Mervin, I just noticed that you are a moderator here. I answered you earlier about this (I’m addressing comments in chronological order) and told you that I have been prohibited from discussing the world God said He created on this site. If you are able to reverse that decision so that we can discuss the topic, I’m more than willing to discuss Galileo, Copernicus, modern heliocentrism, etc. in light of the scriptures and science.
But until that time, don’t think that I’m not interested in the big bang idea. I certainly am interested in it - especially in trying to get answers to a lot of ideas within the main idea that don’t currently make any sense to me.
I started with asking how a structure that allegedly expanded equally from a center point could logically be said to not have a center at all.
Now I’ve moved on to rapidly expanding energy that has transformed into the first matter in the universe. As I see it, this new matter was still expanding out from the center point (which is apparently not the center) equally in all directions. My next question is how a bunch of atoms that are constantly moving away from each other at an extremely high rate of speed ended up in the rotating clouds from which the stars allegedly sprung forth.
Oh, I’m ready for it. It’s just that I’m not allowed to discuss it here. Ask Phil. He was right there when I was told in no uncertain terms that discussing the earth as described in the Bible was not allowed on this “Faith & Science” platform. (Phil’s also the guy who unceremoniously and very abruptly halted my first thread here - even though it was a very lively discussion involving many members at the time.)
Listen Mervin, I’m just trying to raise some questions and maybe get some valid answers without being banned altogether from the forum. I’m willing to discuss most anything… but am I allowed to? That’s the question.
Wait… I thought that extreme heat/pressure could throw off/reset the age clock. Are you now saying that the rock must be entirely melted for that to happen?
How so? Do you deny that dark matter/dark energy is a god of the gaps for BB proponents?
By the way, I have been asking and responding to questions in search of honest dialogue ever since I joined this forum. Heck, I started this thread looking for honest answers/dialogue about how a structure that expanded equally in all directions from a center point could be said to not even have a center. What answer/dialogue did you offer in response?
Now I’m asking how a bunch of atoms moving rapidly away from each other ended up in rotating dust clouds from which stars form. What answer/dialogue will you offer in response?
John 5:22-24… Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son…
whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged…
Here we learn that God has appointed Jesus to judge. Judges have the option of either punishing someone or exonerating them. We’re even told by our Lord that those who believe the One who sent Jesus are exempt from the trial altogether.
But what of those who don’t believe the One who sent Jesus? Will they also be exonerated? And if not, would you consider that to be “unfair” behavior by God and Jesus?
I guess I’m asking where you personally would draw the line. Would it be unfair of God to condemn a serial murderer? How about a baby rapist? What about someone who knows what God has said on a certain matter, but decides not to believe God on that particular matter? Would it be “unfair” of God to condemn that person?
What we and all other geologists have been saying from the very start is that argon does not accumulate in molten rock. Argon bubbles out of liquid rock. Argon only begins to accumulate once the rock solidifies. This means K/Ar dating measures the time since the rock went from liquid magma to solid rock. That’s how the method works. If you have older rock mixed in with flowing lava and the whole thing solidifies you will have a mixture of older and new rock. That’s what happened with the samples we have been discussing.
Redshift. There should be a correlation between the distance to galaxies (outside of our local group) and the amount of redshift seen in those galaxies. You should not see a mixture of blueshifted and redshifted galaxies outside of our local galaxy cluster (i.e. galaxies that are not gravitationally bound to our own galaxy).
CMB: There should be a cosmic microwave background that is coming from everywhere, and it should resemble black body radiation.
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: There should be specific percentages of lighter elements throughout the universe as determined by what we would expect from nucleosynthesis in a very hot plasma.
We have empirical observations that support all of these hypotheses.
Yes, I deny it. I also deny that these things are deities. Dark matter and dark energy are no more god of the gaps than gravity. Dark matter is the matter that doesn’t emit light but can be detected by its gravitational effects on luminous matter around it. Dark energy is the energy that is causing the accelerated expansion of the universe. It is no different than observing how masses are attracted to one another and calling it gravity.
Then why are you using mockery instead of addressing the science?
The same way molecules in air in our atmosphere are rapidly moving around but still stay on the surface of the Earth. Gravity.
