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JohnC said:
Yes, I fully agree. The youths of today, no set beliefs, no morals. Where's the world going to end this way? By the way, which brand of glue do you use for your denture?nyjbarnes said:
There was nothing, no dimensions (ie length width height) and no matter/energy. All of a sudden, due most probably to quantum fluctuations that are observable today, these things came into being in a very small space. It is quite complicated and I only understand a very small portion of it, but it actually is consistent with what we know about physics at this point in time. For example, there is matter and energy coming into being from "nothing" all of the time. It is called the Cassimir effect. They are in fact "Little Bangs" that involve the production of equal amounts of matter and anti-matter that then cancel each other out and produce energy.JohnC said:
It confuses 99.9999% of the population, including me. First you have to realize that there wasn't an explosion. Secondly, matter probably did not exist at the very beginning. Most likely, matter is a result of the condensation of energy. The pressures and temperatures hypothesized for the moments after the creation of the universe are to high for matter to form, and hence it only formed once the energy expanded outwards into the expanding universe of space time. This links back to E=mc^2, where energy and matter are interchangable. Confusing, I know, but just because something is confusing doesn't meant it isn't true.
And that is good. However, what you need to decide on is how you will judge the evidence at hand. Will you take things on faith or will you accept things as being more accurate by the weight of the evidence? Will you not accept something because it goes against your religious ideas, or will you tentatively accept explanations that are consistent with the evidence? This seems to be the biggest difference between science and religion, the question of what makes an explanation trustworthy.
But we can reconstruct what happened to a certain extent. Just as with forensic science, were detectives piece together what happened on the crime scene by looking at what is left behind. By looking at these clues, we can at least point to what has most likely happened and rule out what most likely didn't happen. Maybe you won't get an answer with a 100% certainty, but you can check people's arguments and see if they make sense to you.JohnC said:
I agree. I am not picking on anyone here, but christians want people to have faith in something that they may not understand. Not understanding is not a problem. Not exploring or trying to find the answer IS a problem.JohnC said:
Which is the beauty of science. If you don't believe it you can look at the evidence yourself. The theories give you a testable platform to go from, a list of things that SHOULD be there and a list of things that SHOULDN'T be there. For the Big Bang, the first big test was the CMB, the Cosmic Microwave Background. The theory, as it is constructed, predicts that there should be electrmagnetic radiation emminating from everywhere in space due to the energy present in the singularity right after the creation of the universe. Guess what, they found that electromagnetic emmination in the form of microwave signals. If you don't like a theory show that it is not consistent with the evidence by testing it in the manner above. The problem with creationism (at least young earth creationism) is that it has already failed this type of testing and has therefore been put on the trash heap of falsified theories.
Why do humans have to be somewhere or witness something for them to recreate it? How many people are on death row right now by the weight of DNA fingerprinting? How many of those people were actually witnessed doing the crime? If the scientific method is reliable enough to execute a man, why isn't it reliable enough to look into the natural history of our universe?
If you intend to use that as your empirical standard of belief, I suggest you get used to not believing in much of anything. In fact, I might suggest a profession to you: judicial system opponent. I say this because you'll apparently never be satisfied with any verdict that does not rest solely on eyewitness testimony.JohnC said:
But we can at least make some theories about it and thus increase our knowledge. And we can increase our knowledge of the world around us by arguing about those theories. And we can increase our knowledge of ourselves and grow as a person by discussing here.Vintero said:
But if we think we know at least a little bit about it, shouldn't we act on that. If a christian thinks people are judged after they die on the way they lived, shouldn't they try to steer us in the right direction. If I think global warming is caused by man and can be solved or at least reduced in seriousness by man, shouldn't I try to persuade people to act on this information?
I have met some people on this forum who changed their minds, so it is entirely possible. It might not happen regularly, it might not even happen often, but it also makes discussion usefull. In general, I don't seek to change other peoples minds. I seek to gain understanding in their position and hope they gain some insight in my position. This way, we promote mutual understanding and reduce a chance of conflict. This is all of why I am here. We might not change each others mind, but we might at least come to a better understanding of each other.
I disagree. I read the bible differently now than 4 years ago. I know more at present, more about the history of the bible, more about the interrelationship between different stories. The stories themselves don't change, but the way I read them does.
That is true.
Why, because he thought your arguments were true? You might have given someone some insight which he or she didn't have before. This does not mean he/she has no mind of his/her own, only that you drove an argument home. It seems to me that the most closeminded person here is you, by your own admission. I sincerely hope that you open your mind a little to another way of looking at debates.
With the funny sidenote that eyewitness testimony is probably less reliable than forensic evidence.Philosoft said:
Heh. Psychology labs have been pumping out confirmation of this for years but no one's been listening until recently. I had a Psych & Law professor a few years ago who is very involved in this topic. I mentioned his work to my father - a criminal defense lawyer himself - and my former professor has now testified in a half-dozen cases locally as an expert on eyewitness reliability.Tomk80 said:
The goal of science is to shed light on what cannot be directly observed. If we could see atoms we'd not need the atomic theory of chemistry. If the murder was filmed, we'd not need forensic science.JohnC said:
Sorry I was addressing the person who said that not believing in anything was a problem with our generation. I thought I had quoted him but I guess I didn't.Loudmouth said:
I haven't looked back through the thread lately, but what do you think of the evidence presented in this thread. The evidence is that if the earth were young, which is claimed by those supporting a literal Genesis, then there shouldn't be any discernable star farther than 10,000 light years away. However, we find stars that are billions of light years away which FALSIFIES young earth creationism. If a theory is falsified, then there is not a reason to even suspect it as true. That is, once falsified always false. Do you think that a supernatural deity created light, in transit, to give us an illusionary universe?JohnC said:
One of my favorite failed creationist predictions is one of taxonomy. If the creationist claims of created kinds is true, then taxonomy should reveal buckets of unrelated species. Each bucket would represent the species formed when each separately created kind diversified via hyper-evolution after the global flood. One would not expect any other inferred relationships between these buckets of species.Loudmouth said:
No, if the universe was created 10,000 years ago, and there is a star 3 million light years away, then its light would not yet have reached us.JohnC said:
