The Houston Atheists have a challenge for you. Aron Ra and I are willing to lower ourselves to engage you in debate. This is a very rare exception to my policy of refusing to debate clowns — you should take advantage of it.
Houston. 1 August. You’re going to be there anyway. We’ll meet you to discuss your belief that the earth is only roughly 6000 years old, and that common descent is false. Imagine the prestige you’ll acquire when you rout the scientists with your logic and evidence! Imagine real hard!
If you don’t show up, Houston Atheists will be putting on a series of talks that directly refute the nonsense Answers in Genesis peddles, without you there to challenge it.
As much as I dislike the idea of debating these buffoons, this seems to be the right way to do it.
By keeping the terms of the debate narrow, he has less space to Gish Gallop.
Oh oh, if he doesn’t show up, you could put an empty chair on stage and…um…wait…
Maybe not.
Brilliant. I assume the MWAHAHAHAHA is implied.
Or just squeal like a ham, Ken. Seems to be what you’re best at.
Glen Davidson
I really like the empty chair idea. Of course, Kenny doesn’t want to debate you directly, he’ll have to get one of his “scientists” to do it. Who’ll likely be some sort of engineer.
I still don’t think he’s going to acquiesce. He’ll come out with some nonsense about short notice and how the schedules of the PhDs he contacted didn’t line up or any other number of things that aren’t true at all. He’ll probably bitch about the Houston Atheists anyway and use words like “unprofessional” without even a hint of irony.
Sweet! If he accepts I get to go see a creationist moron get smacked down.
For the love of GOD do not do this at U of H. I don’t want to see my Alma Mater stoop to the pathetic depths of hosting a creationist. As I said previously, these things should not be done at Universities as doing so allows the kooks to say that Creationism is debated at major universities by scientists. I.E. it only lends them credibility. I think you could probably do it at The Vatican on Woodway. Nice part of town and they would probably host the event for free.
Trebuchet @ 5
Hey, don’t insult engineers! My hubby is an engineer who happens to also hold degrees in chemistry and biology. He would jump at the chance to debate one of those creationist IDiots and would probably do a great job!
Or a robot…
You should livestream it.
Questions I would like to Ask an Atheist
out of curiosity I wish to ask :
1 . If there is no God, “the big questions” remain unanswered, so how do we answer the following questions: Why is
there something rather than nothing? This question was asked by Aristotle and Leibniz alike – albeit with differing
answers. But it is an historic concern. Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet, and is there any meaning to
this life? If there is meaning, what kind of meaning and how is it found? Does human history lead anywhere, or is it all
in vain since death is merely the end? How do you come to understand good and evil, right and wrong without a
transcendent signifier? If these concepts are merely social constructions, or human opinions, whose opinion does one
trust in determining what is good or bad, right or wrong? If you are content within atheism, what circumstances would
serve to make you open to other answers?
2 . If we reject the existence of God, we are left with a crisis of meaning , so why don’t we see more atheist
recognize that in the absence of God, there was no transcendent meaning beyond one’s own self-interests, pleasures, or
tastes. Without God, there is a crisis of meaning, and these three thinkers, among others, show us a world of just stuff,
thrown out into space and time, going nowhere, meaning nothing.
3 . When people have embraced atheism, the historical results can be horrific, as in the regimes of Stalin, Mao and
Pol Pot who saw religion as the problem and worked to eradicate it? In other words, what set of actions are consistent
with particular belief commitments? It could be argued, that these behaviors – of the regimes in question – are more
consistent with the implications of atheism. It could be argued that the socio-political ideologies could very well be the
outworking of a particular set of beliefs – beliefs that posited the ideal state as an atheistic one.
4 . If there is no God, the problems of evil and suffering are in no way solved, so where is the hope of redemption,
or meaning for those who suffer? Suffering is just as tragic, if not more so, without God because there is no hope of
ultimate justice, or of the suffering being rendered meaningful or transcendent, redemptive or redeemable. It might be
true that there is no God to blame now, but neither is there a God to reach out to for strength, transcendent meaning, or
comfort. Why would we seek the alleviation of suffering without objective morality grounded in a God of justice?
5 . If there is no God, we lose the very standard by which we critique religions and religious people, so whose
opinion matters most? Whose voice will be heard? Whose tastes or preferences will be honored? In the long run,
human tastes and opinions have no more weight than we give them, and who are we to give them meaning anyway?
Who is to say that lying, or cheating or adultery or child molestation are wrong –really wrong? Where do those
standards come from? Sure, our societies might make these things “illegal” and impose penalties or consequences for
things that are not socially acceptable, but human cultures have at various times legally or socially disapproved of
everything from believing in God to believing the world revolves around the sun; from slavery, to interracial marriage,
from polygamy to monogamy. Human taste, opinion law and culture are hardly dependable arbiters of Truth.
6 . If there is no God, we don’t make sense, so how do we explain human longings and desire for the transcendent?
How do we even explain human questions for meaning and purpose, or inner thoughts like, why do I feel unfulfilled or
empty? Why do we hunger for the spiritual, and how do we explain these longings if nothing can exist beyond the
material world?
#11, when you’re going to copy-paste a tract of text that you clearly did not write yourself, would you mind getting the line-returns right? This is painful to try to read.
Yawn, copypasta godbotting. So, obligatory link to Talk Origins.
Purpose and meaning is what we humans make out of life. The universe is an uncaring place. Nothing needs your imaginary deity to be explained. And you can’t/won’t explain how your imaginary deity came from nothing too, which is required for your “theory”. So you have no edge other than your fallacious presuppositions of an imaginary deity and non-mythical/fictional holy book.
@11, Michael Benson Ajayi,
I don’t think you are actually interested in our answers. I think you are just wanting to throw a whole bunch of “gotcha!” questions at us, then disregard our serious and thoughtful responses and claim victory.
If you want actual answers, please see all the other posts on Pharyngula. And all the other blogs on FTB. And the atheist portal blogs on Patheos. And a large portion of the rest of the internet, really. And about 100 or so recent books on the subject. Our answers are easily available, if you actually are interested in knowing.
“Goddidit” isn’t a real answer to those questions anyway. Just saying “magic!” is equivalent.
Evolution and 42 respectively.
What is the meaning of life with God? To serve God? Again, the “answer” to these questions with God just pushes the question back one step and dares you to question it further because doing so would be questioning God.
Transcedent moral laws and arbitrary moral relativism aren’t the only options. Morality is complicated.
The moral laws given by the Bible are immoral by our modern sensibilities. Explain that one.
#11 all the ‘if there is no god’ questions are equally unanswered if changed to ‘if there is a god’.
as for number 3 atheist have go a long way to go before they catch up with religious killings and other human violations perpetrated in the name of god, let alone by those of a religious bent.
Well, borked quote and responding to something I didn’t catch was a copypaste job. Not my finest hour.
@Michael Benson Ajayi,
Life isn’t fair.
Deal with it.
@11, Michael Benson Ajayi,
I assume your answer to all of those questions is “because God!”
If that is the case, you haven’t actually answered anything. Which god do you mean? How do you know that that’s the right god? How does whichever god you’re speaking of actually achieve those things you purport it to be achieving?
#11: Did someone mentioning Gish Gallop inspire you to dump a Gish Gallop on us?
Ask a specific question. Your catalog does not convince that you’re actually interested in hearing the answers.
@PZ: Don’t forget to bone up on geological dating methodologies, and the geological processing of salt (which you may or may not recall was Ken Ham’s big “gotcha” for the age of the Earth).
Anteprepro IMO it is a good idea to respond to YECs even if they are just pasting and running. If anyone reasonable is lurking, and mislead by Ham and indoctrination, they can read your response. Sometimes less experienced evolution supporters can learn better ways to debunk pseudoscience too.
Must remember to refresh before posting. I see my point has already been posted, as always, and better made, again as always. :-)
I might write up a quick blog post dealing with the copypasta questions later today. I might as well have a ready response since I get the feeling I might see someone else throw out that list.
@#11 There is not god. It is not a matter of philosophical argument it is simply a fact. No amount of wishful thinking or high school debate tricks will change that.
damn typo
There is no god.
Hey Ken Ham, repeat after me: bock bock bock bock BIGAWK
@#8:
And I’m one myself. Ask your hubby how many creationist engineers he’s run into during his career. Lots, if he’s anything like me. Not to mention various conspiracy theories.
It seems a lot of the creationists Aron and I run into are either engineers or dentists. Some engineers may have a tendency to over-read design, agency, and engineering into nature.
A COODLE DOODLE DOO! A COODLE DOODLE DOO!
@11 If there is a God, how does it explain anything? I mean anything at all.
I’m not saying that it couldn’t, understand, I’m saying that you haven’t given us any cause, any explanation, any sort of evidence for God, hence there’s nothing in your little plagiarism that suggests that God explains anything or is anything.
I think you need to begin to understand what explanation really is. It isn’t saying “God explains it.”
Glen Davidson
In all seriousness, I would ask Ken Ham why he and his organization does not defend a flat/stationary earth since a simple reading of the Bible (not just Genesis) amply supports that this was the belief system of the Biblical writers as well as many other Ancient Near East societies just as clearly as it supports a 6000 or so year old earth (if you extrapolate ages of patriarchs similar to that used by Ussher). There are plenty of resources in print and on the web that amply demonstrate this.
CHA-CHI, CHA-CHI, CHA-CHI, CHA-CHI!
Michael Benson Ajayi #11 wrote:
I’ll echo everyone else here (including PZ) and point out that you’ve asked far too many questions at once. If you’re genuinely curious as to how atheists would answer certain questions then start with the one that’s the most important to you and yes, use your own words.
I’ll give a quick response to this first one, though. ANY answer will be incomplete — including “God” — because we’d always be able to move it back a step. At some point we just have to terminate in a simple brute fact and say “because.” The God hypothesis isn’t simple, though, nor is it obvious or unproblematic. There just happens to be a God who cares about us. Remarkable, complicated — and in need of explanation. It only seems satisfying to some people because it anchors all of existence into an answer which looks like ourselves — intentional agency, personhood, values, Mind — and subtly changes the nature of the question.
“There is something rather than nothing because someone wanted it that way.” The universe as a whole is thus reduced to something familiar, a part of our social network. We like answers we can relate to in a reality formed in our image.
If you want to ask the “why is there something rather than nothing?” as a philosophical question, I like saying that Existence exists because it’s tautologically necessary. If it’s a science question, then apparently the answer is that ‘nothing’ is unstable.
Just a quick note on the tenor of many of your questions. Atheist Mark Voletic once wrote about apologetic techniques he called “The Argument from Boo-Hoo.” It goes like this:
1.) If there is no God, then I will be very disappointed (no afterlife; no objective moral authority; no ultimate fairness; etc.)
2.) BOO HOO! (existential angst; human insignificance; unsatisfying denouement;etc.)
3.) Therefore: God exists.
As mentioned above, that third one doesn’t follow. The universe is not under any obligation to fulfill your hopes and dreams. Thinking otherwise is arrogant — ironically, it turns you into “God.”
Sometimes that third step is put into a form like “Therefore, I simply HAVE TO believe in God (or I can’t live with the knowledge.)” This plaintive plea for forbearance from the weak isn’t trying to persuade or even answer any question about the nature of reality or the nature of God. Instead its a tacit admission that you kinda know your belief isn’t true but can’t handle the truth and prefer to live under a delusion.
If so, then it’s not a good idea to come marching triumphantly into an atheist blog and demand to know how an atheist could ever try to answer these important Big Questions. The only thing Big is your fear and trembling. Not good strategy.
Oops sorry got it ass backwards. What to ask an atheist? The usual.
Why do you bother to get up in the morning?
What keeps you from rape, murder and pillage if there is no god?
#11:
Is God the only reason you don’t rape / pillage / steal?
What are some of the common words for someone that only does the right thing because they’re being watched? (hint: they end in -path)
A wizard did it!
/obligatory Simpsons reference
So if he does not show up, and he doesn’t like it would it be OK to ask him “Were you there???”
that morality question above is really dense!
all morality came from humans no amount of trying to attribute the source to some transcendental being makes it so. since there is no such being anyway, only us doing the talking
uncle frogy
Michael Benson Ajayi
Your BIG questions have been answered. Now what? Seriously what did you hope to accomplish with that post? Did you for a moment think that those questions are so unique that they haven’t been addressed ad nauseam? You seem very insincere. And to me that’s a crime.
Presumably Mr. Ajayi will not be satisfied with the many secular answers (as said, addressed ad nauseam in numerous other fora) because no matter what we say we will never be as cool as saying “morality/reality/the transcendent/the meaning of life can’t just exist/be created by collective humanity..but God can!” Really, he could have answered these questions himself if he would just accept that God hasn’t been proven to be the special case that fills all gaps. If he comes back, I challenge him to give a reason for God existing over and above “A lot of people who don’t read atheist blogs can’t think of a more likely explanation.”
What’s morbidly, darkly hilarious about this is that these “problems” are only problems if you START from the position that said God (Yahweh) exists, and then go backwards. As usual, our theobot is putting the cart before the jackass, and wondering why it gets splintered when he whips the donkey to move.
Every. Single. One. Of these things has a much harder problem being answered when Yahweh is postulated than when he is not. And the questions themselves are indicative of projection.
The one on morality makes me laugh and cringe the most. “You can’t have any objective morals unless you subscribe to the morals put forward by my murderous, tortuous, scatalogical, genocidal Bronze-Age hangover!” I’ve met young children with better morals than that. And it gets worse in the New Testament, infinitely worse in fact, not better.
Sometimes I think the best proof Yahweh doesn’t exist is that never, ever, has any one of these morons making him look bad been struck by a thunderbolt after leaving a particularly noxious brain-dump in his supposed defense.
There may not be a reason, because it’s not clear that there logically needs to be a reason. If there is a reason, we don’t know and may never know. It makes no difference.
Conscious, intelligent life is on this planet because it evolved from non-conscious, non-intelligent life, which itself arose from non-living matter early in the Earth’s history.
We perfectly capable of creating purposes ourselves. We do it all the time, no matter whether we’re created for purposes. We should try to understand and appreciate everyone’s point of view about what makes them suffer, what makes them happy, what their interests are, and so on. There doesn’t need to be any one authority which we must all follow.
I am open to other answers than atheism, and I would change my mind if there were evidence of a god. You’ve given none, just a bunch of loaded questions.
Regarding your #3, neither atheism nor the non-existence of gods implies we should endorse totalitarianism or violence. You say “it could be argued” to the contrary, but in all your rambling drivel, you give no argument.
The problem of evil certainly does disappear. I don’t need to explain why there is evil or suffering in terms of what some mysterious wizard in the sky supposedly wants. There is evil and suffering, and there is hope it can change for the better by recognizing the reality of our situation: we’re the only ones who will be able to make the situation any better, and this is the only life we have in which to do it. We don’t “hope” that a god will give us a consolation prize at the end: we have to do our best now with what have. An irresponsible, false “hope” like yours does us no good whatsoever.
We should alleviate suffering because we don’t like the experience of suffering. You don’t need any other reason, nor do you need a god for that. Also “objective morality” doesn’t need to disappear, if it has no “grounding” in a deity (a deity would be a subject not an object anyway, if a god were anything at all). It’s pure, authoritarian double-speak to talk about it being “objective,” when the only thing it can really mean is “totalitarian.” It’s a flat-out lie you’ve been fed, which you repeat without a second thought, not to mention that it’s just fucking insulting to humans as thinking, feeling, purposeful, social beings.
We’re the people who give them meaning. What kind of fucking question is that?
Me, along with lots of other people. Maybe not you; but I say that lying, cheating, adultery and child molestation are wrong. Really, really wrong. Not because a sky wizard told me so, true. I say that because they’re clearly and unambiguously harmful all by themselves, with or without a god.
If there’s no god, we don’t make sense? What the fuck? I explain your longings and desires (not mine) by your being indoctrinated into believing this is actually saying something meaningful.
How do I explain my desire for a purple unicorn, if there is no such thing as a purple unicorn? Checkmate, a-unicornists! Also, checkmate to everyone who isn’t intoxicated by the smell of their own bullshitty wishful thinking.
@ #11 – OK, I’ll have a crack, just for kicks:
1 .Why is there something rather than nothing?
Because if there was nothing, we wouldn’t be here to ask the question. Ultimately the question is unanswerable, even the notion of “god” does not answer it, we still have to ask “why is there god, rather than nothing?” The very nature of the question is to be unanswerable. It’s just a thought puzzle. Of course, the closest we’ve come to a real answer lies with antimatter, virtual particles, and quantuum mechanics. 7 or 8 years of study of cosmology and physics will get you close.
Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet, and is there any meaning to
this life?
The inevitable result of the chemistry of the Universe across its vast expanse is life. In our case intelligence and consciousness were evolutionarily successful. So far.
If there is meaning, what kind of meaning and how is it found? Does human history lead anywhere, or is it all in vain since death is merely the end?
No.
How do you come to understand good and evil, right and wrong without a
transcendent signifier?
We are born with an innate sense of right and wrong that is defined by our biology: doing right enabled us to build complex societies that were more successful, so we evolved a basic sense of right and wrong. A more complex sense of right and wrong can be logically derived based on our knowledge of ourselves, other humans, and the world we live in and maximizing utility. Crikey, you act like biologists and philosophers haven’t gotten anywhere at all in the last few centuries.
If you are content within atheism, what circumstances would serve to make you open to other answers?
Let’s start with a clear and consistent definition of what the other answers are. After that you’ll need to refine that definition into a falsifiable hypothesis and provide some kind of evidence by which it can be tested. Mind you, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and no on has yet provided even ordinary evidence of a god, hell not even a coherent definition.
2 . Wait, what the hell? Not only are ignorant of modern science and philososphy, you can’t even count? I’ve already answered five questions, and I trimmed out the reduncancies…Oh, wait, this one’s redundant too, see above answer in re “meaning”.
3 . When people have embraced atheism, the historical results can be horrific….?
There’s a question in there somewhere? Anyway, utter bullshit. Your first and second premises are false, any conclusions drawn from them are invalid, your question is therefore moot. The embrace of atheism can not be shown to be related to the evils done by those regimes, what we find instead is that all sorts of regimes will engage in horrible evil to sustain and increase their power. Please see all of world history for the religious and Christian examples of same. Or just read the Bible.
4 . What the hell is this word salad? This is just meaning and right and wrong again, right? See above.
5 . See above on right and wrong. Morality evolves as our understanding does. So yeah, it’s not constant, but it tends to improve if we seek to maximize utility and follow the basic biological morality.
6 . Didn’t we cover meaning above? Why do we yearn for it? Is that really a different question? The real answer is probably that we evolved pattern recognition skills that enabled us to be better hunter/gatherer/predator avoiders and that pattern recognition goes a bit haywire a lot of the time.
What the hell is with this numbering? If we count question marks it’s way more than six questions. If we eliminate rewording of the same questions we get six questions if we’re generous, but they’re all but one asked in number one. Learn to count first. Then learn to think.
High Five to Lilandra, Vic and everyone else who is taking this battle on!
I think it is time that atheist organizations stop focusing on the “atheists exist” message and start educating the moderate xtains about the scam job being pulled on them by the fundy minority.
That science quiz Vic talked about was put out by a xtian parent who sent his daughter to a xtian school then was appalled by the science she was being taught. Like, Dad, you never thought to ask what the school was teaching your daughter? Nope. He probably assumed it was vague, wishy washy “God is good. God created the universe (using science).” like he believed.
Moderate xtains are tolerant, ecumenical and usually pro-real-science. It never occurs to them that the fundies aren’t any of those things, but soft pedal their differences to moderate xtains to garner their support. When they hear about some CreoId silliness, they write it off as a kooky minority (like the WBChurch). Moderates I have talked to are flabbergasted that Creationists still exist and want to put their beliefs into schools.
It is time to pull the fundy’s dirty secret out of hiding and put it on display for all to see.
I’m not sure about debating this clown under any circumstances. I admit it sounds like fun to see PZ and Aaron Ra shred the guy, but I don’t think it’s particularly effective. The biggest problem with the challenge is that they do the same thing and we give the (entirely correct) answer that science isn’t determined by a staged debate, that facts aren’t up for debate, and that it is good for their CVs, not so much for ours. But now they’re in the position of similarly saying that we’re not worth debating. Although I suppose it might quiet their constant clamor for debates.
In the end though I think the only conclusion that could be reached is that they believe the Bible must be true and everything else is contingent on that and must be false if it contradicts the Bible, regardless of whether the Bible contradicts itself, and that that we believe that our own senses and ability to read the evidence with them and with tools to magnify them gets us the closest to fact as we can get. There can be only two outcomes: no one gets anywhere and both sides think they won, but we mostly make Ham look like the jackass he is, or we get him to admit to the basis for his belief system and consistently explain why that basis is flawed, not by using Bible contradictions that they can sophisticated theology their way out of, but by demonstrating logically that it fails in all evaluations of the real world we live in.
Which still kind of leads to outcome one again…
And that just bolsters my hypothesis that all apologetics becomes presuppositionalism after a certain point…
gussnarp #46 wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that the ‘sides’ are not in the same position when it comes to the freedom to explore, hear, or entertain other views. Atheists, evolutionists, and scientists have no problem reading creationist literature, understanding (or trying to understand) the specific claims, and engaging with the alternatives from a rational perspective. We do it all the time … because we don’t have a fragile, tender ‘faith’ to protect from outside influence.
The Christian creationists are not in the same position. If you look at Ham’s site you’ll see there’s no room for comments, discussion, debate, or dissent. A religious faith site is supposed to be a ‘safe’ zone where you deal with people like yourself and encounter only positive, affirming messages which help to reinforce what you already know to be true. When atheist or evolutionary arguments are put forth they’re done by a leader, paraphrased and shaped according to what’s usually a straw-man caricature. Our position is “explained” in a way which can be easily dismissed. Most believers don’t get anything from a direct source. They’re comfortable with that. Too comfortable.
That’s just it. If they come to an actual debate there is nowhere for them to go but out of their comfort zone. The science is no longer safely filtered or distorted. Even encountering an actual *atheist* and finding out that they pretty much look and behave like anyone else is something new. When it comes to debate then sure, we already know what’s coming. But the Christian confidently sitting with their spouse and kids in the audience does not.
So in a sense we always ‘win.’ We’re in their territory and we’re presenting. We’re also right — and we’re not forced to spout juvenile pseudoscientific nonsense. Given the way their community has been isolated from genuine science by the fuzzy downy atmosphere of faith and lies, there is nowhere for us to go but up. Seeds of doubt; a furrowed brow; a puzzled question to self in the night; one little crack in their smooth, smug edifice of self-assurance.
And from them we just get the same old, predictable mess of nonsense. It’s not even. Creationists forget this and get over-confident, surrounded as they are by waves of social approval and the repeated message that evolution didn’t happen because you can relax and rely on God. Right. You think that.
Now come to the debate….
My two cents worth is that talking to creationist only encourages them. There is never a good reason for that.
Yeah, but it doesn’t need to go up. They can keep it at rock-bottom simply by not listening or by hearing what they want to hear. Is Michael Benson Ajayi from #11 going to come back to read this thread, respond to anything in it, challenge any point or pose new questions? Or if he comes back, will it just be a repetition of the same stuff? I don’t know.
re gussnarp@44:
QFT!!!!
My answer would simply be, “Undefined!”. Too few words mor this mindless ‘godbot’. Godbot: cut-n-paste is not your friend; not an effective tool, at all. Step away from that computer, your parents need to use it. Don’t pout, just step away.
Hey Hammy, the bible is too much complexittty for a mere mortal sinner like you to understand, therefore arglebargle is true.
I read that as “the fuzzy brown atmosphere of faith and lies”
No. Anthropic reasoning doesn’t legitimately respond to the question, for one thing. That is apparently understood and indicated by the very next sentence. But we don’t know it’s “ultimately unanswerable.” That’s just bullshit, not the truth.
You should learn what the philosophical issue is about first, not just take it as an isolated question posed by a godbot.
Also, the “cut-n-paste” stuff is a bit of a leap. I sometimes use Word or other programs to write longer responses (rather than the comment box), and depending on how the program’s settings that can mess up the formatting. It doesn’t imply it’s just “copypasta” or plagiarized.
^Err, this is a good example of why I do that sometimes. Preview/editing in the little box can be a pain.
Another way of saying it perhaps, is that there is something wrong with you if you need a debate to settle a particular issue. I have changed my mind on many things based upon books, essays, lectures and discussions with people, but not due to a debate. One of the few useful things about debates are you get to hear arguments you haven’t heard before, equally bad but in new and interesting ways. Debates are primarily entertainment, it’s a match of who is better at rhetoric or thinking on her/his feet the fastest, and not as much as who has the best arguments. And with atheism, you have the atheism of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, etc. with their particular emphasis and biases, and some of their not so well composed arguments against the creationist or religionist with their own sets of emphasis and biases. I might agree with a particular atheist during a debate, and yet find that many of their arguments or bases for unbelief or any of a number of points are terribly argued. Only a based upon a broader set of readings and influences should one make up their mind on an issue, not based upon a debate. For example, you’d have to be asleep to need the so-called canned commercials called presidential debates to decide who to vote for. So I think debates are fun, as long as you don’t think they are a substitute for thinking for yourself/doing your own research.
“doing your own research” is the cop out that creationists use. Selective research in other words.
The term should be “research what science recognizes”, except that creationists don’t recognize science.
This is a no win formula; unless we revert to what used to be the norm before the internet and when fruitcakes had to find a typewriter and paper, and a stamp, and a mailing address for the local newspaper; which of course they seldom had the skills to do and didn’t, and many editors would throw their ramblings in the trash anyway.
There was an age when science and education had respect, and that goes all the way back to the founders; and even that is now being bastardized.
I fear that as enabling as modern communications is in many regards, it also enable the dumbing down of any discourse to the point where we can have presidential candidates denying science at its most basic level.
This is how civilizations degenerate.
Did I forget to mention that the Ham will not participate?
Why not?
How come your default assumption of prior conditions is ‘nothing’ rather than ‘something’? Particularly when ‘something’ has been repeatedly observed and ‘nothing’ has not.
A quick trip to Google shows that Mr. Ajayi spams his copypasta at a variety of sites and vanishes before anyone can actually point out it’s not even that original. Oh well.
I am conflicted about this debate.
I deeply loathe the dumbass creationists and I am very excited at the prospect of their annihilation by the forces of reason.
I also abhor the pansy-ass political correctness that has made the atheist movement I used to love so weak and lame.
To cheer for the weak or the stupid, that is the question.
@Michael Benson Ajayi
Those appear to be slight rephrasings of Ravi Zacharias’ “Six Questions to Ask an Atheist”. You will find a comprehensive answer here, where it was posted three years ago.
“Questions I would like to Ask an Atheist
out of curiosity I wish to ask :
1 . If there is no God, “the big questions” remain unanswered, so how do we answer the following questions: Why is
there something rather than nothing? This question was asked by Aristotle and Leibniz alike – albeit with differing
answers. But it is an historic concern. Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet, and is there any meaning to
this life? If there is meaning, what kind of meaning and how is it found? Does human history lead anywhere, or is it all
in vain since death is merely the end? How do you come to understand good and evil, right and wrong without a
transcendent signifier? If these concepts are merely social constructions, or human opinions, whose opinion does one
trust in determining what is good or bad, right or wrong? If you are content within atheism, what circumstances would
serve to make you open to other answers?”
This forum doesn’t seem to allow for simple formatting to respond to multiple questions. Hopefully my comments can be distinguished from the question.
This is a multiple question, poorly formatted, but I would comment on the first part as follows:
What is your definition of “nothing”? Surely you recognize that “nothing” is meaningless except is reference to “something”? (perhaps you don’t)
“Nothing” means, in our terms, the absence of “something”. (Like a god perhaps?)
In other words, nothing is simply a special case regarding a particular something, like a circle is a special, unique, case of an ellipse. The ellipse is the norm, in an infinite possible forms and the lack of a circle is simply the absence of a particular form of ellipse. Nothing is simply the absence od a particular form of something. It is no absolute.
Since we clearly have something going on, I dare to propose that nothing is simply a mental subset of something, and the latter is the norm; including your imagined god(s).
As to your question about the meaning of life; if, as a sentient being, you can’t find one within yourself I feel sorry for you, but I hope you find solace in your imagination as indeed many do.
So it’s definitely plagiarized. It was reposted on what is apparently his blog this January.
No comments.
And as has been pointed out already, it’s way more than “six questions.” Silly, silly apologists.
elind
You can see plenty of people using blockquotes. It’s not the forum.
<blockquote> </blockquote>
Some others are hinted at below the comment box: <b> for bold, <i> for italics, <strike> for strikethrough, with “/” to close them.
I’m curious about this. Nietschze would have ranted incoherently for much longer than you have. Don’t you feel the need to demonstrate your superiority, or at least explain what the fuck you’re on about?
You can see plenty of people using blockquotes. It’s not the forum.
Thanks. I am familiar with the formatting, but most forums in my experience have little buttons to do this, not requiring typing out the HTML key by key, nor requiring a copy paste and format for every response. No offense, but this system is primitive as discussion forums go.
Why? This is 2013 is it not?
Well, I wrote that blog post. Decided to make a series where I answer stupid question lists like that.
Because it’s not a discussion forum. It’s a blog.
I don’t know. Not my blog. Links in preview are still borked too. I think PZ does it to punish us.
But it sure is 2013. We have not (yet) made time machines, I think. :)
I use firefox’s text-formatting toolbar.
If this is an MRA, my translation software reads that as “I’m angry that the atheist community sees me as the whiny, thin-skinned, immature jerk I am and won’t hang out with me.”
