Dan Jr. - 26 March 2006 05:49 PM

However, the distances between stars are enormous, and the travel-time makes round-trip ventures quite unlikely….

And let’s not forget the time scale of things.  Even in geological time, human civilization of any sort is just a recent thing.  In cosmological time, we’ve only been here for a gnat’s eyeblink.

Civilizations and life itself might rise and fall across time.  Combined with the great distances, it makes our running into other advanced life (“aliens”) darn near impossible. 

It would be nice to find some evidence of any kind of extraterrestrial life.  At this point, even the purported Mars bacteria traces lack compelling evidence.

Here’s a Drake Equation calculator (strictly to guestimate the number of alien civilizations within the Milky Way able to communicate—say with radio waves):

http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html

Bebelicious - 14 October 2006 12:17 PM

You are now doomed to join my minions.

Today is the best day of my life!  I have SO! always wanted to be part of something big!  And now I am!

Dan the happy minion-member [See, Mom!  I told you I would make it someday!]

BetterLookAgain - 15 October 2006 05:52 AM

See this link:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i2/stars.asp

Great site. Very funny!

I particularly liked this bit…

[quote author=AnswersInGenesis.org]
Every year, rivers and other sources dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year. As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today

I don’t know if this is on topic or not (I’m not really sure what the topic is, to be honest), but my favorite author, Philip Jose Farmer wrote a good book called “Jesus on Mars”. 

You can get it used at Amazon and it just may have all the answers!

Jesus on Mars

David B. - 15 October 2006 08:54 PM

BetterLookAgain - 15 October 2006 05:52 AM

See this link:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i2/stars.asp

Great site. Very funny!

I particularly liked this bit…

[quote author=AnswersInGenesis.org]
Every year, rivers and other sources dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year. As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today

BetterLookAgain - 17 October 2006 01:15 AM

If the aluminum tests are wrong?

Ummmm. . .then that means that that particular test can’t be relied on.

And there’s no way to verify the “accepted” tests.

But there are.

Then what do you really know?

Plenty, actually.

BetterLookAgain - 17 October 2006 02:23 AM

Cmon now, you really believe all these dating tests?

Nope, not all of them.  For example, I don’t believe the ones that show that the Earth is only a couple centuries old.

I found out how Real the scam works.
(fossils dated compared to rock compared back to fossil ... in a grand, orchestrated fantasy circle)

But that’s not all that there is to it.  For example, you can use things like radiocarbon dating on organic material.  Yes, this does give a more and more non-exact measure the older things are, but it can still give you a general idea.  And if you know that the dead critters in one layer of sediments are about 200 million years old, and the ones in another layer are about 250 million years old, then why shouldn’t you take it as a probability that the nonorganic sediments laid down in between are somewhere between 200 and 250 million years old? And that the rocks from below the 250 million year old sediments are older than 250 million years old?

And there are other methods for getting a general age estimate as well.

My big question to any scientist that trys to shove “3 billion years ago..” in my face IS:
  Were you there??? Do You know anybody that was???

If you’re going to use that argument, then were you there?  And if not, then how do you know that 3 billion years ago is wrong?

How can you look me in the face and tell something is such and such years old when you have Nothing KNOWN to be 3 billion years old to compare it to.

By comparing it to something that they know is 1 billion years old, and by using tests and their best judgment to determine that it’s about three times as old.  Sure, they can’t tell that a rock was formed exactly at 3:27 pm GMT on Thursday the 12th of June 2,798,584,865 BC.  But they can tell that’s its very, very old.

What I really want is instead of the constant presumed lie… shoved down my throat,
Is for your type to just say “we don’t know, but here are some theories…”

Which happens to be along the line of what they do say in such situations.  Well, most of them, at least; you always end up with some people in any group who are a bit weird.

And then there’s the little minor detail that sometimes they actually do know.

And Your line: “I know plenty, actually…” seems to sum up everything. (kinda sick, kinda sad, kinda scary)

What, you’re against people knowing things?

