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jclalor

Nova's judgment day: Intelligent design on trial

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I just finished watching this online.
It's very interesting. It really shows the unreasonable stances that creationists take. I think they made a very poor attempt at defending Intelligent Design/Creationism. I think it is sad that people really want to throw away science in favor of mythology.

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"'The first part of the argument is that everything that exists must have a cause. Nothing comes into existence out of nothing. "

As bilvon pointed you are just wrong here. Vacuum fluctuations do occur and its been postualted that the universe came out of such a vacuum fluctation.

"The second part of the argument is that there cannot be an endless string of causes. If that were the case, then we would never get to the present moment. There had to be a single beginning cause that set all the other causes into motion. "

You are bascially denying the existence of infinity becuase it leads to a paradox if we accept it. The problem is it also leads to a paradox if we deny it. Can the universe exist indefintley into the future? If you think yes then we have an infinity, if you think no what happens after?


"The third part of the argument is that this first cause cannot itself by caused. It must be an infinite, eternally existing, uncaused force or being that set all other causes into motion"

You have now just contradicted yourself. You are saying that nothing is uncaused apart form the thing that I say is uncaused. Not very good reasoning mate. If your can postulate your god as existing infitley back in the past, why cant't I do the same for the universe?


"Scientists used to believe that the universe always existed (even though this belief violated the philosophical argument we just laid out). But scientific evidence uncovered in the last 10 to 15 years has proven that the universe did have a beginning."

I think you need to be carerful here.Thingsa re not so clear cut as your religious web site implies. Whilst there is clear evidence the big bang did occur. In order to have anything as definitive as you claim we need a theory of quantum gravity to describe the universe when it was smaller than an atom. At the moment we dont have an agreed upon theory of quantum gravity. There two best candidates we have for a theory of quantum gravity are string theory and loop quantum gravity. Unlucky for you both of these theories agree there was a universe before the big bang. Sorry.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=big-bang-or-big-bounce

http://www.physorg.com/news63041667.html

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>Besides if people were to actually do the research themselves instead of
>just accepting what is put in front of them, they would find the problems and
>holes in the standard models and theories.

I've actually done it. I've measured the nuclear magnetic resonance effect, and I've measured mutual inductance between coils. Maxwell's Equations and quantum mechanics fit with my measurements pretty well. I've also had to deal with the speed of light in a great many designs, and lo and behold it really _does_ travel about a foot per nanosecond, and slows down in various mediums (like glass.)

I'd love to be able to document a system that does not obey Maxwell's Equations, or be able to demonstrate that light goes slower when it's moving "against the ether." It would guarantee me a Nobel Prize at least. But the physical world sticks stubbornly to the basic laws that govern it.

So what research have you done that shows the holes in the standard models and theories?



And herein lies the problem, these effects are not taken into account in astrophysics. These testable and verifiable test are put aside for the untestable and imaginary entities of gravitational (as a distortion of "space time") mathmatics. When gravity alone is not sufficient they turn to falsified ideas such as magnetic reconnection in order to save thier models. They ignore the findings of men like Arp, and ban them from telescopes, to retain thier expanding universe through redshift assumptions. http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Redshifts-Cosmology-Academic/dp/0968368905 They don't take into account test which show that light becomes redshifted when traveling through a plasma. http://www.plasmaphysics.org.uk/research/redshift.htm

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"I continue to recieve similar responses to my posts. Simply state, "Your wrong", ignore any information or facts I have posted, if any "evidence" if used it is ignoring anything that was already addressed in post.

Simply a wave of the hand is no sufficient! This is the ultimate problem. No one is actually willing to look at the facts, at the information, or at the problems. "

I gave you a very detailed response to your claims on page 7 , no hand waving. You ignored it

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The first part of the argument is that everything that exists must have a cause. Nothing comes into existence out of nothing.

The second part of the argument is that there cannot be an endless string of causes. If that were the case, then we would never get to the present moment. There had to be a single beginning cause that set all the other causes into motion.



Think really, really, really hard about those two statements, and you should see that they completely contradict each other, and combine to make nothing more than vapid waffle.

Seriously dude, you gotta be smarter than this.
Do you want to have an ideagasm?

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>These testable and verifiable test are put aside for the untestable and
>imaginary entities of gravitational (as a distortion of "space time") mathmatics.

Are you really saying that gravity and its attendant distortion of spacetime are untestable and imaginary? If so, you are entirely incorrect - and if you have ever used a GPS in your life, you have proof right there in your hands.

>When gravity alone is not sufficient they turn to falsified ideas such as
>magnetic reconnection in order to save thier models.

