something along the lines of how to God a day is 1,000 years and vice versa. I've never really taken the days to be literal, though there's no reason they couldn't be. I mean, people will bring up carbon dating and crap like that...but I sometimes view that type of thing as a test to see who true believers are.

Once again, I'm just going off my beliefs. I don't know what your beliefs are.

Originally Posted by Pepsi

Somewhere in the letters in the NT there's a verse that says something along the lines of how to God a day is 1,000 years and vice versa. I've never really taken the days to be literal, though there's no reason they couldn't be. I mean, people will bring up carbon dating and crap like that...but I sometimes view that type of thing as a test to see who true believers are.

Once again, I'm just going off my beliefs. I don't know what your beliefs are.

1) what the fuck do you know about radiometric dating that would allow you to call it "crap"?

2) i'm not sure exactly what you're referring to as the "test to see who true believers are" here, but you're saying that god would put evidence in the ground that would logically make one conclude that there are things on the earth older than the earth's biblical age just to see if his believers would believe the Bible over their senses?

What a terrible God.

Originally Posted by gwahir

I agree, except that I think that a belief in gods or fairies makes suspect the integrity of science. I don't know -- I haven't thought about this bit at length, and could be wrong. But it doesn't seem so.

well, you see i was brought up in a religious household, and i wasn't even aware that there was a conflict between science and religion until around the 4th or 5th grade. so no, a belief in something else doesn't require denying the discoveries of science.

Originally Posted by sycld

1) what the fuck do you know about radiometric dating that would allow you to call it "crap"?

2) i'm not sure exactly what you're referring to as the "test to see who true believers are" here, but you're saying that god would put evidence in the ground that would logically make one conclude that there are things on the earth older than the earth's biblical age just to see if his believers would believe the Bible over their senses?

What a terrible God.

If I'm not mistaken, carbon dating's really only accurate up to 10,000/50,000 years(I've seen some that say one or the other).
http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricu...atingBack.html

The short half-life of carbon-14 means its cannot be used to date extremely old fossils. Levels of carbon-14 become difficult to measure and compare after about 50,000 years (between 8 and 9 half lives; where 1% of the original carbon-14 remains undecayed).

Carbon dating cannot be used on most fossils, not only because they are almost always too old, but also because they rarely contain the original carbon of the organism. Also, many fossils are contaminated with carbon from the environment during collection or preservation proceedures.

This was saved on my computer, I forgot where I got it from though.

Genesis 3 verse 17 "..cursed is the ground for your sake"

When this happened there was a burst of radioactity that made the rocks appear older than they were.

Wouldn't this make all the rocks appear the same age?

"The rock question is fairly simple and has to do with the basic elements which made up these rocks in the beginning. When each of these elements, uranium, potassium, radium etc. were switched on, it would only be natural for them to behave according to their individual properties, eventually acquiring stable half-lives of decay, at different rates. Let's say initially every radioactive element was "exploded" into existence from pre-existent elements. None of these early faster half-lives would be the same as they are today.

As time progressed each would begin to acquire its slower modern-day stable half-life, but would they all acquire these stable rates in a uniformity which would keep them all in synchrony? I doubt it. If they did, all would give the same ages, you are right. Each would probably arrive at equilibrium at different times.

Look at biological breakdown everywhere, it proceeds at different rates. Look at the world from a devolutionary viewpoint and see how perfection has been lost and breakdown has proceeded in spurts and stasis periods. Some of us have lost more information than others, that's why some are at Harvard, but others, more unfortunate, [the same] age struggle with debilitating genetic degenerative diseases like Lupus, MS, ALS, Crohn's and many other autoimmune diseases. The keys of which are locked in the "vault of degeneration knowledge" that evolutionists are unwilling to open for fear that we creationists might be correct."
Jack Cuozzo 3/02

"Radioisotopes and the age of the earth" (edited by Larry Vardiman, Andrew Snelling, Eugene F. Chaffin. Published by Institute for Creation Research; December 2000)

Dating methods are based on 3 unprovable and questionable assumptions:

1) That the rate of decay has been constant throughout time.
2). That the isotope abundances in the specimen dated have not been altered during its history by addition or removal of either parent or daughter isotopes
3) That when the rock first formed it contained a known amount of daughter material
("Radioisotopes and the age of the earth" pg v)

We must recognize that past processes may not be occurring at all today, and that some may have occurred at rates and intensities far different from similar processes today.
( "Radioisotopes and the age of the earth" pg vii)

"We didn't tell them that the bones they were dating were dinosaur bones. The result was sample B at 16,120 years. The Allosaurus dinosaur was supposed to be around 140,000,000 years. The samples of bone were blind samples."

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html

For this system to work as a clock, the following 4 criteria must be fulfilled:

1. The decay constant and the abundance of K40 must be known accurately.

2. There must have been no incorporation of Ar40 into the mineral at the time of crystallization or a leak of Ar40 from the mineral following crystallization.

3. The system must have remained closed for both K40 and Ar40 since the time of crystallization.

4. The relationship between the data obtained and a specific event must be known.

Radiometric dating relies too much on the chance that the constants remain the same. Unless your samples have been in an airtight vault from the time the organism/substance began fossilization/erosion, it will most likely be contaminated/altered from its original state by the introduction of a new or unoriginal substance.

I'm probably wrong, but I don't care.

Originally Posted by Absolution

You did it! You have disproved and recreated time and space; what the heck was the rest of the world thinking? Listening to those smart scientists and their scientific methods is just plain dumb. Thanks pepsi, you're smarter than you type.

