Merlyn_LeRoy

 

 

Wow you like to twist things don't you?

 

All c-14 dating has assumed a constant, not a variable, thus the result is wrong. Period.

 

Thus the result has ERROR BARS.

 

That goes a long way to promote one's faith in the validity of the results.

 

You also don't know what error bars are for.

 

Which have been reduced after calibrating with ancient air in ice cores.

 

Does ice absorb carbon the way living organisms do?  This is news to me.

 

You could reduce your ignorance by looking up how ice cores are used to calibrate C-14 dating; I'm not about to try and teach you, since you won't even learn what "evolution" means, yet you continue to post about it as if you do.

 

If they KNEW it was a variable 

 

They KNEW they were assuming it was constant and noted that.

 

Assumptions?  Isn't that the whole basis for Evolution?

 

As I keep telling you, evolution has been observed.  You like to deny reality.

 

...

Which means he's ignorant.  There's only so much you can do with people who insist on remaining ignorant.

 

If the shoe fits....

 

Says the guy who says nobody has observed evolution.

 

 

 

Hmmmm, peer reviews?  Yeah, right like Jesus didn't start out with 12 and end up with mega millions?  

 

Lets see, how many did Israel have?  Oh, yes, 12, too.  That kinda went viral too.

 

I'm not too sure about Mohammad, but I'm thinking his peer-review process is pretty well established. 

 

Kinda messes with that validity conclusion.

 

No, it just shows you don't know what "peer review" means.

 

But I'm sorry to say, I've never seen evolution nor seen evolution work.  But then again, no one has.

Yes, they have.  They aren't limited by your ignorance of evolution.

To all that have fallen into the M trap.  You will never win, as M has total faith that he knows all and the rest of us are totally ignorant or unable to make a value judgement.  But it will guarantee a somewhat amusing series of ambiguous circuitous postings.  Have fun.

Feel free to lie about me, skeptic.

Wow you like to twist things don't you?

 

All c-14 dating has assumed a constant, not a variable, thus the result is wrong. Period.

 

Thus the result has ERROR BARS.

 

Which have been reduced after calibrating with ancient air in ice cores.

 

If they KNEW it was a variable 

 

They KNEW they were assuming it was constant and noted that.

 

they should have either 1) sought to define how to calculate the variable, or 2) put a HUGE disclaimer on the result as being +/- (x) where "x" equals the varying amount of carbon 14.

 

THEY DO.

 

And they HAVE calibrated it using ice cores.  And even before then, they would cross-date things using different methods to check their accuracy.

 

You make it sound like C-14 dating was some kind of scam and that it was presented as infallible.  That's nonsense.

 

I don't see that mentioned very often when looking at c-14 results unless you are looking at the detail of the data. The layperson is not going to go looking for that. Without that disclaimer, Bubba is going to take it at face value.

 

Which means he's ignorant.  There's only so much you can do with people who insist on remaining ignorant.

 

I've been in a recent argument with someone who thought dinosaur bones were dated using C-14; I could never convince him that "radiometric dating" didn't mean "carbon-14 dating".

Well, for one, the basis of carbon-14 dating assumes the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere as being constant. It isn't. Many of the science journals have confirmed this. Willard Libby even noted this in the 1960s in his papers on carbon dating, but the scientific community never took this in to account until recently. So science, as a group, ignored the fact that carbon levels differed historically and, therefore, many of the dating of artifacts was wrong.

 

No, they knew that was an assumption, and that's part of knowing what carbon-14 dating means.  Meanwhile, creationists frauds try to show it's false by dating sea fossils, which can't be dated using a method that depends on atmospheric carbon (yet they dishonestly do it anyway).

 

We are now being asked to believe they have it right now..

 

No, you aren't being "asked" to believe they have it right.  If you don't understand the assumptions being made and the possible errors involved, you might get that impression.

 

 

No, any real science is peer-reviewed.  People who can't understand it might have to take it on faith, but science doesn't expect anyone to do so.

 

Ah, did you miss the other examples? The whole T-Rex thing WAS peer-reviewed.

 

That doesn't mean it's intended to be taken "on faith".  If it was taken on faith, it wouldn't have been challenged.