Care to elaborate on this? Because if you’re saying what I think you’re saying I do believe you’ve come to the wrong corner of the Atheist movement.
Go fuck yourself, you chest-thumping, venom-spewing, reptile-brained wingnut. I deeply apologize that there are too many atheists who care about human beings for your liking. Why don’t you and your ilk just finally go Galt and we Lessers can all weep about how lost the atheist movement is without the noble contributions and visionary leadership of such wise and prolific atheists as yourself? Go ahead. I’m sure we will all totally miss you.
And I also note that there is a “link to this post”, which doesn’t seem to do squat.
As to blog versus forum, I would appreciate a definition of the difference. It strikes me that the difference you describe is that one is primitive software sucks and the other may or may not suck technically speaking.
Please be aware, I admire the content here greatly, I just think the execution sucks. Atheist should show their technical skills better.
A forum is where folks chat about any topic they want. A blog is somebody posts an opinion/article/video they find interesting, and the ensuing thread discussion is OP related. Not been around much, have you?
Who the fuck are you to tell other people how they should run their business/blog? A big arrogant are we?
It sends you to an URL specific to that comment. If you copy and paste the URL and use it as a link, it will send people to that specific comment on the page.
This.
And why, in any case, does an All-Powerful Mono-God ™ need some mortal’s defense? Since when can he/she/it be meaningfully attacked? Kinda puts the lie to the “all-powerful” bit , no?
–
consciousness razor@65
Eh, posting elsewhere what he wrote on his blog doesn’t make it plagiarism, just copypasta spam.
Now, taking somebody else’s words, especially without attribution? That makes it plagiarism.
Elind:
A blog is where a single person(or select group of individuals) write the topics, and people can choose to comment on it. Because most such comments are short, complicated new fangledy things aren’t necessary.
A forum is a place where many people can start a thread on a variety of topics, specifically to solicit discussion. The comments tend to be longer. It’s also somewhere frequently post things like photos.
For some reason, I’ve never had a problem mixing up the comments of a blog and a forum.
What about you cheer for none? We don’t need you.
Will look good on Ham’s CV, and all that…
I’m actually all for counterattack when it comes to debating religious people. Here are 6 questions for a Creationist:
1. Did a fish really swallow Jonah, and was it made just for this purpose by god?
2. Did Joshua made the sun stand still to lengthen the day, and what does that imply about the position of the earth relative to the sun?
3. If all living things were once destroyed in a global flood, how did all the creatures and civilizations develop in the few thousand years(not more than 4200, according to Ussher)since this event?
4. Where did Cain get his wife from, and how do you know this?
5. How is crawling on its belly all its life a punishment for a snake?
6. How come there were mornings and evenings on the first 3 days of creation when the sun wasn’t created by god until day 4?
I’m fairly certain Pastor Ajayi won’t be coming back. It’s not like he’s expecting answers, as he should be used to praying without results by this time.
Pastor Ajayi is also used to expecting his god to be right back for the last two thousand years.
PZ, after the debate, when Ken Ham is claiming he did well, please ask him, “Were you there?”
@ rorschach
There is actually only one question that the Hamster knows the answer to, and we do not:
What does YHWH do with His Penis?
I second omnicrom @72.
“Pansy-ass political correctness”
Place yer bets now.
Whiny MRA?
Clueless privilege soaked dudebro?
Star seeking Pitter?
elind @74:
You appear to be under the misconception that being an atheist somehow makes one have greater technical skills than non atheists.
Being an atheist does not make anyone more superior at anything, and thinking like that is arrogant.
rorschach:
Nice list.
I’d love to hear an answer to #4 myself.
#79:
Yeah, the first part was meant to be in response to #62, that it’s from Ravi Zacharias. Sorry, the way I wrote that was sort of ambiguous. “Reposted” was supposed to mean it wasn’t originally from his blog either.
———
I really don’t get the whole drive by, take a dump in the comments, then leave thing. What’s the point of commenting, especially when it’s full of questions like that, if you’re not going to stick around to see what others have to say, respond to them — you know, if you’re not going to converse with people? Does he seriously believe he dropped a bombshell on us or something?? Am I supposed to be seeing the light and loving Jesus now, or what? Is he just really fucking lazy as an evangelist? Or was it not even meant for atheists, but for other theists who might be reading?
consciousness razor,
Yes, probably he does. If you’re careful never to listen to or read answers to such “gotcha” questions, you can maintain the illusion that they are unanswerable. My hunch is that a lot of religious believers are aware, at some level, that their beliefs cannot withstand critical examination; but are able to convince themselves otherwise by the kind of tactic Michael Benson Ajayi used.
PZ in the OP:
Caveat Emperator in #1:
Creobot in #11:
It’s almost like they’re sentient.
Almost.
consciousness razor #70 wrote:
Ok. Test.
This is convenient. Thanks.
@consciousness razor –
Obviously, I disagree on the question of why there’s something rather than nothing. I don’t think the question even makes sense. I see no reason to ask it. It does end up being the infinite “why”. Any answer you can ever give would lead to another “why”. Even the answer of “goddidit” leads to, why is there god? Why did god do it? I think the very idea of “nothing” is meaningless. Our brains have never experienced “nothing”. No living thing ever has. We have not evolved the ability to conceive it. Every time we think of “nothing” we’re just approximating because we have no idea what nothing is.
But your results may vary. For me, that’s all the answer I need and, much as there’s no god shaped hole in my heart, there’s simply no curiosity or interest in that question at all. It certainly is good enough to demonstrate why god is an unnecessary hypothesis that brings us no closer to an actual answer.
Now a better defined question, like what was the universe like before the “big bang”? That’s interesting, and there are certainly ideas that can be pondered there, and it could be answerable in principle, but I doubt we ever will. I expect I’ll be long dead before we can be remotely definitive about it.
Also, I had no excuse for not block quoting my comment, I do it all the time and just didn’t think to do it so it was difficult to read entirely because I screwed up.
@mikeyb:
I’m curious if you can recall one specifically.
If he comes to Houston, I’ll bring him some green eggs.
Heh; that is a funny politically correct comment. Aside from my own comment being obviously tongue in cheek, I do state the obvious that the majority of scientists of note are atheists (or politically correct agnostics) and I certainly believe that intelligence is required to not fall for imaginary beings, which would be reflected in many techical skills.
Of course this blog/forum system may have been designed by evangelicals for all I know, and is not a reflection directly on those who make use of it, although I do think there are more efficient and flexible systems available.
But you still won’t like the Ham.
Glen Davidson
It’s Philip Bruce Heywood here, PZ. (Tim. reluctantly allowed me to use his login.)
Last time I invited you to come onto your own blog and answer questions you were as incognito as the hamster himself so I shan’t be holding my breath. To your credit and to your advantage you have a sense of humour, you actually do teach some useful facts, and you do not simply cut with scissors everything and anything that you cannot answer. This contrasts favourably with people such as Professors Coyne and Prothero — who immediately remove anything not from the cheer squad or from someone they can ridicule. Keep it up. You can find me, either on your blog or at my sites –which you have consistently declined. I represent mainstream Science, and mainstream Science neither makes up fairytales about the Bible nor employs Tinkerbell making your heaven and earth. Some rely upon Tinkerbell, and some rely upon people such as K. Ham, to tinker with the Bible. Some do both.
There is one class of person sillier than Ken Ham — those who take him seriously or regard him as a threat. If you knew the first thing about your topic, (I don’t mean your topic of Biology), Prof., you would do your research and get back to us instead of using Ken as a cover for going on pulling the wool. I am yet waiting on you to shoulder your responsibilities and start in on the facts regarding Origins Education. You have yet to address the questions put to you rears ago by myself on your blog — the questions which science itself either has now answered or is in the process of doing so. As I wrote then, and repeat here: meet you, right here, any time. If you have any wits — which I suspect you do — you will either cut my comment or cut and run. Which is exactly what Ken does when I send him the same. Where would you like to begin? History of Science? Sir Richard Owen and species as vivified information packets, pre-empting Darwin, before Darwin got published? The unassailable fact that species are pre-programmed information tech. phenomena and GENESIS by obvious implication says they are such? The geologic record in GENESIS thereby rendered totally accurate? Done your homework, PZ? And if you yet possess that wonderful beard, have you got the vanilla mustard(was it?) out? Meet you here, any time — if you so choose. Others, such as Coyne and Prothero, bail out. So you have an excuse. P.B.H..
So, who are you again?
Philip Bruce Heywood: I’ve read some of your stuff, and you are a very silly man. And worse, you’re a very boring man. Say something interesting for a change.
For mainstream Science. And you are not the bearded Professor.
Ah, the bearded Professor has appeared. Well done. This is how we will refute Ham — by claiming boredom? He raises a point. Mainstream Science can be very boring. It doesn’t hit the top of the popularity charts. Ham versus PZ, now — this gets us down to the nitty gritty of Science and keeps us awake?
LykeX — The Prof. of course didn’t mention the following Controversy -ending advances in science which I have been priveleged to document and which neither he nor any serious science follower can deny. All they do is hide — sometimes, it seems, behind Ken!……Solar System, including Moon. Species. Climate Moderation. And related matters. You can internet search.
Evolution, incidentally, in the mainstream science meaning now obvious to all, is a staged revelation of life-forms courtesy of info.tech.. The Bible foreshadows such a process. What Evolution in the mainstream science sense is not, is a religious experience or an excuse to stop the boredom. Sorry to put you to sleep. Philip Bruce Heywood. B.Sc.(hons. geology) ex. Geol. Surv. Qld, Ken’s home State.
You invented the solar system? And I thought Al Gore’s achievements were impressive.
If you want to be taken seriously, you have to start being a lot more clear about what you’re claiming. Right now, I have no idea what you’re saying, nor am I interested enough to spend any real energy trying to find out.
You sound like a crank. Plain and simple.
You sound like a crank. Plain and simple.
Apparently the argument from I’m rubber and you’re glue is still considered a good debate tactic down Tim Heywood’s way.
In my experience, this is an effective way of telling the difference between a deluded fool and a lying bastard; ask them to clearly explain what they mean.
The fool will try, because he honestly believes what he’s saying. He may be crazy, but he’s not lying.
The bastard, on the other hand, will evade, because he knows that clarity is his enemy.
You invented the solar system?
What I clearly mean, and what any person with any wit clearly sees, is that this is hilarious. No, Prof. PZ invented the solar system. Just ask him. He did it in between reading my first entry and seeing that his minders were on the job.
Do these posts actually make sense to you when you write them?
And what is it with trolls? Why is it none of them understand how to use <blockquote>?
Why is it that creationists can’t write? Seriously, Heywood’s sentences are much more convoluted and incoherent than my own, and that’s saying something.
Oooh, serious man, just like Ken.
It’s the equivalent of saying Santa Claus is so real.
Glen Davidson
Ken Ham gets one thing correct. The Bible is a technically relevant document. Ken then goes on to impose upon it, rather than simply rely upon it. When I came to teach geology (and therefore, in some sense, Origins), I knew what anyone’s eyes tell them– the Bible is supernatural. Don’t kid yourselves. You don’t need me to show you that the biblical text has to be higher than human invention. For instance, the manuscripts can be accurately dated. In places, future empires and world events are delineated without fault. When it comes to the geologic record, it is patently obvious that the order of appearance of life-forms is correct overall yet, mystifyingly, apparently somewhat addled. The question then became, “In what measure am I to take this script as technical, and in what measure, allegorical?” Neither way would have troubled me. The Bible is obviously here for some purpose other than the geologic record. Besides, the Devil knows Scripture better than any of us – and believes every word, in the academic sense — and he is not any the better for it.
I was totally startled, mystified, and humbled to be able to see what anyone who actually reads the text can see. Genesis 2:4&5 state that all plant species existed and were in some sense alive before becoming tangible on Earth. By extension, this applies to all species. As soon as one applies the concept of living species being brought into existence at a point in time, and then being made to appear tangibly as the need arises, the contradictions with the geologic record immediately cease. It only remained to wait on science to show the mechanism. Although the mechanism of species emplacement remains cloudy, science has advanced to the place where it is obvious in general terms. The Origins question has been solved in general outline. Ken Ham and many Australian science commentators were advized of this, decades past. I am currently in process of putting the whole meticulously in print and making it publickly available.
Climate change of course is peculiarly a province of Geology and the geologic record in combination with the Bible are far from silent.
I vote for deluded fool. The Bible is supernatural in precisely the same way that “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” is a factually-based historical documentary.
Taking this out of context seems appropriate in this case.
Glen Davidson
And this is your “revelation” of the revelations in your chosen texts?
Please, you are trolling in the wrong place for morons.
My eyes tell me that the Bible is exactly as “supernatural” as any book of stories made up by people who had no understanding of biology, physics, geology, paleontology, or cosmology.
I don’t need to you to show me that because you can’t show me that.
What exactly do you mean by “accurately dated”? I know that archaeologists have dated the composition of much of the Pentateuch to about the 7th century BCE, because the narratives reference places and things that only became prominent at about that time.
Bullshit.
Well, duh. The Bible is obviously here because a bunch of priests and scribes wrote down a bunch of stories about the God their cult happened to worship.
What Devil?
I am startled, mystified, and amused at the obvious bullshit of your exegesis.
Oh, please do. There obviously is a deficit of delugional kooks with wacky attempts to force the bible to be consistent with reality as discovered by science.
Speaking of delugion, what silly exegesis do you use for the “Global Flood” that never actually happened?
Let me tactfully suggest that when people get to a certain level of collective incoherence, it becomes wiser to leave them to themselves. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou appear like him”.
If you are incapable of the simplest expedient, say, of doing some GOOGLING, I shan’t be wasting time doing it for you. For instance, I mentioned the blatantly obvious supernatural prophetic nature of the Bible. In the book of Daniel, for instance, it not only mentions forthcoming world empires in order but names them. But such obvious facts require people at least to press a computer key or two. If someone (and there worthy people who visit this site) actually has a rational response or question; say on, and welcome. The cockatoos are rather raucous here.
My publications are available and I expect are about to become more so.
So difficult to do when it’s written after Persia and Greece came to the fore. It’s not for nothing that Daniel was supposedly shut and sealed until the “time of the end,” that is, in the time of Antiochus IV.
Just because we’re not impressed with your BS doesn’t mean that we don’t know both the claim and the reason it isn’t a genuine prophecy (ok, there’s some of that, but it failed). Apparently you’re as ignorant and dishonest as you are gullible.
Glen Davidson
Oh, I don’t mind if you think I’m a fool. I know that someone who believes in superstitious nonsense is far more foolish than myself.
But it looks like you’re not foolish enough to try to defend the “Global Flood” that never happened. Good job.
Google Shmoogle. Google cannot provide any evidence whatsoever that the claimed “prophecies” in Daniel were written before the events they claimed to “prophecy”. Not to mentioned the alleged “prophecies” that describe events that never happened; e.g., ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.
Bullshit.
The rational response to seeing gullibility is to point out that gullibility.
Says the blathering godbot.
Not only does the good book advize us not to answer fools according to their folly: it immediately counters with the advice to answer fools according to their folly (under certain circumstances) lest they lose the plot and mislead not only themselves but others. My paraphrase. The Bible is a message of incomparable love. It is not a message to delete or deface. If God can help me, he can help anyone. I mean, anyone. No strings attached, unconditional. What society is about is personal relationship — which flows from truth in love, which flows from divine grace. God himself, in a sense, is defined as a loving relationship. He can not be known or defined by technicalities.
T. H. Huxley, ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, who coined the term, ‘agnostic’, to describe himself, prescribed the Bible as basic to education. He could not understand nor agree with much of it but he did publickly own it as the democratic book, foundational to the rights of Man. (My paraphrase). The world’s leading agnostic and darwinist could at least recognize truth when he saw it and countless others of all persuasions have at least got that far.
As I mentioned previously I wish people who claim to know something would at least get basic research under their belts.
Of course there are no carbon dates of the first parchments upon which the books of the Bible were written. So we may decide that the Bible was written by frauds and charlatans — personal choice. However, the Bible itself implies that if its veracity is bound up in technicalities such as carbon dates, and not in self-evident truth and potential power imparted to the reader, then it is indeed a fraud. The word of God, like it’s author, is not a technicality. Its veracity may be analyzed but ultimately is proved by living experience.
Parts of DANIEL which speak of future empires and events are written in the first person. So if this book was concocted centuries after Daniel was dead, it is essentially a lie. The same can be said of the entire Bible. With just one or two little difficulties.
If you actually read DANIEL, even at the most elementary level it becomes clear that the accurate prophecies don’t stop at the times of the Greek occupation of Palestine. They follow through to after the time of Christ. So DANIEL was concocted in Europe or somewhere, A.D. But read it more — and it follows through in an unmistakable sense to modern times. It speaks of the full time of gentile occupation of the Holy Land. So, DANIEL was written last week — presumably by the bible scholar, G. Davidson.
But, hold. It cannot have been written by him, because it goes on to the end of the ‘weeks’ and thus the end of time. So DANIEL was written after the world ends.
By the inexorable progression of G.D.’s enlightened understanding, the books which speak of the return of Israel to their land were written after 1948 or whenever it was, and all those which prophetically speak of events yet to happen have yet to be written.
Explain why GENESIS 1 contains this order of appearance of life: Plants, concurrent with planetary coalescence…… but flowering/fruiting plants not actually growing until much later — the times of Man. Long after planetary formation, sudden, abundant aquatic life and flying life -thus allowing insects. Modification of aquatic life leads to land creatures and earth- related flying forms. Finally Man. That is what it says, in a loose outline. Must have been written in 1800’s by geologist Lyell.
O/M, the great flood was a tidal surge triggered by cometary action. It did not drown the entire globe, but may have impacted the entire globe. It drowned the entire world known to Man. The rain did not cause the flood –it was a by-product of the extraterrestrial encounter. If you desire credibility, do basic searches before assuming what is published on the Internet. If you wish to know what someone has written, ask first, don’t write it for them.
Why do you not quote someone even earlier who made a bible of those parts that could be considered what you describe? A much much smaller bible, thought Thomas Jefferson.
Seriously, this is a form of Pareidolia. You don’t know anything of the sort and just make shit up.
So, you agree that the story, as told in the bible, is wrong? Because I can’t help but noticing that that’s not what it says.
Isn’t it pretty much against lying, at least in the New Testament? So quit lying. I mean in general, not just quoting stupid old nonsense at us.
You don’t read so well, do you?
You don’t tell the truth so well, do you?
THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE
ESSAY #6 FROM “SCIENCE AND HEBREW TRADITION”
By Thomas Henry Huxley
`
‘
I’m not saying that all of what you wrote about Huxley and the Bible is wrong, naturally, but the statement that “The world’s leading agnostic and darwinist could at least recognize truth when he saw it” in the context you placed it amounts to fabrication, since he called portions of the Bible “lies.”
Theater-powered projection you have there.
No, liar, we can date the Bible in other ways. Don’t you know anything of philology, epistemology, or truthfulness?
Please do tell how it implies that. More importantly, why would I care if it does so? I want actual evidence for what I believe, not the circular claims of religious idiots like you and the Bible writers.
Parts of Frankenstein are written in first person. Am I to make something of that?
OMG, really?
Pure trash. The fact is that chapter 11 fits well with the time leading up to Antiochus IV and with nothing else at all. All of the dishonest retrofitting that you and others do changes that fact not a whit. Btw, why don’t you read some good Catholic commentary on Daniel, which fully agrees with what I’ve written?
Nothing to back up your bullshit, of course–especially not good scholarship.
Porphyry already knew better than that shortly after the time of Christ. Your insipid lies do nothing for your religion at all.
Look, being utterly stupid here won’t work.
Because we know it’s all going to work like that. Uh-huh, you have absolutely nothing, which is why you present no evidence.
Yeah, moron, I know Daniel better than to fall for your misrepresentations. You’re without anything, so spinning lies like crazy.
I’m supposed to explain the shit you made up?
Uh, yeah, have you ever actually read Genesis? If so, why can’t you deal with what it really says?
That would really finish off the iniquities of the world.
Well hey, why don’t you take your own advice, for once?
Glen Davidson
Should have been:
Glen Davidson
snortgiggle. Geological evidence for the flood: ready, set, GO!
You, dude, are no superman, neither of the omnibenevolent kind (like, y’know, Superman before the recent movie) nor of the sociopathic kind.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Do explain!
Also, kindly explain why the geological evidence makes clear there was no Flood and no comet shower anywhere near a time when there were humans around.
There is scarcely anything of note there except my sympathies to the guy who stutters. Try G G G GOOGLING it, my friend. No, I’m not going to link you to all the peer reviewed literature re. comet theories, you don’t seem to have heard of Tunguska, and the item in NEW SCIENTIST strongly indicative of near-proof of near extinction of Mankind early in our history (on the basis of impoverishment in human genetic information) by Brooks I think it was, 1999 — no, look it up yourself. You could of course try GOOGLE IMAGES for DNA as programmable information device, and do a search under quantum info.tech. and drag yourself at least into the modern era. Ah; and tidal surges do not tend to lay down significant rock beds.
T.H.Huxley was a troubled and provocative man obsessed with religion but seemingly unable to get peace. He regularly quoted the Bible. He is on record as suggesting to Darwin that Nature somehow ‘makes leaps” — written in Latin — saltationary process. Alfred Wallace of course believed in little people of the jungles, a convinced spiritist. Darwin it appears was undecided but may well have been pulled towards ‘Naturism’ by his academic associates Wallace and Huxley. Evolution, the religious experience.
Dear Tim,
You really should try to make connections in what you call logic, instead of simply referencing things and then seeming to think there are connections, that you can’t prove.
You are not going to accept science (peer reviewed, and you mention Tungusta as if it has any connection to anything being discussed here. You mention a genetic hint of low human population, possibly close to extinction levels, possibly, without any shred of connection to what is discussed here.
Please also do not pretend to know squat about DNA and quantum info whatever.
Tidal surges and rock beds? WTF is that about?
What is your obsession with Huxley anyway?
Missed something? G.D. I am not going to copy and paste GENESIS 1 here so you can read it. The word (‘day’ as applied in GENESIS 1, excluding the 7th, means a period of work of unspecified length.) I believe in the inherent honesty and good sense of ninety nine percent of people out there. Yousomehow think, along with
Yawn, one meteor is meaningless. Not evidence for anything other than one meteor. Why don’t you learn how to do science. Which means you back up your assertions, or shut the fuck up. You should shut the fuck.
No authority on modern synthesis (present day scientific evolutionary theory, with a million or so scientific papers to back it up. No religion (no imaginary deities, no belief without evidence), just a typical scientific conclusion based on solid unrefuted evidence.
Could we lock Tim and Algis in a room for a weekend? At the very least they might come up with a workable Adam Sandler script.
No, it doesn’t. You interpret it to mean that, because otherwise, you’d have to admit that your bible is wrong. The word simply means “day”.
–sorry– pushed wrong button — Ken Ham & AIG, you can pull the wool by saying the Bible says something obviously just so long as you don’t have to actually quote the Bible? People can think — and read. AH, Elind; my name is Philip Bruce Heywood and my publications are available under my name on-line. So there is “a connection that you can’t prove”. Tim reluctantly allowed me to use his Facebook. My wife has pinched our joint e-mail address for her Facebook.
Huxley is a religious ‘father’ in the modern ‘atheist-evolutionist’ movement. Compare him with Sir Richard Owen –who upstaged him but nevertheless had his own problems.
Yes, you’ve missed just about all of the context.
Yes, incoherent blatherer, why don’t you respond to your strawman? I noted your inability to comprehend Genesis, which remains apparent.
Well that’s completely off my point, although wrong in context of Genesis nonetheless. You’re almost wholly without capacity for meaningful dialog.
You manage not to think, and apparently can’t even finish sentences with any high probability.
Glen Davidson
Gee, an assertion without evidence. DISMISSED as fuckwittery.
Creobots have an interest in demonizing those who started the SCIENCE of evolution. But they have a big problem. Science doesn’t pretend those who practice it are always right, and any and all theories will change as the evidence changes. Modern Synthesis (see link in previous post by me) was a significant change in details from Darwin (Darwin isn’t the last word, and his Origin of the Species was only the first word on the subject. You can’t prove any point by arguing against the founder of evolutionary theory, as science moved on. Evolutionary theory also changed slightly when genomes could be sequenced fairly cheaply. Notice I supplied a link to back up my claim, unlike you, so it can’t be dismissed out of hand.
LykeX the words in GENESIS specifically state that each day bar the 7th was ‘an evening and a morning’. Notice, no mention of night. If you read the Bible you will discover that ‘evening’ and ‘morning’ refer to periods of work opportunity (the evening and morning sacrifice, etc.). So what is being referred to is a work event. The Bible also states that all of creation was accomplished in “the day that the Lord made the heaven and earth’ — exactly the same Hebrew word for ‘day’. It then goes on to state in black and white that “God’s days are not as Man’s days” (JOB). Go and read my publications or someone’s publications — not A.I.G.’s — and save my typing finger. I can only one finger type.
It can mean “an age” or however you want to label it.
Not in the context of Genesis–although that’s among the least of Heywood’s idiocies–but in other contexts it needn’t mean a 24-hour period.
It had nothing to do with what I was writing about, of course, since the babbling nonsense about angiosperms, etc.–which claims have nothing to do with Genesis–were my concern. But he can still bring up a meaningless “objection” to his delusions about what I was writing.
Glen Davidson
Gee, how can morning and evening occur without a sun. Funny how your mind goes blank at such obvious mismatches in the myth. The whole babble is a book of mythology/fiction (evidence based null hypothesis), until you demonstrate otherwise with solid and conclusive evidence not from the babble. You also need to show solid and conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity, evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. Something equivalent to an eternally burning bush.
Sure, you can interpret it as meaning something other than “day”, but that’s exactly my point. It’s an interpretation. There’s nothing in the plain meaning of the text that precludes it from referring to simply a standard 24-hour day.
Unless you have an agenda that makes you want to avoid that meaning.
Nerd – o- Troll, team up with LykeX and research. Your link is good. You don’t need me to supply you with links. You could try my full name (Philip Bruce Heywood) or just go to creation theory dot com (near top result under creation theory for a decade) and go from there.
Evolutionary theory was well in existence some time before Darwin & co., and Darwin & co. certainly added something to it (especially the notion of information feedback from environment). Your link adds something to it. A.I.G. adds nothing to it. Huxley and Wallace’s wafflings about Nature having creative powers seriously set it back. Nature is not supernatural. Animism adds little or nothing to science. Science can be divided from religion. Evolution as an unrolling obeying the (created) laws of science was the idea of pioneers such as Cuvier and Sir Richard Owen (Owen, as I noted previously, had personal difficulties in his science dealings). Huxley came along claiming objectivity yet handed mysterious creative abilities to Nature. Owen meanwhile, long before it was known that DNA even existed, had highlighted information driven transformers. Evolutionary theory certainly exists. You or I are not the first to consider it.
Going by what you presumably pull out of your publication to post here, I have to inform you that there is no reason to read anything else you have written, if this is the best you have.
As to Huxley, you seem to think he is responsible for atheism, or people coming to call themselves atheists. I can assure you that I have never heard Huxley mentioned by any atheists as an influence in their lack of belief, and I don’t think I knew of him when I began to see myself that way around the age of 13, many years ago. Quoting him is irrelevant.
LykeX, the Almighty did not clap a copyright on his Word. His word is for all men. But it only becomes useful if it becomes meaningful and even powerful. It was originally recorded in what are now dead languages. So how did the church fathers know what was sacred writ? The only way is if the same spirit of prophesy that lies behind the Word, ‘rings true’ with Man. Whatever this business about ‘day’ is supposed to mean is lost on me. The plain literal meaning in GENESIS cannot possibly be a day as we experience it for reasons so obvious I will not copy and paste the text. No sun for the first three, for starters. What you appear to be saying is that sects, misrepresentations, variances of opinions, religious nut groups, headaches, you name it, are bound to follow when people start to lose the plot of what it’s all about. Argue over the meaning of a word by all means — but the argument will never end.
Yes, you need to supply links. If you don’t, what you say is presumed evidenceless fuckwittery, and is dismissed per Christopher Hitchens: “That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”. What you post on a web site isn’t peer reviewed scientific literature and can be dismissed as such. The peer reviewed scientific literature (found at places like this is the only thing that refutes science, namely more science. No science is done at any web site where the mythical/fictional babble is presupposed to be inerrant.
Yes, certain rumbling about change over time were there, but Darwin meticulously referenced the theory with the best available evidence available to him. Unfortunately for you, science never stops, Darwins mistakes were corrected, and the ToE marches forward unrefuted.
Evolutionary is not a religion. That is what you have asserted, but you haven’t evidenced. Which means the assertions is dimissed out of hand. Evolutionary theory is a well evidenced (a million or so scientific papers, backing ToE both directly and indirectly), so it is a full and solid scientific theory, not a “theory” as used in common parlance.
Elind; Now be a good little ‘atheist’ or whatever and try not to misquote people —
“As to Huxley, you seem to think he is responsible for atheism, or people coming to call themselves atheists.”
Tim, why are you spouting this religious drivel? It is irrelevant.
Now be a good little creobot and don’t quotemine real science and scientists.
I became an atheist when I read the babble cover to cover, and saw it wasn’t the word of a god, but rather the raving delusions a sick, sorry people who believed in all sorts of nasty things. Then I looked at the real scientific evidence, and the babble became nothing but a book of mythology/fiction, and since there was no other evidence for Yehweh, concluded no deities exist.
