Strong Nuclear Force

The popular belief at that time was that the earth was the universe's center, and everything moved around it while it stood still. Galileo challenged that, but the majority opinion forced him to keep quiet. He said those words in defiance to the opposition. And guess what? He was right, it seems.

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I see parallels with Charles Darwin, anyone else?

Originally posted by alexgb00
Joe, i don't want to sound old-fasioned, but, see, when we pick-and-choose some things from the Bible (that some things are literal and some are figurative) then it makes us doubt more important doctrines (like "did God really perform miracles before the pharaoh," "was Christ really resurrected," and "are heaven and hell literal places"). Buddy, it makes me sad that you take the creation figuratively. It's your choice, though.

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You seem to take all scripture literally. I was wondering if you could do something for me. Interpret the following scripture literally:

For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. - John 6:55, NASB

God is Almighty, Joe. He could've used the BB, or He could've done it through His Word. He created light by speaking, He could do the same to the earth and everything on it and everything separate from it. Don't you think so?

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Well, I know that God created the universe. And I know that the BB is one of the more likely theories of how it happened. I think that both of those statements can be true without diminishing each other.

Originally posted by chickenman
I see parallels with Charles Darwin, anyone else?

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Absolutely. There are other parallels, too. They're both dead. So with that common characteristic, it follows that they must share common ancestry.

Originally posted by alexgb00
As for discoveries, would i get a $500000 bonus for inventing mint-flavored earplugs?

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Probably not, but I'll bet you could make a bundle selling them in the right stores.

Originally posted by Jerry Smith
Just don't be too quick to judge a particular finding of science to be a "lie" - merely because it doesn't mesh well with your religious understanding of the world..

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Whoa!!! ROFLMKO!!! Look who's talking. Mr. "if a creationist site doesn't keep its information up-to-the-minute they are out to intentionally deceive people with their lies, but if an evolutionist site leaves information out of date, I'll just overlook it."

Are you a schloctor, or did you just take the hypocritic oath for fun?

Originally posted by alexgb00
Oh yeah, i believe the earth is about 6000 years, if you trace the names and ages in Genesis 9.

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Just in case you think you're totally alone, you're not quite. I'm simply not as certain as it sounds like you are. I have no idea how old the earth is, but I suspect it is a lot closer to 6,000 years old than it is 14 billion years old. I also believe in a 6/24 creation, but it wouldn't phase me if it turned out I was wrong. It's not that I think the text in Genesis 1 is anything but literal, and I'm perfectly confident that G~d is capable of creating everything in 6/24. What I'm not certain of is whether I fully understand some of the Hebrew and expressions in Genesis 1.

By the way, I wonder if the non-believers here have any idea how much information contained in the geneologies starting with Genesis 9 is directly traceable to today (in other words, confirmed by our current state of knowledge). That's only 8 chapters away from the stuff they say is fairy tale.

nepetrely,your belief that science is just a big lie, only out to debunk biblical stories is simply amazing.You seem to have such as disdain for science yet you run for science to save you if you get injured or sick.Science is responsible for our standard of living,should we all just "pray"for diseases to cure themselves?Perhaps we would all be living in log cabins with no electricity if everyone chose your path of enlightenment.assuming disease had'nt already wiped us off the face of the earth.

Whoa!!! ROFLMKO!!! Look who's talking. Mr. "if a creationist site doesn't keep its information up-to-the-minute they are out to intentionally deceive people with their lies, but if an evolutionist site leaves information out of date, I'll just overlook it."

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This grows tiring:
1) The creationists who run the site made the "no pelvis with ambulocetus" claim recently and without the plausible deniability of applying it to an illustration in their rebuttal to the PBS series. Their claim was a substantial claim of fact and was in error. The fact that they leave those articles up and do not at least note the fact that the pelvis has been found and did not contradict the 1994 research and the illustrations they criticize, coupled with the fact that they make the false claim again without applying it to an illustration reveals that they don't mind using false information to persuade.

2) You haven't even shown that the illustration in the NAS book is out of date. To the extent that an illustration can be considered information, you will need to show that it is false information before you can hope that I will share your criticism. To date, the NAS hasn't done anything to suggest they are interested as a group or as individuals in using false information to persuade.

