Why do people care?

[TheReasoner]

Gravity is the observable phenomenon of falling near the surface of the earth. It doesn't explain anything.

Gravitation attempts to explain gravity by positing that masses are attracted to one another.

This is, of course, absolute nonsense: the moon and Earth are observed to fall away from eachother at the rate of 3.8 cm per year.

"Darwin is the Newton of Biology." -- Philip Kitcher, professor, Abusing Science, June 1983

Ah. So you're an intelligent faller?

Your proposal that it's nonsense is not right. Do some calculations concerning the speed at which the earth and moon rotate around their common centre of gravity and you'll see that they are indeed pulling apart.

It's not a problem at all Agonaces.

 

[Split Rock]

Have others wondered like I have why people care so much about the origins of life and why they get so heated about it?

The fact is NOBODY can prove how the universe and life started yet this is a topic that people put so much focus and emotion into. Why? Is it just human ego of wanting to be proven correct what one believes is the answer? I don't think one can say it is just humans being inquisitive because it is something that can't be proven so it is a hopeless cause. Nobody can really prove God exists and nobody can prove God doesn't exist no matter what atheists try and say when they bring up supposed scientific discoveries (usually just theories) because that still doesn't mean God doesn't exist. Why argue about it?

Me personally, I don't really care how things got to be what they are as focusing on stuff millions/billions of years ago is useless to me. Will finding fossils of extinct species help cure things like cancer or solve world hunger? I am willing to say no. Being told dinosaurs evolved into birds does not better anyone's life other than the people being paid to find the fossils and come up with that THEORY. Does trying to explain how the universe works without a creator being needed do anything for people? No, it doesn't. On the flip side, quoting biblical passages to try and prove there is a God does nothing either since for all ANYONE knows the bible was just some joke some started back in time.

I just wonder what could be done in the world if all the people who focus their time on things that can't be proven would instead focus that time on solving legit issues that have an effect on living people and creatures or spent in on bettering the lives of people who could really use the help. Trying to piece together things from millions of years ago does not do that.

I think if God does indeed exist that God just laughs at all this stuff and how much ego the human species has to think people int he year 2011 can actually say what was going on millions of years ago. Heck, even thousands of years ago.

Note that I am perfectly fine and am happy humans are inquisitive as it has created many advancements...I just don't see the point in trying to figure out the origins of life and try and figure out stuff from millions+ years ago when there is no real evidence behind it or real use. You couldn't convict a person of even stealing a chocolate bar with the type of evidence support that is used to explain early history yet it gets taken as fact. Weird.

Aside from all the misconceptions you provided concerning SCIENCE and what a THEORY is (since you like capitalization), I am here to defend the teaching of science.

 

[Split Rock]

I think people get pretty heated about it because evolution is taught as fact and there are really some big holes in the theory and it cannot be proven by the scientific method, therefore it is NOT science.

Science is what scientists do for a living. That includes making use of the theory of evolution. Please do not tell us what science is and isn't.

Its really argued as a ploy to get people to atheism and take believers away from Christianity.

Absolute nonsense. Evolution is science, not atheism.

 

[TheReasoner]

I think people get pretty heated about it because evolution is taught as fact and there are really some big holes in the theory and it cannot be proven by the scientific method, therefore it is NOT science. Its really argued as a ploy to get people to atheism and take believers away from Christianity.

Splitrock has it right. Please don't start calling science something else because it suits your agenda.

Evolution is a scientific theory*, not a 'ploy to get people away from christ'. You creationists manage to push people away readily enough by your false accusations and lacking knowledge. No-one would leave Christianity due to this "controversy" if you people didn't insist there was a controversy. Evolution is as compatible with Christianity as the theory of gravity or the electron orbital theory.


*which doesn't mean it's weak or merely wishful thinking. Theory in this context is something else entirely.

 

[Nabobalis]

So is it normal that people who support PC/EU don't believe gravity exists?

 

[Greg1234]

Ah. So you're an intelligent faller?