Again, you’re starting with the assumption that the text has to be correct. If you give up that idea, you will quickly see that there’s no contradiction.
It’s entirely possible that the people back then didn’t fully grasp that daylight came from the sun. After all, the daylight comes from all around, whereas the sun has a specific position in the sky.
Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not. You certainly can’t tell from reading the text.
Where did you get that from? I’m not even sure what that means and I certainly didn’t say that.
NERD -O; Be a better little ‘atheist’ or whatever and try to avoid telling people what they have said or not said, especially if you haven’t read all their posts. What does this mean? No, don’t explain. “Evolutionary is not a religion. That is what you have asserted, but you haven’t evidenced.”
Evidence presented in my post #129 (modern synthesis is modern evolutionary theory) and # 142 (scientific theory).
Now, show me your evidence, or shut the fuck up….
Myeck: “Tim, why are you spouting this religious drivel? It is irrelevant.”
I have hijacked Tim’s Facebook. I hope he isn’t embarrassed. My name is Philip. The confusion is my fault.
Strange how something ‘irrelevant’ gets a mention in the lives, beliefs, practices and successes of almost all respected foundational scientists of the Western World — from Francis Bacon through to Lord Kelvin. Yes you could probably count Laplace out, and Einstein of course has been officially classed as everything from creationist to atheist. This is a generalization.
Nerd -O: If you read the Bible from cover to cover you are better than I. I couldn’t have done it. It was obviously true, but it was like a dead letter. Like, lead weight. However, without going into detail, things changed. I wish they had changed more. They can change more. There is hope. But, anyway, suddenly, the Bible was written to me, personally. I found I could read it. There is a way — forward.
Again I ask: why are you spouting this religious drivel?
The beliefs of past people are interesting only as historical context. What matters is the facts of the world as they have been discovered and demonstrated.
And why are you besmirching Tim’s presumably good name by posting this idiocy under it? Why not do him a solid and create your own login?
Yep, you unplugged your ability to think critically about what you were reading. And that isn’t moving forward, it’s moving backwards to presuppositionalism. Your problem rests on the twin lies of believing your babble is inerrant, and not a book of mythology/fiction, and your imaginary deity existing. Stupidity writ large over such inane, ignorant, and irrelevant presuppositions.
Be fair. It’s not at all clear that he ever had much ability to think critically.
Glen Davidson
This is a clear indication of why intelligent design fails. If the design of humans is intelligent, why are there still dumb humans?
Or in other words, as so often happens, the bible contains a directive and its exact opposite. Demonstrating once again that it was composed entirely by humans, who are perfectly capable of contradicting themselves, and sometimes don’t notice, or don’t care, that they are contradicting themselves.
This is garbage. The only ones who can get “incomparable love” out of the Bible’s mishmash of religious myths, propaganda, contradictory storytelling, contradictory rules and inconsistent directives, and very rare good stuff, are religious fanatics who neither know nor care what “love” actually means.
Yes; that’s why he was an agnostic, and not religious. He recognized that truth was not in the bible, nor in the claims of the religious.
Nuts. If he said anything like that, he was wrong. But after skimming this, I strongly suspect that he did not say that, or anything like that. Your “paraphrase” looks to be a fiction.
We can decide that the Bible was written by frauds and charlatans when they make claims about peoples, places, and things which supposedly existed in the Early Bronze Age but which can be shown by archaeology not to have existed until the Iron Age — or, sometimes, at all. It’s your personal choice to continue believing frauds that have been exposed and discredited by those who actually care about what is true.
Now you’re just lying, flat-out. I’ve read the book of Daniel. The only time and place that it makes sense that it was composed was the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
More ludicrous lies.
Haha! Daniel’s “weeks” cannot possibly match to anything at all, but no matter how you interpret “weeks”, if you actually care about matching them up to the events that Daniel talks about, they ended before the end of the Hasmonean kingdom. Zombie Apocalypse!!!
Oh, wait. There was no Zombie Apocalypse.
Daniel was a false prophet.
What “concurrent with”? God makes plants before he makes the sun!
And what “planetary coalescence”? The Israelites priest who authored Genesis 1 had no idea that he lived on a planet!
Not content with pathetically transparent lying about Daniel, now you have pathetically transparent lies about Genesis.
Gen. 1:11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so.
Gen. 1:12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Note present tense, LIAR.
Gen. 2:5 is in CONTRADICTION to Gen. 1:12; not some supplement as your stupid bullshit exegesis pretends.
What “long after”? It was two days! And do you really think “flying life” meant only insects to the author of Genesis 1? How stupid! Gen 1:26 uses the same damn word in Hebrew – ‘oph; (עֹוף) – when it talks about what Man is supposed to rule over. Man is supposed to rule over the insects of the skies? Hahaha!
Not content with lying about the Bible, now you’re lying about geology.
You’re claiming that there are tsunami deposits everywhere simultaneously. GEOLOGISTS KNOW WHAT TSUNAMI DEPOSITS LOOK LIKE AND HAVE MAPPED THEM AND DATED THEM. There are NO simultaneous worldwide tsunami deposits, you LYING LIAR.
For pity’s sake. Have you no shame at all?
Geologists also know what impact sites and the results of impacts look like. Not a single one of these pretend “comets” of yours left an impact crater or tektites?
How was this fake comet bombardment supposed to drown “the entire world known to Man” when that entire world was neither entirely coastal nor entirely riparian?
Why did Noah build a boat instead of simply moving upriver and/or uphill?
Hahahahaha! Lying godbot is ironic.
A fragment of the Tunguska bolide has been found, MORON. Even before the bolide was found, magnetite and silicate spherules were found in the trees.
Where’s the signature and remains of your fake recent global cometary bombardment?
The only known genetic bottleneck to be hypothesized correlates to the volcanic supereruption of Toba, 74kya, which has been hypothesized to have caused widespread climactic effects and mass deaths among many organisms, including our own species.
No mass cometary impacts. No global simultaneous tsunami deposits.
Your myth is busted.
Moronic liar unable to even cite the primiary literature.
They lay down a significant widespread pulse of marine sediment you lying idiot.
The ancients did not actually know that light needs a light source.
Finally, you’re talking about yourself.
I actually don’t care what your name is. I’m responding to the stupid and dishonest arguments you’ve presented.
But why are you too stupid to create your own wordpress account on freethoughtblogs? It’s not like the site requires Facebork.
I (Philip Bruce Heywood) actually possess a WordPress blog but to discover such would require GOOGLING. I am not internet ‘savvy’ and think I have misplaced the password. Not possessing Pz’s charm and wit I don’t compare with PHARYNGULA.
Discovering that a prolonged tidal surge due to gravitional pull upwards has no relationship or similarity to a tsunami caused by a sudden movement underneath the sea would require some sort of factual research. Likewise for learning that the Tunguska event was almost certainly comet-initiated and the associated impact is believed to have possibly left some of the comet itself — possibly ice — buried there. Incidentally, the literature suggests that that bolide that tickled up central Russia earlier this year could be a lonely remnant of some evaporated comet. Google is here for a reason. If I was to link O/M to the actual publications — mostly on SCIENCEDAILY, I would be wasting my time. If you don’t believe GOOGLE, you won’t believe SCIENCEDAILY.
Queer world. I dabble in the solar system. Currently, SCIENCENOW features something at or near the top under a google of lunar origins — with a little of my input as comments. If you track it down, you will discover one other comment alongside my two — by ‘Boris’. Boris appears to be attempting to prove the APOLLO landings were a U.S. conspiracy. I was obliged to lodge a second comment to advize him that ‘Common Donor Moon Capture’ — my paper — is not the conspiracy evidence for which he is searching.
Hiding from facts is not new. Prostituting science for idealogic purposes is not new. Using it as a cover for indoctrination in vice, political ‘liberalism’ and even effectively murder (e.g., Lysenkoism) is not new. Going off on a tangent is not new. That is why they have peer review and an Internet.
No, there’s no embarrassment in standing on the the shoulders of giants — scientists who went before, most of whom were bible believers of some category. Sure beats tinkebellism, little people of the jungles, ghosts, ufo’s, the great God of Vacuum.
Phil, serious, deeply and genuinely: Stop preaching for five minutes and entertain the notion that the response you’re getting is not because people are closed-minded or stupid, but because you’re not expressing yourself very well and you’re coming off as a moron.
I really think you would benefit greatly from spending less time coming up with new (brilliant?) ideas and more time on clearly communicating and supporting the ideas you’ve already got.
Listen for a second when I tell you; you’re sounding like a crank. Don’t get defensive or start in on another spiel: LISTEN! You’ve gone way off the reservation and if you want people to follow you, you’ve got to be a lot more convincing than you are right now.
Yep, for you to CITE your sources. Any vague references you make are the equivalent of saying “I’m a liar and bullshitter”. Welcome to science, where precision is your friend.
Link to your fuckwittery. You posted nothing cogent based on your meander inane posts here.
And the present National Academy of Science has a only 7% of its members believing in your imaginary deity. Link to evidence. Godbotting is for those with weak minds unable to face reality. Sounds like you alright.
For all that I said that I didn’t care about his name, there was something about “Philip Bruce Heywood” that sounded familiar — did he post to Pharyngula before?
It turns out that indeed he did; to Sb Pharyngula, a few years ago. He was blathering a right streak, including about names and Shakespeare, so I found myself inspired to write this (with minor edit):
====================
CLOWN 1: Who be this babbler, this gibbering child of nature, this addle-pated mooncalf?
CLOWN 2: Doth he not scribe his name right well?
CLOWN 1: The first part hints that he loveth the horse.
CLOWN 2: Aye, perhaps too well. Mayhap a horse kicked him in the head before fleeing like the wind.
CLOWN 1: ‘Twould explain much.
CLOWN 2: And the second part?
CLOWN 1: ‘Tis a name from the cold north.
CLOWN 2: Where the men, ’tis said, are very manly.
CLOWN 1: And the very sheep, ’tis said, live in fear.
CLOWN 2: And the third part?
CLOWN 1: Mayhap ’tis a riddle.
CLOWN 2: Be he a tree?
CLOWN 1: Or hath he a stiffness of his focative root?
CLOWN 2: Perhaps he tells of his head.
CLOWN 1: If so, he tells all that he hath termites, or dry rot.
CLOWN 2: And if ’tis his root, he shall find no satisfaction, for all he come near shall fear splinters.
CLOWN 1: Wherefore horse and sheep flee him!
CLOWN 2: Thou hast unriddled him, forsooth!
None of Lord Kelvin’s acclaimed foundational research derived any useful contribution from creationism. The one time Lord Kelvin let his creationist preconceptions color his scientific work, it led directly to his most humiliating mistake, one for which history will hold him in derision for as long as it will be recorded.
You can examine the length and breadth of all the so-called “founders” of the sciences and you will see the same pattern. They were mostly creationists. Intelligent, educated men, well-versed in the forms of creationist thought of their times. None of them, NONE, successfully applied creationist ideas to ANY of their scientific work that is of consequence and has stood the test of time.
Every time, EVERY time, they tried to do so, the end result was laughable error.
Creationism is a bankrupt, intellectually vacant mode of thought. It stifles inquiry and promotes falsehood. It turns intelligent men into fools, and fools into liars.
Creationism is useless.
Utterly useless.
Of course, now that I know he’s a loon, there’s no point in going overboard in the SIWOTI. Yelling at the kook will not make him stop being a kook.
Still. SIWOTI, ever SIWOTI….
A … what?
A fake event that no geologist or astronomer thinks has ever actually happened at all?
Velikovsky doesn’t count, because he’s not a geologist or astronomer, and even though he proposed similar lunacy, his lunacy for Noah’s Flood was not that.
This particularly idiotic fake event couldn’t have happened without leaving evidence in the form of massive multiple impact craters or a ring around the Earth. You like Google so much? Google “Roche limit”. If an object got close enough to pull the oceans up enough to form a giant wave, the Earth’s tidal forces would have caused the object to break up.
Moron. Who said anything about “a sudden movement underneath the sea”? Bolide impacts also cause tsunamis. As do slope failures and flank collapses.
Any giant powerful pulse of water which sweeps in from the sea — no matter what the actual cause — would be expected to sweep in a pulse of marine sediment. Because that’s what the force of a giant powerful pulse of water does. It doesn’t just conveniently move in and drown people and leave no sign of its having been there; it moves stuff in the direction of flow.
Even your fake wave that didn’t happen would have done so, if it had happened.
Irony.
Moron. You didn’t even read what I wrote, let alone the actual science research on Tunguska.
Any ice would have vaporized when the object exploded in the atmosphere.
Why the hell are you even mentioning Tunguska when your stupid fake idea was an enormous comet which supposedly didn’t impact the Earth?
You won’t link because you can’t link. Nothing on Sciencedaily, or anywhere else, would accept such a ludicrously stupid idea.
I searched Sciencedaily for “Velikovsky”, and found nothing but one press release in 1997 about exoplanet formation. Which was a pretty stupid comparison to make, since Velikovsky’s ideas were all about magic planetary billiards taking place in the relatively recent past.
And why are you so obsessed with Sciencedaily? Do you think that “primary literature” means “See Spot Run” and “Dick and Jane”?
If Lysenkoism — a false ideology with state approval and capital state punishment for dissenters from that ideology — is “effectively murder”, then religion is definitely “effectively murder”.
Do we not actually know about examples of real such marine sediment pulses at the KT boundary? We know exactly what the marine sediment depositions of bolide tsunamis look like, and we know exactly where such sediment deposits should be if the bolide-flood idea had any merit. And we look in those areas and we see jack squat.
Tim, (that the handle you chose since you were too lazy to make up a gmail/hotmail/yahoo account for this purpose)
This last comment above really does prove you are nuts. Nothing left to say; although no doubt many will.
There’s a whole arc of them along the Gulf Coast from Mexico to Arkansas, according to the reviews I’ve been perusing.
Fixed.
I can’t help noticing that the people (most) who are able to contribute meaningfully in terms of fact and reason are suddenly absent. An example to follow. We learn every day. Our latest lesson is that astronomers believe there is no evidence that tides occur on Earth due to upwards pull of extraterrestrial bodies. Wisdom has not deserted the contributors entirely — not those who aren’t between here and my previous entry, anyways. My compliments to PZ,, who as usual keeps a considerable distance. A long distance, a safe distance. If you have to read the above, man, keep a bottle of rum handy. There may be more than rum involved here. I will override my instincts and copy/paste something from peer reviewed science. Only this once, mind. The source is called WIKIPEDIA. That’s a cross between a certain type of woven basket, and a centipede. You know; those big, big, mean yellow-eyed fire-breathing slimy horrible black things with a million legs that rear up and chase you when they get disturbed in the abyssal deep. Some believe they arrived here in a fiery black comet. It helps to glance at WIKIPEDIA occasionally, when walking about on the ceiling. Greetings, salutations, best wishes.
Three-dimensional numerical modelling of the Tunguska impact done by Utyuzhnikov and Rudenko in 2008[35] supports the comet hypothesis. According to their results, the comet matter dispersed in the atmosphere, while the destruction of the forest was caused by the shock wave.
During the 1990s, Italian researchers, coordinated by the physicist Prof. Giuseppe Longo from University of Bologna, extracted resin from the core of the trees in the area of impact to examine trapped particles that were present during the 1908 event. They found high levels of material commonly found in rocky asteroids and rarely found in comets.[36][37]
Kelly et al. (2009) contend that the impact was caused by a comet because of the sightings of noctilucent clouds following the impact, a phenomenon caused by massive amounts of water vapor in the upper atmosphere. They compared the noctilucent cloud phenomenon to the exhaust plume from NASA’s Endeavour space shuttle.[38][39]
In 2010, an expedition of Vladimir Alexeev, with scientists from the Troitsk Innovation and Nuclear Research Institute (TRINITY), used ground penetrating radar to examine the Suslov crater at the Tunguska site. What they found was that the crater was created by the violent impact of a celestial body. The layers of the crater consisted of modern permafrost on top, older damaged layers underneath and finally, deep below, fragments of the celestial body were discovered. Preliminary analysis showed that it was a huge piece of ice that shattered on impact, which seem to support the theory that a comet caused the cataclysm.[40]
Doesn’t support your argument at all. Notice all the evidence that was left, compared to the lack of evidence at the proper time for your inane idea. You did nothing but handwaving. What a worthless post.
Sucked me in again Timmy,
Quite a statement you make there, and as usual without anything to back it up. Turns physics and Einstein on their heads, not to mention astronomy. I can’t figure out if you are really this dense, or ignorant, or just trolling.
And Tunguska again. What is your point with that?
Tidal calculations. Do your homework.
Fixed.
While Wikipedia is better than it used to be, I note that the final paragraph is supported by reference [40] — which is not from the peer-reviewed scientific literature, but a newspaper article — in Pravda, no less — translated, rather clumsily in places (“a conical hopper”?), from the Russian.
I can find nothing in the peer-reviewed literature by Vladimir Alexeev that supports the claims made in the newspaper article. Maybe I need more Russian…
Is this guy really and truly a published author? I suddenly have a greater respect for editors everywhere.
Did you seriously miss Owlmirror in the immediately preceding comments? Or were you just disappointed that no one was posting on this days-old thread in the middle of the night in America?
Some of us sleep on occasion, and many of us don’t live in the US.
More later.
I am present. (But in lurk mode (not that I could contribute anything meaningful though)).
I can’t help noticing that the guy who contributes meaninglessly in screens full of gibberish just can’t shut up.
OK, I can find a citation, but I have no access to the original text of this article (let alone a translation)
Google Translate:
Spelling his name “Alekseev” instead of “Alexseev” also brings up these citations in an English-language search:
If I may strain my crank-to-English translating abilities, I believe he’s using it as an example of a cosmic event with the possibility of causing near-extinction of the human race, which could be what the authors of the Flood story was referring to. Even though the existence of such events has never been in question by us, even though as Owlmirror pointed out we are well aware of the Toba event which really did appear to have nearly wiped out the human species, and even though such an event is not really consistent with the sort of worldwide flood depicted in the Bible.
It’s all just more desperate flailing to find any level of truth in the Bible, as if if they scrape together enough parts of the Bible that remotely resemble what has actually been observed in human history (hey, those Bible authors name REAL PLACE NAMES THAT REALLY EXISTED ZOMG), then all the crazy nonsense about 3O Yahweh becomes official default Truth. And also as if they really do concede that empirical scientific investigation really is the best way of knowing things and that religious thought is just incestuous and worthless outside of independent confirmation and actual observation (which, for hundreds of years, has painted a wildly different, much more complete, and much more INTERESTING picture of the universe than that moldy old book of myths).
Regarding the Toba event, it is pure speculation that this resulted in near extinction and a quick read of Wikipedia on this explains why, with relevant links.
Timmy, as usual, takes the creationist view of facts; namely grab any speculative idea that fits a preconception and call it a fact.
” :-D ” is a laughing face rotated 90° to the left.
You know, a smiley – what kids these days have been using on the Internet for 20 years now.
Of course I have. It left evidence, and it was just one comet.
That’s a genetic bottleneck some 100,000 years ago (very roughly). It used to be blamed on the eruption of the Toba, but as that doesn’t work, the most likely candidate are the extreme droughts in eastern Africa that occurred several times between 135,000 and and 85,000 years ago.
Also, I wouldn’t call midway through the history of Homo sapiens sapiens “early in our history”.
How does that make species “pre-programmed information tech. phenomena”?
What, if anything, do you mean by “significant”? There are 66-million-year-old tsunami deposits out there, clearly caused by the Chicxulub impact – see comments 161 and 164. Indeed, there are even sediments on the ocean floor west of Florida that were deposited by a tsunami that swept over Florida from Yucatán!
~:-|
Huxley, Wallace and Darwin have long been dead, you know. Why should I care about their religious beliefs or lack thereof? They don’t somehow follow logically from the theory of evolution by mutation, selection and drift.
What the fuck are you on about.
What have you smoked, and can I get it legally in the Netherlands?
Genesis 1, Genesis 2, and Job were written by different people in different centuries. You can’t describe that as “[i]t then goes on to state”.
I don’t understand why you keep attributing this to Hitchens. Doesn’t it go back to Aristotle or so?
Daniel was made up!
I don’t have a WordPress blog. I simply created a FreethoughtBlogs login. You should try it.
Dude, do you have any idea of how heavy the moon is and how heavy any comet is?
Wikipedia is not a source. It’s a compilation. It’s an encyclopedia that cites sources. Wikipedia strongly discourages its contributors from putting any original research in it; it is not a place for the publication of new ideas.
The vast majority of Wikipedia articles have also never been peer-reviewed.
…I think you need professional help.
I’m serious. You have all my sympathies.
“Optics of the atmosphere and”.
GPR must be ground-penetrating radar. The original says “georadar”.
He didn’t know what a smiley was back in 2008, either.
Daniel was a fictional prophet who made fictional prophecies.
I watched Cosmos, and Carl Sagan gave a short sketch of Velikovsky’s ideas. One of them (as I recall) was that the planet now known as Venus was a “comet” ejected from Jupiter.
Wikipedia supports my memory:
I suspect that Heywood’s loony-tune “comet” causing a global coastal flood was either directly or indirectly plagiarized from Velikovsky’s loony-tune idea.
David Marjanović
“Some of us sleep on occasion, and many of us don’t live in the US.”
Quoting this blog, entry by myself. “Evolution, incidentally, in the mainstream science meaning now obvious to all, is a staged revelation of life-forms courtesy of info.tech.. The Bible foreshadows such a process. What Evolution in the mainstream science sense is not, is a religious experience or an excuse to stop the boredom. Sorry to put you to sleep. Philip Bruce Heywood. B.Sc.(hons. geology) ex. Geol. Surv. Qld, Ken’s home State.”
So now we know why you went to sleep. Greetings from Central Queensland, Australia– God’s own country, sun just risen, light frost, crows everywhere, odd cockatoo. You, sir, display remarkable lucidity when asleep.
theophontes
“I am present. (But in lurk mode (not that I could contribute anything meaningful though))”.
You just might be present, at that. First intelligible entry I have encountered on this blog.
amphiox
“You can examine the length and breadth of all the so-called “founders” of the sciences and you will see the same pattern. They were mostly creationists. Intelligent, educated men, well-versed in the forms of creationist thought of their times. None of them, NONE, successfully applied creationist ideas to ANY of their scientific work that is of consequence and has stood the test of time.
Every time, EVERY time, they tried to do so, the end result was laughable error.”
The first law of science upon which the whole stands, year 1 day 1, is what? Recite the first law. No, don’t. Here is something simpler, which although seemingly complex is far simpler than understanding the full implications either of the first or second laws of Physics. Detail here on this blog by return mail the meaning and implications of Leonard Susskind’s work, especially as it relates to the conservation not only of matter but also of information. Do not ignore Hawking and make sure you have explained entropy in terms people out there can understand. Don’t worry about the people here. Other than possibly Theophontes, they won’t believe you. They won’t believe Susskind. Susskind is a plumber, a son of Isaac by race, turned physicist. So he does understand that water runs downhill, and he knows how to stop leaks and shut off spouts. Well get to it, man, and try to find a dictionary and the English language while you are doing it. I’m taking the liberty of assuming you are male. Enlist Marjanović to help, if he can be woken. You bucks are leaving it to the squaw (O/M would have to be a squaw, right?) and like with the Apache, the squaws were squashed. You’ll discover science yet, if you stop squawking..
Your racism is noted.
Not to mention misogyny.
The babble does no such thing, being a book of mythology/fiction until you demonstrate otherwise with evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature. Your word on the subject is dismissed as evidenceless fuckwittery.
There is no first law. But one of the first principals is the easiest person to fool is yourself, as you so aptly prove with each and every evidenceless post.
Actually, it is far more complex. You must demonstrate with solid and conclusive physical evidence how your imaginary deity came to exist. No presuppositions like “eternal” (an obvious avoidance of the inability to show evidence) allowed.
Science neither has nor needs any such “first law”. Only creationism requires such a useless concept.
That is just another one of many reasons why creationism is a useless and pitiful idea.
An excellent illustration of its general toxicity is how it has reduced you, right now, to incoherent babbling.
[meta]
“either of the first or second laws of Physics”, eh?
(I guess Philip Bruce Heywood imagines there is only one First law in physics)
I still haven’t seen any evidence. About the best I’ve seen is “floods happen at a local level therefore the Babble was probably talking about a regional event” and then comets were mentioned as the cause out of fucking nowhere.
Douchecake is just proselytizing. So sad to see a mind with such potential being wasted on mythology as reality.
The first law of science:
“Check his work.”
The first law of religion:
“Give him money.”
For a moment, with that rush into print about past scientists, AMPHIOX, I thought you might have an interest in the topic.
The first Law of Physics stipulates there be no such things as fairies, appearing and disappearing rabbits, bank accounts, even pink elephants. The Second Law stipulates that Nature has zero creative powers. No pachyderms, not even a wobbygong will arise from mysterious aether.
The best of men (Conan Doyle was an example) have resorted to spiritism and even fairies and Professor Hawking made a comparable blunder by resorting to a sort of perpetual motion concept, and attempted to drag mainstream Physics with him. Proposed ‘Hawking Radiation’ is involved. As far as I can gather — not being mathematical beyond one plus one — Susskind had the unenviable task of correcting Hawking’s error. Susskind has a great love of Physics and was palpably relieved when able to get the ship back to even keel. The laws of Physics stipulate that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. Since E = M.C.squared, it is apparent that matter and energy can interchange. What is not so obvious courtesy of Einstein’s equation is that there is an organizational factor involved in the existence of matter. This has to do with subatomic particles and involves quantum theory as distinct in some ways from Relativity. When matter is theoretically drawn into a black hole, it dismembers. Hawking as far as I can gather assumed that the organizational capacity went into annihilation. This would mean that matter can be created or destroyed, thus overthrowing Physics and allowing fairies, hokums, and superstition to be real. Susskind rescued the information and returned Physics to rationality.
Susskind, in a way like, say, Einstein, Bohr, and many other physicists — many of them Jewish –declined religious comments and preferred to be regarded as atheists of a certain type. Hawking, as we know, is atheist as a matter of self-proclaimed ‘faith’.
The capital A atheist, Hawking, taking his ‘faith’ seriously, fell into technical nonsense. The small a ‘atheist’, Susskind, lover of Science, at the point where he saw how information is theoretically conserved in relation to black holes, wrote, with an almost audible sigh of relief: “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
No laws of science, no rational universe.
So who is the creationist, Amphiox? Susskind or Hawking?
Would you also put in writing the grievious error of Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, to which you mysteriously refer in an entry above? Sure, he made plenty of errors. Who doesn’t?
He was also a leading skeptic and referred to as such to this day — even by ‘atheist’ scientists — and a protestant churchgoer. He did refuse to believe anything he could not formulate mathematically –and carried it to such extremes in his later years, it bordered on scientific obstructionism. But people understood. Is this the sort of error to which you are referring?—-Quote from the ‘Net:
“I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.” [TLWT]
“The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.”
“The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I do not see how I can put it in words.” [Source]
“Do not be afraid of being free thinkers. If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion.” [Source]” End Thomson Quote.
People keep demanding evidence. It surrounds us. We will never see it unless our eyes are opened to see it. Fabre, the eminent French observational biologist, when asked if he believed in God, said: “No.” “I do not BELIEVE in God– I SEE him,everywhere.” We will never get more technical evidence for the existence of God than we have right now.
If the highest thing in this life is technical evidence, then that religion is a fraud. In a sense, “I am, because I am loved”.
Of course, all serious practicing scientists are creationist in the sense that their practical actions and deductions rely on the laws of physics. If you did not rely on the laws of physics you would not even walk down the street. It might disappear. No God — no street. Do you practice what you preach?
No babble, no irrational universe. Checkemate fuckwit.
Gee fuckwitted idjit, laws of science are usually calculations that cover the minor aspects of a Scientific Theory. The Scientific Theory is the overall logic holding science together. And with the Theory of Evolution, it is held together by a million or so scientific papers. There are no papers supporting your intellectually bankrupt creationism. Creationism is based on the twin fallacious prespuppoitions that your imaginary deity exists, and that your babble is inerrant. Both concepts have no evidence to support those presuppositions, and you never, ever, supply any evidence for them.
You word salads aren’t going to convince anybody here you have anything cogent to say. If you did, you would link to the scientific evidence, and let it speak for itself.
It is very stupid to imagine that the term ‘laws’ means there must be a lawgiver.
(They’re not someone’s regulations, they’re regularities of nature)
Since we atheists can and do walk down streets, we do, yeah.
(You might as compellingly claim “No fairies — no street”)
It’s almost cute how you flail around, trying to pretend you have a clue. Next you’re going to tell us you have a degree in science!
After all that, this is what you end up with? A glorified “look at the trees” argument?
You make up laws to be facetious, perhaps?
Are you even aware of the fact that “laws” do not explain anything other than state an observation of what appears repeatable?
I could make up more than one law about your logic.
ELIND, you may as well take the lead of others and talk Russian. Get out on the street and do 150 in a radar zone and find out what is a law. No matter how much verbiage you and I spout, law is final inescapable. The laws of Physics are immutable in the physical world and are reflection of ultimate Law. Ultimate Law means that anything not absolutely one hundred percent perfect by definition must undergo everlasting destruction. Speed all we wish — no-one will stop us — but the radar is on and the Judge is in his office. When we get there we will find him to be a man like us who gave us the opportunity to do something about ourselves. Believe me, I get no happiness from saying so. We can no more escape ultimate Law than we can make the components of an atom from nothing or make them cease to exist. Changing the English language does not change reality.