I don’t recall any such decision being made to prevent you from discussing what the bible says about the earth. Probably what happened is some particular thread got shut down because you may have started using it just to platform stuff that you’re unable to support. That remains our practice here with any thread if we see that real discussion or engagement is no longer happening.
So it would appear that one of two things must be true here. Either …
The universe has to get a whole lot smaller in order to accomodate your understanding of how apocalyptic literature works.
…OR…
Your understanding of scriptures has to get a whole lot bigger to accomodate the reality of God’s much-larger-than-you’re-imagining creation.
Which of those two above things makes the most sense to you to change? It is blindingly obvious to everybody else here which of those two things is the more likely needed.
So… no, it isn’t that we won’t let you discuss such things here. Indeed, here you are discussing them - for the moment! What happens is if it becomes apparent yet again that you’ve been indoctrinated to the extent that no amount of reality or evidence moves you, and you are here only to platform your views without engaging with or answering any of the challenges put to you, then … yes; we’ll eventually put a stop to it. Again. Because the only pattern I see so far is that every one of your questions gets answered, and explained. Repeatedly. But you aren’t able or willing to engage with and answer any of the challenges put to you. We’re trying to help you towards a set of beliefs that actually do have some grounding in God’s created reality, as well as in Scripture. So far you haven’t demonstrated that you have any grounding in either of those things.
I looked back, and that thread was shut down because of redundant posts with it becoming a personal platform rather than a discussion. And those same standards continue to be applied, and in fact, may well be a little tighter in focusing on faith and science issues.
Here’s what: it would make the rock look younger than it really is. So a rock that gave a reading of, say, 200 million years, could then in reality be, perhaps, 400 million years old. The 200 million year figure would be a lower limit.
That doesn’t help the young earthist cause at all because the error would be in completely the wrong direction. Remember that you’re looking for some way of getting significant quantities of argon into a crystal lattice within a rock in only six thousand years. Since argon is an inert gas, such a thing is physically impossible unless you are going to claim some sort of miracle occurred, but the problem with that is that such a miracle would be (a) completely pointless both Biblically and scientifically, and (b) deceptive.
This is something that young earthists don’t even attempt to address when trying to debunk radiometric dating. They overlook the fact that even when radiometric methods can be in error, in many cases they still place lower limits on the time that has passed since something happened. This is just as true of the Mount St Helens dacites: even if they don’t date the eruption itself, they still provide conclusive evidence that something or other must have been going on at least 2.8 million years ago.
Wow, that’s some accusation session you guys had in my absence! Let’s review the facts…
I quoted Patterson verbatim from his book Evolution - saying that the one time historical event called “Darwinism”, “Evolution by means of natural selection”, “common descent evolution”, and “macro evolution” among others - is not a part of science because it cannot be observed, repeated, and tested. And he based his conclusion - at least in part - on what Popper had said.
I even volunteered without solicitation that Patterson had later tried to recant his statement…
Then glipsnort got involved saying that I misunderstood what Popper meant about “natural selection”, when Popper’s statement was actually: “I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme…”
Then I responded that either I and Patterson both misunderstood Popper… or glipsnort did.
Klax then made a snarky comment designed to demote Patterson to someone whose statements weren’t even worthy of consideration in the first place.
Then Randy pulled up some Patterson comment about being taken out of context by those darn evil creationists - something I had already volunteered 70 posts earlier.
Of course that made Klax change his mind about Patterson from “Who?” to the greatest mind ever, and worthy of Klax posting a BUNCH of his statements.
.
Klax offered that he wasn’t at first able to find a Wiki entry about Patterson before Randy’s help - despite me linking a Wiki article about him in Post 32 of this thread - the post where I first mentioned him.
.
Despite Klax’s newfound love of Patterson, he apparently remained oblivious to the fact that if Patterson is all of a sudden some genius worthy of being heavily quoted by him, then my argument against glipsnort is supported - because Patterson certainly understood Popper to be saying that the unique historical event known as Darwinian Evolution was not a part of science, because there is no way to test/falsify it. So like I said, either both I and Klax’s new hero, Patterson, are misunderstanding Popper - or glipsnort is. And glipsnort’s insistence that the Popper comment was about natural selection only, and not “Darwinism” in general, as it actually was, lends even more credence to me and Patterson.
