Genesis and Other Creation Myths

[Manfred Belheim]

I suppose you never watch or read news either - as you can't possibly know if it's true because you weren't there. And never trust anything any scientist claims ever - as you haven't done it yourself. I'm sure you can live a happy life that way - albeit completely ignorant and distrustful of anyone whom you haven't met personally. Sort of as in the Middle Ages, to use another cliché.

Or you could employ a little faith in your fellows - and those fellows who specialize in the type of thing you are ignorant of. So you might actually learn something. Join the human race, as it were. You may forfeit living happily ever after, but that's the thing with knowledge: it's not always positive - but ever so often it is.

I was sarcastically parodying earlier posts in this thread.

 

[Flying Pig]

That's an interesting point though. A major reason that pseudoscience like homeopathy or the creationism found in this thread is so popular is because it's actually quite the effort to engage critically with the corpus of scientific research that has established a certain bit of knowledge as fact.

For instance, I have never read any of the probably hundreds of papers and articles that led to our current understanding of the formation of the Indian subcontinent. And since my knowledge of geology is limited, many of them will probably only be accessible to me to a certain extent.

I see no reason to disbelieve the current scientific consensus though, and to some extent that is only because of trust. Not so much trust in specific scientists with a certified "smart person" degree. But rather trust in the scientific community as a whole and the process by which it operates.

I know that this process includes verification by peers at various stages of the publication process. I know that discovering new information that overturns current thinking is encouraged and rewarded in the community. I know that most established knowledge relies on a wide array of facts from different scientific fields. I also know that I could actually read everything that has been written about a subject and see my initial doubts addressed.

But in the end I have to rely on those people, and trust them that if I actually did that the result is what I'm being told.

If you're naive and scientifically illiterate, to the point where "nobody was there so who knows" seems like a reasonable argument to you, it's hard to see the difference between this and pseudoscience. It's because at the most basic interface, there is no difference. Especially in highly evolved pseudoscience like climate change denialism, where a lot of effort is expended into training their believers to pretend they're talking science.

You're absolutely right, and that's a big problem. Personally, I think education is the way forward: I want everyone to know about the problems of sample size, what a placebo-controlled trial is, why it's a good idea in theory and why you should be wary of it in practice, what a p-value is, and so on. That won't get rid of the need to accept many things on faith, or the people trying to peddle rubbish, but it will mean that the people who do have the time and inclination to look into their methods and find them wanting will have a receptive, educated audience to direct their whistle-blowing to. This is the difference: if someone claims something without good reason to believe it, it's a simple matter to call them out on it, provided that everyone in the conversation has a basic expectation of how the scientific process is supposed to work. Pseudoscience happens when people set themselves up to be beyond that, and it would be wonderful if most people had a suspicion of anyone (scientist, advertiser, celebrity, politician...) who told them that they were above scrutiny.

 

[timtofly]

We are talking about the size of the Universe right after the big bang and now, not statistics. You are saying they are exactly the same size. I am saying that the size used to be tiny, smaller than an atom, and today it is much much bigger. So not at all the same. It's almost gone from the smallest thing you can imagine to the largest thing you can imagine.

Then you have not seen the model. I said that 3 minutes after the big bang, it was roughly the same size as it is today, because if you graph the result from 3 minutes after the big bang to infinity that is what you get. We have yet to reach the point where expansion has shown that much acceleration. That could still be in 50 billion years. If you want to say the big bang was the size of an atom, no one knows. The information they have shows that inflation was instant and every where at the same time. The universe was not the size of an atom 3 minutes after the fact. If you are just quibbling over 3 minutes, to prove that I am wrong, then why quibble over 10,000 years?

I already stated that I do not accept the universe was created 3 minutes ago. I am just going by what the model shows. If I am wrong, then they need to change the model and stop lying about it.

 

[warpus]

Then you have not seen the model. I said that 3 minutes after the big bang, it was roughly the same size as it is today, because if you graph the result from 3 minutes after the big bang to infinity that is what you get. We have yet to reach the point where expansion has shown that much acceleration. That could still be in 50 billion years. If you want to say the big bang was the size of an atom, no one knows. The information they have shows that inflation was instant and every where at the same time. The universe was not the size of an atom 3 minutes after the fact. If you are just quibbling over 3 minutes, to prove that I am wrong, then why quibble over 10,000 years?

