How is one orgins story considered better than another

[abaris]

Too complex a distinction for the likes of drippy.

They don't even look at the evidence presented. I recently posted a video in which AronRa explained the difference between the law of gravity and the theory of gravity for school kids. Obviously that's still too much to handle for some.

[robvalue]

I'd like to give a short presentation about all the credible religious evidence we have received, worldwide, in the last 2000 years.

Thanks for coming.

[abaris]

Thanks for coming.

Thanks for nothing.

[robvalue]

More atheist experience, referring to what I was saying about believers not believing their own beliefs. Don baker is some kind of bullshit-slicing logic ninja.

http://youtu.be/8HkNN0ctgKk

[Anomalocaris]

Drich, you're like a kid in kindergarten trying to teach his teacher how to read.

Kids in kindergarden can be taught.

Drich is the unteachable truculent illiterate adult retard who insists writting is no better than his doodles.

[Esquilax]

Seriously I'm confused. You said you weren't going to re-evaluate what you believed, and now you say you do all the time?

I do re-evaluate my beliefs in accordance with new evidence coming in.

Am I to assume that you were not willing to take a fresh look at the info being discussed, that your re-evaluation process it alot like a confirmation bias? That you are willing to only consider infor that supports what you already believe?

Just asking.

No, it's actually that you didn't offer any information. What you did was assert by fiat that we should re-evaluate everything we know because the way we know it is through someone else telling us. But assertions aren't information, and moreover I disagree with the basis of what you were saying because I don't just believe things because I was told to by scientists, as I explained in my first post.

The short answer is that you offered nothing that would prompt me to re-evaluate anything, you just demanded that I should due to your own faulty conception of how rational people come to their beliefs.

haven't discarded any evidence. I simply Identify the faith needed to accept a given interpretation when said theory can not be proven.

I didn't say it was a bad thing I am just calling a spade a spade.

It's funny that you say you know science, but then in this post demonstrate that you don't understand the scientific method at all. Science is probabilistic; the theories we accept are tentative conclusions made due to the fact that they have the highest probability of being true based on the available evidence. We can't "prove" anything with perfect certainty because there could always be evidence out there we haven't taken into account, but there's no faith involved in accepting any given theory because I won't accept them the moment the evidence no longer supports them.

If you're asking for perfect certainty then you don't understand science and your position is a misrepresentation. If you understand the probabilistic nature of science then there is no faith involved, merely tentative explanations based on all the observable evidence. Either way, you're wrong.

Like it or not, Belief in guess work no matter how thorough, still takes a measure of faith. I am just point to that faith as being the same type of faith needed to believe in anything else that is unproven.

Faith is belief in spite of evidence, not belief based on incomplete evidence. This is the equivocation that lies at the heart of your position; it doesn't take the capital F Faith that religious people have to believe in something absent total certainty. You're using a word that has two meanings, while pretending that it only has one in order to dishonestly make your point.

Besides, an actual mature person would recognize that outside of a handful of very simple things, absolute certainty is impossible. One should always be willing to revise one's position in accordance with new evidence, and this is precisely why no faith is required to believe in scientific theories, because the moment there isn't sufficient evidentiary support, you stop believing in them.

You seem to be operating under this assumed conclusion that there are scientific theories for which there are no evidence, but I'm not willing to assume that conclusion too. Either present your case or stop talking about it, but don't just expect us to take you seriously just because you can type the sentence "some science has no evidence."

Again evidence become trivial when said evidence can not be directly linked via expermintation or tangible observation.

But it all can be. Are you talking as vaguely as possible just to avoid having to make a specific case, and hence be proved wrong?

Think about that for a minute. The core of this theory was first thought up in the 1200's. At that time one can not argue it was a sheer matter of faith to accept. Now from that time to this and everything we have learned the core hypothesis has not changed.

Which theory? You haven't named a specific one. Unless you're talking about the big bang again, in which case the physical evidence we collected in the meantime has only confirmed its accuracy.

Another example: evolutionary theory existed before genetics. When genetics was discovered it only refined our understanding of evolution because it provided a physical mechanism for the evidence we could already observe. The discovery of new information does not necessarily invalidate all of the old.