BetterLookAgain - 17 October 2006 01:15 AM

[quote author=“David B.”]They sure do. For example, the same calculation for for the amount of aluminum shows that the ocean is a mere 100 years old. ....

Thank you! You just said it right there.

If the aluminum tests are wrong? And there’s no way to verify the “accepted” tests. Then what do you really know?

You know that the oceans aren’t only 100 years old. Therefore you know that measuring the amount of an element in the oceans does not give you a reliable indication of its age. Therefore you know that deducing the age of the oceans from the amount of salt in them is bullshit.

What is more answersingenesis know this. They know that their methodology produces a ridiculous range of values for the age of the oceans. They know that the original work was wrong and (very possibly deliberately) omitted the largest known process for removing salt from the oceans. They also know that there are millions of people out there who don’t know this; so they repeat the lie again and again in the hope that it will silence the truth. They are scum and a disservice to christians everywhere (though I can’t say whether they know this).

[quote author=biblebelievers.com]In other words it is impossible to observe evolution in action, therefore it is impossible to establish it, not only as fact, but impossible to establish it even as a theory!

Ahearn, J. N. 1980. Evolution of behavioral reproductive isolation in a laboratory stock of Drosophila silvestris. Experientia. 36:63-64.
Boraas, M. E. 1983. Predator induced evolution in chemostat culture. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. 64:1102.
Breeuwer, J. A. J. and J. H. Werren. 1990. Microorganisms associated with chromosome destruction and reproductive isolation between two insect species. Nature. 346:558-560.
Budd, A. F. and B. D. Mishler. 1990. Species and evolution in clonal organisms—a summary and discussion. Systematic Botany 15:166-171.
Bullini, L. and G. Nascetti. 1990. Speciation by hybridization in phasmids and other insects. Canadian Journal of Zoology. 68:1747-1760.
Butters, F. K. 1941. Hybrid Woodsias in Minnesota. Amer. Fern. J. 31:15-21.
Butters, F. K. and R. M. Tryon, jr. 1948. A fertile mutant of a Woodsia hybrid. American Journal of Botany. 35:138.
Callaghan, C. A. 1987. Instances of observed speciation. The American Biology Teacher. 49:3436.
Castenholz, R. W. 1992. Species usage, concept, and evolution in the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Journal of Phycology 28:737-745.
Clausen, J., D. D. Keck and W. M. Hiesey. 1945. Experimental studies on the nature of species. II. Plant evolution through amphiploidy and autoploidy, with examples from the Madiinae. Carnegie Institute Washington Publication, 564:1-174.
Craig, T. P., J. K. Itami, W. G. Abrahamson and J. D. Horner. 1993. Behavioral evidence for host-race fromation in Eurosta solidaginis. Evolution. 47:1696-1710.
Crossley, S. A. 1974. Changes in mating behavior produced by selection for ethological isolation between ebony and vestigial mutants of Drosophilia melanogaster. Evolution. 28:631-647.
de Oliveira, A. K. and A. R. Cordeiro. 1980. Adaptation of Drosophila willistoni experimental populations to extreme pH medium. II. Development of incipient reproductive isolation. Heredity. 44:123-130.
de Vries, H. 1905. Species and varieties, their origin by mutation.
de Wet, J. M. J. 1971. Polyploidy and evolution in plants. Taxon. 20:29-35.
del Solar, E. 1966. Sexual isolation caused by selection for positive and negative phototaxis and geotaxis in Drosophila pseudoobscura. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US). 56:484-487.
Digby, L. 1912. The cytology of Primula kewensis and of other related Primula hybrids. Ann. Bot. 26:357-388.
Dobzhansky, T. and O. Pavlovsky. 1971. Experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila. Nature. 230:289-292.
Dodd, D. M. B. 1989. Reproductive isolation as a consequence of adaptive divergence in Drosophila melanogaster. Evolution 43:1308-1311.
Dodd, D. M. B. and J. R. Powell. 1985. Founder-flush speciation: an update of experimental results with Drosophila. Evolution 39:1388-1392.