I’ve finally found something to do with this troll! A game with rules as ill-defined as whatever the fuck he is talking about!
Book title or title for a weird action movie.
Name of a really hardcore Japanese metal song, poorly translated.
Line of a poem about math.
Tagline for a first person shooter.
Quote from a summer blockbuster.
Line from a dystopian “15 minutes into the future” Sci-fi novel.
Also: Irony.
Some Heywood
You obviously haven’t met quantum mechanics and relativity yet.
“God doesn’t play dice!!!”
Like heck he doesn’t.
@ Tim Heywood
Yeah, this would be true if our loving planet were completely isolated. But if we had a source of energy to power the system, we would be talking about something quite different. Now imagine for a moment that such an energy source existed. Wow, we would have life without gods! If only such a power source existed… {thinks hard}
Oh, also:
Why do you have such an anthropomorphised version of the YHWH in your mind? Really, do you ever stop to think about it?
(A little off topic: You refer to your god as a “he”. Do you believe it has a penis? Inquiring minds wish to know.)
Lost god.
“Ye cannae change the laws o’ physics!”
Neither does misunderstanding it. :)
Timmy says
Not to mention the rest of that incoherent rant. You seem to think that whatever you imagine becomes a “law” of some kind. Do you have fantasies about being a god?
Yet another example of an otherwise brilliant scientist who, when he attempted to apply even a single, vague creationist principle to the making of a scientific comment, was lead by that creationist principle straight into making an utter fool of himself.
Creationism is a worse-than-useless idea.
The Second Law stipulates no such thing.
Another vivid demonstration from Timmy of how the toxic, useless idea that is creationism turns a fool into a liar.
Actually it is. But you keep implying it is the laws of your imaginary deity parsed through your book of mythology/fiction. Which is utter and total bullshit.
There is no “ultimatelaw”, as your imaginary deity doesn’t exist. Physics and the other sciences describe how the universe works. No need for your delusional word salad that sound like you are on LSD.
“First law of physics”
Snicker snicker
Snorfle
Bwahahahahaha!
Oh wait…xe was serious?
[Ditches Mockery Hat. Acquires Humility Hat. Goes in search of “first law of physics.]
After an exhausting 1.5 minutes, I can report that a google search turns up…ta-daa…ZILCH. o
I need several mind altering substances to decipher Tim’s drivel.
Obviously that’s because the first law of physics is that one doesn’t talk about physics.
I’ve said too much.
elind (back at #96):
Ah, I see your humor flew past my head. It happens.
I do take issue with your comment about intelligence though. There are many, many intelligent individuals who believe in imaginary beings (or any number of unscientific ideas such as homeopathy). Given how deeply indoctrinated many people are in their religions, combined with ongoing cultural support of their beliefs, mixed with a dash of fallacious arguments, topped with heapings of cognitive dissonance and a pinch of wishful thinking –its easy to see how very intelligent people believe in gods.
It is still nonsensical and unevidenced, but understandable. Such belief, however does not entail lack of intellect on their part.
@ Tim Heywood
Methinks you know as little about me as you do about YHWH. Just keep making shit up, you amuse me. And stick around awhile too, I want to poke you with a sharp stick.
Sorry, but you have wasted your time. If you want to know all there is to know about your imaginary deity, you should study people per se, not their blather … nor their Physics neither.
@ Owlmirror
The give-away to Tim’s racism spewed out earlier in hir mentioning of “Isaac”. Religion panders to hir dyed-in-the-wool, bigoted, intuitions. Why should xe let go of a god that encourages and endorses such asshattery.
BEAU-TI-FUL. Keep it up, bucko’s. You are actually mentioning items that have to do with science.
LOFTY:
“‘We can no more escape ultimate Law than we can make the components of an atom from nothing or make them cease to exist.’
You obviously haven’t met quantum mechanics and relativity yet.”
Hold it there a moment. Ignoring the fact that a previous comment of mine mentions the q-word in an obvious way, I will assume you do read when the spirit moves you and are referring by implication to virtual particles, the casimir effect, realization of quanta from vacuum, etc.. In which case you are confusing vacuum, and Space, with, ‘nothing’. Quantum particles, or subatomic energy packets if you wish, abound in a vacuum and in Space. The interior of an atom IS a vacuum. By tweaking the right levers, virtual particles can be made to reveal themselves. A quantum particle, whether it is currently displaying itself or not, is not an atom. It’s not really even a ‘particle’. Many of these ‘particles’ do form components of atoms. Some are real whilst invisible. Some interact with others to give the universe its solidity. Others can be one whilst concurrently being (say) three– each the the multiples being one and the same as the one. As I pointed out above somewhere: everything in the spiritual world has a parallel in the physical world. You will never get more technical evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible than what you are looking at right now. More on that below, see end at Theophontes.
“God doesn’t play dice!!!”
Like heck he doesn’t.”
You lose me here. So far as I know, the first line was Einstein’s, as an incidental quip (his idea of God was seemingly of some mechanical or overseeing principle): the second line was someone’s attempt at a quip to lighten the conversation.
theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物)
“The Second Law stipulates that Nature has zero creative powers.
Yeah, this would be true if our loving planet were completely isolated. But if we had a source of energy to power the system, we would be talking about something quite different. Now imagine for a moment that such an energy source existed. Wow, we would have life without gods! If only such a power source existed… {thinks hard}”
If you actually do think hard, as distinct from having a hard time thinking, you will already have agreed with Sir William Thomson that hard line ‘atheism’ is so nonsensical as to be indescribable. It left him ‘gobsmacked’. My paraphrase.
Are you attempting to create intelligence by application of immense quantities of raw energy? That line of reasoning has a basis in physics but dissolves once physics is applied. Entropy, according to one dictionary is; “A term in physics signifying formerly the available energy, now the unavailable.” The ‘formerly’ is before some event and the ‘now unavailable’ is after the event. The event may be any action or process in the cosmos – from a supernova through to the production of a wobbygong. Entropy is measured in heat or calories or joules or something, per degree Kelvin(=Sir William Thomson). So, creative intelligence theoretically can be quantified in terms of raw energy. In that you are correct — if that’s the way you are headed. Joule, incidentally, was a bible man. Thomson, as I mention above,was also protestant church. J. Maxwell, who almost single-handedly derived the mathematical formulation of light and who has been likened to Einstein, was protestant, bible, church. Maxwell (along with Botzmann, finally, Shannon, and others), theorized on trying to get a direct mathematical relationship in physics between energy and information. This of course would open the way for quantifying creative ability and therefore, ‘God’ in the einsteinian sense. These physicists made very limited progress. The big question of course to those attempting to power Evolution, is ‘how many supernovae does it take to power the blueprint for a wobbygong into existence?
You can follow up on energy-information equivalence as you wish but I shall attempt to explain it in everyday terms. By the end of the explanation I shall have technically proved that a Creator exists — and hard-line ‘atheism’ is the opposite of skepticism and rationality. Get three bricks and stack them one on top of the other so that all edges and corners align. The question is, “How much raw energy would the Cosmos need to expend to replicate my action?” Since blind chance actions of Nature could conceivably place the bricks exactly as you have done, by enough experimentation and computer simulation you could calculate within some acceptable margin of error, the number of tornadoes etc. required, and get to the joules per degree kelvin (entropy factor). Agreed? Now replace the bricks with the MONA LISA. Remember, the MONA LISA is not even a fruit flies’ big toe. Ask PZ whether fruit flies have big toes. Your entropy factor will approach infinity. The big bang, plus.
Theophontes: ” Oh, also:
Why do you have such an anthropomorphised version of the YHWH in your mind? Really, do you ever stop to think about it?
(A little off topic: You refer to your god as a “he”. Do you believe it has a penis? Inquiring minds wish to know.)”
God is one whilst being three, each of the tree being the one. Read that somewhere recently? He created Man in his image and was thus able to ‘nestle into’ as it were a created human body. The created body into which he ‘nestled’, possessed sexuality. Only plants and animals — Man being within that category whilst being special within it– possess sexuality. Adam initially embodied the female half of humanity and could not have reproduced unless either the female portion was separated and built into a person; or asexual reproductive capacity was built into him. (If this seems fanciful, just try to describe the actual events of Common Descent or darwinistic Evolution, without bringing the house down. You don’t have a candle of a hope.) God himself appeared to Adam in some sort of bodily form but when Man became imperfect, the perfect God could no longer appear in full bodily form to any human being without the human being annihilated. Christ was raised from physical death in bodily form but no longer with sexuality. On the Day of Judgment at the end of time you and I shall be raised from physical death in bodily form but without reproductive sexuality and not with a physical body precisely as we know it. It will be our body nevertheless. Our bodies are information (quantum info.tech. RNA. DNA & so on) and we know who created the files. We are advized that resurrected human beings are as the angels, no marriage, no need or desire in that department. Mount Olympus is the spot where the gods are crazy and razy.
[meta]
That babbling @207 is a perfect example of the applicability of Poe’s law.
There is no second law of science, but there is second law of Newton and a second law of thermodynamics. If you are so stupid as to not differentiate between the two, you have nothing cogent to say to anybody.
Nerd -O: “There is no second law of science ….. there is second law of Newton and a second law of thermodynamics.”
Lord Kelvin: “In science, there is Physics. Everything else is stamp collecting”.
Newton was physics. Thermodynamics is a branch of physics. Physics is the basis of science.
Heywood:
Leaving aside that empiricism is the basis of science, classical mechanics is also a branch of physics, and Newton’s laws of motion are not the laws of thermodynamics.
(cf. #185)
He was dead wrong about that. So what?
Physics has lots of laws. It’s not itself a law. If someone talks coherently and rationally* about a law of science, they’re talking about one of the various, different regularities observed in nature, not a whole discipline which studies them.
*That doesn’t describe you, unfortunately.
Also, I bothered to look up the quote. That was apparently Rutherford, not Kelvin.
Argument from “Authority” (there is no “Authority” in science, just evidence). What a loser you are.
Actually, I have taught the second law of thermodynamics as chemistry abject liar and bullshitter. You will find it on every syllabus of general chemistry world-wide. But then, you haven’t shown one iota of evidence for your imaginary deity, or that your babble is anything other than mythology/fiction. Don’t get ahead of yourself. No deity, your whole house of cards falls apart….
Ah, as the Mythies, say, “There’s your problem”. Your deity is imaignary until you provide conclusive physical evidence for it, evidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. Show me where you have provided said evidence, the equivalent of an eternally burning bush. Until the, your presupposition is false. Which everybody here knows is the case. Not one godbot has demonstrated his deity exists.
Kelvin indeed may not have been the source of the quote about science and stamp collecting. I have seen it attributed to him and it fits his mode of speech.
Down below is something along the same lines which is attributed to him. It leaves darwinism/common descent right outside the fold of science. Only if the mathematical pathway of events involved in species actuation can be delineated, can it be said that that theory of evolution can be scientific. Evolution courtesy of information technology processes is science: Evolution courtesy of wishful imaginings is wishful imaginings.
Don’t anyone cart out that garbage ‘I taught it it must be true”; and, “It’s in all the science texts”. So was a flat earth, five elements only, bloodletting, you name it.
The big defense of nonsense is vitriol. The defense of empirical fact is mathematics.
Lord Kelvin:
“To measure is to know.”
“If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”
“In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be.” [PLA, vol. 1, “Electrical Units of Measurement”, 1883-05-03]
Again, he was wrong. So why does it matter?
Since you have no idea, let’s just take a basic look at what conceptually evolution by natural selection is about:
I don’t see anything that could even approach being a wish or wishful. It’s an explanation of facts. It’s definitely science, with a very strong mathematical foundation for that matter, meaning we can ignore your incoherent, dishonest rambling about it. (Some of your writing is vaguely reminiscent of actual, comprehensible English, sort of like this or this. You should work on that.)
Now that we have that settled, what’s a god supposed to be? Has it ever interacted with the universe in any way? Since no matter what an interacting god is, its interactions would involve something observable in the universe, we could have evidence if there were such a thing, so what’s your evidence for it?
Still no EVIDENCE for your IMAGAINARY DEITY TH. Makes what you say shear bullshit. Without the existence of your IMAGINARY DEITY, you have no arguments against science. And your deity is imaginary until you provide conclusive physical evidence for it, which you haven’t and can’t do. Which is why it is imaginary….
Evolutionary theory has been completely mathematical since Fisher, at least.
I notice Tim Heywood that when confronted with evidence you are wrong about your quote you immediately double down and go “BUT STILL!” In Science if you’re wrong you’re supposed to own up and grow up. If you can’t do it when using dead people to bolster your credibility how can we believe you to do it when it comes to reality? Also since you got something as simple as a quote wrong how are we supposed to believe your citation without a link to that citation? And indeed why should we believe any unsubstantiated things you say when you come at Science and all that has been accomplished by it and all the uses of it as an enemy that must be vanquished for your god?
Let me draw a parallel. It’s perfectly obvious that the sun rises and sets, isn’t it? Anyone who asserts that the sun does not rise and set is a ningnong, right? Now give me the mathematics involved in your assertion. Your mathematics will come via Galileo, Kepler, Newton .. all rationalists and all biblically oriented in some measure, incidentally .. and, the mathematics will seem to prove that the sun does not rise and set. (Until Einstein came along and gave us relativity, we could not be technically assured in saying the sun does rise and set — Einstein qualified all existing physics mathematically so that is technically possible to say the sun rises and sets without being technically incorrect.) You have not got to the bottom of any problem until it is mathematically delineated from all angles. You have not proved any theorem without being able to describe an event in numbers or equivalent words — logical words being an expression of mathematics.
By return mail, describe to us in a way that can be expressed in numbers and/or pure logic, the events involved in transformation of one species to another. You must detail or at least give as a plausible possibility, the events involving: a) The requisite information re-programming of items such as DNA and immune systems. b) The mechanism by which environmental requirement was programmed into the species’ information systems. c)The actual events involved in the actuation of the very first member(s) of the new species, a blow-by-blow account, real world, as if you were there observing same.
I have already done so to the best of my ability with the most recent information I have to hand. I publish an outline of the possible/probable events. Every step I suggest could have been physically observed and empirically measured in numbers. It’s no purpose coming back here and saying; “But it’s obvious the sun rises and sets. It’s obvious lighter objects fall slower than heavy objects. It’s obvious blood gets bottled up and must be let.” I am a geologist and I will be pleased to assist.
Examine the problem. Don’t run away from it. As Kelvin said, (roughly) “When you are up against a difficulty, you are on the other side of a breakthrough.”
You will never defeat Ken Ham by running from the difficulty. He has logic on his side: you have the faeries.
dissolves once physics is applied.
Warning label on religious texts, Kool-Aid packets.
Question on an astronomy exam set in the Pokemon universe.
Terrible teenage love poem, regarding the recipient’s magnitude of beauty.
Spin-off of “The Big Bang Theory” sitcom.
Description of incredibly Mad Science.
Dialog from an RPG implying you haven’t found the correct quest item.
The terrible progeny of death metal and Christian rock.
Celine Dion song.
Doctrinal statement of the Last Congregational Church of Techno Jesus, circa 2515.
Concept for a teen college comedy that takes “Greek life” literally!
Fucking band name. Finally.
Psychological projection. Alternatively: A fortune cookie.
Bible study. Alternatively: A comedy of errors. Even more alternatively: See above.
“Internet Argument Folk Wisdom for Dummies!” Alternatively: See above.
The most hardcore math-based video game that has ever been or ever will be.
Philly Heywood continues to provide a vivid demonstration of how creationist ideology, insipid and useless, rots the brains of all who believe it.
Bravo, Philly, bravo! A better propagandist for atheism and evolution we could not have obtained even if we had prayed for one.
Please proceed, Phil.
Please proceed.
I notice that after all your blathering, you still haven’t even tried to give one shred of evidence for a god or anything like a god. Not one iota about it.
Instead it’s the usual, ignorant fixation with evolutionary biology, as if the rest of the sciences don’t demolish creationism as well. Along with a big helping of authoritarianism, of course.
Don’t forget demons. We also have them on our side. Because ours is clearly the side which involves unevidenced belief in that sort of thing, not Ken Ham’s.
On top of that he doesn’t have the small amount of insight to realize that he isn’t so much arguing against evolution as much as the entire field of biology . Because it isn’t as math-y as physics, ergo it isn’t science. And of course, the creationist standard projection. It’s the Evolutionists who believe in just-so stories, who believe in faeries and magic, whose beliefs are comparable to pseudoscience and failed scientific hypotheses of centuries past. Because fuck science that isn’t just equations.
I’ve seen it all before, but never with such flowery incoherence.
@ Tim Heywood
The great Lord Kelvin reduced himself to buffoonery, the moment he opened his mouth about ID:
[emphasis mine]
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that both science and atheism are actually counter-intuitive. We are all wired to see many things that are not really there. Our inference systems twist things and pass it on to the brain prior to its coming into conscious consideration. These effects must be very carefully considered when setting up scientific experiments, so that we do not get bamboozled by our emotions, impressions or intuitions. Check out this little icon to the right –> ☻
Your face recognition subroutine immediately makes of it a face. If you don’t stop yourself, and run with the intuition, you could likely tell me much more about it. Eg:“He” looks “happy” and appears to be of “African descent” (Though how a “Son of Ham” could ever be happy is any bigot’s guess. Perhaps his master gave him a Cushy task? …)
Er, no. We don’t have to disprove your god, only show how he came into being. That question is not dealt with by physics, but rather by considerations of psychology, anthropology, history, and such. YHWH, ghosts, ever-living ancestors,and similar figments, make their homes in peoples’ minds. There is no real point then, in looking for them in the stars or atoms. They are essentially a series of fundamentally similar memetic parasites that reside within the human psych.
…
In your response to my question about YHWH’s Mighty Wang ™ you really spewed a lot of drivel. To be frank, I think you just made that shit up. As much as all that guff may find emotional resonance with you personally, it comes out pretty fucking creepy for the rest of us.
je n’ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse.
Yeah, some of it does sound like he is trying to play his first game of Sophisticated Theologian, and its going about as well one would expect. I don’t think he’s even answered the question:
God created Adam in his image and ergo shaped himself to look like Adam because Three is One.
Adam was no/both gender(s) until his rib-ectomy forced him to Pick A Side.
God couldn’t appear to humans after our ancestors ate the dread apple of hereditary eviction.
Jesus and other ghosts are not made of mere man meat, you philistine!
Angels and other heavenly robots do not partake of the earth genitalia.
All of that is perfectly cromulent theobabble, but I don’t see a clear answer to why God is male. Because he made Adam first? Because he once paraded around in a male meatsuit? Because angels don’t fuck, but how many aren’t doing so on a head of pin? Can’t quite pinpoint the answer, I’m sad to say.
@ anteprepro
In cognitive psychology, one would speak of “salience”. Our mental apparatus tends to discard a lot of information rather than feeding it through to our consciousness. Somehow our godbot has managed to stickytape hir chosen deity onto all the information that actually cracks the nod. If a moral impulse should arise, xe attributes it to YHWH. If hir reward subroutine flushes hir with emotions for creating cromulent theobabble, xe spews it out at us. The whole mechanism has been bent out of shape by the freeloading, mind-jacking god-meme. Salience is determined not by the relevance of information to the host brain, but to its parasite.
…
It is rather amusing that Tim Heywood brings up judges judging. Cognitive inference systems tend to judge information they present to themselves (as,analogously, the informations attorney before a court) and pass on the “decision” to the rest of the brain. This tends to happen subconsciously in all the myriad cognitive inference systems we have running all the time. Information is presented and adjudicated within each system, which then passes on only the judgement itself. Information not deemed salient is simply rejected out of hand. Unfortunately, the systems will also run on fictional narratives, or misrepresent information, or adjudicate wrong output from other systems:
In experiments on children, they are asked to comment on moving dots on a screen. Certain trajectories are seen as merely moving objects, others as having intention. They will even identify dots that a “predatory” and those being “predated upon”. Their inference systems are working perfectly, but adjudicating something for which they were not evolved. We, as educated adults, look on and – even though we can fully appreciate what the children think they are witnessing – we know that they are mistaken. They are merely dots on a screen.
Those kids can easily be shown their error, or they simply grow out of it.
Poor godbots never learned to take that necessary step back and realise that, what they mistake as the presence of their gods, is nothing but their minds spinning away on confabulated narratives.
Styer, Daniel F. Entropy and evolution. American Journal of Physics, Volume 76, Issue 11, pp. 1031-1033 (2008).
Ouch, Owlmirror’s post #231 is scorching hot in its absolute refutation of creationist nonsense about the second law of thermodynamics.
I’ll take bets on how Tim Heyweed tries to dismiss real science.
I’ll put 100 e-ducats, or the grog/swill equivalent, on it will be totally ignored, with canned blather ensuing.
Tim says:
So could you please apply this to your first and second LAWS of physics/nature/everything that you reference, whatever they are?
Perhaps the answer is as simple as 42?
OwlMirror,
Top marks for trying and for actually quoting a peer reviewed text. It’s worth a glance. Here is the first line: “Quantitative estimates of the entropy involved in biological evolution demonstrate that there is no conflict between evolution and the second law of thermodynamics.” End quote.
Problem. The author does not define ‘biological evolution’. Until the actual events in physics involved in biological evolution are quantified in mathematical terms, there is no way that this author’s statement can be tested. Go back to Kelvin, go back to Galileo, accept that the created universe is mathematical and subject to the laws of physics. This author makes no attempt to define what he/she is talking about. In my previous entry I invited people to define what they are talking about. So, EOHIPPUS may have been a factor in the actuation of MESOHIPPUS on this earth? And MESOHIPPUS may have been a factor in the actuation of PROTOHIPPUS? And PROTOHIPPUS (for all we know) may have been one and the same species as the modern horse, EQUUS –or perhaps a sub-species or an earlier species? And this took some time — a lot less than Darwin dreamed of but perhaps the same time as T. Huxley dreamed of when he dreamed of his little gremlins causing Nature to make some sort of ‘leaps’? Environmental conditions were involved, somehow. How? By dreaming? No-one has said how mum and dad MESOHIPPUS suddenly appeared, new species, new programming, and went on to generate an entire new species without gradation without inbreeding without arrant nonsense without contradicting every law of genetics, observation, common sense and rationality.
Take something to a physicist that is rational and measurable and he might be able to cast an opinion. When it came to Darwinism, Kelvin couldn’t, Faraday wouldn’t, no technician can. Einstein would laugh. Go back and do the homework.
You bucko’s leaving it to the fem. again?
Science won’t do what you demand according to your religious/idealogic views, so — bury science and jump on its grave? The heathen believe they shall be heard for their much praying? “Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is counted a wise man”.
“The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools”. Been there, done that. You aren’t aren’t a bigger a fool than anyone else. God says there is hope for fools. You had better become one.
Will someone please tell me where I unsubscribe from notifications. None of the checkboxes are checked and there is none for unsubscribe.
Don’t these three mean essentially the same thing? Does “post” mean new topic in this case?
Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.
Notify me of follow-up comments by email.
Notify me of new posts by email.
elind, I think you can unsubscribe via one of the emails you’re getting in the subscription. There should be a link in them to do that. If you’re not getting any such emails, you’re not subscribed.
A “comment” means a comment like this one or yours. A “post” is the whole page. But I don’t know why there are two boxes for comments.
Equation 2 is that quantification.
Thanks. If that works I won’t be reading Tim here again. My brain is starting to convulse. Maybe upthread.
What, I wonder, is the mathematical delineation for “godditit”?
Equation 2 estimates a rate of evolution significantly faster than what is actually observed in real life. And the final calculations show that the energy flux through earth’s biosphere can theoretically support a rate of evolution a trillion times faster than even that.
This makes poor, poor Philly Heywood’s fappery about “quantification” truly desperate and pathetic, because the range of allowable and perfectly workable numbers actually spans over a trillion-fold range in magnitude.
Meanwhile, his poor, worse-than-useless creationism is busy churning out quantifications like pi=3, and 3=1. (I suppose this means that pi = 1, as well).
Neither do you. But you also have to define “deity evolution”. We don’t.
Science explains everything. Your imaginary deity explains nothing, since it doesn’t exist. Why is this so hard for you to understand? Oh, you just can’t imagine in any way your deity isn’t imaginary. Try showing conclusive physical evidence for it, evidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained‚ origin. Until you do, all you have is vaporware for your “deity”.
This is not a forum ( = bulletin board), it is a blog. Blogs consist of blog posts and the comments on those posts; everybody can comment, only the bloggers themselves can post.
In short, yes, that’s what the words mean.
Nerd -O:
“But you also have to define “deity evolution”. We don’t.”
If you wish to define ‘deity creation’ of space-time, study the big bang. If you wish to define ‘deity creation’ of the planets, begin perhaps with high speed particulate turbulence or whatever, and don’t ignore Laplace.
If you wish to see the description of a ‘deity created’ living organism, apply to Professor PZ, or the late great Linnaeus, or Fabre, or someone qualified.
If you wish to see the stultification of free thinking and scientific advance, go to someone such as Prof. Coyne of the Uni. Chicago. To my very limited knowledge (I apologize to him if incorrect) he cuts out anything that demands the proper investigation of the subject in hand. I suspect his ideaology might not be far removed from Lysenko’s. But give Lysenko his due: as Kruschev observed: if Stalin said he wanted you to do a Russian bear dance, you did a Russian bear dance.
The Deity created according to the laws of physics. You see a rolled rug. It unrolls before your eyes. That, literally, is evolution. The non-rationalist says, “Aha! This I can use to prove something idealogical!” The rationalist, the skeptic, says, “I can use the laws of physics and discover how the rug unrolled!”
The idealogically motivated person, depending on his/her level of motivation, might even go as far as founding a political movement and a dangerous political movement, on the basis of the evolution they witnessed. Some have founded a religious movement on such ‘evidences’.
The Bible (despite Ken Ham) says in black and white by undeniable implication that species are information outcomes (they existed in some real sense before they became tangible to a human observer) , and all complex life was created ex nihilo without pre-existing blueprint or pattern Day 5, no more creative work in the ex nihilo sense until Man, right at the end. The Bible demands a form of evolution. Physics will tell how it happened. We happen to have got a fair idea of how it happened, in the past 15 yrs. As I explained above; I have attempted to update evolutionary theory. By normal procedure.
God says he made the heavens and earth in a moment: physics agrees. He also speaks of sequential revelation of life. Physics and observation will ultimately agree. Get the physics right and the hoo-ha will subside.
If you demand God appear before you right now, and he acquiesces, you will be dead, on the spot. I agree with you, you cannot make sense out of things out there. It doesn’t add up. But here is something that really does not add up: That is to be able to truthfully prove, “I am abandoned in this universe with no-one to love me.” That is the ultimate meaninglessness. It is a total lie. We are loved.
Actually fuckwitted idjit, is the creation of your imaginary deity from nothing. AND IF YOUR DEITY EXISTS, YOU MUST SHOW EVIDENCE FOR IT, AND HOW IT CAME TO EXIST WITHOUT WEASEL WORDS LIKE “ETERNAL”.
Science explains everything else. You have nothing but your delusions.
The BABBLE IS A BOOK OF MYTHOLOGY/FICTION SINCE YOU HAVEN’T SHOWN OTHERWISE WITH SOLID AND CONCLUSIVE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE. Your presuppositions are loser material. You can’t evidence your deity or your holy book What an intellectual bankruptcy if you can’t understand basics.
There is no diety, you haven’t evidenced it. Therefore this is an assertion without evidence, and can and will be dismissed without evidence. Whereas science has evidence in places like this,where your imaginary deity is ignored, like phantasms should be.
Your deity doens’t exist. Period end, of story. Show otherwise with solid and conclusive physical evidence, like an ethereally burning bush. Or shut the fuck up.
Heywood:
It literally isn’t, but nice to know you accept the reality of evolution and thus are not a creationist.
(What you are is a theistic evolutionist, though you are very ignorant when it comes to science)
Due to the worse-than-useless parasitic brain rot that is creationism which has infected your brain, Philly, you have not noticed that you, and your rug, are on a 30 degree slope.
No, physics does not.
The formation of the earth took millions of years. The heavens at least a 100 million years. What emerged “in a moment” after the Big Bang can in no way be called “heavens” by any honest commenter, until least a hundred million years of further cosmological evolution had taken place.
…These sound like very, very creative interpretations of the First and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Also, there is no such thing as a pachyderm. The term is so useless, so misleading, that biologists haven’t used it in something like 200 years.
(And wobbegongs are awesome.)
Show me that that’s how he arrived at that conclusion. Show me.
Day saved.
It wasn’t powered into existence. It evolved by mutation, selection, and drift.
Creating the raw materials for a wobbegong has taken 2 or 3 supernovae in a row.
You don’t know anything about biodiversity, do you.
Fungi. Ciliates. Foraminifera. Slime “molds” with their up to 23 sexes. None of them are plants or animals, and nearly all of them fuck!
So why do you try to flood us with Kelvin quotes? Where’s the difference between “it’s in all the science texts” and “it’s in all the Kelvin quote anthologies”?
Wer misst, misst Mist.
“Whosoever measures measures trash.”
(Ultimately, that’s Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation turned into a physicists’ proverb.)
This is a common misunderstanding.
1) Speed is relative, but acceleration is not!
2) If everything moved around the Earth, most stars would be faster than light, which Einstein’s very same theory of relativity says isn’t remotely possible.
Ha!
…ma hhheart will… go_w_ooooon…
That’s because everyone already knows it’s defined as “descent with heritable modification”. Everyone, that is, except you.
Those events are things like bases in DNA rotating or being hydrolyzed off. What are you on about?
