Kent Hovind Gets Taken Again
Oh, this is just too precious.
The April 2005 issue of Scientific American included an editorial entitled “Okay, We Give Up” and subtitled, “We feel so ashamed”. The editors said they were contrite for ignoring creationism and ID, simply because there’s no evidence for either one.
That’s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn’t get bogged down in details.
Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts.
This was clearly an April Fools joke. Perhaps not the funniest ever, but still pretty blatant. But Kent Hovind fell for it anyway.
Go read his response. I’m not reading so much as a twitch on the Clue-O-Meter. No wonder he’s a laughingstock, even by creationist standards.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, either: in 1999, New Mexicans for Science and Reason awarded Hovind the P.T. Barnum Award for showing a Philadelphia audience evidence of humans and dinosaurs coexisting. He didn’t realize it was NMSR’s April Fools prank.
Anyway, here are some selections from Hovind’s reply to Scientific American. Those of you who are familiar with him may recognize a lot of it. Those who don’t will discover new depths of kookiness.
The magazine treats evolution as if it is a part of science, when there’s nothing further from the truth. It is a religion, masquerading as science. But there is no scientific evidence that would tell us a dog produced a non-dog, let alone that a dog came from a work 4.6 billion years ago.
There’s actually overwhelming evidence that dinosaurs have always lived with humans. We simply called them dragons. Man killed most of them, and there may be a few still alive today.
As for the flood carving Grand Canyon, why don’t they explain to us why the top of the Canyon is 4,000ft higher than where the river (Colorado River) enters the canyon? Why don’t they explain to us how rivers miraculously flowed up-hill for millions of years to finally cut the groove deep enough so they could flow downhill?
The simple answer is uplift, of course. But Kent doesn’t accept continental drift, so presumably the idea of mountains growing is anathema to him as well.
There’s no such thing as a “fossil record”; there are simply fossils in the dirt.
Thanks for clearing that up. In other news, there’s no such thing as the free market; there’s just people buying and selling stuff. There’s no such thing as the National Archives; just a government building with a lot of old papers.
And if you can’t get your point across any other way, compare your opponents to Nazis or Communists:
Try to get a creationist article into a magazine like Scientific American, and see what happens. Ten years ago if a professor in the Soviet Union tried to submit an article to any Soviet magazine claiming that communism didn’t work, and capitalism is a better system, he would be shipped off to Siberia if he survived. Today, if a teacher in a public university, or a writer at any major science magazine (such as Scientific American) dares to suggest that evolution is not true, and maybe Creation is true, he will be sent to academic Siberia in a heart-beat.
One thing, though: ten years ago was 1995. The Soviet Union had formally become Russia four years earlier. I doubt anyone would have been sent to Siberia for saying that the old regime didn’t work.
I can’t believe these guys think there are scientifically credible arguments for the idea that all life came from nothing, 18 billion years ago. What are they thinking?
I agree with Hovind on this point: you’d have to be crazy to think that life on Earth started 4 billion years before the Big Bang. (For those unsure of the timeline: the universe is roughly 14 billion years old. The Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. Life appeared somewhere on the order of 1 billion years after the Earth formed, or about 3.5 billion years ago.)
The truth is that many scientists have come to understand who butters their bread. They have to support the evolution theory or lose their grant money. Ask any number of scientists who have not kissed the sacred cow of evolution and have lost their job, grant money, or position at a university. The list grows every day. See video number 7 for much more on this.
Ah, I love a good conspiracy theory!
The Bible says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” Anyone who believes they came from a rock is a fool.
Hovind doesn’t think he came from a rock. He thinks he came from dirt.
You can download MP3s and videos of Hovind’s unique brand of stand-up comedy here.
Update, Sep. 16, 2005: Fixed URL to Hovind’s response. Thanks to alert reader Jamie for the correction.
PCDR:
No. You don’t get to bring up any more topics until you address the questions that have been asked before, starting with “How do you know that these things happened?“.
Fez and Eamon Knight have pointed you at information about why your arguments are bogus. I’ve tried to be fair and map out the form of your argument, and only succeeded in showing that it is indefensible.
You can either bring hard solid evidence to the table, or you can admit that you’re wrong. Then we’ll move on to the next unanswered question.
Creationists and apologists always do this: as soon as one of your talking points is refuted, you move on to the next one to see if something will stick, like a guilty child desperately searching for an excuse that mom and dad will accept. You’re not interested in what’s true, you’re only interested in playing “stump the wicked atheist”.
As for the origin (I assume you meant “origin”, not “evolution”) of time, space, and matter: do I look like a cosmologist to you? Why don’t you go look on Wikipedia or read a book or something?
Of course, I suspect that you don’t really give a rat’s ass about the correct answer. You just want to elicit an “I don’t know” from me. Fine. I’m happy to admit that I don’t know how the universe started. But you have yet to demonstrate why “magic man done it!” is a better answer than “I don’t know”.
What does it really matter about the origins of these things? We can prove that space exists through the most basic of scientific experiments, as well as time and matter. The understanding how these things came to be could be beyond a human beings level of comprehension. The mystery of the origins of these could be solved in a thousand years from now or maybe even next week or maybe even never. A complete model of the origin of space and time could possibly never be more than conjecture and hypothesis. Your question is similar to this one.
“Can g-d create a rock so big that he himself cannot lift it?”
