(February 6, 2014 at 11:30 pm)Mothonis_Cathicgal Wrote:

(February 5, 2014 at 4:11 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote: This makes me sad, and frustrated:

22 Messages from creationists to people who believe in evolution

5,10,22 Made me laugh my ass off

Lets see if waldorf can prove the existance of angels,talking snakes, and prove to me that my lord Talos didnt create the world.

Well, durr - everyone knows Talos is an ascended mortal, you heretic, you.

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Young in comparison to what? I believe that if you start with the axiom that God does not exist you will arrive at an age for the Earth somewhere around 4.5 billion years (for now, this number will probably eclipse five billion soon). On the other hand, if you start with the axiom that God does exist and that the Bible is what it claims to be (as I do) then you will arrive at the conclusion that the Earth is just over 6,000 years old. Same evidence; two very different conclusions. Both of these positions are far more consistent than a Christian who believes it is billions of years old or a materialist who believes it is thousands of years old.

Hey Stat, glad your surgery went alright and you're doing okay. You do understand that the age of the earth doesn't speak to a god actually existing, and so you can examine the evidence for it without beginning from a position on the non/existence of god, right?

Given this possibility, where the question of divine origins doesn't even enter into the picture, what conclusion would you say one would draw from the available evidence?

(February 6, 2014 at 8:53 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 4, 2014 at 10:29 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Divine regulation would imply tacit approval of the practice.

How?

Regulation of a practice by any authority is an indication of acceptance or approval by the authority of the practice. Conservatives are usually the ones making that point whenever anyone talks of legalizing pot or prostitution.

This is especially true if said authority had the power to forbid the practice if it chose to do so. All Yahweh had to say is "one man and one woman" and it would be Yahweh's law. Yahweh certainly wasn't shy about laying down the law on sexual matters in great detail on far more uncommon practices, so why not? Instead, Yahweh chose to regulate the practice of polygamy, including how the children of different wives were to be treated.

David took many wives and the Bible specifically calls him a righteous man who always did the will of Yahweh, save for the matter of Uriah. It doesn't say "save for the matter of Uriah and taking multiple wives."

What evidence can you present that Yahweh disapproved of polygamy, yet somehow allowed it to be common practice by his chosen people?

(February 7, 2014 at 1:22 am)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 8:53 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: How?

Regulation of a practice by any authority is an indication of acceptance or approval by the authority of the practice. Conservatives are usually the ones making that point whenever anyone talks of legalizing pot or prostitution.

This is especially true if said authority had the power to forbid the practice if it chose to do so. All Yahweh had to say is "one man and one woman" and it would be Yahweh's law. Yahweh certainly wasn't shy about laying down the law on sexual matters in great detail on far more uncommon practices, so why not? Instead, Yahweh chose to regulate the practice of polygamy, including how the children of different wives were to be treated.

David took many wives and the Bible specifically calls him a righteous man who always did the will of Yahweh, save for the matter of Uriah. It doesn't say "save for the matter of Uriah and taking multiple wives."

What evidence can you present that Yahweh disapproved of polygamy, yet somehow allowed it to be common practice by his chosen people?

Yahweh, you mean the guy who says beating slaves is permitted so long as they can get back to work within two days? The same guy who said stone the apostates? I think polygamy is the least of his problems.

Statler Waldorf Wrote:If you believe that all that exists is matter in motion and there is no transcendent governing agent then how can you possibly know that the Universe operates the same now as it did in the past?

I have a question for you: How do you look into the night sky, see the stars, know that the nearest one is 4.4 light years away: and not know that the universe operates the same now as it did in the past?

NASA Wrote:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble...40283.html
The parallax of nearby stars can be measured by observing them from opposite points in Earth's orbit around the sun. The star's true distance from Earth can then be precisely calculated through straightforward triangulation.

Once the true distance is known, an exact value for the star's intrinsic brightness can be calculated. Knowing a star's intrinsic brightness is a fundamental prerequisite to estimating its age.