I suggest you learn what natural selection is. It involves lots of maths, you’ll love it.
They didn’t, you dolt. There are no sharp lines between species!
By other people, yes.
But not by any god.
And no such things as gods.
A god is just a fairy by another name.
Oh yes. In biology, “evolution” is a total misnomer. It was a really bad idea to adopt that word for what it now means in biology.
What it now means in biology isn’t even remotely similar to the mere unrolling of something that already exists.
…You know, that would probably be worth it.
Wouldn’t you like to die to teach all humankind the most important fact ever?
Maybe we should set up Mr. Heywood on a playdate with Scott Adams. Babbling pseudointellectual who doesn’t understand science meeting babbling pseudointellectual who doesn’t understand science. Match made in heaven.
anteprepro:
I’m assuming that by “match made in heaven,” you mean, “Dear sweet doddering grandfather of Jesus, make it stop!”
J.M.,
Quote. “What you are is a theistic evolutionist”.
Thanks for telling me what I am. Would you like someone to return the favour?
I am not an evolutionist in the sense commonly attributed to the term you employ, which, had you understanding of this very convoluted topic, you would not have employed. The term tends to be used to describe those who accept large swathes of ‘Common Descent’ whilst acknowledging a Higher Guidance involved. Had you properly read my entries, you would have seen that I acknowledge physics to be paramount. In other words, as with other areas of science, this area may be pursued without making specific reference to the Creator as such. Unlike ‘Common Descent’, the gross absurdities, from Grandad being a chimp, a rock, or nothing at all (except, perhaps, a faery?) are eliminated. But don’t jump to hasty conclusions here. Species were revealed in streams in which one was transformed into another, so life flowed along that stream or branch. Species transformation events were information -triggered but in the fossil record will presumably show as though one species gave rise to another. They didn’t. They were involved, but they did not genetically produce another species. That is impossible. Don’t rush in.
Throw Joey the presuppositionalist philosopher (*snicker*) into the mix, and see if a black hole of stupidity forms…
> take rugTim Heywood:
In what way is it impossible?
Right. No evolutionist believe in imaginary deities doing anything other than standing aside like they don’t exist.
There is no “higher guidance”, as your deity is imaginary. You haven’t shown otherwise with solid and conclusive physical evidence. Making you a liar and bullshitter.
Any area of science will be pursued without any references to your imaginary deity. Science doesn’t need your good approval to operate. In fact, your OPINION is irrelevant to science and scientists. Which is why you are getting nowhere. No deity, fuckwitted OPINION with a phantasm, dismissed as irrelevant.
You are the one who jumped to conclusions with your presuppositions. You have nothing cogent to say.
Assertion made without a citation to peer reviewed scientific literature, therefore dismissed as presuppositional fuckwittery. YOUR UNEVIDENCED OPINION IS IRRELEVANT TO SCIENCE.
I believe that is an equally acceptable translation from the Greek, yes.
I am a typical crank that thinks physics is the entirety of science and trumps everything and thus can handwave in regards to any other finding of any other scientific field that is not physics.
There, finished that for ya.
Anyone who is half-way informed knows that you are making shit up. And you have the gall to imply that the people who aren’t exclusively relying on ignoring facts is the side of this discussion that believes in fairies? You have the gall to say this:
Like you are some authority on the subject? For fuck’s sake, this is freshman level biology. For fuck’s sake, this is obviously a nonsensical rule of thumb if you are even informed to simply know about fucking mules . Do you seriously expect people to not just laugh at you?
myeck waters:
That is a 55-gallon drum full of win.
Self-correction: mules are a case of two different species cross-breeding and not necessarily one species breeding into a new species, because mules technically aren’t a species due to inability to breed. Still, it is an illustration of the fact that “species” isn’t as simple and clear-cut of a concept as assorted denialists and ignorami might believe.
Heywood:
You acknowledge forms of life on Earth have changed over time, rather than being static; that you misunderstand the scientific concept of evolution (the actual process involved and its mechanism) doesn’t make you a non-evolutionist.
(Of course, you’re a creationist-lite just like most theistic evolutionists, since you deny the possibility of abiogenesis on the basis of personal incredulity)
Your ideas are not just inchoate, but also incoherent; remember writing this: “all complex life was created ex nihilo without pre-existing blueprint or pattern Day 5, no more creative work in the ex nihilo sense until Man, right at the end.”?
(BTW, all life is complex)
anteprepro:
I’ve noticed a distinct tendency of evolution denialists towards a complete and utter misunderstanding of what a species is.
Species have nothing to do with evolution. “Species” is a rather broad categorical tool used to make communication easier, to give us labelled buckets in which to place a specimen. But again: species have nothing to do with evolution.
Usually when people talk about species and evolution, they really mean populations.
Unfortunately for you, said Higher Guidance violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Unfortunately for you, scientists have already observed several species transformation events in real time, on a few occasions down to the first generation. So not only is it possible, we have actually seen it happen. In several cases we have even reproduced the speciation event in the laboratory.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
Behold, once more, the worse-than-useless toxic insipidity that is creationism turn a fool into a liar.
We’re all just part of a really big and extremely complex and very long-lasting chemical reaction that started about 4 billion years ago, anyway.
Indeed, it is in fact known to be possible for mules to reproduce, if but rarely. I believe it is some 60 known cases on record since the 1500’s, and at least 2 in the last few decades.
Now if horses and donkeys had overlapping territories such that they regularly met and interbred to produce a steady small population of mules, over a couple million years that could easily translate into hundreds of thousands of cases of fertile mules. In any one of these, a second chromosomal mutation has the potential to restore a even chromosome number, restoring normal fertility, which in turn could enable to establishment of new species out of the hybridization.
Of course in nature horses and donkeys never shared overlapping territory until humans domesticated both of them. But this process has already been observed to happen in some other species. There are instances in plants where scientists have actually reconstructed the species from its two ancestors, reproducing the sequence of events that generated that new species, right in the lab, observed in real time.
Indeed, in our own genes we already have seen that H. sapiens interbred successfully with both H. neanderthalensis and H. denisova.
H2 + CO2 CH4 + H2O
The entirety of biology lies within the equilibrium arrow of that chemical equation!
(The reaction, incidentally, proceeds spontaneously aka is energetically favorable aka obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics, though it usually does require a catalyst to get started.)
NigelTheBold, also Avo
“They [other species] were involved, but they did not genetically produce another species. That is impossible.
In what way is it impossible?”
Yeah, my name is Philip Bruce Heywood, N.t.B,; I hijacked Tim’s Facebook to make a challenge to the illustrious Professor — it seems to be fashionable to make challenges just now — and these guys pre-occupied me. Find me on the ‘Net under my full name no trouble.
The reason why it is impossible for one species to genetically (I should have written, as per everyday reproduction) produce another is of course self-evident. Because they cannot do it, we have species and Darwin was able to write a book titled On the Origin of Species… . If there wasn’t such a thing as a species lock we would have every hybrid possible as species, new species every moment of the day, dogs being cats, some human races being sub-human, chaos, you name it. The claim that new species are arising today is of course a nomenclatural excess on the part of darwinist devotees. Defining a species whether living or fossil is not always straightforward or even possible within a lifetime. If we go down that road we will be here a long time. Essentially, as the overwhelming majority of people accept, a species is genetically an island unto itself but it requires PROLONGED OBSERVATION IN THE NATURAL BIOSPHERE WITHOUT ANY HUMANLY INDUCED FACTORS IN THE ENVIRONMENT to be able to define a population as definitively a species. Beef cattle-buffalo, wheat, rye, triticale, Darwin’s finches — the study of a lifetime. The key factor is prolonged observation of the population in the natural world. Species thus defined ultimately retain a special or recognizable status so that people such as Darwin could write about them. Species reproduce their own species and any variation from this (such as hybridization) will finally lead to a dead end — in Nature out there. Don’t ask me to define bison and beef cattle.
Here is the trick. It is obvious that, say, a sheep is genetically almost identical to a goat. Yet if I advized you that my ba ba had given birth to a nanny goat (no resemblance to current commentators implied) you would say I have lost it. So what stops sheep giving birth to and rearing goats? Not body form. Not very much in terms of DNA. Now, as a vet.,try to take a goat embryo and incubate it in a ewe’s womb. To do so you will need to re-program immune systems. As far as I know, nothing more. Theoretically, could it be done?
It is glaringly obvious that by tripping the species lock whilst getting requisite slight but revolutionizing information into the embryo of a species, it would become the conduit for the actuation of another species. Information tech., no faeries, no magic, no breaking the laws of heredity, no evolution debate by nannies and ba ba’s.
@ Tim Haywood
Why this fixation with the Dinosaurs of Science? Perhaps you can tell us more about Lord Kelvin’s YHWH-inspired musings on the luminiferous ether?
A discussion of gods begins and ends with the socio-political nature of such contrivances. They have, at least in the first instance, absolutely fuck-all to do with physics. If you want to have a discussion about Deism, fair enough. But your real fixation is with a personal god. These figments – together with witches, ghosts, eternally living ancestors and all manner of fictions – that are supposedly deeply concerned with the dull workings of our daily lives. You are really wasting your time, as one cannot make that magical leap from Deism to YHWH, or to Jeebus, or such as these.
I note that you like to babble on about physics, as a distraction from the questions I have raised, with regard to how the gods came to be. They are in you Tim. The mechanisms that they manipulate are in all of us. You may run away to the stars or dig deeply into the atom, but you are only running away from thinking about the real nature of gods. Face down that parasite in its lair Tim. Kill it and move on. You only have one life, and you are wasting it.
Heywood sez
A “species lock” must exist because we don’t have every possible hybrid imaginable!
But some hybrids are possible, so mumble human activity mumble mumble nature mumble fertility mumble mumble information mumble mumble.
Your arguments regarding the immutability of species are just naive, which makes your incredulity regarding evolution just the snide blitherings of an uninformed blowhard. Shocking to absolutely no-one.
No it isn’t. You ignore the SCIENTIFIC papers saying otherwise, like any credulous fool. Your deity is imaginary, you haven’t demonstrated its existence.
That would required a knowledge of biology you so sorely lack. And that lack is self-evident with every inane post you make.
Citation needed for how alike they are. And you provide nothing but blather and expect us to accept you as an authority. Real scientists who know how much bullshit you are peddling. You are the authority of nothing but your own delusional mind. Nothing cogent, nothing scientific, nothing even making any sense. Just inane and incoherent blather. You can’t make a point with blather.
Sadly for you, Heywood, we have observed new species genetically arising from old species directly in real time, and we have reproduced the process in a laboratory and successfully DOCUMENTED every required genetic change on a generation to generation basis.
So whatever your sad, pathetic, worse-than-useless creationism has deceived you into thinking is “self-evident”, is, in reality, self-evidently WRONG.
It is the typical sort of erroneous absolutist thinking that is the hallmark of a brain infected and consumed by the worse-than-useless mind rotting parasite that is creationism.
The worse-than-useless brain rot that is creationism prevents poor little Heywood from seeing how he refutes himself in his own words.
“Everyday reproduction” isn’t the only mechanism of evolutionary change.
(It is also quite amusing watching Heywood perseverate over the definition of species, when very definitions of “species” were developed and produced and validated using evolutionary theory, while his sad, worse-than-useless creationism could produce no coherent definition at all for that concept, and was busy classifying insects as birds and whales as fish.)
“I note that you like to babble on about physics, as a distraction from the questions I have raised, with regard to how the gods came to be. They are in you Tim. The mechanisms that they manipulate are in all of us. You may run away to the stars or dig deeply into the atom, but you are only running away from thinking about the real nature of gods. Face down that parasite in its lair Tim. Kill it and move on. You only have one life, and you are wasting it.”
Theophontes, as far as I know, the Prof. runs a forum at which he uses the term, ‘godless’. I suppose it is a forum intended for science-related matters as distinct from personal religion. I would require an o.k. from himself before turning this into religion. If it was turned to religion I might for example be linking you direct to people such as Rev. Daniel Nalliah here in Australia who is reported here in the Melbourne AGE and many other secular newspapers, for amongst other things as having been used to bring people back from the dead in the presence of medicos. You get PZ’s specific request and I will type out for you account after account of miracles, healings, link you to men of God –you name it. But religion isn’t a circus show. And all that is on the ‘Net, anyway. Your experiences may be different to mine; good luck to you.
A lot of dishonest fappery can be crammed into the word “almost”.
Incidentally, sheep and goats aren’t even in the same genus. They are less similar to each other genetically than humans are to chimpanzees.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1297-9686-37-S1-S1.pdf
You’re the kind of drooling self-important armchair expert that would insist that a rooster and a hen must be separate species. How would insist that different breeds of dogs are different species, but insist that dogs and wolves are really technically the same species at the same time. Because you are the kind of narcisstic, Dunning-Kruger afflicted asshole who thinks they can make these kinds of decisions just by eyeballing it. That you can just take a glance at the two different kinds of animals and decide whether or not they lump together based on how similar your gut tells you they are. Oh, they are somewhat similar. But, here, let me just have the Pfft entry for sheep-goat hybrid do the talking!
I mean, for fuck’s sake, you creationists (or whatever you are supposed to be) go fucking bananas whenever we mention a common ancestry between humans and chimps, who have 23 and 24 chromosomes respectively. You just don’t see the similarities. You eyeball it and can’t see it so therefore it doesn’t exist and science is lying to you. But you think goats and sheep are kind of similar. Because eyeballs! So the difference of six chromosomes doesn’t matter when you say “hurp derp genetically identical!” on that issue. But humans and chimps genetically similar? Nope nope nope nope lalalalala I can’t hear you.
@ Nerd
“deity evolution”
E PUR SI EVOLVES!
As the religious narratives are evaluated by the human minds of those afflicted, most components are actually ejected. Only the most salient parts are retained and worked into the narrative. They appear ever more important to the goddists, as time goes on, as they stick more and more to the workings of the host minds inferrence systems. There are actually only a limited range of religious memes that can do that.
Eg: It is important that the god/ghost/shade/witch can see all that you are doing, so that they can function as moral agents. A god that was only omniscient on Thursday’s would be pretty useless, as it wouldn’t have the complete story (at least for other days of the week) and would therefore make a poor moral judge. Such a Thursday-god (my apologies to Thor) would lack evolutionary fitness in the religious evolutionary race and drop by the wayside. Ancestors, ghosts, gods, etc that are allways all-knowing will win out over them.
…
Presuppositionalists with an authoritarian bent might like this link: Kelvin Is Lord!
In other words, you are a coward, afraid to respond to the challenge.
Your attempt to hide behind PZ’s coattails is pitiful.
PZ has not prevented others from providing such citations, so long as they are not excessive, and his definition of “excessive” is extremely tolerant. And he will usually warn you if you cross any lines.
So link away. Put up or shut up, coward.
@ Nerd
“deity evolution”
E PUR SI EVOLVES!
As the religious narratives are evaluated by the human minds of those afflicted, most components are actually ejected. Only the most salient parts are retained and worked into the narrative. They appear ever more important to the goddists, as time goes on, as they stick more and more to the workings of the host minds inferrence systems. There are actually only a limited range of religious memes that can do that.
Eg: It is important that the god/ghost/shade/witch can see all that you are doing, so that they can function as moral agents. A god that was only omniscient on Thursday’s would be pretty useless, as it wouldn’t have the complete story (at least for other days of the week) and would therefore make a poor moral judge. Such a Thursday-god (my apologies to Thor) would lack evolutionary fitness in the religious evolutionary race and drop by the wayside. Ancestors, ghosts, gods, etc that are allways all-knowing will win out over them.
[My whole comment is awaiting moderation, but I wanted to respond to Nerd sooner.]
“Look at all the faith healers, ridiculous anecdotes, and completely non-miraculous believable anecdotes! Look at all of it! But religion isn’t a circus show! But look at all of it!”
(I also suspect that none of the above is actually content that would address theophontes’s questions.)
I will save the guy the trouble:
Who is Daniel Nalliah?
http://m.sbs.com.au/news/#article1736346_Who-is-Danny-Nalliah-and-what-is-Rise-Up-Australia
Surely Tim does not believe Daniel Nalliah brought someone back to life through “laying of hands” and prayer. I mean there is no evidence to support that.
Tim, please do not waste anyone’s time citing anecdotes.
Looking at the wikipedia page for The Age, I see nothing to indicate that it is secular in nature. It appears to be left leaning, but that hardly equals secular. Perhaps someone from Australia-other than the resident creationist-can verify.
My blockquote may be confusing. I should have indicated that this was one anecdote about Mr Nalliahs “resurrecting powers”
@ PZ
Sorry that my linky caused a kerfuffle. (It is extremely funny and, particularly in the context of this thread, pertinent.)
@ Amphiox
You are wrong. Here is a citation w.r.t Our Divine Lord Kelvin:
More seriously, you are also wrong in terms of how Philly (Not “Tim”? What a fucking liar the man is.) sees the world. He understands human love well enough.
He also understands that his imaginary friend loves him. Though in a special way, 24/7, and all knowingly. By knowing everything, Jeebus can be the only true judge of Philly. We fail to see the whole story and tend to think he is a fucking liar and wilful idiot. But Jeebus knows better, so that’s all OK then. Philly knows this to be true because it feels right and all the people he cares about say the same.
Most children with imaginary friends know that they are imaginary and will readily acknowledge such. But Jeebus is different you see.
Brain Tamaki is better.
he has better bling, too.
your con man, uh, I mean “reverend” building a golden city?
yeah, I think not!
losers!
are you sure you know what that phrase means?
I can quote from Jason and the Argonauts…
about the same level of fiction.
Tell me, oh Tim…
is this a miracle?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10892272
family claims it is. Must be then, right?
I’m sure the rescue workers that actually saved the guy would agree….
not.
oh look! a very tiny little donut!
The written responses to my mention of the facts of what is going on in the world of faith and what can be proved to have been going on in the world of faith for millenia confirm my refusal to involve this blog in religion. Simply, you have lost the plot. This isn’t from the Bible, but it contains historically proveable fact.
“Whom God would destroy, he first maketh mad.” You have lost the instinct of self-preservation.
You cannot prove any of these so-called facts of your faith. The ridiculous miracles you believe support the existence of your imaginary genocidal baby killing deity have consistently had naturalistic explanations.
Your arrogance is truly breathtaking.
What need for self-preservation is there when your god sits alongside Odin, Thor, Zeus, Apollo, Osiris, Vishnu, Brahma, and all the other human made deities in the land of the imagination?
You have zero chance of convincing anyone here to come around to your thinking. Contrary to what creobots like yourself think, a great many atheists know the bible better than believers. Atheists are all too often raised, nay indoctrinated, into religion at an early age. Many atheists have read the entire bible and realized how deeply flawed and immoral it is. Many an atheist has realized that reading the bible is one path to atheism.
If you cannot come up with any extraordinary evidence to back up your delusion-proof that can withstand scientific scrutiny (which rules out silly unverifiable anecdotes) – you may as well hit the road here.
Historically proveable facts involving a god?? Dude, go read your bible cover to cover.
Then come back and peruse the archives of Pharyngula. PZ has spoken about religion many, many times. It is an ongoing topic discussed here. Never in a positive light either, given how much religion chains humanity to superstitious and wishful thinking.
[OT]
Heywood:
Most of us atheists were inculcated into some religious mythos, but successfully overcame that mental impediment.
Misattributed to Euripides, this sentiment certainly predates Christianity by far.
One cannot lose an instinct, O ignoramus; at best one can override it.
I’d much rather see some of this evidence you mentioned. See, random, poorly supported stories that are impossible to check up on aren’t really that convincing. Not to anyone who has a clue, anyway. I hope you’re not going to be so ridiculous as claiming that because it was published in a newspaper, it must be true.
There is no plot, it is all in your delusional mind. There is no evidence for your imaginary deity. Otherwise, you would point to the eternally burning bush and we would all bow down.
@ John Morales
Indeed.
A significant part of the Greek religious writings were based on extremely old religious traditions. These where all transferred (“around campfires”) from generation to generation. In this way the narratives were actually quite sophisticated by the time they were written down (Homer is a case in point). The stories, in other words, were in quite an advanced stage of evolution.
W.r.t the driving mad of humans by the gods, a classic case is that of Io (in the form of a cow) and the gadfly (later called upon by Zeus Himself to pester Pegasus (the winged horse in my gravitar)). They were driven to distraction by the constant pestering of these insects.
As far as Tim (the untrustworthy liar, it is not his real name) Heywood is concerned I shall happily play the role of gadfly. Sadly, however, he does not seem to respond to all the little infusions of reality I have stung him with.
@ Tim (or-whatever-the-fuck-your-real-name-is,you-fucking-liar) Heywood
Another point, via John Morales‘s:
The whole set of mental conditions that is fed upon by the YHWH-parasite memeplex in your sad mind, are pretty much exactly the same as for any other one of us. Our cognitive problems arise from the field of human evolution, both as predator/prey and as social mammals (more, but let us keep it simple for now). Our brains take many shortcuts. We learn by inference, not because this is the most accurate method of understanding, but because we must gain a phenomenal amount of knowledge in a very short (in relative terms) space of time. This leads to huge problems with accuracy. We tend, for example, to attribute agency where clearly none exists. Best to mistake that rustle in the leaves for a predator, or prey (En las selvas, dicen los sabios, hay más ojos que hojas), than to find out too late that you are too complacent. It is precisely into these types of cracks that the seeds of religiousity are sown. And if the mind is weak or lazy… : grow, the gods shall.
Tim Heywood #272:
Noted. I will continue to use the label at the top of the post in replies, however, as this is used to point other readers to the proper posts.
You claimed you respected physics above all the other disciplines, so it’s weird you’d use the “self-evident” argument. Very little in physics is self-evident. From the fact that a feather and a bowling ball will drop at the same rate (in a vacuum, of course), to the demonstrated traits of quantum mechanics, physics has been a long trail of disproving the self-evident.
Here, you’re using the term to mean, “something I personally don’t accept.” In the context of what we know about evolution, and what you write in the next two sentences, it unpacks to, “something I personally don’t accept because my understanding of it is deeply flawed, yet I do not wish to rid myself of my ignorance by actually learning about the subject of which I’m so dismissive. Instead, I’d rather flaunt my ignorance by attempting to argue with people who do understand the subject to varying degrees, and insist they are wrong because what they describe does not fit within my erroneous understanding.”
For instance:
We certainly have species as a concept. But, our concept of species is an attempt to provide a distinct label to indistinct organisms. While it’s convenient to lump some birds into specific species of gull, for instance, reality is not quite so simple. We have things we like to call ring species, which are adjacent populations in which species A can breed with species B, and species B can breed with species C, but species A cannot breed with species C.
The idea of species predates the discovery of evolution through natural selection. (Evolution was known before Darwin discovered the mechanism of natural selection — it was self-evident to anyone who studied fossils at the time.) Therefore, it’s not surprising that the reality of evolution doesn’t fit tidily into the idea of species.
When I said that evolution has nothing to do with species, that’s what I meant. Species don’t evolve. Populations evolve. The concept of species is completely artificial, and doesn’t fit well with the reality. Clean examples of the concept of populations exist in the real world.
If you’re going to understand evolution, you’ll have to give up your literal understanding of species. Hell, there’s not even a single, unified definition of what a species is.
How so?
This is the first real indication that you don’t understand the most basic processes of genetics, let alone evolution. There’s not such thing as species lock. Just as species don’t really exist in the real world, there’s nothing locking them in place, genetically.
If the “dogs becoming cats” is your understanding of evolution, it’s no wonder you’re completely confused about the nature of evolution.
(Emphasis added.)
See that bolded word? It seems you do understand that “species” is a definition, rather than a description of the way the real world operates. We define a specimen as belonging to a species. It gives us a shorthand we can use to talk about where that specimen fits in our understanding of the web of life.
That’s it.
So you’re off to a good start.
Again, you’re thinking species. But species don’t reproduce. Individuals (or pairs thereof) reproduce. And therein lies the key to understanding evolution.
Let’s start with a population of generation n. If we were to map the genes of every individual in that population, we’d be able to come up with a profile of the genetics of that population. Now, let’s look at the next generation, n+1. This generation would be almost identical to n, but because of the mixing of genes via sexual reproduction, mutations, and so on, the genetic profile would be slightly different. You couldn’t say in any way n+1 was a different species from n, but random chance necessitates their genetic profile will be subtly different.
The same is true of n+2. A specimen from n+2 could interbreed with n, if they happened to live at the same time. But, because of random chance, n+2 will be more different from n than even n+1 was.
And so on.
Now, let’s fast-forward to n+1000. n+1000 will be hardly different from n+999. Yet it will be noticeably different from n. A specimen from n+1000 may be able to breed with a specimen from n, but that’s not certain. Yet both might be able to breed with a specimen from n+500.
This is not significantly different from the case of the ring species, but instead of being separated by space, these individuals are separated by time.
The details of evolution — the mixing up of the genes, the various (and varying!) influence of environmental selection pressures, all that jazz — that’s where the really interesting stuff is happening. But what I described above is a (simplified) version of one population of a species (which we, not nature, define) becomes a population of another species entirely.
First, this is word salad. Second, it’s not glaringly obvious. This is something you’ve (or someone who’s influenced you) made up, with no basis in reality. Third, this shows a profound misunderstanding of what evolution is. Fourth, you’d be better off cloning a goat using a sheep’s egg. You’d get closer to the experiment it seems you want to do.
And the “not very much in terms of DNA” difference between a sheep and goat is quite a bit of difference. I’m not discounting the influence of development on morphology, but you can’t just ignore even the slight difference between a goat and a sheep.
Tim Heywood:
As it’s self-evident that gods don’t exist, my instinct to self-preservation isn’t in question.
E PUR SI SPECIATES.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
So much for Heywood, the poor man, made mad by his “god”, the insidious, worse-than-useless brain rot parasite that is creationism.
Nice post, Nigel. I think the point about “species” being an artificial category is a common stumbling block for creationists.
Not-Tim was the first person I’ve seen spouting that “species lock” bullshit though. So, he’s got that going for him.
The analogy may be more apt that he realizes though.
Any lock can be picked. And given sufficient time, all locks will fail.
If you people are yet attempting to spout darwinism/huxlyism (all I can see you doing is spouting, full stop) fill up the balance of cyberspace accounting for the observations below. You going to bore people to sleep and win the argument? What are you talking about? It bears no relationship to the real world.
“The Origin of Flowering Plants
By Kate Wong | November 8, 2000 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
Researchers have long puzzled over the origin of flowering plants, or angiosperms. Indeed, 125 years ago Darwin himself proclaimed their sudden appearance in the fossil record an “abominable mystery.” Subsequent efforts to sort out floral emergence and diversification based on fossil evidence and comparisons of anatomy among living plants led to little consensus among researchers. But in recent years new data have provided insight, suggesting to a number of scholars that a genus of small flowering shrubs known as Amborella make up the first branch …………”
Our lecturer was amongst the top few dozen in the world, regarding plant spore and pollen fossils. He said he could not fit a razor blade into a drillcore between either very few or no flowering vegetation, and flowering vegetation — the difference between the lower microscope slide and the one above it being reminiscent of something like an avalanche.
“The lack of appropriate rock types (igneous or metamorphic rocks containing radioactive elements) in the Burgess Shale rules out a direct application of radiometric dating. Indeed, few points in the Cambrian have been precisely dated in this way.
The best-constrained points are at the beginning (542 million years ago) and end (488 million years ago) of the Cambrian Period” (ex internet, google it for source.)
The time it took for every category of complex life to come into existence (Cambrian ‘Explosion’, exactly what the Bible says at GENESIS 1:20) was, at the most, 54 mill. yrs. Best estimate of palaeontologists is a lot less than that. The time involved in species actuation, the event proper, as she happens, is totally insignificant in terms of geologic time. Presumably, a week is being generous.
Translation:
“Oh shit, they figured out I was trying to bullshit them. Quick, gotta change the subject.”
Tim Heywood:
What do you mean, “spouting?” You’re received many excellent responses ranging from specific cases of observed speciation (which you claimed couldn’t happen), to the least of all the responses: my little bit attempting to help your education.
So, instead of presenting strawmen versions of evolution (“dogs into cats”), and continuing to demonstrate your lack of understanding of how evolution really works (your continued insistence on using the term “species” when you mean “population,” your quaint phrase “species lock,” and so on), how about you actually try a real argument — using real, observed, documented processes — with specific examples, clear explanations, and consistent use of terminology?
I mean, like we have.
As it is, you’re not really making much sense. Which might work fine with all your ignorant creationist friends, but that doesn’t fly here.
Tim Heywood:
Birds didn’t evolve during the cambrian explosion, so no, it isn’t exactly what the Bible says in Genesis 1:20. Holy second-cousin of Jesus’ hairdresser, but sometimes this whole attempt to retcon science to fit the Bible just baffles me. It’s obvious you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about; “birds of the sky” my foot.
And 54 million years? That’s already a million times longer than an observed, documented speciation event within very recent history. They don’t call it an “explosion” for nothing.
@ Tim Heywood (aka Philip Liar-for-Jeebus)
Actually, I have tried to shift the discussion away from this to cognitive psychology. If you are clueless as to how your own cognition developed, or how it works, then how the fuck are you ever going to figure out how you come to have a god-parasite lurking between your ears? Or what to do about it? Looking for a figment of your own imagination in the stars, or in DNA is pointless.