It adds no value to any argument and any answer makes little difference in someone’s overall belief.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0418_030418_jesusrelic.html
National Geographic (not a religious site) on the proof of James and Jesus being an important figure
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1027410/posts
Burial Site of Many of the First century christians named in the New Testament
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529346,00.html
The Bones of Paul (maybe)
http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/the-house-of-david-inscription-faq.htm
Proof of the Existance of the House of David from a king of Damascus (Aram) (Just a bonus here)
http://www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/historical-and-scientific-proof-of-jesus-faq.htm
Proof from Josephus, in the book Jewish Antiquities
and Roman historian Carius Cornelius Tacitus
Proof in the stones of the existance of these people is one step toward proving their accounts.
For the rest of the proof, you are correct, there are no videotapes to watch. Just as there are no videotapes of any other event from before the invention of photography. Are you going to use that as an argument that the World did not exist before motion pictures? No, you are going to consider the evidence as a whole and draw a conclusion. Like I have said before, there is a vast amount of references to Jesus from Christian sources, Jewish sources, Roman sources, and others. Any one of these by itself could be doubted, but taken as a whole they provide very compelling evidence that the events of the New Testament are likely to be factual. Now, you may choose to shut your eyes and say “I don’t see it” but that does not make them go away.
[Edited, 17:20: fixed a URL –arensb]
Menes777
What does it matter where stuff comes from? My Theory answers that question, yours can not. I thought you were about facts and science not blind belief.
However, I will give you a second chance, Tell me about the evolution of stars. I will even give you some facts to go on.
1. Stars are required to perform fusion to create elements above hydrogen.
2. Elements (in the form of clouds of hydrogen, helium, and “molecular dust”) are required to create stars
3. Massive forces such as the collision of Galaxies are needed to compress the matter to spark the fusion.
Now, I admit, I glibly threw in “My Theory” in the first line. I believe that Something vastly superior to me created time, space, and matter. I as a created human do not have the capacity to understand everything about my creator, but I have a book of His revealed answers for many common questions. What do you have?
PCDR:
Well, sure. But so does the theory that invisible universe-creating pixies are busily creating time and space all over the place.
“Magic man done it!” is an answer. But what makes you think that it’s a correct answer?
This sort of answer always brings me to the same question: Why is positing another unexplainable thing with no origin a satisfactory response to the unexplained origin of the universe? The number of unexplained things hasn’t decreased, but the complexity of the non-explanation has increased.
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled blog debate…
PCDR Says:
Sure, and my hypothetical response of , “Blue” to your hypothetical question, “Which animals lay eggs?” is also an answer but it’s nonsensical.
You do not have a Theory; at most you have the weakest of hypothesis and at the least you have a simple belief. Now take the next step – how are you going to validate your hypothesis?
And I’m still waiting for you, using the arguments you yourself have laid out above, to complete the Unicorn Test.
PCDR:
Okay, and how do you propose to take the next 999 steps?
Leadership U, which the Free Republic article links to, is a religious site. So are the allabout* sites (allaboutarchaeology.org has a blurb at the bottom about how we’re all worthless pieces of crap who deserve to be tortured forever unless we swear allegiance to Jesus). So they’re obviously biased. Poking around allaboutjesuschrist.org, it looks like they’re creationists, and still think the shroud of Turin might be real, which shows how bad their scholarship is.
Heck, the page you linked to accepts the Testimonium Flavianum as true, even though it’s widely accepted as a later insertion to the text. And the quoted excerpt from Tacitus only claims that there were Christians in the time of Nero. That’s hardly an extraordinary claim. I mean, there are Christians now.
The other articles you linked to are of a similar sort: assuming that they’re correct, they show that there lived, somewhere around the first or second century, people with the same names as in the Gospel accounts. If the National Geographic article is to be believed, Jesus was considered important enough to be named on James’s ossuary.
Let’s grant that James’s brother really was the Jesus; that some of the people buried under the Mount of Olives are mentioned in Acts and elsewhere; that the bones in the Vatican really are those of the apostle Paul. How do you propose to show that Jesus did magic or rose from the dead?
So far, you’ve shown that there was a Christian community toward the end of the first and beginning of the second century. You haven’t shown that this was anything more than a religious cult like a thousand others, just one that happened to get big.
Your argument so far has been that “early Christians wouldn’t die for a lie”. I’ve outlined the structure of that argument. Now how do you propose to fill in the missing pieces?
Oh, and I’m rather amused that whoever wrote the shroud of Turin article at allaboutjesuschrist.org doesn’t know the difference between tempera and tempura. I think finding deep-fried Japanese squid on a piece of 14th century European cloth would be a big deal.
To the 3 of you together, lets see, No answer to the Evolution of Stuff, no answer to the evolution of Stars, the most abundant objects in space, Not much science explaining things here so far.
Lets try an easier one.
Explain the process of creating the Elements. The types of forces to overcome the natural repellant nature of protons. How fusion can create heavy elements above iron which would require the consumption of energy rather than the release of Energy.
The Best answer I have seen is a star exlodes and here come heavy elements. Of course the elements were required to form the star in the first place, but that is just a small problem.
Fez, I am not the one making science up to fit my theory. I have a God who created natural laws to show you that your made up science has to violate the very laws it tries to claim to be based on to work.
My God left His own proof behind. He said (paraphrase) “Look around. You can see by the things I have made that I have Created them.” Do you look around?
