The Skeptics Thread

[TheSickness]

Someone doesn't agree with me Now I'm taking my ball and going home...

I've only posted to this thread because I saw an inaccurate definition of a scientific fact. Other than that you guys believe what you want. There are very few people you can dissuade from their core beliefs. Typing about it doesn't convince anyone. Keep typing, I have my view of things and I don't expect anyone to believe or get any inspiration by what I might say. Rodney King was a great prophet when he said, "Can't we all just get along"....

-jeff

Female sexual organ

 

[jelms]

Female sexual organ

Well we all know how you hate those Mikey

 

[Azmal]

I've pretty much avoided this and D's other thread. I personally don't find them worth talking about in this type of format.

One thing that needs to be pointed out to you and everyone is that Evolution is not a scientific fact, just a theory. Much different for those that try to follow the scientific method. Just wanted to point that out. Am I saying I do not believe in Evolution, heck no, just trying to point out a problem with definitions.

Am I giving any support to you or D, no. I think you are both a little blinded by your beliefs....

-jeff

See my above post and I will contest that point further. Thanks to a christian agenda evolution, instead of being a Scientific Theory, has been labeled as -JUST- a theory.

This is erroneous. I want to copy over something that explains this better than I can. I know I know, copy/paste=bad but at least I know this stuff.

The terms "fact" and "theory" can be applied to evolution, just as they are to gravity.[1] Misuse and misunderstanding of how those terms are applied to evolution have been used to construct arguments disputing the validity of evolution.

There have been many theories that attempt to explain the fact of gravity. That is, scientists ask what is gravity, and what causes it. They develop a model to explain gravity, a theory of gravity. Many explanations of gravity that qualify as a Theory of Gravity have been proposed over the centuries: Aristotle's, Galileo's, Newton's, and now Einstein's. Confusion of the terms can arise when we use a single word to describe both the observed facts and the theory that explains it. The word ‘’gravity’’ can be used to refer to the observed facts (i.e., the observed attraction of masses) and the theory used to explain it (gravity is the reason why masses attract each other). Thus, gravity is both a "theory" and a "fact."

In the study of biological species, the facts include fossils and measurements of these fossils. The location of a fossil is an example of a fact (using the scientific meaning of the word fact). In species that rapidly reproduce, for example fruit flies, the process of evolutionary change has been observed in the laboratory.[19] The observation of fruit fly populations changing character is also an example of a fact. So evolution is a fact just as the observations of gravity are a fact.

In biology, there have been many attempts to explain these observations over the years. Lamarckism, Transmutationism and Orthogenesis were all non-Darwinian theories that attempted to explain the observations of species and fossils and other evidence. However, the Theory of Evolution is the explanation for all relevant observations regarding the development of life, based on a model that explains all the available data and observations. Thus, evolution is not only a fact but also a theory, just as gravity is both a fact and a theory.

 

[Azmal]

We have those Peeps because Jesus died for our sins and chocolate Bunnies signify the cross....Have no idea WTF the eggs got to do with it but hey whatever gets your rocks off LOLOLOL Just trying to bring some levity to a really dark thread...Azmal I respect your position...I don't have to accept it though. Same with Django and Nelson and Jelms. This is a no win situation on all ends....Let's embrace those who are different and give each other wedgies..Because someone seems a little mentally screwed up with what you personally believe does not mean they are stupid...Just Different.

No, of course not. I don't think anyone is stupid for for believing anything. I'm of course unapologetic about my positions and it may make it seem like I'm trying to be offensive out of malice but it is not the case.

 

[BurntRubber]

See my above post and I will contest that point further. Thanks to a christian agenda evolution, instead of being a Scientific Theory, has been labeled as -JUST- a theory.

This is erroneous. I want to copy over something that explains this better than I can. I know I know, copy/paste=bad but at least I know this stuff.

The terms "fact" and "theory" can be applied to evolution, just as they are to gravity.[1] Misuse and misunderstanding of how those terms are applied to evolution have been used to construct arguments disputing the validity of evolution.

There have been many theories that attempt to explain the fact of gravity. That is, scientists ask what is gravity, and what causes it. They develop a model to explain gravity, a theory of gravity. Many explanations of gravity that qualify as a Theory of Gravity have been proposed over the centuries: Aristotle's, Galileo's, Newton's, and now Einstein's. Confusion of the terms can arise when we use a single word to describe both the observed facts and the theory that explains it. The word ‘’gravity’’ can be used to refer to the observed facts (i.e., the observed attraction of masses) and the theory used to explain it (gravity is the reason why masses attract each other). Thus, gravity is both a "theory" and a "fact."