I get the feeling you are trying to ignore me. As much as your comments speak little of the real world, they speak volumes about your mental state. Your response in #207 amounted to nothing more than gobbledygook, flung about defensively to put me off the trail. You get the story of god’s penis exactly 180 degrees wrong, which is interesting in itself. Perhaps you do understand what is at issue, but reject it because it undermines the religion you have wasted your entire life in defending. You must be crying out by now for answers that make sense, that don’t lead to lying, or skirting the truth, or that dissonance that you are forever flailing about with.
Just for reference, this is Genesis 1:20:
Since bacteria are living creatures that teemed in the water for billions of years before the Cambrian Explosion, it would appear that poor Philly’s worse-than-useless creationism failed to recognize that bacteria were alive.
There is nothing in Genesis about “complex” life. Poor, lying, Philly just made that up. Special pleading all the way down.
But of course, there’s also this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacara_biota
The ediacaran fauna predates the Cambrian Explosion by over 100 million years, and was every bit as fecund and numerous, as “teeming”.
So once again we see how his desperate attempt to apply his worse-than-useless creationist principles has lead poor Philly Heywood straight into monumental error.
But it doesn’t end there.
http://www.pnas.org/content/95/2/606.long
Molecular clocks date the origin of several, if not all, the animal phyla to hundreds of millions of years before the Cambrian Explosion as well. Sponges and Cnidarians and several types of worms are well recognized in the Ediacaran fauna. And a couple modern phyla have their earliest known representatives date back only to the Ordovician, not the Cambrian.
And outside of the animals, several of the major categories of PLANT life definitely did not appear during the Cambrian.
So poor Philly’s assertion that “every category of complex life” is wrong too.
Creationism turns wise men into fools, and fools, like Philly Heywood, into liars.
N.t.B.: “…..observed speciation (which you claimed couldn’t happen)”. When your dog really does give birth to a cat, give us a call. Give the papers a call. Try telling people out there. You read my entry above where I pointed out that anyone can make speciation happen if they make their own rules for defining a species.
Theophontes; You are more likely to get people to respond to you if you avoid verbally abusing them without provocation from the outset. I read your entries don’t worry and I think you are a nice person. I’m not against psychology but it’s like this: I had a hang of a hard time finding a wife (she is a saint to put up with me) and I imagined all sorts of things about really having someone to love me. Then she put her arms around me and I felt it. Get the meaning?
Like I wrote somewhere above: “Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is counted a wise man”. My congratulations to everyone who showed wisdom by remaining quiet.
Those who decline to do the research and yet rush into print, have only themselves to thank. I have of course the latest science papers relevant to items mentioned above documented at my site. AMPHIOX, you are only ten odd years behind the times, cheer up. Science advances, even in ten years. No I won’t tell you exactly where to go on my site, look it up yourself. The ‘proof’ that complex life long predated the Pre-Cambrian/Cambrian Unconformity was blown out of the water several years ago by the observation of rolling protists – ‘sea-grapes’ or something such. They leave tracks that people had assumed could only be made by things like worms. Regarding the Ediacaran there is no unanimity as to what those organisms were but no-one has found the necessary internal bi-lateral symmetry and internal organs to suggest they were more than ‘organized sea-weed’. Etc. Etc. FYI the Bible gives two levels of life: Plant, obviously simplest and long pre-dating everything else (in its creation, not in its full actuation): and everything above plant-category ‘The moving creature that hath life’, Cambrian Explosion Day 5. Man is special within the second category. I won’t be going on transferring my publications to this blog but I do break the rule for the piece below. This is part of the preface to my new book which definitively lays all this bun-fight to bed. Good luck to you. I hope I’m not as mean as I write. When I tell you Origins arguing is no longer necessary, documented, done, finis; man, I expect you to look into it. It’s fast becoming history. You could assist in smoothing the transition. Before you decide I have missed something out (you won’t get the full picture below) have a long, long read of creation theory dot com.
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and
fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven”. — The accurate English
translation of ancient Hebrew involves equal concurrent meaning. Gen.1:20: “And God said, Let
the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above
the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” (equal concurrent) “And God said, Let the waters
bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and let fowl fly above the earth in the
open firmament of heaven.” Now, reproducing Gen.2:19: “And out of the ground the LORD
God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to
see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the
name thereof.” Verse 20 translates the Hebrew as, “fowl that may fly.” These fowl were
brought forth abundantly by the waters. This of course is a direct reference to the Cambrian so called
‘explosion’, Day 5, approximately 500 million years past. If we take only the equal
concurrent listed first, we have a problem with accuracy. “Fowl that may fly” means exactly
what it says. Fowl that may fly include birds, bats, flying reptiles – and the most prolific and
ancient of all – the insects. Herein the potential contradiction if the equal concurrent is ignored.
According to the literal meaning of 1:20, all complex life (i.e., above plant level) leaped into
existence on Day 5 — all of it. Yet it was water-generated and by implication water-based and
water-dwelling. This is exactly as the fossil record shows. Large portions of it had not yet
appeared, but, excluding (in some vital sense), Man, every species was effectively created, and
alive, at that point in time. That is exactly what the Bible demands. On Day 6, already created
divisions of life were merely modified, or formed (in the sense of over-formed) of earth. Again,
this is precisely as the fossil record shows. The ‘over-forming’ of earth did not cancel the water
base. Which division of fowl that may fly was not formed (over-formed) of earth? Squash one!
And the insects are far older than the earthy fliers, and first appeared in conjunction with aquatic
and amphibious species — long before even the gliding reptiles. Birds, bats, flying reptiles
appeared in conjunction with the land animals — Day 6. Comparing now 2:19 against 1:20.
Note the changed wording referring to flight—‘fowl of the air’. Real fowl of the air, species that
fly strongly and rule the skies. Like all complex life, they are water based, but birds, bats and
reptiles are formed out of the ground. They are earthy, as distinct from insects. Where were they
at the ‘Cambrian Explosion’, Day 5? They were in existence, as living species, as information,
pre-programmed to automatically be transmitted into a living cell. Hence, they were all alive, as
the Bible implies of all species. See Gen.2:4 & 5. Man, of course, is exceptional. Genesis could
be taken to suggest he more-or-less pre-existed in an embryonic way with God himself. He was
‘put’ (Gen.2:15) in the garden. Not all creatures capable of flight or of the flying category
leaped into visible view during the earliest outbreak of complex life. This is the testimony of the
fossil record. Gen.1:20 informs the reader that some fowl that may fly, were ‘let fly’, but it is an
unspecified generality. As we have learned, there was a category of flying life that the waters
brought forth but which was not subsequently brought forth ‘out of the ground’, or ‘formed of
earth’ — the old and ubiquitous insects. Gen.2:19 goes on to explain that earthy fliers are
associated with the land animals. Thus, the text of Genesis in co-operation with geology gives
the origin of all complex (including flying) life at the Cambrian Day 5, says that watery water
related flying creatures were a definite aspect of that far-off ‘explosion,’ gives precedence to the
insects, and allows for future appearance of the birds, bats, and reptiles, giving them future rule
of the air and association in time with land animals.
Amphiox:
Stop spouting Darwinism! And facts.
He speaks yet he says nothing .
Tim Heywood:
Again, are you going to bother addressing evolution? Or are you going to continue to focus on this Ray Comfort level of misunderstanding? Honestly, this is the kind of answer you’d get from someone who has not studied biology at all, let alone evolution.
Phillip, while truthfulness to others is important, truthfulness to yourself is even more important. You can continue to recite Ray Comfort here all you want, and it doesn’t hurt me one bit. I feel a certain amount of frustration, and a lot of pity, but otherwise, I am unaffected.
The fact you ignore what others say here, and instead argue against what you wish them to say, hurts only you. The fact you argue against a fantasy, and not reality, hurts only you. The fact you are unwilling to face that reality hurts only you. (Well, and others affected by your decisions based on fantasy rather than reality.)
I’m not talking about your faith in God. That’s not that fantasy of which I speak. I’m talking about the real concept of evolution, not your “cats into dogs” strawman. I’m talking about the real mechanisms that have been observed, the ones you go out of your way to deny, to the point of prevaricating on what the definition of “species” is.
Your inability to address any of these issues only hurts your position. Your demonstrated lack of understanding only hurts your position. Your unwillingness to learn only hurts your position.
But worse, this all hurts you.
And for that, you have my sincerest pity.
And you read mine (both of them) that explained that “species” is nothing but an artificial category. It’s nothing but us making up our own definitions. But, one of the few common criteria for “species” is the ability of populations to interbreed. The speciation event reported by Amphiox in #304 was exactly that: one population of flowers transformed over time until its descendants exhibited different traits from the species definition; and more saliently, could not interbreed with members that exhibited the traits of the species definition.
So again, your defense demonstrates vast and willful ignorance coupled with a willingness to misrepresent … well, pretty much everything. You claim we are the ones defining species all willy-nilly, but in fact, you seem to be the only one doing so. Ours is the set of standard definitions of “species.” (Again, there is more than one definition, as life doesn’t fit neatly into a single definition of “species.”)
Uhm, sorry. Discovery Institute has yet to publish a single paper that has held up to scrutiny. Your “science” is nothing more than a bunch of old fools who didn’t keep their mouths shut. And you are a bigger fool for blindly accepting them.
Yawn, nothing but canned idiocy from the godbot. And still no evidence his imaginary deity exists, as his OPINION and appeals to his mythical/fictional babble (not shown to be inerrant with solid and conclusive third party evidence) are derivative and utter and total bullshit.
Where to find the evidence to back up its claims, libraries of science found at institutions of higher learning world-wide. Links to various articles therein are the only evidence we will pay attention to. OPINION and PROSELYTIZATION are dismissed out of hand.
Tim Heywood:
I apologize for the multiple postings, but your posts address multiple things at once, jumping back and forth like a thief trying to evade capture.
The Bible identifies 2. Science identifies six: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, Archaea, and Bacteria. There haven’t been only two since the time of that dapper researcher Leeuwenhoek. In that, plants are predated by archaea, bacteria, and protists. Since protists are moving creatures that hath life, reality again contradicts the Bible. (Or, more importantly, the Bible contradicts reality.)
Hard-shelled (that is, complex animals) creatures appeared before the Cambrian period. We have fossils for these, and they are quite a bit more than just seaweed (which is also complex life).
And when I tell you that you don’t even understand evolution, I expect you to look into it. Yet you won’t.
As for the bit you posted: this is nothing more than taking the Bible and attempting to fit what is known into that framework. It doesn’t work. The days of creation aren’t in the right order. People have tried all kinds of twisting of Genesis to make it work (which is all the excerpt you provide attempts), and it just doesn’t fit known facts. Not even theory: facts.
I’d spell it out, but you’re not a ten-year old. You can look it up.
Let me ask you this, Phillip: if the Bible is such an accurate conveyer of scientific knowledge, why did it take the development of the scientific method to discover all this about the world? Why did it take us over three thousand years to gain this knowledge, and we only did so by ignoring the Bible and using the scientific method?
Why does everybody call Philip Heywood a liar just because he’s too stupid to create a FtB login for himself???
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Day saved!
You’re really naive. There isn’t one single mechanism that allows some populations to interbreed freely, others with difficulty, and others not at all. It’s a range of gradual things.
That’s exactly why there are about 150 definitions of “species” out there, and why they all give different results when applied: depending on the definition, there are from 101 to 249 endemic bird species in Mexico.
Enough in terms of DNA.
Read comments 280 and 281, and let them sink in.
No, not even. Immune systems have nothing to do with it.
Fucking awesome.
Define “every”, “category”, and “complex”.
I’m completely serious.
Oh, and define “life”, because you seem to mean only triploblastic animals by that term.
I am a palaeontologist; depending on how you define the explosion, which you have to do because it does not have a self-evident beginning or end, it lasted the whole Cambrian.
To be fair, such studies are very easy to miscalibrate.
Sponges, yes. Cnidarians, probably. “Worms”, good question.
Mollusks, though, are a bit older than the Cambrian. Look up Kimberella.
This is deeply ridiculous. Get your understanding of biodiversity out of the 18th century.
What a stupid thing to say.
The oldest insects are less than 400 million years old, the oldest pterosaurs hardly 230, the oldest birds (by a generous definition) around 160, the oldest bats around 55. None of them were “water-dwelling”.
You have no fucking idea what the fossil record shows. Why do you talk about it, then???
Plants, BTW… the oldest liverworts are less than 500 million years old, the oldest trees about 370.
This is ridiculous special pleading. Are you really too stupid to notice?
Has it never occurred to you what would happen to untranscribed DNA over such timescales?
Shorter discussion:
Godbot: Evolution doesn’t exist, hear many testament and babble quotes.
Pharyngula: This is the evidence for evolution with citations to the scientific literature.
Godbot: But the babble says….
Pharyngula: Then show us evidence the babble is inerrant and your deity exists.
Godbot: *crickets chirring*
You could also say that science identifies two: Bacteria and Neomura.
Or you could say it identifies only one: life.
The trick, you see, is that science identifies a tree, the family tree of life.
(“Protista” is hopelessly paraphyletic. It’s a deeply misleading term.)
David Marjanović:
Yeah. This whole standard nomenclature falls apart at the top (at the kingdom level) and at the bottom (at the species level). Life is too complex to be easily categorized that way.
But I think cladistics is a bit beyond Phillips ken right now.
Or as I like to say, we’re all part of the same complex and continuing chemical reaction that started around 4 billion years ago.
But you said that trees were only 370 million years old, Poindexter. How can a tree then predate all life?
The answer: Biblical taxonomy is supported by
a complete misunderstanding of scientific termsSCIENCE.Check and mate, Marjanović.
*ascends into heaven*
How about, “If you’re going to quote religious scriptures, prove that your creation myth is the one that’s right or shut up about it.”
Remember to ask him about other historical sciences such as archaeology. If he believes that finding a pot means someone made it, then finding a pot that’s 10,000 years old falsifies YEC. And definitely remember to ask him if he was there for the Crucifixion/Creation. Have a few other creation myths on hand to ask him about, because if he believes the story in the Babble, why doesn’t he believe the story in the Bhagavad-Gita?
“Or as I like to say, we’re all part of the same complex and continuing chemical reaction that started around 4 billion years ago.”
How do you know life didn’t begin before then, in some organics rich spot perhaps involving conditions not encountered on Earth — perhaps where there were quantum effects brought on by conditions not experienced every day. The Bible does not say that life necessarily originated on Earth. Kelvin himself suggested panspermia of a sort. I have never heard of Ray Comfort. Is it a type of room warmer? When you or anyone else does anything but misquote, misrepresent, and pluck inane statements out of the air, I will bother to address the points raised. I really am sorry for you all that the Bible doesn’t actually contain the entire encycloepedia right at the front so you could then say, “Now it’s being clear.” Only people with a Ph. d. would get to Heaven. As for the reason GENESIS is only becoming clear now — Origins Science is the most sophisticated so it came clear last of all. It isn’t going to get you or me to Heaven. The Bible always was technically relevant to anyone capable of cognition. Nothing has changed. But as someone who appreciates Geology as a science, it is good to show the people with the politico-religious agendas and the fairytales the door — out.
Tim Heywood: I suppose that someone has explained Occam’s razor to you at some time in the past and eventually gave up in frustration. Maybe, then, we could skip that particular exercise, and I’ll just get frustrated in advance and you can remain willfully ignorant?
How do you know your imagery deity exists and your babble is inerrant and scientific. Answer that with conclusive physical evidence.
Panspermia. Evidenced, unlike everything you say.
If I might add something to save people embarrassment: The God who created the heavens and the Earth just happens to know about quantum physics. He knows even how to design and use a PC computer. He knows the latest technology before we think of it. And he happens to be perfectly capable of expressing himself with total technical accuracy. You cannot understand the technical side of the GENESIS account without I.T. and computers. Not to mention entropy, thermodynamics and the conservation of information (information is timeless); high speed turbulence as an engine of particle coalescence; water as a courier of quantum category information; cosmology……. . I won’t be spending all day correcting people every time they say that something that is now possible to modern science is impossible, or if they say something like, “But the Bible is stone-age mythology!”
Tim Heywood,
oh wow, what a mess in your head…
Well that’s basically impossible to exclude. It apparently wasn’t so widespread as to have left traces. Also, when you go much further, conditions on earth were simply too destructive for organic material.
What?
You are sorry for us? It’s your holy book that is shown to be devoid of any insights, why should you be sorry for us?
You are fooling yourself, really. Nothing about Genesis is sophisticated, it’s an old fairy tale. With this technique you could try to fit scientific findings to almost any source retroactively. It doesn’t mean anything.
Who the what does what what? Very confusing. You are the one with the politico-religious agenda.
Tim,
Sure – if your God is omniscient, he would also know all about quantum physics. That’s a triviality, you don’t have to explain it to us, that’s silly.
The trouble is there is no evidence that such a God doesn’t exist.
So now that you got told off by the Paleontologist upthread, now it’s the physicists turn to explain to you why you’re full of it?
How convenient that I am a theoretical physicist. Unfortunately, in your statement above there is only word salad, nothing to address really.
Spare us your feeble attempt at condescension, you are suffering from delusions of grandeur.
Occams Razor fail X-|
The trouble is there is no evidence that such a God does exist.
Or without a technical side of the GENESIS account. Which is more or less lacking. Maybe God could build himself a PC, and write us a little wiki in which he expresses himself with like, “technical accuracy”.
Wait. Let me guess. God doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. But in His Divine Mercy, he has sent His Legion of Fruitcakes to help the infidels before it is Too Late, and you are the LoFC Prelate of This Sector of the Internet?
Gee, since your imaginary deity doesn’t exist, it created nothing. Show otherwise with solid and conclusive physical evidence. We’ve been waiting for years for some godbot to show real evidence, not just proselytize and handwave like you are doing.
In other words, you can’t provide evidence for your presuppositions. You can’t put up, and you can’t shut up, like a person of honesty and integrity would do. You are admitting you are nothing but an evidenceless liar and bullshitter, who should not be listened to, as you have nothing cogent to say, just slogans and other idiocy.
Look, Timmy. You maybe used to people fawning and gasping in respect the moment you bust out one of your rants consisting entirely of fancy-sounding words that you don’t understand, but here, we’ve got a slightly higher standard.
Try actually engaging with the points that people make and turn down the level of incoherent rambling. Really, you’re not doing yourself any favors with this shit.
Tim Heywood:
I don’t. But in that case, life began more than 4 billion years ago. And my statement doesn’t change, except in scope.
We definitely agree on that.
Tim Heywood:
As an IT professional (I started programming assembly when I was 13, about 33 years ago), I’m calling bullshit on this. There’s nothing information technology brings to GENESIS (Sega tried, and it wasn’t very successful), and definitely nothing GENESIS brings to information technology. You may be referring to numerology, of course, but since that’s even more of a fairy tail than your god, that is also bullshit.
I really wish folks like you would stop trying to stick the square peg of science into your god’s round hole.
My wife had a minor medical procedure this morning, so I brought my Android device along and spent a nice three hours alternately napping and reading Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. I’m pretty confident that the new stuff I learned about biology in that time is more than the total actual (i.e., true) knowledge Not-Tim has acquired to date.
You should check out that book, Not-Tim. It’s written at a layman’s level and it’s utterly fascinating.
I see nigel is wearing his special “+3 for video games humor” shorts today. Nice one.
And another thing: the idea that the Bible was written specifically to be properly decoded only at a specific time many thousands of years in the future kind of defeats the purpose of what the Bible represents, does it not? I mean, if it’s the inerrant word of God, why didn’t God just write out the exact rules of the universe? Why claim that pi is 3, rip off creation and flood myths from nearby cultures, throw in garbled tribal history and erotic poetry, and try to pass it off as some kind of instruction manual for God’s Chosen? Why not just give his chosen the actual answers to life’s mysteries?
I mean, the Bible is really just a mixed up melange of mostly myth muddled with monstrous morality and misremembered missives. Why would God provide something so obtuse in the hopes that it might one day be deciphered by a bunch of desperately deluded dunderheads? Why wouldn’t God just put it in a sealed capsule in some deep strata and arrange to have it dug up? That would be easier, present a much more compelling case, and wouldn’t’ve fucked up two thousand years of civilization.
Your story just doesn’t hold water, Phillip. It sounds like a last-ditch just-so story for someone who is beginning to doubt his own bullshit.
Last time I was at the hospital for a blood draw, I had my iPad and was reading the book on evolution that PZ pointed to a free Kindle download a while back. The guy next to me saw the title and tried to discuss the matter. He didn’t appreciate it when every time he began a sentence with “Do you believe…” and I corrected him to say it is a scientific conclusion, with no belief necessary.
Great and thunderous applause for everyone still beating their heads against the brick wall that is Tim-dont-call-me-Tim Heywood. I’m getting migraines just reading his drivel, don’t think I could handle actually trying to educate him. Special thanks to those who linked sources, I picked up some useful stuff on speciation that I can use on a friend of mine who’s having trouble maintaining his parentally-indoctrinated YEC-ness. Who knows, I might make an evil-utionist out of him yet.
@ Tim (not really) Heywood
“nader te bepalen”? (Dutch: “Yet to be determined.”)
Methinks you are trying to use N.B. : “Nota Bene” (Latin: “Note Well.”)
Your tone trolling is noted. You come here and lie, and I must pretend it is fine? Perhaps if people were less civil towards your brainfarts, you would have snapped out of your bullshitting sooner.
I think otherwise.
Aren’t we all?
You somehow think your cognitive inference systems run seperately from the rest of your body. Or that you are conciously aware of all their carryings-on. Rewards and punishments in the form of emotions, inter alia, are just your mind’s way of keeping you on track for survival and reproduction. There is nothing magical involved. Our ancestors were simply better at forming strong emotional bonds (or at least their pretense) with their mates, relatively improving their odds of passing on their genes .
…
@ nigelTheBold
Actually, the point of inference is that we do, in fact, create (I use the term metaphorically) strawmen. A child’s knowledge of a cat is utilised, to expand hir understanding of similar instances (xe need only dissect one cat to know all cats have hearts) but xe can also utilise this knowledge to make inferences about similar animals, like (straw) dogs. Xe has not opened up the dog, but has constructed knowledge of dogs by inference. (Generally this construct will be pretty much on the mark as a first approximation.)
However, there is a problem with such inferred knowledge, when we utilise this trick to generate knowledge of metaphysical figments. It fleshes them out far more than the narrative ever spoke of. We simply cannot stop the process, it is the way we as humans roll .
For example: I infer that My Imaginary Cat has a vagina. I know this with biblical certainty, through inferences from cat-kind. I can continue to expand on the MIC narrative indefinitely. The process is profound because it occures on all levels of cognition,inuition, emotion…
It just FEELS so damn REAL, it must be TRUE ™ !!!!elebenty!!!!@!!1
inuitionintuitionMy Imaginary Cat who created the heavens and the Earth just happens to know about quantum physics. She knows even how to design and use a PC computer. She knows the latest technology before we think of it. And She happens to be perfectly capable of expressing Herself with total technical accuracy. You cannot understand the technical side of the
GENESISTHUMBSUCK account without I.T. and computers. Not to mention entropy, thermodynamics and the conservation of information (information is timeless); high speed turbulence as an engine of particle coalescence; water as a courier of quantum category information; cosmology; Nepeta cataria ……. . I won’t be spending all day correcting people every time they say that something that is now possible to modern science is impossible, or if they say something like,“But the Bible is stone-age mythology!”“But Theophontes, you made up all that shit!”thephontes:
I think he meant “nigelTheBold.” He just fucked up the capitalization (which people do often, I’ve discovered), and put periods in between the letters for some reason.
I surmise this because his answers were, to the best of my parsing ability, directed at my posts. Not in response to my posts, for some reason, but definitely directed my way.
I suppose that is all we can expect. This is a man who doubled down on “no evolution unless a dog gives birth to a cat!” after all. Baby steps.
N.t. B., Some of the stuff you write is almost coherent. Mustn’t have as bad a hangover as the others? But if you would afford yourself the simple expedient of doing a bit of reading yourself and stopping and thinking, you could become a useful contributor:
“And another thing: the idea that the Bible was written specifically to be properly decoded only at a specific time many thousands of years in the future kind of defeats the purpose of what the Bible represents, does it not? I mean, if it’s the inerrant word of God, why didn’t God just write out the exact rules of the universe? Why claim that pi is 3”.
What’s that word, “decoded?” Forget codes. The technical thread in the Bible is science, not hidden meanings. And the technical thread is an aside. Heathens, thinking they could by violence force their heathenism on the world, decided they could better do so by rubbishing the Word of God. God, however, always prevails. “There is no wisdom nor counsel against the Lord”. But God cannot be proved personally by technicalities any more than you or I can have a friend by analyzing him/her in a test tube. It’s all about personal relationship. GENESIS was kept in the Bible not because people understood the technicalities but because people know it is the LINGUA FRANCA of the living God.
Now, since you are info. savvy, write down pi here and now by return mail leaving nothing out. Repeat, leave nothing out.
The biblical account of it (should you actually read it) gives the circumference of the brass laver by repition as the measurement of importance, and merely rounds off the diameter to the nearest whole number. And since the temple/tabernacle was a physical type of Christ, who is God, who is infinite, any mathematician immediately sees that the measurements so given are saying that the answer lies in infinity. Which is the length of cyberspace you will require to show pi. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God”.
There is no science in the babble, as science wasn’t invented (by men) for another 2000 years. If you lie about that, what else will you lie about? EVERYTHING.
Read it several times. Nothing but bad mythology. And you haven’t shown otherwise, just presupposed that, and that becomes proselytizing. And proselytizing is a banhammer offense. here Cricket.
Quoting a book of mythology/fiction like it means something? I can quote Harry Potter, and it is just as meaningful. And quoting the babble is prima facie evidence for PZ of your proselytizing….
Tim Heywood,
I know you probably think you are writing totally deep things, but you really aren’t. It reads as if you were on cocaine or something. Not good.
It’s always impressive when a holy book contains statements declaring that the holy book is a holy book and anyone who doesn’t agree is a poopoohead.
That there is some sophistimicated theology..
Not-Tim, if you want to have a debate about scientific matters, you have to speak the language of science.
If you are hoping to convince people about the truth of your religious claims, it’s a pretty bad idea to do it while mooching someone else’s ID..
You really haven’t thought this through, have you?
Ah, poor Philly Heywood, continuing to vividly demonstrate how the brain-rot of creationism turns human beings into babbling, incoherent idiots, all the while doing a Cain-and-Abel on his brother’s internet reputation.
The technical “thread” of the Bible concluded that pi = 3.
But wait! The math can be made to work if one supposes that the wall of the container postulated in that passage has a negative thickness.
It’s a coded message, people! The bible is giving us the secret of warp drive!
Tim Heywood – for the sake of your family’s diminishing reputation please stop you father from using the net, he’s really embarrassing.
Tim you will find to be as interested in geology as I am interested in knitting. Keep going there verbo-merchants. You are receding backwards from Galileo at a steady rate, somewhere near Zeus on Mt. Olympus about now possibly, crank up negative warp drive, we’ll all be in the Garden of Eden, laying back sniffing the flowers.
I seriously need to depart as the e-books which fully document the termination of the Controversy (in meticulous detail, suit all ages, educational) require proof reading. Don’t worry, you bucko’s get up front mention — one front cover has one of our darwinian predecessors on the cover, in a tree, scratching its head.
There is no termination of the controversy until you admit you have no scientific evidence, and must stop pretending religious ideas are equal to scientific theories. Which means you are still full of shit.
It’s almost poetic. It’s like something out of Naked Lunch. Actually, on second thought, Naked Lunch made way more sense than that.
I’ve said it before, now I’ll say it again; you need to work on your communication skills. At the moment, you’re coming off as a complete loon; constantly dodging the issue and spouting random buzzwords.
Here’s what you should do: Lay out your position, simply and clearly. Present the evidence, along with all relevant references (hint: “[famous person] said X” is not a reference). You might actually want to take a time out fro this thread. Take the time to seriously organize your thoughts and arguments.
At this point, the only thing you’re accomplishing is to make us more convinced that creationists are all nuts.
The subject is utterly beside the point, so I guess I should have expected you to glom onto an utter irrelevancy and miss the actual crux/nub/gist.
The point is that you are making him look like a fucking idiot on the internet. You are using his identity in a way that makes him look like a complete moron.
Simple, common courtesy should have compelled you to create your own logon.
And you don’t even have that small shred of decency.
But you think you have something to tell us that we should listen to.
You really haven’t thought this out, have you?
Tim Heywood:
Cool! I hope it’s me. Remember, my right side is my best side.
Also: remember the difference between “they’re” and “their” and “there”. So many people don’t.
Good luck, Kiddo! Give ’em hell.
As the Director of Information Technology for a $150 million /yr company and knowing a thing or two about IT and computers and using them to solve both pedestrian and extremely head spinning complex problems, this gives me deep and satisfying chuckles.
The rest of this is just hilarious gravy.
heheheh
you’re hilarious Timmy.
@ nigelTheBold
Sorry n.T.B, Timmynot‘s lack of blockquoting, and other formatting, had me stumped there.
@ Rev.
Wait ’til you see the cover of his paradigm changing book. YHWH travels around the galaxy in a UFO composed of used laptops. Link Here. Read the blurb too. It is all about ticking the right boxes. I snarfled at this one:
Non-Tim, the bigot, has the gall to accuse the YEC’s of bigotry. (Matthew 7:5)
Oh boy.
I really needed that laugh.
Thanks Not-Tim.
Hee hee.
“You need I.T. and computers to understand Genesis”
That is rich.
What does one need to understand the crucifixtion? The resurrection? The End Times?
@ Tim (not his real name) Heywood
As luck would have it, Greta Christina has just written a blog post, that links to another about the very subject we have spoken about above. (Link to: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)) (I have not read the book yet, but it seems to cover all the bases in a straightforward and informative fashion. Greta appears to have put together a good piece on it.)