 

 

Let's not pretend that peer review takes away ANY chance of things being wrong.

 

I'm not.  Don't pretend science demands that anything be taken "on faith".

 

Of course not. What I can't abide by is people hiding behind science like they have all the answers and that aspects of science are not based on faith in current premises...which end up later being dead wrong.

 

Anyone who knows anything about science knows that no conclusions are written in stone -- religion does that.

 

Which religion has taught that the earth is flat?

I didn't say a religion taught that (though it wouldn't surprise me if some did); I said "some people's religious beliefs".

http://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8172270.stm

Science also gave us leaches, plating, an upright walking T-Rex, heliocentrisim, opening windows during a tornado to prevent your house from imploding or exploding due to air pressure and other such things that were all later proven to be wrong. There are many things in which science expects people to take on faith too. Often very long-established scientific principles turn out to be very wrong.

Heliocentrisim is wrong?  True, the entire universe doesn't orbit our sun, but it's way better than geocentrism.

There are many things in which science expects people to take on faith too.

No, any real science is peer-reviewed.  People who can't understand it might have to take it on faith, but science doesn't expect anyone to do so.

By the way, do you have a problem with learning from past mistakes?  Religions tend to be really bad about ever admitting they were wrong about anything.

The hard-sell proof of the atheist's stance that all religions are myths is the "proof" of evolution.

 

That's nonsense, since there are plenty of Christians and members of other religions who have no problem with evolution, like Francis S. Collins.

 

Darwin, an educated theologian, was later in life a converted atheist who in his anger against the Catholic church revived Socrates' argument as the basis for his treatise on the Origins of the Species "proving" his hypothesis on the non-existence of God.

 

Ridiculous.  He wrote it to explain "the origin of species".

 

Since his appearance on earth, how many different species of humans have there been?  Just the one Homo Sapien  and that hasn't changed for how many years? and how are those years measured?

 

So should we not teach that Pluto orbits the sun?  Its orbital period is ~247 years, but it was first seen in 1930, so it hasn't been observed to orbit once yet.

 

There are some who say God can't create the world in six days, but they can't measure the age of a rock.  Carbon dating has it's problems too.  

 

Name them.

 

I don't think it's necessary to teach the Judean/Christian/Islamic teachings of creationism in public schools because that would establish a state religion, but teaching the anti-Judean/Christian/Islamic teachings of evolution in public schools does just that.

 

No, it doesn't.  Teaching that the earth is round and orbits the sun contradicts some people's interpretations of the bible, but that doesn't (and shouldn't) prevent schools from teaching that the earth is round and orbits the sun.  Hobbling science to the lowest-common-superstition-denominator is just intellectual suicide.

 

And by the way, scientists have been able to replicates the 3-legged frog phenomena of Minnesota over and over again in scientific labs using the pond water the frogs live in.  But after 20+ years they haven't figured out what it is in the water that is causing the mutations.  So how long is it going to take before scientists say that 3-legged (and other deformities) frogs are a new species?  I don't see many jumping on that bandwagon.

 

Do you even know what "species" means?  It appears not.

 

Now, since you haven't answered my question about e. coli evolution, do you think schools can teach the earth is round, even though this contradicts some people's religious beliefs?  If yes, why should your beliefs be treated any differently?

Gravity is a known force of nature, evolution is not.

The effects of both can be measured.

What do you say about the long-term e. coli experiment where one strain evolved the ability to digest citrate?

1) Do you say it wasn't an example of evolution

2) Do you say it didn't happen

3) Other?

Evolution is the philosophical belief that somehow this really is the "truth" and all religions are myths.

 

 

No, evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time.  It doesn't refer to religions at all (or "truth", for that matter).

Packsaddle has explained things very well, stosh, so I'll just echo his reply.  Evolution really is what scientists say it is, you don't get to redefine it to explain that it really isn't evolution.  That e. coli experiment really is an example of evolution in the lab, and it's repeatable.

I stand corrected, homo sapiens, not homo erectus.  But in either case the point being no evolutionary dynamics have been found since they came on the scene.  Which wither 70,000 or 140,000 years ago, it makes no difference, both numbers are purely speculation because there is no way of accurately measuring it and there is no missing link evidence to give rationale where homo sapiens even came from. As far as scientific evidence is concerned, there are a number of missing links for all kinds of species.  It makes it kinda handy but if no one is looking closely it does make a great story. 

