>> ^messenger:
Someone who believes in something despite evidence against it is not using sense, reason and intellect. The Bible contradicts itself internally (contradictory lists of the "begats" is the clearest example I can think of), so cannot be accurate. If you believe the Bible is infallible, that isn't a reasonable belief. Some people "believing in a personal god" doesn't equate to "believing in Yahweh", which is your contention, so it doesn't matter if they're true or not. There's nothing unscientific about spirituality, and identifying some aspect of your spiritual experience a personal god. There's plenty unscientific about declaring the Bible to be infallible. Again with not understanding science.


If you're referring to the geneology of Jesus, it is presenting one geneology through David's son Solomon, which is the royal line, and one geneology through David's son Nathan, which is the non royal line. The lineage in Matthew is Josephs line, and the lineage in Luke is Marys line. There is no actual contradiction there, or anywhere else in the bible. What skeptics call contradictions are usually things they simply do not understand.

In any case, it would not be unreasonable to believe the bible, even if there were contradictions. This is simply a fallacious argument.

>> ^messenger:
The absence of circumstantial evidence where you might expect to find it is circumstantial evidence of absence. If the Bible were true, we would should expect, for example, that miracles would continue to occur, because why not? They should be even more commonly documented because of our massively increased population and information technology. But they appear to happen less! This is absence of circumstantial evidence. Amazing discoveries in science aren't evidence for God. God is one theory that explains them, but it doesn't work the other way -- you can't start with an amazing fact, and declare that it suggests all other theories are wrong. No matter what the universe looks like, it will still conform with the theory of God creating it, so amazing discoveries are not evidence -- they're just things we can't explain yet, like retrograde motion was once considered "amazing" and attributed to gods.)


Your contention is false for a few reasons; first, that miracles do not occur, and second, that we should expect to find an abundance of miracles. Not only have I seen miracles occur, I have been a party to them. As far as the number of miracles, we shouldn't expect to know how many miracles occur. God isn't performing for the general public. Even the post-resurrection appearances were only for a limited number of people.

We do have circumstantial evidence for Gods existence, such as the information in DNA and the evidence of fine-tuning. The theory of God has explanatory power, and is a better explanation for these phenomena. We should never ignore a theory which better explains the evidence.

>> ^messenger:
This where I start picturing you with your hands over your ears going LALALALALALA! Nothing rules out God's agency. Nothing rules out God period. He cannot be ruled out because there's nothing verifiable about his existence whatsoever. Nobody ever makes this claim, ever, ever, ever. It's like you wish we were saying this, but we're not. Really, we're not. BUT, if someone claims that their god has a chariot that moves the sun across the sky, I call bullshit because we have actually seen with our eyes that the Earth is spherical and rotates on its axis, which causes the apparent motion of the sun. If someone says the Earth is only a few thousand years old, I say bullshit and refer you to archaeology and to every branch of science that demonstrates the Earth to be much older.


It is the persistant claim of atheists that science has sufficiently described the Universe and is regulating God to a smaller and smaller corner. It's called the "god of the gaps" and you hear this all the time. You hear it from eminient scientists like Dr Krauss. So I don't wish it is being said, it is being said all the time.

As far as the age of the Earth goes, there are more evidences for a young earth than an old one. Since you don't know much about macro evolution, you probably don't know much about the theory of deep time either. Paleontology and archaelogy are historical sciences. The age of the earth is assumed, and the evidence is interpreted through that assumption. The assumption itself is never challenged.

>> ^messenger:
This is the least scientific thing you have ever said.


Messenger, you seem like a thoughtful person, so step outside of your box for a moment and think about this. The statement that "If God exists, the entire Universe is evidence of His existence" is a scientific statement of absolute fact. If it isn't, explain why not.

>> ^messenger:
You and I agreed before, no solipsism.


I engaged in no solipsism, as you will see, and I also thought we weren't going to be doing cherry picking either. I noticed you avoided these questions:

The question I would put to you is, how would you tell the difference? How would you know you're looking at a Universe God didn't create? What would you expect that to look like?

>> ^messenger:
You realize that you are using logic to prove that logic isn't real? "If-then" statements and implied questions come from logic. If logic doesn't stand on its own, then you can't use it to prove that it doesn't stand on its own. If you want to know where the rules of formal logic come from, you can look it up. If you don't accept them as valid, you've descended into solipsism, at which point I don't even accept that anything exists but my own mind. If you accept the definitions and rules of logic as valid on their face, then we don't require anything to explain where they came from. Logic is definitions, like equality. a=a. How do I know this? It's the definition of equality. If you disagree, then words have no definition, and thus no meaning, and we also agreed that "words have meaning".