Before you invest too much time tilting at windmills, consider:
Personally, I feel you are banging your head against a wall. You are wasting your life away, abasing yourself and your talents to a figment of your imagination. This whole process is extremely entertaining to watch, as an outsider. Perhaps you would have more success as a lampooner, or comic writer.
groan
But he is on the right path on one thing
Unfortunately just not the way he thinks.
Do you get coffee and bagel with that? I hope so.
@ Rev
Wait ’til you see his other book…
Fifty-eight fucking bucks! Without a fucking bagel. Fuck-me-jeebus! It has three reviews and scores 5.5 stars. That’s a better score than the fucking Bible itself! (link here)
The reviews look suspiciously like woolly footwear.
The person who proved himself beyond all shadow of a doubt as utterly incompetent to even discuss evolution, has written a book on the subject.
theophontes:
Both of the reviewers with names have written exactly one review each: this book. So yeah, woolly footwear with googley eyes and felt lips.
used
“Fifty-eight fucking bucks!”
Its a fair price – the only copy in existance straight from his home printer. Well, actually his son’s printer.
He should send me a review copy. Just mail it to PZ Myers, Division of Science and Math, University of Minnesota Morris, Morris MN 56267. (Actually, I’ve had some mail arrive addressed to PZ Myers, Morris MN 56267. It’s a small place.)
I’m reading lots of wacky stuff this summer. It’ll fit right in.
Seeing that the bandmaster himself gives a response (above) I will reciprocate. The review opportunities, which of course have always been yours, are yours by return mail, today, should you give me the e-mail address to which to send. Likewise anyone else on this blog who gives a request and an e-mail. I have the semi-finals right here at the touch of a key. The major item is the revised and fully updated version of THE TREE OF LIFE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, there is the revised and updated introductory geology booklet WHAT IN CREATION ID GOING ON HERE?, trashed by Ken Ham; and for entertainment more suited to certain persons we shall not name, and infant’s picture book, UNIVERSE EARTH SOLAR SYSTEM LIFE. You will be free to publish as you see fit any part on this site. Let’s see whether you are clowning. You get serious, I shall give you the opportunity to do something big for education. I will happily add useful comments to the books. Like I said, meet you here, any time. And congratulations on practising free speech.
BigDumbChimp:
“As the Director of Information Technology for a $150 million /yr company and knowing a thing or two about IT and computers and using them to solve both pedestrian and extremely head spinning complex problems, this gives me deep and satisfying chuckles.
You cannot understand the technical side of the GENESIS account without I.T. and computers.
The rest of this is just hilarious gravy.
Not to mention entropy, thermodynamics and the conservation of information (information is timeless); high speed turbulence as an engine of particle coalescence; water as a courier of quantum category information; cosmology……. . I won’t be spending all day correcting people every time they say that something that is now possible to modern science is impossible, or if they say something like, “But the Bible is stone-age mythology!””
Your computers, of course, build themselves out of nothing and you yourself have nothing to do with the company of which you are a part because that would imply that intelligence can only be a product of intelligence. An honest man! When you cease being as you name yourself, get back to us.
Unevidenced assertion, dismissed as abject fuckwittery. Creobot loser, EVIDENCE rules, your OPINION DROOLS.
[meta]
<snicker>
PZ’s email address is cunningly hidden on every page of this blog, Heywood. :)
GASP, you mean Heywood hasn’t been reading the blog, but just proselytizing????
*Dramitic swoon into the heavy duty fainting couch. Pullet Patrol ™ gives it 7/10*
Ah yes, that is quite a lame use of the even lamer watchmaker argument. Pretty sad in fact.
We know how computers and companies are built. We have seen it. Some of us have done it. We can name famous people who have done either or both. We can recreate the ways they have done it.
You can do none of what you’re suggesting by your answer that i quoted above using a laptop built by a human somewhere in South East Asia.
You are working from pure emotional attachment and assertion.
In other words, quit being so proud of your stupidity.
Ah, yes. As soon as logic comes on the scene, fire up the bad language.
Get some respect for the owner of the blog. He doesn’t lay around all day sniffing flowers. If he or anyone else is serious about reviewing my educational materials say it in clear English and don’t clown. I will only send materials upon serious and obvious request.
Hey look, he’s already backing out! Chicken!
Your materials aren’t educational. They are religious bullshi. In last few hundred years, science rules, religion drools, as religion hasn’t presented on advancement to mankind in that period of time. In fact. they hold back progress due to the fact they erroneously believe that their deity isn’t imaginary and their babble isn’t a book of mythology/fiction. You are nothing but a loudmouthed arrogant ignorant evidenceless delusional fool.
Bad language from me? Logic from you? Where?
I have respect for the owner. I’m pretty sure he thinks the watchmaker argument is garbage too.
If you’ll read #371 that is the owner of this blog asking you for a copy of your book.
And your inane religious OPINION, isn’t now, nor will ever be anything other than more mythology. EVIDENCE of SCIENCE will always beat your OPINION.
So PZM directly states that he would like a copy of the book to review, and gives his mailing address.
Not-Tim offers to email it to an email address.
John Morales points out that PZM’s email is listed at the top of the page.
Not-Tim pretends that bad behavior is why he is chickening out of sending the book.
*cues the Pullet Patrol Chorus rendition of “I’m a religious coward” *
Poor, poor Philly Heywood. Lead by the nose by the worse-than-useless brain rot that is his creationism until he is cornered into a humiliating retreat that vividly demonstrates his pathetic intellectual cowardice.
Hey, Heywood: don’t run away!
What controversy? There isn’t any. What we have is a bunch of religious organizations trying to manufacture the appearance of a controversy. The anti-evolution camp is predicting the end of the Darwinian paradigm for a hundred years now, excuse me if I’m a bit skeptical.
Yep that’s about right. We brought in the logic and then when you wouldn’t reciprocate we fired up the bad language.
Tim Heywood:
I’ve not been involved in any scuffle here. I want to see your book. I obviously request that it be sent to my num – crip dyke, with no spaces – at that googly gmail thingy. Dotcommed for the finishing flourish.
I hope Timmy can decipher that.
CAW CA-CAW! CAW CA-CAW!
Criminy, that should have been “sent to my nym” – but autocorrect got to it, the sneaky thing.
Curiously, my brain auto-corrected it back, so I didn’t notice the error until you pointed it out.
Don’t be too impressed by that price. I used to sell used books for a living. What you do with the stuff that’s not common is put an artificially high speculative price on it. The idea being that if there’s few available anyone that wants it is more likely to pay high.
I once had a book that the only other copy I could find in the world was in a library in England. I put around $200 dollars on it and it still hadn’t sold by the time I left that job. Much like Heywood’s dreck no one was interested in buying it despite the rarity. I could have put $2 bux on it and it still wouldn’t have sold.
no worry there
I’ll try not to be. But I can’t shake the sense that Dembski’s Design Inference must be a great book, at $30+
Seriously, though, that’s an interesting anecdote, even if not very surprising, IMO.
Glen Davidson
The useful take-away from my anecdote, if there is one, is to realise that the prices on rare items that aren’t popular are pure speculation. If it’s a first edition of Tom Saywer you’re after (good luck figuring out if that particular copy is an actual first) expect to pay a lot for it. But if it’s something obscure I’d suggest politely offering the seller whatever you’re willing to pay, because the odds are they’ve been sitting on it for years and will be happy to stop having to dust it.
@Rev BDC:
I’m worried my own self.
Tim? It’s @gmail.com
Send the thing if you have it.
One wonders about such a disappearance, though perhaps time zones explain it.
The name is Philip Bruce Heywood (B.Sc. hons geology, ex. Geol. Surv. Qld.) I borrowed Tim’s facebook to make a challenge to Prof. PZ. If you are looking for contact details go to www, creation theory dot com, where you will also get the gist of the current state of Origins Education. There are three e-books soon to become available which give much more detail. One of them is a necessary new updated version of the old hard copy yr.2,000 TREE OF LIFE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES.
This book tells the story which Darwin and others attempted to tell, a century or two before the information was available to tell the story in terms of mainstream, systematic science. It’s all over, done, finished. Anyone who is serious about improving education and who can convince me they are serious may ask me for e-mailed semi-finals of my books. If you think you would like to challenge anything on the basis of fact or science go ahead at PZ’s account if you wish to persist but for your own benefit read all my entries on this forum. Wise up. I won’t be hanging about here, there is leaking raw sewage.
Boredom struck and I went looking for reviews of not Tim’s book. I couldn’t find any, but this was too amusing to not share:
“His hope and earnest desire in publishing these materials is 1) to bring honour and Glory to the great God; 2) to provide a real and lasting benefit to all who study these materials in sincerity and, 3) to encourage a renewed throwing off of superstition and ignorance, ushering in a new golden age of science.”
(his ‘about the author’ on Amazon)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0959431829/ref=mw_dp_mdsc?dsc=1
Since its nothing other than religious wankery, nothing of interest. NO SCIENCE WHATSOEVER.
Yes it is SCIENCE RULES, CREATIONISM DROOLZ.
And it is obvious our creobot lies about knowing any science, how science is done, and where he has to publish his drivel for science to take notice. Self-publishing is one way to make sure real science ignores his drivel, compared to publishing papers in peer reviewed scientific journals.
@ Nottim Heywood
theophontesathotmaildotcom
A challenge you were doomed to fail, since you don’t understand a goddamn thing about biology. That was clear from your first posts.
I have a direct question for you, Mr. Heywood. It has been mentioned that the online listing of one of your book includes three glowing reviews. It has been suggested that those reviews were written by you and/or one or more friends and/or family.
So my question is this: Were any of those reviews written by you or somone you know?
Have you submitted this amazing discovery to any peer reviewed journals?
Something this earth shattering is sure to garner some professional attention.
That’s not at all my point. My point is that nomenclature isn’t science, it’s a set of conventions about where to tie which labels to the tree.
Cladistics is a term for methods of the science of phylogenetics. It has nothing to do with nomenclature.
My point here, which I didn’t make clear, is that not everything is equally closely related to everything else, and close relatives can usually hybridize much more easily than distant ones. Horse/donkey hybrids are common, and some of them are even fertile – horse/cow hybrids are not gonna happen.
What – why do you think quantum effects were necessary?
While we can’t disprove this hypothesis, it is at present wholly unnecessary.
We’re not complaining it’s incomplete. We’re telling you it’s wrong. The order of events in Genesis 1 is wrong, and so is the different order of events in Genesis 2.
Huh?
That would be you, then.
This is technobabble. It doesn’t mean anything more than “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”.
nigelTheBold is n.T.B., not N.t. B.. Learn to read what you see, not what you imagine.
You moron.
ROTFL! 0.6 Tc instantly!
“Do not tick: the same old same old. Science has advanced expect surprises – and the Origins Controversy will soon be as extinct as the dinosaurs!”
Dinosaurs? Extinct? Some ten thousand species are alive today!
Birds are dinosaurs just like bats are mammals, in case you’ve been sleeping for the last twenty years, Mr. Heywood.
Yep, 0.6 Tc sounds good as a minimum. :-)
“You are invited to evaluate a new creation model for the 21st Century. In doing so, the reader will have the opportunity to join hands in some measure with the personal philosophy of pioneers great names in science such as Joule, Faraday, Lord Kelvin, Sir Isaac Newton, and many other besides. Science near its highest potential! Science built upon objective observation! Science to give renewed confidence!
Science to lead mankind upwards into a new millennium!”
ROTFLMAO!
His ego is so big he doesn’t fit through doors! :-D :-D :-D
Scroll back up till you can see the left sidebar.
Then scroll to “Profile”.
There you’ll find a photo of PZ, then “PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.”, then the title page of his book “The Happy Atheist”.
In that sentence, “PZ Myers” is a link. Mouse over it, and you’ll see his e-mail address; click on it, and behold the miracle.
Evolution = descent with heritable modification.
Computers do not reproduce, they don’t descend from each other, and they don’t inherit. Therefore, computers can’t evolve.
Tim (Phillip) Heywood:
Many people make this sort of claim. Why should your claim be any different? You’ve demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the observed mechanics of evolution. How can you possibly hope to explain something you quite obviously don’t understand?
I’ve read through what you’ve posted here. So far, all I’ve seen are assertions backed by nothing more than bluster and insistence and misplaced pride.
There are two questions that might redeem your assertions here. Hopefully, you’ll wade through the sewage and deign to answer:
1. What specific testable predictions does your hypothesis make that might demonstrate your hypothesis is false?
2. Have you performed those tests to verify the predictions?
Science has moved on since Kelvin and Darwin. If all you can do is disprove centuries-old paradgms, don’t bother – mainstream science already did that long ago.
Seriously, Chester: Register a Freethought Blogs username. It takes less than one minute.
David Marjanović:
David, I apologize. I was importing context from my exchanges with Phillip. I had made this exact same point earlier with respect to the term species, and my responses to you were assuming that context. Similarly, my mention of cladistics was in the context of Phillip’s posts concerning the cambrian, and how all the real diversity came from there, and his tie-in of GENESIS.
And now I’mma shut up and stop digging.
@ vaiyt
Not disprove, endorse.
Timmy?
I really should be at work. However there are contributors currently contributing who do make a glimmer of sense at times. Your difficulty of course is that you are coming — understandably– from the viewpoint (which I can understand, having been there) that GENESIS is speaking within the parameters we leaned of when we were at uni.. Those lecturers themselves imbibed their personal parameters long before we sat and listened to them. It is “modern Evolution” that is back with Darwin, Huxley, Kelvin, etc.. The Word of the living God, like its Author, is timeless. It is not only modern — it remains ultra-modern — way out in front, never fully fathomed. It took me years to accommodate to the reality of what I was looking at. I had spent years listening to one of the world’s best palaeontologists. His lectures were accurate. He was ‘tops’. Every division of complex life may indeed be traced back as some ghost- like pattern to the Pre-Canbrian/Cambrian Unconformity. Nomenclature does not tell the full story. His mechanism of species actuation was non-existent. It had to be non-existent because quantum physics, quantum I.T. and the reality of what species are, were all in the future. They are in the future no more. And the Bible was sitting, waiting for science.
David Marjanović — copy that? If necessary, read it all again, Go to http://www.creationtheory dot com again and read it again if necessary. There is a paradigm shift required. Species are information plus vivification. Vivification and information are timeless. So a species can exist as a living organism once a living cell is in place and applicable automatic signalling system(s) with databank are activated. That is what GENESIS is saying, incontestable, black and white. Go back and read again. God is who he is, not what we imagine him to be. He is a person — and he knows what he is doing. Incidentally, the first half of GENESIS Chapter 2 is merely a commentary or an explanatory note to Chapter 1. Chapter 1 is the sequence of events: Chapter 2 (first half) is the mechanical detail. It is not, repeat, not, in time sequence. The key to the mechanical detail is 2:4&5. Living species existing before being tangible. Chapter 1 does give a big hint — find the word, “signs”. That’s I.T. — information storage and transmission. Modern. God is not behind the times. He created time.
Sir Nigel: Tell me about your title some time. Quote:
“Many people make this sort of claim. Why should your claim be any different? You’ve demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the observed mechanics of evolution. How can you possibly hope to explain something you quite obviously don’t understand?
I’ve read through what you’ve posted here. So far, all I’ve seen are assertions backed by nothing more than bluster and insistence and misplaced pride.
There are two questions that might redeem your assertions here. Hopefully, you’ll wade through the sewage and deign to answer:
1. What specific testable predictions does your hypothesis make that might demonstrate your hypothesis is false?
2. Have you performed those tests to verify the predictions?”
If you wish to get serious and be taken seriously, go way back above on this forum and find an entry of mine which mentions MESOHIPPUS. Addressed to Owlmirror as I recall(?). Then, by return mail, answer the question about how mum and dad MESOHIPPUS arrived on the scene — no wishful thinking, no magic. When you have done so, go to my publications, which are I hope as specific as possible given the latest research, and tell us the actual hands-on mechanism which modern science is pointing towards. While there, check on the “species lock”. I predicted it, the university of Texas(?) I think it was then co-incidentally started talking about one likely possibility — something to do with proteins and sex cells (?). I do reference it at my site. Plus fifty other falsifiable predictions from lunar and solar system origins to the advent of Epigenetics. Find them for us, from my site. Do your homework, I won’t be doing it for you.
It isn’t, and never did. That is your delusion, not ours. You don’t understand the science, and that only more science, published in the peer reviewed scientific literature, can refute that. And you have NOTHING BUT OPINION, WHICH IS DISMISSED AS EVIDENCELESS FUCKWITTERY.
Which is releveant if it wasn’t published in the peer reviewed scientific literature. STILL NOTHING BUT OPINION, WHICH IS DISMISSED AS FUCKWITTERY.
If you don’t present them here they never existed. And if they aren’t peer reviewed scientific papers, they don’t exist. What a loser if you think otherwise. And you do….
Tim Heywood (Phillip):
The nigelTheBold came from a time when I played MMOs. I spent fifteen minutes trying to come up with a decent name that wasn’t taken. In frustration, I put in nigelTheBold, and voilà: no more trouble with a distinctive name.
Stupid MMOs.
Recently I’ve added “also Avo” as I’m toying with the idea of changing my nym to Avo (Esperanto for grandfather). It’s there to prepare, so people know who I am if I do. That’s just basic nym etiquette.
I’m not sure what your question is. I’ve read through the comment (#234). You claim there is a problem (that “biological evolution” isn’t defined), then say:
This is completely untrue. First, the actual physical events involved in evolution are quantified. The entropy of evolution is actually quite well understood. Second, you don’t have to know the exact amount of a measurable value to draw conclusions from it. For instance, in this case, you only need to calculate the upper bounds of entropy in biological evolution. That’s more than sufficient to determine that evolution is not in conflict with the second law of thermodynamics (in this example).
Further, in this case, the author didn’t attempt to define biological evolution because the term itself is well-understood. The processes that contribute to evolution are well-understood. So, to anyone well-versed in the art (the expected audience of the paper), an in-depth definition of biological evolution is unnecessary.
You start in talking about eohippus and mesohippus. Interestingly, you use the word “actuation:”
You talk about defining words. This is an important one to define, as it isn’t a standard term in evolution, at least in the sense you use it. What do you mean when you say one group is “a factor in the actuation” of another?
Then you finally get to the question you reference:
Now, if I’m reading this properly, you are asking how two individuals, each of the same brand-new species, might suddenly appear, whole-cloth and out of the blue. Is that really what you’re asking?
Because if it is, you fundamentally misunderstand the simplest concepts in evolution. Even worse, it means you didn’t read my comment #302, which answers this very question, and does so without magic.
Now, as for species lock, the top Google hit is on a forum talking about fictional characters who suffer from lycanthropy. I can find nothing that suggests species lock is a real thing, discussed by real scientists. Do you have a citation from a peer-reviewed paper that discusses the nature of species lock?
Because if your hypothesis predicts species lock, and there is no such thing, your hypothesis is falsified.
I would appreciate if you would do your own homework, honestly. Because the more you post, the more it becomes apparent you really don’t understand evolution at all. Worse, you don’t appear to have any intention of rectifying your ignorance.
it’s truly unfortunate that you however, do not.
otherwise it would be worth responding to you.
I suggest you take those words to heart. They apply to you, more than anyone else that has posted on this thread.
“Tim”:
You seem to know a lot about your baby killing god. Are you two BFF’s? If so, I just have to know something: how big is Yahweh’s dick?
It’s your site. You find them. It’s not our job to dig up your citations for you, asshole.
Still, since you’re so hopelessly flailing, I figure that’s never going to happen. If we’re going to make any progress here, it’ll be because other people drag you along, kicking and screaming. So, I did a search and found exactly two pages. Only one of them contains anything that could charitably be called a reference and that’s a dead link. No evidence is cited, no real reasoning. Just yet another assertion.
You’re full of shit, not-Tim.
It is funny watching le pauvre Heywood try to drag out his **hippus question.
He doesn’t appear to realize that the species essentialism underpinning the question is actually a fatal flaw of his creationism, one which his creation, tired and useless as it is, is utterly unable to answer without resorting to magic.
Whereas, in evolutionary theory, the answer is simply “that is the wrong question to ask”.
@Tim Heywood (yes, we use nyms here – if your post says Tim Heywood, you are Tim Heywood for purposes of in thread response. You want something different? Register).
I asked very clearly for you to send me the e-books. You have not sent them. You have put up yet another post insisting that you are willing to send them.
However, in the presence of a direct request, the provision of my e-mail address, and your utter lack of response, I can only conclude that you are
a) a less than competent reader who somehow missed the post right above your #398 that reminded you that you had not yet responded to the original request.
b) insincere in your promise to e-mail the books.
Please, either send the books or explain your refusal.
It really is tragic (OK, it’s also funny) how utterly Not-Tim fails to understand the most basic parts of biology and evolution. Shit, my formal qualifications amount to a real-looking diploma from a Catholic high school, and I am repeatedly dumfounded by the massive feats of getting-it-totally-fucking-wrong he pulls off.
How can you still be not getting this, Not-Tim? Your confusion about the meaning of “species” has already been explained to you, more than once.
Do you really not understand that a species is not a real, concrete thing? It’s a human-invented concept which makes it easier for us to think and talk about this stuff, but it’s not reality.
It’s like the border between US waters and Canadian waters off the coast of North America. You look at a map and the lines are right there, plain as day. But out at sea? There may be a marker anchored here or there, but is the line real? Does water stay on one side of the line? Do fish or whales? The line is imaginary. We use it because it facilitates certain things, but it’s still imaginary.
@ Amphiox
One should perhaps use Feynman’s phrase¹: “Not even wrong.”
…
¹Original was Pauli’s : “Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!” [German:”This is not only not right, it’s not even wrong!”]
@ Tim Heywood (or the hand that fits the sock) And I would like to second Crype Dyke’s request:
I even checked my “junk” file in my inbox. Nada from you. (Just some whining from Christian Coalition, complaining about their hate being curtailed by the US courts.) I was perfectly happy to read and crit your work for you. Now I don’t know why I bothered to offer you my email address in # 402.
I’m going to go ahead and concur that you send copies to all the people who are asking for a copy of your e-Book Person-who-uses-Tim-Heywood-as-a-psuedonym. You’ve talked a lot about how people need to “do their homework” and seem to believe that your communication has been totally clear and transparent. In truth its been anything but, your long posts are incredibly unclear in many ways. If you sent people copies of the totality of your writing it would be much easier for them to engage your ideas head-on.
Unless of course his books are written to the same standard that he uses for his posts here. Having briefly browsed his site, I’m not optimistic about his ability to clearly express even the simplest thought.
This has been a problem from the beginning: He rambles on and on, utterly failing to draw the red thread that might allow us to follow his thought processes. He happily jumps from one subject to the next; maybe the jumps make sense to him, but not to anyone else. Finally, he consistently fails to provide citations, preferring to simply handwave about them being “on his site”, but then forgetting to explain exactly where
And now he has topped it all off with the claim that it’s our responsibility to dig through his mental excretions to find the sources that back up his claims. I’m guessing that if we fail to find such sources, that somehow proves him right… or something.
Communication requires at least a basic concern for the person you’re communicating with. Not-Tim doesn’t have that. Like so many cranks, he’s too enamored with his own perceived brilliance to ever get around to clearly explaining his ideas, backing them up, or listening when people point out an error.
Not-Tim:
I may be sounding like a broken record at this point, but if you want to be more than a freak-show spectacle, you should spend less time overturning the scientific conspiracy against god and more time learning how to clearly explain your thinking to someone who isn’t you.
You desperately need to get to the point where, agree or not, people at least know what you’re actually saying.
But, if all else fails, at least do us one little, tiny favor? Learn to use freakin’ <blockquote>. It’s simple. You just write:
<blockquote>Quoted text here</blockquote>
And it shows up as:
Nigel the Bold:
You are not on the same page as Science. Unless you get on the same page, you will only be able to stir up frustration and ignorance like many of the others. Isn’t it remarkable — no-one likes to have their religion or their deity investigated. So long as “Evolution” is some undefined process that makes people feel comfortable, believing atheists/animists are happy in the knowledge that they are being looked after. Investigate the mechanism of evolution, reduce it to technicalities — it’s like sacrilege.
You might try to begin with Mendel and the mathematical basis of heredity, go on to items such as genetic engineering, immune systems, cloning, etc. You could look into the structure and purpose of DNA, RNA, sex cells, you name it. Until you grasp the fact that species are defined by information so placed as to have predictable effects and this information is something that can be expressed mathematically, I am wasting my time. Evolution as it occurred is a mathematically describable process, not a warm inner feeling or a heap of jargon. Of course, all the world knows evolution is the answer — just like they knew the earth has to be flat (actually, many did not believe that — they believed in the superstitions promulgated by a state church which pushed various science fallacies, so believed a flat earth by default.) If evolution makes you feel warm, stick with it. I can’t actually see what it is you are talking about. I was several years learning about fossils and evolution and I could understand a fossil sequence, but the lecturers themselves made no serious claim to knowing how it happened. The evolutionary ‘experts’ themselves turn and run when asked to explain it. But when they do claim a ‘breakthrough’ — almost every other day — it’s to do with genes and often has medical implications. In short– hands-on technicalities, real genes, real information, quantifiable. Go and ask one of them to tell you what actually happens in terms of DNA bases, sex cells, immune systems, etc., blow-by-blow, during the speciation event. You are wasting your time with me. I will give you the facts as they are or are not known –and your world view can put up with it. You are not on the same page as Science.
Heywood, you have embarrassed yourself in your response to Nigel:
As a geologist, presumably you laugh at Young Earth Creationists who imagine the planet is but 6,000 years old and its appearance of age is but a mirage; you might care to consider why biologists might likewise be laughing at your conceit that evolution is a mirage.
—
PS Mendel was looking at a black box; modern science actually knows what makes it tick.
Tim Heywood:
In what way? You’ve made claims similar to this, but you’ve not clarified what you mean.
That’s the trouble with your assertion: evolution is an exceptionally well-understood process. In fact, only gravity has been tested more than evolution. It’s not undefined, it doesn’t make people feel comfortable, and it doesn’t look after anyone.
Also, you’ve not addressed a single point I’ve made. Here, it seems you’re deliberately avoiding anything I’ve actually said.
Uhm, what do you think biologists do? Evolution is rife with technical details, formulas describing how to calculate the evolutionary distance between two populations.
You are begging the question. You assume information is “placed,” which implies something placing information there. This is nothing more than a restatement of the completely undefined “specified information” creationists go on about.
You are yet again showing your ignorance.
Really? You haven’t even addressed my very basic explanations, let alone anything an “expert” (love the scare quotes) might provide.
If you are incapable of addressing something as simple as gradual change over time (as I posted earlier), then I don’t think you’re capable of addressing someone who really knows their shit.
Ah! Here’s the problem! You’re still yammering away on “speciation event.”
Let me state this one more time: there’s no such thing as a speciation event. A dog doesn’t suddenly become a cat. A t-rex isn’t suddenly going to lay an egg for an ostrich. That’s not what evolution is. All the technical shit you admit you don’t understand? It doesn’t claim an octopus is going to give birth to a spider.
You want to talk about science? This is basic fucking science. You want to talk about mathematics? This is simple fucking mathematics.
I’m coming to realize that.
Science. With a capital S. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Can you at least provide a definition of Science?
@ Tim (he claimed, then retracted) Heywood
You mean something like a giant clock? Could your YHWH be the Blind Watchmaker ol’ Dawkins was gabbing about? Perhaps you should stop what you are doing and start reading the dinosaurs of philosophy rather. I suggest you start with Rene Descartes.
@ Tony
Now you are being a big meany! One is never supposed to ask a goddist the practical details of their religion. It’s just not polite! That will force them to make shit up (aka: lying).
This type of bullshitting is in no way a feature of YHWH-botherers only. All superstitious thinking suffers from this. The hosts focus solely on their feelings, their intuitions, of the object/s of their worship – never on the practical workings.
Methinks that Tim Heywood is a closet deist, who has not yet clawed his way out of the superstitious inanities of conventional xtianity.
(Nottim, this is for you: Link to definition of deism by World Union of Deists. You could perhaps even sign up, if you could just scrape that Jeebus crap off of your thinking.
I never publish in that journal. too much microbiology for my tastes.
give me Pacific Science, Animal Behavior, TREE, Copeia, but not Science, or even Nature for that matter.
not what you mean?
sorry, I know it’s hard to translate loon.
no, I think being a freak show is what it wants, exactly.
but… it’s not.
YOU’RE NOT ON THE SAME PAGE AS SCIENCE!!!11eventy!!
Holy shit, you started with Darwin (150 years outdated and counting) and now you’re going all the way back to Mendel? Populations don’t devolve, but your arguments seem to be. What’s next, trying to disprove quantum mechanics by invoking Ancient Greek atomists?
Well, that’s the problem! You think we’re talking about “Science”, when we’re actually talking about little old science. A common mistake!
Is anyone keeping track of the number of Heywood’s comments that are blatant projection? Or do numbers not go that high?
Like I said. Every fucking sentence, pure bluster and pure projection. I’m glad that I don’t allow irony meters near creationists anymore.
And you can look up the basic fucking definitions and concepts of evolution, species, and natural selection. Because you still don’t get Nigel’s point and still seem to stand behind your argument that “dogs don’t give birth to cats” is a counter-argument against any of the above.
The purpose ? Where would we look for that, exactly? A preacher’s blog? Because it sure as fuck isn’t something actually in science. Maybe “Science”, but not science. Not even “SCIENCE!!!”.