PCDR:
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why don’t you ask a physicist or an astronomer? This is undergraduate-level stuff. Go to your local college campus, find a used copy of last semester’s Introduction to Astronomy textbook, and start reading.
Or, if reading makes your lips too tired, my local university’s astronomy department has open houses and public lectures. See if yours has something comparable, and go ask. In my experience, it’s not hard to get scientists talking about their area of expertise. In fact, the hard part is getting them to shut up.
Of course, this applies only if you’re actually interested in learning, rather than playing stump-the-atheist.
PCDR said:
No; you’re blindly accepting what other people over a period of thousands of years made up and apparently do not have the slightest inclination to engage in the smallest amount of critical thinking.
You’ve made a statement of fact now prove it or admit you’re only here, as arensb has pointed out multiple times, to play games.
My statements of facts contained in the Unicorn Challenge are far stronger than your claims regarding the existence of some supreme power and yet you repeatedly shy away from challenging them. Your Swiss Army Knife of Beliefs has allegedly provided you all the tools you need to disassemble my argument in a self-consistent fashion. Do it without dismantling your own logical structure. Until you’re willing to man up I’m done trying to engage you.
Explain the process of creating the Elements. The types of forces to overcome the natural repellant nature of protons. How fusion can create heavy elements above iron which would require the consumption of energy rather than the release of Energy.
The Best answer I have seen is a star exlodes and here come heavy elements. Of course the elements were required to form the star in the first place, but that is just a small problem.
Oh for crying out loud, do you even read your own crap? Hydrogen — one, simple element with only one proton (you do know that much, don’t you?) — is all you need to get a star going, and gravity is quite adequate to start the initial condensation of a nebula. All fusion up to iron is exothermic, so normal stellar fusion is sufficient to produce that out of hydrogen. Trans-ferric elements are produced in supernova explosions (which take place precisely because there is no more energy to be had from fusion, therefore no internal pressure to balance the force of gravity).
I’ve known this stuff since I was a teenager in the astronomy hobby. Where exactly is the problem?
PCDR,
I think the reason you’re encountering as much frustration as you are is that you’re doing a very common (and annoying) thing for creationists to do. You’re throwing out a pile of claims that:
1) Are individually really elementary to answer but collectively start to pile up into a huge workload to respond to.
2) Could generally be looked up on Wikipedia.
3) Demonstrate a deficient basic understanding of the material you’re attacking.
Your heavy elements question is a classic example. The mechanism by which heavy elements are produced is well understood and supported. A short perusal of a basic web site on astronomy would explain it (although Eamon Knight was helpful enough to write a nice summary for you). All it really does is show that you haven’t done your homework and implicitly demand that other people do it for you. Compound this by doing it several times in one post, and you can see how it may get people riled up.
Imagine the response you would get if somebody walked into a Christianity forum and asked with a straight face, “If Jesus is the lamb of God, where is his wool?” Aside from not advancing any useful argument, the question betrays an alarming level of confusion that needs to be addressed at many levels.
If you want to delve into cosmology and physics in general, I’m sure that there are people who would be interested in discussing it, one step at a time. They may even point you toward references that answer your questions with mainstream science and data. For starters, are you satisfied with Eamon Knight’s answer about heavy elements? If not, why not? Let’s get this one finished before moving on to the next one.
You’re right, this is basic stuff. Physics can write a formula to show how to hang an elephant from a twig by his tail, but common sense says it will not happen. You can say Hydrogen and Gravity can create a star, but common sense tell you that a cloud of hydrogen will dissipate, not condense into a massive gravitational hole that begins fusion. Where is the massive hydrogen cloud coming from? Where is the Massive gravitational force coming from? Don’t pull some quirky quantum sub-atomic formula out because the amount of matter and gravity to form a selfsustaining fusion reation is not in the quantum physics range or in the sub-atomic range. You guys are the science crowd, why does the theory of star creation have to violate known laws of science?
Simple example: Law of probabilty tells me a fair coin has the exact same chance of throwing 100 heads in a row as throwing 100 tails in a row, which is also the same as 50 heads then 50 tails, which is exactly the same as Head, tail, head, tail, head…. But Common sense tells me that any perfect pattern is probably proof that I am being cheated by a crook.
Science can show me a formula for an elephant to hang by his tail from a tree, but If I see it in real life my common sense tells me that something fishy is going on.
You can argue that a star can form under x billion tons of hydrogen and Gravity of y times the force of Earth’s gravity, but your common sense should ask how you concentrate the matter and where the Gravity comes from and say “that sound fishy based on how thing happen naturally (in other words, in nature, the real world, without outside influence.)
Besides Eamon, You wan’t me to check Wikepedia, here is a quote from it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star
A star begins as a collapsing cloud of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of heavier elements.
So, Stars dying produce heavy elements, and heavy elements produce stars. Genius. What came first the chicken or the egg?
So, you are right Arensb, the first stars did form by Magic Man then He put a process in place to form more.
PCDR,
I think the problem that’s coming out here is that you’re very confused about what the physics actually says. Starting with the basics:
Are you suggesting that physics doesn’t have equations for strain and tension? If you ask a physicist or engineer if this is possible, he’ll calculate the breaking tension of the twig and tell you exactly what your common sense will tell you. In fact, he’ll likely be able to tell you with far greater precision when the twig will break. If physics was as pathetic as you think it is, we wouldn’t have things like bridges and airplanes.
