Most atheists do not know what science says about our origins

[wollery]

In a Liberal Democracy it is all about WHO you know.

You are making my point, thanks.

Nope.

You have to prove that you know how to conduct research by obtaining a PhD, but once you've done that, provided you can get your work published, you can continue to get funding.

To get work published it must pass the scrutiny of other scientists, and that only requires that it is free of error and contributes to the scientific knowledge (i.e., it's original and/or new).

Robert Foot's Mirror Matter work is mostly laughed at by other researchers, but it gets published because there's nothing wrong with it mathematically, and it's original.

Mordehai Milgrom proposed an alternative theory to the generally accepted Cold Dark Matter theory. Few people think that it works, or can be made to work, in general situations. But he gets published because his work is mathematically rigorous and entirely original.

There are many other examples of scientists who get published because their work is rigorous and original, even though it is generally disregarded as fringe science, or completely silly, or ultimately worthless. They just happened to be the two who came to mind first.

 

[Paulhoff]

wollery, there be a troll.........

Paul

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

This is ridiculous.

Your proposition here is stating that anything which is not explicitly proven false is potentially true and within the realm of science.


You can not say that fairies do not exist because science has not shown that fairies do not exist!


This is just silly.

Well, there is a bit of silliness in what you seem to think I am saying. No, I am not claiming that all things not explicitly disproved are possible, though abiding by the definition of logical possibility they are.

I am saying that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially in a situation where we have only recently begun to address the issue. As mentioned previously, it would not have been correct to say in the first century that man cannot fly. It was true that no evidence existed at that time for men flying, but it was not a universal truth that man cannot fly, because we obviously can.

It is simply not the case that science shows that life only arises from life, or that the evidence shows that life only arises from life. We do not know if non-life can produce life unequivocably, but we have significant evidence that this will be proved in the near future -- there is a wealth of evidence pointing in that direction. Unlike fairies, who have no credible evidence outside of the next attempted gay equivocation joke. It may very well be that non-life can produce life, so the word "only" should be dropped from your statement.

ETA:
Or, rather, you should move the word "only" to a different part of the sentence. It would be correct to say that the only evidence we have is of life arising from life, but not that the evidence shows that life only arises from life.

 

[RandFan]

Throwing CT in there is pissing on the table and you know it!

You were the one that alluded to it.

Are you honestly claiming that scientists in a liberal democracy have the resources to work on what ever they choose?

A lot of them do. A lot of researchers work in academia and challenge the status quo all of the time. The facts are simply against you. Researchers frequently write papers trying to push new paradigms (ego, much fame and fortune awaits those who come up with something earth shattering). There is much, much evidence that this has worked. Jeez, just look at history. Where do you think all these nifty scientific ideas come from.

Marconi, Plank, Curie, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Watson and Crick, etc., etc. I could write quite a comprehensive list of hundreds if not thousands of researchers that have enlarged our understanding of the natural world and who have challenged existing paradigms.

 

[joobz]

Well, several inidividuals have presented the evidence that the universe hasn't always existed.

This statement is untrue!

hmmm...

You've dismissed the evidence, but never explained why, except for assertions that there is no evidence.

Regarding, life from life, You've said this but you have also admitted to the tenuous grasp we have on what life is in the first place. When we go down into the molecular biology and look at other "living/non-living" replicating systems (e.g., viruses, prions, self-replicating RNA...) life coming only from life is a rather nebulous statement.

 

[Prometheus]

 

[Paulhoff]

Lots of popcorn is good.

Paul



To bad the plot is so predictable

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

wollery, there be a troll.........

Paul

Maybe the title for this thread is wrong? Perhaps it should read something like: Most gnomes just want a little bit of attention.

 

[wollery]

wollery, there be a troll.........

Paul

Yes, and I'm having fun.

 

[arthwollipot]

This is ridiculous.

Your proposition here is stating that anything which is not explicitly proven false is potentially true and within the realm of science.

You can not say that fairies do not exist because science has not shown that fairies do not exist!

This is just silly.

Jerome, you have finally got it. What you have posted is absolutely true. The fact that you view it as "ridiculous" and "silly" doesn't matter, because this is how science actually works. Science can indeed not say that fairies do not exist. Anything which is not explicitly proven false is potentially true. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim that something (say, circular time) is true. It is logically possible for someone to demonstrate that something exists, or that something is true. It is not logically possible for someone to demonstrate that it is not. In the case of circular time, the burden of proof is on you, the claimant, to demonstrate that your proposition is true. You can't claim proof just because nobody has disproved it.

Say I have a theory that states that all swans are white. I can go around the world pointing to white swans and saying "this evidence supports my theory". But in fact it doesn't. The existence of white swans only supports the theory that white swans exist, which as I am sure you are aware is a mere tautology.

Based on this evidence it is impossible for me to say that "black swans do not exist". I have no evidence that black swans do not exist - only that white ones do. Similarly, there is no way that science can say "fairies do not exist", only that there is no evidence that they do. Common sense can say that fairies do not exist, but there is no justification for science to say it. This is how bigfooters and loch ness monster enthusiasts can still make their claims - because science cannot prove that something does not exist.

 

[wahrheit]

Lots of popcorn is good.

Paul



To bad the plot is so predictable

Too bad the mods don't want us to post kitten pics or play Mornington Crescent in the "serious" sub fora.

 

[Ocelot]

The Big Bang violates the laws of physics and math at t=0.

Not really. The mathematical models we use make no predictions for t=0. They are inapplicable. As such the big bang does not contravene any laws of physics and maths. The problem is that these laws have nothing to say, not that they say something in opposition to the big bang.


For analogy the law of gravity has nothing to say about electrostatic replusion. That doens't mean that electrostatic replulsion violates that law of gravity.