Then a couple other members piped in with what I understood as veiled insinuations that I had been deceptive - either intentionally or not.
Yikes!
Listen up, folks. My quote of Patterson came straight out of his own book. The “anti-creationist” quotes from Patterson that a couple of you guys posted were addressing a question asked of him by Luther Sunderland about why - if evolution was true - he didn’t include any images of “missing links” in his book Evolution. And Patterson told Sunderland that if he knew of any, he would have included them.
Of course I didn’t discuss that interview or that statement from Patterson at all. So all of your anti-creationist quotes from Patterson have nothing to do with anything I quoted from him - and therefore cannot logically nor honestly be used to imply that I had been deceptive in any way, shape or form.
And even if I had talked about Patterson’s admission that he - a top expert in evolution - didn’t know of a single transitional fossil, did you even actually read Patterson’s “rebuttal”? My God, the man said that he would have to be more careful in the future when talking to people he didn’t know. What the freak does that mean? That he couldn’t say HONEST stuff about the failures of ToE unless he was sure he was among only true believers in the cause?
For crying out loud, he actually said this in one of Klax’s quotes… "In short the article does not fairly represent my views. But even if it did, so what? The issue should be resolved by rational discussion, and not by quoting ‘authorities,’ which seems to be the creationists’ principal mode of argument.”
First of all, I’ve read the entire article - and it does indeed represent Patterson’s views. At no time does Sunderland pretend that Patterson is anything but a tried and true devout evolutionist. Nobody would walk away thinking Patterson was a creationist or something.
Secondly, everybody quotes authorities about nearly everything! That’s where most of your arguments in this thread have come from… stuff you’ve heard from authorities and believe. Phil was just telling me about spectrographs of radiation from supernovas. Is that coming from Phil himself? Or was Phil conveying information that he’s heard from authorities on the matter? And since it is clearly the latter, shall we also lump Phil into the “unethical, deceptive and evil creationist” category for “quoting authorities as his principal mode of argument”?
I’m very happy that aside from Klax, what I understood as veiled accusations against my moral character were at least done in a respectful way - most even including the possibility that I was simply “mistaken”. I am, however, saddened that not one of you stopped to check if I actually had done anything deceptive or unethical - intentional or otherwise - before piling on.
I merely quoted Colin Patterson from his own book saying that the unique one-time event known as evolution is not a part of science because it cannot be observed, repeated or tested. That remains just as true now as when Patterson based it on Popper’s distinction between science and non-science and wrote it in his book, and as when I first quoted those words from his book on this thread.
Okay… who’s up for explaining how a bunch of atoms hurtling through space in all different directions ended up as huge rotating clouds of matter that turned into stars and planets?
What is and isn’t science does not hinge on what one dude says. You need something more than a suspicious quote from one person. You know, like an actual argument using logic and reason.
Darwinism in that context is natural selection.
And what does any of this have to do with the Big Bang?
And Patterson is wrong if that is indeed what he meant.
You haven’t shown that Patterson was true to what Popper intended.
Can you cite Popper ever stating that historical events can not be scientifically investigated?
I suggest that my previous post is an even better example of that.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
180
I know I won’t, one way or the other. If He grounds infinite, sempiternal being then He is competent. And takes full responsibility. If He wants to ■■■■ anyone He should start with Himself.
Thanks Ron. Yes, I was arguing in favor of the Biblical timeline of six literal days of creation, and was told by a mod (can’t remember her name right now) that if I take the Biblical age of the earth literally, then I’d be a hypocrite for not also taking the Biblical shape of the earth literally.
I told her she was absolutely right, and that I do indeed take the Biblical shape of the earth literally as well. That’s when she explained to me that I would certainly not be talking about that particular Biblical teaching on this site. Discussing the Biblical age of our world is okay here… but not the Biblical structure.
I have no clue why you’ve quoted mine or the many others you quoted here. I never asked you anything so I wasn’t expecting any response but please leave me out of any future grab bag posts you make. Thanks.
Let’s review the facts…