My Favorite (to date) take down of Creationism.

[_SteelHead]

Res,
Like most self identited prophets of revealed truths, Frank isn't here to learn , he is here to preach.

That what he is promoting - (is) drivel, irrelevant to his agenda.

[_Franktalk]

Res,
Like most self identited prophets of revealed truths, Frank isn't here to learn , he is here to preach.

That what he is promoting - (is) drivel, irrelevant to his agenda.

I fully admit that I do not know the true past of the earth. But I do not think that science knows it either. I read a variety of material and I consider it all. I have my favorite theories but they may be wrong as well. What I reject is science in its overreach with little data. I would have thought that would be obvious.

[_jo1952]

If you have to posit any God or Godlike force onto science to make it work, it is no longer science but religion.

As soon as someone places a limit on what they will allow themselves to believe while in search of any truth, then that person has closed their mind to all other possibilities which don't fit within the parameters of what they allow. This is an inevitable consequence of placing parameters upon what we will allow ourselves to believe. It is the placing of parameters which cause us not to be able to believe what Christ was trying to teach us from within the confines of religious belief (religion being the most controlling influence over our free will). Those parameters separate us from those who don't agree with our beliefs. We think that our beliefs make us smarter or more special or somehow better than those who don't agree with us. The religious think they are saved and that non-believers aren't; they are the ones who are chained by the concepts of heaven and hell and sin and "God" and "satan", etc. Those who like the belief system of science think that those who don't agree with them are stupid and foolish---though I think it would be easier for them to accept what Christ was trying to teach (albeit they are likely going to wait until someone from science to whom they have given control over their thoughts tells them that what Christ was teaching was actually the real truth). Thinking we are better than or smarter than others is a manifestation of pride; it is something we experience inside of mortality...and it is what causes us to not treat each other as equals.

Outside of mortality we are all equal beings who have always existed. We have all knowledge and all power...we are the creators. However, even though Christ tried to teach this to us, we will not be able to believe Him because the nature of our belief systems prevent us from being able to accept what He tried to teach. We won't be able to even entertain what He tried to teach UNLESS we are able to discard what the world has taught us. By discarding what the world has taught (remain unspotted by the world), we will be able to open our minds to the possibility of what Christ was teaching. It is part of the experience and the purpose of mortality to NOT be able to accept this about ourselves; which is why we have a veil of forgetfulness.

While it isn't necessary to believe what He taught, our closed minds will not allow us to love one another equally. There are consequences for not loving others like we love ourselves...though this is also part of the purpose for experiencing mortality...this testing of our humanity.

We are all awesome, all powerful, all knowing, eternal beings. If we could just believe this about ourselves, we would treat each other as the equal beings we are.

[_spotlight]

Thinking we are better than or smarter than others is a manifestation of pride

Oh so you are not a disciple of God the Father?

Abraham 3:19

And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.

We are all awesome, all powerful, all knowing, eternal beings.

But are a disciple of Stuart Smalley instead?

[_spotlight]

Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV. The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics. Within QFT, there can't be a new collection of "spirit particles" and "spirit forces" that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments. Ockham's razor is not on your side here, since you have to posit a completely new realm of reality obeying very different rules than the ones we know.

But let's say you do that. How is the spirit energy supposed to interact with us? Here is the equation that tells us how electrons behave in the everyday world:



Don't worry about the details; it's the fact that the equation exists that matters, not its particular form. It's the Dirac equation -- the two terms on the left are roughly the velocity of the electron and its inertia -- coupled to electromagnetism and gravity, the two terms on the right.

As far as every experiment ever done is concerned, this equation is the correct description of how electrons behave at everyday energies. It's not a complete description; we haven't included the weak nuclear force, or couplings to hypothetical particles like the Higgs boson. But that's okay, since those are only important at high energies and/or short distances, very far from the regime of relevance to the human brain.

If you believe in an immaterial soul that interacts with our bodies, you need to believe that this equation is not right, even at everyday energies. There needs to be a new term (at minimum) on the right, representing how the soul interacts with electrons. (If that term doesn't exist, electrons will just go on their way as if there weren't any soul at all, and then what's the point?) So any respectable scientist who took this idea seriously would be asking -- what form does that interaction take? Is it local in spacetime? Does the soul respect gauge invariance and Lorentz invariance? Does the soul have a Hamiltonian? Do the interactions preserve unitarity and conservation of information?

Nobody ever asks these questions out loud, possibly because of how silly they sound. Once you start asking them, the choice you are faced with becomes clear: either overthrow everything we think we have learned about modern physics, or distrust the stew of religious accounts/unreliable testimony/wishful thinking that makes people believe in the possibility of life after death. It's not a difficult decision, as scientific theory-choice goes.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue ... -the-soul/

[_The CCC]

If you have to posit any God or Godlike force onto science to make it work, it is no longer science but religion.

