If you ever want to see the typical course of a creationist’s visit to Pharyngula, we’ve got a good example in medic0506, who showed up to argue and then didn’t. I mostly ignored him, but his announcement that he was disappointed caught my eye.
I was told on DDO that there were actual scientists here who would engage in informal argumentation, so since I’ve had my fun with the whineylibs, I’ll scroll through an see if there is any valid posts by someone who wishes to have a discussion rather than just try to scratch my eyeballs out.
This is standard noise from creationists: get thrown lots of evidence, then claim that there was no evidence and they’re all so very tired of it. So I thought I would take a look at his posting history here to see what kind of substantial, thought-provoking, evidence-based arguments he had made.
Surprise. There weren’t any.
He’s very proud to have coined the term “National Coven for the Solicitation of Evolutionism” for the NCSE. He thinks it fits because Eugenie Scott reminds him of the wicked witch
. Why? Because she lied and said Meyer’s awful paper, The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories, didn’t mention ID (what? It was an ID paper; the whole issue with that is that it was smuggled in by a creationist editor friendly to the idea, making a farce of peer review). As evidence, he provided this video:
I really would not want to cite that as favorable to intelligent design creationism. Meyer was disgraceful, Eugenie was patient and calm, and she didn’t say what medic0506 claimed she said.
Then he declares that he is a young earth creationist. In reply to a comment that he’s flat-out denying the overwhelming scientific consensus, he waves away that little problem of contradicting physics, chemistry, and geology by saying it only takes 1 to be right
.
Next we learn That “old book” [the Bible], on the other hand, paints an accurate picture of what nature should, and does look like, so I see no need to disregard it in favor of what others believe.
He then ignores all the comments that point to verses in the Bible that paint a very inaccurate picture of the world. Sometimes the absence of a reply is as damning as the content of a reply.
When confronted with standard evidence for an ancient universe, like the existence of galaxies farther away than 6000 light years, he simply denies it: your belief in deep time is heavy on theory but light on actual evidence
.
The rest is just repetitive noise, and then he starts talking about retreat because there is a dearth of scientists here. He can’t make a single positive argument for his goofy beliefs, and his entire visit was simply an exercise in evasion.
Unimpressed. Bored. That’s why I didn’t bother to engage with yet another asinine fool stopping by — he had nothing to discuss, and he knew that if he brought up any actual arguments for a young earth or creation by divine poofery, he’d have his head handed to him.
Yay! We have a major eruption of kookery from medic0506!
I’m willing to be proven wrong on this, but I don’t believe that starlight is something that actually physically travels to earth, in order for us to see it. I think that light is emitted from an energy source, and if the amount of energy released as light is enough, the object will be bright enough for our eyes to see it from earth. I don’t buy when someone argues that starlight has been traveling for billions of years to get here. Feel free to prove me wrong by proving the current understanding of light travel, but no one else so far has been able to address this without just throwing more theoretical BS at it.
So light doesn’t actually travel at some limited speed, but if it’s really, really bright, it is instantly transported to our eyes. All that empirical evidence, all those measurements of the speed of light…that’s all just theoretical BS. Why should we throw out all of physics? Because a creationist thinks brightness can substitute for velocity.
Medico, you are an idiot.
Sixth Day in Genesis 1:
“Sixth Day” in Genesis 2:
Order of events do not line up. In the first one, God created plants before the fucking sun and creates men and women together, last. In this one, God creates man, then plants, then animals, then woman.
You cannot read the first three fucking pages of your own fucking holy book. Congratulations.
medic0506 @495
At least we’re more intelligent then you, although that isn’t hard. You’ve managed to show your ignorance in biology, genetics, morphology, and basic physics.
So, medic, you figured out how light works yet? What’s a photon and what’s its mass? Why do photons travel at the speed of light? Name another particle which travels at that speed. Or admit that you don’t have a clue about what light is and how it behaves.
Addendum @502
medic0506 is also ignorant about hir own holy book.
re medico @495;
Hey medico, here’s a hint. I gave that citation to you AS A TEST to see if you were intellectually honest enough to actually follow the information to the source, or if, as I expected, you would just quote mine it and try to distort the meaning of words within it, ignoring the actual way that the word “proposal” is used in scientific literature and what it actually means.
And, as I expected, you failed, and provided yet another data point to demonstrate to those reading this (because those are the people I am addressing, and not you. I do not bother wasting time having direct conversations with liars) that the creationist position can only be supported by lies.
But I will be generous, and give you another chance. So here we go:
http://phys.org/news2806.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC547867/
E pur si evolves, medico.
I can’t say if I am demonstrating myself more intelligent than a creationist, but I sure am finding easy to demonstrate that YOU are ignorant, intellectually dishonest, lazy, and cowardly.
A flat out lie, medico, as anyone who has eyes to read the bible can tell instantly.
Is lying about your god’s word not prohibited in your religion, you disgusting sinner?
The paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC547867/ incidentally, uses the standard biological methods of determining common descent, methods which medico CLAIMED to accept in an earlier post. These are the SAME methods that when used to analyze horses and zebras, confirm that they possess a common ancestor, which medico previously also accepted.
But of course, medico rejects them now. Note the recurring pattern. He will accept assertions in general, but whenever the SPECIFICS are shown to him, demonstrating that the SAME methodology he had accepted as valid in the past shows him his preconceptions are wrong, he rejects them.
In other words, he deliberately ignores all evidence that contradicts his preconceptions, even though he is happy to accept the SAME evidence when it confirms his preconceptions.
Textbook intellectual dishonesty.
An understandable mistake on your part, given how incompetent you have proven yourself in assessing empirical evidence.
You on the other hand seem to have made numerous comments that indicate that you’re trying to convince someone (perhaps yourself) that you’re less ignorant than an evolutionist.
So far you have failed rather spectacularly.
Naturally, the other notable thing about the paper at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC547867/ is that when the features of whales and hippos are analyzed alongside those of a wide range of other living and fossil mammals, the PATTERN of similarities and differences produces a perfectly nested tree-shaped hierarchy of relative similarity and difference, which is, again, exactly the pattern one would expect to see if common descent were true, and utterly inexplicable in a model with created “kinds”.
E pur si evolves, medico.
I’ve been lurking, but medic0506 is just lying his ass off at this point. Nobody capable of sitting upright at a computer and typing could possibly be so ignorant that they are unaware of DNA sequencing and that we can physically compare actual genomes. (something that was not possible in 1977 when the proposal was made that hippos were more closely related to whales rather than pigs…yay science!)
Bad creationist! Don’t you know that god hates liars?
Proverbs 6-16
Haughty. yes
Lying. yes
Wicked plans. yes, though it isn’t working out so well for him.
Gravitates to evil. yes, IMO creationists are very evil
False witness. yes
Sows discord. yes, another poor attempt. The horde will supply plenty of it’s own.
——
I have never had any problem with DM’s commenting that could not be solved with a brief search, or by asking for clarification. One of my favorite things about both David M and the horde in general is that they are very generous with their knowledge.
Ha-ha. Medic0 reads a science paper, misunderstands it because of his bible blinkers, and comes here to gloat about how wrong we are. Fill in another box on your bingo card.
Back in 1866, Ernst Haeckel (the guy that the creos know as the identical-embryos artist) published a beautiful tree of life drawing, with hippos and whales near to each other. The whales seem to grow from hippos, almost.
The idea is not new, medic0, nor is your reading of the link anywhere near accurate. Your reading skills and your Christian kindness just came up zero, zero, zero.
Then you prove thst you don’t even understand your own holy book. Stick a fork in yourself, medic0506, you are done.
60. Rowan:
I assume you’re asking me to answer what the bible considers them to be. The Hebrew word used in the list, most often referred to as a list of birds, is ofe or winged-creature. So both can be included and still be accurate.
Are bats and birds the same “kind”, according to your bible, medico?
Are the winged insects the same “kind” as birds and bats?
Are the flying fish, which have wings, the same kind as the birds and the bats?
Were the winged insects created on the the fifth day with the rest of the winged creatures, and the wingless insects like the silverfish later, on the sixth day, with the rest of the animals that move along the ground?
Hey, maybe the reason god had to make the plants again on the “sixth” day in Genesis 2 was because he screwed up, and all the plants he made on the third day, before the sun, died, so he had to do it over!
Bwahahahahahahahahaha. You are funny. You are engaged in a scientific discussion and unable to define your parameters with precision. You rely on a book of mythology/fiction instead of the the evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature. You aren’t looking at evidence, as your holy isn’t and never will be scientific evidence. It was falsified a couple of centuries ago, when the evidence for the Flud was MIA.
@445
Okay, I’m going to take a different tack in the blind hope that common sense will sink in.
Okay, a “kind” are groups of animals that can interbreed and/or share a common animal. Okay, I’ll admit that that is a definition. If I take two organisms (say, case 1: a dog and a wolf 2: a lion and a house cat 3: A weasel and Marvin the Martian), assume I have Zeus like predictive power to know the answer to the two questions, then I will be able to state whether those two organisms are of the same “kind”. (Case 1: dag and wolf can interbreed, hence same kind, Case 2: can’t interbreed but common ancestor [how did I know that?] so same kind. Case 3: can’t interbreed and no common ancestor [again how did I know] so not the same kind. [um, are the any organisms *without* common ancestors that *can* interbreed… oh, never mind, I don’t care] )
Okay, so that *is* a definition. We could also define organisms by “flooms” in which a “floom” is an organisim that my little sister weezy would be funny if we feed it ice cream. Walruses and foxes are flooms. But bears and sheep are not. (weezy is afraid of bears…. and sheep aren’t funny) But I digress…
So the issue is: Does the definition of “kind” have any use to “The Theory of Creation”? There are three major issues: 1) How can one ever know if two animals have a common ancestor? Are horses and frogs the same kind? They are if they had a common ancestor. Did they? If not, how the heck do you know they didn’t? If you don’t know then how can we ever know if two organisms are of a kind or not.? Are housecats and lions the same kind? Since they can’t interbreed they are not if the do not have a common ancestor. How can we know that they did? How about weasels and sea otters? 2) “Kinds can’t evolve to other kinds” is a tautology and there is no point in stating it. Anything an organism evolves to will have the same ancestors so by definition “kinds can’t evolve to other kinds” so that observations is utterly pointless. 3) How many kinds are there to begin with? If the answer is One then we are in agreement. If the answer is more than one how do you determine which organisms do not have common ancestors.
(By the way, how many bones does a cat and lion have? I’m now curious.)
Okay, so you’ll probably say a frog and a horse are so completely different than each other that it’s obvious they share no common ancestor. So, how far apart *can* species of the same kind get. House cats and lions are pretty dang different. Given more time they are just going to get more different. Is there a maximum difference? If so why? If not, why is horse to frog too far?
Aw man, I nearly missed a fun thread! (Not that I can really keep up anyway.)
Species” is a pretty vague concept in biology, given it’s a taxonomic term of classification, not a strict statement of fact.
But as evolutionary biology states that all extant life (hence all species) share common descent, we can also talk about how “closely related” species are; and when the relationship is very close, the fuzziness of species definition is understandable and expected.
How do biblical “kinds” explain these fuzzy boundaries? If kinds are forever separate, why is there any confusion over classification at all?
For that matter, for “kinds” to be true, their number must presumably be fixed (or at least, can never increase — without divine intervention, anyway). In comments above, you’ve allowed that kind-related species may lose the ability to reproduce, but still remain of the same kind.
By what methodology could you look at two different unfamiliar species, and determine whether they are A) of different kinds, or B) of the same kind, despite incapacity for interbreeding? How could you demonstrate that the kind you have nominated has always existed, and is not a more recent occurrence?
—
There’s been a fair bit of discussion of lizards, snakes and bones previously. So let’s bring it all together!
I’m going to guess that you consider snakes and lizards to be distinct kinds, medic0506. Correct me if that’s not the case.
I presume you’ve heard of ‘legless lizards’ before? Many species have absolutely no legs at all. They superficially look almost exactly like snakes, but deeper morphological cues clearly mark their kinship to other lizards. Where do they fit into your classification heirarchy?
* If they’re of the “lizard” kind and in-kind variation led to their legless-yet-functional state, how do you justify this? It’s not simply a “loss of information” mutation; their bodies are well adapted to their legless state, and they successfully fill a similar niche to snakes –which are a valid kind, yes? But why do snakes deserve a distinct kind? Leglessness is demonstrated to not require being “created” in that state.
* If they’re of the “legless lizard” kind, then you’re implicitly accepting a ludicrously large number of originally-created kinds — far too many to make the already-silly Ark story remotely viable (which is the basis for needing biblical kinds in the first place). And how does this explain their extremely close genetic and morphological relationship to ‘true’ lizards?
* If you think they’re of the snake kind, then you’re ignoring all the biological evidence based on a naive superficial judgement, as well as disregarding the ‘legless’ lizard varieties with vestigial limbs. (I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that this option is too ridiculous to consider.)
. . .
Oh, just one spanner in the works — evidence indicates the various legless lizard species evolved leglessness independently, so we’re not actually talking about a single (or even close group of) species at all…
medico
I love Christian half-assed scholarship. The Hebrew word is most often translated as , in the Bible and in translations of that specific verse, “birds” or “fowl”. There are also a lot of “flying insect” iterations in the NIV. It is rare that I see it translated as “flying creatures”. They just use that as the general definition because it can be either birds or flying bugs.
http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H5775&t=NIV
And the various Bibble translations:
Every single translation disagrees with your glib dismissal! Congratulations on yet again not knowing what the fuck you are talking about in regards to your own holy book! Fucking Christians.
Come on. We all know bats aren’t birds. They’re bugs!
David Marjanović @373:
Just caught this. Actually, all of a photon’s energy is kinetic. You’re using the nonrelativistic definition of kinetic energy for a relativistic particle. You may as well say that, if momentum is mv (nonrelativistically), then the photon momentum is also zero, which is (also) nonsense. The relativistic definition of kinetic energy (using c=1, and rest mass m) is
E – m
where E is the zero component of the particle’s 4-momentum P = (E,p). The Lorentz invariant inner product of P with itself is
E² – p² = m²
where p is the magnitude of the 3-momentum. So the kinetic energy is
(p² + m²)^(1/2) – m
For v much less than 1 (i.e. much less than c), this does reduce to mv²/2 (plus terms of order v^4), but for given p, it reduces to p as m goes to zero. Which is equal to its total energy.
Evolutionary theory predicts that species, and indeed all classifications, should be imprecise, because evolution predicts that organisms in reality fall on a continuum, which means that any and all discontinuous classification systems MUST have exceptions on their edges.
But discontinuous created kinds are NOT on a continuum, and therefore creation theory must predict that a precise and exact definition of “kind”, with zero vagueness, must exist, directly reflecting the categories of kinds first created and set in stone by the creator.
You, medico, have failed to provide such a definition. Your theory has made a prediction, and that prediction has failed.
Evolution theory, on the other hand, has made a prediction, that species definitions will be imprecise at their edges, and that prediction has PROVEN TRUE.
Thank you for conceding the argument. You may go away now.
medic0506, you creationists should be able to recreate the cargo manifest from the ark. I know the bible didn’t define kinds very well, but you guys decided what it meant. It means, according to Ken Ham, that one pair (or maybe seven) of horse-like critters got off the boat, and all donkeys, zebras, and horses descended from them. Same for canids, felids and mustelids, I guess.
Now, there is no reason that there should be any similarities between those kinds. Like, the -ids that I just mentioned all have claws and eat meat. The horse-likes and the bovids all have hooves and eat plants. And all of them do live birth, give milk and have hair.
Now, us dishonest and stupid science people have noticed that all animals fit into groups. Big groups, with smaller groups within them, down to family groups where all the kids look like their parents. Now, it isn’t just god-hating scientists who do this—tribes who have never even heard of your god divide animals the same way.
Yeah, there are some odd ducks, like penguins and platypi, but they work out. There are no crocoducks gumming up this nice nesting tree. Cuvier, woken by the devil, knew he was in no danger of being eaten by anything with hooves and horns.
But God and Noah shouldn’t have left this shapely tree of life. The original creation could have made each kind distinct from every other, and the flood left major gaps in the tree, with a few big branches.
You guys should be able to look at the animals and say that obviously Noah took a lion pair, a tiger pair, the pair that were ancestor of leopards, cheetahs and pumas, and seven that gave rise to all smaller cats. I mean, when the coelecanth showed up a few years back, scientists knew what it was, fit it in place, and showed that it had changed over time (they didn’t have to cover it up, either). Where is your non-tree of life? Where is the cargo manifest?
See, medic0, the theory of evolution was based on what there actually is in the world, not on some blood-soaked priest’s confidence trick. Evolution predicted certain things, and when they were found, the theory was refined further, and new findings made.
Evolution explains the world because it was developed from and by the real world.
Creationism doesn’t explain anything. Except, sadly, just how wrong a believer can be.
@ [no-one in particular]¹
The whole concept of Kinds ™ is merely a rhetorical trick used by the likes of Ken Ham to get around a particular problem he has in persuading people to his world view. That is: the arguments for evolution are very strong and convincing for anyone who takes the time to learn about the world about them. And they stand in direct conflict with his own arguments.
To avoid a very inconvenient cognitive dissonance in his target audience, he needs to make a substitution. From the outset², they are to learn to believe that discussions of evolution are driven by a serious misunderstanding of biblical Kinds ™ .
Rather than follow the evidence (and intellectual curiosity), one is to think rather: “Aha, such a situation as Mr Ham described! We are speaking of the same thing, but scientists are misguided! Let us not fall into the same trap!”
There is nothing in the concept at all. Medic0506 will bend hirself out of shape trying to articulate a concept that is naught but a red herring to begin with. Its sole purpose is to act as a chock before people’s intellects.
….
¹ I see no need to elaborate as to its origin, nor ascribe it to a particular comment. Suffice to note that its sentiment comes from before and beyond the current discussion.
²Obviously it is all the more convenient to indoctrinate the ruse of Kinds ™ into the very young, and thereby prevent any dissonance from the get go. This is a particular focus of Ken’s teaching of Kinds ™ .
One more thing about the biblical view of life that annoys me; and I really would love to get a straight answer on this one.
Why is the idea of all life on Earth being descended from a common ancestor, evolving over “millions of years” (it’s billions, actually), considered ridiculous…
but the idea of all life on Earth being descended from a group of separate ancestors small enough to fit in a warehouse, “changing within their kind” over scant thousands of years to create the population and diversity of the life we now see… that’s much more believable?
If the answer is simply “I believe that’s what the Bible says so it must be that way and nothing will convince me otherwise”, then fine — we have nothing further to say to each other.
But if you think you have a convincing argument why the second idea makes so much more sense to you, I really want to hear it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110823180459.htm
This gives an estimate of about 9 million species alive on the earth today. If we are extremely generous and allow for 1 million kinds on the ark (that’s 2 million animals give or take….), that is 8 million new species arising in about 4000 years, or 2000 new species per year.
That math works out to an average of 5.5 new species PER DAY.
@ woozy
Good that you bring up teh kittehz.
As children we learned a lot about the world by way of making inferences. Knowing something about the category “Mammals”, we know by inference, that a creature belonging to that category shares commonalities with other animals so categorised. Within the category “Mammals”, we have a further category called “cats”.
Though I play fairly loosely with these terms, there are destinct advantages to this way of learning. By meeting one example of the category “cats” (Ms Molly appears on stage as volunteer), I can make inferences based on that experience about any other creature in that category. If I know she has a heartbeat (presses her to ear) and sharp claws (Ouch!), I can infer that of other “cats”, such as lions. I infer that they have heartbeats and sharp claws, even though I have never met one. Ms Molly and some random lion are bound together in my head by the inferences I can make. To my young mind, it makes sense to describe them as being of the same “kind”.
But the issue does not stop there. I cannot simply switch off the inferential systems. I can make feline inferences about Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr (a figment) from my knowledge of Ms Molly (a real cat). (As it turns out, Sylvester does indeed have sharp claws!) To my young mind, it makes sense to describe them as being of the same “kind”.
There are some obvious limitations to this mode of gaining knowledge. What starts out as an advantage – necessity even – can also create serious problems. Fortunately, (for most of us) as we mature, we recognise that knowledge is a more nuanced affair. We amend our simplistic categorisations, even as we find the underlying inferential systems as seductive as ever.
Kinds ™ panders to our natural impulses (to infer things) even as it fails to give a meaningful account of the world.
[slashfic] Genesis 8.1 beta version:
That God didst say unto each of the animals upon the ark: Thee shall bear for me each the full spectrum of thy Kind ™ .¹
And loh! So did it come to pass: For the animals went forth from the Ark and did bring forth young in great variety, each according to their kind.²
And The Lord did look upon this and find it good. Amen.³
[/slashfic]
…
Problem fixed!
FIFM: slashfic —> fanfic
(slashfic would not fix the problem quite as quickly)
I love everyone on this thread who has patiently shared your knowledge, prompted by medic0506’s blatherings.
You are too many to name individually here, and it would unfair to single out any one of you*!
I am baffled at medic0506’s lying; it takes seconds, and no effort, to expose them as lies. What does he expect to gain from lying here, of all places?
(*Except for David Marjanović, of course. *Applause*. I still remember how I felt the day I learned how old he is. Already a great fan, and impressed at his breadth of knowledge and willingness to share the same, I was floored when I found out he was approximately half as old as I had imagined. How on Earth does he do it? And find time to eat, sleep, etc. too? =ô.Ô= )
***CHALLENGE***
This challenge goes out to all you
brainiacsbrights who think you have the universe figured out, and like to talk smack to anyone who dares to question your ideas. Instead of trying to respond to each of these posts about light travel, I’m just going to make this challenge to you all, as a response.If your ideas about light travel are true, you should be able to catch some of these photons from a distant star of your choosing, and ship them to me with a note telling me which star they’re from. Once I open the container, those photons jump into my eyes, and I see your star, I will come on to Pharyngula AND DDO, publicly admit my ignorance on light travel, and issue an apology, as well as reimburse you for any shipping costs.
Any takers, or are you guys just going to grumble about how ignorant the challenge is and make excuses for why it’s not possible to meet the challenge?? That seems to be the MO here for many of you, or the few of you and your puppet accounts, whichever the case may be.
BTW, my name is medic, not medico.
medic @ 530, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Er, medic… how can I put this politely?
YOU.
ARE.
NOT.
EVEN.
WRONG.
(I suggest you look up the meaning of each of those words carefully before you go any further.)
Gee, you can catch your own, with your own telescope, or your own eyeball if you look up in the sky at night. Your challenge is one from ignorance and arrogance. My challenge back to you, is to find in the peer reviewed scientific literature from the last two hundred years, even ONE paper backing up your claim. Take your argument outside of yourself and your ignorance, and check to see if you are right. You aren’t.
re medic@50:
Such a reasonable challenge! I’ll just ship you some photons from Cygnus X-1 by the next post. Look for them in your mail next Tuesday. Everyone has boxes of photons on their shelves, just cluttering up their shelves. We’re all hoarders, donchano. We all collect those shinny photons, waiting to hand them over to anyone who challenges us with the right …. werds. medic so happy to see you’ve caught on to our subtrefuge, next prize is an internet for your all your truths so humbly put forth in such a den of evil.
Greetings,
@ David Marjanović (455)
Because it showed the paper in the exact same context as applies here – a creationist (gilbo12345) questioning the evidence for evolution – and Rumraket quoted the relevant sections.
@ The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knoweldge (458)
I use abcTajpu in Firefox.
{501}
Medic0506, with regards to the Genesis verses quoted by Anterprepro…
God, apparently, gives seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees (with seeds in them) to Man and gives green-leaf plants to all other creatures.
Does the Bible really reflect “what we see in Nature”?!
Nowhere is Man told/allowed to hunt/kill/eat meat in the form of wild animals, nevermind the livestock.
Nowhere are the other creatures differentiated into herbivores, omnivores and carnivores (not to mention insectivores) and thus allowed to eat other creatures.
In both cases, Man and the other creatures are not acting in accord with God’s wishes – commands, even.
This would appear to question that the Bible is “the (inerrant) Word of God” – given this, whose “word” is it?
And, even more to the point, if it’s just the “word of Man” – or a specific culture at a specific point in human history – that raises questions as to whether this God, let alone any God, exists.
Kindest regards,
James
@530 medic0506
I’d be happy to send you some photons medic but I’m kinda busy this week so you’ll have to provide the box capable of holding them. Send me the box and I’ll send you the photons.
@medic0506 #530
This is a classic creationist response: Pretending that rejection of nonsense is the same as dogmatic arrogance. The problem isn’t that you’re questioning our ideas. You’re not questioning anything; you’re ignorantly rejecting what you clearly don’t understand and consistently refusing to explain what your alternative is.
Case in point…
But that’s not a response. It’s explicitly a refusal to respond in any real way to the questions posed to you. Say, weren’t you just complaining about people who don’t like having their ideas questioned? We’re questioning your idea and you’re refusing to answer.
If you reject the idea of light as photons traveling at fixed speed (and in that process, rejecting pretty much all physics of the last century), it’s not unreasonable for people to ask you what you propose instead. If you reject the existence of photons, then what’s the cause of the colors we see when sunlight passes through a prism? How do lenses work? What does a mirror reflect?
These are simple, everyday phenomena, that anyone can observe for themselves. If you can’t explain something as down to earth as how the glasses I’m wearing right now actually work, then you can’t really expect us to take you seriously, can you?
Greetings,
Medic0506, I understand your ignoring sarcastic, etc, comments.
Earlier, I asked you a question regarding your statement that, if a stellar object is bright enough we see, otherwise we don’t.
I asked, if that is the case, how does a telescope enable us to see more than we do with the naked eye?
Would you mind answering this question, please?
Kindest regards,
James
medic0506: Sure thing, as soon as you capture some of the neural impulses within your brain and ship it to me. If you can find any.
Tell you what, we’ll do this the easy way. Take a flashlight and shine it at your eyes. The atoms the flashlight is composed of were formed in stars that exploded long before the Earth was formed via the process of nuclear fusion, so it should serve as a surrogate star for you. I’d tell you to use a laser, but you’re so ignorant of basic science I’m afraid you might try it.
By the way, do you have any idea of the number of devices we use today that are based on the quantum properties of light? The very properties you are implying are not possible? It is only through our deep understanding (well, deeper then yours) of light that we have lasers and photocells, not to mention the advances in quantum cryptography, atomic spectroscopy, UV lithography (for making silicon chips), etc.
The very capabilities of our technological culture prove that the scientific understanding of the nature of light is correct. Again, for you to assert otherwise is to deny reality. Characteristically, this doesn’t seem to be a problem for Creationists.
Mykroft, that’s very kind and thoughtful of you.
medic0506 is trying out for resident clown now, and he’s got some mildly amusing material – the “winged-creatures” bit (gosh, how scientifically accurate and useful that must have been, back in the day, eh? When flying fish, winged insects and birds and bats were all categorised as the same thing, as opposed to other fish, other non-flying insects and other mammals) not to mention the whole I-can’t-do-age-12-arithmetic bit he did with light-years, and the whole I-don’t-know-what-light-is bit – but he’s not really funny enough for more than a short skit. The photons in a box thing raises maybe half a smile for buffoonery. Ooh, how about you send us some evidence for the existence of your flavour of god, medic0506? Now that would be impressive, wouldn’t it? You’d think a true believer would jump at the chance to prove the existence of their god to a whole crowd of atheists … but they never do, it’s soooo disappointing :-(
PS is a whale a fish? Is a bat a bird? How many legs do insects have? What is light? You’ve had plenty of time to check!
medic0506,
While you’re working out the specifications for that box chris61 has asked you for, allowing for the fact that photons act as both particles and waves at the same time, you might like this video clip and accompanying calculations from Brian Cox.
http://harveyjohnson.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/the-number-of-photons-ejected-from-the-sun-in-a-second/
Enjoy!
OMG. that challenge up there is the most hilarious thing I’m likely to see all week. Apparently medic thinks photons are supposed to be like chunks of a star that broke off and flew over?
LOLOLOLOLOL
packaging photons. packaging something that has no mass. shipping something that travels at the speed of light, via snail-mail. HAHAHAHAHAHA
anyway, that still doesn’t answer the question of what medic thinks light is. So basically medic lied about answering questions. What a surprise, a creationist liar.
medic_0506: Is that your badge# ? why you picked it as your internet nym?
See, not a question about those mythical photons or other nonsense, just curious about your choice of nym. Enlighten me, please.
530 medic0506
You don’t “question our idea’s”, you flat out reject them without any evidence of counterargument whatsoever, so yeah, you deserve all the derision that’s coming to you.
You only had to respond once, but apparently that is too much work for you.
Stupid challenge that only shows of your ignorance is not a response. Actually, maybe it is, because it clearly shows that you indeed don’t have any clue whatsoever what light is.
It the opposite, if you were able to do that, it would invalidate our idea of light, not validate it.
Photons ‘jumping’? That might be the most unintentional funny thing I read today.
You are already admitting your ignorance, by every post you make.
You got one right, it is in fact impossible, because light doesn’t work that way, but it is you who is claiming this, not us. So major fail on your part.
Again, with your stupid challenge you have indeed proven again that you have a child’s understanding of how the physical world works.
Idiotic Creationist:
If your ideas about light are true, you need to explain how eyes work.
But it is interesting to see that your understanding of light is just as bad as your understanding of evolution. And yet you are so confident that your inane, incomprehensible version of reality is unquestionably right. Very entertaining.
Should we poke the creationist more? See if they react with arrogant bluster and outrage at the thought that electricity is composed of electrons, and have them assert that in order to prove that we need to capture a lightning bolt in a backpack and mail it to him?
OK, that’s it. I’ve been reading blogs like this one for years and I’ve read some incredibly stupid things. I’ve read stuff so monumentally idiotic that I thought my brain was going to liquefy and run out through my nose.
Mediczero’s “challenge” in 530 goes so far beyond anything I’ve ever seen before—trying to suck my entire head into a black hole of sheer idiocy—that this is it: I give up the internet altogether. It’s not worth the risk. It’s not that I think I could ever encounter anything more stupid—that would be absolutely impossible. I just don’t think I can go on living being constantly exposed to the knowledge that there are gomers as stupid as mediczero running loose in society. The Republican primaries are bad enough…¡No mas! I give up!
@546 zenlike
I think you meant to say:
And not the good kind…
I see that instead of honestly answering the question about light, medico tries to weasel away with a bunch of strawman distortions.
Disgusting.
***CHALLENGE***
Tide goes in, tide goes out…
also magnets.
Make medioc’s box out of any phosphorescent material, and you will have answered his challenge for sunlight. He will of course deny that this is so, but any honest person will see that he would be lying.
I’d like to see what how medico explains phosphorescence if he thinks light does not think light is made of photons.
starlight
Speaking of which, real scientists are actually working on capturing and later releasing photons, and are pretty close to creating medioc’s box.
So if medioc’s “challenge” was a sad attempt at reduction ad absurdum style rhetoric, he has, once more, failed miserably.
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/25
E pur is photon, medico.
I ‘d like him to explain the working of solar panels, of the eye, of photography, of a telescope,…
Keep in mind that medic’s box not only needs to capture the photon’s, it also needs to show the image of the star at the moment the box is opened.
The closest I can think of of complying with the challenge is an actual photograph of the night sky, but at this point I pretty much assume medic thinks photography is witchcraft.
This woman has done it (captured light in a container and then released it).
zenlike
More challenging…
How do you make the starlight photons stick to the photography paper?
How do you get them to jump out when medic0506 opens the box?
If medic0506 opens the box without actually looking, do the photons still jump?
medic_0506
and
@543
Actually this is already technically feasible
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/25
I encourage medic to contact the cited scientists and arrange a contract to have a stellar photon delivered.
An easier approach for medico would be to go outside and look up. The average dim star will provide his eye with around 2700 interstellar photons per second. (The reference url for this fact apparently doesn’t embed properly, but if you google “stellar magnitudes and photon fluxes bishop” the first reference is the one of interest)
Knowing which photons came from which star is the tricky bit.
(apologies for the borked formatting (or, depending on results, the borked preview window)
borked preview, evidently….
I think I see the basic stumbling block that medic0506 has regarding light. He sees the macro world, where everything real has mass and therefore kinetic energy when in motion. He then looks at light, and it doesn’t fit the model. It has no rest mass, therefore it is not something physical. If it is not something physical, it is magical/supernatural and must be able to travel from one place to another instantaneously.
Let me see if I can break this down for him:
– Light consists of packets of energy (not matter) composed of photons. It travels as waves of alternating magnetic and electric fields. It is energy, pure and simple.
– Even though it has no rest mass, it does have an effective mass in transit and therefore momentum. This momentum is a byproduct of its relativistic speed. The momentum in a photon is minuscule, but collectively can have an effect. We can measure its slight effect in terms of light pressure on objects, such as a solar sail.
– When light hits something, if it isn’t reflected the energy in the light is absorbed, and is transferred into another form of energy (kinetic/thermal, electrical), depending on the characteristics of the material it hit.
– Light travels in a vacuum at a constant speed. The speed of light (c) is a universal constant, showing up in a surprising number of equations we have that describe the nature of reality (such as E=mc^2). This constant is at the heart of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which has been experimentally proven in numerous ways. We make use of this fact to generate tools such as GPS, radar, LIDAR, etc.
So yes, photons are physical in that they have measurable properties and physical effects. They exist in transit, moving is an essential part of their nature. This is why you can’t have them shipped in a box. You can measure their effects, but generally you can’t catch them and hold them in your hand.
Not only that, he appears to expect it to be visible by unaided sight and producing an image equivalent to what you’d see if looking at the night sky. Of course, to produce a stable picture of a star, even for a second, you’d have to have a continuous stream of photons. Presumably, the box would have to be thousands of miles long, in addition to the daunting task of freezing the photons in midair.
Making this challenge only demonstrates that medic does not understand the very idea he insists is wrong.
@ chigau
I suspect it is less of a challenge and more of a cop-out from medic.
