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Based on what he told me last night, “not understanding science but making an honest effort to do so” is actually an accurate description of his current attitude.
Kudos to Richard then!
An honest effort is all, I think, most anyone can expect as far as those on the forum that respond to his questions. The problem it would seem is that not a lot of progress is being made with him and people end up repeating themselves. It's one thing to question, it's another to have the same things told to you repeatedly only to ask the same question again. Creationism/geocentricism has been refuted. Period. Has been for some time in multiple ways. I'd say most people were, at one point early on at least, tolerant and helpful to Richard and now they've grown tired of reiterating everything with no apparent progress being made.
Even though he’s still a creationist and geocentrist, I don’t think that’s the reason why he keeps posting creationist and geocentrist claims here. The reason seems to be because he wants to see whether the people here are able to address them, and he also posts some of the arguments in favor or evolution from this forum in a creationist Yahoo group, for the same reason.
His arguments have been addressed. I don't recall off hand any that he's posed that have gone unanswered. Yet he still returns with more creationist/geocentric garbage (for lack of a better word). I'm all for asking questions, it's how we learn, but if you're not going to listen to the answer then you might as well not ask.
If he's looking for a "magic bullet" question that one side can't answer which will determine which side is right then he may as well stick with creationism/geocentricism since they can pretty much make up any answer ad hoc as they're not dealing with evidence, or reality for that matter. Eventually, if he asks enough questions, he'll find one that science doesn't have an answer for yet which, I assume, will only increase his faith in creationism/geocentricism. That will never happen with what he believes now since all the supporters of such twaddle can make up their answers on the spot without regard to it being factual.
I don’t think he’s really “abandoned” one thing or the other at this point; he’s still trying to choose between them. But making this kind of decision is more difficult when other people are making fun of him for it, rather than saying anything that could actually help him decide.
What more can they do? They've told him why his claims of a geocentric universe are wrong. I'm pretty sure he's been provided multiple links. I can only assume that if he were shown advanced mathematical refutations for his geocentric nonsense he's still not abandon the idea simply because he can find some geocentric supporter who will tell him it's bunk and that's all he'd need to hear. The same for creationism. Look at how often creationists arguments are refuted and they'd still rather take the word of some creationist huckster like Hovind over that of someone actually working in the appropriate field.
__________________ FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who
speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
take the word of some creationist huckster like Hovind over that of someone actually working in the appropriate field.
Actually, I take the word of Creationists working in the appropriate field.
__________________ You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
His arguments have been addressed. I don't recall off hand any that he's posed that have gone unanswered. Yet he still returns with more creationist/geocentric garbage (for lack of a better word). I'm all for asking questions, it's how we learn, but if you're not going to listen to the answer then you might as well not ask.
If he's looking for a "magic bullet" question that one side can't answer which will determine which side is right then he may as well stick with creationism/geocentricism since they can pretty much make up any answer ad hoc as they're not dealing with evidence, or reality for that matter. Eventually, if he asks enough questions, he'll find one that science doesn't have an answer for yet which, I assume, will only increase his faith in creationism/geocentricism. That will never happen with what he believes now since all the supporters of such twaddle can make up their answers on the spot without regard to it being factual.
I think his arguments against creationism and geocentrism in the CreationTalk Yahoo group have been addressed also, even if not as well, so that’s probably another reason for the lack of progress.
I agree that there isn’t any one specific question that will be a “magic bullet”, but there’s something almost as good I’ve found that’s what caused me to abandon creationism when I was 11 years old, and I’m hoping that Richard will eventually discover the same thing for himself. It’s that even though there are creationist theories that technically take all of the observable data into account, most of the time they ways in which they explain it rely on complex patterns being the result of pure chance. Dr. Liu’s explanation for ERV’s in this thread is a good example—basically, he claims that the only reason why closely-related animals always share the same ERVs is because God just happened to create them that way.
I didn’t really know about ERVs when I was 11 years old, so the thing that convinced me that young-earth creationism can’t be true was a different example of the same thing. In my case, it was the way in which different animals are sorted in the fossil record. According to YEC, the reason why each layer of rock contains its own unique set of animals is because these animals were sorted in different ways by the flood—either they lived in different ecosystems, or they lived in the same area but were buried by the flood at different rates. Yet animals whose fossils are found in the same areas, and whose bodies are physically so similar that there couldn’t have been a significant difference in how the flood would have affected them, are still always found in separate rock layers. Just among dinosaurs found in the United States, this is true of Alamosaurus and Apatosaurus, Captosaurus and Edmontosaurus, Allosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus, as well as Deinonychus and Dromaeosaurus.