I am not using logic to disprove logic, I am using logic to show you that you don't have a foundation for your own rationality. You live your life as if logic is a transcendent and absolute law, the same way as you do right and wrong, but you can't account for it in your worldview. It's a bit like sitting in Gods lap to slap His face. If logic doesn't have the same value independent of human belief, then you have no basis for your own rationality. Words do have meaning, which is why I am pointing out you have some intellectual sinkholes in your worldview that you just accept without thinking about it.

>> ^messenger:
Also, as your argument goes, if you assert that logic is a creation, and that God created logic, this entails that God exists outside of logic. Interesting prediction.


I didn't say God created logic, I said He is a rational being. Since we are made in His image, we are also rational beings.

>> ^messenger:
No, I wouldn't, necessarily. That's one field of science that I know very little about. If you've read a single book about it, you know more than me. That' doesn't mean you understand better than me how science works in general.


It doesn't mean that, no, but it does mean that you spoke authoritatively and condescendingly about something that I actually know more about than you do, jumping to conclusions based on your misunderstanding of what I said, that on a lack of knowledge about the theory itself. I would say this is positive evidence in my favor, and negative evidence against you.

>> ^messenger:
But since you bring it up, the theory of macro evolution may or may not be weak, I don't know, but outdated quotes from Darwin and about Darwin about the impossibility of macro evolution don't convince me any more than outdated quotes from Newton about the impossibility of the Solar System holding together. Do you know what Newton concluded? He concluded it must be God holding it together. Einstein figured out why it really doesn't fly apart, and it wasn't because of God.


They aren't outdated quotes, they are predictions that were made about what we should expect to find if the theory is true. Darwin made a great discovery, that changes can occur within a species. From there, he made an unjustified extrapolation that all species had a common ancestor. He expected to find evidence for this theory in the fossil record, but what he found was evidence against his theory. He blamed this on the relative poverty of the fossil record. 120 years later, we know it isn't the poverty of the fossil record; there simply is no fossil evidence to confirm macro evolution.

Do you know what a gluon is? It is a theoretical sub-atomic particle that binds quarks together. It has never been observed; it is simply a fudge factor, and without it, atoms would fly apart. Scripture says God is upholding them.

>> ^messenger:
Likewise, the problem of the lack of fossil records has been resolved since Darwin's time. The fossil evidence of intermediary links isn't a problem with the fossil evidence: it's a problem with Darwin's model. Darwin believed all evolution happened gradually, as he had observed. But there's no reason to believe it must all be slow. If one species had some tiny mutation that happened to give it a massive advantage over other species, its descendants would naturally spread into all sorts of new niches and tons of evolution would take place, both for it and other animals in its environment. Again, these changes were very rapid, so rapid, that they may not have left fossil evidence. Sometimes they did and other times they didn't, or we haven't found it yet. Check this video out: It's mostly a rebuttal to the "God is not a blind watchmaker" argument for Intelligent Design, but you can skip to 1:33 and still understand the premise. If you watch until 8:42, you'll see the reason why we wouldn't expect to find fossils of intermediary links, and why this isn't an argument against macro evolution anymore.


You're talking about the theory of punctuated equillibrium, or the modern "hopeful monster" theory. This is one of my favorite quotes:

In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had been previously been simply embarrassing; 'all these years of work and I haven't found any evolution.'

Gould & Eldredge
Paleobiology v.3 p.136


It's the theory to explain why there is no evidence for evolution. How convenient. Do you realize that this makes macro evolution unfalsifiable? It also makes macro evolution a metaphysical theory, like abiogenesis, which you must take on faith. The video you referenced is not an accurate demonstration of macro evolution, either, since nothing is being added to the genome. A reconfiguration of the same genetic material is not traversing above the species level and is therefore micro evolution.

Since you're never read a book on macro evolution, try this one and challenge yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0890510628/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

@shinyblurry

If you understood it better than I do then you would know what macro evolution is.

No, I wouldn't, necessarily. That's one field of science that I know very little about. If you've read a single book about it, you know more than me. That' doesn't mean you understand better than me how science works in general.

