Bill Dembski disillusioned with fundamentalism

[Jorge]

What evidence for YEC would that be ? We've been asking you for your scientific evidence that establishes a less than 10,000 year old Earth for over a decade now and you've never provided a speck. NEVER.

Shut up, Bozo Beagle!!!

Your sad, decrepit spiritual state totally prevents you from approaching
this issue with even a distant semblance of intellectual integrity.
Therefore, stop muddying up the water (which is your usual contribution).

Jorge

[NorrinRadd]

...
For me however, this element of prayer formed a key piece of my understanding when I asked God if it were possible would He please show me in the Scripture itself something that could clarify the element of intent, was Genesis intended as physical history that described the event in broad but technically accurate terms, or was it some other kind of inspired text that did not lend itself to that kind of approach. It was then that I realized that whenever I read the text describing the raqia, waters above/waters below I would just go blank, that it just didn't make any sense at all. And it was then that I began intensive study of that passage. And what came out of that study was the realization that in the Hebrew what is being described is some sort of surface that that waters above rested on and that the birds of the sky fly before or in front of (not 'in' as is commonly translated today), and that the sun moon and stars were in or affixed to. The more I studied, the more it became clear this was what was being described. And further, that this was a common way of understanding the cosmos in this time. That Job and his friends clearly understood the sky as 'molten' in the KJV, which means cast, as in casting a metal object in a form. That the only other use of this word for 'sky' in the Bible was to describe a crystalline dome in a vision in Ezekiel. And that historically, viewing the sky as some sort of hard dome is a typical response of non-technically advanced cultures.

Further, that this sense of the sky as a dome or surface over the Earth in scripture was so clear in non-technical times that it carried even into the Reformation, to the point it was what both Luther and Calvin understood.

Are you sure you didn't just read too much of the Fabrini literature from the archives on Yonada? ;-)

[Jorge]

(1) the tissue was not 'soft', it has to be carefully extracted from the fossil and then rehydrated before it regained anything like that description
(2) yes - it challenges previous notions of how long such a tissue fragment could survive.

However - and this is key - the common opinion about how long this kind of tissue could be preserved are themselves based on certain assumptions. To scientifically assess the meaning of such a discovery is not to just assume common opinion about tissue longevity in all possible environments is correct, but to weigh what has been discovered in light of all the evidence. Given the strength of the evidence for the great age of the Earth, the most obvious flaw in the chain are the assumptions which defined the common opinion about the longevity of the tissue. To come to some other opinion would be to NOT follow the scientific method.

IF we approached this issue in the way YOU would prefer, then science would NEVER make progress, it would be forever locked in assumptions from the past, unable to react to new data, correct itself, and move forward.

Jim

Ahhhhh, I was waiting for that one: the ol' "you don't understand science and so if we did science your way we would NEVER make progress ... yadda, yadda, yadda."

WOW - wonders never cease!

Oh, by the way, thanks for providing MORE evidence supporting what I posted (in which I issued a challenge that remains standing).

Here's another one: Long-period comets shouldn't exist if mega-years are true yet there they are. "What to do? Ah, I know: we will concoct a never-once-observed thing called an "Oort Cloud" that will provide an endless supply of these comets. There - problem solved - we get to retain mega-years!!!"

Here's one of my favorites: Evolutionism long predicted that Evolutionary changes were slow and gradual. Yet, as evidence became more and more abundant it pointed in exactly the OPPOSITE direction. "What to do? Oh, I know: we will concoct this thing called "Punctuated Equilibrium" in which species remain the same (statis) until -- WHAMMO!!! -- they change abruptly (a 'punctuation'). There - problem solved - we get to retain Evolutionism!!!"

It is intellectual dishonesty perpetrated at the highest levels of academia and logic and there are so many takers (suckers). And it all has one common goal: cast doubt on the plain account in Scripture (God's version) so as to make the Materialistic Establishment's account the de facto "Truth". Then ...