Magnetic reconnection? Again, if you have ever seen an aurora borealis or a solar flare, you have the proof you need to know that such a phenomenon exists. Indeed, scientists working on magnetic confinement of fusion plasmas are trying hard to work around the problems presented by magnetic reconnection, but so far have not had much luck.

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That's some really different stuff than I remember reading. Have to go back and look again; I might have 2 things mixed up because I could swear I read (in Hawking's book and elsewhere) that Hawking radiation IS how a black hole would evaporate, that it has never been observed, and that it would not happen for a long long time because it would require that the Universe cool to many orders of magnitude below it's current temperature.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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These testable and verifiable test are put aside for the untestable and imaginary entities of gravitational (as a distortion of "space time") mathmatics.



Holy Obfuscation Batman!

Gravitational mathematics is an imaginary entity.

What?
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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That's some really different stuff than I remember reading. Have to go back and look again; I might have 2 things mixed up because I could swear I read (in Hawking's book and elsewhere) that Hawking radiation IS how a black hole would evaporate, that it has never been observed, and that it would not happen for a long long time because it would require that the Universe cool to many orders of magnitude below it's current temperature.



Plagiarized summary:

A slightly more precise, but still much simplified, view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). By this process, the black hole loses mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle. In reality, the process is a quantum tunneling effect, whereby particle-antiparticle pairs will form from the vacuum, and one will tunnel outside the event horizon.


...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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>that Hawking radiation IS how a black hole would evaporate . . .

Agreed - but it doesn't come from radiation _from_ the black hole, but rather from the aforementioned pair production just beyond it. (That is, of course, splitting hairs; the particle/antiparticle production effectively forms the "observable skin" of the black hole.)

>that it has never been observed

It _probably_ has not been observed. The larger the black hole, the cooler it is and the less it radiates. And we can only see the side effects of the big ones now.

>and that it would not happen for a long long time because it would require that
>the Universe cool to many orders of magnitude below it's current temperature.

Definitely true for big ones (stellar masses and higher.) Small ones are hotter and evaporate faster.

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>These testable and verifiable test are put aside for the untestable and
>imaginary entities of gravitational (as a distortion of "space time") mathmatics.

Are you really saying that gravity and its attendant distortion of spacetime are untestable and imaginary? If so, you are entirely incorrect - and if you have ever used a GPS in your life, you have proof right there in your hands.

>When gravity alone is not sufficient they turn to falsified ideas such as
>magnetic reconnection in order to save thier models.

Magnetic reconnection? Again, if you have ever seen an aurora borealis or a solar flare, you have the proof you need to know that such a phenomenon exists. Indeed, scientists working on magnetic confinement of fusion plasmas are trying hard to work around the problems presented by magnetic reconnection, but so far have not had much luck.



You have your steps to the scientific method backwards. That does not consitute proof of magnetic reconnection, experiment would constitute proof that these things were due to magnetic reconnection. As for the auroras, ever heard of kristian birkeland for starters. Besides, even the messed up nasa scientist don't believe the auroras to be due to magnetic reconnection.http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/auroras/sun_earth_connect.html
On top of all of that magnetic reconnection is not necessary to explain the sun or any other findings, however, one must look beyond gravity only models. They simply use it to save thier failing models.
Ralph Juergens and Hannes Alfven both independently produced models of the sun, which included experimentation, which does not require magnetic reconnection. Attached is an image of a "solar prominence" in a lab from over 100 years ago. No magnetic reconnection required!

Confirmatory Bias in Science
This refers to the tendency for humans to seek out, attend to, and sometimes embellish experiences that support or ‘confirm’ their beliefs. Confirmatory experiences are selectively welcomed and granted easy credibility. Disconfirmatory experiences, on the other hand, are often ignored, discredited, or treated with obvious defensiveness... the most costly expression of this tendency may well be among scientists themselves...

One study found that the vast majority of scientists drawn from a national sample showed a strong preference for "confirmatory" experiments. Over half of these scientists did not even recognize disconfirmation (modus tollens) as a valid reasoning form! In another study the logical reasoning skills of 30 scientists were compared to those of 15 relatively uneducated Protestant ministers. Where there were performance differences, they tended to favor the ministers. Confirmatory bias was prevalent in both groups, but the ministers used disconfirmatory logic almost twice as often as the scientists did. The costs of this cognitive bias are perhaps nowhere as serious as in the area of scientific publication.
— Michael J. Mahoney, Cognitive Therapy and Research, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1977, pp. 161-175.

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Confirmatory Bias in Science
This refers to the tendency for humans to seek out, attend to, and sometimes embellish experiences that support or ‘confirm’ their beliefs. Confirmatory experiences are selectively welcomed and granted easy credibility. Disconfirmatory experiences, on the other hand, are often ignored, discredited, or treated with obvious defensiveness... the most costly expression of this tendency may well be among scientists themselves...
.