Are you a schloctor, or did you just take the hypocritic oath for fun?

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Being productively wrong is nearly as important to science as being right.
Being sarcastically wrong is just small.

Alex, you claim that a christian must not pick and choose from the bible. Fair enough. Now lets see if there is anything that you pick out of the bible, like weeds from the garden, and choose not to follow shall we.

Do you work on the Sabbath - and that just aint paid work either? Should people be killed for working on the Sabbath? Do you observe Saturday as the Sabbath (the seventh day in the 10 commandments), or Sunday?

"Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the Lord: whoseoever doeth work therein shall be put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day." (Exodus 35:2)
A man was once stoned to death for gathering firewood "as commanded by Moses" (Numbers 15:32-36)


YOur teenage son had better watch himself if he disobeys you about his crufew! If he is late comming home again, you are just gonna have to kill him, especially if he gives you any lip.

"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them; Then shall his father and mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of the city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear." (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)

"And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:17) "For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he that cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)


Not too many brides would survive the wedding night if christians did not pick and choose this one out of the bible.

"If any man take a wife, and go in unto her . . . and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid . . . and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die . . ." (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)

Do you believe that you think with your heart or your brain? Cause if you think that you think with your brain, you are not beleiving in the bible. Or do you conviniently overlook those many parts of the bible.

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)
"And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child, and set him by him." (Luke 9:47)
"As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." (Proverbs 23:7)
"For the word of God is quick, and powerful...and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)
I had better stop using up so much bandwidth: Judges 5:15, I Chronicles 29:18, Esther 6:6, Job 17:11, Psalm 10:6, Psalm 33:11, Jeremiah 23:20, Isaiah 10:7, Daniel 2:30, Acts 8:22.

Better not put up the ol' christmas tree or any wreaths this year.

"Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. . . . They are altogether brutish and foolish." (Jeremiah 10:2-8)

If your daughter gets raped by some sadistic pervert, don't call the police! No, instead start sending out those wedding invitations, and you can use the money that rapist paid you for your daughter to cover the cost too.

"If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days." (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)



So please tell me would you do as the bible saysin these cases; troublesome son, sexually assaulted daughter, christmas trees, sabbath, and where exactly does your thinking cap go. Lets see if you pick and choose to ignore those little tidbits. Or is that particular stuff not ment to be taken seriously/literally. Oh, and please address each one of them.

Originally posted by npetreley
I have no idea how old the earth is, but I suspect it is a lot closer to 6,000 years old than it is 14 billion years old.

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Actually Nick, you're right. The scientifically accepted age of the Earth is 4.55 billion years, which just happens to be a lot closer to 6,000 than to 14 billion.

Morat, throught the course of this argument, i have tried to not use dogmatic statements like "God did it." I meant this thread for Christians to discuss. But still, you say things like "natural selection does it." If you think that's a good substitute for "God did it," knock yourself out. Just don't assume your beliefs are right while telling me mine aren't good.

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 How did God do it? Natural selection works in a simple, explainable, testable way. Differential reproduction.

   You say "God did it", and I'm as clueless as I was before as to how it really happened. I say "Natural selection did it" and you know that enviromental pressures resulted in differential reproduction, which led to a change in allele frequences in a population. Depending on the example, you can see what alleles and what pressures.

  "Natural selection" explains antiobiotic resistance in bacteria. We know the buggers are dying in that enviroment, and that, because of natural selection, any of them that manage to tough it out better than others will contribute a greater percentage to the next generation (by virtue of being alive). With DNA analysis, we can even see what mutations, and what alleles changed from generation to generation.

   Can you think of any "God did it" explanation that is that predictive?

See below for an explanation.

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  You think triangulation is the only way astronomers measure distance? How..strange.

Funny, i didn't notice the universe zooming away from me. Did you, Morat?

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  Funny, the earth spinning under my feet doesn't make me motion-sick either. I don't notice the Earth zooming sideways through space at a rather good clip, either.

  It's amazing what you don't notice.