LISTEN AND LEARN: "Next step: force-feed it to all the kids in school (go after the kids! -- they are too young and ignorant to defend themselves). That's why we MUST keep an ideological monopoly in the classrooms (NCSE and ACLU, anyone?). NEVER allow the Holy Foot in the door. After a generation or two we will have most of them thinking as we do. The hardcore Fundamentalists will die of old age and we'll have the market cornered - Christianity will go the way of the Dodo Bird. Here's the really funny part: we will actually have some of them - TEs and OECs - helping us achieve our goal ... a bunch of useful idiots they are!"

By the way, hardcore Communism has lines eerily similar to the above.
I highly doubt that any of the above will register with you but there it is.

Jorge

[rogue06]

Ahhhhh, I was waiting for that one: the ol' "you don't understand science and so if we did science your way we would NEVER make progress ... yadda, yadda, yadda."

WOW - wonders never cease!

Oh, by the way, thanks for providing MORE evidence supporting what I posted (in which I issued a challenge that remains standing).

Here's another one: Long-period comets shouldn't exist if mega-years are true yet there they are. "What to do? Ah, I know: we will concoct a never-once-observed thing called an "Oort Cloud" that will provide an endless supply of these comets. There - problem solved - we get to retain mega-years!!!"

Here's one of my favorites: Evolutionism long predicted that Evolutionary changes were slow and gradual. Yet, as evidence became more and more abundant it pointed in exactly the OPPOSITE direction. "What to do? Oh, I know: we will concoct this thing called "Punctuated Equilibrium" in which species remain the same (statis) until -- WHAMMO!!! -- they change abruptly (a 'punctuation'). There - problem solved - we get to retain Evolutionism!!!"

It is intellectual dishonesty perpetrated at the highest levels of academia and logic and there are so many takers (suckers). And it all has one common goal: cast doubt on the plain account in Scripture (God's version) so as to make the Materialistic Establishment's account the de facto "Truth". Then ...

LISTEN AND LEARN: "Next step: force-feed it to all the kids in school (go after the kids! -- they are too young and ignorant to defend themselves). That's why we MUST keep an ideological monopoly in the classrooms (NCSE and ACLU, anyone?). NEVER allow the Holy Foot in the door. After a generation or two we will have most of them thinking as we do. The hardcore Fundamentalists will die of old age and we'll have the market cornered - Christianity will go the way of the Dodo Bird. Here's the really funny part: we will actually have some of them - TEs and OECs - helping us achieve our goal ... a bunch of useful idiots they are!"

By the way, hardcore Communism has lines eerily similar to the above.
I highly doubt that any of the above will register with you but there it is.

Jorge

Except from the very outset Darwin predicted that different things would evolve at different rates.

Source: On The Origin of the Species, First Edition

Source

© Copyright Original Source

In the 4th edition of On the Origin of Species Darwin added that

"the periods during which species have undergone modification, though long as measured in years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same form."

And research subsequent to Gould and Eldredge proposing "Punk Eek" reveals that in over three quarters of the cases the evolutionary change is slow and gradual. Only about 22% of the time is there any sign of any relatively rapid (remember we are speaking in geologic terms), sporadic changes.

And please check the hubris at the door when you claim that how you interpret something is "God's version" especially when it flatly contradicts all of the evidence He presents us when we examine His creation.

[oxmixmudd]

Are you sure you didn't just read too much of the Fabrini literature from the archives on Yonada? ;-)

"For the world is Hollow and I have touched the Sky".

I am pretty sure that episode what not on my mind during those study sessions, however, I would not be at all surprised of the inspiration for that story did not to some extent build off of the way the ancients tended to view the sky

Nice to know there are others out there familiar with the true history of the future ...


Jim

[oxmixmudd]

Ahhhhh, I was waiting for that one: the ol' "you don't understand science and so if we did science your way we would NEVER make progress ... yadda, yadda, yadda."

WOW - wonders never cease!

Oh, by the way, thanks for providing MORE evidence supporting what I posted (in which I issued a challenge that remains standing).

Here's another one: Long-period comets shouldn't exist if mega-years are true yet there they are. "What to do? Ah, I know: we will concoct a never-once-observed thing called an "Oort Cloud" that will provide an endless supply of these comets. There - problem solved - we get to retain mega-years!!!"

