Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

[warpus]

I guess my problem with growth (and I don't really have a problem with growth, really), is that we're always looking for growth.. and when there isn't any, we deem that to be a failure.

Why? Sometimes you don't need growth for success. Sometimes you do, but sometimes you don't.

We live on a planet with limited resources, growth every year everywhere just isn't feasible. Is our goal to use up everything as fast as we can anyway? It shouldn't be, because that'll be the end of us.

 

[AdamCrock]

Yeah it is a very good problem for us to colonize a new planet - we need oxygen ! Ye good old O2 ! and we need it bad !!!!!

 

[El_Machinae]

I guess my problem with growth (and I don't really have a problem with growth, really), is that we're always looking for growth.. and when there isn't any, we deem that to be a failure.

It IS a failure. ALL transactions should be mutually beneficial*. If all transactions are mutually beneficial, you're going to get growth. The problem kicks in once we start negotiating the division of that mutual benefit. That 'economic surplus' can be divided, but it's a zero-sum game (taken as a snapshot). If one person is basically forced to only get 'enough' out of the trade to continue living, then there will be a lack of mutual progress.

*This is a tough one, because while it's technically true, more and more people are finding themselves in a situation where they don't "really" have the choice to not engage in the transactions.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You should know that already.

That's the thing that boggles my mind. How can he not?

But as opposed to you, I did find some evidence:

http://biblicalgeology.net/Model/Biblical-Chronology.html

No, of course it's not just the picture. It comes with argumentation:

Biblical Chronology

© Tas Walker May 05
Chronology provides the frame

The basis of a geologic model is a clearly defined history of the earth. Naturally any such history must be an assumed history because no one alive today was present to observe what took place.

Because we believe the Bible is true, we assume that its plain reading gives an accurate understanding of Earth history. Biblical chronology is used as the basis for geological investigation.

Science 101 really.

Spoiler Classical Hero only, the rest of you, move along :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology
Geology (from the Greek γῆ, gē, i.e. "earth" and -λoγία, -logia, i.e. "study of, discourse"[1][2]) is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change. Geology can also refer generally to the study of the solid features of any celestial body (such as the geology of the Moon or Mars) or the Bible when it's carved in stone.

Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates, and biblical timelines. In modern times, geology is commercially important for mineral and hydrocarbon exploration / exploitation as well as for evaluating water resources. It is publicly important for the prediction and understanding of natural hazards, the remediation of environmental problems, and for providing insights into past climate change. Geology also plays a role in geotechnical engineering and is a major academic discipline.

 

[Kyriakos]

^ That is not good

Present day..

Present Time..!..

(serial experiments Lain).

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'd even be tempted to call it wronger than a fat guy in a thong.

edit: By the way, I recommend the FAQs. They go as far as 80s fashion in terms of wrong

 

[timtofly]

They're not afraid, because you just made those scientist who find that peer reviewed data up.

Second time I catch you making these kind of claims. Just as you did when you said


Now kindly stop making things up, or have the balls to support your claims.

Do you have one good reason why I would make stuff up?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Do I need a good reason why you should make stuff up?

 

[Farm Boy]

I'd even be tempted to call it wronger than a fat guy in a thong.

B-but Ziggy, my tan lines...

 

[Kyriakos]

Do I need a good reason why you should make stuff up?

Is making stuff up an innate ability in humans, or was it created by a god in around 6000 BC?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

B-but Ziggy, my tan lines...

I wasn't judgemental. I like 80s fashion. I'm still wearing the originals

Is making stuff up an innate ability in humans, or was it created by a god in around 6000 BC?

If God created it, he must have had a good reason.

 

[timtofly]

Do I need a good reason why you should make stuff up?

If a person has no good reason to do so, then making a false claim could be considered slander. I have no way to cite what people have said. They are cited, but I am sure there would be no way to double check and triple check what scientist have made claims about over the last 200 years. I have no reason at all to make things up, proving that I do not even need a good reason. If you had one it would at least explain why you are making such claims. Since you did not claim that I was trying to slander them, then I assume that reason is ruled out.


I was not even attempting to slander them. If they are holding back on evidence that may be crucial to my hypothesis, why is it wrong to find that out? I have already accepted the fact that people are free to choose what they want to believe. I do keep getting push back from those who make it well known that I am wrong.


Would making stuff up be a futile attempt to hide something from a being that knows everything? So far no one here has claimed they know everything.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

If a person has no good reason to do so, then making a false claim could be considered slander. I have no way to cite what people have said. They are cited, but I am sure there would be no way to double check and triple check what scientist have made claims about over the last 200 years. I have no reason at all to make things up, proving that I do not even need a good reason. If you had one it would at least explain why you are making such claims. Since you did not claim that I was trying to slander them, then I assume that reason is ruled out.


I was not even attempting to slander them. If they are holding back on evidence that may be crucial to my hypothesis, why is it wrong to find that out? I have already accepted the fact that people are free to choose what they want to believe. I do keep getting push back from those who make it well known that I am wrong.


