Quote from Rusender

The Bible.

Okay, Im going to give you an outline for our next few posts. You discredit my evidence for God, then state your evidence for evolution or whatever.

Then I will discredit you.

Yay. Oh and no, I wouldn't have gotten pissed, because I know you're just as close minded as I am.

You can't use a book of purported events as evidence for the thing the book is promoting and inciting, you dolt.

It's just like if I were to write a book about the Holy Bean-With-Bacon Soup Bowl. If anyone says "what evidence do you have that the Holy Bean-With-Bacon Soup Bowl exists?", I can say "The Bean-With-Bacon Bible says that he exists."


I know that someone will think to use the same argument about evolution, but there's a stark and clear difference between following a book of supposed events and a book of confirmable and repeatable observations. You can't compare the Bible and, say, The Descent of Man, because the Bible is a book of uncomfirmable, one-time events, while the Descent of Man is a book of observations that anyone else can confirm and experiments that anyone can repeat.

Oh, and no, we knew the world was round far before we went to space. People flew around the world and arrived at the same place, plus we made hundreds of observations that lead us to that conclusion a few hundred years before.


Also, Rusender, the Bible we have is not the original "Bible". When each book (Genesis, Mark, Romans, Psalms, etc.) was written, it's not like there was a group of people who lived all through the time they were being written and going around saying "Oh, you're writing a book about your experiences with Jesus? Well, then, I'll just add that to the Bible so it can go down in history as the official word of God!"

What happened was all these religious books were gathered up about a thousand or so years ago by the Catholic church and sorted out. The books that the Church didn't think made God look good were thrown out, such as the book of Thomas. They picked and chose which books were canon. That means there is loads of room for human error: even if God does exist, the Bible can't be used as evidence because it HAS been tampered with.

Carbon dating is accurate to a couple of hundred thousands years due to the isotopes radioactive decay. It gets very inaccurate at millions of years.

Also I can use evolution my self as proof of God simply due to the ridiculous possibilities that have occurred to get us where we are today.

Anyway evolution is not with out its flaws, take for exam a dig that happened a couple of years back, where they found two skeletons from two different branches of our 'evolutionary tree' which previously where though to be hundreds of thousands of years apart, but where in the same sediment level. Will find source when awake.

Also you accuse Christian of being close minded, yet have a look at your posts as if a Christian had written them, and see if they still aren't close minded.

Quote from Steyene

Carbon dating is accurate to a couple of hundred thousands years due to the isotopes radioactive decay. It gets very inaccurate at millions of years.

Also I can use evolution my self as proof of God simply due to the ridiculous possibilities that have occurred to get us where we are today.

Anyway evolution is not with out its flaws, take for exam a dig that happened a couple of years back, where they found two skeletons from two different branches of our 'evolutionary tree' which previously where though to be hundreds of thousands of years apart, but where in the same sediment level. Will find source when awake.

Also you accuse Christian of being close minded, yet have a look at your posts as if a Christian had written them, and see if they still aren't close minded.

Who was your post aimed at? I sure hope it wasn't me, because if so, I'm gonna have to say it was the stupidest and most closed minded post I've seen yet. I'm not saying it's closed-minded in relation to RELIGION, i'm saying it's closed minded in that you are making completely unfounded PERSONAL accusations that I have dealt with before.

For instance, saying that I am closed minded because I don't accept your point of view when I myself have held that point of view in the past.

Or maybe the fact that I haven't called anyone closed minded in a debate in more than a year (or not at all since I became an athiest, from what I remember)

One could also ask you to give me a link explaining why carbon dating is inneffective so far off in the past, because I remember a post here a while back dealing with just that, and it actually cited multiple sources.

And finally, the argument that evolution couldn't have happened because it is extremely IMPROBABLE.

IMPROBABILITY can NEVER be used to imply IMPOSSIBILITY, and frankly I think that the word should NEVER be on ANYONE'S lips (or fingers) for the rest of human existance except when dealing with gambling and the like.

I can go back in time and make a prediction with billions of times more improbability than the evolving of humans, but will that make it impossible, or even fair to treat it as such? I suppose that would depend on the nature of my prediction.