It is so much fun when you try to use science to support your point of view.

The YEC's used to lump the Kuiper belt in with the Oort cloud when they'd repeat this line. Of course, we now know not only does the Kuiper belt exist, belts like it are not at all uncommon around other stars:

220px-Fomalhaut_B_entire-Hubble_Telescope.jpg

The orbits of long period comets point to an origin like that predicted as the Oort cloud. Often as the wonder in they are coming from orbits of many thousands of years in length, and we OFTEN see their orbits modified by their path through the inner solar system. There is no reason to presume - GIVEN ALL THE OTHER EVIDENCE FOR GREAT AGE - that comets themselves are magic or need some supernatural explanation for their origin.

Here's one of my favorites: Evolutionism long predicted that Evolutionary changes were slow and gradual. Yet, as evidence became more and more abundant it pointed in exactly the OPPOSITE direction. "What to do? Oh, I know: we will concoct this thing called "Punctuated Equilibrium" in which species remain the same (statis) until -- WHAMMO!!! -- they change abruptly (a 'punctuation'). There - problem solved - we get to retain Evolutionism!!!"

Yes - scientific theories respond to the evidence - they can and do change. The problem for YEC is there just isn't any substantial evidence for it, and there is just to blame much evidence AGAINST it. Jorge - the early geologists TRIED to explain what they found in geology according to a young Earth presumption. That was the prevailing idea of the day. IT FAILED. There is just too much that contradicts those assumption. Not to mention the entire UNIVERSE, let alone Earth's geology.

It is intellectual dishonesty perpetrated at the highest levels of academia and logic and there are so many takers (suckers). And it all has one common goal: cast doubt on the plain account in Scripture (God's version) so as to make the Materialistic Establishment's account the de facto "Truth". Then ...

LISTEN AND LEARN: "Next step: force-feed it to all the kids in school (go after the kids! -- they are too young and ignorant to defend themselves). That's why we MUST keep an ideological monopoly in the classrooms (NCSE and ACLU, anyone?). NEVER allow the Holy Foot in the door. After a generation or two we will have most of them thinking as we do. The hardcore Fundamentalists will die of old age and we'll have the market cornered - Christianity will go the way of the Dodo Bird. Here's the really funny part: we will actually have some of them - TEs and OECs - helping us achieve our goal ... a bunch of useful idiots they are!"

By the way, hardcore Communism has lines eerily similar to the above.
I highly doubt that any of the above will register with you but there it is.

Jorge

Jorge - the fact some want to eliminate Christian faith has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the age of the Earth or Evolution. But ideas like YEC make it much, much easier for them to paint faith in God as a product of a weak mind and/or ignorance.

So Jorge - when are you going to offer the YEC explanation for the Chesapeake Bay Impact crator (or Chixulub, or the m31/32 galaxy collision, or ... )
There are literally TRILLIONS of historical records found on the Earth and in the universe that imply an age of > 1 million years. YEC will NEVER find any serious support in broader scientific community because of that simple fact - ever. There is just too much against it. The only option you have is God made the universe AS IF it was billion of years old. There is no other rational YEC position. All this other stuff forces either ignorance or worse because it is simply impossible to make an honest assessment of the evidence and be led by it to conclude the world is less than many billions of years old.

Jim

[NorrinRadd]

"For the world is Hollow and I have touched the Sky".

I am pretty sure that episode what not on my mind during those study sessions, however, I would not be at all surprised of the inspiration for that story did not to some extent build off of the way the ancients tended to view the sky

Nice to know there are others out there familiar with the true history of the future ...


Jim

It would not have occurred to me but for the fact that your username primed the pump.

[rogue06]

It is so much fun when you try to use science to support your point of view.

The YEC's used to lump the Kuiper belt in with the Oort cloud when they'd repeat this line. Of course, we now know not only does the Kuiper belt exist, belts like it are not at all uncommon around other stars:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]16188[/ATTACH]

The orbits of long period comets point to an origin like that predicted as the Oort cloud. Often as the wonder in they are coming from orbits of many thousands of years in length, and we OFTEN see their orbits modified by their path through the inner solar system. There is no reason to presume - GIVEN ALL THE OTHER EVIDENCE FOR GREAT AGE - that comets themselves are magic or need some supernatural explanation for their origin.