Common sense is, quite simply, wrong. Historically, when common sense and physics collide, physics wins. Common sense says that a feather will fall slower than a rock in a vacuum, but that’s wrong too.
Let’s file that one under “ultimate origins of the universe” for the moment, if you don’t mind. We’re definitely trying to climb Mt Everest before we can walk here.
The hydrogen itself provides the gravity. Every individual particle in the cloud is attracted to every other particle. That’s how gravity works. They will “fall into each other” over time. Individually, those atoms don’t weigh much. Once you add them all up, they weigh as much as a star and produce a tremendous crushing force. The individual atoms in a school bus are each very light, but if you add them up and put them next to the atoms of Earth, the attraction between them is enough to crush you like a bug.
A better understanding of probability would help here as well. The broadest rules of probability would tell you that you should expect about 50 heads and 50 tails over the course of 100 flips. That’s not all they tell you, though. They will tell you, for example, the probability that you’ll see any number of heads or tails in a row within that sequence of tosses. Probability will tell you a lot about the “texture” and patterns of data you should see in that stream. If a statistician tells you you’re flipping an unfair coin, she’s not using common sense. You can bet she’s using math.
Using common sense over real mathematics in when you’re gambling is a good way to end up in the poorhouse. Try the Mony Hall Problem and see where you go.
PCDR wrote: [science tells me sweet little lies. am I it’s bitch?]
CHECK, PLEASE!
You were the one making it seem like an issue of where things come from. I have no problem not completely understanding the origins of space, time and matter. Stating that I am basing what I know and believe on blind faith demonstrates a considerable amount of ignorance on your part. It’s also very dishonest and a misdirection ploy that I would expect from someone who is incapable of effectively arguing their point. However, since you mentioned blind belief, it is you sir that is the one who has chosen to blind yourself to the facts. To hide behind the guise of “God did it” and “I have a book that explains everything”. You have the blinders on and it’s really sad that you are entwined in your cocoon of ignorance that you cannot understand the fallacies that you are spouting.
Astrophysics and related subjects aren’t my specialty. In fact my specialty about science is limited in comparison to some of the other more educated posters. However, I can tell you a little overview of the formation of stars (stars do not evolve). Stars are not required to perform fusion to create elements above hydrogen. Stars form out of gravity and fusion. The byproducts of this fusion are the elements from Helium all the way up to Ferrum (Iron). Only one element is required to create a star and that is Hydrogen, the most basic of elements. Massive forces such as the accumulation of a mind boggling amount of gravity is required to start fusion, or maybe not. It could be a completely different process, but like I said star formation isn’t my specialty. However I can tell you that stars form by gravity, are held together by gravity and go through phases as they “burn” (in quotes because fusion is not burning) through their fuel. The amount of fuel determines what type of start it will be and how its life will generally go. Throwing this back on you, the only thing you can tell me about star formation from your book is that g-d created them. Interesting that the creation of a billions of billions of stars is just an afterthought, yet it takes 6 days to create earth and then 40 days to flood it.
In response to your last question, I have an incredible amount of books and knowledge on how not only evolution but origins of the universe and a host of other topics. Not to mention a plethora of objects around me that do not point to a creator. What you have is a poorly written book that not only contradicts itself, but almost a third of it is considered obsolete by its very believers.
Your last statement is also fundamentally flawed in that your book should not able to answer many common questions, it should be able to answer ALL common questions. A snippet of questions such as…
When did g-d say “Let there be gravity”? He mentions light, but why not gravity or even sound? Gravity is one of the most important forces to the existence of just about everything, yet it’s omitted even in just a passing statement in the creation of everything. The answer to that could be in the fact that gravity is taken for granted so easily. Everyone and everything is subject to gravity as soon as they are born into the world and is inescapable except by extraordinary means. The writers of the bible couldn’t perceive nor could they understand it as a force so they left it out. Really spoils the idea that an all knowing g-d wrote this all encompassing book yet omitted such an important detail.
Why did g-d create sex for reproduction? Another of those things that are so ingrained in our minds that it has become taken for granted. Some creatures reproduce sexually and some reproduce asexually. Why make two sets of ways to reproduce? If death wasn’t intended to be a part of the original Garden of Eden, then there would be no need to reproduce period. How did an all knowing g-d create all the animals with mates yet screw it up when it came to man and added females later? He either forgot or made a mistake, either way, not the actions of an all powerful all knowing god. Not to mention that if he made Eve out of Adam’s parts wouldn’t he just be making another Adam??? This is forgetting all of the fundamental differences between males and females.
What does the statement “made in our (his) image” mean? If it means that we look exactly like g-d that makes g-d really ugly and really limited. If it means we have the general shape of g-d then chimpanzees could also be considered to be made in his image as well as dogs or hippos. Nearly all mammals have a cranium (in which is a brain along with most of the senses), torso, 4 appendages, fingers and toes and a face (as well breasts, nipples and sexual organs). It is amazing that humans just happen to have the same fundamental layout as thousands of other species. If it means the ability to think and be self aware, that too is not necessarily unique to humans. As an example, some birds (Parrots I believe) and are acknowledged having the same emotional level as a 5 year old child. Not to mention that even my little weiner dogs are able to think their way out of a cage (they use their little noses to push the latch up and over so it opens). The line “Made in his image” sounds more like a writer who wanted to make humans appear more special than they really are.