 

But of course in some people's minds and beliefs, this is all scientific proof.  

Stosh, you're completely ignorant about evolution.  You didn't say anything about the long-term e. coli experiment, which is a repeatable experiment that demonstrates evolution.  You still can't understand that there are no "proofs" in science, and you try to bring in "missing link" nonsense.

 

No one has never seen it happen,

It can't be replicated in a scientific study.

 

And yet it is taught as scientific fact?  

 

Evolution has been observed, and yes, it can be replicated.  Here's just one example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

Note population Ara-3

Also see any number of websites, like http://talkorigins.org/

If you're going to veto teaching actual science because some people might have religious reasons not to believe it, we can't teach that the earth orbits the sun or even that it's spherical, not to mention a host of other things.  If you have actual scientific objections to evolution, have at it.  If you have religious reasons, that's not relevant to the science.

I didn't miss it, I was trying to keep the discussion in the context of why God has to be in the BSA program.

 

Personally, I disagree with you.

 

Barry

So, you mean you have personal revelations from god?  That's about the only non-human source of god-based morals that I can think of that you could claim.  Anything else, as I said, have humans in the loop.

Well I am speaking in this discussion from an ideological perspective of integrity on building character. Ignoring the chaos of the actual applications of religion, who do you trust more in setting the definition of morality, God or man?

You seem to have missed my point in my previous post -- the ONLY definitions of morality we have are from people, including people who claim to be speaking for god(s).

It's people all the way up.

So you aren't comparing the opinion of men vs. god, you're comparing the opinion of men vs. men, but you are mistaking it for the former.

God is omniscience,  man is not. 

 

Barry

And since we only have the claims of other people on what god may or may not want, what can you conclude about all statements about what god wants?

Yes, I realize they rescinded it.  But according to Eagledad, it's impossible for god-based morals to change.

The only way the BSA as a National institution for youth can even propose the idea of encouraging boys into ethical moral decision makers is to put the responsibility of those ideals on a resource that never changes it's virtues of morality. That can only be God.

So, do Southern Baptists still hold slavery to be moral?  That's what they said their god approved of when they formed in 1845.

Was anyone else not able to get into the forum for about 4 or 5 hours.. I had something about a database error.. But when I could get back in it seems like all of you have been posting away with no issue..

Same here.

National does seem to stumble a bit trying to dodge litigation from the hard answers. But the Oath, Law, Mission and Vision statements, are still the key framework to program's values and God is right in the middle. I don't seen any outcry to change any of that. Atheism just doesn't make sense or fit in the present BSA values framework.

I'd say that's due to the incoherent BSA values framework, since they DO allow some atheists, particularly if they belong to a religion.

Never said it did.  Lutherans take on non-members all the time.  My CO has no members in it's troop.  They view it as a community outreach program.  So the point being, the CO is irrelevant to this discussion.

I was responding to this earlier remark:

Mozartbrau, on 15 Apr 2015 - 11:57 AM, said:

I'm going to convert to Scientology just to make BSA's head spin on the whole "God" and religion issue.

 

Go Thetans!!! Beat Xenu!!! 

To show that Scientologists in the BSA are nothing new, and that the BSA even allows them to charter units.

You have only pointed out that National doesn't go into details, It is the elephant in the room Merlyn. Why would it be worth going through all this hassle otherwise?

 

Barry

Your response makes no sense.  The BSA's moral stance in incoherent, it can't be coherent since it allows contradictions.

God is in the program to anchor  morality and ethics.

I've pointed out numerous times that the BSA's god requirements don't point to ANY particular morality or ethics, since it's quite possible for one member's religion to believe X is moral and another member's religion to believe X is immoral.  There's simply nothing to anchor to.

Don't stick your arm

 

Out too far

 

It may go home

 

In another car.

 

Burma Shave!

http://www.amazon.com/Verse-Side-Road-Burma-Shave-Jingles/dp/0452267625

Has all the Burma-Shave sign sequences.  Started near Red Wing, MN.