Yes - scientific theories respond to the evidence - they can and do change. The problem for YEC is there just isn't any substantial evidence for it, and there is just to blame much evidence AGAINST it. Jorge - the early geologists TRIED to explain what they found in geology according to a young Earth presumption. That was the prevailing idea of the day. IT FAILED. There is just too much that contradicts those assumption. Not to mention the entire UNIVERSE, let alone Earth's geology...

Until recently YECs were mocking the concept of the Kuiper belt as an ad hoc fantasy but most have quietly ceased their scoffing -- which is probably wise considering that astronomers have cataloged over a thousand Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) since the first one was detected in 1992.

And while some YECs like to pretend otherwise, there is fairly strong evidence for the existence of the Oort Cloud. There are, for instance, eight likely Oort cloud objects including Sedna (aka, 2003 VB₁₂ -- roughly three times as far from the sun as Neptune), which is very possibly a dwarf planet or planetoid and not a comet). It will make its closest approach to the sun in the mid 2070s and won't be back for roughly 12,000 years (it travels in an extremely elliptical orbit ranging from 76 AU to 937 AU from the Sun).

The others are 2000 CR₁₀₅, 2006 SQ₃₇₂, 2007 OR₁₀,
2008 KV₄₂ (for a bit about 2008 KV₄₂ see HERE), 2010 GB₁₇₄ and 2012 VP₁₁₃ (nicknamed "Biden" after the current Vice President),

Moreover, a radio broadcast from 2006 put out by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) acknowledges that "what look like" Oort clouds have been seen around other stars

[Jorge]

It is so much fun when you try to use science to support your point of view.

The YEC's used to lump the Kuiper belt in with the Oort cloud when they'd repeat this line. Of course, we now know not only does the Kuiper belt exist, belts like it are not at all uncommon around other stars:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]16188[/ATTACH]

The orbits of long period comets point to an origin like that predicted as the Oort cloud. Often as the wonder in they are coming from orbits of many thousands of years in length, and we OFTEN see their orbits modified by their path through the inner solar system. There is no reason to presume - GIVEN ALL THE OTHER EVIDENCE FOR GREAT AGE - that comets themselves are magic or need some supernatural explanation for their origin.



Yes - scientific theories respond to the evidence - they can and do change. The problem for YEC is there just isn't any substantial evidence for it, and there is just to blame much evidence AGAINST it. Jorge - the early geologists TRIED to explain what they found in geology according to a young Earth presumption. That was the prevailing idea of the day. IT FAILED. There is just too much that contradicts those assumption. Not to mention the entire UNIVERSE, let alone Earth's geology.



Jorge - the fact some want to eliminate Christian faith has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the age of the Earth or Evolution. But ideas like YEC make it much, much easier for them to paint faith in God as a product of a weak mind and/or ignorance.

So Jorge - when are you going to offer the YEC explanation for the Chesapeake Bay Impact crator (or Chixulub, or the m31/32 galaxy collision, or ... )
There are literally TRILLIONS of historical records found on the Earth and in the universe that imply an age of > 1 million years. YEC will NEVER find any serious support in broader scientific community because of that simple fact - ever. There is just too much against it. The only option you have is God made the universe AS IF it was billion of years old. There is no other rational YEC position. All this other stuff forces either ignorance or worse because it is simply impossible to make an honest assessment of the evidence and be led by it to conclude the world is less than many billions of years old.

Jim

Meh ... I may as well be talking to a sack of rusty hammers.

Only thing I sometimes wonder is the exact moment at which specimens like you go from being a bona fide Christian to one "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: ... "
God ends that verse with, "... from such turn away." 2 Timothy 3:5

Which is what I am going to do right now.

Jorge

[oxmixmudd]

Meh ... I may as well be talking to a sack of rusty hammers.

Only thing I sometimes wonder is the exact moment at which specimens like you go from being a bona fide Christian to one "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: ... "
God ends that verse with, "... from such turn away." 2 Timothy 3:5

Which is what I am going to do right now.