Suppose I were to say that in a hundred billion years, the penny I am looking at in RL right now would end up in this very position, remain for 39 seconds, then move to another specified position (Which I have just moved it to).

The CHANCES that that would happen would be about 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. If that penny had been a mere micrometer to the left, I would have been wrong in my prediction, but sure enough, the penny, despite "impossible" odds, is at this extremely improbable position on my computer desk.

The thing is, though, it is very difficult to apply probability to living systems, as their interactions are too complex to predict with any degree of accuracy using our current technology. This fact, combined with the fact that improbability to even an absurd degree can't be used interchangably with impossibility, means that the "evolution is too unlikely to have happened" argument is unsuable. (That's without going into whether evolution truly is as improbable you say.)






P.S. Please use quotes in replies.

Think of how many atoms are in the universe. Imagine the probability that one oxygen atom can end up in one place in the universe as opposed to any other. You are breathing in atoms with such improbability attatched to them that according to you, it is impossible that those atoms could be there, BUT THEY ARE THERE NONETHELESS, and I think we can all agree that there are more atoms and places for those atoms to be than there are rungs in a strand of DNA.

Yes but none of those atoms have bonded in the correct fashion, in the right ratio's, in the right temperature, in the right place to turn into life currently.

Anyway here is a question for you, since the large amount of chemical dating techniques are only useful for a maximum of one million years, how can we age the earth correctly?

Quote from Steyene

Yes but none of those atoms have bonded in the correct fashion, in the right ratio's, in the right temperature, in the right place to turn into life currently.

Anyway here is a question for you, since the large amount of chemical dating techniques are only useful for a maximum of one million years, how can we age the earth correctly?

Well, I checked up on your sources, and the first 1 had nothing to say, and the other 2 were plain wrong. Scientists can always measure smaller amounts of C14 far beyond what Conservapedia, who's atheist article drew ties between atheists and Stalin's mass murder (I know, such an unbiased source you got there!) seemed to think was the limit of measurement. As for you not knowing how we know the age of the earth, meet our friend Rutherford and the very distinguished science of Geo chronology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9-lyZEgqlI
For measuring the earth and rock's age (which we can then determine the age of fossils, and therefore be able to see the process of evolution) scientists use mainly Uranium 238 (which has a half life of 4.47 billion years, so we don't have any issues with measurement) found in most rocks and other radioactive substances.

Now, give me proof that the world is 6,000 years old that is backed up by anything close to my argument.

Quote from Dinomut

Well, I checked up on your sources, and the first 1 had nothing to say, and the other 2 were plain wrong. Scientists can always measure smaller amounts of C14 far beyond what Conservapedia, who's atheist article drew ties between atheists and Stalin's mass murder (I know, such an unbiased source you got there!) seemed to think was the limit of measurement.

Actually believe it or not there are links between Stalin and atheism but that is not for here.

Also I am not sure if you actually understand what carbon dating is, yes you can measure an objects age via carbon dating, but once it gets past 50,000 years, it gets increasingly inaccurate.

Also how can you say that the information given in those links is "just plain wrong"? Are you an authoritative figure on C14 dating?

You need to learn that even if some one posts information that goes against what you think, doesn't mean that it is wrong.

As for you not knowing how we know the age of the earth, meet our friend Rutherford and the very distinguished science of Geo chronology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9-lyZEgqlI
For measuring the earth and rock's age (which we can then determine the age of fossils, and therefore be able to see the process of evolution) scientists use mainly Uranium 238 (which has a half life of 4.47 billion years, so we don't have any issues with measurement) found in most rocks and other radioactive substances.

Now, give me proof that the world is 6,000 years old that is backed up by anything close to my argument.

Thank you it was a question not a statement. It was question based off the facts that I currently had.

AND ALSO WHERE THE **** DID I SAY THAT THE WORLD IS 6,000 YEARS OLD? AND WHY THE **** WOULD YOU ASSUME THAT?! HELL IF SOMEONE ELSE HAD ASKED THAT YOU WOULDN'T OF INCLUDED THAT LITTLE CHALLENGE, SO WHY THE **** WOULD YOU INCLUDE IT FOR ME.