62. Amphiox:
Both our theories agree that all humans share a common human ancestor, that there was a severe genetic bottleneck in the past, and a dispersion of population from a particular area. I find it very interesting that the biblical account of history would be consistent with those findings, thus “predicting” 3 things that both our theories agree are scientifically accurate. Doesn’t it seem a bit coincidental to you, to believe that the author of Genesis would just accidently happen to unkowingly include fables that explain those historical events?? To borrow a common phrase from Frank Turek, “I don’t have enough faith to believe that”, but back to the original topic.
Rob Carter, with help from John Sanford and others, has been doing work on the very issues that you’re asking about here. He has been researching Y-Adam and mtEve, as well as genetic evidence that addresses population distributions after the flood. He addresses your question in a 2011 article, in the first link below. I’ve also included a couple others that go more in depth.
http://creation.com/y-adam-sea-floor
http://creation.com/neutral-model-of-evolution-recent-african-origins
http://creation.com/y-chromosome-adam
Dr. Carter has also appeared on Origins, where he takes biblical predictions and compares them to the evidence that can be found in the study of genetics and biology. These videos are very informative, but they each require you to invest a half-hour of your time hearing something that you so vehemently deny the existence of. I fully expect you to just hand-waive away anything that I post, but I’ll leave the links anyway, just in case there are actually some “freethinkers” here, who can make up their own minds and don’t need to be told what to think by a squadron of pseudo-intellectual bullies and probably a few puppet accounts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auygJmEcgLY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz5BsP-LIX8
To clarify, I know about slow light. It’s the implication that one photon can be distinguished from another (and has a little label attached to it indicating what star it came from) that had me reeling.
More on capturing photons.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/new-state-of-light-photon_n_5266415.html?utm_hp_ref=science
http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.0520
I find it amusing how medico’s attempt at an “impossible” challenge immediately gets a flood of citations from cutting edge scientific literature.
The fapwit faps, and science marches on.
medic0506
Isn’t God the author of Genesis?
@ medic
Which I predicted in #523
Except that your bible predicts no such thing. It gets the timing of the bottleneck wrong, both in absolute time AND in relative time from the origin of humanity, the number of bottlenecks wrong, the size of the bottle necked population wrong, and the location of the area from which the dispersal occurred wrong.
In other words you and your ilk have simply dishonestly adhoc’ed the evidence to fit your preconceived notions by ignoring the actual DETAILS of the evidence.
medic0506 #564
So, you agree that the Hindus had it right? Or perhaps you accept the Norse creation account? If not, why not? Those have the same basic story. Humanity originating from some primeval ancestor is a common feature of origin legends all over the world.
Moreover, the myth doesn’t get it quite right, does it? The evidence doesn’t suggest a bottleneck as tight as three brothers and their wives. The myths gets that wrong, because obviously they’re not actually based on real events.
The only reason this seems interesting to you is because you’re cherry picking: You focus on the vague similarity between your myth and reality and ignoring the fact that the details are all wrong.
medic0506:
Here’s something really simple for you. You understand waves, right? Water ripples up and down as waves travel, oscillations of atmospheric pressure in sound, that sort of thing?
Well, the frequency of a wave (how fast the peaks or troughs pass by) can be measured, as can the wavelength (peak to peak distance). These values are inversely related; as one goes up the other goes down. Increase the frequency, the wavelength gets smaller. This is because the product of these values equals a constant, the speed of the wave.
Guess what? We can measure the frequency and wavelength of light! You’ll never guess what the values multiply out to! For all forms of electromagnetic waves!
Isn’t science fun?
66. Hank:
Sorry Hank but just asserting the same thing that many before you have asserted, without providing any new evidence to support that assertion, is a wasted venture.
What a rearguard action religion has been forced into. At one time they could dictate our view of the world. Now they try to co-opt us, too late.
medico, you cannot catch up with science while your mind is shackled to the fetid corpse of your imaginary god.
Telescopes. A telescope *is* “catching” photons and using the mirrors and lenses *is* “shipping” the photons. And these are the very same photons form the star and grouped in a recognizable image.
If medic0 claims that we need to somehow store the photons for a significant period of time longer than the time it takes for the photons to travel through whatever serious of distances, walls, reflectors and lenses medium material we have in the box, that is *precisely* not what our theory of light allows us to do.
And that, medic0 is the the dishonesty of your proposal. “If your ideas about light travel are true, you should be able to catch some of these photons…” Catch but not keep. *Nothing* of our ideas about light travel would conclude we could keep photons. Quite the opposite actually.
medic0506, you owe me a new irony meter. You just blew the hell out of mine.
69. Nerd:
I’m curious as to what you think are the “facts”, about this issue.
A lovely image, though, isn’t it.
It put me in mind of something else – medi0506’s notions of things such as light and the animal kingdom are rather disneyfied, aren’t they? A disney cartoon notion of light (maybe he thinks photons are something like Tinkerbell?) and of horsies, fishies and birdies. Sadly, yes, a poorly homeschooled child’s understanding (pace those whom we know do real schooling at home, often surrounded by fundie-infested “schools”; I certainly do not wish to denigrate their achievements).
medic0506 #572
Well, as you’ve demonstrated, providing evidence to you is also a wasted venture, since half the time you ignore it and the other half you don’t understand it.
Feel free to prove me wrong by addressing for example the point about endogenous retroviruses, shared by humans and chimps.
I note that in none of medico’s written links he provided in @564 did he actually answer my question about the y-chromosome haplotypes, (notwithstanding that creation.com has already been demonstrated multiple times in the past to be basically nothing but a pack of lies anyways).
Dishonestly, he tries to talk about y-chromosome Adam, but my question was not about y-chromosome Adam. It was about y-chromosome NOAH. Because according to his biblical account, only one male lineage survived the flood -Noah’s. Which means that the most recent common ancestor of all living humans in the biblical account is not Adam, but NOAH. The y-chromosome haplotype data should have shown this if it were true. The creationists should have been able to get ahead of the game, and predict the discovery of y-chromosome NOAH before the actual analysis was done(and thus coin that term in the popular imagination) But notice how that did not happen, and that the term y-chromosome Adam was coined by scientists, and the creationists had to borrow it?
That is because, of course, creationism is an intellectually bankrupt concept that cannot produce new insights into anything.
Jebus. I hate the Big Lie.
No, the “theories” do not agree (I begrudge even calling the hot mess of ad hoc rationales called creationism a “theory”). Do you neglect the fact that the scientific explanation is extremely quantitative because you’re ignorant or dishonest? We didn’t just pull the story out of our asses like theologians did: we have the numbers and measurements, and reality is totally incompatible with young earth creationism.
This is what you guys always do. Physics has measurements that show the cosmos appeared a bit less than 14 billion years ago; creationist yahoos then declare, “Gosh wow! The bible says the earth had a beginning…it’s just like prophecy!” Modern cosmology is NOT compatible with biblical cosmology. Every time you claim it is, you’re fucking lying.
The y-chromosome haplotype and other related data all show that the most severe bottleneck in the human population reduced the population to a couple thousand individuals, not a single family with a single male lineage. That means there should have been several thousand humans on medico’s ark.
And the OTHER aspect of the whole y-chromosome question that poor medico completely missed is of course that humans aren’t the whole picture. The biblical account doesn’t just require a bottleneck of humans. It requires a bottleneck of ALL LIFE, and ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
So when I asked that question, I gave medico a grand opportunity to make a really strong argument for his position. He could have replied that the human data showed a population bottleneck, and gone beyond the parameters of the question and add his own data, derived from his theory, and show bottlenecks found in OTHER SPECIES, all dating to the same time as the bottleneck in humans. He could have shown that the bottlenecks of most species were twice as severe as the bottlenecks in humans, because at least four female lineages (the wives of Noah and his 3 sons) of humans were preserved, but only one for most species, and he could have shown that the bottlenecks for the “clean” species were half as severe as the human bottleneck, because 7 male and female lineages of those were preserved instead of just one.
But he did no such thing, because, of course, THAT IS NOT WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS. The genetic evidence from other species do not show bottlenecks matching in time and severity to the one found in humans.
Medic0506,
Would you be so good as to tell me what equations in quantum electrodynamics suggest we could send photons in a box ? I must have missed in when I took the class.
See, this is the problem with people imagining that the world must conform to their preconceptions–they make ignorant assumptions that lead to laughable conclusions.
Again, please tell us how you see starlight if it doesn’t travel from the star to you?
The fact that you have a fuckwitted idea of how light is transmitted, and what it is. And you won’t/can’t provide any links to where you got your fuckwitted ideas. By not providing those links, all you present is your own ignorant views, which have no basis in reality.
Until you stop giving testament, and start linking to where evidence is found to back your testament, your testament can be dismissed. Example, you give testament your deity exists, dismissed. You link to a location where an eternally burning bush can be found and investigated by scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers to determine if divine will is present. That can’t be dismissed. But your babble can be dismissed as parts of it have been proven false: genesis, exodus, and likely the jebus myth.
Sorry, medic0506, your neat little sleight of hand does not work and modern genetics does not confirm the origin myths of any religion at all.
It all falls apart on one simple fact – that each human and each proto-human had two parents, one male and one female. As Amphiox says, there was more than one bottleneck and the earliest traceable male ancestor in each line occurs at a very different time – think many thousands of years – from the earliest female ancestor. They had not invented either the freezing of gametes or time travel and therefore the facts as discovered by DNA analysis do not confirm the biblical story.
I recommend the book Seven Daughters of Eve by Brian Sykes, probably overtaken by the science by now but highly readable and based on actual research. It would make a good starting point were you ever to give up this frantic search for magical factoids and do as any scientist does – find out facts by measurement, observation, comparison and then see what question that prompts you to ask next.
You appear to be trying to collect religious Pokemon cards which will somehow fit together to prove what you set out to prove. That is not how science works. Get used to that idea because you’re wasting an awful lot of emotional energy running away from scientifically-based knowledge.
@ arids
You raise an interesting point about creationists’ world view. The babble was based on a cosmology that looked like this: Link here.
Time moved on, and nowadays not even the most dishonest goddists can claim to believe that that image represents anything near their conception of the world.
But now the clanger: That is the only image that will make sense of the babble. Trying to fit anything approaching a scientific, or even quasi-scientific world view into the babble story will simply not fit. It is clearly impossible, when you see the model the babble was based upon.
The story was written asif we lived inside a pingpong ball. In those days, the stars were very, very close.
Since others had already provided that evidence, Hank didn’t have to. But it is notable how you chose not to respond to all the OTHER comments that DID provide the evidence. Because you totally could have, and I doing so also have responded to Hank at the same time. Instead you ignore the substantial arguments and waste our time responding to what you yourself call a “wasted” venture.
Textbook intellectual dishonesty.
Just to be generous to you, I will provide a repeat posting of some of that evidence.
Chromosome fusions and the shared location of endoretroviral sequences in the genome are direct evidence of, in your own terms, a “shared reproductive pathway”. Chromosome fusions are mutations that occur DURING mitosis and meiosis, which means they are transmitted through sexual reproduction. Endoretroviruses insert into genomes randomly, so a shared location of an insertion means a shared original infection in a single individual. Thus finding a fused chromosome in one organism and the identical two chromosomes in another organism unfused means that those two organisms must share a reproductive pathway, somewhere along which the chromosomes fused during meiosis in one branch. And finding retroviral insertions in the exact same places in two species means those two species must have shared a reproductive pathway from which they both could inherit the same random insertion.
Zebras and horses have shared fused chromosomes. (I’m not aware if anyone has gone looking for retroviral insertions in zebras. It has been done in horses, so the data is out there to gather for anyone interested in trying). These fused chromosomes are the biological evidence that horses and zebras have a common ancestor.
Humans and chimpanzees also have a shared fused chromosome. Humans and chimpanzees also have multiple shared retroviral insertions. Thus, exactly as we can conclude that horses and zebras share a common ancestor, we can conclude that humans and chimpanzees also shared one.
(the morphological variation between horses and zebras is also about the same as the morphological variation between humans and chimpanzees.)
medic 0:
1. Most creation myths involve one common human ancestor (a first human). And yet evolution says that it was likely not just one or two humans: It needed to be a group of them, transitioning through generations. Speciation is not something that is done by one or two individuals. It is gradual and involves groups, generations, and time.
2. Dispersion is a logical necessity of life beginning with one specific small group and existing in many areas in the present day. You don’t get to treat that like an independent prediction.
3. The severe population bottleneck, according to your Bible, happened after a ridiculously powerful flood that there is no evidence for, was a population bottleneck that affected EVERY SPECIES, down to either two or seven individuals, and that’s it. Something which there is also no evidence for. Whereas actual scientists say that an extremely low estimate for the human population during a bottleneck would be around 2000. Bible math strikes again.
By fucking zombie Christ, you are easily impressed.
Ah yes, that homophobic hack. Here, one of our own FTBloggers has dealt with Turek’s bullshit at length.
Have fun.
I think we have to remember that Medic0506 enters into this with a different goal than we do. All he cares about is not being shown to be wrong. As long as he can rationalize that his bronze-age conception of reality is consistent with the physical world, he can claim victory, regardless of the tortured logic and absurd lengths he must go to to make such claims.
He doesn’t care about being right–only about not being wrong. So he will be just as vague as he can get away with. His philosophy doesn’t admit of the possibility that “not even wrong” is worse than wrong.
Small scale population bottlenecks , floods, famines, disease, etc, were a fact of life in ancient times. Dispersal by survivors after such disasters were also a fact of life in ancient times. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about a bunch of myth writers writing about these things in general. It would be remarkable if they got very specific details correct, such as numbers, locations and times. But of course that is precisely what they got completely wrong.
@585 Theophontes
Two nitpicks. The concern isn’t medic0’s cosmology that’s at issue; it’s his alchemy of light. Second although the biblical observation may be one thing (a world view of nomadic bronze-age herders), the believes of creationists are something else entirely; mostly remnant of idiotic popes with a fanboy love of plato and aristotle. Battleax in the last page (around post @485 or there abouts) give an excellent (and short) that creationist theology relies upon the distinct and pure “ideals”– things are *always* something specific and never mutate in ideal to anything else. That’s essential to the religious notion of truth and why evolution is more feared than any other scientific theory that has countered the nomadic herders world view and ultimately been accepted (non-geocentricism; chemistry; physics; even old-earth was acceptable until evolution reared it’s ugly head).
I think I have a solution to medic’s challenge. I apologize if someone else posted the same earlier; I read the challenge and went straight to commenting. I can capture the photons using a camera. I’ll send the photo to medic. Is email okay, or must it be USPS?
**Yawn** the only reason Medic0506 has for not accepting the close relationship between humans and chimps is because an ancient book said so. All other evidence will be dismissed until the Bible is updated to include that relationship.
But really, our knowledge of biology hasn’t changed in the 1700 years since material stopped being adding to the Bible. And back then, they had excellent tools for doing physics. The compilers of the Bible also knew exactly which ancient books got the physics of light perfectly correct.
So Medic0506 don’t back down! Don’t accept any methods, results, or outcomes not already outlined in ancient texts. Don’t accept the evil technologies brought to us by modern science! Abandon all phones, computers, the internets & vehicular transport immediately!! Quick, before it corrupts you!!!
medic
A. Its spelled wave.
B. We have been asking you for evidence to support your assertions about the inerrancy of the bible, “kinds” and light. None have been forthcoming so I suggest you shut your hypocritical lying mouth, and stop hand-waving away all the actual evidence which has been provided.
C. I always find it peculiar that when the creationist inevitably cannot support their opinions with hard evidence, the horde is accused of bullying, pseudo-intellectualism, and lying.
A quick count reveals that there are approximately 96 different people telling medico that he is full of hubris and shit. Sock-puppet accounts are held in very low esteem on this blog, and are summarily deleted by the Poopyhead once discovered.
You are not being bullied medico, you are being treated like every other scientifically illiterate troll that has commented here. The only question now is what hilarious new meme* you will spawn when the inevitable star-fart occurs.
*quantum tomatoes, gravity magnets, goats on fire!
Medic0506, if you accept that science & religion are not at odds (your purported alignment of Adam & genetics), then why spend so much trying to use religion to correct science (your disapproval of the relative relationships of species)?
Conversely, if scientific claims & religious claims conflict about an overlapping topic (and religion always wins) why EVER reference science?
I see, but I don’t see why Mayr thought this was specifically an analogy from living beings. It could just be an extrapolation from sloppy observations in a world full of drag and friction, couldn’t it?
I did say “Aristotelian/Star Trek physics”. That’s because starships in Star Trek don’t seem to have any inertia even when out of warp: their engines need to be working all the time if they are to keep a speed, and they can come to a standstill (relative to what exactly?) in about 5 seconds, maybe less.
Just copy & paste. :-) Or omit my name altogether. I recognize what I’ve written.
Is that really less work?
(Sorry, I haven’t been to the Thunderdome in a while – I thought all the action was here now.)
But wrongness isn’t a property of a person.
Because I have real trouble doing things without understanding why. Do you like doing things without understanding why you’re doing them?
Because it’s the height of fucking arrogance to tell people to do things without explaining why, and the height of nightmarish projection to assume it’s so obvious it doesn’t need to be explained! I know it’s normal (at least in Western culture), but it’s got to stop. How many more centuries is this supposed to go on!?!
…It’ll sound hard to believe now, but I don’t actually want to antagonize people. I’ll go back to the Thunderdome sometime this week (unfortunately I can’t promise when exactly), read the arguments, and think about them.
Not quite. Given any particular definition of “species”, there are often methodologies that allow – if not perfectly, then nearly so – determination of whether something fulfills that definition. The twist is that, as I said in the middle of comment 455, there are easily 150 different definitions that actually describe different sorts of things, not the same thing.
I have sobering news for you: science journalists almost never understand what they’re writing about. (They are, after all, commonly supposed to cover all of science – even if they’ve studied one particular field, which is almost never the case, they’re bound to misunderstand something elsewhere at some point.) Do not confuse a scientific paper with a news article about that paper; do not assume that it accurately represents anything the paper says.
The fuck is it a . It’s the outcome of a phylogenetic analysis: make a spreadsheet of dozens of species and hundreds of traits, and then have a computer calculate the simplest explanation for these data. In this case, the explanation is tree-shaped and confirms (as the people using gene sequences as data had been saying for 10 years) that whales (incl. dolphins) and hippos are each other’s closest living relatives.
Google for the paper, maybe it’s accessible for free somewhere. If not, simply write to the authors and ask them for the pdf! Remember, authors are not paid for publishing in scientific journals – we have no interest in paywalls.
To be fair, bicarbonate in particular simply misunderstood my comments – she thought I was trying to make some kind of overarching argument in which the quotes are merely embedded, as if writing an essay instead of a blog comment.
I repeat: the two versions contradict each other.
(It’s not surprising, in the light of this, that the first consistently says ‘Elohim and the second consistently says Yahwe instead.)
Interesting. I didn’t know that.
But to be fair, in the same year (perhaps in the same tree, I don’t remember), he also showed birds and turtles as sister-groups, which really does not work. So I guess I’ll count that as being right for the wrong reasons.
Thank you, I sit corrected!
Well, I’ve always read a lot since I was not quite 5… *shrug* It does take time, though. Hence my common complaint that there are only 30 hours in a day. I push off not-extremely-urgent housework for months, and my productivity in terms of publications comes in bursts.
1) It’s really cute how you’re trying to use “brainiacs” as an insult. :-}
2) “Brights” was a rather dim idea that never caught on and has been abandoned by… everyone as far as I can see.
The stupid! It burns!
A container that can hold light for any extended period would have to have rather remarkable properties. It would need to contain extremely good mirrors between which the photon bounces back and forth without interfering with itself – let alone interfering with any other photons, and never mind hitting anything else than such a remarkable mirror. Is absorption of light really such an alien concept to you?
What, you want the image preserved, rather than mirrored and distorted beyond recognition?
Alright, alright. Light is slower in transparent materials than in a vacuum. Progress has been made in making stuff that slows light down (because that would make building optic computers easier). The record, cited above (thanks, woozy!), is this – well, read that and think about the practical limitations.
Now answer me this: Have you ever had a physics lesson? Ever in your life?
Well, not quite. The photons emitted in phosphorescence are not the same photons the stuff absorbed before. They have less energy – the rest has become heat.
Intriguing.
Too bad, medic0506, that they lived on opposite sides of Africa tens of thousands of years apart.
You just can’t believe there are so many people in the world who know more than you do, can you? :-D There are tens of thousands more. Indeed, when it comes to such things as basic physics, there are tens of millions more in the world.
A sobering read.
That must be why they chucked the book of Enoch out – even though several books of the New Testament cite it as scripture. (More at the link above.)
Not just that: there’s evidence against it – all over history, archeology, geology, genetics and more, in addition to… oh, I just remembered the list of miracles necessary for Noah’s ark. It’s a great read.
That doesn’t deliver the photons, only the effects of their impacts.
This process annihilates the photon, though, and thus fails to conform to the .
@medic0506:
You enjoy scuba diving, right? When you see all the different fishes down there, are they all the same kind?
What would happen to those salt water fishes if the saline content of the water changed dramatically, say because of a global flood? What would happen to all the reef dwellers as the pressure from all the added water increased, and the amount of light reaching their level decreased? What would happen to the fresh water fish, as the flood mixes with the salty ocean? How long did the flood last, a year?
How did all the aquatic life that we see today survive?
Tethys @ 593
Postal photons? Light-speed snail-mail? Light boxes? =^_^=
David Marjanović
Took it to the dome since I appear to be feeling combative again and it contributes nothing to correcting medic0506’s recto-cranial inversion.
medic0506
Have you seen your new thread?
Oops, forgot it was supposed to be a bottleneck event. How did any of the flora and fauna adapted to the near-shore environment survive the flood?
You know what happens when you put salt water fish in an aquarium and you don’t have the salt concentration just right, don’t you?
And now I’m thinking about aquatic apes.
70. Rowan
Stars disprove stars?? You’ll have to elaborate on that because I don’t see anything that I said that even remotely resembles that conclusion.
Like I told the people on DDO that I was discussing this with, if you’re going to honestly try to understand my position, you have to let go of certain assumptions that you currently have because the ideas are not going to be in perfect harmony. I’m challenging some things, about the current understanding, that are taken as axiomatic but are actually just assumptions.
First off, you have to understand that starlight doesn’t physically “travel” here, or “arrive” here, from distant stars. I think it’s nonsense that light left an object billions of years ago and “traveled” all this way across the universe, to bombard our eyeballs with little packets of energy which are believed to be physical things that don’t have a rest mass (huh?). I don’t buy that we’re “looking back in time” and seeing objects as they existed millions of years ago. Such a theory requires you to believe that you can still see light from an object that may not have existed for millions of years, which is absurd. The universe doesn’t have to be so counter-intuitive.
When you look into the night sky and see a star, you are viewing it in real time, as it exists that night, which requires that vision actually play a role in “viewing” something. Most people that discuss this issue seem to believe that it’s all physics, photons, and they view space as a big cosmo-discotheque. They seem to forget about the eye, brain, and complex neurology that also plays a very big role.
It doesn’t matter if there is an infinite number of photons, from an infinite number of stars that are coming at you from all directions and arriving at the same time, you are still only going to see the stars that are within your field of vision. Even if photons coming from stars directly behind you could pass you by, do a U-turn, and come back toward you, you still won’t see those stars. Those photons won’t do you a bit of good because the stars are outside your field of vision. The obvious question then is, if photons and light travel control what we’re able to see in space, why does our field of vision exist??
Any questions so far??
@ 603:
Fucking Shit, medico. You are without a doubt the stupidest motherfucker that’s ever lived. How do you remember to breathe?
73. Amphiox:
I responded to the Greenland question in the only way I’m going to. I didn’t see you ask for a definition of God. Had I seen that post I would have told you that if I could figure out and define God, I probably wouldn’t be as impressed with Him. All I can give you is the same description that is found in the bible.
They’re not taken as axiomatic. There are lots and lots of empirical observations backing it up. You are a liar.
Also, what you’re doing is just pants-on-head dumbfuckery. That’s not a challenge. This part doesn’t count as lying, just arrogance. You’re too fucking ignorant to realize how utterly pointless your blathering is, but you sure seem proud of it.
Not absurd. Not a contradiction at all.
This isn’t counter-intuitive. Stuff moves around in space, and moving from one place to another takes some amount of time. That’s what our intuitions suggest things are like. Light like that, and it moves around very fast.
What definitely violates our intuitions is something moving “infinitely fast.” That actually doesn’t correspond to anything that we intuitively think about our experiences.
That doesn’t happen in reality.
None of us has forgotten that. The role the visual system plays comes at the end the story, whenever somebody perceives something. But that doesn’t happen immediately, and there’s no need for it to happen immediately. It happens whenever the signal reaches the person and they begin to think about it. And guess what? Thinking doesn’t happen instantaneously either. It also takes some time.
Why the fuck not?
Humans evolved from earlier animals which had similarly limited fields of vision. That’s why.
74. Lochaber:
We’re not even on the same page here. I’m talking about viewing starlight and you want to talk about radio transmissions, which we have no disagreement on.
Nope
Yep
Citation mother fucking needed liar and bullshitter. No citation, you lie and bullshit.
The babble is book of mythology fiction, and this helps your inane fuckwitted unevidenced version of your imaginary deity how? IT DOESN’T, evasion typical of liars and bullshitters.
Since they are both electromagnetic radiation, your problem is WHERE? Either cite the source of your problem, or it doesn’t exist….
I’d just like to see medic0506 offer their own ideas on even one of the topics that have come up.
You deny the science on a bunch of topics — we get that. What do you think instead?
I’ll keep it real simple. I think my previous attempt had too many examples and words and stuff.
No need to get bogged down; you’re welcome to pick just one of these to talk about:
1: How do you think light and/or vision work? (If you’re so eager to deny centuries of scientific understanding, you must have some alternative in mind…)
2: What’s the methodology to reliably identify a biblical kind? You’ve told us a broad description, but how would you include or exclude specific creatures from a given kind, and know you got it right?
3: Why is millions of species from one ancestral form over billions of years impossible, but millions of species from thousands of ancestral forms over thousands of years totally cool?
You brainless toad! Radio transmissions and starlight are both electromagnetic radiation, both photons. They’re exactly the same thing. They travel at the speed of light in a vacuum because they are—hold onto your hat—light!
Visible light and radio signals are both electromagnetic radiation. They’re different frequencies of the same thing.
And in case you don’t realize this, the cosmic microwave background radiation is (to us now) in yet another part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It began at very high frequencies and gradually shifted through the visible spectrum to lower frequencies, like radio waves (which you say you don’t disagree about) and microwaves (which is what we see now). This shift is due to the expansion of space. But guess what? It’s been traveling for billions of years, you silly fucker.
No, that is the logical conclusion. That you find it absurd is merely due to your faulty understanding of electromagnetic radiation.
Radio, television, telephones, microwave ovens, satellites, and spacecraft are all technologies that would not work if you were correct, so there is no need for us to let go of any preconceived notions.
Reality is sufficient to disprove your notion that light does not travel at a precise and well known speed.
Errrr, radio waves are longer than microwaves. The point is that they are the same thing as visible light, infrared light, ultraviolet light, x-ray light, and whatever other label you want to put on some range of frequencies of light.
Oh, no no no. You don’t understand:
EM radiation in the spectrum 390 to 700 nm was separately created from EMR of a millimeter and up. They’re separate ‘kinds’, see…
(/Also, there used to be additional visible colours between red and infrared, and between violet and UV, but they got drowndeded in the flood! Because they wuz sinful, praise the Lord!)
You never even attempted to answer the Greenland question. You merely vomited out a bunch of words that evaded the question. That is not an answer in any way.
Now ANSWER THE QUESTION, you dishonest piece of crap, or admit that can’t.
Yes. Every *single* one of us knows that you do not think this. We are asking you what you think it *is*. What ***IS**** light according to you? How does it ******WORK******?
Right. We *know* that this is what you claim. But because you are claiming this and this is something utterly new and different you have to explain how this *works*. *HOW DOES VISION WORK*? You fucking *need* to answer that and you completely refuse. It’s a *simple* question. How does vision work?
Uh, yes you will! That’s how telescopes, mirrors and lenses work. If anything can make the photon do a u-turn such as a mirror or a lens, you *will* see the light of the star.
Have you ever heard of a gravity lens? You will see *two* images of the same object at the same time in different locations and both will be absolutely identical. That is because the light paths are bent rather than the expected straight and thus their images appear in another place than where they “ought to be”. This is exactly the same as though we were seeing double vision through a pair of faulty glasses.
Uh, then how do mirrors work? A star seen in a mirror is outside your field of vision and yet you can see it. How? By your explanation a mirror won’t do you any good because the star is outside your field of vision? By *our* explanation the photon is reflected off the mirror and is placed into our field of vision. Reflecting photons back into our eyes *absolutely* allows us to see them.
Well, duh, because our field of vision is the area range open to receiving photons.
YES! HOW DOES VISION WORK? AND WHAT IS LIGHT?
You have being asked both these questions several dozen times over several days and you have *never* given even a single hint to either of these except “not like you think”. If it’s not like we think then what and how *is* it?
HOW DOES VISION WORK?
WHAT IS LIGHT?
medico>
I’ve go to credit you with giving me more to laugh about in the past couple days than anything I can remember in the past couple months.
Just out of curiosity, do you believe sound travels? Like, have you ever observed a far-off event that made a loud noise (watching someone use a pick or hammer to beat on rocks, observe lightning, see an explosion from a distance, be downrange from a firearm)?
Maybe I’m giving you quite a bit more credit then you deserve based on your statements in this thread, but I’m going to assume you must have experienced/observed at least one of those things. Take lightning, since it’s the most common.
You see a flash (that’s when the photons hit your eye, which is near instantaneous at those distances), and then a short while later, depending on how far away it is, you hear a boom (thunder). Do you find it odd that you hear thunder after the lightning bolt is gone?
It’s sorta the same principle with witnessing supernovas, except light moves much faster then sound, and the supernovas are much further away.
Aside from finding your denials LMAO ridiculous, I’m genuinely puzzled as to how you are having so much trouble with this concept.
*snicker*
That post requires some free grog/swill, and bacon sammiches or popcornz.
Seems I took too long writing my last post up, but that’s okay because it looks like we’re going with question #1 — light and vision. Cool!
So, your conjecture is light doesn’t travel, it just… is? It’s a beam with a direction, but doesn’t contain any physical substance (photons) and so doesn’t have any velocity?
Oh look. Light moving in slow motion.
Hee!, four different replys that all reference electromagnetic radiation. I would almost feel sorry for the medic if he wasn’t so proud of his ignorance that he demands that we ignore reality. *hivemind*
I can hear the thunderclap of a lightning bolt that ceased to exist seconds ago. Nothing absurd about it.
So you have no disagreement on radio transmissions?
Stars emit radio transmissions just as they emit light. We have telescopes that can receive radio transmissions from those stars. Everything we have said about visible light from the stars applies equally and exactly to the radio transmissions received from those stars as well. The distance and time calculations using visible light apply equally to radio transmissions as well.
Remember Supernova Remnant 1987A? Well guess what, we get radio transmissions from it as well as light.
Those radio transmissions, which you have just admitted you have no disagreement with, prove that the remnant is over 100000 years old.
Thank you for conceding the argument.
You may go away now.
How does the eye work, so-called-medic?
Nerd/#618:
(Bows…)
… I’d do more of these, but I worry too much about inadvertently starting a new denomination. I’d be all ‘No! No! Kidding!’, but by then they’d have tax exempt status, and there’d be no stopping them. And never mind the skeptics trying repeatedly to point out to them that ‘The Prophet Roy G. Biv’ probably wasn’t my real name, either…
(/Come to think of it, who knows how many have started that way already?)
Now that medico has admitted that he has no disagreements about radio transmissions, we can talk about quasars. QUASAR, incidentally, medico, stands for Quasi-stellar RADIO Source. Quasars emit both light and radio waves. (We shall humor your desire to regard radio transmissions and light as different things.)
So we see them directly in visible light with our telescopes AND we receive radio transmissions from them. We shall be generous with you, medico, and let the issue of the visible light slide, and just focus on the radio transmissions, which you admit you have no disagreement on. You admit that radio transmissions travel at a fixed speed of 1c, since you have no objection to the radio delay with Mars probes. Therefore radio transmissions would take 1 year to travel about 10 trillion km, otherwise known as a light-year.
The furthest known quasar is about 120 billion trillion light years away. We have received radio transmissions from it which, when the math worked out, must have been travelling for about 12 billion years.
The universe is thus, by the evidence of radio transmissions, which you admit to fully agree with us about to be at least 12 billion years old.
Thank you for your agreement.
medic0506 @603:
Actually, I’ve long thought it’s a vast saloon bar with nice decor, but questionable clientele. You’re cut off, mate.
Why should it not? It is determined by the laws of physics pertaininf to the physical location of our eyes in our heads, as well as their shape.
With the use of telescopes that can omage across the entire EM spectrum, it pretty much is.
Your definition doesn’t have to be perfect. Give us your best guess. You can even change or add to your definition when you receive new empirical evidence.
But if you refuse to define god, then you cannot use god as an explanation for anything. Saying “goddidit” withput defining or describing the properties of god is the same as saying “I don’t know.”
Of course, the god described in your bible is do weak, incompetent, and useless that to posit such an entity being able to create a dingle bacterium, let alone a universe, is patently absurd.
Really? It’s been known that light travels since at least the 17th century, and cameras, lenses, and mirrors are all built based on the concept that light has to travel. If it didn’t, none of them would work.
Good thing science doesn’t rely on whether you think it’s “nonsense” or not. Just on how we can (and have!) demonstrated it. As for the “rest mass”, part, explaining that is fairly advanced. It involves general relativity, and is difficult to explain without using a lot of math (but the GPS system you said you’ve used wouldn’t work without it)0.0
Nonsense. If it’s millions of light years away, and hasn’t existed for millions of light years, none of the photons the object emits have arrived yet. You won’t see anything in that case. They’re still in transit and won’t start to rain down on Earth until sufficient time passes for the light to bridge the gap.