Jorge

But Jorge never judges anybody ...

Jim

[Roy]

It is so much fun when you try to use science to support your point of view.

The YEC's used to lump the Kuiper belt in with the Oort cloud when they'd repeat this line. Of course, we now know not only does the Kuiper belt exist, belts like it are not at all uncommon around other stars:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]16188[/ATTACH]

The orbits of long period comets point to an origin like that predicted as the Oort cloud. Often as the wonder in they are coming from orbits of many thousands of years in length, and we OFTEN see their orbits modified by their path through the inner solar system. There is no reason to presume - GIVEN ALL THE OTHER EVIDENCE FOR GREAT AGE - that comets themselves are magic or need some supernatural explanation for their origin.

There's an even bigger hole in that YEC PRATT. It's like the "if the world was millions of years old the mountains would have eroded" rubbish - even apart from ignoring uplift, they always assume that the mountains, or in this case the comets, were originally the size they are now.

It's like saying 'I'll be home in 5 minutes so I can't have been traveling for more than 5 minutes' or 'I've only got two chocolates left so I can't have eaten more than two already'.

Sure, long period comets may not be able to survive more than a couple of thousand circuits in their current orbits, because their material gets boiled away every time they round the sun. But that doesn't mean they couldn't have survived far more circuits already, it only means that they would need to have been considerably larger.

[TheLurch]

Sure, long period comets may not be able to survive more than a couple of thousand circuits in their current orbits, because their material gets boiled away every time they round the sun. But that doesn't mean they couldn't have survived far more circuits already, it only means that they would need to have been considerably larger.

Interesting paper on this issue out recently:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture17670.html

Seems the duck shaped comet that Rosetta is visiting is probably a natural state for a comet, which alternates between that and a close binary system over time. They fuse, they fall apart, they fuse, they fall apart...

[Jorge]

But Jorge never judges anybody ...

Jim

YAWNNNNNNN ..............

As I have told you countless times, you really must learn the meaning of "judging".

If I steal from you and you call me a "thief" then you are NOT "judging" me.
I AM a thief by the fact of my action.

Think you can get that or is the load too much for your cranial capacity?

Jorge

[Jorge]

There's an even bigger hole in that YEC PRATT. It's like the "if the world was millions of years old the mountains would have eroded" rubbish - even apart from ignoring uplift, they always assume that the mountains, or in this case the comets, were originally the size they are now.

It's like saying 'I'll be home in 5 minutes so I can't have been traveling for more than 5 minutes' or 'I've only got two chocolates left so I can't have eaten more than two already'.

Sure, long period comets may not be able to survive more than a couple of thousand circuits in their current orbits, because their material gets boiled away every time they round the sun. But that doesn't mean they couldn't have survived far more circuits already, it only means that they would need to have been considerably larger.

I really do appreciate you guys providing more and more and more support to my claim:
No evidence - NONE! - will ever refute your assumed religious truths because you
will simply concoct an "intellectually fulfilling explanation" to dismiss any evidence.

Hmmm ... "intellectually fulfilling explanation" ... just as Dawkins said of Evolution (allowing him to be an "intellectually fulfilled Atheist). Fossil evidence refutes gradual Darwinism? No problema - Punctuated Equilibrium to the rescue!!! Soft tissue in mega-year-old fossils? No problema - soft tissue CAN last for tens of millions of years!!! Comets shouldn't be there? No problema - Oort Clouds exist or these comets can last for a lot longer than we thought!!! No known natural process can account for life? No problema - there are unknown natural processes that are able to account for it - we just haven't found them yet!!! Yadda, yadda, yadda ... on and on and on and on and on ...

Yeah, and then we'll call it "science" and ram it down their throats. Bwahahahahaha ...

Funny thing how all of this stuff fits hand-in-glove, coming together to form a consistent picture.

Jorge

[rogue06]

YAWNNNNNNN ..............

As I have told you countless times, you really must learn the meaning of "judging".

If I steal from you and you call me a "thief" then you are NOT "judging" me.
I AM a thief by the fact of my action.

Think you can get that or is the load too much for your cranial capacity?

Jorge