Are you saying that their calculations are wrong?

What is it exactly that you believe? I'd rather not build a case against an unknown opinion. How old is the earth in your opinion, and how do you explain all of our observable universe through your 'unobserved' proposition? Or are you just saying no one was there, therefore no one can know?

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: You seem to be skipping a few steps. If you believe that all that exists is matter in motion and there is no transcendent governing agent then how can you possibly know that the Universe operates the same now as it did in the past?

Wow, how did I miss this?

If you're a young earther, you already believe that there's some weirdness going on with starlight, right? It was either created in transit, or was faster in the past, or some shit. And you've got a god whose main communication to mankind is full of accounts of how he suspended or altered the physical laws of the universe to his own whims, and an ancient evil in the form of the devil whose whole deal is finding ways to trick people:

How do you possibly know the universe operates the same now as it did in the past? Science, at least, has consistent observations of these things.

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:08 pm)whateverist Wrote: Quite the ambitious reply. But all that aside what do you yourself believe to be the case regarding the age of the universe and the origins of man. Do you yourself seriously believe the earth is so young and that evolution so limited as Ham believes. Frankly I don't think so.

Young in comparison to what? I believe that if you start with the axiom that God does not exist you will arrive at an age for the Earth somewhere around 4.5 billion years (for now, this number will probably eclipse five billion soon). On the other hand, if you start with the axiom that God does exist and that the Bible is what it claims to be (as I do) then you will arrive at the conclusion that the Earth is just over 6,000 years old. Same evidence; two very different conclusions. Both of these positions are far more consistent than a Christian who believes it is billions of years old or a materialist who believes it is thousands of years old.

I actually believe the Darwinian mechanisms are more powerful than most Darwinists do in a sense.

Are you taking into account radioactive decay rates? That the mutation rate would have to be so much higher to cram millions of years of change into a few thousand, that reproduction simply wouldn't be viable. Same Evidence? I very highly doubt that...


You simply do not appear to know enough about geology, physics, and genetics to actually digest the available evidence. Then again simply reading a story book takes far less work than getting a real science education.

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:11 pm)Chad32 Wrote: It sounds like trying to say micro and macro evolution is different. It isn't. The only difference is time. Physics don't change over time. The universe works the same now as it has always been. We come closer and closer to understanding everything all the time, as long as we continue to use the scientific method.

You seem to be skipping a few steps. If you believe that all that exists is matter in motion and there is no transcendent governing agent then how can you possibly know that the Universe operates the same now as it did in the past?

Hold on a minute now. Since we've been keeping track of these things, they have not changed. Ever. Science only makes one baseline assumption, and it's an assumption we all make, and that is that the universe is consistent. It's not that we have direct evidence that the laws of physics were not any different a few thousand years ago, but we have no reason to think that they were, and all of our current evidence points to them being unchanging.

Do you have any evidence to support not only that the laws of nature can change, but that they have changed? Do you have any evidence to doubt the mountains of data science has accumulated that the universe is consistent?

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:11 pm)Chad32 Wrote: I will trust science over thinking that there's a firmament over the world, which rests on pillars, and has a throne on top where the lord sits. Or at least he did until Noah's flood came, as Ken Ham believes.

Trust science? You would have trusted science in the 1920s when Steady State Theory was the accepted theory? Would you have trusted science prior to Darwin? What about prior to Pasteur? Newton? Einstein?

I trust them to the extent that the evidence allows. Before we had powerful enough telescopes and satellites, we could not observe the evidence of the universe expanding and the red shift of light from galaxies as they speed away from us. When we did, we studied it, made hypothesis and prediction based on our models. Then we set out to test our models and predictions to see if they were accurate, by doing things like launching the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite in 1989. It did just that by detecting and mapping the microwave background radiation that was predicted to be there by George Gamow in 1946, and earlier measured by Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson in the 1964 (and by accident too). Science found evidence, made a prediction, tested it, and found it to be sound as the evidence confirmed the prior prediction.