The universe, as it turns out, is quite counter-intuitive in places. This isn’t one of them. The travel time of light isn’t counter-intuitive in any way, really.
Can you explain how the physics of light would work, in this case? Of course vision plays a role in seeing it, but the light itself exists independently of whether it’s being observed.
Nonsense. The light itself is described entirely by physics, and doesn’t require neurology to exist in and of itself. If it did, cameras would be impossible to build.
Obviously. Absolutely nobody is going to deny this.
Yes, you would. This is how mirrors and telescopes work. http://i.imgur.com/xe6k34G.gif
That’s a diagram of a Newtonian reflecting telescope (note the name: the design was conceived and built by Isaac Newton in 1668; technology based on light travel predates the industrial revolution). Note that the eyepiece is perpendicular to the opening where the telescope is pointed; to work, the design relies on the fact that light travels, and light rays can be reflected into predictable directions.
Without the aid of a mirror, telescope, or similar instrument, this is correct, and nobody would dispute it.
Non sequitur. If human vision is essential to anything involving light, why can we build cameras which are capable of using light to take pictures, when the cameras do not have the optical/nervous system of a human?
The two are the same thing. Fair enough; this isn’t common knowledge as it ought to be, but all light is electromagnetic radiation of different wavelengths/frequencies (visible light has a higher frequency and lower wavelength than visible light, but both are still photons). This insight is one of the crowning achievements of Maxwell’s equations, and unless you want to throw out all of electromagnetism too (despite the fact that the modern world is essentially built on it), this is further evidence for light travel.
Perhaps it didn’t have to be. But it is.
Live with it.
Or just change your intuition.
Three quarters of that complex neurology exists purely to compensate for the fact that as an optical instrument, the eye is total crap.
Light traveling at a finite speed, Light behaving as a wave, Light behaving as a particle; these are not assumptions, they are observations. Starlight is electromagnetic radiation, just like all other light in visible frequencies, gamma ray frequencies, x-ray frequencies, radio frequencies, etc. There is no celestial sphere with pinpricks in it giving off a super-duper special glow from heaven. If starlight were not electromagnetic radiation, we would not be able to record its properties with the sensors we use every single day.
Pulses of coherent light emitted from lasers on earth reflect off the several retroreflector modules installed on the surface of the moon for a round trip time of ~2.5 seconds. The same process is used in hand-held Time-of-Flight laser rangefinders on earth that are utilized by various military and science communities for a multitude of purposes. Light in the radio frequency range used to communicate between earth and the numerous observation/exploration space satellites, landers, and rovers scattered throughout the solar system have round trip times in the range of minutes to hours depending on distance from earth. In all these cases, you are literally receiving light from the past.
It only seems counter-intuitive because your intuition is obviously crap.
Science has shown that conception of vision to be false beyond any shadow of a doubt. Our eyes are not ‘touch’ sensors with invisible, intangible tendrils reaching out to infinity that cause our visual perception immediately as they contact an illuminated object no matter its distance from us.
That is because physics accurately explains it all already. From the travel and distortion of light emitted from, or reflected off, an object to the photon interactions with photosensitive proteins in the millions of rod and cone photoreceptor cells in the retina, and the neural pathways that transmit and consolidate the sensed photon intensities and frequencies into the visual cortex for processing involved in depth perception and object recognition. I have difficulty discriminating between some reds and greens under certain lighting conditions because of damage or genetic defect in the ‘L’ and ‘M’ cone photoreceptor cells in my eyes. There once was a research poster in the hall that used red text on a green background that was actually painful to attempt to read because my eyes had so much trouble trying focus on the text. Explain how that happens without light being something physical that travels.
How does your vision actually work?
They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.
@David Marjanović (#596)
Reply for you in Thunderdome.
medic0506 #607
That one literally made my jaw drop.
@ woozy # 590
I have to respond in reverse order to your nitpicks:
I could not agree more. That is very much what I wish to articulate. We have three versions at play here:
1. What the bible really says – inasmuch it reflects the “world view of nomadic bronze-age herders”.
2. What the creationists say the bible says – “through a glass, darkly” – a grab-bag of incoherence and plagiarised Paganism, distorted by their own contrivances.
3. Our scientific world view.
Within the fairytale of the bible (1) there was at least coherence in explaining why starlight does as it does. The distances were extremely short. Immediacy between signal and reception of light was not really an issue. (At least: there was, at the time, no way to measure the incongruencies). Everything could be explained in human sized terms (at least in the terms of the fairytale).
In science (3), we have a world that is both extremely small and extremely vast, spanning from less than a photon to more than the boundaries of space. And all between. But within that worldview we can explain things in real terms.
The creationists are neither fish nor fowl. There is no coherent explanation (not even within the hermetic terms of their discourse) whatsoever. We need only witness the witlessness of a medic or a Ken Ham to see their problem.
The entirety of their worldview is the problem. Not merely the issue of hir alchemy of light. The totality of the ignorance is far more than the idiocies of its components.
…
I do not think Ken Ham (and by extension his fanbot, medico) really gives a shit. The whole scienceyness of creationism is merely a foil for them to achieve their nefarious socio-political goals. That last is clear and obvious. But that they really care for creating a real “alternative” to science? That is just smoke and mirrors.
@ medic0506
You do realise you have been given a second OP by PZ? Link here: We have received a creationist challenge!
Ah, well, theophantes. See, I think medic0 is trolling. He wants us to make assumptions about him that he is a creationist and therefore he believes X. Thus he’ll say “well, of course species organisms change into species the can’t interbreed; why on earth do you always assume creationist don’t believe organisms can change over time?” Um, because that’s evolution? The thing you don’t believe in? We’re left flabbergasted. Then he pulls the rug out by not being able to accept basic statements like “Things in group A which is a subset of group B are in group B”.
So if we assume he has a biblical cosmology, he’s probably just going to blather about how is post-relativity despite that that is utterly incompatible with nontraveling light. If we assume he is a Ken Ham fanboy he’ll come up with everything that’s wrong with Ham. He just want to flabbergast us.
I’m more interested in pinning him down and pinning down a single fact rather than giving his a creationist tarp to wiggle around in.
medic0506 #603
Why is that absurd? Your personal disagreement doesn’t make it absurd. Don’t just assert that it’s absurd. Explain why you think so.
Because our eyes are only open for input in one direction? You seem to think that there’s some problem with the normal model here, but it’s not clear to me what that might be.
I wonder, are you under the impression that, if this were the case, you’d be able to see behind your own head? As in, your field of view would actually extend all around your head? Your field of vision is a function of your eyes and how the brain constructs a picture from incoming information. It is not a function of where the photons originally came from.
If photons from a star behind you were to turn around and enter your eye, you’d perceive the star’s position as being the point at which the photons turned. You can check this concept with a mirror, if you don’t believe me.
If this doesn’t clarify the “problem”, then you need to explain your objection better.
It seems I didn’t quite catch what you meant at first; if an object ceases to exist or changes its state, if light travels, then clearly we wouldn’t see the change until the light emitted from the object during or post-change reached us. Why this is “absurd” rather than “trivially true” is beyond me. Care to elaborate?
But woozy:
Highly likely, yes. I struggle to believe that anyone who can type on a keyboard can genuinely harbour such backward ideas.
Not at all, anything but. The gobbledygook is neither babble nor science. He likely does not understand much of Ham either.
(What makes Ken Ham an interesting specimen, is that we have so much data on him. medico is far more elusive.)
@ shockna
Imagine what a game of Creationist Tennis ™ must look like!
It is YOUR notion that the stars can instantly send information (ie starlight) to our brains, (via our retinas) without requiring that information to be carried in a substrate (ie photons) that is nonsense. Such a theory requires requires you to believe that the stars can change the thoughts in our brains, making us think we see light, by telepathy, which is absurd.
@ Amphiox
You have a little problem here:
1. God is eBerywhere (ie: highly distributed), throughout the universe.
2. God is all knowing.
Therefore gods mind is throughout the universe.
What He knows on Alpha Centauri, He knows in Mississippi simultaneously.
The problem you have, which you refuse to acknowledge: If YHWH’s arse is itching, he doesn’t have to wait 4.35 years before he feels it itch. He knows it immediately. Your theory must be wrong, otherwise YHWH would be unable to function … or He would have to be very small, which is impossible. QED!
You scientists fail to take that into account.
[/Australian accent]
Ooops: he —->He
I hope I don’t burn eternally in Hell for that little faux pas.
“photons, how the fuck do they work?” perhaps?
Hey, I wonder if medic0506 is a paid-up member of the cognitive elite ….
anyone who has ever been in a boat can tell you that you will see wakes from boats that haven’t been in your area of the ocean for hours, or even days.
Greetings,
@ Medic0506
They are not axiomatic/assumptions, they are based on observed, empiric evidence.
And your evidence for this is…?? Can you cite scientific papers, experiments, etc, to disprove what the scientific community claims and what you’re saying is true?
This is where your problem lies.
It’s a logical fallacy called an argument from (personal) incredulity.
Just because you don’t/can’t understand and/or won’t accept how something actually works doesn’t mean that’s not how it works and your belief/idea of how it does is right.
If stellar objects are seen in real time, what did the Michelson-Morley experiment measure?
It is all physics – even how our eyes and brains work.
The eye perceives light, the brain interprets – that’s all: they evolved to enable us to deal with what exists in order for us to survive, otherwise they’d be useless.
If it was all about eyes and brains, then cameras and video equipment wouldn’t work as they have neither.
As has already been pointed out to you, mirrors allow us to see photons that have passed us by – thus we can see what’s behind us: outside our field of vision.
As already mentioned, in order for us to make sense of the world around us through perspective: how things are related to each other in space, including distance.
Yes.
From where did you get your ideas of how light and vision work? You couldn’t have come up with this all on your own.
Kindest regards,
James
76. Crip Dyke:
All I’m saying is that anytime you have a speed, whether known or assumed, it can be turned into a distance. If we assume that you move at a constant speed of 1 mile per minute, then 1 Crip-year would be equal to 525,949 miles.
Rather than saying that light “travels” from point A to point B, it’s more accurate to say that it is propelled from a source, point A, and if the energy with which it is propelled is sufficient, it can reach point B. I don’t mean to imply that light can’t be made to “move”, but it can’t do so on its own. This may seem like a minor detail, but it’s an important distinction to make because light is dependent on an energy source. It has no rest mass and no capacity for energy storage for later use, thus it cannot “travel”.
None of the above, although the first question isn’t far off. The more energy that is emitted by the source, the farther and faster it will propel its light.
I’ve made several posts giving more detail since you posted this so hopefully you have a better understanding of what I’m saying. As for the last part, I’m not sure what you’re referring to because I’ve made no comparison of different sun-like stars, but we know that there are different sized sun-like stars so the energy output will vary.
77. Throwaway:
So I guess this is what PZ meant by the thread title, but now I also see why people laugh at blogs like this that tout themselves as “science blogs”, or as a safe place for “free thought”.
Having a really good sense of humor (and thick skin), I have to admit that many of you guys are really good at coming up with cool and funny insults to use against people who believe differently than you do (yay tolerance, boo bullying), but unsupervised kids in a 7th grade classroom exhibit the same skill set and mob mentality, and can be just as amusing to watch. Problem is that for many of you, that’s the only talent you seem to have. Maybe that’s why you band together and let other people tell you what to think and how to act.
When you mature to the point of being able to make cogent arguments AND classy insults at the same time, I’ll view you as credible. That’s a talent I respect. Until then, you’re just another 12 year old with a keyboard, which are a dime a dozen on here. Carry on.
Your complaints would carry a lot more weight if you weren’t spewing such complete nonsense, as well as repeatedly evading even the most simple questions and requests for clarification.
You’d had an entire thread dedicated to your nonsense and it has gone on for 650 comments, yet you’ve still failed to even coherently describe what you position even is, much less address any criticism.
Since you’re so outrageously slow to respond to what anyone is saying, and since you apparently have no ability to summarize arguments, maybe you should just avoid responding to those comments you find unhelpful?
Prime idiocy from mediczero:
Remember the interval between you and the star you’re seeing is timelike—i.e. real, whereas the interval between you and the star as it is “now” is spacelike—i.e. imaginary. However, for a photon emitted by that star and then absorbed by your retina, the interval is lightlike—i.e. zero. There is no such thing as time from the “point of view” of a photon!
Really, learn something about Minkowskian spacetime—it is the geometry of the universe you live in (except when distorted by large masses, but that’s another story.
(The blue text indicates a hyperlink. Click on it, and it will take you to another webpage—a webpage with actual information on it, unlke your Babble.)
Adding “freethought” to the list of concepts that medic0506 fails to understand.
79. MrFancyPants:
Please provide a source for this because I’d hate to call you a liar prematurely.
By using empirical, observable, testable principles.
No technology exists because of beliefs about what happened in the past, or extrapolations beyond what can be tested and observed empirically. It is quite naïve to believe as you apparently do. That historical science is true because observational science works, is a non-sequitor, which is why these attempted comparisons fail miserably. They are irrelevant.
@ medic0506
I don’t quite believe this. The year is 2014 and there are still people as ignorant as you are roaming the earth. The vacuity of your arguments is just mindblowing.
Tell me, medic0506, why do radio signals get weaker, the farther you get from the transmission station ( ie: the “source”)? Why are do sirens sound less loud the further you get from them? Why do stars appear dimmer the further you get from them? Or the light from bonfires … Or streetlamps,… Or… Hell I could go on like this all evening. Do you have even the vaguest conception how anything at all works?
If you say YHWH made you, then you are a fucking poor example of intelligent design. If you say you learned anything from the bible, then you should ask for all your money back.
are do —-> do
Shoobeedoobeedoo.
medic0506 wrote @654:
True, no technology exists because of beliefs; Science is not a Belief, it is a knowledge Tool of how all the facts we’ve seen previously, “fit together”. Hypotheses about how they fit together is what is called a Theory. A Theory can then be used to make predictions based on “what if” questions. Then a comparison between the prediction and measuring the actual event is done, to see how good the theory actually is. Theories are never proven true, they can only be shown to be wrong (or incomplete. Re: Einstein’s GTR vs. Newton’s Theory of Gravity). Theories are only: Works sufficiently, or Wrong; they never get Proven. (only “proven” in the original synonym of “tested”). [so here’s a soundbite for you medic0506: No theory has ever been proven true, and never can be. Run with it]
The second half of your statement: “No technology exists because of … extrapolations beyond what can be tested and observed empirically.”
Is worded poorly. Fixing it for you:
“technology exists because of extrapolations beyond what
can behas been tested and observed empirically.“Citation sorely needed. Your views are dismissed without you supporting them with third party evidence. It isn’t hard. Just copy/paste the url.
For example, book describing the finding of tiktaalik, a 375 million year old fish fossil showing the evolution of forelimbs. Found in strata of the right age, and the right type, as predicted by evolutionary theory, and not found in your book of mythology/fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-Journey-3-5-Billion-Year/dp/0307277453/ref=sr_1_3_title_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399387148&sr=1-3&keywords=neil+shubin
Yes medic, that is why technology exists. You insist on not understanding that because you insist on believing that science is about explaining observations and ignoring its role in making testable predictions. To paraphrase the Esurance commercial… Your notions are not how science works. They aren’t how any of this works.
[edit of 657 || “preview” is not ideal, allow edit for a few minutes after “submit”, would be much better]
The second half of your statement: “No technology exists because of … extrapolations beyond what can be tested and observed empirically.”
Is worded poorly. Fixing it for you:
“
NoTechnology exists because of extrapolations beyond whatcan behas been tested and observed empirically.““propelling” is still traveling. It still takes time to get from point A to point B. You have said many times that the image of the star we see is the image as the star is right *now*. In other words it takes no time at all.
We are still waiting for you to explain this instantaneous projective property of light. How does it get projected instantaneously? How do mirrors, prisms, lens, walls, and closed eyes work if the light is projected to its destination without passing through its path on its way? How can this be when all testable, empirical, observable, and testable principles indicate that light travels at a constant speed? Why do you believe light is instantaneously projected? There is no observed, tested, etc. principal nor any biblical stated principals indicating thus. There is no bible reference indicating light is instantaneously projected either.
Goose-egg pick (too important to be called a nit-pick): Instantaneously transporting 1,000 is not “faster” than instantaneously transporting 10 miles. If light isn’t traveling and doesn’t have any speed and no time passes, you can not claim one circumstance is faster than the other.
All observations, tests, and empirical data show light travels at a constant speed and that instantaneous projection is impossible and simply never occurs.
You disingenuously misunderstand. All empirical, observable, and testable principles that allow a computer to be built and to work indicate and rely upon our understanding of electromagnetic radiation (the visible light is a subset of the ER spectrum). That computers work is proof of our understanding. Computers would not be possible under your understanding of electromagnetic radiation (that electromagnetic radiation is something other than light).
Medic0506: “I don’t mean to imply that light can’t be made to “move”, but it can’t do so on its own.”
WTF? Dude, light is composed of massless particles called photons–it isn’t a matter of choice whether it moves. If it doesn’t move, it doesn’t exist! We have empirical observations demonstrating even in the laboratory that light moves (google Fizeau). We have observational evidence of light interacting with electric and magnetic fields. We have observational evidence of electric and magnetic fields generating light.
At this point, you are simply being silly. Don’t defend territory that is indefensible.
81. Hank:
Yes, I understand that is the theory, but that is what I’m challenging.
Your vision provides the mechanism.
It doesn’t literally “reach our eyes”, you see the light emitted from a star by directing your gaze at that star. If starlight is just a bombardment of our eyeballs with photons emitted from that star, then why do we also see everything else within that intervening space that you mention, that is within our field of vision??
What’s on your monitor is illuminated by light from the energy source. If you stand up and turn 90 degrees to the monitor, you can still see the light and maybe even make out that something is on the monitor, but you can’t read what’s being illuminated by the monitor unless your eyes are directed AT the monitor. Your vision plays an active role, not a secondary one.
In the sense that you guys mean, yes. Light exists, no doubt, so in that sense it does have a physical nature. But light is an effect, not a cause. Light does not cause us to see it, it is a product of an energy source, that we are able to view. By the same token though, light has no rest mass and thus cannot have energy to do work, so it is dependent on an energy source. It cannot exist independent of that source. It does not exist infinitely, and has no means by which it can “travel” indefinitely.
All science, and all technology depends on beliefs about what happened in the past, because every experiment and every observation is in the past as soon as it has been completed, and before it has been reported.
medic0506,
Photovoltaic systems are only one of the many complete refutations of this idiotic drivel.
<blockquote.If starlight is just a bombardment of our eyeballs with photons emitted from that star, then why do we also see everything else within that intervening space that you mention, that is within our field of vision??
We see anything from which sufficient light reaches our eyes, of course. Can you really be as stupid as you appear??
The guy gives Christianity a bad name, a foul taste, an unpleasant smell, and much mockery — deserved or undeserved we can argue about.
Except that, in the vacuum of space, traveling at the speed of light (or the “propagation velocity of energy in a vacuum” as George Gamow used to call it), a light photon continues traveling, at exactly the speed of light, until it runs into something. One photon has neither more nor less energy than any other photon. One photon has neither more nor less speed than any other photon.
The creationist assumes our eyes can detect any photon with enough energy; but that is an unevidenced (by him) assumption that is also skewed by his false assumption that photons may pack differing levels of energy.
All that is necessary for us to detect a light photon (by eye or instrument) is that the photon have enough time to travel from the point of its emission, and nothing else get in the way.
(We’re leaving alone the issue of gravity’s ability to interact with light, to bend its path; this neither slows a photon nor decreases its energy — nor increases its energy.)
Some study of Newtonian physics could do this lug some good. Medico, have you thought of, you know, actually studying physics?
As far as the light is concerned, it isn’t traveling “indefinitely. It isn’t traveling for any time at all. There is no such thing as the “passage” of time for anything moving at the speed of light. It is emitted and absorbed in exactly the same instant from the point of view of the photon.
Absolute meaningless crap. Look up the meaning of the word “energy”. This is just embarrassing.
Also, I did the fucking arithmetic for you a long time ago. The energy of a photon is equal to the frequency times Planck’s constant: E = hν. Or, since the frequency of visible light is hard to measure, E = c/λ: the speed of light divided by the wavelength.
A 500 nanometer green photon from the sun therefore has an energy of about 4 x 10^-19 Joules. It has that energy until it’s absorbed. It doesn’t have to be constantly pushed, as you seem to think. Aristotelian physics is wrong. Really, really wrong.
Except you aren’t challenging it scientifically, which involves you saying “this is what I believe, and this [link] is the evidence to back up my belief”. Belief without evidence is simply laughed at, then ignored.
Non-sequitor, like saying I took a picture of a flower in a field, why is all that grass present?
As is typical with creobots, you give prima facie evidence to show we are right, you are wrong, and you can’t figure out why. That is why you believe, and we conclude based upon reality.
Nope, citation needed for such drivel to be backed up. Where is your citations? Which means all you have you pulled out of your ass.
medic0506, do you understand the scientific method? You don’t challenge a theory without evidence.
Medic0506: “If starlight is just a bombardment of our eyeballs with photons emitted from that star, then why do we also see everything else within that intervening space that you mention, that is within our field of vision??”
Huh? You see the other objects because they also either emit or reflect light. Dude, you are trying to undo 500 years of science.
medic0506, our eyes are a receiver/detector of energy packets (called “photons”). We do NOT have to “look AT” {active voice} something to see it. We see things when we our eyes are pointed in that direction. The same assertions you make about eyes and photons can be made about radios. Radios are just receivers of radiation from a transmitter. Radios don’t create a “field” to hear the radio signal. It just responds to the signals hitting it. Like your ears; do your ears emit an inaudible sound in order to detect things making audible sounds?
It is perfectly fine to ask questions about theories, just as we can ask (extrapolate) your counter-arguments. We take your counter-arguments to our theory, and then extrapolate the new theory it’s postulating. When we look at all past tests of the theory of light (thanks, Maxwell) and try to apply your postulate to them; it doesn’t work. Your theory doesn’t work, doesn’t fit with ANYTHING we’ve ever seen happen. It is good to ask questions; Science is always asking, but you also have to Listen to the answers and Integrate them into your questions. It is too easy for Scientists to call one (meaning: you): “A Denier”, one who refuses to integrate the information that exists into forming better questions.
Medic0506, explain the results of these experiments if light is not traveling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizeau%E2%80%93Foucault_apparatus
This result is 164 years old. You have some catching up to do.
medic0506 @663:
You don’t seem to get photons, so lets stick to good old well-established classical electromagnetism (CE) (you’ve heard of Maxwell’s equations, right? They’ve been around since the 1860s). In CE, light is waves of transverse, oscillating electric and magnetic fields, a well defined energy density, and an energy flux, which has observable effects, like radiation pressure. It does work all the time.
Why don’t you learn a little bit about the really, really well-established theories you dismiss so easily with your kindergartner worldview? Light does more work than you, sunshine.
re Nerd…@669:
Yes, but… Another scientific way to challenge is to ask:
eg.:”If light is a wave (like you say), why does this paddlewheel (in a vacuum) spin when lit?”
That is, ask about apparent oversights in the currently accepted theory. Pointing out flaws can lead to a much more complete theory, explaining a lot more stuff. Theory Of Relativity was a result of Einstein trying to fit Maxwell’s eqns with Newton’s and it wouldn’t quite work, so Einstein adjusted Newton’s to include Maxwell’s.
And that, so far, has worked quite well [GPS, anyone?]
Listen Scientists!
There is a point here that is not being raised: Creationists were raised on a diet of just-so stories from the babble. The babble is the word of YHWH!!!
As scientists, we must not come with a rationale, or explanation, that is more complicated. True explainations are those can be told in a folksie manner around a campfire, or over a cup of tea at granny’s house. Stop talking about things being “counterintuitive”. Think of the children! An explanation that does not sound like it was lifted straight out of Rudyard Kippling is not acceptable.
Put your boring evilution “theories” aside. Now, let us start again. Tell us how the elephant got such a long trunk….
I thought you said that light didn’t travel? How does something move, but not travel?
This sounds a lot like you’re backing off from your earlier claim, or alternatively, that your earlier explanation was so far off from what you actually meant that it was essentially meaningless.
So, let’s get this one point straight: According to you, does light move over time? If not, in what sense does it “move” at all?
How do we see things? With our vision. Gee, thanks. That really cleared things up.
This is not an answer. It is, once again, an evasion. HOW does “vision” provide the mechanism? If there’s no interaction between the eyes and the object seen, how does vision work?
Because those things are also producing or reflecting photons, which are reaching our eyes. I thought you said you understood the theory.
It’s because God™ made light before He™ made any source of light.
Right?
But you are not providing any alternative. And I don’t mean you are not providing any mechanics and theory. You aren’t providing definition. What *is* seeing if it isn’t the perception of light?
How? You have yet to explain what vision is. How does our vision provide the mechanism and what is the mechanism. Why do lenses, mirrors and walls warp the mechanism?
Without any explanation you statement merely states “we see something by seeing something”. Gee, brilliant.
What if there is a wall in the way? If light doesn’t matter than why would a wall in the way matter. What if the wall were made of glass? How can you see through that? Or the back of my head? Why would things need to be in my field of vision to see them? Or lenses or telescopes?
You’ve been asked these things nearing a hundred times. The only possible answer is is that it works exactly like optics except it doesn’t use light. Well, if it’s not using light in the optics what *is* it using and why is it absolutely and completely bound to light? And why the hell *wouldn’t* you believe it is light?
Uh. Because everything in the intervening space emits or reflects light as well? (Are you freakin’ serious?) Um, according to your theory we shouldn’t be able to see anything in the intervening space. If we see something by looking at it then how can we see something that gets in our way? We weren’t looking at that thing.
Um, what are you trying to say? If you see something in your periphery vision you are still seeing it. Neither your theory nor ours has anything different to say about this. And of course or eyes play an active roles. If the light weren’t entering our eyes we wouldn’t see anything, duh. I do not understand the point you are trying to make.
Effect and cause of what, dear? You’re babbling.
Well, no, we have to allow the light to get into our eyeballs and hit our retinas in order to so it. So?
Convoluted wording, but if you want to put it that way, I guess so. We view the energy source by its light product entering our eyes. So? If the light (via eye entry) weren’t responsible then why can’t we see things that have no light or see in the dark? Just what *are* you trying to say because it sounds like babble. It’s not that you are wrong; it’s that you are utterly incomprehensible, or trivial. It’s hard to tell.
And what about things without energy sources? How do we see rocks? And why can’t we see rocks in the dark?
wow, this is getting downright bizarre…
I’m under the impression medico thinks that for things to move, they must either be chucked out of a catapult, or have an outboard motor (and fuel tank), and everything is subject to drag. Since photons are massless, they don’t have a fuel tank (and possibly no outboard motor?), so they must be chucked out of a catapult. How fast/hard they are chucked out of a catapult determines how far they go.
Anyways medico, how do you think optics work? stuff like lenses, refraction, polarized light, and why optical microscopes can’t infinitely magnify an image. Please try to provide some framework for how vision works (with links), instead of just replying “directing your gaze at…”
By how vision works, we don’t mean in the way that someone asks “how does this camera work?”, and his buddy tells him “just point it at something and press the button” – that’s how it’s used, but says nothing about how it works. Most of us seem to have figured out how to use our eyes, we want to know how you think they work, how your gets information about the world around it by looking at things.
@663 Medic
Actually a photon’s energy is based on it’s frequency and photons do work all the time (photosynthesis, photoelectric effect, photoionisation etc). This was empirically discovered, has repeatedly been tested and is why we today put visible light, infrared, microwaves and radio waves in the same spectrum labeled “Electromagnetic Radiation”. This is old news to everyone with a high school physics education (heck, I even learned it in high school chemistry a year before taking physics).
It’s a particularly naive form of (already naive) Aristitotelian realism.
So he’s working from first principles, not starting with general conclusions about optics, the physiology of vision, et al, and deriving a theory of vision that is compatible.
For medic, the first principle is that he is a seeing body. This means, by definition, he instantaneously and directly apprehends all objects in his “visual field”: not their reflections, not the light emanating from them; he perceives them directly with his mind, which in Aistotelian terms is endowed with a “seat of vision”. Now, for Aristotle, the seat of vision was the transparent fluid of the eye, called the vitreous humor. This is apparently too archaic even for medic, who at one point appealed to
Here is the rub, I believe. Talk about photons, optics, relativity and the technology that relies on them is just “theoretical BS”. He’s proud that he can use technology that he doesn’t understand the workings of, it proves for him not only that it doesn’t matter in practical terms if one understands the inner workings of a given device in order to use it, it proves that it actually doesn’t matter, at all, if anyone understands how it works. Explanations of these things in terms that seem absurd or counter-intuitive to him are “theoretical BS”; he seriously would not care if the inventor of some device were to personally tell him that its function depended on the accuracy of relativity, that’s just what he tells himself because he’s blinded by the materialist view and anyone’s opinion about these things is as good as anyone else’s. See, the thing works regardless
It’s the same with vision. Medic sees, that’s all there is to it. Seeing is direct apprehension of objects by the mind and the rest is a materialist fairy tale or possibly true facts about optics, etc. that are nonetheless irrelevant because the power of the mind to see operates just fine whether you believe any of that.
Anyway, I find it amusing that he would appeal to neurophysiology, as if you just keep pushing the seat of vision back into the head somewhere where things get all complificamated, then this kind of naive realism is tenable. But I don’t think there’s any traction here for education. The first principles are too firmly lodged for medic to try and view reality without them, and he’s too proud of his ignorance and its equal standing with the supposed expertise of all you pointy-headed atheist perfessers.
The (actually kinda fun) particle physics aside, I see upthread this ‘you are all such sheeple’ thing, again…
I can’t help but see this as a variant on ‘they laughed at Galileo*…
I guess a little more seriously: the creo rhetoric that those who see generally settled science as plausible, and their own–shall we put it excessively politely–more eccentric offerings as somewhat less so–that these people aren’t ‘thinking for themselves’–this comes up often enough, I guess I could do a few words on it…
I expect, first of all, it tells us a few things about creationists–granted, maybe things we already knew.
See it enough, I do get to figure: this is part of the reward system for them. They imagine themselves bold mavericks. Bravely striking out on their own, intellectually, is what this is. Nay, they aren’t clinging comically to tired, long-discarded tropes from the bronze age, now so long past their sell-by date they’ve become veritable biohazards; rather, they are boldly standing up against a powerful and sinful establishment, declaring themselves independent…
… and who knows? Case by case, some, at least, they might be oddly independent, in their own peculiar fashion (for what it’s worth, given where they wind up). The current foil seems eccentric enough, it’s possible some of this is a recipe of his own concoction, and shouldn’t his parents be proud. That the original construction he sought to shore up, thus leading him into this quixotic enterprise, was once a mouldy bit of establishment thinking itself, long since rubbished, and which fell from such more general respect despite the hegemony it had enjoyed (and for the kinds of crushingly compelling reasons generally needed to fell such a hegemony), he will try not to think too hard upon, as he imagines himself standing tall in the saddle, on the vast frontiers of human knowledge…
Meanwhile, of course, despite his increasingly shopworn pose as thoughtful provocateur, and despite his efforts to invert his perception of this reality for the preservation his own ego, he knows nothing of how those who have tried to educate him, in their harsh fashion, came by their positions. He soothes himself even as he is laughed off the podium, imagining they are sheep, falling for the establishment line, perhaps brainwashed in front of televisions, à la George Orwell…
How widely read they are? How could he appreciate this? The hours they might have spent, struggling through technical literature or more demanding popular works, this he probably couldn’t imagine, either. His world doesn’t work like this. He would never try seriously to muddle through entanglement, nor wave-particle duality. He might skim to concoct at best grammatically sound objections, pressed hard enough, but this would be the limit of it. Cox/Forshaw and the probability clocks? Sounds hard, and he’s find something seductively easier.
Because, let’s face it, in an essential way–and no, you’re not alone in thinking it, if you were–in an essential way, he’s lazy. (No excessive nastiness intended, guy, but it’s true.)
And, see, the way I see this, probably most of us are, given half a chance, but it’s his religion made that already easy out that much easier still–not merely allowing it, but encouraging him to imagine this positively noble. And that’s a huge part of the problem it poses. It gives him that charge so cheaply, gives him that notion he’s part of some brave rebellion against a stifling orthodoxy (and never mind that where they can safely build their own incestuous little enclaves, he and his kind maintain one genuinely cruel, and all the more so, the more the world outside leaves behind the myths they make their badge of belonging) just for signing off on the creed, making himself one of the chosen, among the heathens. They’re a bit like diploma mills, churches, really, when you think about it. Sign the cheque, sign the creed, and consider it done.
I think, mind, we all have our enclaves, to varying degrees, more or less isolated, more or less isolationist. But this is what’s singular about his, apart from the low, low (initial) price: join the sort of tribe he has chosen, and you need never admit you are wrong, however horribly wrong you are.
For I figure this is much of the promise of modern religion, widely understood, behind vapid noise about ‘other ways of knowing’ and ‘we just interpret the evidence differently’. To try seriously to understand the world is to risk failure, to risk, indeed, getting it wrong (not to mention this being frequently a seriously demanding, enterprise, however far you get, for the central nervous system of a recently arboreal ape, with all its peculiar glitches). But join the right religion, learn the necessary rhetorical games, and even though you might (possibly quite regularly) have to fear you might be missing a few things, you need never, at least, admit it publicly, at least to yourself, however blindingly obvious it might become to the rest of the world. Retreat, at the last resort, behind the standard rhetoric, rejoinders about how ‘closed-minded’ are your ‘persecutors’, take comfort in that cowboy image made ready for you, and you’ll be spared such discomfort. That you’re unlikely to be able to have much of a conversation with people genuinely prepared to learn, well, there are enough in the world like you, and enough beyond them who will let you slide by with little more than rolled eyes or dubious sideways glances, you’ll get on, in your fashion.
