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tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
 Posted - 08/02/2001 : 15:09:37
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Anyone care to address (and perhaps rebut) the most common arguments and empirical findings and put forth but scientific
creationists in support of their views?
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
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tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2001 : 15:21:18 [Permalink]
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Oops! I missed the thread just below. It is kinda stale and does not explicitly explain most of the creationist arguments, but perhaps I'll, oh never mind...
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
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tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2001 : 16:37:02 [Permalink]
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Screw it, I'm gonna try to start a new thread that actually talks about creationist arguments.
Here's one. A rhetorically powerful and rather common creationist argument is the argument from entropy. Have we covered this one recently in any depth?
1. It is scientific fact that things get more disordered rather than more ordered
2. Evolution states that things get more ordered.
3. Evolution violates established scientific fact.
So where's the catch?
"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
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tergiversant
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
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Boron10
Religion Moderator
USA
1266 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2001 : 17:03:17 [Permalink]
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I believe this has been covered, but it couldn't hurt to readdress these issues for the sake of us new guys.
quote:
1. It is scientific fact that things get more disordered rather than more ordered
It is a scientific Law that the entropy in a system can only decrease with an increase of energy put into the system. The sun is constantly providing the Earth with more energy. quote:
2. Evolution states that things get more ordered.
Evolution states that things change. Sometimes this leads to a system with more order, but not necessarily.
quote:
3. Evolution violates established scientific fact.
So where's the catch?
There is no catch; just a basic misuse of physical principles.
I am afraid I'm not clever enough to come up with a good signature, eh? |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2001 : 23:05:23 [Permalink]
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quote:
"Life is too complex to have happened by chance."
This is one of the ones also used by the Intelligent Design folks. Sadly, like Creationists, the Intelligent Design crowd turns a blind eye to the fact that complexity does not equal efficiency OR good design.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 23:34:24 [Permalink]
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The wording for the law of entropy includes: *IN A CLOSED SYSTEM*.
To quote the definition in the Facts on File Dictionary of Astronomy, Third Edition, it goes as such:
*entropy A measure of the amount of disorder in a physical system. It never decreases in any physical interaction of a closed system.*
Creationists try to misuse scientific terms to argue against science. Watch them. They are very sneaky.
ljbrs
Perfection Is a State of Growth... |
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Lisa
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2001 : 12:35:05 [Permalink]
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I've had creationists try to use the 2nd law of thermodynamics argument on me. That argument is so old it has whiskers. When I point out that it refers to a closed system, I get blank looks. This tells me they really don't know squat about the subject, and are just parroting whatever they've been told by their pastor/priest/shaman/whatever.
The funniest explanation of the laws of thermodynamics compared them to a game of poker. I forget who wrote it, Asimov or Clarke. It starts out "The house always wins". Wish I could find this again. Any help?
Lisa
Chaos...Confusion...Destruction...My Work Here Is Done |
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ktesibios
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2001 : 15:15:48 [Permalink]
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quote:
The funniest explanation of the laws of thermodynamics compared them to a game of poker. I forget who wrote it, Asimov or Clarke. It starts out "The house always wins". Wish I could find this again. Any help?
Lisa
Chaos...Confusion...Destruction...My Work Here Is Done
I don't know who the source was, but the way I heard them was:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't get out of the game.
Boris Karloff died for your sins. |
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Lisa
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2001 : 15:40:05 [Permalink]
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There was further explanation. For example, naysayers will charge that the earth is thriving, instead of winding down. This was countered by the explanation that we can steal chips from the guy sitting next to us at the table, i.e., the sun. Eventually of course, our partner will also run out of chips.
Lisa
Chaos...Confusion...Destruction...My Work Here Is Done |
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James
SFN Regular
USA
754 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2001 : 22:02:06 [Permalink]
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I don't know if this is appropriate for this thread, but I found this site elsewhere: Bible Absurdities
I especially like these two:
quote:
RE 14:1-4 Heaven is to be inhabited by 144,000 virgin men who have not been "defiled" by women.
MOUTH
quote:
RE 21:16 Heaven is only about 1500 miles square.
Not much room up there...
The way I see it, christians are godless too...they just don't know it yet. |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2001 : 02:38:41 [Permalink]
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I find the Intelligent Design argument that complexity indicates design to be absurd. Complexity points solely towards a Darwinian chaos which, if you are very lucky, you have caught during a slow period.
Simplicity would point toward design. A perfectly spherical world orbiting in a perfect circle and populated by creatures who were all of a solid piece, like Gumby and Pokey, that would imply a creator. This world…forget it.
I have never been able to deny the requests of beautiful women. Recently when a diminutive raven-haired beauty, who will be a beautiful woman in a dozen years or so, asked me to take her to Ben & Jerry's I could not refuse.
However…
Several years back my doctor was waving the results of my cholesterol test in front of my face, making dread prognostications of heart attacks and strokes if I did not change my wicked ways. So I actually did. Exercise began and milk products ceased.
But, hey, one little ice cream cone in five years! What harm could that do? After all I had taken my Pravachol and my cholesterol levels were perfect-if artificially so.
What I didn't know was that, grazing deep inside my guts, was a herd of animalcules that lived solely on lactose. My doctor's health regime had been a Cretaceous asteroid to them and they now form a thin fossilized layer in my digestive tract
To say "Lactose Intolerant " sounds like you are just being smug. "I don't like lactose and I'll have nothing to do with it, so there." But in reality it means that you have turned into a high explosive. You are a danger to yourself and to those around you. "Abandon ship! Women and children first!"
Death by chocolate indeed.
Nope, nothing intelligently designed around here, just the survival of the fittest. In this case "the fittest" are those who can eat Cherry Garcia without cursing the day they were born.
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The brain that was stolen from my laboratory was a criminal brain. Only evil will come from it. |
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James
SFN Regular
USA
754 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2001 : 06:20:22 [Permalink]
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quote:
Death by chocolate indeed.
Only way better to die, IMO, is to die while having sex. Yea-hoo! 
The way I see it, christians are godless too...they just don't know it yet. |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2001 : 11:54:07 [Permalink]
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You could always die during sex and still have chocolate involved 
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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