Religious debate

Discussion in 'Blazers OT Forum' started by julius, Sep 14, 2009.

  1. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    Could you expand on "radiochemical equilibrium"?
     
  2. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    That would be the golden rule.

    Where did it originate?

    http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_origin_of_the_golden_rule

    What is the origin of the golden rule?

    The Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a paraphrase of a line from Matthew 7:12 in the New Testament. Hillel's precept restates the idea more directly: Do not do unto others what you don't want done to yourself.

    FURTHER


    Hillel's version is certainly a precept that may follow. However, there is a difference between his advise and Jesus' "Golden Rule."

    The words of Jesus to "Do unto others" is a proactive command, and for a positive benefit to others, that is "as you would have them do unto you." In other words, do something positive. ' Don't just sit there. Go and do good to others.'

    Hillel's words are more passive, suggesting that 'you don't neccessarily have to do anything good to others, just as long as you aren't doing anything bad to them, that's fine.'
     
  3. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    I assumed it was Christian in origin, but that doesn't mean I'm going to throw it out. It still makes sense from a sociological view.
     
  4. zєяσ

    zєяσ Truth is beautiful

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    I heard it was the Egyptians:
    ~1970-1640 B.C.E. "Do for one who may do for you, / That you may cause him thus to do." —The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant 109-110, translated by R. B. Parkinson.

    http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Golden_Rule

    Wikipedia has similar dates.
    I could care less for its origin though. It seems like a basic understanding worldwide.
     
  5. crowTrobot

    crowTrobot die comcast

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  6. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    So does religion.

    FWIW, I am an agnostic, as I've mentioned a few times.

    For all the talk of paradoxes, there are many in science.

    The big bang. It wasn't big and it didn't bang. You can't hear a "bang" in space (or lack of it) since there's no air to carry the sound waves.

    Science talks about 100ms after the big bang, but can't conceive of anything of any substance about 100ms before the event.

    Then there's a really huge assumption that you can look at an expanding universe and rewind it back in time to some singularity.

    Speaking of the big bang, isn't it a creation story in its own right?

    65M years ago, there was something akin to a biblical flood or soddom and gomorrah. Science has actual flood stories, too - including a massive ice dam that broke in the Pacific Northwest eons ago.

    There's apocalypse stories, too. Global warming (which leads to floods of biblical proportions, ask Al Gore or the UN IPCC). The sun is going to explode. We're going to be hit by a meteor. And so on.

    How about the scientific principle known as the observer effect? Could it possibly be that light goes 186,000 miles/sec only when we measure it, but goes faster or slower the rest of the time? Or C14 decays at a rate we measure today but at a different rate 1M years ago? We simply take a lot for granted.

    So I come back to my original point. I am not a man of faith, nor do I have much respect for televangelists or most religious leaders (MLK Jr. being the kind of exception). THe earth is 4.5B years old. The universe is at least 13.5B years old - maybe older if science is wrong (and its been wrong plenty).

    What my take on religion is that it has two basic purposes. First is to provide a set of morals for society (though they are not really attainable). Second is to explain the unexplainable.

    The latter is pretty obvious if you study history. Even very ancient history where tribal and primitive man prayed to the sun and moon and stars for good harvests or for fertility for the women.

    The greeks and egyptians believed in multiple gods. The greek (and roman) gods were rather odd - they behaved more like humans than all powerful beings (Zeus was a rapist, eh?).

    Judaism was a political and societal movement (among other things) to unite disparate religions under the banner of ONE GOD. The bible is a fine collection of stories with both moral and historical significance. The morality is obvious. The historical significance isn't as much.

    Was there a man named Noah? Perhaps, not all that relevant. Was there a flood? Almost certainly, and science agrees. Was there an ark? I don't think so, at least not in the literal sense; perhaps some lunatic had the foresight to build a boat when he saw the threat of a flood, or perhaps it's symbolism for how life forms survived it. Or perhaps it's the boy scout motto - always be prepared!

    A key thing to remember is how small the world was to people of ancient times. The edge of the world was maybe the horizon, or as far as they could sail in flimsy boats. As travel became easier, the size of their world grew.

    Another source of biblical stories, I find, is consietent with the theme of persecuted race, god's chosen people, god steps up and helps the underdog win. At least in the old testament. Quite often, the stories were for the effect of cheering up a people losing military conflicts or to provide reason for hope in dire times.

    Christianity is Judaism-plus. One god plus jesus. One bible plus the new testament. Jesus fulfills a biblical prophesy (messiah) of Judaism and becomes the focal point to rally oppressed people (Roman occupation, crucafixions, etc.). The first world-wide PR campaign. Well, most of the world-wide (not africa, not the americas, etc., until MUCH later on).

    Was there a man named Jesus? I certainly think it was likely, but he was likely someone akin to a rabbi. Made greater through tall tales and song.

    Religion is the foundation for law and morality. It's hard for me to deny it because I see it in history. We didn't adopt everything in the bible, but "thou shall not kill" and "thou shall not steal" and a few of the other commandments are (somehow) "secular" rules we take for granted.

    To me, religion has lost most of its ability to explain the unexplainable - science has more Reasoned explanations that evolve as facts dictate (at least this was true up to a few decades ago).