And does he really believe the slapdash weirdness he’s brought forward here? Here’s the funny thing: it’s an interesting question, but as a predictor of the progress of this discussion, it’s probably moot. For he’s not here to persuade anyone else, anyway, or least not of what he directly dribbles out as conjecture, whether he sees himself as deliberate troll or not…
He’s here, rather, to assert his identity. To say, as childishly as it sounds, with every word: you can’t make me. Can’t make me recant, can’t make me learn, can’t make me grow past this. I have rewards enough, right where am, so why should I? Fools, you’re interested in working at this getting reality right thing? This would shame me, if I thought long enough on it, not that this is much a danger. Regardless, here I am to make a mockery of the very enterprise, through sheer stubbornness. Look on my bottomless, determined ignorance, and despair.
(I begin to think, too, for what it’s worth, that it’s an epidemic condition of our age–science and technology roaring ahead, people hiding from it, in these confused silos, and everywhere PR and propaganda whispering: believe what you like, believe what have to, choose the truth that works for you, reason be damned. The argument you should drink Coke is beach bodies and a soundtrack… so why need your construction of any part of the world be one bit more coherent. Again, for what it’s worth.)
(*/And, by now it should go without saying, at Bozo the Clown.)
That seems very similar to the pre-Galileo (Aristotle) hypothesis that objects in motion must slow down and eventually stop unless they are somehow being pushed. Galileo’s concept of inertia laid the groundwork for Newton’s Laws of Motion.
I remarked in another thread that this fruitcake might possibly believe “if it ain’t being pushed, it don’t move”. My point (as others have also said) is this guy seems to have, at best, a medieval intuitive physics model. It’s quite a long distance to get to photons, EM spectra, universal laws of physics, mathematical descriptions, even gravity if his worldview truly is medieval. And with that medieval mindset, dogmatic assertion trumps observation and evidence, experiments are invalid unless they support presupposed conclusions, and if truly medieval, experimentation itself is pointless since all can be deduced by “thinking” and interpreting what the ancients are said to have said.
CJO @681:
Yeah, I think we’re firmly in thrashing expired equine territory.
@654 medic0506
OMNEG. I wish I [had the energy required for / could see immediate point in] hopping on this one.
One last question:
Does anyone find it blazingly counterintuitive that this person can write actual sentences (well, sorta… you know what I mean)?
Is this thread a candidate for a new FSTDT “site”?
Um… and one last concern:
I just noticed that the ad at the top of this very page is for “ministry classes online.”
Is it possible that I have accidentally swallowed the BLUE pill?
@663 Medic:
No one said that it does exist or travel infinitely & indefinitely. Light travels until it hits something. When it hits something it might bounce off (reflect), bend as it slows down to travel through the new medium (refract) or get absorbed. Because light carries energy, an object absorbing light gains energy. That energy can be used in a variety of different ways, such as being re-emitted at a lower frequency (less energy) or energizing a chemical reaction (photosynthesis).
Space is mostly empty, so light doesn’t have much opportunity to absorb. Therefore it just keeps going & going & going.
I’m now waiting for the “just kidding, sure had you fooled”.
But I sincerely thank everyone who has been explaining light and other things.
It has been very educational.
(dare I say illuminating?)
When you stick this little gizmo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer light, med-idiot, it spins. If you make the light brighter, it spins faster.
This IS WORK.
EMPIRICALLY OBSERVED WORK.
Your continuing stream of lies is getting pitiful.
Do you think all the NASA engineers working on solar sails are barking up the wrong tree and doomed to failure, med-idiot?
Solar sails depend on the ability of light to do work, to work.
Yeah, I’ve sometimes wondered about the writing ability vis-a-vis the apparent inability to imagine a worldview outside his own head. And for that matter, about what sort of reading ability (as in reading comprehension and/or level) he has.
Wrong, med-idiot.
The active role in this scenario is played by the muscles of your body that move your body, and the eyes within it, not your vision.
@694
I wrestled with this for a long time. I think Medic doesn’t understand the difference between light hitting a mirror and light hitting a wall. So he assumes that because he can see the light from the monitor, it’s his brain failing to construct the image on the monitor from the wall. (Rather than a failing of the wall to maintain a coherent image from the monitor so his brain could properly see it).
There is no functional distinction between historical and observational science, med-idiot-liar. That is just a lie that you and your ilk made up to hide the bankrupt depravity of your world-view.
Which is why your attempts to claim a comparison that self-evidently succeeds brilliantly as a “fail” is so irrelevantly miserable, and pathetically laughable. It simply highlights for all the world to see how you are an incompetent liar, whose worldview can be sustained only with lies.
I’m starting to wonder if this fool has even ever been outside…You only need to step into the sun, particularly during summer at noon, to feel on yourself that light most fucking definitely has energy.
What i find remarkable is that he is able to use a computer. Or even get close to one since he probably thinks electricity is witchcraft.
When he first made an appearance i never imagined the degree of outstanding idiocy to which he would subject us….although quite frankly i think he is a poe…i have a seriously difficult time trying to reconcile the idea that someone in a developed country, who knows how to operate a computer and presumably is capable of working in a society, could possibly hold such medieval, ridiculous ideas. It’s just too much….it’s way too stupid…
Old medi-liar post:
Recent medi-lair post:
What is energy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy
So, old medi-liar: Light is energy.
Pharyngula Horde: Provides numerous irrefutable empirical examples that in order for light to transmit energy, it must travel through space.
In response:
New medi-lair: Light is not energy.
And thus is poor, poor medi-liar trapped again in an obvious lie. It is inevitable that he will do this again and again, as he sadly twists in the wind, attempting to deny the self-evidently obvious. Unbeknownst to him, every statement he makes that agrees even in the slightest with the real world ultimately contradicts his worldview, so he will have to backtrack and lie about them all the moment the relationship is pointed out to him.
It happened with “I accept horses and zebras to share a common ancestor”, and it happened with “I am in agreement with you about radio transmissions.”
Don’t forget, medi-liar, QUASARS.
Of course just consideration of the phenomenology of visual experience poses serious problems for naive realism, in which we immediately and directly apprehend objects themselves in a “visual field”.
Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience, medic:
It sometimes happens that I will go into my refrigerator to find, say, a small jar of mustard. I open the door, I look, I stand there, I look some more. I look at the shelves in the door, I start clanking things around in frustration: “where’s that …” as my wife reaches past me, second shelf, right in front: there it is!
So, curious: what is happening here? How did an object, clearly smack in the center of my visual field, unobstructed by any other objects, evade my mind’s direct and instantaneous apprehension? The episode is consistent with the current scientific view, that my visual field is an internal model based on the raw data coming down the optic nerve from a retina that is stimulated by incoming photons reflected off of the objects in the fridge, and that perceiving individual objects within the field and their properties is a function of that model. It would seem to create difficulties with your view, though. How would you explain this and similar cases of the eye being “fooled”: camouflage, optical illusions etc. if the mind has the power to perceive objects directly?
Part of why I’m pretty sure he’s trolling.
He has the ability to do a simple amount of abstracting. (“You hypothesis rests on the assumption that light travels that has never been empirically tested. If otherwise…”) And that takes a bit of intelligence. Anyone with that much intelligence (and your average “creotard” doesn’t have it) can follow basic science. medic0 seems stumped by kindergarten concepts (“If the world is round the oceans would have humps in them”) which seem impossible for anyone who can comprehend the concept of an hypothesis to not be able to follow.
On the other hand, *very* *very* stubborn Dunning-Krugers can simply refuse to listen. If so, medic0 is pathelogical.
Oh, and RE
Were you with Him when He hammered out the sky?
And the point of this is not just to rub your nose in Biblical cosmology. It is that your quibble is with Him, not us, not the science that describes it, as regards how the universe apparently doesn’t meet your expectations. It doesn’t need to be any certain way at all. You are apparently convinced that the “counter-intuitive” descriptions of reality generated by scientific inquiry are so because of a deep-seated need on atheist scientists’ part to construct a view that denies and renders absurd the pre-modern view featured in scripture. But it is actually you who needs the universe to be other than it appears to be when investigated with objective empirical methods, instrumentation, and mathematics. It seems to me that a vast conspiracy over centuries would need to have been perpetrated in order to arrive at an internally consistent, robust description of material reality that was nonetheless false. Moreover, a great many devout Christians would have had to have been involved too, including seminal figures like Kepler and Newton whose work is foundational to this description.
wow! Medic0506 is asking a profound question, but poorly phrased; leading us to answer about Physical Light (and all that theoretical BS). His REAL question is not about photons hitting the retinas, etc. but, “What is SEEING? HOW does that mass of nerves, etc. form images that the consciousness interprets as images?” “What about That stuff? What goes on in the brain, that we verbally call ‘Seeing’?”
Good question. There are NeuroScientists working on that question at this very moment. Their discoveries are only coming out in dribs and drabs, BUT they ARE trying to find out what goes on, in there.
Is that it, medic0506? Is that really what you’re asking?
medic0,
Our vision is clearly planar projection of the three dimensional world before our eyes. The question is why should that be and how is the planar projection created. That isn’t how hearing works. That isn’t how touch works. That isn’t how smell works. So why should that be how vision works? That is one question that must be answered if you are to answer “what is vision”.
Of course, how a sense “works” involves a phenomenon transferred from object to receiving organ. A sound is a vibration that is transferred from waves. A touch is an object making direct contact with our skin. A smell is chemicals drifting in the air. What is the phenomena that triggers vision? That is a second question that must be answered if you are to answer “what is vision”.
The planar projection corresponds precisely with that of optics. Lines of sight must synchronize precisely with lines of projection. And even more bizarrely these lines of projection must bend for mirrors, lens and the material of the surrounding environment. What phenomenon of the object has these properties. Light does, but no other such phenomenon is known.
Furthermore vision only occurs when the object is illuminated and the quality of vision is precisely the proportional as the amount of illumination. (this isn’t a conjecture; it’s merely observation.)
So the question is 1) What phenomenon of a viewed object that a) follows lines of geometric projection; b) obeys and is affected by optics; and c) is proportional to illumination, triggers vision? and 2)Why isn’t it light? In other words What is vision?
You still have not answered this.
AJ Milne #682 – beautifully put.
In the end it doesn’t matter whether medic0506 really is as terminally and determinedly ignorant as he paints himself or whether he is trolling; the responses have been extremely generous and (as chigau says :-) ) illuminating. While medic0506 has given an exhaustive demonstration of the paucity and rampant dishonesty of the creationist/ID “position” (what a sorry waste of a brain he is, it’s really sad).
654 medic0506
Ken Ham sounds like an ignorant spoiled toddler when he runs around on stage shouting “were you there?” You saying basically the same thing but with slightly more expensive words doens’t mean you are suddenly right, or that you don’t sound like an ignorant spoiled toddler.
663 medic0506
No, you are not ‘challenging’ anything. Challenging a well-understood and well tested theory would mean you come with actual counterevidence or a working counter-theory. You don’t, you just shout “nuh uh”. Remember above that you sound like a spoiled toddler? Not helping your case.
You do understand that there are such things as solar panels, right? How do you think they work? Magic?
@701
As interesting as that is, it has nothing to do with how the image from the retina becomes the image from the retina. I imagine medic0 and the rest of us will probably be more or less in agreement of how the neurology works (although I predict their will be heated disputes over concepts of will, soul, intent, self and sloppy definitions galore).
We still haven’t settled the nature of light and its travel or lack thereof. If light doesn’t travel then vision following the laws of optics simply makes no sense. It doesn’t matter that the eye, and the optic nerve and neurosystem are the components of vision while the image itself and conveyance of the image to the eye are merely the subject of vision. The bone of contention *is* the conveyance of the image from source to receptor. *That* is what medic0 must address. And so far he has steadfastly evaded the issue.
Why (and how) does the vision of an object obey the laws of optics if light doesn’t travel?
And do you understand that this whole line of questioning is useless? The sun is a fire. Bigenergymakerinthesky. That’s all. Solar panels are just a clever more or less accidental invention that somehow refine the heat generated by the Bigenergymakerinthesky into electricity we can use. He will just claim that you don’t know how it works either, and your sophistamacated patter about electromagnetic waves and the photovoltaic effect is theoretical BS.
That is, yes, magic.
Again, useless. In his mind, we’re describing the exact same phenomena it’s just the supposedly scientific view throws in a whole bunch of theoretical BS that only makes it seem like they’re different by using arcane terminology and absurd (“counter-intuitive”) descriptions of (theoretical) underlying realities that he simply denies exist. Basically, he will concede that scientists are smart enough to make sure their theoretical BS aligns at least superficially with what’s actually going on.
Thanks, Amphiox, for naming my Crookes radiometer for me. Had it for years, never knew what it was called.
(This is irrelevant to the main argument: please ignore.)
Perhaps. (Well, definitely.) But the point I’m getting at is a pretty basic one with no particular science but just a visualization of geometry. How can a light path “know” to bend in a prism if the entire path, including the two end points all come into existence at once. How can the prism bending it in the middle know where the endpoints will be. How can the new endpoint know that a prism is about to be placed in its path so it better start showing a different image altogether.
Well, pointless, I guess.
Ignore your post, or ignore the main argument. At this point your post might be more interesting. Crooke’s radiometers were quite the fad in my childhood.
You are not challenging a theory, medi-liar. To challenge a theory is to provide an alternate explanation that explains ALL the empirical evidence that the older theory also explains, and, preferably, include explain ADDITIONAL phenomenon that the old theory struggles to explain.
You, on the other hand, are IGNORING multiple lines of EMPIRIC evidence, some of it centuries old, already gathered about light. Your so-called “explanation” only makes sense if one ignores ALL of that EMPIRIC evidence, and CANNOT explain that empiric evidence.
You are not challenging a theory. You are IGNORING empirical evidence, deliberately, because it does not conform to your cherished, and erroneous, worldview.
83. Hank:
That all sounds well and good, but it’s no more true than saying the moon is made of cheese. Anyone, regardless of ideology, has the exact same investigative tools and data that evolutionists have. Creation biologists, geneticists, etc., study biological life just as evolutionists do, but they don’t make assumptions about relationships that can’t be supported. So saying that evolution offers something scientifically to one set of scientists, that isn’t available to others is just incorrect.
Where do you get that I don’t have a working definition of the word?? I’ve said that a “kind” is a group of organisms that share common ancestry and/or can inter-breed. That is indeed a working definition that is biblically consistent. And since when does being honest and straight-forward about not knowing all the original created kinds, mean that I’m backing away from the word?? That is not at all the case.
You say that, but it’s evident from your critique that you do indeed expect that from my side, but are willing to overlook inconsistency from the evolutionary side. That I admit that I don’t have all the answers is your only argument.
By consistency do you mean the kind of consistency you have when defining a species as a group of organisms that are reproductively isolated, then calling groups that can interbreed (dogs, coyotes, wolves, etc.), different species?? Some definitions say that a species is a group of organisms that can exchange genes or inter-breed, yet animals that can inter-breed are known as different species, certain types of whales and dolphins can breed for instance.
I’m sorry but that is not consistency, and your argument here indicates that you don’t seem to have evaluated evolutionism anywhere near as critically as you’ve evaluated the creationist side. I hope for your sake that it is due to naivety and just parroting what you’ve been taught because that is super easy to fix.
I challenge you to provide a source to show a creationist “defining” a kind in that manner, I don’t think you will find it, unless it is a theistic evolutionist, which doesn’t really qualify as a creationist. That said, sometimes we, myself included, when struggling to communicate with an evolutionist will try to explain that a kind would probably fall somewhere near the family level, of the evo classification system. But that is certainly not to “define” a kind as being perfectly harmonious and consistent with that system.
The “kind” is not at all problematic for creationists, it is the evolutionists that seem to have a problem with it. It’s a constant attack point for evos who don’t know enough about their own theory to know that their means of classification is even more inconsistent and subjective than the one they’re attacking.
In fact I will make it easy for you, medi-liar, and flat out list some of the EMPIRICAL observations you need to explain to challenge the existing theory of light as photons.
1. Explain the DELAY, EMPIRICALLY OBSERVED by Romer (and others) in the duration of the eclipse of the moons of Jupiter seen when Jupiter further from the earth than when Jupiter is closer to the earth, in view of your idea that light does not travel over distance at a finite speed.
2. Explain the TIME DELAY, EMPIRICALLY OBSERVED, before seeing the reflection of the laser beam aimed at the mirrors placed on the moon by the Apollo astronauts, in view of your proposal that light does not travel over distance at a finite speed.
3. Explain how the Crookes Radiometer works if light does not contain energy and cannot do work.
4. Explain how plants can grow using photosynthesis if light is not composed of discrete packets of energy that plants can absorb and use.
5. Explain why a prism can refract visible light into a spectrum of colors, if light is not composed of a mixture of substances and move through space.
6. Explain the EMPIRICALLY OBSERVED results of the double slit experiment in view of your PROPOSAL that light does not travel through space.
There are many, many more, but we can be generous and start with just these six. In fact, to be extra generous, you can start with ANY SINGLE ONE of these, your choice.
The mechanism by which you see it? Sure, nobody disputes that. The light itself? Clearly wrong, otherwise cameras wouldn’t work (seeing as they’re capable of taking pictures even when there are no human eyes around to observe what they’re taking a picture of).
Of course you need to direct your gaze at it. If you didn’t, the continuous stream of photons wouldn’t reach your eyes. The photons themselves, of course, would still exist, you just wouldn’t see them. What about this concept is so difficult for you?
Why wouldn’t we? Everything else we see is emitting photons that reach our eyes in precisely the same way that starlight does. Nobody here is arguing that photons only exist in the case of starlight.
Complete hogwash. Light is energetic, and this is derived from the energy of the source (hence why extremely high energy nuclear fusion in the core of stars emits light as extremely energetic gamma rays, but once they finally make it out of the stars photosphere, where the temperature is a lot lower, they’re generally in the less energetic “visible” part of the spectrum). Light can be said to be an “effect” in the sense that the photons of light are emitted from a source, but they’re absolutely a “cause” in the sense that if an object didn’t emit photons, we couldn’t see it (some matter like this, which doesn’t interact electromagnetically, does exist; it’s a kind of dark matter, and it isn’t seen optically).
After the photon is emitted, it will certainly continue to exist until absorbed by something else, even if the object that first emitted it ceases to exist (saying this isn’t true is akin to claiming that people can’t exist independently of their parents, since their parents were necessary for their creation).
The source is this very thread and the creationist is YOU, medic-liar.
YOU defined horses and zebras as a single kind, which is a definition at the genus level.
You went on to insist that all whales were a single separate kind, which a definition on the ORDER level.
You also implied that all the apes were one kind, which is a definition on the FAMILY level, but excluded humans, which are one genus within that family, as a separate kind, making a special case for humans within that group, as a kind at the GENUS level.
Is FAMILY Homonidae, which includes genuses Pongo, Gorilla, Pan, and Homo, one kind?
medicO506:
The christian mythology rests on your fictional god having a relationship with humanity. This is an assumption made by creationist scientists that cannot be supported.
The difference between evolutionists and creationists like you is that you ignore what the tools and data say when it says something you don’t want to hear.
You accept what the tools say about the shared common ancestry of horses and zebras, but when the SAME tools say the SAME thing about humans and chimpanzees, you reject it.
Pure hypocrisy.
Still repeating this lie. Let’s go back to the very origin of evolutionary science, to Darwin himself, in Origin of Species. He wrote “from one form OR A FEW”.
Given the totality of 10 million or so species (and that’s just known species of eukaryotes, by the way) living today, “a few” can mean anything from a handful to a million. IE, “a few” actually includes within its range the number of “kinds” that creationists posit were put on the ark. So evolution theory in its origin did not “assume” that the biblical idea of separate creations of several kinds, followed by diversification among those kinds, had to be false.
It was PROVEN false later, with EMPIRICAL evidence, DIRECTLY observed.
Relationships between organisms were never assumed. They were OBSERVED, empirically.
Evolutionists don’t make assumptions about relationships that “can’t be supported”. They make DEDUCTIONS about relationships that are supported by mountains of EMPIRICAL evidence, DIRECTLY observed.
You, on the other hand, make assumptions about non-relationship that utterly cannot be supported.
medic0506 #711
Noticing genetic similarities that have no functional explanation is not an assumption. It’s an empirical fact, which you are ignoring. Are you ever going to address the points made regarding, for example, endogenous retro-viruses?
You’ve also admitted that, outside direct observation of copulation, you have no objective method for determining whether two organisms share a common ancestor. The only thing you’ve offered so far is “they kinda look the same”.
That would actually be okay if you professed ignorance to the number of kinds. However, you’re asserting that there are more than one kind. You’re not just being skeptical, you’re positively claiming that there’s no such thing as a universal ancestor.
As a result, people are quite reasonably asking what evidence you have for this assertion. So far, you’ve provided nothing but crickets.
Which is exactly what you’d expect if there’s no such thing as “kinds”. If all life is related, we’d expect any given species concept to break down when we apply it to the borderline cases.
You, on the other hand, don’t have that excuse. You’re claiming that the separations between kinds are objective and absolute. You don’t get to appeal to the transitional states of a seamless continuum. There’s nothing wrong with us admitting to a bit of vagueness because that’s exactly what our model predicts.
I stopped following this thread early on, so perhaps this was already addressed (if so, I’d like to see the answer):
medicO506, you have made multiple claims here. How did you acquire this knowledge? Have you studied light? Have you run tests that determined light has no mass and therefore cannot have energy to do work? Where is the evidence that your ideas-which contradict what is currently known about the nature of light-are correct? How do you know you are right?
Also, did you ever apologize for your sexist comments about Eugenie Scott?
Remember those lasers we aim at that mirror on the moon? That laser can be fired in pulses. Guess what? The reflection can come back AFTER the pulse it is reflecting is TURNED OFF. So yes light CAN exist independent of its source. This EMPIRICALLY PROVEN, and DIRECTLY OBSERVED.
So it appears that medic0, thus far, is only on comment fucking 83 of this thread. It’s gonna be a loooooooong time before he moves onto the other thread, huh?
If you were honest and straight-forward about not knowing all the original created kinds, then you would have honestly admitted that it is possible for humans and chimpanzees to be the same kind, for whales and hippos to be the same kind, and for horses and frogs to be the same kind. Since, after all, you don’t “honestly” know all the original created kinds, so it is more than possible that one original created kind, which you “honestly” did not know about, actually IS the shared common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, or horses and frogs, or whales and hippos, or even all six.
But you did not do that.
So you were NEVER “honest” about not knowing all the created kinds. You were lying.
As usual.
That is his dishonest pretense. One look at his actual responses and it is more than obvious that he knows about and has read multiple responses after the point which he is pretending he is at.
More DIRECTLY OBSERVED, empirical evidence for medic-idiot to explain.
Leon Foucault shone a light beam at a spinning mirror in 1862. The reflected beam returned at a DIFFERENT angle from the angle the mirror was facing when the beam was first turned on. This is only possible because the light beam took a finite amount of time to travel to the mirror after it was turned on, and the spinning mirror had moved, changing its angle, during that time interval.
This in itself is a barefaced lie. Creationists have done almost no actual research work over the past century and more: they spend their time distorting the theories and findings of real scientists, quote-mining their words, inventing spurious terms such as “created kind”, “irreducible complexity” and “ontological depth”, and fantasising about the state of the science – they’ve been predicting the imminent collapse of evolutionary biology ever since Origin of Species was published.
Yes, they do. They claim kinds can not evolve from or out of kinds. Unless kind means all life and there is only one kind (which makes the term useless) this is an assumption about a relationship that can not be supported.
I’m currently reading Deborah Lipstadt’s Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory – her account of the methods of those who claim that the Nazi genocide of Jews is a myth. The similarity to medic0506’s approach is remarkable: the same desperate attempt to have their lies and fantasies accepted as an intellectually respectable alternative view, the same bizarre excuses for the gaping holes in their “explanations”, the same evasions and false parallels, the same “challenges” based on misrepresentation. Nor is the similarity in any way accidental: if medic0506’s attempt to deny the validity of “historical science” were itself valid, it would apply to history itself, since neither documents, nor physical remains, nor memory have any more claim to be reliable indicators of past events than the fossils, geological strata, dating methods, patterns of genetic similarity and biogeography that evolutionary science depends on. Creationism, it may be said, lacks the peculiar vileness of Holocaust denial – but it is just as much an assault on truth and reason as the latter, and any such assault, if it has any degree of success, weakens society’s defences against other such attacks.
90. Hank:
The lineages contained in the bible, along with other physical findings that are consistent with a young universe and earth.
Which bible?
Such as?
Honestly, if you expect to be met by anything other than ridicule and astonished head-shaking, you really have to get rid of this habit of dodging direct questions.
medicO506:
Adding to chigau and Lyke X’s questions-
Why do you accept that the lineages in the bible are true? After all, there is zero evidence that humans can live for hundreds of years (nor is there any evidence that any humans have ever lived that long).
I always find it very amusing when godbots like medic0506 come here and give testament. To a godbot, the highest form of evidence is their testament. To any scientist, who understands the concept best expressed by Richard Feynman:
Which means that their testament is considered bullshit until they provide supporting evidence, from legitimate sources outside of themselves, to back up their claims. They must show that Feynman’s concept is being taken seriously, and they are fact-checking their testament to show they aren’t engaged in self-delusion. Without that fact checking the Null Hypothesis is that it wasn’t done, and everything should be questioned with the utmost skepticism.
Poor Medic0506 just can’t conceive of the idea that we don’t take his word as “gospel”. Since he can’t/won’t back up his claims, his word should be laughed at and then ignored. There is nothing concrete to hang any cogency on without his claims being backed by third parties.
Poor Medic0506 would have trouble dealing with any regulatory agencies in the first world. They won’t accept his unsupported word for anything. And if he can’t/won’t produce that supporting data, too bad, as then he will be told in no uncertain terms to back up his claims with scientific evidence, or withdraw his whatever.
Like shortly, I will have to justify the absolute structure of compound we are filing to a Canadian agency. I had better have some real scientific evidence to tell the story, rather than relying on “I said so”.
Medic0506, every time it comes down to essentially “because I said so”, you have lost the argument. Your word/testament needs support, preferably scientific, or the claim will be rejected, just like my word would be rejected without the supporting data by the Canadian agency….
Perhaps we should pause this thread so the nitwit can catch up. Comment #90 was on the *last* page…
There are no physical findings that are consistent with a young universe and earth except for the ones that are trivially consistent with a universe of any age at all.
There is an ENORMOUS mountain of physical findings consistent with an OLD universe and earth and not consistent with a young one at all.
Creationists like medico make one giant assumption. That a single kind cannot, ever, no matter what, with variation and time, split into two kinds.
That is an assumption that neither evidence nor simple logic supports.
And they have the dishonest nerve to falsely accuse evolutionists of making assumptions.
Or maybe we should’ve paused science and philosophy a couple millennia ago. Some people haven’t quite finished writing and editing and reading and rewriting their holy books yet, so they haven’t had time for stuff like thinking about reality.
And those physical findings are shown where? This is what I mean by third party evidence. Either cite those physical findings, or shut the fuck up like liars and bullshitters should do when their lying is exposed…Welcome to real science.
Well, with medic0’s weasel definition (having a common ancestor) of kind he has made that a semantic tautology (no matter how much modification, one can never lose a common ancestor). So technically his assumption is that separate “kind”/having-a-common-ancestor groups are numerous and occur roughly at the family level of taxonomy. This is is an assumption that neither evidence nor simple logic supports.
His weaseling does have a cost. Kinds must and will become increasingly divergent in time. He assumes they will never become divergent enough to include both horse and frog-like organisms, however he refuses to admit this.
It is remarkable how creationists like medico, invariably and always, lie and distort what actual evolutionists say about evolution, and how the actual research is done.
It seems like to them, bearing false witness against thy neighbour is perfectly ok if that neighbour is an evolutionist.
“Why 6,000 to 10,000 years old?”
“Well, because that’s what all the other young earth creationists say! Duh!”
6,000 to 10,000 is a mighty big range.
Shirley inerrancy could narrow it down.
Feynman.
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i2352.html
(And: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Uv-uxB0sRKEC&lpg=PA3&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false)
If you watch the lecture, he says:
QuorkBote! *sigh*
Ah, common sense. Neither common nor sensical.
Since Medic0506 claims without evidence the Earth is 6-10 kyears old, this doesn’t match the facts and is therefore ignored in favor of the scientific method which gives an age of the Earth of 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years, and Wiki even references three scientific papers confirming this age:
All that is third party evidence medic0506, which needs to be refuted by more science from you, or the age stands. Keep in mind, your personal skepticism isn’t that evidence, and never will be. You, like with what I did, need to provide links to where what you claim is backed up, so that we can see both the evidence and bias (say at a religious web site, which is AIG or DI, etc) of the site. So we can fully evaluate your claims against scientific reality and rigor.
91. Amp:
You don’t need to be terribly bright to know that the reproductive history of a frog is only going to include creatures that are very…frog-like, and the same goes with horses. If you believe that some different mechanism or process was in action billions of years ago that’s fine, but don’t tell me that you’re belief is science.
Medic 0, the fact that you believe you can decide what is or is not science is just simply adorable. Doubly so when the closest thing you come to science in your latest comment is the distinction “frog-like”. You do not understand basic, middle school level science, of any kind. And yet you have the sheer fucking gall to think you know better than actual scientists. You are pitiful.
Hey, Everyone!
Did you know that you can copy/paste the nym of the person you are quoting?
It’s the smugitude of medic0506 that’s really annoying. Xe’s so sure that xe knows exactly what science is, how light behaves, and the various relationships of animals, when all xe does it show hir ignorance on all of these topics. Such arrogance and hubris based on such a slim foundation is rarely met.
There is no such thing as belief in science. There is belief that the scientific method will continue to advance mankind, while religious stupidsticion like you present will hold humankind back. The facts of science are scientific conclusions based upon the scientific evidence presented in scientific papers, like those I showed above for the age of the Earth.
It isn’t a religion. There is no deity, there is no holy book, there is no prayers, there are no tithes, there are no churches, there is nothing associated with any religion. Scientific knowledge is always expanding as new evidence becomes available, which means some theories must change.
Now, when was the last time your deity’s existence was challenged by you, your babble’s inerrancy was challenged by you, and your belief system based on the twin lies of an imaginary deity and inerrant book of mythology fiction was challenged? Never is the expected answer. Whereas today I challenged my latest theory and found it wanting, and discarded it properly into the dumpster, and continued working on something else.
94. Rob G:
Care to elaborate on how this contradicts what I’ve said in this thread??
I notice a lot of people here do the same thing but posting a link to a wiki page to make a point about something during argumentation is a waste of time. Given Wikipedia’s known bias, I view a link to their site with as much credibility as you guys would give a link to creationwiki.
Some people (looking at you medic0506) find more comfort in the certainty of ignorance than in the uncertainty of knowledge. Sad but not much one can do about it.
medic0506 @ 746
That’s funny. Because I’ve watched frogs lay eggs, and then I’ve seen those eggs hatch into weird little wriggly fishy-looking things. They didn’t have the characteristic long, powerful hind legs that frogs have – in fact, they didn’t have legs at all. Nor were they able to absorb oxygen through their skin. Neither did they have long sticky tongues, and they didn’t croak. In fact, they weren’t froglike at all.
On a more serious note… how do you know “the reproductive history of a frog is only going to include creatures that are very… frog-like”? Seriously. What method did you use to acquire this knowledge? Did you read it in a book? Was the knowledge delivered directly to your mind by God? Did you sit down and watch frogs reproduce over generations?
medic0506 is responding to comments ~650 behind current.
104. Kevin:
How did you arrive at those dates and ages??
Care to provide evidence for your religious claims.
Science is scientific conclusions based on scientific evidence. It stands until refuted with more science. Your beliefs will never be that evidence, as they aren’t scientific.
Evidence you have presented to back up your fuckwitted loser claims: crickets chirring.
Science wins, you lose, typical of those who think their believes trumps evidence….
How do you disprove the evidence? You can’t, and must accept any dates science provides until you supply more science to disprove them. Your unevidenced beliefs will never be that evidence…..
chigau (違う) @ 754
Were I the uncharitable sort, I’d suspect this is some kind of deliberate delaying tactic in hopes that everyone else will get bored and wander off. I mean, Kevin, Youhao Huo Mao (who medic0506 just responded to) hasn’t posted in this thread for over four days. Should Kevin not reply, presumably having wandered off to do more interesting things, I wonder if medic0506 will take that lack of a response as a concession of defeat.
Whereas myself, Amphiox, and David Marjanović, A-ray-in-Dilbert-Space, joined by others, argued for years with with various creobots, mainly for the edification of the lurkers, which means the creobots lose. Without their bullshit being refuted, they could score some points, but when every post is refuted several times over….Not happening in the creobots lifetime.
113. Amp
I never said that I was going to waste my time replying to EVERY post, in fact I believe I said that I wouldn’t be replying to all of them, but if you can’t see the numerical sequence in my responses then you truly have a problem that I can’t help you with. Look up habitual prevaricator.
medic 0 sez:
False equivalence for the lose.
122. Menyam:
The offspring doesn’t need to be fertile, so long as the animals can breed and produce offspring, they are the same kind. They can “bring forth after their kind”. Creation doesn’t predict that all offspring will be able to make a new breed, in fact it predicts exactly what you see happening, a discontinuity.
OK
That’s kinda funny.
Has medic0 explained what the fuck he means by “discontinuity” yet?
On a separate note, I find it odd that medicO506, in responding to amphiox and menyambal left off the last three letters of both their nyms.
That’s your picture.
aaaaaand I cannot count. That would be the last three letters of menyambal and the last *four* letters of amphiox.
medic0506 @751:
Sure. You said light didn’t travel. Being deflected by the sun’s gravity says otherwise. BTW, this is my last comment directed at you. I’ve had enough of your ignorance and dishonesty, and life is too short. I could link to a detailed calculation of the deflection, but (a) you could find one yourself if you gave a shit, and (b) you’re not worth the effort. Get a grade school education, then we’ll talk.
medic0506
is
medic zero five zero six
You are make an assumption (something you claimed creationists don’t do) and you are contradicting yourself.