Would making stuff up be a futile attempt to hide something from a being that knows everything? So far no one here has claimed they know everything.

My point was the claim: "There is really nothing new that will ever come to light that can change our minds on the subject. So stop looking!"
So far you haven't answered who was making the claim.

If the theory of evolution is so firm, why are so many people afraid of scientist who find data and it is peer reviewed and tells a different story?
Who is afraid? Where's the peer reviewed data that tells a different story, namely YEC.

Just asking you to specify. Not to go on a slander sightseeing tour.

 

[warpus]

It IS a failure. ALL transactions should be mutually beneficial*. If all transactions are mutually beneficial, you're going to get growth. The problem kicks in once we start negotiating the division of that mutual benefit.

You're forgetting about benefit to society at large though, which can't easily be quantified in terms of $.

So for example, if the coal industry doesn't grow, the shareholders go home to angry wives, but the planet as a whole benefits.

There is more to the equation than just the people who own things, and the people who pay them to for goods and/or services.

 

[Farm Boy]

It's easier to comment on the angry wives of shareholders than the impoverished children of miners. Even if your assessment on the whole is correct that some retargeting of the economy may be helpful in a bigger sense. After all, wars can be justified, so can too be targeted de-growth. But I don't know that this is quite square with growth in the sense that big E means it.

 

[El_Machinae]

You're forgetting about benefit to society at large though, which can't easily be quantified in terms of $

Yeah, I will never deny that there are positive and negative externalities. For this reason, I think it's fine for a society to encourage those trades generating positive externalities and to discourage.those causing negative ones. If you can generate both a giant economic surplus (the trade effect) AND positive externalities??? win/win!

But, I'll stand by my original statement. A lack of growth is a failure, since there are too many ways for economic acivity to lead to growth. I think people wanting to generate an economic system that doesn't cause growth are basically failing in their imagination.

 

[timtofly]

My point was the claim: "There is really nothing new that will ever come to light that can change our minds on the subject. So stop looking!"
So far you haven't answered who was making the claim.

Spoiler :

it's not that water did not cover the earth at one time,(or at different places over time) it's that this in no way is linked to the myths and stories, one half of the argument does not prove the other half of the argument...

the myth requires both evidence of a flood and evidence that man was there when a flood happened, the Gilgamesh myth has both but is limited to the known world at that time, except a large building/citadel was on the flood plains and was used as a safe place during floods interestingly a ziggurat seems to be at its centre made with bricks and tar for mortar, as were walls also with tar for mortar (unusual for building in the rest of the area) found around the site... a giant waterproof ark? that could be used in times of flood a yearly occurrence and vital to the farming techniques of the time...

You appear to be offering contradictory statements. This is either about the time frame, or it is not about the time frame.

I don't have a problem with the concept of the Mediterranean being "recreated" more than once. Geologic time is vast, and as long as the observations support the theory, I'm fine with that. I do note the Wikipedia article offers several hypotheses, and there are numerous "citation needed" notations.

However, the Mediterranean is not the entire world, and the time frame is considerably before the events of Genesis, and even considerably before the human species. Therefore, this is not evidence of any sort to support the floods of either Noah or Gilgamesh.

There are a number of ways that water was formed on Earth, and yes, there was some in the rocks, and yes, it did come to the surface. But that's not the only way water was formed on the surface, and it happened a very long time ago, well outside the time frame of Genesis.


Massive flooding in parts of the planet, yes, no problem. However, massive flooding on the scale described in Genesis - that happened in "40 days and 40 nights" less than 6000 years ago? No. There is ZERO evidence that happened.

I have to ask: If you are admitting that the Biblical account is therefore ruled out, why are you trying to convince me it could have happened?


But the evidence isn't there, no matter what time frame (which you earlier said you weren't talking about in the first place).

The thing about science is that one day maybe we will find proof for a world-wide flood. But we don't have any indication of anything like that ever happening now, so for now we'll file a world-wide flood that happened 6,000 years ago as "false".

If new evidence comes to light, we'll file it under "maybe" and investigate, eventually maybe changing that to a "probably".

But first you'll need some indication that this thing happened. In the absence of such a thing, we're stuck with "didn't happen".

Evidence? Heck, at this point we need an actual articulated theory. Right now, there's no Creationist geological layer that we can point to and say "this, right here, we think this is the layer caused by the Global Flood." Is it earlier than the K–Pg iridium layer? After? Heck. There's no theory, nevermind evidence.

You might not know this, but you need an actual theory before you can judge evidence. It doesn't even need to be a super-established one, just one sufficient to build testable hypotheses off of.


I like to use 1992 as the beginning of the ticking clock. That's when the widespread scientific consensus percolated sufficiently to convince the majority of global politicians (at Rio). But, to be fair, we're really not sure 'what it will lead to'. We have a reasonable idea, but not a great one in comparison to the opportunity cost for not using fossil fuels. It's a real cointoss at this stage whether in 2099 or in 2199 we'll have seriously regretted not investing more on drastically reducing fossil fuel pollution. The majority of that consumption in the 20th century looks to have been a net win for humans.