There were (and are) only two creationist explanations for this. One is that these patterns are caused by nothing but random chance, and the other is that God is deliberately deceiving us by making the world look older than it actually is, and making it appear as though animals are related to one another when they actually aren’t. The second possibility should be unacceptable for a Christian, since if God is deliberately deceiving us with the way in which he created the world, then there’s also no reason to trust him about matters such as salvation. But for random chance to produce these sorts of patterns, without any sort of mechanism by which they could be produced, is virtually impossible.
In order to notice this sort of thing it takes a little while of looking at the data, though; in my case it took several years. So Richard may need more than a few months to notice this problem about the claims of the creationists he interacts with.
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As E. Mach, H. Thirring, P. Gerber, J. Lense et. al. have shown, a rotating shell of matter would account for these forces. Follow the calculations yourself. Show me the faults in these.
The fault is that there is not a shell of matter.
Why not have invisible fairies pushing on the pendulum? It's just as unevidence, and it works just as well.
__________________ "Since YAC [Young-Age Creation] epistemology accepts Biblical claims over physical evidence and human reason, logical or evidential arguments for evolution and/or against YAC are likely to be ineffective in converting most YACists."--Kurt Wise
Why not have invisible fairies pushing on the pendulum? It's just as unevidence, and it works just as well.
In all fairness to Richard, this is a pretty standard line of reasoning, especially in astrophysics and cosmology. In my research we regularly invent models and then assume them to be viable if the data fits (well there's a lot more involved, but this is more or less the central dogma). However, my guess is that the geocentrist web page doesn't actually have any papers by Ernst Mach which make the claims that they think it does. They may have inadvertently misunderstood certain scientific literature.
__________________ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:18)
Actually, I take the word of Creationists working in the appropriate field.
Too bad there aren't any Creationists actually working in the field. Or to be accurate, there is no one doing any research that points to Creationism. All they are doing right now is more apologetics and hand-waving.
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The human race will begin solving its problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously - Principia Discordia
All there is is metaphor - Robert Anton Wilson
Do not offend the Chair Leg of Truth. It is wise and terrible! - Spider Jerusalem
Rich, one of the issues is that there is the perception that you post, get refuted, then abandon the thread. Now, as aggie has told us, often you aren't just taking off, you are asking others about what has been said. What may help is acknowledging the replies you get and saying that you want to run the responses by some other geocentrists/creationists to see if they can resolve the errors people here have pointed out.
Actually, I take the word of Creationists working in the appropriate field.
Therein lies the problem.
__________________ The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies--
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The moment one looked in his face!
Too bad there aren't any Creationists actually working in the field. Or to be accurate, there is no one doing any research that points to Creationism. All they are doing right now is more apologetics and hand-waving.
Dismissing the existance of a group of people is also called handwaving. There are very few creationist scientists, even fewer that work in a relevant field. However, they do exist. Larry Niven said "there is no cause so noble you would find a fool following it". I would agrue the converse as well. There is no cause so foolish you won't find an intelligent educated man following it.
Rich is young. He's still learning about the world around him. If geocentricity can explain what he has been exposed to the solution is to expose him to more. That's what I'm trying to do by pointing out that a shell of matter only rotates on one plane and thus such a theory would require countless shells to acount for the various rotational forces we observe.
Also rich, if gravity were respected, the sun would need a gravitational counterweight to keep the point of orbit at the earth. It would be at a specific place along the line of earth's eclipse for any specific mass. The problem is there would be a large effect on all the other planets as well. we obvously don't see this.
Relativity would be out too since many stars would be moving faster than the speed of light.
Dismissing the existance of a group of people is also called handwaving. There are very few creationist scientists, even fewer that work in a relevant field. However, they do exist. Larry Niven said "there is no cause so noble you would find a fool following it". I would agrue the converse as well. There is no cause so foolish you won't find an intelligent educated man following it.
I think you missed my point. Yes, I realize that there are scientists who believe in Creationism. I don't know why well-educated men and women would believe that, but that is their perogative.
I was trying to make the point that there is no one who is using a Creationism model to do research. I'm not even sure how someone would be able to do that. Creationism doesn't make any predictions and doesn't have any positive evidence in it's favor. It's completely useless as a research tool.
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All there is is metaphor - Robert Anton Wilson
Do not offend the Chair Leg of Truth. It is wise and terrible! - Spider Jerusalem
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