In the study of biological species, the facts include fossils and measurements of these fossils. The location of a fossil is an example of a fact (using the scientific meaning of the word fact). In species that rapidly reproduce, for example fruit flies, the process of evolutionary change has been observed in the laboratory.[19] The observation of fruit fly populations changing character is also an example of a fact. So evolution is a fact just as the observations of gravity are a fact.

In biology, there have been many attempts to explain these observations over the years. Lamarckism, Transmutationism and Orthogenesis were all non-Darwinian theories that attempted to explain the observations of species and fossils and other evidence. However, the Theory of Evolution is the explanation for all relevant observations regarding the development of life, based on a model that explains all the available data and observations. Thus, evolution is not only a fact but also a theory, just as gravity is both a fact and a theory.

Oh now evolution isnt a fact, because us crazy christians have a different agenda. I think that it was us christians, before scientists, that said it was creation, then it was an anti-christian movement tht said it was evolution.

 

[Azmal]

Reflecting on the posts talking about coming together, accepting our differences, joining hands, singing kumbaya, and so forth; I think a lot more is being read into thread this than really is there. I thought we were just having a discussion on a (very) controversial issue. I may seem push the position because it's one of those things where people tend to feel uncomfortable with it (probably for the reasons people are reading too much into this thread) but I don't think its good to shrink from controversy.

This has never been about 'winning' either, and progression is being made on some levels regardless and has sparked interest and conversation having over 300 posts already (hell, even a few relevant ones too : )

It's all in good fun and at the end of the day I think the participants of this thread know that. Some of it seems a little personal but I for one at least won't hold anything against anyone because I know these issues are dear to them and will surely cause anger and offense eventually.

 

[BurntRubber]

Bible stated the Earth was round first...................way before Columbus

Isaiah 40:22 (written 2800 years ago): "It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth."


The Bible informs us here that the earth is round. At a time when science believed that the earth was flat, it was the Scriptures that inspired Christopher Columbus to sail around the world. He wrote: "It was the Lord who put it into my mind. I could feel His hand upon me . . . there is no question the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit because He comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures . . ." (From his diary, in reference to his discovery of "the New World").

interesting

 

[BurntRubber]

How so long ago before telescopes would it have been written of how vast the solar system and stars are...it also has the same message in Isaiah...2 confimed places in the Bible.

Jeremiah 33:22 (written 2500 years ago): "As the hosts of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured."
Isaiah 40:22 "He stretches out the heavens like a canopy" 26"Lift your eyes and look to the Heavens, Who created all these? Who brings out the starry hosts one by one and knows each by name?"


The Bible claimed that there are billions of stars ("host of heaven" is the biblical term for the stars). When it made this statement, no one knew how vast the numbers of stars were as only about 1,100 were observable. Now we know that there are billions of stars, and that they cannot be numbered

bump!

 

[BurntRubber]

does the Bible really talk about dinosaurs? looks like it does

How can archiologistst explain how artifacts from 1000 years ago on the same plain as dinosaur bones...dinosaurs werent around 6000 years ago...or did my boy who wrote this in the book of Job find the first dinosuar remains(did someone really thousands of years ago find a skeleton of a brontasuras and put it all together)...i think the Bible has some truth...

read JOB 40 & 41
15 "Look at the behemoth, [a]
which I made along with you
and which feeds on grass like an ox.

16 What strength he has in his loins,
what power in the muscles of his belly!

17 His tail sways like a cedar;
the sinews of his thighs are close-knit.

18 His bones are tubes of bronze,
his limbs like rods of iron.

19 He ranks first among the works of God,
yet his Maker can approach him with his sword.

20 The hills bring him their produce,
and all the wild animals play nearby.

21 Under the lotus plants he lies,
hidden among the reeds in the marsh.

22 The lotuses conceal him in their shadow;
the poplars by the stream surround him.

23 When the river rages, he is not alarmed;
he is secure, though the Jordan should surge against his mouth.

24 Can anyone capture him by the eyes, [c]
or trap him and pierce his nose?

Job 41
1 "Can you pull in the leviathan [d] with a fishhook
or tie down his tongue with a rope?

2 Can you put a cord through his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?

3 Will he keep begging you for mercy?
Will he speak to you with gentle words?

4 Will he make an agreement with you
for you to take him as your slave for life?

5 Can you make a pet of him like a bird
or put him on a leash for your girls?

6 Will traders barter for him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?

7 Can you fill his hide with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?

8 If you lay a hand on him,
you will remember the struggle and never do it again!

9 Any hope of subduing him is false;
the mere sight of him is overpowering.

10 No one is fierce enough to rouse him.
Who then is able to stand against me?

11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to me.