You're thinking in the right direction, and i like that. But the problem is that everyone gives scientific measurements and reports the benefit of doubt. We (the public) can't know for sure what the truth is regarding the "flow." How many of us here have measured the distance to Betelgeuse by our own instruments?

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   I see. It's a "conspiracy". Hey, it's worth a shot. When all else fails, call them liars.

I said let's drop it, and i told you what i believe. But if you want a perpetual argument, i guess i can do that. Here we go:

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  I'm not dropping it, because it's a stupid claim.

Evolution uses abiogenesis for one leg and the BB for another. Without these, it will fall apart. If people lost their silly faith in abiogenesis and the BB, evolution couldn't continue.

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   Really? Can you quote me any paper on biological evolution that discusses the Big Bang or abiogenesis. I'll even take a textbook.

    I'll wait for you to support this.

You think math doesn't involve experimentation?

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  I know it doesn't.

 Ask Seebs. He's a programmer, he'll tell you that when you write a program, it involves a lot of numbers. One way to test it is to assign different values to variables and see if the answer comes out the same.

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   Funny. So am I. You wouldn't believe the number of math courses you need for a Computer Science degree.

  Programs involve lots of variables. Programs aren't math.

Same in algebra: y=ax+b.  Before you can find x-intercept, you will need to know the x and y, and the slope of the line.

Science isn't always goggles and Erlenmeyer flasks.

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    That's not experimentation, dear boy. And you're somewhat wrong. First off, when solving for an X intercept, you know y is zero. So you only need to know A and B. But since "y =ax+b" is the generic formula for any line, this isn't exactly rocket science.

   Where's the experimentation there? I plug in numbers, I get different equations with different X intercepts. So? That's not experimentation, that's drawing differnent lines.

Don't back out. Answer for <I>before</I> and <I>after</I>, if you can please.

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&nbsp; I'm asking for clarification. If you're unwilling to give it, I can't answer. *shrug*. It's not my fault you're unclear. You stated you weren't aware of anything "during the Big Bang". I asked if you meant "before" the Big Bang or "after" the Big Bang. The Big Bang itself was, depending on how you look at it, a fast event over the moment it started, or a long-drawn out one still going on.

&nbsp;&nbsp; So, clarify your question and I'll answer it. I don't read minds.

omething doesn't happen by itself. Like someone said above -- it's cause-effect. For something to take place, there needs to be a cause. This even works in physics. For something to move, for example, something causes it to move.

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&nbsp; Cause and effect are macroscopic concepts, bound to space-time. Without time, there is no cause and effect. And quantum events ignore it anyways.

&nbsp;&nbsp; Take two atoms of U-235. Watch them. After a period of time, one will decay. The other will not. What caused one atom to decay, but not the other? Nothing.

&nbsp;&nbsp; Decay is causeless. It happens, the mechanism is well understood. But no event caused Atom A to decay, and not Atom B.

Why not? One reason -- because it is a foolish belief. Why do i presuppose God? Same reason you presuppose evolution -- because i believe in God.

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&nbsp;&nbsp; Presuppose evolution? Don't be silly. I don't presuppose evolution anymore than I presuppose that a binary search is an excellent way of searching a sorted list, or that it fails miserably&nbsp;if it's not sorted.

&nbsp;&nbsp; I don't presuppose God. I didn't presuppose evolution. Evolution is the best explanation for the facts I've found, and is so well supported that it's quite hard to deny. And yet, I hang around places like this, just waiting for someone to come up with something that'll make me rethink it.

What do you think is matter? I thought that it is everything that is made of particles. Light, animals, ammonium perchlorate, etc. If you think a car doesn't change when it goes under a semi trailer, i'd like to sell you one. Matter <I>changes</I> -- elemenary physics students know of <I>states of matter</I>. It's not a constant.

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&nbsp;&nbsp; States of matter? Good lord, Alex. You think ice is different than water?

&nbsp;&nbsp; Matter stays the same. Whether the car is in pristine condition, or crushed into a 2 foot cube, the protons, neutrons, and electrons are still the same as they always were.