It's like the whole stegasaurus arguement we had a while back. The first one was compiled out of 60 some odd different dig sites 150/200 years ago. and not one has been found complete. The closest we have come is to construct one out of 40 different dig sites from around the world, and yet this 200 year old compilation of bones it still the scientific standard.

What is the liklyhood that the guy who first put all these different bones together from around the world got it all 100% correct right out of the gate?

Why are you expecting perfect results the first time? The first attempts at aviation couldn't cross oceans, that doesn't mean we take international travel on faith.

Then why is it we teach out children that the model of a stegasaurus is not only accurate but have been indoctrinated to not question it?

Flat earth theory any one?

Don't just assert indoctrination, prove it. Just because religion conditions people to never question authority, don't assume science works the same way. There are whole channels, called peer review, designed for scientists to question established models. That's literally all that happens there.

Now again apply this to a theory that is well over a 1000 years old, and ask yourself did the orginal guy just get lucky? A time travler maybe?? Or with the naked eye did he observe all that was needed to compile the core principle of the big bang... And yet 'supprisingly' the theory did not need to be changed in 1000+ years. It was simply added on to.

First of all, when the big bang was first proposed it is what's called an "hypothesis," not a theory. It isn't confirmed, it can be proved wrong, and it is based on observations.

Second of all, you are breathtakingly ill informed as to how the big bang model came to be. The observations that led to it began in 1912 so it isn't 1000 years old, and those observations were of the Doppler shift of what was then called spiral nebulae. What those shifts showed was that those nebulae (they're called spiral galaxies now) were receding from the Earth. Years after that, the Friedmann equations- derived from Einstein's general relativity theory- denoted that the universe may be expanding, rather than conforming to the competing steady state hypothesis. It would take the work of Edwin Hubble and others to complete the journey, but the point I'm making is that it is a journey, composed of numerous different observations that slowly coalesced into a complete picture. It was not one guy who "got lucky," it was numerous people of different professions and backgrounds and cultures adding data into the scientific community based on real observations that could be replicated later, that led to the eventual conclusion of the big bang. Your ideas of how this worked are not only dead wrong, they are also grotesquely simplistic and childlike, denoting the complete lack of research you did on this topic before you decided how it actually happened. To be clear, I found the observations that led to the theory in about five minutes of research.

Thirdly, the theory did not need to be changed? What would you call all those additions you acknowledge exist, if not changes?

You're just upset that they didn't lead everyone to give up and just say goddidit, aren't you?

Seriously? do you not see any faith being expended in this line of thought?

I guess, but then, since that line of thought is just a fantasy you concocted rather than just looking at how it actually went down, I also don't need to believe that it happened in reality. You believe your fantasy of the history of the big bang via faith, but I can just go look it up. Yet another reason that I don't need faith.

Those new details don't arise in a vacuum Drich, they are discovered one by one in a context of all the established things we knew before. They need to fit into a pre-existing set of facts, not completely destroy all that came before it to build up a new set from scratch. If I'm a scientist and facts A, B, and C are established as true, and then we discover fact D, D needs to be incorporated into a worldview where A, B and C exist, because they still do.

That is how all comfirmation bias works.

It's also how rational inquiry works. What's your point?

What I see is 1200 year old guess being supported by everyone who fancys himself as an 'educated' odgy: person.

It's not a guess if it has evidence behind it... which it does. I linked to it above, so you have no reason to keep believing that it's a guess based on faith anymore.

and doing so by the same method I believe in God. and yet somehow thier faith is commended while my faith is looed down upon..

Except that it's not the same method at all; as I've aptly demonstrated, what you think goes into these scientific theories is not what actually happens, in the slightest.

]
This is you the atheist equilivant of "If God does not exist, then dis prove He exists."

shifting the goal posts

No, motherfucker: "please present evidence for your claims," is not shifting the goalposts, it's a simple application of the burden of proof. I've shown you the evidence that goes into the scientific theories, and you're saying it's insufficient or false. That's on you to prove it.

Not a strawman as I was speaking topically. I was going for red herring.

Why would you go for any logical fallacy when you could just address the topic at hand?