As soon as someone places a limit on what they will allow themselves to believe while in search of any truth, then that person has closed their mind to all other possibilities which don't fit within the parameters of what they allow. This is an inevitable consequence of placing parameters upon what we will allow ourselves to believe. It is the placing of parameters which cause us not to be able to believe what Christ was trying to teach us from within the confines of religious belief (religion being the most controlling influence over our free will). Those parameters separate us from those who don't agree with our beliefs. We think that our beliefs make us smarter or more special or somehow better than those who don't agree with us. The religious think they are saved and that non-believers aren't; they are the ones who are chained by the concepts of heaven and hell and sin and "God" and "satan", etc. Those who like the belief system of science think that those who don't agree with them are stupid and foolish---though I think it would be easier for them to accept what Christ was trying to teach (albeit they are likely going to wait until someone from science to whom they have given control over their thoughts tells them that what Christ was teaching was actually the real truth). Thinking we are better than or smarter than others is a manifestation of pride; it is something we experience inside of mortality...and it is what causes us to not treat each other as equals.

Outside of mortality we are all equal beings who have always existed. We have all knowledge and all power...we are the creators. However, even though Christ tried to teach this to us, we will not be able to believe Him because the nature of our belief systems prevent us from being able to accept what He tried to teach. We won't be able to even entertain what He tried to teach UNLESS we are able to discard what the world has taught us. By discarding what the world has taught (remain unspotted by the world), we will be able to open our minds to the possibility of what Christ was teaching. It is part of the experience and the purpose of mortality to NOT be able to accept this about ourselves; which is why we have a veil of forgetfulness.

While it isn't necessary to believe what He taught, our closed minds will not allow us to love one another equally. There are consequences for not loving others like we love ourselves...though this is also part of the purpose for experiencing mortality...this testing of our humanity.

We are all awesome, all powerful, all knowing, eternal beings. If we could just believe this about ourselves, we would treat each other as the equal beings we are.

Galileo was a Christian. He said "Surely, God could have caused birds to fly with their bones made of solid gold, with their veins full of quicksilver, with their flesh heavier than lead, and with their wings exceedingly small. He did not, and that ought to show something. It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle".
http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1072023

I am a Christian and a scientist. Whatever my personal beliefs are they can't be posited onto science.
Science is Agnostic.
SEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJpYUxRL_3U

[_Gunnar]

This video by Donald Prothero, Evolution: What the Fossils Say, is another clear exposition of how Creationists willfully distort or ignore the fossil evidence, and reveal they haven't a clue as to what the Theory of Evolution really says or how the evolutionary process works. His presentation is a powerful and devastating of Duane Gish's book, EVOLUTION, The Fossils Still Say NO!

[_The CCC]

Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV. The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics. Within QFT, there can't be a new collection of "spirit particles" and "spirit forces" that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments. Ockham's razor is not on your side here, since you have to posit a completely new realm of reality obeying very different rules than the ones we know.

But let's say you do that. How is the spirit energy supposed to interact with us? Here is the equation that tells us how electrons behave in the everyday world:



Don't worry about the details; it's the fact that the equation exists that matters, not its particular form. It's the Dirac equation -- the two terms on the left are roughly the velocity of the electron and its inertia -- coupled to electromagnetism and gravity, the two terms on the right.

As far as every experiment ever done is concerned, this equation is the correct description of how electrons behave at everyday energies. It's not a complete description; we haven't included the weak nuclear force, or couplings to hypothetical particles like the Higgs boson. But that's okay, since those are only important at high energies and/or short distances, very far from the regime of relevance to the human brain.

If you believe in an immaterial soul that interacts with our bodies, you need to believe that this equation is not right, even at everyday energies. There needs to be a new term (at minimum) on the right, representing how the soul interacts with electrons. (If that term doesn't exist, electrons will just go on their way as if there weren't any soul at all, and then what's the point?) So any respectable scientist who took this idea seriously would be asking -- what form does that interaction take? Is it local in spacetime? Does the soul respect gauge invariance and Lorentz invariance? Does the soul have a Hamiltonian? Do the interactions preserve unitarity and conservation of information?

Nobody ever asks these questions out loud, possibly because of how silly they sound. Once you start asking them, the choice you are faced with becomes clear: either overthrow everything we think we have learned about modern physics, or distrust the stew of religious accounts/unreliable testimony/wishful thinking that makes people believe in the possibility of life after death. It's not a difficult decision, as scientific theory-choice goes.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue ... -the-soul/

Science is agnostic.
SEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJpYUxRL_3U

[_Gunnar]

As pointed out by Donald Prothero in the link I provided in my last post, churches, even in the deep south, once had little problem with the teaching of evolution and the fact that the earth was billions of years old In the public school system. The current fundamentalist insistence on biblical inerrancy and backlash against the teaching of modern science only really got stated about a century ago in the 1920s. I have very little doubt that these relatively recent, extreme fundamentalism, religious conservatism and anti-science backlash movements are largely to blame for the fact than, on average, Americans score lower than any other industrialized nation on earth in science and math scores. This is a national shame and embarrassment!

The fact that the congressional committees on science and technology consist of scientifically illiterate creationists who are outspokenly antagonistic towards science (especially evolution and modern geology) is also a national disgrace. What makes it even more disgraceful is that scientifically literate congressmen and senators who try to get on those committees are apparently routinely denied membership, precisely because they are known to be scientifically literate and pro-science.

[_The CCC]

"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."
Thomas Jefferson