&nbsp;&nbsp; Steel, ice, gold, alloys, gasses....the properties of these things are properties caused by the specific combination of unchanging particles they're made up of.

&nbsp;&nbsp; Gold is different than nitrogen because gold has more protons, neutrons, and electrons than nitrogen. Which gives it different properties. But those protons, electrons, and neutrons properties never change.

No need to apologize. Except for the bad example. <I>Matter</I> doesn't imply molecules or atoms.

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&nbsp; Matter is subatomic particles. Your problem is you're trying to take a collection of these particles, point out that different collections have different properties, and claim that thus fundamental laws change.

&nbsp;&nbsp; Bollucks. Those properties never change, anymore than the properties of "2" change in &nbsp;"2+3 =5" and "2+5 =7".

&nbsp;So you think that in the elements we have now are the same as those in the BB? I don't think they've changed either, but i don't believe in the BB.

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&nbsp;&nbsp; Elements? Nope. I said subatomic particles. Don't change my words, please. Heck, right after the Big Bang, all you had was a nifty soup of free quarks. As the universes cooled, they formed protons, neutrons, and electrons.

&nbsp;&nbsp; But strangely, the properties of the quarks never changed. And over the last 15 billion years, the properties of quarks, electrons, neutrons, and protons have never changed either.

&nbsp;

That's a pretty good selection of scientists who died long before we had any real information about this. If you go further back, I can provide a list of great scientists who thought the sun moved around the earth.

I think the theory of evolution has contributed a lot to the world; it has formed the basis of a lot of modern medicine, for instance. What do you think "disease-resistant" bacteria are? Evolution.

&nbsp; Many Christians are population biologists. And evolution has contributed in many ways. You just don't see it. Possibly because you've never looked. Biology would be nothing more than a collection of unrelated facts without it.

&nbsp; As to your list. Darwin wrote The Origins of Species in 1859.

Francis Bacon: Died in 1626.

Robert Boyle: Died in 1691.

John Hus: It's rather a common name. The one who followed Wycliffe died in 1415.

Kepler: Died in 1630

Emanuel Swedenborg: Died in 1772.

&nbsp;&nbsp; Is it just an accident that everyone on your list died before Darwin was even born?

&nbsp;

alex,evolution is indeed contributing to the world.such as molecular medicine,and research for diseases such as aids. genetics also.
whats has your bible contributed? what are you so afraid of?would your God allow evolution to destroy your belief?

-- Francis Bacon
-- Robert Boyle
-- John Hus
-- Johann Kepler
-- Emanuel Swedenborg

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If you are calling these people "Creationists", not as a slur on their scientific acumen, but on the basis of their belief in a creator, then Kenneth Miller, and quite a few other biologists and scientists who accept evolution are "creationists."

If, on the other hand, you meant to imply that they rejected the science of evolution because of blind prejudice, then you are unfair to them. Darwin hadn't either set forth his theory when they lived.

As to whether the theory of evoltuion has contributed to the world, a few points:

1) It has definitely contributed to our understanding of the world. I guess that you were talking about material contributions, though
2) It has contributed in some ways and stands to contribute in more ways in the future, as the basis for further understanding of biology (which may well be applied toward material gains).
3) It is contributing directly to our ability to understand disease, as seebs pointed out, and to get a handle on anti-biotic resistant bacteria.
4) We don't know how our enhanced understanding of the world around us might contribute in a material way in the future...

so....

&nbsp; You'd be somewhat hard pressed to name anything but trivial things "relativity" has added to the world. It's explained a few things, but...hasn't cured illness or made flying cars or reduced our dependence on oil.

&nbsp;&nbsp;

Can we "ditto" with Quantum Chromodynamics? QED has helped with or yielded some remarkable advances in superconductivity & elsewhere, but understanding of the strong force hasn't really yielded any practical material results that I can think of..

&nbsp; It's got my vote for coolest name ever. Quantum Chromodynamics. Such a cool phrase. The stuff it consists of is darn cool too, and if I ever go for my physics degree again, I think that's the field I'll be angling for, PhD wise.

&nbsp;

Morat-

You don't have a physics degree? You know a lot, is it just from reading on your own?