And that’s just A to D!

Edit: changed disgrace to disservice, no reason for all christians to take the heat for these bozos.

And, by the way…

(A) The theory is ‘Natural Selection’, evolution is the observation it seeks to explain.

(B) You can test a theory through its correct prediction of a previously unknown datum. It is not necessary in science for you to be able to ‘conduct and experiment’ (astronomers would be totally f***ed if it weren’t so).

[quote author=biblebelievers.com]Question: How can anything come to life if it is dead? While laughing at the resurrection of Jesus Christ, they believe in a resurrection of all life from nothing! Tsk, tsk.

Define life. Abiogenesis in the scientific world requires only that sufficient organic molecules are around and that at least one autocatalytic reaction occur. Variant autocatalytic reactions more able to function in the primordial soup would then prosper at the expense of less robust types, leading to evoultion and natural selection. Mind you, you might wait millions of years for something like that to happen!

Question: Better yet, can anything come to life of itself when it never was?

The big bang is cosmology, not biology.

Question: How can an explosion create anything but chaos?

Question: Are you saying a gigantic explosion will not kill?

Well the Sun is an ongoing, massive fusion explosion on a scale to dwarf anything human beings are ever likely to produce. Sunlight makes plants grow and keeps us all alive.

Question: Do you really expect me to believe an explosion was the deciding factor in the creation of life? I thought explosions, of the magnitude that would send planets flying through the universe, would kill life, not create it!

If you think the Big Bang sent ‘planets flying through the universe’, you need to read more than the back of the dust-jacket.

Question: Before the gas cloud exploded [Gas becoming billions of tons of rocks?] how did it form? The gas had to have a beginning, didn’t it?

Gas? 

Question: If it came from nothing how can something come from nothing? Isn’t that faith?

Science believes in the Big Bang because it followed the evidence. Effectively, you mathematically run the universe backwards and see what happens. What happens is it seems to explode out of nowhere at astonishing speed. Most physicists will, if asked nicely, admit they have no idea why (but it’ll be fun finding out).

Question: When you have faith don’t you have a religion?

A philosophical point. I have faith in my wife (and, incidentally, worship her), does that make her my religion? I accept scientific claims I am, myself, incapable of verifying, because the scientific method has repeatedly verified other claims to me in the past. I do not ‘have faith’ in the scientific method, I trust it based on my prior experience.

Question: How can 0 + 0 equal life when it does not even equal one? If it did equal one then how can one female produce offspring? Okay, how could one male produce offspring? Oh, a single cell became two? Then somewhere along the evolutionary trail you had to have male and female.

Question: How does trotting out arbitrary bits of bad math prove anything? 1+1+1 does not equal 3, what does that say about the blessed trinity?

Question: (a)Which one came first, the male or the female? How could one male produce? How could just one female produce? (b)If evolution is correct then somewhere in history there had to be just one whale, one monkey, one lizard, right? Was that one, a male or female?

(a) Logically, neither came first because if there was only one then it wouldn’t be given the name of either sex (are bacteria he or she?). Diploidy (having two of each chromasome) certainly seems to confer several advantages to the organism, but also a fairly obvious cost (twice the work). Perhaps in circumstances where the greater damage resistence and variability of diploidy was more than usually beneficial it became the fixed genotype. Perhaps sex wasn’t originally to our benefit at all, but was a result of the transmission mechanism of a cellular parasite.

(b) Wrong, if sex evolved before whales monkeys and lizards they would have inherited it. I.e. they were male and female long before they were monkeys and whales.

Question: Do both fish and man have eyes because man evolved from a fish or because both man and fish needed to see, in order to fulfill their intended creative purpose?

Because (i) man evolved from fish, and (ii) because it has remained advantageous to the intermediate steps between fish and man to be able to see. Clearly there is no point in putting eyes on something that will never be anywhere with enough light to see. So NS would suggest that genetic drift and the phenotypical cost of producing eyes would lead to fish in dark caves losing their ability to see.