I don't recall saying anything of the sort.

Originally Posted by gwahir

I keep thinking of more points.

Tidus, I've put my finger on the problem I have with you reciting "science". It's true that I know no more science than you, so I can't object to you not having done the research yourself. I can't accuse you of simply following the claims of others, because that's what I do too. My problem is with the particular "science" you do bring up, and the manner in which you follow the claims of others.

Findings like the ones you showed (I'm making no claims on their validity) are findings because religious people want facts, or want "science", that agrees with what they already "know" about the universe. That's exactly the opposite of what science wants to do. Genuine scientists find new evidence and then shape their understanding of the universe around that, instead of looking for evidence that supports their understanding. I mean, many look for evidence that supports their theories, because otherwise science couldn't move forward, but the reason they do that is so that their understanding of the universe can edge closer to completeness; it isn't so that they can support what they ALREADY believe.

Science, genuine science, is unbiased and without motive. It seeks to uncover the truth of the universe, and if it has to demolish everything we understand to do that, it will. Mainstream religion tends to claim it already holds the truth of the universe, and if it goes to science, it only does so to support that "truth".

You can't use science as an argumentative weapon if you have an agenda. That's why I hate you and other religious people making these arguments.

EDIT: I should stop referring to what science "wants", as if anthropomorphising it into a being with hopes and dreams, or alternatively I could link you to science personified.

I see your point.

I'd just like to add that maybe you should also hate nonreligious people that use science to try to discredit religion.

It's a double-edged sword, and both sides do it.

As for the radiometric dating, I'm not trying to disprove it for the sake of my beliefs, I was making my argument based on the fact that there are proven flaws within the system. Not all scientific experiments or theories are perfect. Sure, there are undeniable facts that I can't ignore...but I look up such sources in my quest for knowledge and to know correct.

I'm not solid on my beliefs. If I didn't question them, I don't think I'd be a true believer. The only way I will be swayed is by doing research, looking at studies, and forming an opinion. Most religious people just take what the church tells them as fact. THAT is why you hate religious people. They are hard-headed. They don't seek out truth. Instead of telling me you hate me because I have an agenda, why don't you realize that I'm open to new ideas? Show me something that you think proves religious people wrong. Go ahead. I'll look at it, do research, and form an opinion. Whether or not that will strengthen or weaken what I believe, I don't know.

Maybe you'll see that I'm not a bigoted Christian with an agenda. If I were, every single damned post I made would probably would have had a bible verse in it. That long post I made about radiometric dating had nothing to do with religion. It had to do with cold hard facts. It is flawed.

This is why I don't take part in most of the debates on this site. It's because I haven't searched enough about them. I haven't read the books that you, TOGS, coqauvin, or Atmosfear have read because I haven't had the chance. The contrary is why I posted my views in this thread. This is something I have looked at and formed what I think is an informed opinion. Honestly, I'd prefer that someone counter my sources. I'd prefer for someone to prove me wrong instead of just harping on about how I'm wrong and not giving me proof.

The only problem is that on this site I'm obviously hated. Everything I say is jumped on by these people as though they were jackals. They just wait until I post again so they can mock and ridicule me. This is why I always say I don't care...because I don't. If I really did care, I probably wouldn't post on this website anymore. I post on here because I can have a right laugh at the people trying to bring me down, thinking that what they say will turn me into an atheist, a pot smoker, a fag, or whatever the hell else.

And as I post this it will be torn apart. I'll be proven wrong. I'll have dirt kicked into my face. Big whoop. I guess I just wanted to say my peace.

Wow, that was really longer than it should have been.

Originally Posted by Absolution

So you start off rather respectable, and then you start talking about yourself.

Did I miss something here?

About 3/4ths of it was in response to this or just me ranting on:

You can't use science as an argumentative weapon if you have an agenda. That's why I hate you and other religious people making these arguments.

I rant a lot.

Originally Posted by gwahir

Science, genuine science, is unbiased and without motive. It seeks to uncover the truth of the universe, and if it has to demolish everything we understand to do that, it will. Mainstream religion tends to claim it already holds the truth of the universe, and if it goes to science, it only does so to support that "truth".

Comparing 'genuine science' to 'mainstream religion' is like comparing 'journalistic science' (poorly researched facts posted in a newspaper) to 'genuine moral religion'

when you take the pure form of one and say it's better than the impure form of another, it's pretty obvious that's not much of a comparison

compare genuine religion and genuine science and we can talk about that.

Originally Posted by gwahir

Well, no. That's the thing. Scientists use science to answer questions; religious people use "science" to support "answers". People in favour of science use science for science's sake. They don't have an agenda outside of science. Religion IS outside of science. Science isn't used to discredit anything; it's just used -- no, because to say it's used does imply agenda -- it's just pursued so we know more about the universe.

Besides, science can't discredit religion. Religious people will always have the fallback that god or satan put stuff there to fool us, or god works in mysterious ways, or god doesn't have to obey the physical laws of the universe, etc.

There are plenty of scientists that release testing results of a product in favour of a company for varied recompense. They aren't testing from a position of neutrality or for the sake of science, they are doing so because it is a job, and it's not uncommon for pressure to be put on them for poor test results. You can't claim the moral purity of scientists and denounce the impurity of religion without looking at both objectively.

Religion and Science are like balsamic vinegar and olive oil - they don't absorb into each other, but if you mix them together, it makes your salad of life pretty flippin' delicious