12 "I will not fail to speak of his limbs,
his strength and his graceful form.

13 Who can strip off his outer coat?
Who would approach him with a bridle?

14 Who dares open the doors of his mouth,
ringed about with his fearsome teeth?

15 His back has [e] rows of shields
tightly sealed together;

16 each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between.

17 They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.

18 His snorting throws out flashes of light;
his eyes are like the rays of dawn.

19 Firebrands stream from his mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.

20 Smoke pours from his nostrils
as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.

21 His breath sets coals ablaze,
and flames dart from his mouth.

22 Strength resides in his neck;
dismay goes before him.

23 The folds of his flesh are tightly joined;
they are firm and immovable.

24 His chest is hard as rock,
hard as a lower millstone.

25 When he rises up, the mighty are terrified;
they retreat before his thrashing.

26 The sword that reaches him has no effect,
nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.

27 Iron he treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.

28 Arrows do not make him flee;
slingstones are like chaff to him.

29 A club seems to him but a piece of straw;
he laughs at the rattling of the lance.

30 His undersides are jagged potsherds,
leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.

31 He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron
and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

 

[Azmal]

Oh now evolution isnt a fact, because us crazy christians have a different agenda. I think that it was us christians, before scientists, that said it was creation, then it was an anti-christian movement tht said it was evolution.

First come first serve? Wonder what the Greeks thought? They beat your god if you go by that mentality.

Anyway, I don't think I was clear cause that wasn't what I was talking about anyway. About the agenda bit I meant that modern Christians (when debating against it) will say evolution is -just- a theory as a method to make it sound as though it was just a typical idea, just as valid as the next.

 

[BurntRubber]

First come first serve? Wonder what the Greeks thought? They beat your god if you go by that mentality.

Anyway, I don't think I was clear cause that wasn't what I was talking about anyway. About the agenda bit I meant that modern Christians (when debating against it) will say evolution is -just- a theory as a method to make it sound as though it was just a typical idea, just as valid as the next.

because it is just a theory, its not fact

 

[TheSickness]

Sounds more like a position of Hate then logic to me...

 

[Azmal]

does the Bible really talk about dinosaurs? looks like it does

You'd do well to look outside the venues of biased christian websites.
Did you actually read the bible quote? I did. I don't think you did... cause uh... dinosaurs probably didn't have bronze bones... probably didn't breathe fire either... Hm, you don't suppose it could be a man made fairy tale do ya?

This is a fine example of grasping for straws. Since dinosaurs are a big speed bump to faith, ya gotta figure out some way all the science is wrong and your bible is right.
Ultimately dinosaurs themselves don't make any difference as to whether a god exists or not. The point is that they lived millions of years ago and that conflicts with the great flood, god marching ALL the animals (or kinds) two by two, and the young earth biblical model.
In order to formulate the hypothesis that dinosaurs existed within the last 10000 years or less you have to basically throw out just about everything we know about geography, geophysics, plate tectonics, cosmology, biology, radioactive decay dating and so on. Each field has more data than you can hope to educate yourself on in a lifetime. Not just you, that's not an attack, but anyone.

 

[Azmal]

because it is just a theory, its not fact

See above posts concerning Theory & Fact of evolution.

 

[BurntRubber]

See above posts concerning Theory & Fact of evolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact


you mean the if its in wikipedia it must be true...

thats where you got your post from,

 

[BurntRubber]

You'd do well to look outside the venues of biased christian websites.
Did you actually read the bible quote? I did. I don't think you did... cause uh... dinosaurs probably didn't have bronze bones... probably didn't breathe fire either... Hm, you don't suppose it could be a man made fairy tale do ya?

This is a fine example of grasping for straws. Since dinosaurs are a big speed bump to faith, ya gotta figure out some way all the science is wrong and your bible is right.
Ultimately dinosaurs themselves don't make any difference as to whether a god exists or not. The point is that they lived millions of years ago and that conflicts with the great flood, god marching ALL the animals (or kinds) two by two, and the young earth biblical model.
In order to formulate the hypothesis that dinosaurs existed within the last 10000 years or less you have to basically throw out just about everything we know about geography, geophysics, plate tectonics, cosmology, biology, radioactive decay dating and so on. Each field has more data than you can hope to educate yourself on in a lifetime. Not just you, that's not an attack, but anyone.

considering it was written thousands of years a ago an describes a dinosaur, that were thought to be extinct at the time when it was written is very interesting.

plenty of cultures talk about fire breathing dragons...but that was a seperate Bible verse. chapter 40 & 41 in Job are exclusive of each other

 

[Azmal]

Bible stated the Earth was round first...................way before Columbus
Isaiah 40:22 (written 2800 years ago): "It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth."
The Bible informs us here that the earth is round. At a time when science believed that the earth was flat, it was the Scriptures that inspired Christopher Columbus to sail around the world. He wrote: "It was the Lord who put it into my mind. I could feel His hand upon me . . . there is no question the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit because He comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures . . ." (From his diary, in reference to his discovery of "the New World").