It's the onion news.

The Onion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Further, you're mistakenly comparing an observable phenomena like falling with something like Darwinism. But that supposedly was the reason for attaching theory with it, a piggy back ride on gravity. It doesn't matter what is posited therefore, it still has to account for the observable phenomena of the impotence of chance and necessity and inherent design just like whether or not you propose intelligent falling, it still has to account for the observable phenomenon of "falling".

 

[TheReasoner]

It's the onion news.

The Onion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Further, you're mistakenly comparing an observable phenomena like falling with something like Darwinism. But that supposedly was the reason for attaching theory with it, a piggy back ride on gravity. It doesn't matter what is posited therefore, it still has to account for the observable phenomena of the impotence of chance and necessity and inherent design just like whether or not you propose intelligent falling, it still has to account for the observable phenomenon of "falling".

Of course it's the onion. It's ridiculous. As is the notion that evolution is false.

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Do some calculations concerning the speed at which the earth and moon rotate around their common centre of gravity and you'll see that they are indeed pulling apart.

According to your faith-based belief in creationist Isaac Newton's creationist hypothesis of gravitation, the moon and earth should fall towards eachother at the rate of 9.8 meters per second squared in acceleration. However, in reality the moon and the earth fall away from eachother at the rate of 3.8 cm per year.

"... lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other, he [God] hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, Principia, Book III, General Scholium, 1687

 

[TheReasoner]

According to your faith-based belief in creationist Isaac Newton's creationist hypothesis of gravitation, the moon and earth should fall towards eachother at the rate of 9.8 meters per second squared in acceleration. However, in reality the moon and the earth fall away from eachother at the rate of 3.8 cm per year.

"... lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other, he [God] hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, Principia, Book III, General Scholium, 1687

As far as we humans are concerned in our daily lives things happen linearly. That means I can't suddenly act as if I knew some principle discovered a hundred years after my death.

So bringing up that Newton accepted the governing paradigm within a field not his own during his time is hardly surprising given that Newton died in 1727 whereas ToE wasn't around seriously until Darwin's time, roughly 100 years after Newton's death. Hence, calling him a 'creationist' is irrelevant and misleading.

What's more, Newton's worldview was limited by other factors as well, all based on the simple fact that he didn't have the necessary data to extrapolate further and end up with relativity, the universal constant and so on. He can hardly be blamed for that and he cannot be used in any valid argument for or against this any more than Anaximander can be brought forth as an expert on microbiology. Or Pythagoras as an expert on calculus.


Again, if you do some calculations you'll see that there is no mystery here. The earth/moon system behaves as it should. It's not 'falling away from one another' they are moving apart as a simple consequence of the properties of the system.

And good grief man your abhorrent slaughter of the theory of gravity is not too good. The acceleration you're talking about is at the earth's surface, at sealevel. And it's an approximation at that. Move up or down and that changes. With results such as inaccuracy in pendulum clocks moved up and down. Think of the gravity field as a divergent vector field originating in the earth's core, and you'll see it grows weaker as you go further out.
Furthermore it is not the only force in play. Consider the effects of two bodies rotating one another. Try spinning a thread with a rock in the end. What's holding the thread taught? You can easily get it rotating horizontal to the ground despite a constant acceleration around 9.81 m/s^2 downward at all time. So... The same applies to the moon you know. It's pulled out by the rotation so to speak.

 

[Ar Cosc]

Agonaces, just because you don't (or refuse to) understand the concept of centrifugal force doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I was going to post a structured argument, but instead, I give you:

YouTube - German upstart Heidler wins hammer throw

 

[driewerf]

According to your faith-based belief in creationist Isaac Newton's creationist hypothesis of gravitation, the moon and earth should fall towards eachother at the rate of 9.8 meters per second squared in acceleration. However, in reality the moon and the earth fall away from eachother at the rate of 3.8 cm per year.

"... lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other, he [God] hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, Principia, Book III, General Scholium, 1687

Except, of course that the same man you quote clearly explained why the moon doesn't fall to the earth.