It's real simply if one can not demonstrate their 'scientific theory' through the scientific method more over if a theory is based in the intangiable then it is often shuttled to the fringes of science. The big bang while many consider it a staple of scientific discovery does indeed fit the defination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fringe_science

Well, given how well you've shown that you don't understand anything that has gone into the development of the big bang theory in your previous posts, I think we can safely dismiss your appraisal of it entirely.

Incidentally, even if we didn't do that and took you seriously at all, another completely baseless assertion ("the big bang theory has no evidence and is fringe science") is not a proper justification for your other assertion.

The problem with all of the theories you mention are based from a relitive single point of time and space. In truth we have only one data point and yet claim mastery over all of time and space. this is loonacy. In what other scientific endeavour can we claim mastery if we have only one data point?

One data point? We have many data points- I listed three in the part of my post you quoted alone- that point to the big bang model being accurate. And if you're talking about the universe being one data point, well, the universe isn't a data point at all, it's the topic under discussion. Things within the universe are data points about this topic.

What's also hilarious is that you've now gone from "you believe this stuff on faith because you don't have any evidence," to "you only have one piece of evidence!" You're contradicting yourself.

Again the theory can not be validated because it speaks to the intangible. How can we test the intangible. Rather the theorist is what gets validated.

You can piece together what happened in the past based upon its continued effects in the present. What you're doing here is essentially rehashing the old "were you there?" canard, but you don't have to be able to physically interact with something to know things about it. You're still just talking out your ass.

I have no doubt there are evidences all around us. What I am saying is it takes faith to attribute them to the current theories of orgins

Bullshit. It just takes an informed view of how physics works, and a willingness to work in probabilities rather than the insipid "belief/no belief" binary you insist on working in. These equivocations you keep making are profoundly dishonest.

Again, All 'Facts' concerning the big bang are not what is being debated here. It is intrepretation of said facts. If the theory changed has changed/augmented even once, then a measure of faith is indeed required to hold to the newest version.

Not if that new version came into being on the backs of new discoveries about the universe.

[robvalue]

Why do these guys come here?

Do they enjoy being ripped to shreds on a daily basis?

I really don't know what they get out of it. They must know by now that we are not convinced by semantic deception, logical fallacies and attacks on science. I'm not at all saying they shouldn't come here, it's just that they continue to use the same dishonest methods every day and seem to expect different results.

If God wanted us to believe any of this shit, we'd have believed it already. If he can't manage it, how do they expect do to better?

[Silver]

Be honest with yourself and acknoweledge that It all boils down to you pointing to a guy or a group of people who you believe to be credible because they are smarter than you, and what they think. And for them what they think is based on what someone smarter than them thinks, and so on goes the daisy chain.

Certainly, the ideas of others, mainly the brilliant Robert Green Ingersoll, set me on the path of understanding that it is illogical to believe in something for which there is no evidence to support its existence, but in the end I arrived at that reasonable conclusion not because others believed it but because my own thought processes, along with better than average reading and critical thinking skills, allowed me to reach the knowledgeable understanding that faith is absolutely useless.

Why shouldn't both accounts be taught side by side

I am certain it has already been stated, but there is no harm in reiterating something important. Anything in relation to religion and faith should not be taught alongside science for the simple reason that religion is utter bullshit.

[Mister Agenda]

Why do these guys come here?

Do they enjoy being ripped to shreds on a daily basis?

I really don't know what they get out of it. They must know by now that we are not convinced by semantic deception, logical fallacies and attacks on science. I'm not at all saying they shouldn't come here, it's just that they continue to use the same dishonest methods every day and seem to expect different results.

If God wanted us to believe any of this shit, we'd have believed it already. If he can't manage it, how do they expect do to better?

They think they're ripping US to shreds.

[Esquilax]

Why do these guys come here?

Do they enjoy being ripped to shreds on a daily basis?

I really don't know what they get out of it. They must know by now that we are not convinced by semantic deception, logical fallacies and attacks on science. I'm not at all saying they shouldn't come here, it's just that they continue to use the same dishonest methods every day and seem to expect different results.

If God wanted us to believe any of this shit, we'd have believed it already. If he can't manage it, how do they expect do to better?

They think they're ripping US to shreds.

But then, we already knew they were delusional.