But since you bring it up, the theory of macro evolution may or may not be weak, I don't know, but outdated quotes from Darwin and about Darwin about the impossibility of macro evolution don't convince me any more than outdated quotes from Newton about the impossibility of the Solar System holding together. Do you know what Newton concluded? He concluded it must be God holding it together. Einstein figured out why it really doesn't fly apart, and it wasn't because of God.

Likewise, the problem of the lack of fossil records has been resolved since Darwin's time. The fossil evidence of intermediary links isn't a problem with the fossil evidence: it's a problem with Darwin's model. Darwin believed all evolution happened gradually, as he had observed. But there's no reason to believe it must all be slow. If one species had some tiny mutation that happened to give it a massive advantage over other species, its descendants would naturally spread into all sorts of new niches and tons of evolution would take place, both for it and other animals in its environment. Again, these changes were very rapid, so rapid, that they may not have left fossil evidence. Sometimes they did and other times they didn't, or we haven't found it yet. Check this video out: It's mostly a rebuttal to the "God is not a blind watchmaker" argument for Intelligent Design, but you can skip to 1:33 and still understand the premise. If you watch until 8:42, you'll see the reason why we wouldn't expect to find fossils of intermediary links, and why this isn't an argument against macro evolution anymore.

>> ^Arkaium:

Terrible parenting. Wouldn't expect anything more from a man who'd give the dog a better name than the son.I don't know, Havoc seems like a very cool name to have in a post-apocalyptic world. Assuming he survives.



My son will definitely be named Einstein. Everything should be fine unless he decides to take it sarcastically.

There is so much wrong with this crap. I can't even begin to explain.

@ForgedReality. I am not going to go knee deep into this. But I think you have misunderstood a few things. First, dispersion or the index of refraction of many materials is frequency dependent. Ironically, my graduate research focused extensively on this! In it's simplest form, the dispersion relation is (w/k)^2 = (c/n)^2. That means that the group velocity is limited by c. So in a medium where the refractive index is nonzero the speed of light is less than c. Frequency dependence further complicates the issue. It implies that the refractive index is different at different frequencies. Hence, light at one frequency has a different group velocity than light at another frequency. This has been known since Hertz. It was explained by Einstein.

Lene Hau's experiments at the Rowland Institute are a little more difficult to explain.

It is a little easier to explain something related to her experiments: Bose-Einstein condensates. Naively, you can think about light as billard balls. If you hit one ball moving at a given velocity in a given direction with an identical ball moving in exactly the opposite direction and same velocity, then by momentum transfer you can cancel the motion of both balls. When you do this with light you create a Bose-Einstein condensate.

For the love of god! It's 9.8 m/s^2. SQUARED!!! Do you understand what that means!!?!? For us to *feel* the gravity of Earth WITH Einstein's (or Newton's) gravitational effects it must ACCELERATE up continually per second, per second... This would not only mean that another force is responsible for Earth's movement, but since very soon after we started having gravity we would have to increase to light-speed or we stop feeling that "gravity" effect (our inertia is "caught up" if you will and we will be floating). It would mean that that force pushing us is the most powerful force in the Universe and we can't detect it even though it's strapped to our backs.

Don't get this confused with other ways to create gravitational effects or acceleration fields at 9.8 m/s^2, like centrifugal force (rotating space stations) or gravity...

>> ^critical_d:

Odd how the scientific community seems to have more enthusiasm for exploring the oceans of Titan than our own. I read somewhere that the technological aspects of a dive like Cameron performed are as complex as a moon landing. I guess the thinking was that if something went wrong seven miles below then you are just as screwed as if you were in the Frau Mora Highlands. If the ultimate goal is to setup a colony on Mars or our own Moon, then we should practice in our own backyard first.


Firstly you make the mistake of assuming that all scientists COULD be working on deep sea exploration. There wasn't a scientist working on it but then a bloke pulled him away and asked him to do space instead. Not all of them enjoy marine biology, not all of them work in the correct or an analogous field.

Secondly, there is always the argument AGAINST directed research. That is, most of our most amazing discoveries happened through studying something else and often enough by accident, so why would directed research be any better? The cosmic background radiation was discovered at bell laboratories and they thought it was due to pigeon shit at first. You may as well go back in time and tell einstein to stop pissing about with light and help solve real world problems like in-car navigation. Then suddenly 50 years down the line we have no state of the art GPS system because he didn't go into relativity.

Thirdly, exploring deep sea trenches is, i believe, an engineering problem rather than a theoretical problem. Why would a scientist need to stop working on discovering things to help to either build or generate money for something?