We have established that organism’s offspring and modify over time. Thus one line of descendents of a frog can become increasing and increasingly less frog-like. We asked you if you there was any limit or mechanism that that what limit just how different organism can become. You could not come up with any method. Given enough time, millions of years, it’s reasonable that descendents of frogs can be very un-frog-like indeed. Given enough time, it’s reasonable that the predecessors of frogs were very unfroglike. Given enough time it is very reasonable that horses and frogs had a common ancestor. Go back far enough it is reasonable that all vertebrates have a common ancestor.
And it’s more than reasonable, fossil records and genetic analysis bears it out.
All vertebrates form a very large group and loose group admittedly and broad and base in the structured hierarchy. It’s a Phyllum, the second broadest there is (only the kingdom of all animals is broader). But it was your assumption that the criterion of having a common ancestor would yield narrow and high level groups. That was, as Amphiox pointed out, an incredibly HUGE assumption that only creationists and all creationists make.
No mechanisms or processes have changed. There slight and minor mutations in a generation and over many generations the changes accumulate. To accumulate enough so that some descendents are horses and others are frogs is a *huge* amount of accumulation but it is possible and did happen over millions of years. But the processes then were the same as they are now.
=====
===
I may not give it credibility but I would read it. And if I dismiss it I would not dismiss it with a “I don’t accept it because it doesn’t match my opinion.” I’d read it and respond and critique each point. Science is not a matter of opinion. Although wikipedia is not reliable for academic work it does give overviews in science that are accurate enough for amateurs.
chigau:
huh…my brain is weird. I kept seeing the letter ‘O’ all this time…
Tony! The Fucking Queer Shoop! @ 771
In many fonts, including the default one here, o (the letter) and 0 (the number) can look very familiar. Once you see it one way, it’s hard to see it the other.
Blargh. I meant “similar” in 772, not “familiar”.
Tony!
It may not matter.
I don’t think medic will make it this far.
!!!WAIT!!!!! I though you said they only need to have a common ancestor *OR* can interbreed (one or the other make them the same kind). Are you now saying that they have to a) have a common ancestor **AND** be able to interbreed (albeit possibly infertilely)?
If chickens and turkeys have a common ancestor but can not interbreed at all then are they or are they not the same kind. Are you claiming that, as per Amphiox’s Creationist Assumption, that kinds never evolve into different kinds? Are you claiming that because chickens and turkeys can not interbreed it follows therefore that the can not have a common ancestor?
You do realize the assumption that descendents from a common ancestor will always be able to interbreed is a *HUGE* assumption about relationships. Your comment that creationist do not make such assumptions is shown to be false, as you do indeed make such an assumption.
@ chigau
Inerrancy —–> inerrant inaccuracy
anteprepro @ 764
I think medic0506 is (perhaps deliberately) conflating two different ideas into “discontinuity” – reproductive discontinuity, and the possibility of morphological change.
Here’s my guess: medic0506 makes the observation that not all organisms can breed with all other organisms, but instead generally only reproduce with other similar organisms. The “discontinuity” is that rather than there being a strict continuum, where each organism can breed with its similar neighbours, there are clusters – a group of individuals that are all mutually interfertile, but none of which are fertile with the members of another mutually interfertile group. So, basically one of the “reproductive” definitions of species.
Then medic0506 seems to be making the claim that these groups are in some way immutable – that variation within a group can’t possibly ever lead to members of that group appearing significantly “different” from its own ancestors and that the ancestors of organisms in that group will never leave that group, and groups never split or merge or vanish. Here’s the confusion – medic0506 is claiming that reproductive discontinuities create morphological discontinuities. For (for example) an organism to go from a land-dwelling hoofed grazer to a fully-aquatic predator, it’d have to “jump” from one grouping to another. Since the “land-dwelling grazer” group and the “fully-aquatic predator” group aren’t mutually interfertile today, that means the morphological change from one position to another is also impossible. It’s basically Platonism.
Though I might be wrong. I might have put more thought into this discussion than medic0506 ever did and xe’s just spewing bog-standard creationist talking points without actually understanding what they mean.
More dishonest evasion from medic-liar I see. Whether you previously said you would be responding to every post or not is irrelevant, you pathetic mendacitor. You said explicitly that you were responding IN ORDER, but the clear evidence is that you were not, but were jumping back and forth between early posts and late posts back and forth.
Whether you were replying to all the posts or not is similarly irrelevant, you unethical prevaricating piece of shit. You said IN ORDER, and YOU LIED.
You are pitiful.
False.
You don’t need to be terribly bright at all to see at a glance that the reproductive history of a frog can EASILY include a creature that could morphologically be an ancestor to horses as well.
Only the most ignorant and superficial thinker, unaware of the true range of diversity of life on earth, and too dishonest to educate himself about it, can look at a frog and a horse think that the superficial differences in outward shape are in any way significant when compared to the VAST and MASSIVE similarities in the actual body plans and biochemistries these two organisms share.
Frogs and horses, both being tetrapods, are roughly more similar to each other than either is to 95% or more of the rest of life on earth. In other words, on the measuring scale of the true diversity of life on earth, which is the only measuring scale that matters, a horse IS very frog-like, and a frog IS very horse-like. Only the most stupid and dishonest of lying scum, if given the same amount of information as we have already given you on this thread, refuse to admit this similarity.
Beyond the obvious, self-evidence morphological similarities, the reproductive history of both the horse and frog have already been proven, EMPIRICALLY, to be shared, from the telltale and indisputable evidence of common descent found in their respective genomes.
This is the SAME genetic evidence that demonstrates horses and zebras share a more recent common ancestor.
Once more, medico, the hypocritical liar, accepts one and refuses the other, simply because he does not wish to be honest enough to admit that he is wrong.
In fact, if you include all the bacteria and archaea, frogs and horses are probably more similar to one another than 99% of all the rest of life on earth….
With directly observed empirical evidence.
And of course, if this were true, there is no reason for medico to be lingering back in the 100’s in his replies, rather than jumping forward to the more recent and topical responses, other than sheer dishonest cowardice, as Snoof suggested in @777.
735 Amphiox
The root cause is of course one big ass assumption that they made earlier: “god is real an created the earth and everything that’s on it 6000-10000 years ago.” From that assumption, which has zero supporting evidence, everything follows. And everything that contradicts this is hand-waved away, again, without evidence, or with convoluted babbling.
That’s why idiots like Medic0506 disregards wikipedia as ‘biased’, because it containsactual facts and science which contradicts his big ass assumption, so it must be biased. No single shred of proof of course, it just is, otherwise the big ass assumption falls flat, and that cannot be the case. Circular reasoning at it’s best.
Evolutionary biologists don’t make assumptions about relationships, you fuckwit, they make direct observations and they propose the best hypothesis based on those observations. It’s not assumed, it’s derived from. Creationists on the other hand assume that a magical hyperpowerful wizard in the sky exists and that it magicked shit into existence…..and that’s just the beginning of a whole lot of the most ridiculous, completely baseless assumptions you could possibly imagine…i mean, seriously….the shit you believe in xDDDDD
And those are just the assumptions made about their ridiculous religious beliefs, add to that the assumptions that like you, medic0506, they have to make in order to try and shoehorn reality into your myths…
Let’s see if this time you’ll bother to even attempt an answer. According to your “definition” of “kinds”, there are many different kinds of frogs. How many? Why would your non-existent sky wizard magic various kinds of frogs into existence? Why can we draw relationships between frog species, genera, families, etc, based on observations of their anatomy, behaviour, physiology, biogeography and genetics? It works for species that are reproductively compatible, and the exact same type of observations work for species that are not, and like i said, for different genera, different families…and it also works for stablishing that anurans are related to caudates and caecilians…
Why would this be if your non-existent sky wizard had used magic to independently create a lot of different, discrete kinds that all happen to be easily identifiable as frogs? Unless……are frogs a single kind, medic0506?
746 medic0506
Poof!ology in action… His complete befuddlement regarding time/light/travel/whatever not only freezes the observation of stars in the “now,” it also apparently freezes processes in the “then.” He can’t seem to understand the concept of a “mechanism or process” occurring over billions of years, but instead apparently needs to anchor them at a fixed point (not surprising, given the poof!ological theory of creation)… so, he believes evolution requires that frogs were affected by a “mechanism or process” at some discrete point “billions of years ago.”
Perhaps this is because the stunning nowness poof!ologically manifesting in his eyes masks any conception of change over time. Or perhaps any sequence. Like DNA.
No, it doesn’t. You can’t even keep your story straight. You have been claiming, as all creationists do, that there are discontinuities between “kinds”. But within a “kind”, if it predicts anything, creationism predicts – in your words – that all members of a “kind” can “bring forth after their kind”. But infertile offspring cannot do so.
Greetings,
@ Medic0506
As others have pointed out, Aristotle’s concept of motion is wrong.
He based it on his observations of things being thrown through the air and/or being slid along a surface losing momentum.
He failed to take into account two things: the first being FRICTION. (The other – in relation to objects thrown through the air – was, of course, gravity.)
The natural state is a (near-)vacuum – most of the universe is empty (space): planets and other bodies are a rarity.
For this reason, Aristotle’s observations were carried out in highly unusual, to say the least, circumstances.
In reality, as Newton’s laws of motion – particularly inertia – explain: an object at rest tends to stay at rest, an object in motion tends to stay in motion.
In the near-vacuum of space, objects will tend to continue to travel in a straight line until they either impact/ricochet off something or are bent round it due to gravity (including gravitational lensing in the case of light).
Thus it was that Newton’s laws of physics superceded Aristotle’s, just as Einstein’s superceded Newton’s – for now, until somebody comes up with a Unified Field Theory to do for cosmology what the theory of evolution does for biology.
Why do some theists/creationists still use Aristotle’s concept of motion?
So they can insert “God” as the “Unmoved Mover” – a version of the “Uncaused Cause” – on the grounds that there’s nothing like that in Nature.
However, in this they are also incorrect.
Radioactivity occurs spontaneously without any external cause – thus, it too is a “uncaused cause”/”unmoved mover”.
Kindest regards,
Medic0506, please realise that Aristotelian physics is simply wrong for the reasons I’ve explained above. Einstein’s is the most correct to date. Need I also point out that the Big Bang has been confirmed recently?
James
126. Amp:
See my more recent post where I explain the difference between light being emitted by/propelled from an energy source, and light “travel” as you’re using it. My explanation is consistent with, and accounts for this and other phenomena.
Have you isolated your experiment from the possibility of light “contamination”, so to speak, from any other sources?? Obviously not, so in order to confirm your hypothesis, you need some independent method of confirming that the light is from the star that you say it’s from. How can you link light to star, and eliminate vision as a primary mechanism, thus showing that the light had to physically travel from your chosen star??
While I won’t call your experiment a total failure just yet, I can say that it is incomplete and doesn’t conclusively support the most important part of your hypothesis. At this point, my explanation can also account for what has been shown.
Back ‘er down a notch there, turbo. You’ve still got quite a lot of work to do before patting yourself on the back.
I keep coming back to this thread to learn (and, of course, to see what further nonsense medic0506 has written – I like a laugh as much as anyone!) and the horde never disappoints. I am now better off for having learned a lot about physics that I didn’t know before.
Thank you. =^_^=
medic0506 is asking questions such that a child with no knowledge of physics might ask.
Here’s a question that puzzled me as a kid – if light travels in straight lines, how come things appear smaller the further away they are? Shouldn’t they always be the same size?
medic0506 #789
HOW?
How does your idea that light is propelled, but doesn’t travel (whatever that means) explain how the path of light is bent? You keep asserting that your model explains all this, but you’ve consistently failed to actually provide that explanation. You waffle and wave, you dodge and divert, you ignore and ridicule, but the one thing you’ve yet to do is to give a clear, direct answer or explanation to anything at all.
I still don’t know what the hell your model of light actually is and I’m increasingly of the opinion that you’ll never tell us.
Tigger/#790:
Easiest way to work this out, I’d say:
Google ‘convex lens ray diagram’. Draw it with the same size object at different distances. See what happens to the image size.
In other terms, your eye doesn’t directly measure the size of things. It measures the angles of your visual field they cover. The same object that covers, say, half your visual field at one distance covers far less, further away, for reasons of simple geometry. (How much they cover is technically found with an arc sine function, if you draw it, and as the adjacent increases, with the same opposite, the angle decreases.)
(… erm… arc tan would probably be more convenient, and given those two terms, would be the one you’d use, obviously.)
Without a citation to back up this assertion, your explanation is bullshit. Here’s a clue for the clueless, take your arguments outside of your own incredulity. Or they will be dismissed as this claim.
If you claim contamination, you must provide outside evidence to support that claim. You don’t, so it is dismissed as fuckwittery. Your testament of bullshit is nothing but bullshit.
Nope, he can pat himself on the back. You have a lot of work to do to get your claims out of the bullshit stage, starting by providing third party evidence to back up those claims. And without that third party evidence, your testament is laughed at and dismissed, as it should be.
medic0506, a few years back, astronomers saw a supernova blow off, in their visual-light telescopes. They alerted the other flavors of astronomers, who jumped to their detectors, and just at the right time later, they saw non-light evidence of that same supernova as the predicted burst of neutrinos.
They got confirmation of their model of supernova, evidence for the speed of neutrinos, as predicted, and confirmation of the speed of light, not that they needed that. The right signals, at the right times, everything snapped into place.
Unless you can provide a much better explanation of what happened than “oh, they must be wrong because of my projection of my bias”, you are wrong.
Medic0506, you are so wierdly wrong that your ideas aren’t even wrong sometimes.
Essay by Asimov on the Relativity of Wrong. And Medic0506 is not even wrong on a lot of things, like light and “kinds”.
No, your explanation is not. Not even close.
Yes, as anyone who has any education at all about these experiments would instantly know.
But even if the light WAS contamination from another source, it STILL HAS TO TRAVEL THROUGH THE PRISM, at a finite speed, for a spectrum to be produced.
Correlation with the rest of the non-visible electromagnetic spectrum received from the star, because the spectrum doesn’t end with just the visible part. RADIO TRANSMISSIONS from the star, as you already conceded you have no disagreement with us about.
@snoof 758:
Meh, at this point I’m about to just concede on behalf of extreme boredom. By the time he gets to my next response, it’ll be August. Slowest, debate, ever.
Thank you for admitting that it takes TIME to get from point A to point B, as ALL things that are “emitted” or “propelled” take TIME to move from source to destination.
It doesn’t matter whether it can or can’t “on its own”. So long as it can be made to “move” in ANY WAY, as you just admitted, then the TIME it takes to move can be used to calculate the age of universe.
It IS in fact a trivially minor detail.
This is not an important distinction at all, and is utterly irrelevant to the question of light TAKING TIME to be “propelled” from source to receiver.
Yes it can. Absence of rest mass has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it can travel or whether or not energy can be stored for later use.
And of course, as every honest person can see, trying to make a distinction between “travel” and “propelled” is an utterly pathetic and laughable piece of intellectual dishonesty.
Compare this statement with all of medic-liars previous statements about light. Note the obvious and dishonest walk-back, and weaselling in the face of the evidence presented to him that he cannot deny.
But that’s all ok.
The fool has just conceded that light requires a finite time to reach Point B from Point A.
I’d say that’s a completely safe bet, because medic0506 doesn’t have a model of light at all, just an incoherent set of canned phrases.
This is a key point. We know by direct measurement the speed at which radio waves travel (radio waves and light travel at the same speed in a vacuum), so they also refute the claim that the universe could be only 6,000-10,000 years old, since we know that almost all stars are far more than 10,000 light years away – and IIRC, medic0506 admits this. In the case of radio waves, medic0506’s fuckwitted bullshit about vision is entirely irrelevant, since we cannot see radio waves.
So if we keep commenting, it is impossible for medic0506 to catch up.
We are caught in a paradox!
I think Medic0506 needs a primer on the electromagnetic spectrum. But I sincerely doubt if Medic0506 will actually click on the link and learn something.
One more point with respect to this:
Medico the ignorant likely doesn’t realize this, but the prisms used in these experiments can be placed in the EXACT SAME PLACE where the observer would normally put his or her eye, at the eyepiece of the telescope. So whatever the prism is perceiving is exactly the same thing the eye was perceiving in the same spot.
And secondly, we can place a SECOND prism to catch the light spectrum coming from the first prism, and that second prism will recombine the spectrum and reproduce the image of the star, thus confirming that the light passing through the spectrum is the same light that was observed and labelled by its optical appearance as the star.
Now there is a remote possibility that there is something between the telescope and what we thought was the star, and the image is actually this thing between the telescope and the star (which happens to look exactly light a star), but that is actually completely mute to the main point, as the light from this “contaminating” object still has to travel the distance between it and earth, through the telescope and the prisms, and have its path affected at each step.
Chigau, a new Zeno’s paradox?
It’s a metaphor for how science moves on, leaving him and his ilk in the dust….
@ Amphiox
FIFY: a metaphor for —–> yet another example of
This is how the battle is fought soldier!
I’ve been following this increasingly hilarious thread for a few days, but had to register an account to ask a question of all you wonderfully smart people. It occurred to me that I understand, broadly, that we are able to determine the age of the universe by (amongst other things) using starlight to demonstrate the distance to far-off celestial objects – indeed, this is the reason Medic doesn’t want to accept light “travels” as conventionally understood, as that would force him to accept that, from calculating how far it has travelled, we can deduce the time it’s taken to arrive. All quite straightforward.
What I don’t understand, and what a very cursory Google failed to explain (it even brought up AiG!), is how we can calculate the distances to stars – necessary in order to calculate the time in the speed * distance = time equation.
I love all the high-end physics and history of science in this thread, but unless I missed it, I don’t recall anyone laying out in as layman’s terms as possible just how we can use starlight measurements to calculate distance to far-off stars, and therefore the time since that light was emitted.
In a way, I’m ashamed to admit, I also have some of the same intuitive questions about the process, too – in charitably trying to understand what Medic fails to understand, I realised I wasn’t sure either – or at least, I couldn’t explain it sufficiently. Principally, how do we know that a particular observed / measured particle of light from a star is not, in fact, from the lamppost down the street? I realise this *is*, of course, possible – I’m just curious as to what the mechanism is.
Maybe if we boil this down – fewer mentions of complex phenomena and particular experiments, more straightforward explanations of exactly how light enables us to age the universe – we might crack Medic’s problems. I am naively optimistic.
So yeah. Explain it to me like I’m 5. How can we deduce the age of the universe by observing and measuring light?
@809 Matt Lodder
As stated on the “other” post:
PHARYNGULAGATE!
(Kidding, Matt. It’s a good and apparently honest question. But it won’t help that case, at least not soon.)
((And I’m not answering only because there are minds superior to mine around here.))
128. LykeX
It isn’t whether or not “kinds” presents a problem for evolution, that is important. What’s important is which one best explains what nature shows us. I agree that IF all life springs from A common ancestor, then obviously the biblical view of kinds would not be sufficient to explain that. All of life would be one kind, but that is a huge IF.
First off, we need to lay some groundwork here because I think we disagree on who has a burden to prove what. Let’s leave language and terminology out of the equation for a moment and look at what we agree on.
Everyone agrees that empirically and observationally, organisms reproduce other organisms that are copies of themselves which can have slight variations. Humans produce humans, dogs produce dogs, microbes produce microbes. Both theories, all scientists regardless of their ideology, and everyone who discusses the issue, agree on that as an objective scientific fact. No one believes that dogs breed and produce squirrels. No one believes that dogs can breed with squirrels. Empirical, observational science shows that groups of like-organisms interbreed and produce offspring, and that organisms cannot breed and produce offspring with other organisms that are outside their group. Agreed so far??
Unless you wish to challenge one of the empirical observations in the above paragraph, intellectual honesty requires you to admit that I have met my burden of proof. Although you don’t like my terminology, not liking it doesn’t change the fact that, empirically and observationally, what the bible tells us about kinds bringing forth after their kind, is literally true and scientifically accurate. I have absolutely nothing more to prove on this matter, my burden has been met, and my theory proven true. In fact, your own theory admits and requires my theory to be true, as my theory is the foundation upon which evolution theory rests. That’s why creationists say that we agree that micro-evolution is true.
It is the evolutionist who says, “But wait, there’s more to the story”. In doing so, it is the evolutionist who carries the entire brunt of the burden for proving his belief that there is more than what empirical, observational science shows. I do not need to prove anything else, and it is not my burden to DISprove anything that your theory asserts. The onus is wholely and entirely upon the evolutionist here.
I do not, as you say above, need to prove anything about “various species”. Species is not a part of my theory, it exists solely in yours but I will address it. As Stephen Meyer said, “speciation is an artifact” of your attempt to classify organisms according to evolutionary belief. The change that an organism displays is nothing more than a variation to the parental organism, that we already know happens. It is a variation within that group. It is illusory to say that a scientist has observed a “new species forming” because in reality what they’ve observed is a variation of the parental organism, that’s it. It only becomes a “new species” because you decide to give the organism a “new name”, so the claim of “speciation” fails as evidence for universal common ancestry.
I agree with you that if I just assert that two animals are the same kind, without evidence of them being able to breed and produce offspring, or coming from the same ancestral lineage, that I am not proposing something that is scientifically supported. If you ask me whether a badger and a platypus are the same kind, unless I can find an answer I will tell you that I don’t know. There is nothing wrong with, or unscientific about “I don’t know”.
Given that observational biology follows the pattern that I discussed earlier in this post, it is not at all unscientific to group organisms in such a way. Whether I call that group a kind, a type, a sort, or even a googaplex, is irrelevant to the validity of the method and whether the method is scientific or not.
What IS unscientific is to make the assumption that all organisms are related, that they can morph into things that are different than their ancestors, and then begin grouping organisms according to what you think turned into what, and claiming that as proof of your original assumption. That is evolutionary biology in a nutshell, and it is indeed unscientific.
@Matt Lodder
See http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970415c.html.
Basically there are multiple ways, applicable to different distance ranges, which overlap, allowing us to cross-calibrate them for accuracy.
The methods described in that link seem to be mostly for individual stars, usually ones in the Milky Way galaxy.
For the really big distances between galaxies the main method is the use of so-called “standard candles”. These are cosmic objects whose absolute luminosities can be independently determined. And since apparent luminosity varies with the inverse-square law, once we know how bright it actually is and compare it to how bright it appears to be, we can calculate how far away it is.
A common standard candle are Type Ia Supernova. These can be identified by characteristic spectral lines. They are, to put it in a simplified way, all giant thermonuclear explosions of cores of stars 1.4X the mass of the sun. The way they form is by gradual accretion of mass onto a stellar corpse less than 1.4X the mass of the sun, and once it becomes reaches 1.4X the mass of the sun, it becomes critically unstable due to that mass and explodes. Thus they are all* very close to 1.4X the mass of the sun, and since the mass determines the brightness of the explosion, they are all very close to the same absolute brightness. Thus when we observe such a supernova in a distant galaxy, we can calculate the distance to that galaxy. (And the distance to the galaxy equals the distance to all its stars, as the size of the galaxy, compared to the vast distances between galaxies, is basically a rounding error).
*One theoretical exception is the case of two stellar corpses colliding and merging. So for example two 1.3X solar mass stellar corpses could collide and merge and instantly become a 2.6X solar mass object that would immediately explode as a brighter-than-expected Type Ia Supernova. But stellar collisions of this type are exceedingly rare, much rarer than the usual situation where a single stellar corpse slowly accretes mass (usually by sucking it off a nearby companion star) that such exceptions are easy to distinguish from all the rest, which are the same brightness, and to my knowledge there are only a couple of known candidates, none of which have been confirmed, of this kind of collision producing a bigger than expected Type Ia Supernova.
Another way to calculate distances is by redshift, but this method depends on the “assumption” expansion of the universe, and we can use it only because we can calibrate it with other methods of determining distance, so it would not satisfy someone like medico (not that anything would).
Matt, “Principally, how do we know that a particular observed / measured particle of light from a star is not, in fact, from the lamppost down the street?”
Well, I did learn that much when I was little – light travels in straight lines. If we are looking at the sky and see a star, it’s because our eyes are receiving photons of light from that star.
If we receive photons of light from the streetlamp, it’s because we are looking at the streetlamp and will therefore see the streetlamp – not a star!
It’s like time travel…
Maybe if we all just stopped commenting until medic0506 catches up?
Then we can take it up again in August.
or October.
More on Type Ia supernova here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova
They are basically a giant carbon fusion bombs, 1.38X the mass of the sun.
Which brings up yet another question to ask poor medico.
Does he or does he not accept the nuclear physics that calculate the yields of nuclear bombs here on earth? Those same physics are what determines the yield of Type Ia supernova, and if Type Ia supernova were not many millions of light years away, and if their light was “emitted” and “propelled” to earth instantaneously without attenuation via the inverse-square law (and this law actually depends on the fact that light must travel to work – it is basically derived from the density of energy within an expanding sphere. As the sphere expands the energy within it becomes less dense – the law doesn’t work if energy can be transmitted instantaneously without the need to travel through distance) they should all appear much brighter than they actually do, and some of them could indeed have vaporized the earth….
What nature shows us is universal common descent, medico.
re 811:
in short: Science is just obfuscating the obvious, the people who wrote the Bible were totally correct, what they wrote is totally obvious, even scientists agree, they just go on and on about pointless details, that just overcomplicates simple issues; like species, and photons to try to complicate the concept of “vision”. Evolutionists admit that dogs breed with dogs, don’t birth squirrels, nor vice-verse. Why do scientists over complicate everything? To sell books and stay employed; indoctrinating us with all that excess knowledge.
Thanks, Amphiox. Fascinating stuff, and that link is great. Can I ask how absolute luminosities are calculated?
And, @Tigger, thanks – I figured as much, though as I was trying to work out what Medic0 was getting at with all his talk of “field of vision”, that’s the question that I think he was getting at, along with the fact that we see things that don’t emit light, but merely reflect it — in other words. not all the light entering my eye (or telescope) when looking at a star has come from that star; much of it will have been light emitted from elsewhere and reflected off of objects. So it seems to me there must be “contamination” when doing astronomical measurements, right? How is this corrected for?
(Again, for the avoidance of doubt, I am not asking rhetorically or incredulously. I’m genuinely interested. Fascinating stuff!)
Still bearing false witness against evolutionary scientists, you deceitful fapwit?
Organisms are NOT grouped according to what “you think turned into what”. The methodology of cladistics SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITS making assumptions about ancestry before you begin. The RESULTS of cladistics produces a grouping of organisms that take the form of a perfectly nested tree-shaped hierarchy, and that RESULT is most parsimoniously explained by common ancestry. The RESULT is EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR common ancestry.
Common ancestry was NEVER “assumed”. It was DEDUCED.
No that is not evolutionary biology, you pathetic hypocritical liar.
Certain processes, such as the Type Ia supernova, produce consistent absolute luminosities that are the same all the time.
There are certain types of variable stars whose period of pulsations correlate directly with their absolute luminosity. So we can determine their absolute luminosity simply by timing the frequency of their pulsation (brightening and dimming as we observe them).
Absolute luminosity can be roughly estimated as well from the mass of the star (more massive = more luminous, assuming the stars are not out of the Main Sequence phase of their life cycle) and mass can be determined using gravitational calculations if the star is in a multi-star system and we can observe the movement of the various members.
For stars that do not fit into any of the known categories where we can independently determine their absolute luminosity, or the direct estimate of their absolute luminosity isn’t precise enough for measuring distance accurately, we can determine distance by determining the distance to another star nearby that DOES fit into one of those known categories. So, as I said before, all the stars in a distance galaxy can have their distance determine by a single Type Ia supernova in that galaxy. Similarly all the stars in any gravitationally bound cluster of stars can have their distances estimated by determining the distance to a single member of that cluster.
And that is NOT how “evolutionary biology” works! That’s what this site is all about, read some more, and try to understand it. Don’t just dismiss it as “nonsense”.
– Species were originally assigned due to morphological differences, it took lots of work to show that different species are actually related through a common ancestor. It was never Assumed, a priori to be true. Scientists are always demanding evidence for anything another Scientist claims. Look at the current claims that Birds ARE Dinosaurs (and not just Evolved From Dinosaurs), that Dinosaurs had feathers and weren’t just scaley Lizards, that Feathers aren’t just for flying, but warmth and insulation, etc.
No. Organisms produce organisms that differ from themselves. Usually, the differences are small enough that we humans decide to call them by the same names. However, that has more to do with language and artificial categories than reality. Just because we use the term “dog” for two animals doesn’t make them identical.
In reality, off-spring are different from their parents. Even in organisms that reproduce asexually, differences creep in. Objectively, empirically, organisms produce off-spring that are different from themselves. We can check and demonstrate these differences.
Unless you can show a mechanism to prevent it, such differences would obviously build up over time, resulting in larger and larger diversions from the ancestral type. Can you show such a mechanism? You’ve been asked more than once and you haven’t gotten anywhere near an answer yet.
Your argument relies on assuming that there really is such a thing as a platonic type to which a given organism belongs and from which the off-spring cannot differ, but that’s the very assumption that you need to back up.
Except you don’t say “I don’t know”. You are asserting that there’s more than one kind. I’m asking you to back that up. We know that organisms vary and change over time. You’re the one asserting that there are limits to this. Explain what these limits are, what mechanism accounts for it and how you know.
re 818:
My somewhat simplistic answer to this is: The telescope TUBE. The inside of which is usually painted Black. That restricts the light hitting the mirror to have come *straight* from the target. Other angles are absorbed or blocked.
To obfuscate: the premise of the question derives from the answer to “Why is the sky blue?” due to how light is scattered by the air molecules, bouncing photons all over the place. [which also causes stars to “twinkle”, BTW]
That’s why telescopes are in a tube, not just for mechanics but for optics also.
The question medico must answer, and consistently evades, is WHY when we analyze that directly observable traits of organisms, and try to group the organisms based on which traits they share, we ALWAYS end up with a nested tree-shaped hierarchy. No matter what trait or type of trait we use, we ALWAYS produce a tree-shaped hierarchy. And the more traits we add to the analysis, the more rigid the tree becomes. And when we conduct separate analyses using separate TYPES of traits, the trees that are produced CONVERGE onto the same trees, as more traits are added to the analysis.
It doesn’t matter which combination of traits we use (ability to interbreed is just one such trait we can use), whether it is skeletal structure, or possession of specific types of skin organs like hair or feathers, or DNA sequences.
It ALWAYS produces a tree. No assumptions are made about ancestry whatsoever before doing this analysis. We don’t even have to include the names of the organisms when we do these analysis, and can assign to each just a number, blinding the researcher doing the analysis to the identity of the organisms being analyzed. It doesn’t matter what we call the various trunks, branches and twigs of the tree, whether we choose to call the end twigs species, and the branches genera and the bigger branches orders and families, and the biggest trunks phyla and kingdom, or we choose to call the branches “kinds”. It is always still a tree, a perfectly nested hierarchy shaped like a tree.
There is no explanation that accounts for this observation of a perfectly nested tree shaped hierarchy other than common ancestry that is not patently absurd.
Tygger
AJ Milne
now woozy =>
To put it in even simpler terms: Each visible point of a visible object sends multiple light rays in multiple direction. (Well, lasers send directed light in precisely one direction. But lasers are only visible if you shine them directly into your eye. [The “laser dot” is scattered light. The “laser beam” is dust that got in the way and scattered the light.]). The light we see are only those whose paths reach our eyes. Because our pupils are small and the objects are big, this light that actually makes it to our eyes is *not* the light that was travelling in straight parallel lines but the light that was traveling in convergent straight lines. (The light that was traveling in parallel lines goes over our heads and way the heck to the left and to our toes.) They are projected onto a flat (more or less) retina and the relative sizes are all a matter simple geometry (the similar triangles lesson).
If we could build a device that would view the light that travels in parallel (and also filters out all the other light such a large device would *also* collect) then, yes, objects would be viewed full size no matter how far away they were.
Do you or do you not admit that it is POSSIBLE for a badger and a platypus to be the same “kind”, medico?
If not, HOW DO YOU KNOW? The platypus isn’t even mentioned by name in the bible, so you can’t even go there for a reason.
First, that is not an assumption that anyone is making. It’s a conclusion based on evidence. Evidence which you are deliberately ignoring, considering how it’s been repeatedly presented in this very thread.
Second, we know from direct observation that organisms are different from their ancestors. It’s trivial to show that offspring differs from their parents. You’ve just decided that those differences don’t count, for some reason.
You’ve decided that a series of small steps couldn’t possibly result in a larger journey. That’s obviously bullshit and until you can give us some explanation of what would limit such variation over time, you’ve got nothing but your simple-minded refusal to accept reality.
I would also point out that nearly all the stars other than perhaps one or two of the very biggest and relatively close stars appear as points of light. Most contaminating light would not come in exactly parallel to the starlight, so even that which the tube shape of the telescope excludes is quite unlikely to end up overlapping EXACTLY on the point source that is the star’s image. You can then additional isolate the star with filters (basically black sheets with a hole cut in it right where the star is – it sounds ludicrously simple, but even something as advanced as the Kepler Space telescope basically used a variation of this).
The tiny amount of potential contamination left after all this is light from things directly between us and the star, and we can often identify whether or not such contamination exists by looking at how clean or “messy” the spectra of the star is. (The contaminating light will add or remove absorption lines from the spectra. It is often possible to identify spectral lines that “shouldn’t be there” as atypical of the kind of lines you expect to see from a star. There remains the possibility that a “contaminant” spectral will look enough like a regular star’s spectral line that you get an erroneous result about the composition of the star, but that’s where repeatable observation comes in – it is unlikely that a contaminant will remain identical over time and repeated observation, but anything actually coming from the star should stay the same.)
Pertaining to this, medico, you hypocritically throw out the “assumption” accusation all the while making even bigger assumptions of your own.