Science, it works bitches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Back...on#History


Biology prior to Darwin had a far greater penchant for inserting God into everything, and now you try to turn around and blame it's prior mistakes and shortcomings on science? That's rich. It was a different era and Biologist like Richard Owen would attempt to postulate evidence for a divine creator by lying about the evidence. He was debunked and his claims found to be fraudulent by other scientists (like Thomas Huxley) using actual evidence.

"During the reaction to Darwin's theory, Huxley's arguments with Owen continued. Owen tried to smear Huxley, by portraying him as an "advocate of man's origins from a transmuted ape" and one of his contributions to the Athenaeum was titled "Ape-Origin of Man as Tested by the Brain". In 1862 (and on other occasions) Huxley took the opportunity to arrange demonstrations of ape brain anatomy (e.g. at the BA meeting, where William Flower performed the dissection). Visual evidence of the supposedly missing structures (posterior cornu and hippocampus minor) was used, in effect, to indict Owen for perjury. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Owen


Science is a self correcting and ever improving field. You point to the mistakes of history and attempt to use that to discredit science, entirely ignorant that science's ability to change is it's greatest strength. The only way to find and improve flaws in science is with better science.


Can you even name one instance where our understating of the universe has been improved by assuming the supernatural or divine? One instance where a supernatural explanation has replaced a scientific one?

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:20 pm)whateverist Wrote: Well fine then I concede that knowledge about how old the earth is in any precise sense is a fool's enterprise. So on some nit picky level we can agree to remain agnostic about the precise age of the earth.

Yet you laugh at those who disagree with you on the matter?

That's the purpose of the margin of error, in the case of the age of the Earth the margin is 1%.

The age of the Earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years, meaning that our best current evidence places the Earth to be between 4.39 and 4.59 billion years. Can we tell you the precise day, minute, and hour when the planet formed? No. Do we have enough evidence to make a laughingstock out of a 6000 year old Earth? Yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:20 pm)whateverist Wrote: But how far do you wish to take it? Would you in the same way insist the earth might be less than 25 minutes old since an all-powerful genie could make anything happen?

If such a conceptual scheme could make sense of reality, I do not believe it can however.

Simple, an all powerful Genie made the entire universe 25 minutes ago; unfortunately for us this is an evil and deceptive genie. So he created us all with memories and histories prior to 25 minutes ago, he made the entire universe look billions of years old even through it's only 25 minutes old. He created photons mid trajectory between us and the other stars and galaxies. He created all of human history and made it seemingly fit together. Radioactive decay rates that indicate a billion year planet? He created them too. He created suffering in our past and will allow it in our future. Any and all evidence that we could possible find, he molded in such a way as to hide and obfuscate his involvement. He has created everything to merge seamlessly together within his simulation, and there is no possible way within the simulation to detect the Evil Genie or know what he has done. For all intents and purposes, the Evil Genie is unfalsifiable and the simulation (for those inside it) seems to operate as if he never existed.

Really, if you can't imagine something like this, then your imagination must have atrophied from a complete lack of use. Seriously, have you never seen The Truman Show?

Now just replace Evil Genie with Yahweh and 25 minutes with 6000 years, and that's basically the massive pile of bullshit you ascribe to.

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:20 pm)whateverist Wrote: The available evidence for the age of the earth is more than sufficient to rule out an age of 25 minutes - with whatever caveat you find necessary to cover mischievous genies or brains in vats.

We agree, the Earth is not 25 minutes old.

But you don't know, you just lack the evidence to have any reason to think it's true.

Just like there is no evidence for a 6000 year old Earth, which is incidentally about 1000 years after the Sumerians invented glue.

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:20 pm)whateverist Wrote: The evidence is equally compelling to rule out an age of 6000 years.

Only if the Bible is false, that’s my point.