 

[driewerf]

Have others wondered like I have why people care so much about the origins of life and why they get so heated about it?

It isn't only a matter of our origins. Actually biblical literalists, who put the bible above the sciences discovery would destroy nearly all scientific knowledge. If we drop the teaching of evolution, then they will attack geology. And later astronomy. And oceanography, embryology, glaciology, geophyscics, chemistry, astrophysics, sedimentology, dendrochronology, archeology, linguistics and many other sciences.
All these contradict the bible. Not in some small detail, but at the very fundamentals of their teachings.
Biblical literalists are anti science. Both in their content as in the scientific method. For in science, the highest authority is the observation. Bibnlical literalists put the bible forward as the highest authority, and if the real world doesn't fit the bible, the reallity can take a hike, for them.

Yes, it matters not to give in to those relgiously fanatical vandals. Because, if we unleash them, they will throw away 500 years of scientific discoveries. And it matters for everybody; not only Americans.
As a European I 'm very concerned about the American science education. Considering that the US has the biggest number of nuclear plants AND nuclear weapons, I want very much that the guy controlling the buttons knows the basics of nuclear physics.

 

[Hespera]

It isn't only a matter of our origins. Actually biblical literalists, who put the bible above the sciences discovery would destroy nearly all scientific knowledge. If we drop the teaching of evolution, then they will attack geology. And later astronomy. And oceanography, embryology, glaciology, geophyscics, chemistry, astrophysics, sedimentology, dendrochronology, archeology, linguistics and many other sciences.
All these contradict the bible. Not in some small detail, but at the very fundamentals of their teachings.
Biblical literalists are anti science. Both in their content as in the scientific method. For in science, the highest authority is the observation. Bibnlical literalists put the bible forward as the highest authority, and if the real world doesn't fit the bible, the reallity can take a hike, for them.

Yes, it matters not to give in to those relgiously fanatical vandals. Because, if we unleash them, they will throw away 500 years of scientific discoveries. And it matters for everybody; not only Americans.
As a European I 'm very concerned about the American science education. Considering that the US has the biggest number of nuclear plants AND nuclear weapons, I want very much that the guy controlling the buttons knows the basics of nuclear physics.

The literalists are more profoundly anti science, anti reason than even they realize.

One thing we notice-its very obvious, not hard to notice- is that they just CANNOT ever be wrong. That is not a good thing for anyone, and when they can influence others, its even worse.

As a Chinese -American, I am ery concerned about the cult of ignorance that creationism represents. And the danger it puts us in.

I wish I could just give people my perspective on this! How many of you have been in the far east I wonder and seen for yourselves just how many intensely bright motivated and intelligent people there are over there?

Hint" they way way way outnumber us in the USA

here is another hint. Cultural weakness is no protection. They are going to be utterly unsentimental about american superstitions, and run right over us.

Oh, about nuclear physicists etc.

N Korea and Iran have nuclear capability; one is a theocracy, the other is a quasi-theocratic dictatorship. We do want people messing with such things to know what they are doing in some ways. Like that they dont dump radioactive wastes everywhere, and have accidents.

But even more we need them to not be religious fundamentalists who may set the world on fire for the sake or some stupid ideology.

 

[Ar Cosc]

Exactly, Hespera. The number of times I've seen people here calling for the entire middle east to be turned into a smoking radioactive crater is scary. And these people want their sort of jingoism taught in schools. If there was ever a majority of people in the US who thought this sort of thing was a good idea, God help us all.

 

[Hespera]

Exactly, Hespera. The number of times I've seen people here calling for the entire middle east to be turned into a smoking radioactive crater is scary. And these people want their sort of jingoism taught in schools. If there was ever a majority of people in the US who thought this sort of thing was a good idea, God help us all.

It wont take that many. it took about 25% of determined organized support to put the ayatollahs in power.

Check out 'the turner diaries'. its the 'bible' for the right wing religious fanattics' take over.