Small variations that continue over time is the observed fact. The evolutionary assumption is that, given time, small variations CAN add up to produce large morphological changes. Stress on CAN, not WILL. Large morphological change does not have to occur in any given lineage, and in fact does not most of the time. But over time SOME lineages will produce large morphological changes.
So the assumption is if you let a large population of entities walk in small steps, at random, SOME of them will end up traveling a long distance form their starting point. One can look at any example of randomly moving objects to observe that this is indeed the case in reality.
YOU, on the other hand, make the ENORMOUS assumption that these random small steps will NEVER produce large morphological change, that, essentially, the random walkers will ALL continuously go in circles, and only in circles, around their origin point. That NONE will ever walk a long distance away from their starting position.
That is a FAR LARGER assumption than the assumption that evolutionary theorists make.
And the other difference between you and evolutionary scientists is that evolutionary scientists are honest about their assumptions and continually TEST them as they make them.
The entire Linnaean classification system was developed BEFORE evolutionary theory. Perhaps medico doesn’t realize this, since he has a rather fuzzy understanding of the passage of time.
The Linnaean classification system, based entirely on morphology, fell into a perfectly nested tree-shaped hierarchy consistent with shared common descent before anyone had even thought up the idea of evolution at all.
More bearing false witness against evolutionists here. No, the evolutionist does not have a belief that is “more than” what empirical and observational science shows. The evolutionist’s contentions are EXACTLY what empirical and observational science shows.
This would only be true if you were simply criticizing evolutionary theory. But you, medico are not doing just that. You are actively proposing A SPECIFIC alternative to evolutionary theory. The moment you do that the burden of proof SHIFTS BACK TO YOU, for you to show how your alternative better explains the empirical and observational data.
And you have FAILED UTTERLY to do that.
Thank you, woozy – the kid I was (half a century ago; good grief, how time flies) is delighted with your explanation! =^_^=
I’m briefly peeking in to address this bit of medic’s #811 (which is a response to LykeX back at #128): (bolds mine)
Evolution isn’t an assumption. It’s a conclusion. The similarity of organisms to each other was observed, long before the powerful and quantitative tools of genetics, by the scholars of anatomy patiently dissecting carcasses from all over the world. Comparative anatomists determined that whales and dolphins are mammals because they share underlying similarities, such as having flippers homologous to mammal paws instead of fish fins; similarly bats are mammals and not birds. Anatomists and naturalists charted the patterns of similar species (a term which also predates evolutionary theory, going as far back as Aristotle) on different continents, and observed that animals behaving as predators, grazers, burrowers, pollinators or whatever, would have surface features like the predators and grazers etc. of other continents, but underlying bones and organs closer to each other. Darwin observed one such instance in the famous Galapagos finches, where in a small isolated place, the roles ordinarily filled by many different types of bird were all here done by finches – but finches which had more types of beaks than finches anywhere else in the known world.
From wiki again:
Classification into species, and species gradually changing into other species, were solid concepts long before either Darwin, evolutionary theory, or genetics. The entire science of genetics has turned out to mesh with evolution before it, and comparative anatomy before that. (With minor tweaking, as in any reality-based theory.)
Nick Gotts also mentions the evidence from anatomy back at #181.
Aaaand I’m slow. Oh well, what Amphiox and LykeX and twas brillig (stevem) all said.
807. Amphiox:
It’s also illustrative of how you use what you think you know and go beyond what you can support observationally, leaving behind questions that need answers rather than assumption. Those assumptions can come back to bite you later, and can lead you to ignore other possible explanations and answers that might have lead you in a different direction had you not prematurely settled on a particular paradigm. When you dogmatically defend that paradigm even though people know that contrary evidence exists, insist that any view other than your own is unscientific, and tell those people that they are stupid for interpreting things differently than you do, while presenting yourself as a spokesman for the entire scientific community, those people become increasingly distrustful of scientists and thus science in general.
While there are actual good scientists and teachers trying to spark interest in science, it is people like many of you on here that are cutting their throats and nullifying their good work, just to push an irrational ideology.
I saw this and just can’t help but comment even though it’s out of order.
medic0506
Stop answering comments in order.
Just take up the discussion here.
What ‘assumptions’?
medic0506, you’ve had it explained to you, over and over and over and over…
The theory of evolution is a CONCLUSION, based on EVIDENCE.
It isn’t, and never has been, any kind of assumption. Stop lying!
No dogma (that’s your department), no ‘interpretation’.
And, since you have shown by your comment at 835 that you ARE reading this thread in real time – stop being dishonest about what other people have said! Your questions at the beginning of the thread have already been answered, stop pretending that they haven’t!
WRONG. That is what Science is all about, DISproving other Scientists claims. No scientist claims to have a “proven theory”, just that it hasn’t been disproven. Theories are always “Acceptable”, never “True”(capital “T”, significantly). (unlike your Bible-thumpers’ claims). Doesn’t all our efforts to DIS prove your claims, give you a hint? It’s not just nastiness, but Science, motivating the dissonance.
Neither “kind” nor “species” explain what nature shows us at all. They are just terms for grouping. Creationists have a concept that animals only evolve within certain inviolate groups and want to use the word “kind” to describe those groups. In other words, they are defining the group to cater to the hypothesis. Which is bad *bad* science!
Anyway, they fail as such groups simply do not appear to be distinct and inviolate at all.
Yes, it is. But we have a buttload of evidence for it.
Absolutely !!!NOT!!!! Your claim was not that groups produce outside the group within a single generation but that descendents of groups *never* produce outside the groups and that new groups never arise. You haven’t even *remotely* begun to address that.
That is not the issue (and you know it, you disingenuous pig). The bible claims that all animals (plural) were created at one time. You creationist, assume that the animals were created at one moment in various different groups and that the descendents of these groups were all within the same group and that no new groups ever arose. *That* is the issue in question.
And that is not scientifically accurate nor empirically true. And you have *everything to prove as you haven’t yet provided fuck-all.
Both have burdens. The creationist burden is that s/he must show current groups have always existed and that no new group has ever come about. s/he has failed.
Evolutionists must show that current groups were different in the past, that different groups have common ancestors. They have succeeded. They’ve gone further. They have shown all life has a common ancestor.
No it isn’t. It’s an attempt to classify organisms into the distinct-most hierarchy. It’s freaking difficult because grouping is not distinct either in breeding or in morphology. The idea of distinct groups is fundamental to creationism and this inability counters creationism. This difficulty supports evolution.
What *is* an attempt to classify organisms according to evolutionary belief is Kingdom, Phyllum, Class, Order, Family and Genus and, oddly enough, there isn’t much difficulty there at all. By creationism there is utterly no reason for such classification to work at all.
So we choose to call that new animal a “frog” and that other new animal a “horse”? But if we hadn’t given them those new names that would still be the same animal?
Yes, making the assumption that is unscientific. Observing empirical data that confirms it is not.
@811 medic0506
Translation of the entire post:
“I look outside the window and all i see are dogs producing similar looking dogs. That fits with the vague “reproducing after their kind” thing my book of fairytales says, therefore i have met all the burdens of proof and explained the entirety of biology.”.
In reality, actual biology, a VERY complex science, is able to explain why we observe chromosomal fusions, viral markers shared among groups, the distribution of traits, the biogeographical distribution of species, the transitional features of fossil species, why birds are unequivocally dinosaurs, why the mammalian inner ear is embriologically derived from gill arches, why mitochondria have their own DNA and a huge, almost endless list of other biological factual observations.
But you know, it’s great that your myth fits with dogs producing similar looking dogs.
medic at #835:
Well, that explains why medic0506 doesn’t grasp how mirrors work.
Amphiox:
Me:
Yeah, I should have said what amphiox said. I meant what amphiox said.
The classification was not an attempt to classify organism according to to evolutionary belief but it fit into one and works *perfectly* as one. There is absolutely no explanation that a morphological classification system should exist at all other than an evolutionary one.
(Why don’t any octopus have back-bones and why do snakes have hips and why should anyone give a damn about teeth, etc…)
Medic0506: “Have you isolated your experiment from the possibility of light “contamination”, so to speak, from any other sources?? Obviously not, so in order to confirm your hypothesis, you need some independent method of confirming that the light is from the star that you say it’s from.”
You really haven’t thought this through, have you? Your contamination is limited due to the very fact that light TRAVELS in a straight line–so by focusing our measuring apparatus (be it an eye or a detector) on the object we’re observing and limiting the angle via which we gather light (e.g. by a telescope tube), we ensure that the vast majority of the light comes from the star. Nice own goal.
Now, even if we did not limit the angle, all that would happen is that the source/star would appear dimmer against a brighter background. And the light from the background would not be Doppler shifted as the light from a distant star/galaxy would be.
Dude, you are arguing from ignorance, but I suppose that ignorance is essential to believing what you believe.
Still lying and bearing false witness against us I see.
Everything I have posted in this thread is fully supported observationally, and I have provided the citations. In order to claim otherwise, you have deliberately created a false and dishonest definition of the very word “observation”. You then make up your own definition of assumption which you selectively apply to me and others but do not apply to yourself. It is a sad and transparent piece of hypocrisy.
Your lack of even the most basic of rhetorical ethics is disgusting.
medic0506, the fable.
Once upon a time, a very short-sighted man arrived on a new continent, carrying a guide book of the tiny island he came from.
He sat on the beach and decided that, since this beach looked (to him) to be exactly the same as the beach back home, he had no need to explore the rest of the continent. Because he already had a map book and that told him everything he needed to know about this new place.
Feeling sorry for him, some of the people of this highly-populated continent, who had explored great swathes of it, armed with guide books written by people who had explored even more of it, tried to explain what the man was missing.
But he was having none of it. He kept telling them that they couldn’t possibly know more about the continent than he did, because he had a book that told him all about it! When the people pointed out that his book didn’t describe the continent at all, and they had accurate books (and many, many more of them) he argued that books were just opinions, and his book was just as good as theirs – better, because their books described a place he’d never seen!
Inviting him to explore the continent with them, the people of that place tried hard to educate the man.
But he refused to move off the beach, telling them that he knew all about the continent, because he could see all around the place he was standing that it had the same sand and pebbles that were described in his guide book of the island; indeed, the people couldn’t prove that there was anything more to this so-called continent than his guide-book said! They were obviously making assumptions about what was beyond the beach. They couldn’t prove it! Anything they said which contradicted his guide book had to be false.
And the people of the continent sighed, and carried on trying to educate him; not because they expected to succeed as far as he was concerned, but because of all the people who had come over with him on the boat and were standing on the quayside, listening, trying to decide whether to explore the continent, or stay on the beach…
It should be noted that the very idea of medico’s “failure to interbreed” is itself an arbitrarily invented discontinuity in what is actually a continuous spectrum. If we look, really look, carefully at the details of what is actually happening when organisms are interbred, this is what we actually see.
1) some interbreed to produce fully fertile offspring
2) some interbreed to produce offspring that are fertile but have reduced fertility compared to the parent(s)
3) some interbreed to produce sterile offspring
4) some interbreed to produce offspring that are born viable but do not survive to reproductive age (we never get to see if they are actually sterile because of this)
5) some interbreed to produce offspring that are stillborn
6) some interbreed to produce offspring that spontaneously abort in the middle phase of fetal development
7) some interbreed to produce offspring that spontaneously abort early in embryonic development
8) some interbreed to produce offspring that make it just several cell divisions past the zygote before development gets scrambled
9) some interbreed to produce a zygote that cannot divide further
10) some cannot even produce a zygote together
11) ALL, even the ones not able to even form a zygote, can genes from one inserted into the genome of the other, by both artificial and natural means, and produce a viable organism.
Medico seems to think that the dividing line between 4 and 5 (or is it 3 and 4?) is somehow empirically significant in a way that the other dividing points are not, but that is a ASSUMPTION on his part.
But in reality reproductive barriers are a continuous spectrum, just as the theory of evolution predicts.
In fact, empirical experiments have been done, and humans are at step 9 with gibbons. Human sperm will penetrate and combine with gibbon ova to at least produce a zygote that stays viable for at least a short period of time.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/409311
Scientists don’t presuppose like you do with your imaginary deity and mythical/fictional babble. That is presupposition, as there is no third party scientific evidence for either claim.
Science does do observations, but it does have methods for observing and deducing what happened in the past, and how to look at present day data, like genomes, and see the relationship of all life. Scientific deductions based upon real scientific evidence. Amount of scientific evidence, or any evidence outside of your delusions, presented by you is ZERO.
Great story Tigger! Needs an alternate ending:
The short-sighted man then began to walk home, and as he was wading out into the sea, he made one final gurgle of protest, and was heard from no more.
I prefer happy endings.
@ Tigger_the_Wing #790
Inderdeed. Medico has done us a real favour here. Hir gobbledygook has triggered a real outpouring of writing talent across the board. YHWH has been knocked back quite a few notches, in my estimation.
Also: How often does one get to experience a complete data download of Amphiox‘s brain to the internet?
Your 845 was pretty cool too.
@ medic0506
If YHWH existed, He (Penis and all) would be truly embarrassed by your ignorance. If you want to do your imaginary diety a favour, I’d recommend STFU. The more you comment, the more you undermine YHWH.
Honest scientists realize that new questions will produced no matter what you do, because the questions for knowledge is endless.
Honest scientists welcome new questions, since they provide an avenue to learning more.
Honest scientists embrace theories that produce useful and testable questions, because such a theory allows them to learn more, faster.
Honest scientists understand that the generation of new questions is not a sign of in accuracy of a theory, but that the production of the right KINDS of questions is a sign that a theory is a good approximation of reality which potential to become even better.
Only dishonest hypocrites and cowards like medico take the generation of new questions as an excuse to reject partial knowledge and an invitation to wallow in total ignorance.
Nice ending, throwaway!
Can you clarify this for me? Is the “can” a typo? (or is a word missing?) Are you claiming that if we were to mix a horse and a frog we’d get a viable organism that isn’t a zygote? What would it be? Or do you mean gene splicing? What is a “viable organism”? If we ripped a frog gene and a horse gene “straight down the middle” we’d get something? I did not know that.
I did not know that. …. And !EWWW!!!!!!
(Pardon my ignorance.)
@woozy;
11) was auto-spellcheck doing its various weird things. I did mean both gene splicing and natural lateral gene transfer. For example multiple human genes have been inserted into mice and the mice are fully viable. The human PAX-6 gene was inserted into fruit flies in experiments, and those fruit flies were viable. Human insulin genes have been inserted into yeast, and the yeast are viable. Whole retroviruses have merged their genomes with those of other organisms, and the organisms stayed viable (this is in fact a direct analogy to the retrovirus “mating” with the host, since the whole genome was merged, on a genetic level.) and of courses, endosymbiosis of whole bacteria with other bacteria/archaea and eukaryotes has occurred several times.
Here is yet another empirically observed phenomenon that cannot exist if medico’s “theory” of light were true.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/07/double_rainbow_and_lightning_fantastic_photo_by_joan_wallner.html
Great picture, Amphiox – and I like the explanation, too. It also explains how the third rainbow in a triple is so faint.
It’s a good point, theophontes. Not to mention the fact that the existence of people like medic0506 is an embarrassment to all those christians who actually try not to be dishonest.
More for Matt:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/ita/06_3.shtml
Put another way: For most stars (dwarves & giants excluded), absolute luminosity (brightness) is the result of the star’s temperature. And a star’s temperature can be determined from its color. Data collected from a large number of stars generates the “main sequence” which happens to form a narrow plot (this means it has predictive power). So for an appropriate unknown star, it’s color can be measured, converted to temperature and then read on the main sequence to get an absolute luminosity.
So how far away is it? Measure it’s apparent luminosity & color. Convert color to absolute luminosity via temperature & main sequence relationships. The ratio of absolute & apparent luminosity is related to the distance (another equation). This technique is called spectroscopic parallax and works for distances out to 150,000 light years.
Other links at the same site include information about related topics you might find interesting. (Telescopes: putting them in space & on lonely mountain tops reduces interfering phenomenon you expressed concerns about).
There are two main things that medic0 has to address in his model of light. Simultaneousity; and what the heck is the stuff that Maxwell’s equations and physics experiments and the laser shot to the moon shows.
Simultaneousity: It’s fairly natural for people to intuitively accept that two people or things can interact simultaneously. (My favorite example is from Dana Sobel’s book “Longitude”. In the 18th century there was a popular belief in an “empathy powder” that if two beings were dusted in it they would feel each others sensations. An ocean vessel would take one of a pair of dogs that had been dusted in this powder while the other would stay in London. Every day at noon the London dog would be beaten and the dog on the ship would howl in pain. Thus the ship captain would know when it was noon in London and be able to calculate his longitude from that. [Longitude was impossible to calculate at sea at the time.]) This becomes a little less credible when one is forced to consider simultaneous events separated by distance in the astronomical scale. It’s less easy to imagine two dogs light-years apart in simultaneous in sympathy. Still most can imagine a kind of sympathy as something two objects would share between them. An intertwining as it were. Simultaneousity between two arbitrary objects would require some information transference that would either require time or some forehand intertwined knowledge between the two objects. For light to appear *everywhere* simultaneously the object and every single potential viewer in the universe would have to be intertwined. The mind boggles.
Of course mind boggling isn’t enough to say something can’t be true but it’s a huge violation of occum’s razor. Add to that that there is no evidence for intertwined simultaneousity (even between only two physically close objects) nor any proposed mechanism to explain it (someone mentioned instantaneous transfer of adjacent materials; um, okay but that leads to some pretty xeno like paradoxes) and the whole thing seems pretty damned impossible.
And then Relativity desproves synchronicity. Not only can nothing be transferred faster than the speed of light, no two events, “intertwined” or not, can ever occur at the same time and there is no universal measurement of time at all.
What the heck is…: We’ve been measuring and observing the finite speed of light for centuries. Maxwell’s equations, everything about electromagnetic radiation, the laser bouncing off the moon, etc. This include visible light-like substance that we can and do see. This light-like subject that we see travels at a finite speed.
So if medic0 is right there has to be two types of light. Starlight and heck-light. Starlight doesn’t travel and is instantaneous. heck-light travels at the speed of light. Both are visible with both human vision and with optics and photography. Thus when we look at the sun we should see both. We’d see the starlight immediately as it happens. We’d see the heck-light some several minutes later. We’d have a strange time delayed double vision.
It’d be worse for further stars. We’d see a supernova explode with starlight and then we’d see the ghost in heck-light for thousands of years. Pulsars and Quasars would be out of synch for billions of years.
I suppose a solution could be that light is in the form of starlight when transgressing over vast distances but is in the form of heck-light when viewed in localized environments. This violates the Copernican principal majorly.
Which, I suppose, is theoretically possible. However this would mean that the false notion of Copernican principal has had centuries of predictive abilities all of which were false but consistent will the true notion of simultaneousity has had no predictive abilities of thing that are tre but inconsistent. That would make the universe a very deceptive place and its creator a deceptive little bastard.
Re: woozy 858;
There is clear crystal sphere of divine material. The size of it is unclear, but ranges from a sphere encircling the earth but excluding all our satellites, to a sphere enclosing medico’s head, or two tiny spheres enclosing each of medico’s eyeballs. When starlight strikes the sphere it is instantly and with 100% efficiency transformed into heck-light of the exact same optical properties and moving in the same direction…
medic0506 @#603:
Night vision devices. How do they work?
Hint: it’s not by amplifying your field of vision …
Matt Lodder,
I’m a bit late with this but you may find it helpful. Parallax – first observed aeons ago – was how we began to understand the movement of bodies in relation to each other, long before we had a way accurately to measure time, speed, angles, let alone have observatories thousands of miles apart but in telephone contact. Let alone the Hubble telescope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax
One version of the history of science is that curiosity about such things – already partially understood – is what drove us to invent the measuring gear and take long sea voyages to Tahiti to observe a predicted eclipse.
What medic0506 seems unable to grasp is that those who use the scientific method on a day-to-day basis and those of us who just watch are not burdened by his need to be right all the time. We have seen him in this thread pick up and try to incorporate the odd fact – e.g. that the photon has no mass, from Jadehawk – without having it in any way change his worldview.
I, on the other hand, am happy to report that I was in my 30s when plate tectonics was sufficiently accepted to be part of the syllabus and recall a time when derision greeted those who dare to speak aloud the notion that Helicobacter pylori was the cause of gastric ulcers. I came to no harm incorporating new knowledge into my lay person’s grasp of reality.
Poor medic0506 must spend his whole life with clenched fists and clenched teeth lest he admit that someone – like the Horde here – has asked a question which his sistema del mundo cannot answer.
Except, redshifted, to make it look like space is expanding, and to such an extent that it seems like the star is not small but far away. ;-)
Amphiox #846
There also another variant; those that could potentially interbreed, but don’t. I.e. their genitalia and reproductive cells are compatible and if artificially inseminated they produce viable offspring, but in nature they never mate, perhaps because of different mating periods or behavior.
From wikipedia:
Unsurprisingly, medico has offered nothing but the solipsism that his ignorance is equally valid as all of science. Since he is so sure that light does not travel I wonder how he would explain X-rays, the use of lead shielding for the patient, and a special booth for the X-ray technician?
In any case, the toxic level stupid comment about squirrels and dogs crossbreeding to make a different kind deserves an antidote. How about a squirrel and a deer?
Behold the cute!
I find the information on zygotes and fertility pretty fascinating. Thanks to Amphiox and the horde for making it worthwhile to let all these photons jump into my eyes.
medic0506, #811:
No, we don’t. We seem to disagree on whether parsimonious and evidence-based explanations (ours) are to be preferred over convoluted, incoherent and evidence-less non-explanations (yours). Incidentally, this is true for both common descent and light.
It’s funny how the less you know about an organism, the wider you allow its kind to be. It’s even funnier how you have basically implied here that you are willing to include all life domains in the same kind… as long as you can’t see them with the naked eye. :D
1) It’s not a belief, it’s what science also shows. No one that I know has the slightest interest in common ancestry being true just for the sake of it. Seriously. It would be just as cool if life were polyphyletic, and if the evidence pointed to polyphyly that’s what the scientific community would accept. I mean… why not? It’s not like that alternative has never been proposed and tested, you know. And scientists don’t usually like to believe false things, we like falsifying things. Seriously, give me a reason why anyone would want to believe in universal common ancestry just for the sake of it, regardless of the evidence?
2) Of course there’s a burden of proof on those who defend universal common ancestry. It has been met. It has been shown to be strongly corroborated by the evidence and to be the most parsimonious model. Not our fault that you don’t like that.
156. LykeX:
They are the same kind. They can breed and produce offspring AND they share ancestry. There is no discontinuity at that point. The discontinuity comes in because the lineage is apparently coming to an end. Given the reproductive process, how else would you expect to see a discontinuity manifest itself if not by production of infertile offspring??
medic0506
stop it
You are now replying to comments 710 ago.
You’ll never catch up before PZ shuts down the thread.
Earlier it was “or”. Now it is “and”. Note the dishonest moving of the goalposts.
I will give medico one chance to redeem himself. Let him provide an example of a kind where the members share common ancestry but can NOT interbreed. Say snakes, for example. But medico can choose his own.
Then let him explain how he determined that they shared a common ancestor, given the fact that they cannot interbreed.
Failure to answer should be taken as tacit admission of intellectual dishonesty.
Inventing a wholly new assumption previously not discussed into order to weasel out of a plain fact that empirical evidence has been presented that utterly destroys his original position.
More textbook intellectual dishonesty. Disgusting.
158. Amp:
So you’re going to try and tell me that your theory, which claims that all species originated and evolved from a LUCA by speciation, also explains why there are discontinuities just as creation predicted thousands of years ago.
Truthfully the only explanation you can provide is that animals morph into other animals, except when it can be shown that they don’t. That isn’t a prediction made by your theory, it’s another of the many just-so stories told by evolutionists who are trying to make excuses for things in biology that are inconsistent with evolutionism. It’s that constant story-telling and trying to account for every piece of information that makes evolutionism unfalsifiable, which is another reason why it isn’t scientific.
This is the kind of naïve argument you’d expect from an angry 12 year old, not someone who actually understands what science is suppose to be. Science deals with HOW the universe operates, not WHY, because it is not equipped to answer why. Likewise, man is not equipped to answer conclusively WHY God made it that way, and I don’t need to know why He did it that way, to know that He did do it that way. Since when is “I don’t know”, an unscientific answer??
159. Snoof:
I can understand attempting to come up with a classification and naming system for biological organisms, but I don’t see much value in one that is based on morphological features rather than ancestry. Even though it’s just a rescue device, convergent evolution proves that homology is not a reliable indicator of ancestry, so what’s the point in a taxonomic system based on similar features??
uh, morphological features reveal ancestry; it was what zoologists used long before we started attempting to assess ancestry with genetics. your argument again reveals you don’t understand even the basics of biology.
good thing we are easily able to tell the difference then, which is why we differentiated between parallel and convergent evolution.
you’re laughable.
… back to not knowing whether to laugh or cry again. It’s a rollercoaster ride with medic0506 and his irony-meter-destroying powers.
Tigger @845:
^^This.
This thread has been highly educational for those without bible blinders.
…and that’s why bats are birds, whales are fish, and colors don’t exist because there is no strict dividing line (much less a bunch of other colors) between red and blue on the spectrum.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/05/04/an-easy-way-to-explain-evolution/
medic0506 #870
But you don’t know the ancestry of most organisms, remember? That’s the line you were just using to weasel out of your burden of proof. Surely you haven’t forgotten already?
So, which is it? Do you know the ancestry or don’t you?
Why don’t you ask the Christians who came up with that system?
I’d still like to hear how medico explains refraction (how rainbows form, why objects look bent when stuck in water, how lenses work, etc.)
Not that he’s explained anything else, he just keeps claiming that the scientifically created models for how the world works are wrong, without explaining why or proposing alternate models.
This is like arguing with a very articulate toddler.
Why do stupid fuckwitted delusional creobots keep telling real scientists what science is and how it works, instead of shutting the fuck up and learning from listening to the pros?
hint, your imaginary deity explains nothing, so you have nothing.
That’s a widely held misconception.
“Everything is the way it is because it got that way.”
– D’Arcy Thompson: On Growth and Form (1917)
All “why” questions are in reality “how” and “what” questions – how did it get that way, what influences occurred, what has happened –; science is fully equipped to answer them.
160. Amp:
*yawn*
This is absurdity. WLC addressed this a while back, arguing that you don’t need to explain an explanation to know that the explanation is true. If what you say is true then you could never explain ANYTHING at all. You’d need an explanation, then you’d have to explain the explanation, then explain the explanation of the explanation, then explain the explanation of the explanation of the explanation, then explain the explanation of the explanation of the explanation of the explanation, etc. You would have to have an infinite regress of explanations, meaning nothing could ever be explained, which is a logical absurdity.
And here we have yet another lie. One that is propagated by the segment of the anti-theist crowd that don’t seem to exhibit a guilty conscience, or a sense of shame in knowing that other people are aware that they’re lying through their teeth.
Want to prove me wrong?? Provide a source that shows a creationist saying that we should stop searching, or halt scientific inquiry. Provide that source or you are a liar, plain and simple, or a troll, but either way it is a waste of my time to read and respond to the posts of someone who is willing to tell bold-faced lies just to try and win an argument.
Are you seriously trying to tell us you can’t imagine any other options between “perfect” and “utterly useless”?!?
First of all, modern nomenclature is increasingly based directly on ancestry (to the best of our ability to reconstruct it), not on the features that produce it (let alone a fraction of them). Diagnoses are not definitions, they change all the time.
Convergence is common, yes. But it’s not common enough to obliterate the tree-shape signal from the data. As you add more data – morphology, nuclear genes, mitochondrial genes, miRNAs, LINE and SINE insertions (look them up!!!)… –, the signal adds up, and the noise cancels itself out.
Finally, it’s really… cute how you try to explain science to scientists when you’re not even one yourself. I’m a phylogeneticist…
The fuck it is. It’s a basic requirement of science. If an explanation isn’t better than all alternatives, what reason is there to think it’s any good?
What? What does “explain an explanation” mean?
Wow, medic is still going? Persistent, at least. But yeesh…
When it’s immediately followed by “I refuse to find out”. Yeesh, what an idiot you are.
Lineages come to an end? This is the first you’ve ever mentioned of this. We’ve asked you before, what if anything determines how far a lineage can continue to change and why can’t it continue further? So if the horse/zebra lineage is coming to an end because the can just barely continue to breed. What’s to prevent the horses from continuing to produce newer horses that utterly unable to breed with the continued progeny of zebras? What is to prevent the two lines to keep breeding further apart? Why can’t this happen? Why do believe this doesn’t happen? Why do you assume it didn’t happen with apes and humans? Or the many many types of snakes that can not interbreed?
PZ can shut down threads?
Pretty dang ironic coming from you. You haven’t explained the HOW of any of your system.
Once again HOW does a prism bends a ray of light? Our theory says the light travels to the prism. The prism is of another medium and the light passes through it at a different speed. Momentum and energy must be preserved so the angular path is modified. The new angle and the new speed have the same momentum and energy.
This doesn’t work with your model. The light appears instantaneously from endpoint to end point. A prism is placed in its path. The light has no speed so it doesn’t slow through the material. Light has no energy or momentum so my explanation of conserving either can not be work for your model. Your model claims the light is dependent on the source. Putting a prism in the light in no way affects the source. So HOW does the light bend?
Here’s another. You say human vision is more important then light. Take an opaque coffee mug and place a penny in the bottom. (This is fun to do with a kid; Heck, it’s fun to do with an adult.) Look at the penny in the bottom of the mug. Now step away so that you can no longer see the penny because the wall of the mug is blocking your field of vision. Now by your terminology you can no longer see the penny because you are no longer looking at it. Have a friend start to fill the mug with water while you continue to look at the same spot where you can no longer see the penny. The friend will fill the mug with an inch or so of water and WHAM-O the penny *JUMPS* right back into view. Somehow the penny insisted that you continue looking at it despite your eyeball claiming it no longer wanted to. HOW does that happen?
medic0506:
Just to be clear…it’s *not* a waste of your time telling bold faced lies just try and win an argument, right?
That’s not what you creationitwits do though.
You assert that god created everything and *then* say “I don’t know”. You start with the assumption that your particular god exists and then claim IT is responsible for everything. “Goddidit” is not an “explanation”. “Goddidit” does not increase our knowledge of the world around us. For Fuck’s Sake, you haven’t even proven your god (out of the thousands that humanity has created) is anything more than a delusion! Until you can prove your god exists and that IT has done any of the things you claim IT has done, IT is nothing more than a delusion.
Reality is so much more wonderful and awe-inspiring than anything in the bible. Hopefully one day you’ll pull your head out of your rectum and recognize that.
woozy:
Not sure if you’re serious, but yeah, he can.
If you wander through the archives, you’ll notice that the threads are closed (i.e. comments are disabled).
I always figured that threads were shut down when interest waned, or in cases where the discussion just got nasty, or people used a live thread for jumping into behaviors elsewhere that were a unconstructive.
Yeah, this thread is never going to go anywhere and we are never going to convince medic of anything and eventually he is going to hit bedrock of dumb comments, but in the meantime the only people who are wasting anyone’s time are those who for their own purpose continue to find some reason to come back.
I’m personally trying to get medic0 to back into classical pre-medievel natural philosophy and start denying the Copernican principal and empiricism. Divine impietus would be fun. Unfortunately he seems to be stuck in an absolute-absence-is-confirmation loop that’s getting boring. But at least his evolutionist are emotional anti-science trolls and creationists are rational bit is somewhat funny.
It’s not the best, which is why phenetics fell from favor. But in fields like paleontology, it’s necessary on at least the first pass.
your entire argument hinges on a rejection of what science has concluded, both in physics and biology.
you can’t even see that this, in and of itself, is indeed screaming out to halt scientific inquiry?
does that hugely delusional state of mind you foster come with fries?
I can only conclude you suffer from Dunning Kruger syndrome, and like so many other creationists, cannot escape the house of cards you have imprisoned yourself in.
sad.
Hmmm, I just realized that my statement @885:
doesn’t demonstrate that PZ can shut down threads. It only demonstrates that threads are closed.
@879 medic0506
Sweetie. Put the fork down. Take a breath. You’ll be able to make friends with real heads someday. Just remember: Offer something. Be charitable. Do unto. Be honest; though it’s hard. Model the world you want to see. In this case dear, you might TRY TO SHOW THAT THEY FREAKING STARTED SEARCHING OR INQUIRING, EVER, AT ANY POINT, YOU SPOILED LITTLE WAD OF INVERSE UTILITY. Now eat your vegetables, and please, darling, do not complain about the chemical smell or that burn-y feeling again.
You have an explanation if the person asking takes the proposed answer to be relevant to some fact about the world under discussion.
Suppose I ask, after PZ flips a coin, “why did the coin land heads-up?” I want an explanation of that. You might give some (very elaborate) explanation in terms of how this the sort of thing is what we expect to happen, given the conditions and how those conditions change according to the laws of nature. That increases your understanding of what happened. You wanted to know why, and these are all relevant facts which you didn’t know (or hadn’t considered) which make the event likely or typical or something to be expected.
You might also give an explanation to the effect that “PZ wanted to flip the coin, so he did, and heads was as likely as the other options which was tails” (leaving aside all of the elaborate stuff about laws, if those facts are taken as a given and irrelevant to what precisely you wanted to know about). What you wanted to know, if this kind of explanation is satisfactory to you, is basically whether PZ had something to do with the coin landing heads-up, or if PZ had nothing at all to do with it. Maybe somebody else flipped it, or maybe it happened because of some other process that you’re not aware of (a sudden change in the electromagnetic field, let’s say). Maybe PZ’s influence only counts as a relatively insignificant factor in the whole story of the coin being flipped, and you want to know more about the other relevant factors to determine something else about the situation.