Is there any evidence that the Bible is accurate? Well, the Bible is not proof of the Bible, so you have to look outside of it. Everything outside of the Bible points to a planet and universe all far older than 6000 years. Is there reasons to doubt the Bible? Plenty, if you actually care to study the polytheistic pagan origins of your religious texts. Try reading A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong, it's simple enough that even you'll be able to (hopefully) comprehend it. Failing that, here are the Cliff Notes versions.

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:20 pm)whateverist Wrote: Silly stuff aside, extrapolating what what we observe going forward to what has preceded the observable we can be quite sure the earth is billions of years old.

I still think you are jumping steps here. As a materialist what’s your reason for believing in past and future uniformity of natural laws? I see no basis for it within the realm of atheism.

All of our data points to them being uniform, and even you accept this in your day to day life. If you burn your hand in an open flame on Monday, you're not going to do it again on Wednesday and expect not to burn yourself again, because the universe appears to be consistent. Outside of your Bronze Age book of myths, what reason do you have to think that the rules of the universe were different in the past?


Also please explain how a 'lack of belief in gods' (you know, atheism) somehow entails any assumptions about the universe?

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:23 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote:

Statler Waldorf Wrote:How do you know what we observe today is what happened in the past? That was Ham’s entire point, you cannot know that, therefore you cannot know how old the Earth is.

You mean unlike the Bible?

I am not following you. Explain?

You cannot a priori assume the Bible's accuracy without outside verification. The same reasons you use to disparage scientific dating (not actually being there personally) applies to your Bible as well. Where you actually there 6000 years ago? No, and thus your own objections are shown to be as worthless as your near insurmountable ignorance.

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:39 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Obviously waldork thinks whoever wrote the fucking bible was looking over 'god's' shoulder when he created the earth!

No, I believe God wrote the Bible silly old man (2 Tim 3:16).

Right, quoting the Bible does not prove the Bible. Sorry, but do try harder in the future.

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:40 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Oh, he was there?

No, but Min is old enough to have been. He's got tubes of Bengay older than me.

(February 7, 2014 at 2:02 am)Esquilax Wrote:

(February 6, 2014 at 9:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: You seem to be skipping a few steps. If you believe that all that exists is matter in motion and there is no transcendent governing agent then how can you possibly know that the Universe operates the same now as it did in the past?

Wow, how did I miss this?

If you're a young earther, you already believe that there's some weirdness going on with starlight, right? It was either created in transit, or was faster in the past, or some shit. And you've got a god whose main communication to mankind is full of accounts of how he suspended or altered the physical laws of the universe to his own whims, and an ancient evil in the form of the devil whose whole deal is finding ways to trick people:

How do you possibly know the universe operates the same now as it did in the past? Science, at least, has consistent observations of these things.

I'd add that Statler has presented a classic case of how the ad hoc hypothesis can be abused, mixed with a dash of argument from ignorance.

Paraphrasing slightly:
"The light in the night's sky from Andromeda is 2 million years old."
"Maybe the laws of physics worked differently in the past." (ad hoc)
"What do you base that on?"
"It coulda happened." (argument from ignorance)

If there is one thing waldork has in abundance it is ignorance.

(February 7, 2014 at 2:27 am)EvolutionKills Wrote: Simple, an all powerful Genie made the entire universe 25 minutes ago;

Great rebuttal. May I suggest you missed a point:
That the Evil Genie included in its simulation a prevalent though false memeplex represented by a collection of ancient documents. This 'bible' was edited by committed priests and described a creator God who brought the universe into existence 6000 years ago. Coincidentally there is also record that this collection of documents provided thousands and thousands of man-years of gainful employment free lunches for clerics up until the present. Though they've only been real free lunches for the last 25 minutes.


Sheesh last Tuesdayism is hard to deal with. I can't do the mental gymnastics needed to make up (implausible) explanations why such a preconception is True when it differs from observation. I guess I'll just stick with reality.