This one is pretty funny. Who comes up with this stuff?
The scientific method we recognize and use today wasn't even present until around the 16th and 17th centuries. Science as we know it today, or perhaps even at all, did not exist back then. I think the first hints of science have been dated back to early greece and early egypt but nothing like what you might expect.

That said, it was ignorance that said the world was flat, not science.

I said all that to humor the argument, but here's the real point: Your point is irrelevant. A circle, so far as I know, is not a sphere. A circle is two dimensional right? FLAT.

 

[jelms]

See my above post and I will contest that point further. Thanks to a christian agenda evolution, instead of being a Scientific Theory, has been labeled as -JUST- a theory.

This is erroneous. I want to copy over something that explains this better than I can. I know I know, copy/paste=bad but at least I know this stuff.

The terms "fact" and "theory" can be applied to evolution, just as they are to gravity.[1] Misuse and misunderstanding of how those terms are applied to evolution have been used to construct arguments disputing the validity of evolution.

There have been many theories that attempt to explain the fact of gravity. That is, scientists ask what is gravity, and what causes it. They develop a model to explain gravity, a theory of gravity. Many explanations of gravity that qualify as a Theory of Gravity have been proposed over the centuries: Aristotle's, Galileo's, Newton's, and now Einstein's. Confusion of the terms can arise when we use a single word to describe both the observed facts and the theory that explains it. The word ‘’gravity’’ can be used to refer to the observed facts (i.e., the observed attraction of masses) and the theory used to explain it (gravity is the reason why masses attract each other). Thus, gravity is both a "theory" and a "fact."

In the study of biological species, the facts include fossils and measurements of these fossils. The location of a fossil is an example of a fact (using the scientific meaning of the word fact). In species that rapidly reproduce, for example fruit flies, the process of evolutionary change has been observed in the laboratory.[19] The observation of fruit fly populations changing character is also an example of a fact. So evolution is a fact just as the observations of gravity are a fact.

In biology, there have been many attempts to explain these observations over the years. Lamarckism, Transmutationism and Orthogenesis were all non-Darwinian theories that attempted to explain the observations of species and fossils and other evidence. However, the Theory of Evolution is the explanation for all relevant observations regarding the development of life, based on a model that explains all the available data and observations. Thus, evolution is not only a fact but also a theory, just as gravity is both a fact and a theory.

I think your statements have proven my stance that a theory is just that. With all the data we have now Newton's law of gravity is modified to take into consideration Einsteins theories. And Einsteins theories are just that until they are proven through scientific experiments, which are being developed now. To draw a conclusion between gravity and evolution is not a scientific conclusion. They are very different things and to try to tie them together through observation is wrong.

I do believe in evolution, but scientific repeatable evidence is not something that can be done with evolution.

-jeff

 

[BurntRubber]

I am not going to resay, what has been said. as far as the last circle/flat earth...it is more obvious you are grasping at straws.

Good posts and I believe much as you do.

You can't prove faith,hope,God to someone who is totally opposed to it.Faith comes from the spirit ( a spiritual force) and skeptics are operating solely on a mental level (in the soul area : mind,will,emotions).

It is not possible for the non-spiritual to comprehend that which is discernible only to the spirit.They have knowingly or unknowingly shut off input from their spirit in favor of that which makes sense to them : things which are logical.Faith defies all logic of human reasoning.

God has said that He chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise (God's "system" works ONLY by faith) .To an unbeliever,faith is foolishness for there exits no logical explanation for it or for it to take precedence over reason .

As well developed as the greatest mind of all time might be ,it is nothing compared to what is available from the spirit.

As I am sure Azmal will logically and methodically dispute everything that I have written and that Burnt Rubber has written ,this serves only as entertainment for other readers.He will not believe and I will still be a believer .


If I remember correctly,it is supposed to be impossible for a bumblebee to fly due to it's wings supposedly not being able to generate enough lift to overcome the weight of it's body.That's logical.

Apparently the bumblebee isn't a logical being

 

[Azmal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact
you mean the if its in wikipedia it must be true...
thats where you got your post from,

It collaborates with virtually all other universally accepted encyclopedias, scientific & academic books & papers. You man enough to contest that? Better step up your game. Of course if you feel all academic pursuits and education and scientific understanding are unimportant to you, then I obviously have nothing for you.