Any sort of explanation would suffice, but it depends on what exactly you cared to know about in asking the question, what you did or didn’t already know (and can be taken as given for practical purposes), and what the facts of the situation actually are. If those are not facts, they cannot possibly explain anything. They need to be true in order to offer an adequate explanation. Even if there’s still some degree of uncertainty about the facts, it is nevertheless a true statement that one proposal is more or less likely than another, or that it has some specific probability which can be compared to others.
So, you don’t need to explain your own explanations. There’s no need to fall into an infinite regress. All you need to do is increase a person’s understanding, according to what the actual, relevant facts are. It doesn’t need to generate total understanding of everything there ever is or was or can be. It needs to satisfy a person’s curiosity, about some particular thing that they don’t already think is obvious or expected given what they know. If there are other explanations which take into account more of the relevant facts (or true statements instead of false ones, or known facts instead of unknown speculations), then it is a better explanation than the alternatives. It is doing explaining that really does increase your understanding, and it’s not confusing you about things which are untrue, unknown, or irrelevant to what you take the question to be about. Since there always are conceivable alternatives for any specific explanation, these can always be expressed in terms of their relation to one another — you can get such a relationship without requiring that there’s any sort of “hierarchy” of one explaining another and another and another. The fact of the matter, the real world itself, is all you need to weed out the ones which aren’t doing the job or to determine which ones are doing it better than others.
… also, before I’ll be convinced that guy standing right there ripping off the ATM is a thief, I insist you get him in print actually saying he rips off ATMs…
Because, y’know, that’s what guys who rip off ATMs do. They put it in writing. Notarized, even.
… sorta more seriously: while we do get the odd ‘one book is plenty’ variety of blatant anti-intellectual in pulpit, there’s a reason creationists like to call themselves ‘creation scientists’. They hope to get their grubby fingers into the respect people do generally have for science as a way of learning the world. And know too well admitting the only real reason they are so (frequently hilariously) at odds with the conclusions of science across, in fact, a rather stunning multiplicity of fields–cosmology to nuclear physics (get them started on dating methods, too, I assure you, it’s a scream) to, of course, biology–they know too well it won’t sell well, admitting the only real reason for this is they’re trying to square a literal interpretation of a bronze age religious text with a world that’s rapidly leaving such an interpretation in the dust.
So we get this doubletalk, this generally pretty transparent game, where they insist, oh no, we’re all for science. And oh no, it may look like we’re just incredibly bad at it, but, see, that’s just because those meanies in the scientific establishment are shutting us out. We have lovely contributions, but there’s this dreadful bias against us, is all it is…
(/… oh, and I’m sure they’re right. How the brilliant thinker who’s put forward this revolutionary theory of light, here in this very thread, how this (ahem) visionary isn’t published, it’s beyond me. Clearly, the world just hasn’t caught up, is all it is.)
Nothing reproduces after its own kind, really. Every offspring is different from its parents (even if it only has one parent). If you define “kind” down tight enough, you will see that your dog, say, the purebred dachshund kind, will not reproduce a dachshund unless the otber parent is also of the dachshund kind.
I’m… impressed? No, wrong word – ummm… disgusted, that’s the one – that medic0506 has gone back to providing non-answers to questions posted over 700 comments ago, while ignoring all the questions and refutations since then, despite having shown at comment 835 that he is, in fact, following this in real time and could very well reply instead to the more recent comments which have summed up the conversation so far.
He is obviously hoping that stubborn pig-headedness will earn him a much-desired ban-hammering.
medic0506, you lost comprehensively on your stationary light thing when (a) you said it didn’t ‘travel’, but was ‘propelled’ (and then refused to explain how anything can be said to have been propelled if it hasn’t travelled) and (b) when you accepted that radio waves travel, but thought that they are something different to light. They aren’t.
You lost your defence of ‘kinds’ when your definition contradicted itself in these four comments:
(a) “I have defined a biblical kind as a group of organisms that can inter-breed, and/or share a common ancestor. That you don’t like that definition is irrelevant. It is no more vague than trying to use the species concept.”
(b) “The offspring doesn’t need to be fertile, so long as the animals can breed and produce offspring, they are the same kind. They can “bring forth after their kind”. Creation doesn’t predict that all offspring will be able to make a new breed, in fact it predicts exactly what you see happening, a discontinuity.”
(c) “They are the same kind. They can breed and produce offspring AND they share ancestry. There is no discontinuity at that point. The discontinuity comes in because the lineage is apparently coming to an end. Given the reproductive process, how else would you expect to see a discontinuity manifest itself if not by production of infertile offspring??”
(d)”Your comment is false because there is no “gradation of forms”, that can be shown. All we see is bounded variation and discontinuity between groups, thus your comment reflects what you believe, not what science actually shows.”
Do you see the contradiction? It has been pointed out to you by people far cleverer than I, in such a way that I can see it easily!
The lineage of horses isn’t coming to an end – horses can still breed with one another and produce fertile offspring.
The lineage of zebra* isn’t coming to an end – zebra can still breed with one another and produce fertile offspring.
But when horses can no longer produce viable offspring, let alone fertile offspring, by breeding with zebra – will they no longer be the same kind? You said that ‘kinds’ are separated by discontinuities, but that ‘kinds’ have a common ancestor, even if they cannot breed; but, if they cannot breed, that’s a discontinuity. Contradiction!
This is why what you are doing isn’t ‘science’. In science, words have very precise meanings; they aren’t used to obfuscate or hand-wave away difficulties, as you are doing. What you are doing, in fact, is the very opposite of science – even a non-scientist like me can see that you are trying to sound ‘sciency’ and failing miserably, because you are actually spouting nonsense.
*Although the species of zebra isn’t specified; perhaps, medic0506, you think that all zebra are the same species?
Maureen Brian
Minor quibble; not all of them are. Mine isn’t, for example, which means that that particular treatment avenue does me no good.
Medic0506 says:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
http://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/kitzmiller-v-dover-whats-the-wedge-document/
“The Wedge Document states in its “Five Year Strategic Plan Summary” that the IDM’s goal is to replace science as currently practiced with “theistic and Christian science.” [transcript reference]. As posited in the Wedge Document, the IDM’s “Governing Goals” are to “defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies” and “to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.” Id. at 4. The CSRC expressly announces, in the Wedge Document, a program of Christian apologetics to promote ID.”
By the way, when medic0 said …
… I got two on my creationist bingo card.
One for the creationist troll trick of insisting that they have never actually said what they have been strongly implying for days (they may have said that your behavior is childish, but they never actually said that you are childish, because that would be rude).
And one for the creationist idea that words have power, more than deeds. All that matters is what they say. Fuck logic, fuck facts, fuck the world, all that matters is that God has spoken through them.
medic0506:
Do you think the Moon emits light?
The source is this thread, and the creationist is YOU, with each and every single one of your asinine posts rejecting the established scientific findings about light and common ancestry.
YOU might be so dishonest and stupid to think that by weaseling around with definitions you can pretend that you haven’t been implying this time and time again, but WE are not stupid, and WE see right through your pathetic transparent lies.
@ medic0506
Genesis 30:37-39 goes into detail on how genetics works:
If you are looking for a fairytale for young children, this story is not bad. HOWEVER … if you are looking to gain any understanding of the nature of reality, I suggest you stay the fuck away from such biblical twaddle.
Why don’t you give equal credence to stories like these:
1. How the Tiger got his stripes? (Teeldeer: TIGERS ON FIRE!!!)
or
2. How the leopard got his spots. (Teeldeer: Painted on by an Ethiopian.)
or
3. How the elephant got his trunk. (Teeldeer: Stretched by a crocodile.)
This last one is rather interesting, as it has Mrs Snake and the Tree_of_Wisdom ™ – exactly like in the Genesis story of Eden. But more importantly, we have photographic evidence that this *REALLY* did happen: Linky to PROOF!!111!!
But sadly for you medic0506 … if you look carefully, you see NO snake and NO tree. These were later added, as embellishments, to increase its appeal to small children. This is a rather common literary ploy.
If you wish to claim the Genesis story of the goats has any more scientific validity than the other stories, then the onus is on you to enlighten us as to why you believe such.
Take any convergently evolved feature, and break it down into its various subfeatures. Run those subfeatures through a cladistic analysis, and it INSTANTLY falls out of the analysis as clearly convergent rather than homologous.
Convergent features are similar in a DIFFERENT WAY than homologous features are, and the NATURE OF THAT DIFFERENCE is a PREDICTION of evolutionary theory, which EMPIRIC evidence HAS CONFIRMED, time and time again.
Take echolocation by bats and whales. Break it down into its subcomponents: where and how the sound is coming from, how the sound is projected through space, how the sound is received, what structures are responsible for the reception, how the brain is wired to process the signals. Run those features into your cladistic analysis (remember, one which, AS A SPECIFIED RULE, does not consider ancestry at all until the analysis is done). BOOM, all the bat echolation features cluster together, and all the whale echolocation clusters together in a perfectly nested tree-shaped hierarchy that DOES NOT OVERLAP.
Now, for even greater fun, let us add in the same subfeatures in OTHER creations that DO NOT echolocate. So we can add all the sound reception and generation features of the baleen whales, which do not echolocate, and all the sound reception and generation features of the macro-bats (ie fruit bats) which do not echolocate. And for even greater fun we’ll throw in the same set of sound reception and generation features of, say primates. Run the analysis again.
BOOM, the sound reception and generation features of the baleen whales CLUSTER with the echolocation features of toothed whales, and the sound reception and generation features of the fruit bats CLUSTER with the echolocating microbats, in a perfectly nested tree shaped hierarchy and DO NOT OVERLAP. Meanwhile, the sound reception and generation features of all the primates CLUSTER TOGETHER in a THIRD branch that DOES NOT OVERLAP with either of the other two.
This works EVERY SINGLE TIME. Even for the features that are so strongly convergent that they have converged on the exact same DNA sequence. All you have to do is add into your cladistic analysis other sequences from elsewhere in the same gene and nearby non-functional sequences and BOOM, your analysis will reliably spit out whether the sequence is convergent or homologous.
Convergent features perform the SAME FUNCTIONS, and share similarities in OUTWARD FORM, but always, always differ in the details of HOW those functions are achieved. Homologous features may perform DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS, and having COMPLETELY DIFFERENT OUTWARD FORMS, but always, always SHARE specific fine details of HOW they perform their functions.
A whale’s flipper and a bat’s wing are HOMOLOGOUS structures. They perform completely different functions, but the fine details of their anatomy and how they are constructed MATCH, bone for bone, tissue for tissue. A whale’s flipper and a shark’s fin are CONVERGENT structures. Their superficial appearance is almost identical, but their anatomy and interior construction is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
This distinct pattern of similarities and differences between convergent and homologous features is PREDICTED BY EVOLUTIONARY THEORY. It is utterly inexplicable under a creationist paradigm.
This difference means that the statement convergent evolution is a “rescue device” is another bald-faced lie. Convergent features are never used for classification purposes. The classification methodology deliberate identifies them and excludes them from further analysis.
You didn’t click on the telescope diagram I linked you to earlier, did you? The design of the telescope minimizes contamination, as most light coming into the telescope tube that isn’t collinear with the light coming from the star will come in at odd angles, and be absorbed by the walls of the tube before it reaches the mirror, or be reflected off the mirror and either onto the tube wall, or onto a different section of the eyepiece (so that it won’t hit the same point as light coming from the star). This isn’t some kind of newfangled ““, this is 17th century physics. Isaac Newton built his telescope on this insight, and modern telescopes still use the same basic principles of optics. If light didn’t travel and follow these predictable patterns, telescopes wouldn’t work.
“Eliminate vision as a primary mechanism” is very simple. The ability to use a camera to take a picture of a star through a telescope does this. The camera uses an optical process quite different (and for some applications, better than) from human vision to detect light. Cameras are built on the idea that light is something emitted from objects, which we see from the light emitted or reflected from them; if light did not work this way, and hence, did not physically travel, cameras wouldn’t work.
You’ve repeatedly asserted that your concepts explain things just as well as the scientific explanation, but you’ve yet to explain any of them. If vision is somehow a “primary mechanism” in light, then how is it that light can be collected from objects completely in the absence of someone to visualize them (e.g. a camera left alone to take images for a time lapse, while no person is observing the objects it is imaging)?
“I don’t know but this is what I think might be happening, and this is what things should look like if I am right, and now I’m going to go check to see if things really look like that to see how close I am to being right” advances scientific inquiry. It generates a question you can ask, and an experimental method by which you can go about trying to answer it.
“I don’t know, therefore god must have done it” halts scientific inquiry in its tracks. No question is generated, no experimental methodology suggested. And indeed no question CAN be generated or methodology devised. Thus further inquiry becomes impossible.
Unless, of course, you DEFINE GOD FIRST. The statement then becomes “I don’t know, but I think god did it. Given the nature of god, he would have done it THIS way, and not THAT way, and therefore this is what things should look like. I will now go and look and see if it really is that way to see if I am right about god. If it doesn’t look that way than I will be willing to change my definition of god, or concede that god didn’t do it.”
This does work for advancing scientific inquiry a little bit, but ultimately you still get stuck, because you will always have to deal with TWO competing uncertainties. If you observe something that does not fit into your hypothesis, you can never tell if it is because god did NOT do it, or because your idea of what god is like is simply wrong, and you will have no way of ever telling the difference. So in this scenario scientific inquiry isn’t flat out halted, but it is slowed down to a trickle and ultimately doomed to peter out in a morass of unanswerable questions about the nature of god.
But YOU, medico, explicitly refused to provide a definition for god, even a provisional one. So YOUR version of “god did it” is the version that HALTS scientific inquiry in its tracks.
You know it doesn’t have to be a deliberate, intentional thing on the part of the creationist, though in YOUR case, it obviously is. But it is the inevitable and unavoidable consequence of sticking god into any explanation.
The cognitive dissonance.. it burns.
*more popcorn*
@ shockna
Adding to this line of argument: Even cheap little webcams have IR capability. By removing their IR filters, we can see things via them that we cannot see with our (so called) “vision”. Night vision goggles, gun-sights etc take this ability to amazing lengths. In the dark, we are blind, but these things give us sight.
Better than jeebus if you ask me. [Dr Strangelove] Mein
FuhrerNachtsichtbrillen I can SEE!!! [/Dr Strangelove]It’s taken me several days to try to understand what you are trying to say. I’m still not sure I what you think you mean. What *do* you mean?
Are you actually asking how can we eliminate vision as one of the causes of the light? Are you implying that we are claiming that if light traveled to a spot where nobody could see it, that would bean it had to travel but if we saw it, that would mean it didn’t have to? And that we would actually think such a thing so we actively deny that vision matters?
Um, if so, …. okay. Um, we are light years away from the star and we have no connection with the star when we are not looking at it. If looking at it is the connection to establish light, how can we do that if we don’t know where it is first. If simply pointing our heads in the general geometric direction is enough to make the connection, then the connection *is* completely determined by the star as our heads did nothing that simple geometry didn’t predetermine.
If vision determines that light comes here, well that’s bizarre at best. At the very least a mechanism has to be provided to explain how turning a head toward a star will make light appear between us and it. Besides we need the light for other things than vision. Plants need it. Do plants cause light to form? Does that work even though that has nothing to do with vision. When we look at a third inanimate object then light is upon it. Did our vision of looking at a rock cause light to form between the rock and the sun. How does the light formation between what we are looking at and the source work?
If that isn’t what you meant, what did you mean? Did you mean why aren’t we discussing how human vision works upon an image being put before our eye? Well, because we didn’t know there was any issue with that. I simply assumed that both you and I were in agreement that once the light gets to our eye by whatever method it passes to our retina and optic nerve (although your method fails to explain how the light is bent by the cornea and the lens) and the result is transmitted to the brain. The contention is whether the light traveled or spontaneously arrived.
You still have failed explain optics and I won’t let you slide. Refraction according to *all* accounts occurs as compensation in energy and momentum in response to change of speed in a new medium. As you do not believe light has energy, momentum or speed and standard account isn’t consistent with your views. You must provide an alternative explanation that does not rely upon speed, energy or momentum.
====
Ichthyc said it best but the very concept of interpreting data to fit God’s Word is a call to halt scientific inquiry. If one presupposes ones conclusions, science is at a complete halt. Any call to do science with a biblical (or any other) interpretation is a call to halt scientific inquiry.
He seems to be suggesting that our eyes somehow perceive light instantaneously as long as it’s “bright enough” (though I doubt he even knows what brightness is at this point) to see, and that it doesn’t travel at all. He still hasn’t explained how telescopes and mirrors work in his model of light, and I somehow think he’s deliberately avoiding my questions on both.
@ woozy
If a bear shits in the woods, and medic0506 did not see it, then the bear did not shit in the woods.
Thanks again to all those who have made such generously educational and eloquent contributions to this thread – you are too numerous and your excellent contributions are too many to count – shockna, Tigger, Tony, Menyambal, theophontes, cr, knowknot, Milne, woozy, David M and many more …. and a special thank-you to Amphiox, chapeau.
Dalillama, Schmott Guy @ 895
Fair enough! My apologies to you and your ulcer. I should have been more careful with the wording.
The Tiny Cannonball Hypothesis of Light.
Pew! Pew! Pew!
@ blf
Nerf light!
@909 opposable thumbs
I was on the way in to write something similar, because I don’t know how long this thread will stay open, when I saw that. And thus I am emboldened.
A lot of people have done real work, spent valuable time doing so, and have invested a piece of themselves in doing so; specifically, the result of previous years of work, struggling to understand something of this peculiar, beautiful, and frightening world we live in.
I’m tempted to name names, because people, but so many have thrown in in various ways that I’d miss someone, and then need an extra scotch. But some of you probably know who you are. The rest of you should. At least a fair share of the rest of us certainly do.
You’ve tried to explain and clarify in circumstances that, in my experience, have a very strong tendency toward ending in the silence of exasperation… obviously the exasperation has palpable, but the silence hasn’t, and since humans are destined to cause bother to one another at the best of times, lack of silence is often the one clear mark of real decency and a level of care for the minds of others. Even more so when that lack of silence is wrestled into an attempt at clarification and understanding.
I honestly believe that this these threads are a thing of value, because they show in microcosm the range of interaction that goes into any attempt at meaning.
I find this to be a beautiful thing. As in, beautiful. And I don’t use the term lightly.
If anyone feels like their efforts were wasted as related to whatever the initial goal, or perhaps the eventual goad might have been, you should… um, you know… knock it the hell off right now. Because there’s a lot of juice in this pulpy mess. And though it may seem scant from the perspective of an adept, I, for one, am very, very thankful for it.
I got nothing but love for you all.
And no I don’t think I’m being effusive, dammit.
I’m now convinced that medic0506 is trolling the shit out of us.
Regardless, i’ll play along a little more because i’d just like to comment that the point of taxonomic systems is that they are extremely useful and provide a huge deal of information. The cladistic system, in particular, because it is based on phylogenetic relationships, provides tremendous insight on how particular features arise, when they arise, why they are shared by various groups and how they have been modified throughout the divergence of those groups.
Before, all we had was a planet full of lifeforms and no mechanism to group them together or explain their features, you know, just like medic0506. He and his 200 year old mates could only describe existing features of living organisms, but they couldn’t go any further than that because if a magical being wizarded them into existing, how the fuck could you? Why do monotremes lay eggs? Well…god had a gippy tummy that day? There is nothing to learn there, there’s only “things just are” and “fuck knows why”.
But thankfully, people who weren’t content with magical non-explanations, and armed with powerful curiosities, actually looked at the natural world and the more they lookd, the more they learned and eventually those features that animals possessed started to make sense. Why do only mammals have fur and also an inner ear composed of three tinny bones? why are their dentitions unique among all the other animals? Why do flowering plants have floral formulae that are variations of a strobilus? The answer of course was shared ancestry and that’s why our classifications, which as others have pointed out, began as “god’s creatures share features, let’s see how”, eventually converged into the nested hierarchy of evolutionary relationships we use today. It always does, because that’s what the examination of biological reality invariably produces. Unlike what medic0506 dishonestly claims, common ancestry is not an assumption, it’s the conclussion that analysis of biological reality converges on.
People like medic0506 when comfronted with homologies can only say “god made them and god gave them those same characteristics…only god knows why”. Biologists, however, look at the feathers in a bird and the feathers on a non-avian manirraptoran and they notice the homology but then, they continue to look….and the more they look they start noticing that during development, birds have a tail composed of many vertebrae that later are reabsorved, that their wings are made of three fingers and two of them fuse, that birds contain the genes for the production of teeth, that both birds and theropods have pneumatic bones, that they lay eggs and incubate them in the same fashion….and of course, they unearth fossils that demonstrate a transition between non-avian and fully avian forms.
Meanwhile, people like medic0506 who have just assumed that some god magicked them into existence with those features for some reason only he knows, are content to just stare out the window and say not go any further than the obvious fact that there are birds, dogs and cats…and that’s it…that’s the whole story, that’s all you can say because after all god’s ways are misterious…so if there’s any significance to why they share features and why these features fall into nested hierarchies, you’ll never know.
Rid yourself of the completely unjustified assumption that creatures were magicked into existence, however, and all of a sudden you can investigate freely and draw your own conclussions purely from what you can observe, and not from what you assume…and everywhere you look AND the more you look, the same pattern of nested hierarchy ALWAYS comes up.
People like medic0506 can only maintain their ludicrous possitions by keeping themselves ignorant. They rely on the most superficial of observations because that’s what was also available to the authors of their mythology. So as long as you keep your knowledge at a similar level, then their observations will generally fit, but when you go deeper than those shepherds ever could, you learn completely new stuff and then all these people can do is waive that knowledge away, dismiss it, pretend it’s not there and use their own ignorance to do so.
164. Nick G.
Some one corrected me on that earlier, I should have said and/or.
Yes there are some cases where this is true, such as the Larus gull ring species. I don’t see them as different organisms but evolutionists call them a different species, so I’ll use it as an example.
You should re-read your argument, and think through its logical extension, a bit more. If you actually believe this to be true, then you must admit that belief in biological evolutionism is irrational and cannot be proven or falsified, scientifically. The belief that humans and chimps share an ancestor cannot be supported scientifically, even in principle, and that belief is thus worthless, according to your own argument.
Aside from that, the continued study of biology and genetics with an open mind on the question of ancestry, is the only way to answer that question.
hey medico.
why don’t you try and explain how refraction works in your model of how the world works?
what causes a rainbow? why can you burn an ant with a magnifying glass? what makes a spoon in a glass look bent?
How about polarized light?
how do 3D movie glasses work?
why are radio waves and visible light subject to different rules?
what else is different? what rules apply to microwaves? infrared? ultraviolet?
try and explain how your version of the world works, instead of just denying the version that is backed by experiments and evidence.
167. Jade:
Like I said to Amp, this is not a “prediction” of evolution, which “predicts” a gradual change in species over time. This is a rescue device used by evolution-ISTS to account for when evolution doesn’t happen, or we see a discontinuity between group of organisms.
That is such rubbish, and any thinking person will know that. If every group of organisms that can breed together produce “fertile” offspring, how could you ever end up with discontinuities between those groups?? A lineage can’t end if fertile offspring are continually produced.
@915 medic0506
OK. That’s it. You’re a troll. You can’t possibly be this confused, or ignorant.
He doesn’t “believe this to be true,” you’ve intentionally quoted him OUT OF CONTEXT. And the context was a response to something YOU wrote.
Here it is, from post 164 (Nick Gotts) on this thread:
His statement was an attempt to clarify what YOU said. Here, you take his attempt to understand you, and present it as his own argument.
So, you were (and almost certainly continued in) baiting by producing a barrage of words, causing others to attempt to clarify, in good faith, a mess that was made by you, and then mining the clarifications for material to present out of context in order to embarrass, confuse, waste others’ time, or…
troll.
Oh, by the way… I’m just wondering if you’d yet considered starting a third line of argument, in order to make this stuff easier distort via sheer mass? 2 is clever, but 3? You could probably start yourself a fan club…
medic0506, why do you only reply to one comment at a time? Why don’t you read the whole thread before adding to it?
You can’t seriously believe that the 850 comments you still haven’t read are just useless repetition, can you?
Show me a case where evolution doesn’t happen.
So you accept that the ability to interbreed can be gradually lost in, dare I say it, evolution from a common ancestor?
medic0506, whilst you are still wallowing in the first third of the first page, all the points you raised in your latest comment have already been addressed; and we know that you know this, because you have already responded (at 835) to a comment in the last fifth of this page!
Repeating what others have said since the comment you are allegedly responding to, and merging it with your own stupid stuff, doesn’t make you look clever; quite the opposite. It makes you look ignorant and dishonest.
If it weren’t for the lurkers who are learning such a huge amount from intelligent comments by educated people, this thread would have stopped long ago.
Instead of plodding through the comments made a week ago, repeating crap, how about addressing the questions on this page? Without plagiarising and distorting the intelligent comments by educated people?
You don’t know what you are talking about. Evolution is a fact. Your deity is imaginary. Deal with reality elsewhere.
What is rubbish is beliving in imaginary deities. That is utter and total delusion.
919 David Marjanović
Because it’s an effective trolling technique: More posts, harder to keep track of anything, and if you get anyone to talk or write enough, you’ll find something to use to produce more.
He doesn’t read the entire thread and attempt to respond comprehensively and in greater depth because it’s not conducive to the actual goal. That’s what you’d do if you were attempting to be clear, or even to persuade.
Better that everyone else wander through it all until all eyes glaze. Because the goal is to mock.
Can’t believe I didn’t see the nastiness until he dropped his robe by too transparently playing the quote from @164. Now other little bits and pieces and changes in approach make more sense.
Doesn’t affect the work others have put in. Just makes it clear how vapid a person can be.
172. Kevin:
First off, “kinds” say nothing about a “species”. A species is not a term that is biblically supported so to try and use them together is problematic and will just create confusion. Kinds is not meant to serve as an entire classification and naming system, it is simply a statement about the biological and reproductive patterns that living organisms will show. Given that the pattern is shown in nature by observational and empirical science, it makes perfect sense to design our classification system around that fundamental unit of life, based on ancestral relationships.
Why do you say that it doesn’t make sense?? It is a fact of biological reality that there are organisms that share a common ancestor, that can interbreed. It’s also a fact of biological reality that there are organisms that share a common ancestor, that can’t interbreed.
Assuming that the shared ancestor is reasonably certain, yes they would be of the same kind.
No, I don’t “think” they are the same kind, and would need to see empirical evidence of shared ancestry, or reproductive paths that cross lineages, before believing such a thing.
The fact that you “classify” organisms according to morphological similarities is irrelevant to the question of whether or not they are related though ancestry. It is no more a valid method than if I were to classify organisms according to eye color.
Even evolutionists were forced to admit that morphological similarity or similar traits is not a reliable indicator of ancestry. “Convergent” evolution is proof of that admission. When both sides agree that similarities do not prove ancestral relationships, it seems incredibly irrational to me to continue to classify organisms accordingly.
No, I don’t make an absolute, conclusive decision based on looks, but in most cases it’s reasonable to believe that the organisms are probably, or probably not, the same kind.
The troll was raving about “evolutionist” assumptions up there. As others have pointed out, there is a lack of assumptions in science–there is instead a building up from facts, without assumptions.
But there was indeed an original assumption when what the troll calls “evolutionism” started. That assumption was that the biblical account was true, factual and accurate. That’s where this whole thing started—deep in creationism.
But the biblical account is not complete, and it isn’t coherent, and it isn’t accurate, and that can not be hidden. The biblical account can only be believed, not proven. It can’t even be written out, as it contradicts itself.
Someone who wants us to start taking the Bible into account forgets that we already did. Someone who insists on taking the Bible into account winds up like medic0506, a confused, hateful, lost and dishonest troll.
knowknot,
That’s what I was responding to in my comment at 920; reading that was like a light shining on his other responses where he’d distorted what other people had said.
But I’m slooooow, and other people got in before me with better replies. Ah, well; he can hardly claim a conspiracy of scientists when lay people like me respond that we can see how dishonest he has been!
I expect better from my youngest grandsons, and they are three.
medic0506, your dishonesty is showing again – every point you raise in your comment 923 has been addressed – and thoroughly refuted – already; on this very page!
We don’t believe, we conclude based on both the fossil evidence and genomic evidence.
You must believe, as you depend upon an imaginary deity and a book of mythology/fiction. That is why you lost this argument before it even started. You have nothing to base your beliefs on other than self-delusion.
You have belief, we have scientific conclusions based on evidence. You lose every time, as there is not evidence for your imaginary deity, scientific or otherwise. Just presupposition.
Who gives a shit about your delusional beliefs? You have no expertise to criticize science, just your delusions. Pitiful display of abject ignorance.
I think medic is trolling us:
Those are the only two options…
@medic0506 #923
Huh. Is a Melon-Headed Whale of the same “kind” as a Mahi mahi (Common dolphinfish)?
Lying yet again, medico?
The right combination of the right kind of similarities DO demonstrate ancestral relationships, as the previous posts about cladistic analysis, which you in your disgusting dishonesty have ignored, demonstrate.
Organisms were ORIGINALLY classified based on superficial similarities because that was all that could be empirically observed AT THE TIME. It so happened that said classification TURNED OUT, without any assumptions of ancestry whatsoever, to reflect a pattern that can only be rationally explained by shared common ancestry. TODAY organisms are classified by SEVERAL methods, depending on the data available. And all of those methods converge on the same answer – all organisms are related.
More lies from you.
NO. It is not a “rescue device” used to account for when evolution doesn’t happen. There are NO known examples of cases where evolution “doesn’t occur”. NONE. There are cases where the rate of evolution has been slow, and cases where the rate of evolution has been fast. But evolution has been empirically demonstrated to occur in ALL organisms ever investigated.
And NO, we do not see any discontinuity between groups of organisms in any of the things that actually matter. What you claim to be a discontinuity is NOT a discontinuity, and you can only support that claim by dishonestly IGNORING the majority of the evidence.
FALSE.
Yet more bearing of false witness against medico’s evolutionist neighbours. No evolutionist has ever claimed that convergent evolution is a problem for the classification of species based on morphological similarities, so long as sufficient data is available to demonstrate that it is truly convergent.
More cowardly dissembling.
It is time for you, medico to PUT UP OR SHUT UP, and give us an example of a what you think is a “kind” that cannot interbreed but has shared ancestry, and show us exactly WHAT you regard to be “empirical evidence of shared ancestry” that does NOT involve the ability to interbreed, or admit that your original claim that kinds were those that could interbreed OR share a common ancestor was a piece of deliberately dishonest distraction.
The fun thing is that even trolling actually gets met with interesting, informative and often inspiring comments. A bit like making an educational pearl around a dirty little speck of dishonesty.
Attempting to nail medic0506 down to any estimate about how many, and what, ‘kinds’ there are is like attempting to nail steam down. One fails, and gets hurt in the attempt.
As this example amply illustrates:
572, medic0506
“New” evidence? “New” evidence?!
So, he dismisses centuries of accumulated evidence just like that?!
And if an individual commentator can come up with “new” evidence, he’ll… what?
Say “You’re right, I’m mistaken”?
Fat chance…
Me, 934:
Evidence:
68, medic0506
(My emphasis)
And then goes on to prove that he isn’t remotely “willing to be proven wrong” by making ludicrous assertions which he refuses to back up (although he frequently lies and says he has), including that radio waves and starlight are different things.
This replying to shit that’s 800 comments back thing has got to stop. Don’t allow this cretin to act so insufferably evasive. The only reason, as pointed out, one would need to utilize such a tactic is if they were dishonest about the veracity of their own claims and couldn’t make a preponderance of evidence-backed claims.
Further, this wacky notion that the Christian holy Bible “predicts” that there are kinds of animals that: can either breed and look similar, can’t breed but look similar, can breed but appear mostly incongruous, or neither can breed nor do they look similar. Amazing fucking prediction*, that is. Well, anyway, where is that “prediction” explicitly stated anywhere within the Christian
TextbookBible? Fucking nowhere, that’s where. Bearing false witless yet again.* Not only is that hedging your bets on a galactic scale, it’s also only taking into account what is common sense to anyone who makes even a cursory study of life, or who partake in the act of reproduction their self. It has no useful application to anything we know, yet science and the study of the genome, the study of evolutionary history and the study of biology give us antibiotics, antivirals, gene therapy, minimization of risk in reproduction, fertility treatments… The Babble gives us fucking squat except useless heaps of sequestered carbon.
</rant>
Trolls like medico are among our greatest assets for teaching evolutionary theory. Not only do we get the opportunity to collect those informative comments in one easily accessible place, but they also demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of their own anti-evolutionary ideas with every post they make.
It is a notable empirical observation that trolls like medico who try to argue against evolution always end up having to flat out lie about what evolution theory says and how scientists (evolutionists) study it.
That in itself is a powerful testament to the accuracy and utility of evolutionary theory.
@ medic0506
Yup, the Dodo still inhabits your little world.
Amphiox, thank you for all the heavy lifting you have been doing on this thread, I have learned a lot.
This whole thread is bookmarked, along with several of your individual comments.
throwaway, I found another use for the huge, padded, faux-leather-bound bible I had once upon a time; I gave it to a friend (another ex-Catholic) to stand on for doing the exercises she was prescribed after a knee injury. It was perfect for the job (and her husband enjoyed reading the more ludicrous passages out loud to their teenage kids).
Which similarities?
Really, this is as basic as it gets. Critters that live in the same places, the same ways, tend to have features in common – but they also have features that differ. Which similarities are the important ones and which are just surface-deep?
Bats fly in the air, on wings, and so do birds. But birds have beaks and feathers and lay eggs, while bats have teeth and fur and bear live young. Which is more important, the wings they have in common, or the eggs they don’t? Are ostriches and kiwis, which don’t fly, still birds? Or are they some other kind of animal? What about platypuses?
Sharks and dolphins and tunas are all big fast predators (generic sharks, okay) that live in the oceans. Are they the same kind, or does it matter that the dolphins breathe air and the others don’t? Is the dolphins’ air-breathing more important a difference from sharks and tunas, or are the tunas’ membranous ray fins and tails more significant than the fleshy fins of sharks and dolphins?