To keep on track though…
When does g-d mention elements in the bible? The writers could have easily made the statement that he made the earth from tiny particles that are basis of everything. Yet they did not, because they had no way of knowing about atoms and protons and electrons and so on. Therefore they left it out because of their ignorance. You could say it is inferred by other statements in the book of Genesis (or other books), but when do you start and stop inferring things into the bible? When it’s no longer convenient to what you believe? That’s exactly when a splinter group or sect of a religion forms. You could say that the bible may have left some details out because the writers didn’t understand what was being directed to them. Which begs to ask the question what else was left out because of human error??? In the end your book provides no details (or at the very best an interpreted detail) as to what the elements are, what they do or even that they exist. Yet you disbelieve a book that can answer those very same questions.
PCDR:
You wrote earlier:
But given the questions you’re raising, it’s obvious that you know very little about science. I see engineering students all the time, and I know that they need a solid grounding in at least High School-level physics before they start college.
So may I ask what kind of degree you got, and where? Or, if you didn’t get a degree, where you attended and in which discipline?
Or are you “college educated” the way that Kent Hovind has a “Ph.D”?
Here is an interesting read.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070913140318.htm
Also your Wiki citation refers to the creation of stars in the presence of other stars. It in no way claims that is how ALL stars have been formed.
Simple answer to the elephant twig breaking point. The twig will break when it has T amount of torque(T) applied to it. Torque(T) is the product of Force(F) times Distance(D). Force(F) is Mass(M) times Acceleration(A) so breaking point torque is fixed by the twig, Mass is fixed by the elephant, acceration is fixed by gravity so the variable is Distance. As Distance goes to zero, the torque goes to zero and physics can show that if you tie an elephants tail close enough to the breaking point of the twig, the lever principle (in reverse) will make it possible to do.
You and I both know that is dumb, but the equation of T=FD=MAD shows that if distance is zero, torque is zero. Zero torque means no breaking of the twig.
So this page http://astronomyonline.org/Stars/Introduction.asp has all sorts of equations and theories of how to form a star, including Masses of Hydrogen clouds and Radius of the clouds, and shows it all to be mathmatically possible, but, then has to have that trigger to cause the collapse.
QUOTE
“So what can cause a molecular cloud to collapse?
Nearby stars that have ended their live in a supernova can send a shockwave stimulating collapse
Density waves within a galaxy propagate through the spiral structures that can stimulate collapse
Galaxy collisions can create huge gravitational forces to act of nearby clouds
A nearby Wolf-Rayet star can stimulate collapse
Sequential stellar formation – nearby stars forming close enough that their initial fusion can stimulate collapse
END QUOTE
Notice, more stars cause the next one to form.
I really like these lines:
Within a molecular cloud, the distribution of debris is not always even. Fragmentation is suspected to occur in clouds exceeding
100 Solar masses. Smaller clouds within the large cloud can form stars. These molecular cloud fragments also fall under the Jeans criteria, and does affect the overall molecular clouds ability to continue self-gravitation, but that is an advanced topic.
In other words, in real life these Big clouds are not evenly distributed, so they do not follow these math formulas so we have to make up more advanced formulas to Answer the real world observances.
PCDR:
You say this like it’s a bad thing. Shouldn’t we update our models to match reality?
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.
1) There’s no “zero” distance possible. What would that look like? It would look like you hanging the elephant from the top of a post and somehow having the elephant dangle straight down. If that were possible, then yes, you could dangle an elephant from a non-existent, zero-length twig. For what it’s worth.
2) As soon as you move from that “zero” distance, you’ll be dealing with shear stress, regardless of torque.
Do you really think that an engineer’s mind would be blown by this puzzle? That it’s impossible to model mathematically? Draw the free body diagram of what you’re describing. It’s a trivial problem, especially if you bother to specify it clearly.
That’s not really an accurate translation. Well, it’s accurate in the sense that the simple formulas do not accurately describe all situations and that more complex equations are necessary to handle the more complex set of variables. What’s not accurate is the idea that the more advanced formulas are somehow imaginary or simply “made up.” If you have a problem with the actual mathematics, let’s see it.
I think that what we’re coming down to is that you’re asserting that mathematics cannot describe basic physical systems. Is that your position? Let’s get into more detail on the elephant example if that’s where you’re going. Until we can get past that, dealing with the details of star formation is just a bridge too far.
Funny Joke:
What is the difference between an elephant and a flea?
An Elephant can have fleas, but a flea will never have an elephant.
Very funny for my sons, but if you are an evolutionist, a flea did have an elephant.
Very funny considering that Fleas are part of the Phylum Arthropoda. A divergence from the fish-amphibian-reptile-mammal chain which the Elephant eventually came from. Great way to make a strawman argument though, too bad, it’s completely dishonest and demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of animal phylum and the fundamental differences between them.
That’s ok though, if you are a creationist you think a 600 year old man and his 4 sons built a ship that not even modern shipbuilders would attempt and then stock it with 5-6 million species of animals and still have room left over to for food, water, and exercise. Then manage it for an entire year and after that year managed to bring down all the animals from a mountain.
The flood is a tangent topic, but you seem to think that lots of animals just got into a big pile and died so they could be buried and fossilized together. But this fossilization only happened at distinct periods so the evolutionary progression was shown in stages with nothing in between.
“The story of the fossils agrees with the account of Genesis. In the oldest rocks we did not find a series of fossils covering the gradual changes from the most primitive creatures to developed forms but rather, in the oldest rocks, developed species suddenly appeared. Between every species there was a complete absence of intermediate fossils.”—*D.B. Gower [biochemist], “Scientist Rejects Evolution,” Kentish Times, England, December 11, 1975, p. 4.