I already stated that I do not accept the universe was created 3 minutes ago. I am just going by what the model shows. If I am wrong, then they need to change the model and stop lying about it.

Which model are you looking at? Infinity isn't any part of it, since we have no idea whether the Universe is finite or infinite, yet.

The universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang, it is not the same size today as it was 3 minutes after the big bang. Which part of the theory is telling you this? Can you point to it?

 

[SLAAKMAN]

The universe is big....the universe is very huge....God said, let there be light and then presto, there was me!

Dark Star - Bomb 20

Link to video.

 

[warpus]

Let there be light.. and.. An error has occurred. Please try again later. God saw that it was crap and went to bed.

 

[SLAAKMAN]

Which model are you looking at? Infinity isn't any part of it, since we have no idea whether the Universe is finite or infinite, yet.

Which Universe? The Multiverse?

 

[Berzerker]

"The granites and schists containing these garnets were formed during a collision between India and a section of what is now Asia, the researchers suggest. The rocks were forced down to great depths, where intense heat and pressure melted and changed them.

As the collision continued, the mountains grew, pushing some of the rocks back up to the surface, the team argues. Thereafter, tons of sediment eroded from the mountains and settled on their flanks. Zircon grains in some of these ancient sediments are just slightly younger than the garnets."

According to the "facts" when a continent moves, it leaves an ocean. This ocean forced it's content under the Asian and Indian plates. When India came back it stopped the process, and "grabbed" some of the earlier mountain's rocks inside the new formation. Erosion exposed these older rocks.

There is not an older section of mountains and a newer section. The older mountains were being subducted under the Indian plate. It was that plate that allegedly grabbed the older content. Evidently the Asian continent was the cold nonparticipating partner in the whole process.

The older range was produced by the collision ending around 450 mya with ~400 million years before the next. Your bolded part describes the first event.

I was sarcastically parodying earlier posts in this thread.

The Nature article suggested there was a ~400 million year gap between mountain building events. It did not claim this happened 400 mya and you didn't quote anyone to show how your sarcasm was related to anything.

 

[Senethro]

This thread is difficult to parody.

 

[Harv]

This thread is difficult to parody.

This thread needs no parody.

Sent from my LG-D800 using Tapatalk

 

[Berzerker]

http://www.livescience.com/53352-monster-tsunami-created-madagascar-dunes.html

"Sometime in the past 8,000 years, a meteor may have hit the Indian Ocean, triggering a monster tsunami that struck Africa, a new study suggests."

The Persian Gulf formed about 8,000 years ago, I'll be awaiting dates for Madagascar and Australia.

This thread is difficult to parody.

"Berz, comets are the oort cloud"

One of the rare times you posted something other than insults and that was your contribution. At least you didn't tell me igneous rock doesn't form under water.

This thread needs no parody.

You wanted to talk about the Flood instead of the OP

 

[Senethro]

"Berz, comets are the oort cloud"

One of the rare times you posted something other than insults and that was your contribution. At least you didn't tell me igneous rock doesn't form under water.

lol observations of comets are a heck of a lot more support for the oort cloud than anything you've posted in this thread

this thread is competing with the 9/11 conspiracy thread for being the most ridiculous on the first page

 

[Berzerker]

comets are not the Oort Cloud

 

[timtofly]

Which model are you looking at? Infinity isn't any part of it, since we have no idea whether the Universe is finite or infinite, yet.

The universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang, it is not the same size today as it was 3 minutes after the big bang. Which part of the theory is telling you this? Can you point to it?

This website, if you do not like wiki, but wiki breaks it down further. The first one does not show the break down of the time of inflation. The math of the "Big Bang" shows the time of inflation. The size does not change much though in the first 400,000 million years, and not much between then and now, if you consider that the expansion is supposed to be exponential. The 32 page PDF that you posted explains the exponential factor in greater detail than the wiki page does. It is probably nigh impossible to get a good picture of a 4d expansion, but if the graph was done from calculating the equation, then it should be fairly close. Inflation was the big bang, expansion came later.