A testable hypothesis that supports all the evidence that exists and doesn't contradict anything we already know AND makes predictions that can be tested AND concludes that at some point in the past the Earth was all under water. You don't even need evidence for that! New evidence would help for sure, as all the existing evidence seems to point to the fact that you're wrong. But if you can form a testable hypothesis to make it all work with all the existing evidence and what we know, that'd be the place to start.

If it contradicts something we already know (continental drift, the earth is over 6 billion years old), you'd need to find a piece of evidence that contradicts that, so that we can throw "the earth is 6 billion years old" out the window and replace it with a new theory, which would need to be formulated as a testable hypothesis as well.

That's a lot of work and a lot of upturning of existing theories. You're going to be busy for the next couple years I reckon.

If the theory of evolution is so firm, why are so many people afraid of scientist who find data and it is peer reviewed and tells a different story?
Who is afraid? Where's the peer reviewed data that tells a different story, namely YEC.

Here are two:

“... the team found a distance of about 345 million light-years and a Hubble constant between 61 and 77 kilometers per second per megaparsec. In models in which the universe has just enough matter to keep from expanding forever, this corresponds to an age of about 9.5 billion years.” “The discrepancy between this age and the age of old stars suggests that astronomers have come to a crossroads. They must either embrace a more complex cosmological model or reexamine how they estimate stellar ages. However, cautions theorist David N. Schramm of the University of Chicago, ‘You have to be very careful about drawing conclusions because all of the Hubble constant measurements have huge systematic errors.’” [Rob Cowen, Science News, September 9, 1995]

- See more at: http://www.creationworldview.org/articles_view.asp?id=4#sthash.cswfWTcD.dpuf


and

“He [Dr. Libby] found a considerable discrepancy in his measurements indicating that, apparently, radiocarbon was being created in the atmosphere somewhere around 25 percent faster than it was becoming extinct. Since this result was inexplicable by any conventional scientific means, Libby put the discrepancy down to experimental error.”

Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997, p. 32. (Referring to Dr. Willard Libby - The Founder of the Carbon-14 Radiocarbon Dating Technique, Radiocarbon dating, 2d ed., University of Chicago Press 1955)



“During the 1960s, Libby’s experiments were repeated by chemists. ... The new experiments, though, revealed that the discrepancy was not merely an experimental error – it did exist.” [Emphasis added]

Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997, p. 32. (Referring to Dr. Willard Libby - Founder of the Carbon 14 - Radiocarbon Dating, 1955)

- See more at: http://www.creationworldview.org/articles_view.asp?id=6#sthash.HQBjTioX.dpuf

Is it not important that the Hubble and Carbon 14 dating are in need of major adjustments if they are going to prove some point?

 

[Orka]

Here are two:
- See more at: http://www.creationworldview.org/articles_view.asp?id=4#sthash.cswfWTcD.dpuf

I hope you noticed that the article referenced is 20 years old.

And back then, yes, astrophysicists were well-aware for some time that the cosmological model/measurements used to calculate the age of the universe were disagreeing with the models/measurements used to calculate the age of stars. ("The conundrum continues.")

But the discrepancy only existed based on the cosmological models of the time. Tanvir et al.'s measurement of 69 +/- 8 for the Hubble Constant actually agrees with multiple recent measurements -- the inaccuracy was in the models, which had not incorporated dark energy (and perhaps other discoveries I can't think of off the top of my head), since it would not be discovered until 1998. If the models don't account for 2/3 of the energy content in the universe, yes, they will probably make some inaccurate predictions. But thankfully, science adjusts in light of new evidence, and this particular discrepancy has been resolved.

Of course there are always other questions to address -- the models can always be improved. But given that the current models are most consistent with what we observe, it makes sense to treat them as true with an implicit asterisk (*). If someone has a better model, let's see the calculations.

- See more at: http://www.creationworldview.org/articles_view.asp?id=6#sthash.HQBjTioX.dpuf

What exactly is this "considerable discrepancy in [Libby's] measurements"? I've searched Google Scholar and cannot for the life of me find the basis of this claim. Since this is quoted from a book, I presume you can provide me the source the book used?

Based on a brief glance at the rest of the claims made in the two links, they all seem to be (a) things scientists know about and have quantified and corrected for or (b) claims inconsistent with current science (and also a few out-of-context quotes). I guess I should not have expected much else from such a website, but I thought I'd keep an open mind.

Is it not important that the Hubble and Carbon 14 dating are in need of major adjustments if they are going to prove some point?

"Hubble" as explained is now consistent with star age dating measurements. I await the source of the Carbon-14 claim, but anyway why get hung up on Carbon-14? On the timescales that Carbon-14 is used, there are often multiple alternative non-radiometric dating methods that can be used to corroborate whatever result you get. Indeed, that was how Carbon-14 was confirmed as a reliable dating method in the first place.

 

[timtofly]

I warned Ziggy Stardust that it may be hard to double check and triple check, and I am not using these two as a blanket statement that is what happens all the time.

 

[choxorn]

What... What are you even saying? Your arguments aren't even making logical sense anymore!