The flea elephant joke was just told to me and I thought it was funny. I am sorry, the trilobite had the elephant not the flea.
I apologize for the tanget, I would more like to see your answers to the fine gentlmen and ladies questions from the above (as well as some of my own).
Man, a bunch of posts just showed up here. I will answer a few quick ?’s about myself. I have a B.S. (fitting title) degree in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University. I have had classes in Physics, Chemisty, Biology, Statistics, Electronics, Physcology, Sociology, and Mathmatics. I have been a firm Agnostic / Science will find all the answers eventually person until about 10 years ago when I realized that either Life is a chance random process with no purpose and no final point, or it wasn’t.
If all we see is just a random occurances in the universe, then WOW, some pretty impressive random things were organizing into very impressive organized systems. For example Planatary motion, Galaxy Formation, Laws of Nature, etc.
I began to examine the evolution theory. Here is what I saw. People look like monkeys, maybe we came from the same ancestor. Chickens look like T-rex, maybe they had a common ancestor. However, what began to be a challenge to me was things like How does the circulatory system evolve where you need blood, and arteries, and a heart, and veins, and different blood cells all together. Take one part away, the animal dies. Add one part without the others, it is worthless. Take food intake without a way to process it or a stomach without a mouth, or a stomach and mouth without an exit system. You need all the parts for any of them to work. These are very complex systems. So I said to myself, yes, but it all started with simple organisms. Things develop gradually. But I looked at the simple single cell organisms. They are not simple. They have DNA and RNA and Cell walls, and Cytoplasm and ….. Many Many complex systems in a single cell. I looked at Millers Experiment and thought, Hey it is possible Look here, He did it. But He did not make even a simple piece of Life, he just made a jumble of the chemical makup of a simple amino acid. Kind of like saying my frog in a blender from long ago is a frog because all the pieces are in one place, they just look different and are not assembled correctly. Also, His experiement showed that life can not start with Oxygen present, but Life can not survive on earth without Oxygen. Looked like a paradox to me.
Anyway, I am starting to ramble. I am not writing a thesis paper on this site, so I do not use all the mumble Jumble I would if that was the case. I am trying to just discuss in a straightforward way that anybody can understand and if they choose to dig deep to find the actual math, theory etc, they can.
I got mocked by someone a few posts back about the Horsey Kind and the Teeny Kind but I see the crux of the Evolution side to be exactly that.
Dogs change by breeding so someday a dog can be a _________. (Fill in the blank with your own future creature.)
If a dinosaur(read reptile) has enough time he can become a chicken (read bird).
All that has to happen is his scales change to feathers. His bone structure changes. Arms change to Wings, Lungs change, Mouth changes to a beak. This is just the tip of the changes that have to take place.
I have not got all my questions asked yet, but I will list them here because it fits this post.
Evolution of Time Space and Matter. Unable to be conceived of by any theories yet.
Evolution of Stars. Still not buying the theory of all you need is hydrogen and gravity, plus see #1 for the Hydrogen.
Evolution of Elements. Need stars to die for a theory, and still, just a math formula that is suspect, plus see #2 for stars.
Evolution of Life. Every theory has hit major snags such as the free oxygen paradox listed above, among many others such as The RNA DNA which came first paradox.
Evolution of one Kind of life into another. Violates all knowledge of genetics and observation, besides the missing fossil record.
Evolution of one species into another by natural selection. I think this happens. This is observed and tested. It is limited by kinds. This one being true does not prove 1-5 being true.
Cheers, I gotta run.
PCDR:
What’s a “kind”? How can you tell whether two beings are of the same kind or not?
I would classify kind probably similar to the family classifaction. However, I am an engineer not a biologist. I could give you examples of different kinds easier than I could define each specific classification. For Example: a cat and an elephant are different, but a lion and tiger are probably the same. A dandelion and a donkey are different, but a horse and a zebra are probably the same.
A lion and tiger can breed and create a liger or a Tion. Is a house cat part of the this kind? That is beyond my scope of knowledge.
A horse and donkey and mule and zebra and jackass are the same kind. Is a deer part of this kind? I don’t know. But I know that an octopus is not.
I think God created amazing abilities for animals to adapt to environment – see Darwin’s finches, but I don’t believe this adaptation allowed Monkeys to grow wings unless you are in the land of Oz. Dogs can be bred for hundreds or thousands of different traits, but you can not breed a dog with Thumbs to text on their cell phones. They are limited by the genes God put into their Kind.
Menes777 wrote:
“That’s ok though, if you are a creationist you think a 600 year old man and his 4 sons built a ship that not even modern shipbuilders would attempt and then stock it with 5-6 million species of animals and still have room left over to for food, water, and exercise. Then manage it for an entire year and after that year managed to bring down all the animals from a mountain.”
Many Misconceptions here about what you wrote. Some petty I know but some major.
First Noah had 3 sons. Second, they had as much as 100 years to build. Third, no reason they could not have hired people to help with the work.
The boat was not really a boat as much as a box. All it had to do was float upright.
The size was about 450 ft by 75 ft by 45 ft tall with three levels. This provides over 100000 square feet of space but still tiny by modern ship sizes. Also it only had to last for 1 year, not be seaworthy for decades.