Horses and zebras have hooves and long necks and eat grass. Yet zebras have stripes and horses, for all their spots and patterns, don’t. Are zebras closer relatives to horses or to tigers? Why or why not? Are zebras halfbreeds of horses and tigers? What might they have in common with other striped animals? What does stripeyness mean?
Those are all really simple questions – not to answer, but to ask – and the more curious of humans have been asking them for a very long time. At some point they figured out that dolphins weren’t just fish that happen to breathe air and bear live young and give milk and have lungs and four-chambered hearts and vestigial hip bones and erectile penises and flippers full of bones like the bones in human hands and feet. How many specifically mammal-like exceptions does it take to make a rational decision that the original best guess, based on the finny thing splashing in the sea, was wrong?
181. Nick G:
This is your OPINION, your interpretation of why things are the way they are in biological life, your attempt to explain the WHY question. It is not “evidence”, it is not an empirical finding, and you cannot argue rationally that there is no other reason to expect something, unless you can scientifically rule out all other possible explanations, which you cannot do. Nor can you show using observational, empirical scientific facts, that your explanation is true and valid. Therefore, it is merely your OPINION that “there is no reason to expect these fundamental commonalities”, and your opinion is not a scientific statement. I’ll thank you to not pretend as though you speak for “science”.
It’s very plausible, in fact I believe it to be the only plausible option, that those commonalities exist because life was created by an intelligence. That intelligence designed life forms to have a similar make up because they would all be sharing the same environment, and would all need sustainable, reproducible sources of food for energy, in order for life to survive.
Yes those things have been pointed out to me, and now it has been pointed out to YOU that it is not evidence, it is interpretation, so it is dishonest to imply that there is empirical data that supports anything more than variation within groups of organisms, or micro-evolution if you prefer.
Secondly, it does no good to post links to Wikipedia or talkorigins as neither site is a valid source for scientific information. That’s not to say that none of what they say is true, just that since one needs to verify the information independently anyway, why bother reading through their articles when you know you’re only going to get their biased interpretation. I’m not surprised to find that so many people believe in evolutionism, when so many people get their science from such sites.
Hey, medic0506! I asked you a question in post #929. Would you please have the courtesy to answer it?
I don’t know if PZ is following this thread.
Should I bring it to his attention?
I don’t think he’s in a very good mood.
from medic at #942:
And that brings us right back to the question of which similarities matter and why differences exist at all – much less why the similar critters tend to be separated spatially. Why do kangaroos graze the grass in Australia and not antelopes or camels? Why are there penguins near the south pole only, and polar bears only near the north? Why don’t dolphins have gills so they can’t drown, especially when they’re first born? (And why don’t sharks have echolocation? What a movie THAT would make…) And why do the Galapagos islands have dozens of different finches, instead of the same sorts of birds the continents have?
That’s not even touching on the problems with vestigial organs, or body parts with obvious flaws or inefficiencies. As soon as one knows the most basic things about animals beyond those you’d encounter while spending your entire life in a village or farm, inconsistencies with the creation hypothesis inevitably appear.
My suggestion, for what it’s worth: leave him be, especially if his mood isn’t good.
The creobot isn’t doing any harm and has, unintentionally, shown everyone the bankruptcy of his position whilst prompting some of the best educational comments I’ve seen in a while.
Sorry, my last was for chigau (違う) at 944.
Knowknot/#913:
Effusive or not, I think a little enthusiasm is entirely warranted, here.
The word I’d more use, anyway, for what you’ve written, before effusive, is ‘insightful’. Because I think you put your finger on something important, here.
And I expect I’m going to borrow that phrase, the ‘silence of expasperation’, if you don’t mind. Because I think that’s where you put your finger on it.
I figure this is much of how a lot of colossal humbugs–and religions especially–survive. They wear people down, wear people out. There’s no argument left they can win on merits, so they’re left with little else.
How they do it, mind, varies. In a community where their numbers are sufficient to do so, they can surround dissidents, hem them in, frighten them, demand lip service to the humbug. Say you’re with us, or you will never have peace. In families, in communities where religion rules the roost, this will be the game. Dissent too publicly, the social costs will be made formidable. Speak of the general paucity of religion especially as an explanation for much of anything, speak too directly of how it has tried and does try to stifle or undermine advances in knowledge that challenge its underpinnings, and there are so many excuses to try to force you back into silence, a silence that will be as good as assent.
Where they can’t be quite so heavy-handed–where they can’t actually stone you or imprison you, or, simply drive you out of town to the nearest city–in place likes this one, where they’re outnumbered, you see games like this troll’s. He cannot intimidate, so he hopes to exasperate. Make people believe: it’s hopeless, nothing can be done. Speaking publicly of the humbug will just invite ongoing nuisances like this. Trying to sketch clear explanations will be an effort continually frustrated by such con artists, the space of ideas endlessly muddied with such deceitful bafflegab. The world clearly isn’t ready for physics and biology that don’t kowtow to the middle ages. No social space is safe to talk of evolutionary biology, without some throwback to 300 CE piping up to say this is all a conspiracy of the Illuminati or some damned thing, and dragging the discussion back down into the mud. The world is full of the determinedly ignorant, and they will never stop trying to talk over any who would naively wish to understand the world without a proper bow to their brand of protected superstition. Might as well give up, let them have the field to spout their silly.
… do that too long, though, and apart from your getting ulcers you can live without, the silly will win.
So, in fact, doing what people are doing here–turning such sallies into the unwitting spark for some kind of impromptu online study session–is probably just about the best thing you can do. Where they had wanted silence and expasperation, there will be, instead, laughter, insight, and learning. And a far better world, for it.
(/So, likewise, thanks to everyone who bothered.)
Sorry, you are the one with the “OPINION”, since you don’t back up your claims with third party evidence. Whereas, Nick G is telling you what the science, with a million or so scientific papers to back up their claims, concludes. Big difference hypocrite.
Why should anybody believe your testament? You don’t back up your claims. Until you do so, you will be laughed, refuted oh so easily, and dismissed.
942, medic0506
[1] It is an opinion based on evidence which has already been linked to. Just because you have failed to follow the links doesn’t mean that the opinion is invalid! Indeed, all you have given so far is opinion – with no links to supporting evidence whatsoever; AND, furthermore, opinion which goes against all known facts about the universe. Get down off that high horse off yours before you get a nosebleed.
[2] LIAR. Nowhere did Nick G claim that! On the contrary, YOU are the one claiming that YOUR fact-free drivel is scientific when you don’t even know the meaning of the word!
Except of course that they all do NOT share the same environment. Microbes living in clouds do NOT share the same environment as microbes living around hydrothermal vents. Plants living on mountain tops do NOT share the same environment as animals rooted to the ocean floor. Organisms living 2 miles below the ground in the pores within solid rock do NOT share the same environment as parasites living on the skins of other organisms.
And yet they all share fundamental commonalities that make absolutely no sense whatsoever if they had all been designed by an intelligence.
And except of course that they do NOT share the same sustainable energy sources either. There are probably more than ten energy generating processes that different organisms exploit on this planet. There are those that use sunlight,* there are some that break down big carbon molecules with oxygen, there some that break down carbon molecules without oxygen, there are some that extract high energy electrons from iron ions, some that use manganese, some that react hydrogen with carbon dioxide, some that absorb radioactivity.
And yet they all shaker fundamental commonalities that absolutely make no sense whatsoever if they had all been designed by an intelligence.
Once more, medico, you make an argument that is only sustainable by DELIBERATELY IGNORING 95% of the already known EMPIRICAL evidence about the true extent of the diversity of life on earth.
Dishonest arguments from ignorance are all you ever produce, and all you will ever have. That itself would have been a sign to a more honest intellect that your position is WRONG.
* of which there are at least 3 DIFFERENT methods used by different organisms, the differences between them also utterly nonsensical if they had been intelligently designed
Then of course there are also the commonalities that have NO functional significance, but are shared nevertheless. ANY random genetic code would work equally well for ANY lifestyle. And in case you want to stick a “this is opinion” to this medico, this was empirically proven in the 1950’s when real scientists were trying to work out the genetic code. The exact genetic code has no more effect on the functions of the proteins as the font of the letters has an effect on the meaning of a poem. And yet the genetic code is identical in all organisms.
Parasitic retroviral sequences are functionless sequences that do absolutely nothing useful for the host organism, and yet their sequences and locations are shared, and the pattern of the sharing matches exactly what one would expect if those organisms were all related to differing degrees, descending from a shared common ancestor.
There are countless more examples of these kinds of commonalities. There is no explanation for both the existence and the fine details of the pattern of distribution of these commonalities outside of common descent that is not self-evidently absurd.
183. Jade:
A very good question indeed, and you should challenge your own theory to provide an answer for you. If your eyes are just photon receptors, how does your vision know that it should be s–t, and that the light is entering your eye at the wrong angle?? Does a massless light photon contain an onboard GPS which allows it tell your brain what angle it is entering your eye from??
It was a very similar question that sparked my own skepticism of the status-quo…Why are people near-sighted or far-sighted, if our eyes are just photon receptors that don’t play a primary role in vision?? Why macular degeneration?? Why should people see spots before their eyes?? Obviously those spots aren’t being put there by photons of light, so why do people see them?? Why do we see “stars” even though our eyes are closed, after getting hit with a baseball?? Why blurry vision?? Do some photons appear blurry because they splatter on impact with your eye as a result of their millions-of-miles journey at 671,000,000 mph?? How do people hallucinate while under the influence of certain drugs?? How is it that people who suffer from certain psychiatric disorders see things that aren’t really there?? This just scratches the surface, and there is a myriad of other things that come up when you scrutinize the current understanding.
Obviously, the answers I provided are meant to be sarcastic, but the questions are valid ones and I don’t see a reasonably credible answer being provided by the current belief. I think there is every reason to think that vision does indeed play a primary role, and that our eyes are more than just photon receptors.
@medic0506 (#942):
Well. It’s a good thing you’re dismissing other people’s OPINIONS with what is clearly established fact.
NO.
It is NOT interpretation. It is EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE.
You are NOT ENTITLED to change the definition of “evidence” just to exclude the kinds of evidence that say things you do not wish to admit, you dishonest puddle of excrescence.
Angle of incidence is not a property of single photons, but a property of a group of photons moving together. The eye is not just a photon receptor, but a grouping of MANY photon receptors. Our eyes create images by analyzing HOW MANY photons are being absorbed at DIFFERENT PLACES on its retina. And when a group of photons arrives at the “wrong” angle, then the NUMBER of photons being absorbed in some places on the retina is DIFFERENT from the NUMBER that needs to be absorbed to form a proper image, and the image is inaccurate.
The photon absorption is actually no different, and no poorer. The eye in both cases is an equally good photon detector it is a poorer IMAGE detector.
Once more you have made an argument that is only sustainable by deliberately and dishonestly ignoring the majority of the evidence.
Truly you are pathetic.
953, medic0506
Paraphrase:
“I don’t know how lenses work, let alone entire eyes, therefore I’ll propose that photons don’t travel.”
That entire comment of yours is a logical fallacy, argument from ignorance, with absolutely no suggestions from you as to how vision might work instead. It completely ignores all other ways of collecting photons (cameras, photosynthesis etc.) and simply says “I’m ignorant, therefore you’re wrong” which has been your commenting style throughout this thread.
@medic0506 (#953):
Okay, my brain just asploded with that one.
Obviously.
Why do I suddenly recall that Robot Chicken bit in the classroom? “Remember kids, there are no stupid questions….except Billy’s questions.”
Bionic eye implant approved for US patients (bolds mine)
Yes, eyes basically are photon receptors. They’re photon receptors that don’t always work very well. More specifically, they’re organs containing living cells that have functional photon receptors in the form of light-sensitive signalling molecules, with lenses that focus the light, clear gel with a certain refractive index, muscles to swivel them around, and so on.
‘how does your vision know that it should be s–t’ ? Shouldn’t you be saying a designer made them that way because reasons?
Amphiox @955:
Suggestion: Either that should be the name of a band, or we immortalize it as ‘DPOE’ for future use in dealing with the intellectually dishonest.
Seconded! =^_^=
This fuckhead is trying to flip the script now?
Bahahah! What a delightful little pill that is to press under my tongue.
And then later on… the question that led him to his conclusion that light doesn’t make sense if the eye is a simple photon receptor (it isn’t simple), is based on yet more ignorance. And he has the gall to call it skepticism, yet doesn’t even know the basic components of the eye, nor how the brain utilizes the signals, nor how a sudden jolt of force to the brain could cause a surge of activity and irritation of the parts of the brain associated with deciphering and transmitting visual signals…). It really doesn’t need to be overcomplicated because some ignorant asshat decides that billion year old light isn’t possible because his gods are liars and the rest of us are falling for their lies, and he holds the proper interpretation of light because there’s just no meshing that with his “inspired” beliefs and his house of cards will tumble.
And a protip just in case you don’t get it medicZero: the lens is CURVED and is congruous with all the other theories of how light is propagated through every medium and how other curved, clear surfaces refract light, or how light can also be diffracted. What it is not congruous with is your ‘just-so’ assertion of your own ignorant beliefs, nor do your assertions hold any predictive or explanatory power in the first place. There is only one reason for you to make the shit up, and it’s because you have nothing and will continue to have nothing. You are as intellectually bankrupt as you are morally bankrupt.
Medic0506 is essaying the Dude Defense: “Yeah; well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
Of course in this case he’s saying that “my opinion is that this empirical evidence is true” means that he can dismiss the “empirical evidence” part of the sentence, because Medic0506 himself inserted the word “opinion” into it.
Hey, medic0506, when you’ll have caught up with this thread in a week or so, here’s another thread just for you.
I see no reason to try to catch up with this thread as long as you haven’t caught up. I’ll go work. Buh-bye – see you next week!
(And yes, I know it’ll probably be a week till you read this comment.)
medic0506 #942
Except this doesn’t actually account for what we see. E.g. it doesn’t explain endogenous retroviruses. It doesn’t explain why the cytochome C protein is identical in chimps and humans despite the existence of entirely functional alternatives. It doesn’t explain why the genetic code is identical across all life.
It would be trivially easy for a designer to give each “kind” its own code, using the same nucleotides, but coding for different amino acids. Organisms would still be perfectly capable of eating each other, but this would, as Nick pointed out and you ignored, limit the ability of viruses to jump species.
Did the designer specifically arrange the world so that flu viruses can jump from pigs to humans? Was this an intentional design feature?
#953
Ever heard of a fucking retina, you dumb shit?
The incoming light is detected by the retina and which part of the retina it hits depends on the angle. If the lens is disturbed or the dimensions of the eye are wrong, the photons will not be properly focused on the retina and the brain will miscalculate, producing an incorrect picture of the world.
Incidentally, the fact that you completely and totally didn’t answer the question did not go unnoticed. You were asked a relevant, direct question and you dodged it. Cowardly as well as dishonest.
Thanks to a combination of genetic disorders and the medications I take to cope with them, I have cataracts forming in both my eyes. From having phenomenally good vision for most of my life, I have spend the last six years with steadily deteriorating eyesight.
Fortunately, most people aren’t like medic0506, and so there are plenty of ophthalmologists, opticians, surgeons, scientists and engineers creating solutions for people like me so that we can continue to see as well, and for as long, as possible.
medic0506, since people all over the world have been making glasses to correct vision for nigh on a millennium, based on the very theory of light that you reject because you do not understand it, how do you explain how they work?
(He won’t, of course; he is incapable of explaining anything. He asserts, and then claims his assertions are explanations even as they are reality-defying nonsense).
@ Pteryxx
Has anyone brought up the Wallace Line? That one pretty much fucks up the “theory” of Kinds ™ all by itself.
@ Thumper
Hey! You jumpin’ the queue???
@ The Horde
This is the queue for Brownian/Anthony K, right?
@throwaway (#962):
That really needed “You lose! Good day, sir!” at the end…
…Uh. On scrolling through, I see people have left responses for me in the Thunderdome. I promise I’ll get to them. Right now, though, I have a grant proposal to finish, a manuscript to review, then to continue writing another manuscript… and coming into this with three decades’ worth of exasperation is probably not a good idea.
@medic0506
You still need to explain how placing a specially shaped lens (plastic nowadays, I believe) can turn my blurry vision into clear sight. If there no photons passing through the lens, then why does the curve have such a huge effect on my vision?
It’s a simple question and we have an answer to it, based on our model. Give us your answer. If you have confidence in your position, then lay it out for us. If you continue to refuse, we must conclude that you, deep down, know that you’re wrong.
Oh my god! The goalposts! Where did they go? I can’t even see them any more!
964, David Marjanović
Actually, he is even more dishonest than you might think. He is reading this thread in real time (see comment 835, “I saw this and just can’t help but comment even though it’s out of order.”), but stubbornly sticking by his promise to answer comments in the order in which they were posted – apparently regardless of what has been posted since, but actually sneaking in distorted versions of subsequent replies.
Anyway, he is already six days behind, with only the first fifth of the thread addressed; we’ll be fortunate(? Surprised?) if he responds to these comments before August.
medic0 @ 953.
What in the bloody blue blazes do you mean by “primary role in vision” and where in the heck did you ever get the idea any-one claim that “just” photon receptors (what’s “just” about being a photon receptor?) don’t play a primary role in vision?
Eyes, being photo receptors, are the most important part of vision. Why would you think anyone ever claimed otherwise?
Because the light hits the retina in the wrong place. Duh. The light hits the retina in the wrong place because my eyeball is the wrong shape and the shape of my cornea and my lens bends the light to the wrong part of the retina. My theory relies upon light being bent. Light bends (refract to use the correct term), according to my theory, because light travels at a different speed in through the material of my cornea and lens. Your theory denies that light has a speed through any media. Your theory does not explain why light bends. Hence by your theory can not explain either vision problems nor their correction.
No. It enters the eye at the angle it had been traveling through the air. As is passes through the material of the eye its speed and path is altered determined entirely by the shape and medium of the eye and its components.
It’s your theory which denies speed, momentum and energy that can not explain refraction and requires an alternative theory of refraction; an alternative theory that you steadfastly refuse to provide.
theophontes: Well heck, I never heard of the Wallace Line before. (Thanks, fundie christian schooling!)
So, I had to go and look!
from Nat Geo
Awesome. *adds to stash*
Okay. We have to take a method off the table. When we ask “How does X work”, medic0 can not respond with a glib “well, it doesn’t work by your theory, either” or “My way doesn’t differ from yours”. To be fair he is allowed to challenge us how our theory works (and we are obliged to answer) but he can’t simply avoid answering a direct question. An evasion and counter challenge is not a response.
For well over, literally, the 100th time medic0: How does refraction work. We have explained how refraction works as a direct consequence of light having different constant speeds through different media. This assumes light travels at a finite speed. So if light doesn’t travel and doesn’t have a finite speed how does refraction work?
@ David Marjanović
As Supreme Tardigrade, Benevolent and Benign Dictator-for-Life, I hereby grant you complete and utter impunity for whatever you get up to on Teh Thunderdome.
@ medic0506
You seem to be struggling here. Let me throw you a lifeline: The medieval goddists had it right… Humunculi ™ is *REALLY* a Thing. (Google keywords: tardigrades, hypertrophy …)
Wait, wait (it gets better) … now Google: tardigrades, parthenogenesis, Jesus of Nazareth, sharks, whiptail lizards).
….
Smallprint: This is a bit of a Faustian Deal, I’m afraid. If you wanna use my ammo, you have to back off from the whole fertility/breeding pair bullshit when you blather about Kinds ™.
Or, more simply, he just refuses to listen (read), he just presupposes that everything written here, by the horde, is just “theoretical BS”, so he just doesn’t waste his time even reading it. But he does FORCE himself to read some of it and writes more questions, to see how much BS the horde can produce. Which is way it takes so long between each of his postings: he has to struggle with himself to read the BS, then struggle with finding a new question with which to baffle the horde. Plus, he thinks that only responding in numerical order is ethical and the horde is violating its own rules by responding out-of-order.
Sometimes “feeding trolls” can have a side-effect of providing information to the “lurkers”, silently reading. And, until recently, I have been informed by many of the responses to medic’s ignorant assertions, But medic0506 has exceeded the duration of this side-effect. His non-responsiveness has turned the horde into repetiveness. I propose to end this thread here and now. Just stop attempting to educate this ignorant troll, he chooses willfully to totally ignore and misinterpret everything said to him. This 2nd volume of a single thread is so close to being extended into a 3rd volume I vote NO 3rd volume, 2 is too many. Cut it off now. If PZ doesn’t actively shut it down, just everyone stop posting. Let medic post some evidence that he is actually paying attention to all that was written here. Medic, stop asserting yourself, derive questions based on what has been said to you. Listen! Don’t just assert. The horde asks you questions, they don’t just assert; yet your only response is to further assert. Assertions get boring, and after so many repetitions of such similar assertions, you’ve achieved the status of BORING.
If light travels indefinately the light from the goalposts would eventually reach you. Since you can’t see them any more that means the light just couldn’t go that far. This proves medic0506 was absolutely right after all.
I’m not following your reasoning. Why should it matter whether PZ is following this thread or not?
Yes, but it’s his “if eyes are not primary role in vision” that I simply do not understand. First of all no-one claimed eyes were not a “primary role in vision”; of course they are. And second, we are discussing light transference. What does vision have to with the discussion at all? So I have to wonder if somehow he must mean vision plays a role in light transference.
It’s on thing to imagine a universe in which light is transmitted instantly everywhere (one would then have to consider and address the implications of such a universe), and it’s another to imagine one were light is transmitted instantly according to the people who are looking at it.
Which I suppose maybe gets us back to intromission. Except medic0 never claimed an intromission model.
So basically I am wondering what the heck does he mean by “primary source of vision”. Seriously, I do not understand what he is trying to say.
@ Pteryxx
It makes a complete joke of the “theory” of Kinds ™ On either side of the line, you have two different worlds going on. If the “kinds” are ever the same, their roles are very different. The whole environmental aspect of evolution is driven home with a vengeance. Ken Ham has ideas about Australian rodent Kinds ™ that are shat on by rodents a little to the left of his old stomping grounds.
@940 Tigger_the_Wing, Back home =^_^=
Seconded.
@941 Pteryxx
This really should be the introduction for a book. Continuing in harmony with that feel and gracefully implied discipline, it would be wonderful. Quite possibly numinous.
@948 AJ Milne
Beautiful. That is all.
@951 Amphiox
Thanks for that, in a large way. I was just dealing with a huge, painful and potentially debilitating synaptic hairball on that one.
I couldn’t help myself, this is just too silly. This is not addressed directly to Medic0506 because at this point, I’m far more interested in the meta-analysis (sorry, David M.) of the patterns of his ignorance and mendacity by other parties than I am in his own thoughts. But don’t let that hold you back from responding should you feel the desire, Medic0506.
Translation: “Quick! Look over there at that squirrel! It will distract you from the blatantly obvious fact that I cannot answer your very good question!”
If eyes are photon receptors then there is no need for “vision” (whatever Medic0506 means by that) to “know” anything.
An eye no more requires knowledge of the trajectory of a photon’s travel to detect it than a glass requires knowledge of gravity in order to fill with water when water is poured into it. Why does Medic0506 think that the brain has to “know” things about photons in order to perform the process we call “seeing”? It’s a mechanistic process. Photon hits, nerve fires, brain interprets.
Translation: “I’m lying through my teeth right now.”
This appears to be a question designed to challenge Medic’s own hypothesis. Is this like when a kid in a shouting match get confused and accidentally start insulting himself instead of the other guy?
Oh wait, he thinks that an eye being a photon receptor is somehow different from an eye playing a primary role in vision. That’s… adorable.
Why not? Is there some guarantee that eyes and optical nerves should function perfectly all the time? One would expect such a guarantee if the eyes were designed by an all-powerful omniscient supernatural being, not if they were the product of evolution. Of course, Medic0506 has no explanation for macular degeneration. This is just random shit-flinging. It’s related to eyes, can you explain it? (never mind that he can’t.)
This is an artifact of the interaction between the photon recepting part and the image interpreting part. I.e., eyes, optical nerves, and the brain. Eyes and nerves do not always function perfectly, which is consistent with what you’d expect from eyes that evolved, and inconsistent with what you’d expect if God designed eyes.
This is an artifact of the interaction between the photon recepting part and the image interpreting part. I.e., eyes, optical nerves, and the brain. Eyes and nerves do not always function perfectly, which is consistent with what you’d expect from eyes that evolved, and inconsistent with what you’d expect if God designed eyes.
This is an artifact of the interaction between the photon recepting part and the image interpreting part. I.e., eyes, optical nerves, and the brain. Eyes and nerves do not always function perfectly, which is consistent with what you’d expect from eyes that evolved, and inconsistent with what you’d expect if God designed eyes.
This is an artifact of the interaction between the photon recepting part and the image interpreting part. I.e., eyes, optical nerves, and the brain. Eyes and nerves do not always function perfectly, which is consistent with what you’d expect from eyes that evolved, and inconsistent with what you’d expect if God designed eyes.
It doesn’t even scratch any surfaces at all; Medic0506 doesn’t even have a superficial understanding. He’s pawing uselessly at the wrong surface entirely, to extend the metaphor. And of course there aren’t a myriad of “other things” otherwise he would have mentioned them by now, after nearly a week of flailing.
The bolded part represents the root cause of Medic0506’s difficulties.
That’s nice. People think all kinds of things. Sometimes, their thinking aligns with empirical evidence, in which case their thinking is credible, interesting, and useful. Medic0506’s does not.
Oh well.
Can we get a new troll please? I think this one is nearly used up.
Meh… Were this thread about anything other than troll-feeding, I’d agree with you. And eventually we all will get tired of feeding this troll. But in the meantime we must be getting some enjoyment from the feeding or we wouldn’t be here. In the early days it was fun to see him spin new weirdness (the entire light doesn’t travel was a draconian response to how can there be light from stars further than 10,000 light-years away; this is a huge response to a minor objection and that is logistically entertaining). Now he’s getting boring but there is still some fun in seeing him try to claim evolutionist a philosophically the non-scientists.
Yes, if this thread were distracting from serious discussion (for example, occurring inside a real thread) it’d be a “don’t feed the troll” time but as this is specifically a “Hey, look at this troll” thread, well… troll-feeding is par for the course.
Medico #953
*hysterical laughter*
Gods, they really are an idiot, aren’t they? And they still haven’t answered my question.
@Theophontes #967
Trying to, but the moron ain’t biting. Sorry, I’m impatient :) it’s why I’m no good at fishing.
@ Sallystrange
Exactly! What makes a godfapping creationist tick? That is the question.
carlie @971:
The goalpost photons are in a box, in the corner, waiting to leap out into your eyes without warning. And medic0506 has been revealed as the latest incarnation of Anne Elk.
Hey, mediczero:
Have you explained yet why your “Intelligent Designer” has the photoreceptors in your eyes aimed into the middle of your head, with the connecting nerves draped in front of them, blocking a lot of the light? Why does he have those photoreceptors firing at their maximum rate in the dark, and detecting photons only causing them to slow down?
Don’t say there’s some ineffable reason why eyes have to be that way, since the same “Intelligent Designer” managed to give squid and octopi perfectly good eyes with neither of these problems.
Wait a minute…squid…octopi…I can only conclude that the “Intelligent Designer” isn’t YHWH—he’s Cthulhu!
Rob Grigjanis #985
Aha! I knew I’d seen this line of reasoning before!
While Sallystrange was mentioning meta-analysis on this thread, my curiosity finally got the better of me, and I wandered off across the web to find out what this DDO thing, that medic0506 mentioned, was about.
Well, what a surprise! (Not…)
It seems our medic is just as dishonest when arguing over there as he is over here (I would venture, not a good example to his grandchildren…)
The first example I came across was him lying about how the scientists concerned dealt with the Piltdown Man Hoax of 1912:
Medic:
Pffft:
[6] Gould, Stephen J. (1980), The Panda’s Thumb, W. W. Norton and Co., pp. 108–124, ISBN 0-393-01380-4
[7]MacRitchie, Finlay (2011), Scientific Research as a Career, CRC Press, p. 30, ISBN 1439869650
I wish.
Seriously though, any guesses as to why a person would think that a brain has to “know” the angle of a photon’s path in order to sense it as blurry vs. clear vision? The thing is, he keeps spitting out these bizarre little ideas, and I would totally love to hear him explain them more if only out of morbid curiosity, but he’s such a tease.
How many questions has medic0506 failed to answer? I imagine at 988 comments, with dozens of commenters participating, there are probably a lot of them. Anyone have time to collect them all in one post?
Perhaps next week, when he gets to *this* page (again) medic0506 will answer them…
.
.
…nah. Probably not.
I suspect that medic0506 knows so little that he is completely unaware of how little he knows – he would, for instance, have to be aware that there is a field of scientific enquiry called ‘optics’ to know that he knows nothing about it. But he is as innocent as a babe when it comes to the details of science.
I wonder if he has ever gone so far as to even look for a list of science disciplines, let alone topics?
(Of course, has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?)
Hey, medic0506, once you have sorted out optics and evolution, perhaps you could give us your considered opinion on the wrongness of:
Aeronautics, anatomy, anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, botany, zoology, biology, primate biology, biophysics, human biology, nutrition, medicine, microbiology, immunology, neurology, neuroscience, genetics, psychology, physiology, pathology, ophthalmology, linguistics, sociology, geography, history, physics, applied physics, chemistry, Earth science, ecology, oceanography, geology, meteorology, cosmology, pure and applied mathematics, logic, statistics, economics, business administration, communication, criminology, education, government, international relations, political science, computer science, information theory, systems theory, decision theory, philosophy…
(just a few, to be going on with)
… and how Creation Science gets them right?
Tigger:
Try as I might, I cannot understand this sentence.
Tony,
Know Your Meme
I looked at another debate on DDO and, guess what? Our medic is a transphobic piece of shite too!
This is my surprised face:
=î_î=
@medic #915
And that is exactly how it was decided that humans and chimps were related in the first place! Even before genetics, there was heaps of evidence that humans and chimps were related. Genetics simply confirmed what biologists had already suspected for over a century prior. Studies continuously validate the close relationship between humans and chimpanzees.
Humans & chimps share a more recent common ancestor then house cats & tigers. This is scientifically supported by recent studies.
Humans & Chimps
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1235277/
House Cats & tigers
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130917/ncomms3433/full/ncomms3433.html
Tigger:
Ah, I was unaware of that meme (or many others. I’m fairly ignorant of memes). Thanks.
Over in the Dome, I asked medic0506 if he had any racism or homophobia to add to his sexism:
Although I’ve not seen any indication of either, the addition of transphobia to his bigoted views makes me wonder what’s next.
Thank you, alwayscurious; it really annoys me when medic denies the existence of multiple lines of evidence (especially when he then accuses other commenters of lying when they point out that Creationists deny evidence!)
Oh, and Tony…
this is my favourite rendering of the meme. =^_^=
Tony,
Memes? It is hard to avoid them in my household (having lived with a variable population of teenagers for twenty years). =^_^=
Here is the DDO thread in question:
Should Gender Identity be Predicated on Biological Sex??
(medic conceded at the beginning of the third round, claiming to have made an error in the first).
re SallyStrange @981:
[ignoring my own *suggestions*…]But, but, but,… Don’t hallucinations _bypass_ the eyes (and the optic nerves) completely, being only a brain misfunction in the optical interpretation region of the brain? That hallucinations are simply neurons, in that volume of the brain, misfiring; producing the illusion of seeing phantom objects? That even a person without eyes at all (that previously had them) could still experience hallucinations? Aren’t hallucinations essentially (similar to); dream images? So, medic, if light is necessary for vision; what are dreams, images directly sent from Gawd to let you SEE is message?
SallyStrange/#990, re how could he think something so odd:
For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s so much he does, exactly, think that…
The trouble is that verb ‘thinks’. And I’m not (just) being snarky; I’m quite serious…
In more detail: what I think that answer tells you is he doesn’t really have any particular thoughts on the matter (or none he’s interested in revealing, anyway). What I figure is: he isn’t seriously reading most of the comments he answers for content. He’s just ‘debating’, insofar as he understands such an exercise. In his approach and understanding, it’s a very shallow exercise in (attempted, and probably futilely) persuasion, for most of it, and, given that he realizes he probably can’t persuade anyone who’s paying much attention, nor knows anything about any of the material discussed, it gets reduced, for most answers, to this very superficial effort.
Now, it’s not all equally superficial. He’ll answer at slightly different levels, depending on what he thinks he might have as ammunition. But if he’s got nothing, he’ll just skim the content, and come up with anything that sounds like an objection, at the time. The point isn’t to understand what he’s answering, let alone to seriously consider the sense of it; the point is to appear to have an answer, any kind of answer, however bizarre it might appear to anyone actually thinking about the subject. He probably figures this is a good move because in live debates, standing there with your mouth open does generally look bad. Having an answer of some kind, looking like hey, you’ve thought of this, really, this is generally going play better with the audience. (Whether it really does online, in text, especially if your answers are going to have such quality as he’s managed so far, I guess, is left as an exercise for the reader.)
So what you’ll get from him, if you read for meaning, will be roughly as coherent–no real exaggeration, here–as the output of one of those Markov-chain based text generators. Seriously, what catches in the spam filters of the average blog’s comment threads reads similarly: it’s clear there’s some heuristic within taking the content on the page and playing it back with modification/reaction, to appear as if there’s an intelligence involved, but it’s a pretty weak simulacrum of such an intelligence, easily detected.
What’s kind of funny and very appropriate about it is: I’d say what he’s doing here is only a bit more blatant than–but essentially the same in approach to–the general ‘creationist’ approach to attacks on science. They generally realize they’ve no particularly good objections, so the strategy is mostly: just keep talking, regardless of whether you’ve really anything much to say. The hope is all the noise–and never mind it’s virtually static–creates the illusion of substantive controversy. A bit like a Gish Gallop, but at a much more leisurely trot.