The older range was produced by the collision ending around 450 mya with ~400 million years before the next. Your bolded part describes the first event.

The Nature article suggested there was a ~400 million year gap between mountain building events. It did not claim this happened 400 mya and you didn't quote anyone to show how your sarcasm was related to anything.

Being forced down to "great" depths where the rocks were changed in "great" heat, is not a building event. It was the destruction of the original 450 mya event, that destroyed the mountains that were there. No one is talking about how the first ones got there, only that the India plate has hit more than one time. If they look they may find rocks left over from multiple events.

 

[Berzerker]

Being forced down to "great" depths where the rocks were changed in "great" heat, is not a building event.

the article says some of that material was pushed up to form the mountains

 

[onejayhawk]

This thread is difficult to parody.

More like self-parody.

J

 

[Leoreth]

You're absolutely right, and that's a big problem. Personally, I think education is the way forward: I want everyone to know about the problems of sample size, what a placebo-controlled trial is, why it's a good idea in theory and why you should be wary of it in practice, what a p-value is, and so on. That won't get rid of the need to accept many things on faith, or the people trying to peddle rubbish, but it will mean that the people who do have the time and inclination to look into their methods and find them wanting will have a receptive, educated audience to direct their whistle-blowing to. This is the difference: if someone claims something without good reason to believe it, it's a simple matter to call them out on it, provided that everyone in the conversation has a basic expectation of how the scientific process is supposed to work. Pseudoscience happens when people set themselves up to be beyond that, and it would be wonderful if most people had a suspicion of anyone (scientist, advertiser, celebrity, politician...) who told them that they were above scrutiny.

I totally agree, although in my experience many people who spread pseudoscience (not those with the agenda, just the true believers) are actually quite educated.

The problem is more that modern science is very complex in many relevant fields and it's very easy to disguise your argument as scientific, and it's very easy to support your position with a gish gallop of semi-truths. It's often a painstaking process to refute arguments that are presented in such a way, and to a low-to-medium depth read both position seem at least equal in their amount of support.

Actually I have no idea how to solve it. If people are unwilling to engage critically with their own position then there is little you can do.

This thread is difficult to parody.

Berzerker talking to timtofly is possibly the best outcome of this thread. It's an ouroboros of nebulous incomprehensibility that spirals back into itself to create a beautiful fractal.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The Nature article suggested there was a ~400 million year gap between mountain building events. It did not claim this happened 400 mya and you didn't quote anyone to show how your sarcasm was related to anything.

I didn't realise there was a rule where I had to do that.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

This website, if you do not like wiki, but wiki breaks it down further. The first one does not show the break down of the time of inflation. The math of the "Big Bang" shows the time of inflation. The size does not change much though in the first 400,000 million years, and not much between then and now, if you consider that the expansion is supposed to be exponential. The 32 page PDF that you posted explains the exponential factor in greater detail than the wiki page does. It is probably nigh impossible to get a good picture of a 4d expansion, but if the graph was done from calculating the equation, then it should be fairly close. Inflation was the big bang, expansion came later.

The expansion of the universe was only supposedly exponention during the inflationary "era", which lasted somewhat less that 10e−32 seconds. I'll assume you meant 400,000 years, and accidentally added the "million" in there, as that is around the era of recombination. Long, long after inflation happened. The observable universe has expanded roughly by a factor of 1,000 since then (I believe). I have no idea what you mean by expansion came LATER than inflation. Whilst it's true that the universe has expanded since then, it also expanded quite a lot* during inflation too. Basically nothing you're saying is correct here.

*slight understatement.

 

[Borachio]

If you're naive and scientifically illiterate, to the point where "nobody was there so who knows" seems like a reasonable argument to you, it's hard to see the difference between this and pseudoscience. It's because at the most basic interface, there is no difference. Especially in highly evolved pseudoscience like climate change denialism, where a lot of effort is expended into training their believers to pretend they're talking science.

I pretty much agree with the rest of your post.

Except that it is true that "nobody was there so who knows?" The idea being, I suppose, that there's no reason to think that the laws of physics - as we know them now - held in the distant (or even not so distant) past.

Scientists, it seems to me, pull a very similar trick when they say about the Big Bang, and black holes, "Here the fundamental laws of physics break down, so who knows?"