Oh, you are indeed wasting your time. Mostly because you are not as smart and informed as you think you are. You don’t understand us enough to present a coherent argument, don’t understand the issue enough to present a coherent argument, and aren’t skilled enough of a writer to present a coherent argument. The result is multiple layers of incoherence on our end, Heywood. You aren’t some brave, insightful informed layman bringing us a new revolutionary point of view. You are a standard creationist, complete with inability to comprehend and articulate.
Feeling’s mutual, buddy.
Scientists not leaping to conclusions! Holy shit, cram God into those gaps before they say something!
Those cowards, running away from the questions, refusing to answer. Until they have evidence and then do answer. Like…um…cowards. Or, no, make believers! That’s the ticket.
Only someone as brilliant as yourself would question-beg that into “not relevant to evolution”.
But what if they do so using real genes, real information, quantifiable data, and hands-on technicalities! Or, heaven forbid, what if they present probabilities and statistical likelihoods and mention doubts instead of absolute certainties! Then it would be clear just insidiously blind and dogmatic the Darwinian religion truly is, I’m sure!
True, bullshit, and projection respectively.
How the fuck are you still doing this, Heywood? How can one man contain so much hot air? How can one man go on and on about nothing with such ineptitude for so long, in the face of a myriad of excellent descriptions regarding his error, without realizing that maybe, just maybe, he really is the dumbass in the room? How do you maintain your walls, Heywood? How do make sure they are so resistant to facts? How do you make them so shiny so that it is a veritable hall of mirrors, where you are the intellectual giant? Where did you learn to not only shield yourself from reality, but flip it on its head with such speed and reflexiveness that you don’t even notice you are doing it?
About as undefined as gravity is, and just as well supported.
Of course, I don’t expect much of someone who thinks “how could the first horse make more horses without a mare” is a groundbreaking insight.
nigelTheBold, in response to Tim Heywood:
Allow me to embiggen this.
Species is a strictly artificial definition. A “speciation event” is when a population no longer matches our definition. There’s nothing unique happening in nature. This occurs just because we have a definition that no longer applies to that population (though might apply to other populations).
This doesn’t happen suddenly, from one generation to the next. It happens over many generations, with individuals in the population matching our definition of the species less and less.
It’s like dog breeding. Specific breeds have very specific definitions. I have a boykin spaniel. Part of the breed definition is a size limit — something like 35 or 40 pounds. My dog is a beast, at 45 pounds. He’s outside the breed limit. He no longer matches the definition of the breed.
Now, that doesn’t mean Elvis isn’t a boykin spaniel. His parents were boykin spaniels. If he were to have offspring, they two would be boykin spaniels. But, since he’s a monster by the breed standards, I’m not supposed to let him breed. If I did let him breed, there is an increased likelihood that other boykins would be too large for the standard. And if they bred, there would be many more boykins that no longer matched the breed standard. And so on. And if they let boykins with large patches of white chest hair (the standard calls for no more than about half-a-centimeter diameter of white chest hair), then you’d have large boykins with full white chests. And if you just ignored all the standards, eventually boykins wouldn’t match the breed standard at all, and just look like mutts. This wouldn’t happen all at once. It would take generations.
In nature, there’s no agreement to stop individuals from breeding just because they fall outside our definition of a species. So in nature, there’s no such thing as a “speciation event.” You just have populations that genetically diverge from other populations that were once almost identical.
We have all kinds of mathematical models for this. It’s all very sciency. Hell, it’s even Science.
Your inability to understand these very fundamental concepts is really baffling.
@ anteprepro
Au contraire! I must side with Nottim Heywood here. You are obviously too busy being productive, and therefore never found time to google for “poodle-cat”!
.
{drumrollllllllllll …..*ka-dish*}
.
Voila … Cliquez ici!
That cat might haunt my dreams. Something about the eyes. And the fact that its body looks like a puffy rug.
@ anteprepro
It is sad that people deem it necessary to go all Dr Moreau with animal breeding. I am sure these will survive just fine, but munchkins and pugs (etc) are going too far, The animals actually suffer for their breeders greed.
@ Tim (not his real name) Heywood
Following on from nigelTheBold‘s excellent comments, I thought I’d cross post this here from the Thunderdome: If humans descended from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys.
True in mammals AFAIK, but in other groups of organisms, you get speciation by hybridization andor polyploidy, which can occur in a single generation, and which I think account for most of the observed cases of speciation. Less drastic chromosomal rearrangements than polyploidy, which like polyploidy arise in a specific generation and indeed a specific individual in the population, may also play a role in relatively rapid speciation.
Good grief. What a complete waste of electrons that was.
The definition of a word salad.
Kookism on display.
“Vivification” is a word that belongs in Zombie fiction, not in science.
When your train of thinking leads you to start invoking ghosts, that is a hint that you need to change stations.
It’s sad to see a great mind reduced to producing such ridiculous claptrap.
And it’s even sad when Philip’s mind does so.
Glen Davidson
If anyone needs to apologize, it’s me for not being clearer! Tree-thinking comes naturally to me now, but it took a few years.
It’s not an unconformity everywhere, you know. There are places where sedimentation was continuous across the boundary.
There is no such thing as vivification.
And don’t talk about information when you haven’t learned information theory. Yup, it’s a thing, and you don’t know it.
Gen 1:1 – 2:3 is the P creation myth, which consistently calls God “Elohim”. Then the Redactor (who may have been Ezra) added the deliberately ambiguous 2:4a, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created:”. From 2:4b onwards, we get the J creation myth, beginning with: “In the day that Yahwe made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for Yahwe had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.”
They’re two stories, awkwardly spliced together for great effect.
2:7: Yahwe makes Man.
2:8: Yahwe makes garden and puts Man in it.
2:18: And God saw that it was not good. So he proceeds to make every animal in 2:19.
2:21: Yahwe finally gets it and makes Woman.
This is a chronological sequence, and it contradicts 1:20–27. You can’t weasel out of that fact.
…Species don’t have sharp boundaries (unless they’re allopolyploid plants). There is no way to claim “this individual belongs to the ancestor species, but that one to the descendant species” when they’re still in the same population.
That’s simply not how it works! Learn some basic evolutionary biology, and then come back here.
Learn, also, that there isn’t a single definition of “species” out there. There are about 150 – and they all yield different results: depending on which one you apply, there are from 101 to 249 endemic bird species in Mexico.
~:-| What for?
Science with a capital letter is a journal. (So is Nature, BTW.)
What?
What do you believe evolutionary biologists have been doing for the last 70 years?
Did you not even know about population genetics, which contains all the math you want?
Do you know what mutations are at the chemical level?
What, if anything, makes you think they have a purpose?
“Incidentally, the first half of GENESIS Chapter 2 is merely a
commentary or an explanatory note to Chapter 1. Chapter 1 is the sequence of
events: Chapter 2 (first half) is the mechanical detail. It is not, repeat, not,
in time sequence. The key to the mechanical detail is 2:4&5. Living species
existing before being tangible. Chapter 1 does give a big hint — find the word,
“signs”. That’s I.T. — information storage and transmission.”
You’re joking right?
From Wikipedia, “All but the shortest of these books have been divided into chapters, generally a page or so in length, since the early 13th century. Since the mid-16th century, each chapter has been further divided into “verses” of a few short lines or sentences.”
The bible was originally written without punctuation or spacing between words and even the NT was about a thousand years old before it was divided into chapters & verses – it was not originally written that way.
David Marjanović, re: Avo:
I’m now a grandfather.
Yes. I know I don’t look it. But I am. For the last 7 months or so.
And if I have anything to do with it, this kid is gonna be pretty fucking awesome.
Mendel was looking at a black box. But now, WE KNOW what makes it tick. The words of science destroyers of all ages. Excommunicate those who are not up to the exalted level of supernatural ‘knowledge’ of the self-proclaimed illuminati.
Notice PZ not here, trying to explain what he professes to teach?
There is no such thing as speciation events. There can’t be: you must not investigate your deity: it just does things, no questions asked, no need for science. Goddidit; enquire no more, lest thou be heretical heretics.
The sum total of the mechanism the evo-mists proclaim: Goddidit. You will only find intellectual dishonesty such as that evidenced here in places such as Islam, the bigoted side of Catholicism, various cults and queer denominational sects. It’s all here, in writing.
Timmy,
Making stuff up is fun and all. I used to do a lot of it when I was a child. Making up new universes, new characters, new animals, new situations. And then I would draw some of them and eventually my mother would ask me to explain all of it to her.
I would get so excited. I’d tell her about this group of people and how these animals do this and how the story all fits together and it sounds soo cool and exciting and
ah
those were the days.
My mother, as sweet and as encouraging as she is, would still be left dumbfounded by the complexity of the world I had created at 8 or 9 years old. Not in a “I don’t understand way” but in a “Holy shit that kids spent a lot of time making up a bunch of bullshit” kind of way.
You Timmy remind me a little of myself in those days.
Spending a lot of time fantasizing and making up bullshit.
The rest of us are just here as a way for you to release all that pent up energy.
I think we’ve now come to the time when we tell you about what a nice day it is and shouldn’t you be outside riding your bike?
I’m not trying to discourage your imagination Timmy, I’m just telling you that there’s a big wide real world out there and it’s pretty fucking cool too.
And it has the extra bonus of being, you know, real.
Perhaps you should spend some time becoming familiar with it, because it seems to me you are pretty distanced from what really goes on out there.
Just some friendly advice.
Now run along and be a good boy.
/headpat
Tim Heywood, #449:
So, are you giving up even trying to make sense? You’re like some kind of meta-irony generating machine at this point.
Do you ever plan to address the very real, very observed facts that have been presented here, or do you plan to continue your slide into incomprehensibility?
nigelTheBold, also Avo welcome to grandparenthood! Cool, isn’t it? =^_^=
I’m completely certain that, with you as a grandparent, your grandchild is indeed going to turn out pretty fucking awesome.
And will make more sense in six months’ time than a certain Heywood is making here.
Tim (née Phillip) Heywood:
I apologize for my last post. I realize you’re trying to cope with a lot of stuff coming at you at once, and I know it’s hard. I’ve been there.
It’s just, you don’t seem to admit anything. You don’t acknowledge other folks when they present observed reality. You don’t address parsimonious hypotheses (or even theories) that explain those observations.
Y’know what would be good at this point? Some acknowledgement of these other ideas. Hell, even some acknowledgement of the facts. You still haven’t admitted we observed a “speciation event” (as you call them) 60 years ago, with some fucking flowers. You still haven’t acknowledged that there are indeed explanations of how momma horse and poppa horse arrived on the scene at the same time. (That is, a whole lot of them arrived there together, based on common genetics and an IT algorithm known as the drunkard’s walk, with a bit of selection thrown in for good measure.)
Engage with us, Phillip. Don’t automatically assume you know better, just because you think we’re incorrect. Explain to us why we are incorrect, in points of fact, not in assertion. And try to explain why our actual positions are incorrect, okay? Not some straw-man of our positions. Yeah, I know this means you might have to educate yourself a little more, apply your vast and unchallenged intelligence to this problem a little more.
But at least argue against what we truly understand as reality. Okay? Not some “dogs give birth to cats, or evolution doesn’t happen” bullshit you’ve been spoon-fed by other creationists.
Can we at least start from there?
Tigger_the_Wing:
I sure as fuck hope so. I’m certainly not gonna watch my language. This is a kid that’s bound to get in trouble in school, if I have anything to do with it.
“What, you believe in God? Oh no! You’re parents haven’t told the truth about Santa, have they?”
It remains amusing watching how le pauvre Heywood demonstrates the utterly uselessness of creationist thinking with each and every post he makes, all without realizing it.
He is doing more in the service of supporting evolutionary theory by demonstrating the consequences of denying it than even txpiper ever managed to do.
Tim Heywood:
You are attempting to topple an entire area of science, and you worry about authority now?
I myself am an autodidact. But one of the things I learned as I taught myself everything I know is, “Authority doesn’t mean anything.”
So why are you so intent on calling out PZ? Why aren’t you dealing with the folks here who have been dealing fatal blows to your bullshit?
He’s got things to do. You don’t merit more than the occasional snide comment.
Did you even bother to read the explanations? It sounds like you think that this is some kind of dogmatic assertion.
You’re completely ignoring what people are saying. That’s not the actions of a decent, honest person. That’s the actions of an ignorant, little coward. You’re not an ignorant, little coward, are you Not-Tim?
Prove it. Engage with what people are saying. Respond to the people who’ve taken the time to respond to you. Show a minimum of fucking decency, will you?
A couple of points. PZ is on his way to Ireland for a conference. So, for the next few days, he will be in planes, being at and speaking at a conference, socializing and sightseeing.
He has no need to take time out to deal with yet an other internet creationist dumbass.
Also, Tim, you are hardly the first ICDA to call out PZ. And you will not be the last. And, frankly, he does not have to take the time out to deal with you. Thousands of careers based upon the research of evolution is proof enough that your god soaked word games are meaningless.
If you have proof that evolution is impossible, all you need to do is submit a paper that proves it. Calling out PZ will not cut it.
Now, get to work. PZ owes you shit. And the people here responding to you also know of what they talk about. And they enjoy playing with ICDAs like you. That is all you get and all you deserve.
Several examples were given, with links, on this thread.
The toxic brain-rot of creationism has apparently robbed le pauvre Heywood of his ability to read.
Of course, those examples are a minority. A speciation “event”, as a single, “instant”, one-generation thing, is indeed very rare. From the point of view of directly observing things in real-time, speciation is a process, not an event.
And in the other context in which the term speciation “event” is used, that of looking back in time with the fossil record, what counts as an “event” can span a period of tens of thousands or even a few million years.
Ken Hamm runs away.
“Timmy” Heywood runs in circles.
Hey not Heywood, if you want to show the scientific community your idea, and set yourself up for a possible Nobel Prize for showing evolution is wrong, try publishing here (Science) or here (Nature), instead of self-publishing, which admits your losership to the world.
Be sure top come back and share the reviewers remarks with us. We can always use a good laugh here.
And you call yourself a geologist.
Tch.
PZ has been on a conference in Ireland all his academic career. Hope he brings back some Irish elixir. Don’t worry, he won’t show up here. Never has. But he’s miles ahead of the heel clicking Nazi minority of ‘professors’ who automatically wipe anyone who dares to disagree, in the grand tradition of the persecutors of Galileo, Bruno & co.. . Wipe everyone, that is, except people such as A.I.G., whom they can use to reinforce their own delusions. But they all have to earn a crust and earning a crust isn’t always easy. Good wishes to ’em all.
Nerd-O, like I said, earning a crust in the educational sphere isn’t always easy and with people such as yourself involved, I would turn around and walk away. No-one could do any different. After claiming to have read my entries which of course delineate evolution, you then say I attempt to disprove evolution. The only evolution I deny is the religion, the faery tale for grown- ups, the mind-torment reliant upon contorting half facts into mantras and a creed. If your standard of honesty is a product of your ‘evolution’ ….. your ‘evolution’ speaks for himself — always the same, always deceptive, always so boring you could make big money in petroleum exploration.
The rank idiocy of the nazi-olutionists is so breathtaking it can scarcely be believed. I am not talking about people who politely decline to discuss religion. More power to them. I am referring to those who are not polite and cannot stop talking about politics and religion — the mark of a person who is unsuited to an educational setting. Even children can think. It goes without saying. But here we have a class of person who not only can not reason: who demands that the State fund them to drive even children out there into mental contortions.
You walk into a builder’s yard. Scattered about are various building materials. You walk about and in process of time, see a simple stack of said materials, arranged symmetrically. The infant beside you says, “Look, Dad, someone built a cubby”. You say, “Foolish child. Moron. Can you see the person who built the cubby? That cubby proves that no cubby builders exist”. “Set yourself free, my child, throw off your chains.”
It I was to go about, repeating, in public, the indescribable mental black hole to which this travesty of ‘science’ and ‘education’ has driven grown men, people seriously would suspect I may require medical assistance. I am seeing why it is that most of the world’s leading thinkers, scientists, statesmen, you name it, either had no education specifically in their field, or were failures at being educated. Their education had to do with real existence in the real world. Modern ‘evolution’, the half-truth upheld by non-truth, has to do with drugging the human mind into unreality.
Tim Heywood:
I ask you to give an actual scientific defense of your postion. You respond with an peyote-induced rant.Yet you claim to be on the side of science. In spite of that, the more something approaches actual scientific research, the more you ignore it.
I’m confused here. Are you actually practicing the art and discipline of science, or are you just fucking with us? Because it really seems the latter.
I’d really like an answer.
I don’t have a religion. Only a million paper in the scientific literature, making my decision a scientific conclusion. You, fool, have only you imaginary deity and book of mythology fiction, making you the one with religion. So fuckwit, where is your scientific evidence published in the peer reviewed scientific literature. Because, if it isn’t there,it doesn’t exist except as religious nonsense. So WHERE IS YOUR SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE BY THE RULES OF SCIENCE, WHICH I , A FORTY YEAR PRACTITIONER, WOULD AGREE IS ISN’T RELIGIOUS BULLSHIT?
nTb:
1. Congrats on the grandchild!
2. As usual, I am humbled by your patience and goodwill. That Not Tim Heywood hasn’t strained it beyond accepqtable tolerances is an indication that you are growing more saintly rather than less. Congratulations on that too. However. The answer to your question seems evident. Not Tim is not practicing anything that one might call an art or discipline, unless fucking with us is an art or discipline. Maybe it is. But it isn’t the art or discipline of science.
Antiochus Epiphanes:
Thanks! Near as I can tell, I had nothing to do with it. I mean, other than having a child of my own.
The completely fucking with his head until he has no choice but to accept rationality? That is something for which I might take credit. When the time comes. Assuming it all works out.
One is related to the other, here. My daughter was raised fundamentalist (long story, repeated elsewhere, won’t go into here). But, a result of that is, I’m even more patient than normal. Yes, that might come as a surprise to long-time pharyngula folks, that I might be even more patient. But it’s true.
For instance: in this case, I recognize that Phillip doesn’t know a good God-damned about evolution. How can I hold that against him? He’s as ignorant as my grandchild! Now. it might be fact that Nehemiah (my grandkid — no teasing!) can’t speak, and so doesn’t understand the difference between a genotype and a phenotype. As it turns out, neither does Phillip!
So it’s pretty easy to give Phillip a break.
I mean, he’s not much older than me, right? So his ignorance is excusable.
I’m not entirely sure why he keeps shitting his diapers, but my grandkid does that too. So I’m okay with that.
@ c’est ne pas une
pipeTim HeywoodOooh, snarkiness!
I doubt PZ wants to waste time on inarticulate godbotherers. You will have to make do with those few Hordlings that enjoy poking you with a stick and laughing at you.
Where on earth did you get the idea PZ is some Big Authority ™ ? You act like a kid who doesn’t want to play with the other kids (us), but whines endlessly for the attention of an adult. If PZ doesn’t play Mommy you have a snit.
…
With regard to your writing skills: Sorry Nottim, they suck. There is just no nice way to say this. Your communication skills are atrocious.
.
Following Rev‘s example, I shall tell you a story of my childhood too.
When I was young, I would delight in beating out paradiddles on the back of cake tins. I thought I was really good, but adults felt less so. The result was that, if I wanted to play at all, I would have to do so by myself and away from others.
The point of this tale? Is that I really thought I was good, and in tune. That the beats in my head were coming out just right in the percussions. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. It was the most godawful cacophony. Insisting on people listening to me would not help it. Practicing by myself would not help either, because I knew sweet fuck-all about drumming.
Really, there were only two options: Give it up or find an instructor. I eventually gave it up. (Perhaps the world missed out on another Phil Collins?) An instructor was also out of the question. Who could school my brilliance?
The point of my banging was – in retrospect – simply that I liked the fucking dreadful racket.
Nottim, if you like howling your resentment of gods and scientist at the wind, by all means do so. Just not in earshot please. You are making a lot of noise, but not providing us with any coherent information.
@ nTB
What about “opaTheBold”? Opa is a variant of Oupa (Dutch/Afrikaans: “Grandfather”, lit. “old” + “father”) Especially in Afrikaans, it is an honorary title: “Oupa Nigel”, that might be used even outside of the family.
“Avo” is a common term for “Avocado Pear”.
Teach him about Jeebus? Have him actually read the babble (even beyond GENESIS)? One can’t really fuck with someone’s head more than that.
That 464 is a thing of twisted beauty. Sweeping bald assertions about the falsity of evolution, denial of the religious basis of creationism, Galileo Gambit, academic conspiracy, Godwin, watchmaker argument… I think I filled two bingos.
You are so persecuted it is a wonder that the “Nazi” have not killed you yet.
What a squalid and frightened little world you dwell in.
Ummm, I realize I am not as intelligent, insightful, experienced, or entertaining as Not-Tim, but if PZ never shows up here, who was that @371? Who writes the blog posts? How come you never see PZ and Chris Clarke together…?
….
Not-Tim, the dishonest cupcake-
You have used up your allotted troll time. We need to replenish our supply of feed. Please take your stupidity elsewhere.
Oh yeah “queer denominational sects” (which is ironically one of the funniest things notTim has said if you say it aloud) reminds me…
“
We can add homophobic creationist pissant to not-Tim’s sterling qualities.
Rev BDC @450:
I hate to break it to you, but there really isn’t a real world out there.
I have it on good authority :)
See?
Proof! Only one guess who wrote the above…
@ Tony
Aside from suspecting that the sum total of all the world’s “honest researchers” is equal to one, Tim-not-Tim‘s homophobia is not surprising, given that he trumpeted his bigotry upthread.
I would be interested to hear from him how he manages to square his porn-hypothesis with the simple fact that all higher animal’s populations have significant portions displaying homosexual behaviour.
I have a suggestion as to why this may be, in the obvious absence of “widespread public porn/indecent dress”. Well, generally animals don’t have clothing at all, so we already have one reason right there.
But as regards porn: Though animals generally (except for humans and panda bears) don’t have access to porn, that obviously cannot be a cause. But, and this is a big BUT: They have sex in the open, in the full view of YHWH and of all those impressionable young animals. This, in effect, is nothing less than “public porn”! No wonder we find homosexuality amongst all the animals on the planet. The straight animals are fucking!
nigelTheBold:
Congrats on grandpa-ism!
****
Btw, I do not think engaging not-Tim will ever be fruitful. I did a search for him (using his real name, rather than a borrowed one, which would be dishonest) and oooh boy. After checking out each hit on the first two pages, I found his incomprehensibility on display anytime he commented. He does not engage with the substance of criticisms against him and he speaks in the same gibberish word salad on display here.
Do you consider yourself a “leading thinker”? I ask because I’ve heard this kind of talk before and it usually comes from people with a outrageously inflated idea of their own brilliance.
Then there’s the fact that you’re simply wrong. It’s true that those who come up with great break-throughs are usually those who can think “outside the box”, but that’s not the same as not being educated. The scientific genius is one who can transcend the knowledge of the day, not one who is ignorant of it.
When people get involved in subjects where they have no training (formal or self-guided) they tend to spout an enormous amount of nonsense. It’s not uncommon for an expert in one field to get the idea that they’re also an expert in another field, and get themselves into a great deal of trouble. This happens a lot with evolution, specifically. Non-biologists talking crap about evolution is pretty much par for the course.
And then Timmy, after being confronted with a hard dose of reality, exploded into a million kook shaped pieces, scattering himself across the wide universe.
Millions of years later new civilizations will find these pieces and point to them as evidence of the Great Starfart. They will write books about it and use it to scare little children into going to bed, telling them
“You better go to bed or Timmy the Confused Ogre will force you to listen to his tales of befuddlement and conspiracy for the whole night, never letting you rest. In the morning he’ll spew thick ooze all over your room causing you to be dumber for having had listened to him.”
“OH NO!” the children will say, and the run right off in their little footy pajamas and head straight to bed.
“I have no religion” (Nerd -O).
Your God always turns up in the end. He is the one who “did it”. He is the one you will certainly call on when facing down terror. There are no honest hard-line atheists (your constant deception bears that out!) — there is technically no such thing as a real atheist because even the word atheist would require an intelligence and a source somewhere. It didn’t happen by chance. Not unless chance has suddenly become intelligent. The word atheist cannot be found in the Bible — fools, lost people, people without God and therefore without hope — yes; but no such person as an atheist.
Try looking up, ‘Animism”. Try various Eastern and mythical religions. They tend to be nature-cyclical-self-creating. But you will be forestalled by the Bible: “Men worship the creature [Nature, making it supernatural] rather than the Creator.”
A person’s God inevitably makes an appearance somewhere — people turn to their religion when all else is lost — this little cheer squad under the conductorship of a master clown is merely like you and me, turning up the radio so we can’t hear the news. Reality is terrifying.
Oh Timmy. Is this what you’re reduced to now?
Let’s get it straight: We really are atheists. We don’t worship nature. We’re not going to convert on our deathbeds. Evolution isn’t about chance. Your bible is not an authority on jack shit, least of all word definitions. The source of the word “atheist” is human beings.
Stop flailing randomly, calm down and just talk to us like a normal human being. Can you pretend like we’re just sitting at a table in a diner, with a cup of coffee and a muffin, and we have a conversation like normal, sane adults?
Mind you, that does mean you’ll have to listen to what people are saying and respond to it. Can you do that?
How can it? It doesn’t exist except between your ears as a delusion. You haven’t shown any evidence otherwise….and you word isn’t and never will be evidence.
Unevidenced OPINION dismissed as fuckwittery. Try again, when you can cite some non-religious literature.
The universe happened by chance. Evolution happens by chance (random mutation and natural selection), but my atheism isn’t by chance. After I read the babble cover to cover, I realized what bullshit it was, and there was no evidence for you imaginary deity. It just faded away, like the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and other phantasms adults tell children to believe in.
Since the babble is book of mythology/fiction, and you haven’t show otherwise with solid and conclusive evidence, it is a meaningless quote from a fictional source. NOT CONCLUSIVE OF ANYTHING.
How can it, since it doesn’t exist. Your continued assertions are not evidence, just your delusions. An eternally burning bush you can point to is evidence….
Hey, you know what other word cannot be found in the Bible?
Geologist.
Glad to know you don’t exist, you fraud.
Nonsense. Geologist comes from the roots of geo-, meaning earth, and -logia, which reduces to the root meaning “to speak”. Obviously, this refers to the fact that God brought the Earth into existence via the Logos, the word, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
And if that doesn’t do it for you, I’m sure I can cook up some numerology to prove it.
When you see dragons under every rock, it must be.
I call shenanigans.
Oh, I thought that smell was the red snapper thawing for dinner….
Other words that are not found in the Bible include “trinity” “internet” “antibiotic” and “America.” Do these cause problems for you, Tim-who-is-not-Tim? Is their lack any more relevant than the one you mentioned? Explain the reasoning behind your answer.
I will give you this Timmy, you are one of the higher quality kooks we’ve seen here recently.
And by higher quality I’m not talking about the substance of your words but the depth of dumbassery and kook value contained therein.
I just love Pharyngula. Starfarts, decaying porcupines, goats on fire, sniny things and all.
Don’t expect me to stay about (I really don’t do head trips) and we are presumably wasting our time waiting to see if PZ is serious about origins science education and peer review, but I have ten minutes before the next job. I don’t make a habit of this sort of intellectual ‘entertainment’.
“Other words that are not found in the Bible include “trinity” “internet” “antibiotic” and “America.” Do these cause problems for you, Tim-who-is-not-Tim? Is their lack any more relevant than the one you mentioned? Explain the reasoning behind your answer.”
There is, ‘try- nitty’, which is the quote above, found in the 67th book of the Bible, REVELATIONS 2. Internet were lots of fishies. That’s there, try MATTHEW MARK LUKE and JOHN. Antibionic man is there too; that’s PZ: and America is where it’s all at (when it’s not somewhere else, such as on the summit of Mt. Popacetle on the horns of a dilemma) so that’s there 2. In Rev.’s 2. You know, keep at it, you’ll graduate yet.
Heywood, you do realise PZ’s is a professional pedagogue (specifically, a professor of biology) and not just a blogger, right?
(He could hardly be any more serious about it!)
—
PS Have you yet discovered his email address? :)
PZ doesn’t give a flying fuck about your inane OPINION, is in Ireland atteneding a confernces, and you understand nothing about Peer Review. Which is anyting your write being critiqued by PZ, Chas, Amphiox, Myself, or any number of biologists who know you are blowing it out of your ass….
Since the book you quote is one of mythology/fiction, since, you haven’t bothered to demonstrate otherwise with evidence, and you WORD never is nor will be EVIDENCE……nothing but meaningless blather from a delusional fool, believing in inane presuppositions, not the reality of the world…..
Or in other words, in addition to being a lying fraud, you’re just another damn jackass troll.
No wonder no-one takes you seriously.
“Hi there, I’m Philip Bruce Heywood, and I’ve got this awesome theory that magically explains magical species magically coming into existence from my magic God! But first, let me show you my bum!”
Most people: Roll eyes, delete troll spam.
“Wah! Wah! Deleting my precious words is just like torturing me and setting me on fire!”
More words not found in bible:
Australia. Queensland. Kangaroo. Koala. Wombat. Didgeridoo. Thylacine. Wallaby. Eucalyptus. Emu.
(Oddly enough, the bible, like Australia, is full of sheep.)
Oddly enough, the Bible, like Philip, is full of shit.
Glen Davidson
kookaliscious
More words not found in the bible:
Species. Vivification. Pre-canbrian. Heywood.
kook also not found in the bible
yet, here we are.