The biggest confirmation bias of all, of course, is found in religion.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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Well, I uploaded the attachment but its not showing up, not sure what I did wrong.



Maybe your buddies at http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00current.htm
know what happened to the attachment. ;)
HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

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>That does not consitute proof of magnetic reconnection, experiment would
>constitute proof that these things were due to magnetic reconnection.

Plasma fusion experiments have proven that many of the problems with magnetic confinement of plasma are due to magnetic reconnection. The MRX (http://mrx.pppl.gov/) is a large scale experiment into magnetic reconnection physics. It has been demonstrated in the lab under controlled conditions.

>This refers to the tendency for humans to seek out, attend to, and
>sometimes embellish experiences that support or ‘confirm’ their beliefs.

Indeed. Conspiracy theorists are the prime examples of this. They take a contrary position to mainstream science, look through haystacks for needles, and then take those needles and say "SEE! SEE! Hard PROOF that I am right and everyone else is wrong! It must all be a conspiracy to keep me down." Any evidence that contradicts their dogma is wrong, flawed, inapplicable or "part of the conspiracy."

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That's some really different stuff than I remember reading. Have to go back and look again; I might have 2 things mixed up because I could swear I read (in Hawking's book and elsewhere) that Hawking radiation IS how a black hole would evaporate, that it has never been observed, and that it would not happen for a long long time because it would require that the Universe cool to many orders of magnitude below it's current temperature.



Plagiarized summary:

A slightly more precise, but still much simplified, view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). By this process, the black hole loses mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle. In reality, the process is a quantum tunneling effect, whereby particle-antiparticle pairs will form from the vacuum, and one will tunnel outside the event horizon.





Do all the particles that fall into the black hole have negative energy? And if particles with positive energy fall into the black hole, wouldnt the black hole have just as much chance as contantly growing instead of evaporating?

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Earlier in the thread I was wondering over what doesn't have a beginning, concerning some of the stuff Kallend had said. He wrote this:

"**OUR** part of space-time may have started with a "big bang", but our universe may just be a tiny part of an infinitite entity with no beginning. Maybe there never was a creation."

Which then led me to think:

"Maybe it's God who wasn't created. I came across this:"

With of course 'this' being some stuff from a religious website I came across, from googling "what doesn't have a beginning."

The arguments mentioned apparantly come from a more detailed philosphical study which the website had said they'd simplified. Apparantly so it now seems. (Still might be worth a read if I can find it).
If I'm honest, I should have paid a bit more attention to the arguments, but essentially I viewed them superfluously to my main point of God being without a creator; as any issues within them would be quickly pointed out. (I'm kinda lazy that way - I'll come across things, stick them on SC and let greater minds than mine pick away at them - only 'cos I'm busy as fuck in my day to day life though:)).

It makes some kind of sense to me that God; whoever and whatever he/it is, wasn't created, and put into place the conditions for the Big Bang. The main reason? I cannot accept we're just simply a product of millions of years of evolution, live our lives as best we can, then just die. To me that's ridiculous. Just as stating that God doesn't exist sounds ridiculous. People sometimes don't believe in God as there's no solid evidence he exists, yet there is no solid evidence to say he doesn't exist.:S

Imagine a close friend is killed in a foreign country. You attend his funeral. Afterwards, despite having not seen your friends dead body, do you still believe he's alive? Do you even doubt he's dead? There are countless factors indicating your friend is dead, but have you seen that he's dead with your own eyes? It probably wouldn't enter your mind to question whether he's dead or not in normal circumstances. So you believe something, without any direct proof or evidence.

So whilst I know nothing of loop quantum gravity, and a great deal of other topics mentioned on this thread, I can still have a look at the links and learn something. Which essentially is why I'm here in the first place. And to gob off occasionally too.:)


'for it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.'

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I used to buy into the idea that what we enjoy here on Earth is to miraculous to have "just happened". But as the years went by, I learned more and more, science learned more and more, and now I am convinced that not only can it "just happen", with hundreds of billions of galaxies each containing hundreds of billions of stars it is almost inconceivable that life as we know it wouldn't happen. Think of it...if just one star in each galaxy was capable of supporting life, and just one of every billion of those stars had a planet that could support life, that means there are literally billions of opportunities for life to develop as it did here. In my mind, and I'm not alone in the thought, life had to happen.
HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

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Pity we don't have proof of extra-terrestrial life to support your statement. Still, of course life had to happen, considering God put into place the elements for it to.:P


'for it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.'

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Pity we don't have proof of extra-terrestrial life to support your statement. Still, of course life had to happen, considering God put into place the elements for it to.:P



Or maybe the Easter Bunny. Any rabbit that can lay eggs can sure as heck make a universe.
HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

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