That's what the Bible, your only source of "evidence" says. And as for your idea that scientists cannot accurately date any fossils because of the uncertainty of C14 dating (I will stop arguing with you on this point for the sake of getting to the bigger picture), scientists judge fossil's age not only with C14 dating, but with Uranium dating of the rocks or sedimentary layering surrounding the fossils, which they then could determine the age of the fossil to within 100,000 years.

Now, once again, give me your side of the argument besides trying to disprove mine.

Quote from Dinomut

That's what the Bible, your only source of "evidence" says. And as for your idea that scientists cannot accurately date any fossils because of the uncertainty of C14 dating (I will stop arguing with you on this point for the sake of getting to the bigger picture), scientists judge fossil's age not only with C14 dating, but with Uranium dating of the rocks or sedimentary layering surrounding the fossils, which they then could determine the age of the fossil to within 100,000 years.

Now, once again, give me your side of the argument besides trying to disprove mine.

See thing is that I am not trying to disprove anything. I am just trying to find answers.

Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14_dating

This post would be better but my computer crashed zilla. >_>

alright, now can i hear your side of this debate so that we don't just have an attack defend thing going on?

Quote from Steyene

Yes but none of those atoms have bonded in the correct fashion, in the right ratio's, in the right temperature, in the right place to turn into life currently.

Err... yes they have. That's what we are. Atoms that are bonded in just the right way.

But not just out of chance.


FINALLY, this is where we need to be for the debate to actually progress.

You can't try to say "evolution can't happen because it is improbable", because A) As I have shown, improbability =/= impossibility, and B) evolution isn't just about CHANCE. We're talking about a living system, so conventional probability math can never be applied.

So, about how life can actually arise through natural processes:

Ever heard of Tholins? They're these great organic molecule that are found naturally on the surface of Jupiter's moon Titan, and probably on the Earth during it's development. What makes them so great is that once they contact water, they turn into amino acids (the building blocks of protien) and nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA and RNA. That effectively takes care of how DNA can form.

Now about "life". What all life is made up of is cells. Cells themselves aren't special except in that they reproduce. They are essentially just machines, just fairly complex machines made from natural processes.

And now someone says "But cells are too comploex to arise by chance!!!"

Saying something couldn't happen because it is improbable isn't a good argument as I have said, but luckily noone is saying that cells formed just by chance.


While the entire process of how life can arise isn't completely understood, (due to the fact that it's a fairly new study) we have a pretty good idea.

First, a very simple cell, closer to a virus in structure than a modern cell, is formed. It is put together by a protien, and that protien works together with another protien to assemble the simple cell according to the RNA. While this all sounds extremely complex, consider that we have found protiens that do just this, ones that form out of purely natural processes with no interaction by anything except putting the tholin in water, and that we have ones that can take nucleotides and arrange them into pieces of RNA.

That cell is remade thousands and thousands of times by these protiens, and a few of the protiens, since they tend to vary somewhat, some are a bit different. These different ones may happen to bind with other ones, and the protiens fit together and work together to make other different cells and keep reproducing them. This whole process, since it requires a lot of lucky positioning of protiens, organic molecules, and nucleotides, takes a long time, but eventually results in a single-celled organism, and this organism reproduces a lot, and imperfect mechanisms result in some imperfectly replicated RNA (Which is eventually replaced by DNA after a lot of other protiens get involved), and the rest is his.... err... natural selection.




This is all a very much simplified explanation, and certainly incomplete. It may help you to watch how RNA is replicated by protiens and ribosomes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMD2D58i0lQ

That video shows the entire process in real time, just as it has been recorded by electron microscopes. Protiens are just machines, and this shows them perfectly.

Anyway here is a question for you, since the large amount of chemical dating techniques are only useful for a maximum of one million years, how can we age the earth correctly?

Like what Dino said, Uranium is used for longer-range dating. They also compare where the sample was located to the layers of the earth's crust and what other fossils and stuff are around it (Comparisons like these are only accurate to about 10,000 years)