Fouthly, if you think there's interesting stuff in the tiny amount of water that exists on our planet, you should read up on space.

Finally, at least some of the software tools developed by computational astrophysicists have been used to solve earth-bound problems such as climate change and weather systems, so if you study something else you may end up killing two birds with one stone.

Why the hell would anyone rather look at the ocean which is right next to us over the deepest reaches of space anyway? But if we find the key to faster than light travel down there, i'll be looking sheepish

From what I recall (from reading his books, and a biography) he was young and wanted to help the war effort. I think the quote was his, but also that if he had been a bit more mature he would probably have still done the same... just not without considering the consequences.

The safe cracking etc. was just thumbing his nose at authority, being a smart alec, and trying to point out that the regulations were stupid and the safes weren't that secure... the directive sent out in response was that everybody should keep their safes locked while Feynman was about.
>> ^dannym3141:

@Yogi
I understand. I don't know the history of it, but perhaps his inclusion was in some way not optional? Or perhaps he felt morally obliged to help. If he merely suspected that he had expertise valuable to the protection of his country, he may be easily coerced into doing something to protect his family, or some other propaganda story.
I remember reading a scientist's musings on helping develop the bomb, but i can't remember who it was. It may well have been feynman but i did a project on einstein recently, could have been him. I belive they said something to the tune of working really hard in conjunction with other great minds to develop something, almost for the pride of developing it, but also for their country, and not considering the consequences of what they were working on. Only in retrospect did they wish they had considered their actions first.
My brain wants to tie that story to this, because it would fit nicely and explain why he didn't just leave. I'll try and find the information.

@Yogi

I understand. I don't know the history of it, but perhaps his inclusion was in some way not optional? Or perhaps he felt morally obliged to help. If he merely suspected that he had expertise valuable to the protection of his country, he may be easily coerced into doing something to protect his family, or some other propaganda story.

I remember reading a scientist's musings on helping develop the bomb, but i can't remember who it was. It may well have been feynman but i did a project on einstein recently, could have been him. I belive they said something to the tune of working really hard in conjunction with other great minds to develop something, almost for the pride of developing it, but also for their country, and not considering the consequences of what they were working on. Only in retrospect did they wish they had considered their actions first.

My brain wants to tie that story to this, because it would fit nicely and explain why he didn't just leave. I'll try and find the information.

>> ^Fletch:

>> ^ForgedReality:
Wow. Why. The FUCK. Did this dude settle for this dumb ass bitch? Intelligence is pretty high on the list of requirements for most self-respecting guys.

Knowing that a car traveling at 80mph takes an hour to travel 80 miles doesn't exactly make him Einstein. My girlfriend in high school was very similar to this girl. Just had a very different and creative way of thinking about things that I just found very sweet and attractive, even if she was completely wrong. Musically talented, she could play several instruments and had as much difficulty trying to teach me the piano as I had trying to teach her small engine repair. But she loved the buttsex. Oh yeah... loved the buttsex.

Um...it's not "different and creative" if it's wrong. That is just being wrong. It's only different and creative if it gets a workable answer.


I still hold to the idea that this is all staged and scripted.

Anyone who thinks the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" should take a good look at this dog. He just pwned Einstein right there!

Also, cat's only ever move closer to you.. to kill you.

Evidence: http://videosift.com/video/Stealth-Cat
>> ^lucky760:

Lies. Cats can't walk backwards.

>> ^Enzoblue:

I know I'll get flamed, but this series is so badly done. I like they're dumbing down for attention span but not dumbing down the explanations. All they do is make uninformed people go "huh?" and informed people roll their eyes.

They're screwing themselves with this whole "1 minute physics" idea because nothing I've seen them cover can be adequately explained in even 15 minutes.

>> ^ForgedReality:

Wow. Why. The FUCK. Did this dude settle for this dumb ass bitch? Intelligence is pretty high on the list of requirements for most self-respecting guys.


Knowing that a car traveling at 80mph takes an hour to travel 80 miles doesn't exactly make him Einstein. My girlfriend in high school was very similar to this girl. Just had a very different and creative way of thinking about things that I just found very sweet and attractive, even if she was completely wrong. Musically talented, she could play several instruments and had as much difficulty trying to teach me the piano as I had trying to teach her small engine repair. But she loved the buttsex. Oh yeah... loved the buttsex.

congratulations einstein, you poorly described what we already knew and attached a whole bunch of hokey new age bullshit to it.

Thanks brotha!
In reply to this comment by deathcow:
*promote the underrated