Finally. you listed 5-6 million species of animals. Many misconceptions here too. Only animals that breathed and lived on land were included. This would be probably most animals in the Amniota Kingdom which currently only has about 20000 species. Suppose a few kinds are canine, bovine, equine, and feline. The number of species in each of those kinds would be very high, but only 4 kinds. Lets pretend that each kind has 10 species on average. This only leaves 2000 kinds. With over 100000 square ft that is 50 sq ft per kind. Some kinds do not need 50 sq ft. for example the kinds that include the snake or the rodent or the canary. Also each level is 15 ft (minus the floor height) high. Cages could be stacked of smaller kinds creating many more square feet. Also kinds can be mixed in common cages. (Most birds, most sheep, goats, pigs, most horse, deer etc.
Also if you were taking animals to repopulate the earth, you would probably take younger juvinile animals. 1 year old elephant kind rather than 11 ft tall ones. Young lions rather than Savannah hunters.
This page is fairly comprehensive without being boring on some more Ark Q and A. http://www.thewordout.net/pages/page.asp?page_id=56530
Okay, but what are the criteria? How can you — or, more to the point, how can someone else — tell whether two beings are in the same kind or not? You seem to be using “well, they look different” as your main criterion. But that would put broccoli and cauliflower in different kinds, even though they’re the same species.
Well, sure. Monkeys are tetrapods, with four limbs. The flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz had six limbs.
Why? Dogs already have thumbs (illustration). Why couldn’t they be bred to use them for manipulating objects?
You’re making an argument from personal incredulity: “I can’t believe X, therefore X isn’t true.” I’m sorry, but reality isn’t limited by your imagination.
Earlier, you mentioned having questions about living beings: how the circulatory system could have formed, that sort of thing. Did you ever consider asking a biologist, or reading a biology textbook? Or, hell, even looking it up on Wikipedia?
I’m not sure I can go much beyond saying that it’s really alarming to find an electrical engineer who would trot out the elephant and coin flipping claims that you made. I can’t fully understand how somebody with an education very similar to mine could have gotten through and not consider those elementary issues to be dealt with in basic lower division classes.
Your argument against such things so far appears to be that they don’t make you feel good emotionally or don’t satisfy you on some vague instinctive grounds. I can’t imagine how you can feel that way and still design power supplies or whatever your specialty is (I’m assuming it’s not communications or signal processing–the coin flip example would be death to any such endeavors).
So far, you’ve basically rejected mathematics as a way to model the physical world. I can see how if you do that, a young earth and Noah’s ark could make perfect sense. I’m just not sure how to argue against it if you reject quantitative reasoning as a basic way of understanding the world.
PCDR:
That’s a huge load of horseshit, and you should know it. Sorry to be so blunt, but anyone who still believes in Noah’s flood isn’t thinking straight.
For one thing, you can’t build a boat, or barge, or any kind of vessel of the size ye arke is supposed to have been, out of wood. You just can’t. If the British Royal Navy couldn’t do it in the 19th century, a bunch of bronze age people surely couldn’t. I know you want to say that it didn’t need to sail anywhere, just float. But it wouldn’t. It would leak like a sieve. You claim to be an engineer. Look at the stresses involved.
For another, you expect us to believe that eight impossibly-old people managed to tend however many thousands of animals for a year. Sorry, but that doesn’t even pass the giggle test. Especially when you say that they were juveniles, which typically require more care than adults.
In order to make room on ye arke, you resort to fuzzily-defined “kinds”, which presumably “microevolved” or “adapted” to the huge variety of living beings we see today. If you look in the book of Isaiah (late 8th century BCE), you’ll see that it mentions horses (2:7) and donkeys (21:7), cobras and vipers (11:8, NIV), dogs (56:10) and wolves (65:25). This means that the “horsey” pair would have had to evolve into separate species in just a few thousand years, orders of magnitude faster than any biologist would dare claim.
Oh, and those eight people? They would have been able to carry at most 16 alleles of any given gene. And yet, human genes like HLA B have hundreds of known alleles.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll refer you to Torpedo Ye Arke for more. But the short answer is, the ark story is a fairy tale. Give it up.
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the complete and utter lack of any evidence for a global flood.
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence? And why were none of the larger sauropsids included? Or the unicorns?
You’re attempting to debate science. Either provide a usable scientific definition of ‘kind’ or just STFU about it, be man enough to admit you’re wrong, and bring up something else to demonstrate your ignorance.
Exactly! Yet you use all sorts of misconceptions to prove your point. Maybe use some of the brainpower not to just to attempt to prove your belief correct, but to really understand the facts that you have before you. Maybe the facts are incomplete or missing, but scientific facts will never boil down to “g-d must have done it” or “a miracle must have happened”.
If you look at a snowflake under a microscope it is an incredibly beautiful work of art and no two snowflakes are alike, yet is it created by anyone? Of course not, we all know that snowflakes are the result of the crystalline structures that form when water freezes. The way it forms is by chance, the properties of water freezing, and by the variables of the environment around it. That is the same as evolution. The evolution of life (not the origin of it) has happened by chance, directed by properties of elements and compounds, and the variables caused by the environment. Not chance that it happened at all, but chance that spiders happened to have 8 legs instead of 10, that humans have two arms instead of four and that cats have excellent night vision (just to name an extremely small fraction).
