Creationist arguments are becoming more and more stupid with every pass. Just when you thought you’ve heard it all, they come up with yet another massively moronic attempt to condemn evolutionary theory using utterly junk science. This is a perfect example, with so much wrong in its understanding of the theories of the origins of life that it would take months to explain it all to them.
A special thanks to irReligion.org for finding this one.
On another board I got into an argument with a group of Christians who claim that there is no problem with mixing science and religion. The Big Bang could have happened by the instigation of God and science should not have issue with this. Furthermore, it is counterproductive to invoke argument between science and religion, as it may have the effect of turning away the more dogmatically religious, further widening the gap between religion and science.
After reading the various arguments to this extent, I felt myself slipping into the Twilight Zone, unable to understand how it was that a naturalistic system (science) could even begin to add on a supernatural system (God), without corrupting the very nature of science itself. No political persuasion should change this dynamic, as far as I’m concerned.
For this, I was labeled a confrontational “New Atheist”, as if it was somehow worse than being an “Old Atheist”.
Frankly, I wasn’t familiar with the term, I had to look it up. I still haven’t figured out who coined the phrase, but it is a label for those like Richard Dawkins, who feel that not only should science be separated from religion completely, but science should challenge religion for the superstitious nonsense that it is. At first being labeled a “New Atheist” left me feeling confused over the implications, but now that I understand the meaning behind it: I accept the label and thank all you deluded Christians for it! I’m quite happy to be thrown into this new class.
You cannot mix science and religion. The reason is a very simple one (one that those I was in argument with refused to accept as even a possibility) that once you apply any supernatural entity, no matter how petty or large, into a naturalistic system – you have corrupted the system. Science is ruled by evidence and there is no evidence for gods, pixies, unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, or honest politicians. Once you open the door to that without evidence, you have thrown out science and taken on philosophy. The scientific method starts with observation of the empirical, not mental musings of the ethereal.
Until it can be shown that the interjection of the supernatural into a naturalist system can occur, without corrupting the naturalistic system, there simply is no room for it. Inserting supernatural answers into a naturalistic system is far more than just being counterproductive – it destroys the system.
I have had many tell me that my “love” of science is my largest downfall – that it leaves me overly skeptical and ignorant of the good that religion has brought to the world. I counter with this simple test: compare what science has done for humanity in the last 200 years, with the entire history of religion on this planet. Which has produced more, created more, improved more, furthered knowledge? Which has ultimately done more for mankind?
Pray all you want, but science landed us on the moon.
June 30th was the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska blast in Siberia. (Google for “Tunguska Event” as there is far too much material to link here…) General estimates of the blast put it at 10 to 15 megatons (though some now argue 3 to 5 megatons), or about 1,000 times the Hiroshima detonation. 830 square miles of trees were flattened. Windows shattered 250 miles from the blast center. The fluctuations in air pressure were measured in England, thousands of miles away.
In short, it was one hell of a bang.
No crater was left behind, making it likely that it was a meteor or asteroid, maybe even a small comet burst in mid air.
The problem is, aside from tree damage, we have no physical evidence of the “object”, if there really was one. Basically, we don’t have a clue at this point, but it’s fun to speculate. You can certainly spend hours reading every take on it.
My take is simple: nature still has the last laugh.
Well, this is simply too funny for words. Al Gore has apparently changed some of his slide show to include Adam and Eve.
In the very same breath, he then continued to explain that according to his religious beliefs, this “rise of humans” was God’s creation of mankind — apparently 200,000 years ago.
I couldn’t take the man or his climate claims seriously before, but now it’s gone to utter fairy tales.
Well, it would appear that this winter has set some amazing records. This quote says it all:
The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Time will tell if this trend continues, but I personally think with sunspot activity at a low, we stand a good chance of entering another “little ice-age”. If nothing else, it shows just how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of climate.
Bear in mind that the Church of Global Warming is currently in the process of renaming themselves to the Church of Global Climate Change, so that anything can be blamed on that miserable poison CO2. In any case, Russia could have used a little of the old church and China is battling the “coldest winter in 100 years.”
Lake Paliastomi froze over for the first time in 50 years and temperatures were set to drop as low as 67 F (55 C). As the article states, Georgia is a subtropical climate…
Of course the CGW or CGCC is going to say that one off incidents like these aren’t a data point against the global warming hype. Nevermind that the earth has always been going through an awful lot of climate change over the eons. Never mind that Earth was warming on average in the 19th and 20th centuries, before we started to pump CO2 into the atmosphere.
But anthropogenic global warming is a fact, because the CGW has a consensus, or so they say.
Pray tell, just what is consensus? It is popular opinion, not scientific fact. Science has held many such a consensus which was proven wrong in the end. What we need is hard data.
Proof to me that CO2 and climate have little to do with each other, comes from work from paleoclimatologists, who show us inconvenient facts, such as Carleton University Professor Tim Patterson’s testimony before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in Canada. (See article.)
“There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.”
Or how about Catherine Brahic’s work in New Scientist (2007-05-17) where she showed in ice core samples the CO2 increase lags behind the temperature by roughly 800 years. Ergo, CO2 cannot possibly cause the temperature change. The same pattern, by studying ice core samples dating back 650,000 years, was confirmed by Holly Fretwell at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC).
The fact of the mater is, that the IPCC is a political organization with a political agenda and though they claim to have a majority of climatologists behind their stance, more and more scientists who have never seen an oil company’s penny are coming out against their position, including some former members of the IPCC.
As for the IPCC itself, the truth came out recently about their position papers, especially the Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.
Even this “consensus” is looking weaker everyday.
Addendum 2008-02-11: Yet another article on a group of Canadian scientists who are convinced that the sun is the driving force in climate and are now seeking additional funding for better sun monitoring systems.
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