 

[Upchurch]

Jerome, you have finally got it. What you have posted is absolutely true. The fact that you view it as "ridiculous" and "silly" doesn't matter, because this is how science actually works. Science can indeed not say that fairies do not exist. Anything which is not explicitly proven false is potentially true.

This bears repeating.

There is always, always a margin of error in empirical science. There is always the possibility that some new piece of information will come along that will disprove or adjust current understanding. The key is to minimize that margin of error as much as possible.

Steady State Theory has explicitly been proven false. Currently, the Big Bang theory has the smallest margin of error. It is the most likely explanation given the information we currently have.

The burden of proof is on the person making the claim that something (say, circular time) is true.

Circular time, or the affirmative claim that science says that life only comes from life.

In the case of circular time, the burden of proof is on you, the claimant, to demonstrate that your proposition is true. You can't claim proof just because nobody has disproved it.

*ding**ding**ding**

 

[Paulhoff]

Maybe the title for this thread is wrong? Perhaps it should read something like: Most gnomes just want a little bit of attention.

Then they should find a human of their choice for that.

Paul

 

[Furi]

Too bad the mods don't want us to post kitten pics or play Mornington Crescent in the "serious" sub fora.

OMG!! REALLY.. its a good Job you told me otherwise I might have posted something like this by mistake

 

[skeptical]

Sorry, I did miss it.

No problem.

The dating is not certain, in fact it is a lot of circular guessing. The "earliest" rocks are deemed so because they show no life.

Actually, that's not correct. They are determined to be the oldest through radiometric dating methods. Most rock formations around the world cannot be dated to the earliest periods on earth, but there are few areas where the rocks date to around 3.5 bya or older. http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html

"Ancient rocks exceeding 3.5 billion years in age are found on all of Earth's continents. The oldest rocks on Earth found so far are the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada near Great Slave Lake (4.03 Ga) and the Isua Supracrustal rocks in West Greenland (3.7 to 3.8 Ga), but well-studied rocks nearly as old are also found in the Minnesota River Valley and northern Michigan (3.5-3.7 billion years), in Swaziland (3.4-3.5 billion years), and in Western Australia (3.4-3.6 billion years). [See Editor's Note.] These ancient rocks have been dated by a number of radiometric dating methods and the consistency of the results give scientists confidence that the ages are correct to within a few percent"

Significantly, there are no complex life forms found in any strata even close to this age. http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Tree_of_Life/Stromatolites.htm

Numerous radiometric dating methods agree on the ages, and the radiometric dating of the ocean floor can be compared against known average sea floor spreading rates to compare the dating at successive points along the ocean bottom as one additional method of independently verifying the dating. Not to mention, that the radiometric dating is based on well known principles of physics.

I'm sorry, but there is simply no basis for calling this "circular guessing". It's not guessing at all, much less circular.

ETA: Before you say that the quote above is just a claim and not evidence, the quote is explaining the evidence, the quote is not itself the evidence, the results from the tests are the evidence. In order to think that the claim is wrong, you have to believe that the scientists are just making up their data. If you are going to ignore the data from the tests, you have to explain what grounds you have for rejecting the data (i.e. lying scientists, bad instruments, etc).

 

[skeptical]

Well if you believe in the Big Bang, then there would have to be enough energy in existence "before" the Big Bang to create the 10 billion trillion stars that are estimated to be in our universe. The question then becomes where the heck did that mind boggling amount of energy come from?

Wouldn't it take more energy to create the God capable of creating that amount of energy?

I will grant you that the idea of an uncreated universe is passingly strange, and it is only because we are used to hearing it that we get used to not remembering how strange the idea actually is. In fact, the only idea that is stranger is that it _is_ created, because it just moves the question further back a step and now requires even more of an explanation for the creator.

The simple truth is, "Goddidit" is not actually an explanation at all because it doesn't actually explain anything.

 

[skeptical]

Jerome, I would also add that long before radiometric dating, geologists in the 18th century knew that the earth was on the order of at least hundreds of thousands of years if not millions simply by looking at the sedimentary layering in outcrops of rock around Scotland. James Hutton published his theories about the formations, providing copious evidence of layering and thrusting, and by the beginning of the 19th century it was pretty well accepted that one could tell relative ages of rock formations, though not yet absolute ages, and that the earth was very old indeed.

The process of sedimentation results in a layering that is obvious even to the untrained eye, so the lower layers are almost always older higher strata layers. And in cases where the higher strata have been uplifted via thrusts, this is almost always obvious from the surrounding terrain.

So it is doubly true that rocks are not classified as early because they contain no life. They are seen in the earliest strata, making them "early" by definition as rocks in lower strata must have been formed before rocks in higher strata, and they are explicitly dated via numerous independent radiometric methods, giving precise ages. There is simply no guesswork in any of this process.

 

[Paulhoff]

Another problem with very, very old rocks is that they have been heated under high pressures and lots of fossils are destroyed.

Paul

 

[Paulhoff]

The origin of life is a crucial part (if not the most important question) of the Theist/Atheist debate. Yet I contend that most atheists are not aware that all life (the blue whales, the insects, the elephants, the octopuses, the trees in the redwood forests, the butterflies, the cactus, the humans, all the dinosaurs, and the multi-millions of other plant and animal species) that have ever existed are descended from the "same" one celled organism. (according to modern science)

I would estimate that no more than 10 percent of all atheists know that modern science believes that all the millions of "plant and animal" species that have ever existed came from the "same" organism (and that first organism that we all came from was a one celled bacteria).

See the title is wrong right from the start, it should be

"Most THEIST do not know what science say about our origins"

That is much much better.

Paul