That is one of the hugest misconceptions about evolution is that when the phrase “by chance” is used, it’s not an all or nothing deal. It’s only “by chance” that this variety of evolution occurred as it has. Similar to rolling a 6 sided dice, you will always get a number between 1 and 6. There is never a chance of getting no number. The same as evolution, except for the dice is much much larger.
Another problem you have to consider is the water problem. I did some fairly rough calculations on how much water would be required for about a year’s voyage at sea (314 days) for 16,000 animals.
Assuming the ark is your dimensions above, it’s about 41,006 cubic meters (1,518,750 cubic feet).
16,000 animals x 314 days x 1 liter/day = 5,024,000 Liters consumed the entire trip. – Now that is 1 liter for not only consumption but for sanitation and cleaning. Meaning one half of a two liter bottle per day for a year.
5,024,000 Liters = ~ 5,024 cubic meters of space or about 12.3% of the entire space available on the ark. Now either Noah had an extremely sophisticated water distribution system to get the water from a large vat to the rest of the ship or he had to store it in barrels, which in turn would take up more space and require more time in watering and cleaning the animals. The big vat theory also has some problems as it would either take up most of one deck level or would extend down below the water level. Either way it would be a festering zone for algae and bacteria, not to mention possible contamination by the outside water from leakage. But that 1 liter is really not realistic, let’s look at a more realistic number.
16,000 animals x 314 days x 5 liter/day = 25,120,000 Liters consumed the entire trip.
5 liters seems a bit more realistic when you take into account consumption as well as sanitation and even waste. You also have to consider that if dried foods are used (which another creationist states as part of his ark model) that water intake must increase sometimes as much as 2 fold (sometimes 3).
25,120,000 Liters = ~ 25,120 Cubic Meters.
Houston we have a problem! That is 61.3% of the ENTIRE space of the ark used for only water??? That might give some insights into why a mission to Mars for a handful of people is a very risky proposal. Ignoring the difficulties of storing, accessing and even filling the ark with enough fresh water, there still needs to be room left over for food, the animals and a way to get to those animals in a way that they can be cared for. Not to mention ventilation for fresh air and exercise.
Fez:
Ah, but unicorns were included. As were dragons and cockatrices.
Fun reading for all who haven’t happened up on it before: http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/sillyflood.htm
arensb said:
But that’s unpossible! PCDR himself said they don’t exist!
We’re wasting our time here, of course, but I’ll make two points re our obtuse respondent:
I have a B.S. (fitting title) degree in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University. I have had classes in Physics, Chemisty, Biology, Statistics, Electronics, Physcology, Sociology, and Mathmatics.
I also have an undergrad degree in EE. Granted, I probably had an unusually strong physics component to my career (how many EEs take a half-course Special Rel & QM?), but I am astounded that anyone could get that that far and be unaware that mass generates its own gravity, and that a largish cloud of hydrogen, absent other influences, will collapse until its internal pressure balances the force of gravity (and if it is massive enough, this will be beyond the point at which protons start getting sqeezed into helium). That this may be contrary to “common sense” merely illustrates that naive intuitions based on terrestrial experience are unreliable outside that context.
And this:
So, you are right Arensb, the first stars did form by Magic Man then He put a process in place to form more.
The “Magic Man” reference is intended as a reductio absurdum of the creationist position. No adult is satisfied with “happens by magic” as an explanation. Indeed, everyone over the age of about five recognizes that, not as an explanation, but a refusal to provide one, a conversation stopper. And yet some adults seem to think that “God did it” is a perfectly reasonable answer to the question “How did X happen?” — unaware that it is the logical equivalent of “by magic”.
But here, even when the equivalence is made explicit, our friend is content to duck in to the punch.
Jesus wept.
Okay, you are all having fun with your mocking and that is fine. I can take it. However, you like to point out your calculations, lets look at some more.
The Universe exists. One of two options are possible.
1. It always existed.
2. It had a beginning.
The first one violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If it always existed it would now be absolute zero for temp and no motion.
The second one violates the 1st law of thermodynamics. Nothing can be created from nothing.
Which Law are you going to through out?
Sorry for the Misspelling. Which Law are you going to throw out?
Second, the argument of water on the ark is foolish. It was a flood. Water could be brought into the ark through any number of means easiest would be internal plumbing from the outside. Also, Food stocks need to take into account hibernation.
The Universe exists. One of two options are possible.
1. It always existed.
2. It had a beginning.
The first one violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If it always existed it would now be absolute zero for temp and no motion.
The second one violates the 1st law of thermodynamics. Nothing can be created from nothing.
Which Law are you going to through out?
And why does the same argument not apply to God? Oh right: he’s magic.
My study of the origin of the Universe led me to this conclusion:
Something outside of the laws of nature was involved “in the beginning” of time space and matter. Even the “science” of the Big Bang Theory violates the scientific laws it is trying to match up with.
So My question still stands.. What Laws of Science is the Universe allowed to throw out and when is it allowed to violate them?
Leave my faith in God out of it for the time being.
Interesting quote from Francis Crick – discoverer of DNA “biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved”
Sounds a lot like Romans Chapter 1 Verse 20-23 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
So if you cover your eyes and tell keep reminding yourself that the incredible detail and complexity of living things is not really evidence of a creator you may be able to convince yourself that evolution could happen. Francis Crick is not a believer in creationism by the way.
PCDR:
The Index to Creationist Claims is a wonderful thing. Its response to your claim CF101 reads:
arensb,
BINGO!