    Realize the bible was cannonized - a collection of writings arbitrarily cobbled together by a political body. The proof of this is in the very first book, Genesis, which has TWO creation stories (garden of eden/adam's rib, and 6 days/7th he rested). The works not approved are (to me) equally interesting.

    It is a political and philisophical organization and always has been. It has evolved in that sense over the centuries. At one point it was the State, and the benefactor of Science itself (see Gregor Mendel and many like him going back much further). Today it has significantly less of an overal presence in society, but does some amazing things (as a whole, though there are some bad apples in every endeavor).

    I'll conclude by repeating that I'm an agnostic. I don't believe in much I can't verify with fact and Reason. I don't deny that God exists, and the "god of gaps" theory is not unReasonable. I could believe if "He" appeared before me in a burning bush or something.

    I do respect that while I measure things with scientific type instruments that others may measure things in other ways (the beauty of a snowflake is evidence "He" exists).
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2009
  7. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    To start, did you know there's this guy named don? Well, fish have gills and 2x2 =4!

    uh i hope you're not suggesting the observer effect applies to C.

    Third, is frequently being used to start wars and killing people in the name of god.

    So there was this dude named Hammurabi, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't religious.

    And uh, was the rest of your argument, religion is the opium of the masses to keep them in check?:confused:
     
  8. zєяσ

    zєяσ Truth is beautiful

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    The theory states that there was a heated center and it expanded. I think the name big bang was coined by a non-scientist. I'll get back to you on this. I'll need to go to recheck.
    Hence one of the purposes of the CERN project going on below Sweden now. Hawking pretty much states that we shouldn't concern much if there was anything before the event until we get some evidence for a hypothesis. Right now it is just speculation.

    I agree that there could be another possibility and that rewinding it mathematically is not convincing, but admittedly I don't know the details of the theory in its entirety. for all we know the universe could be eternal due to the laws of thermodynamics and it became more complex as time passed. But to say it is a creation story is wrong. That phrasing implies a creator, which currently has more philosophical arguments than scientific ones.
    The biblical flood implies it was due to a divine intervention. Natural events and disasters aren't biblical.
    You mean end of the human species, world, or the universe itself. The holy books seem to imply existence which then leads to an after world. Apocalyptic? Yes. Unnatural? No.

    Just to add to the list of fun stuff: black holes, our solar system is a highway for asteroids, galaxy collisions, the moon moving further away, etc.:ghoti:
    Why would it decay at a different rate?
    What could cause light to go slower simply by observing it?
    I ask because I suck at physics...D:


    More or less it is assumptive. But what makes science more reliable is its flexibility as the evidence comes in

    i agreed until the last couple of sentences. More or less religion became a system to help reinforce morals, introduce increasingly popular ones on a wider scale, etc... (I look at the development of morality through evolutionary terms and to an extent, memetics). Morality also has variety, as evidenced throughout history and different species like wolves. And I'll add that religion is also used for power.

    I disagree here. The God of the gaps hypothesis is ridiculous imo (as evidenced by the Flying Spaghetti Monster phenomenon). And I wouldnt necessarily accept a burning and talking bush as clear evidence. I would begin to doubt my sanity before jumping to "it's god(s)".
    More or less I try not to suspend my reasoning for what-ifs and unlike many others I don't attribute the beauty, awe, and danger of the universe to a deity (remembers carl sagan's pale blue dot talk). everyone I think everyone has that type of awe, just different attributions to it.
     
  9. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    How do you know that C is a constant? It's not (it travels at 0 in a black hole, right?)

    I made the point that Science makes some assumptions that may be the result of observation from a particular place in the universe or a specific time.

    The bible is full of war stories. Brutal stories, in fact. No prisoners taken.

    That speaks to morality, doesn't it?


    I'm pretty sure Hammurabi was born maybe 1000 years after religious laws were at least being handed down through oral tradition.
     
  10. crowTrobot

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    obviously that's just a semantic paradox, not an actual one.

    the flow of time we experience was likely created in the big bang, so "100 ms before" doesn't really make sense.

    as for what exists "outside" or "beyond" the big bang that might have caused it, science can and has conceived of lots of theories that might work in principal. the problem is we don't (yet) have the technology to test them. again there aren't necessarily any actual paradoxes involved.

    there is remnant background radiation everywhere we look in the universe that fits the big bang theory perfectly, so rewinding to a starting point of some kind is pretty solidly supported by evidence. whether that starting point was actually a singularity or something else is on less solid ground.

    evolution is the foundation of morality.

    i don't need the bible to tell me it's socially detrimental to kill and steal, and what is socially detrimental directly affects my personal well being. rules of social morality derive from experience and common sense of what works and what doesn't. how else do you think we choose what rules from the bible to keep and what to discard?

    god of the gaps is a logical fallacy, not a theory.

    those two things are incompatable. respecting a view that is incompatable with yours makes no sense.
     
  11. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    except space is warped from gravity. And black holes have QUITE a bit of gravity. But you were talking about observing it? Who is to say it's not being absorbed entirely, as opposed to slowed?

    Do you think animal troops don't have moral codes, such as "if you over throw the alpha, you are the new alpha?" or "if you attack her baby elephant, i'll fight back" Do you think the elephants and lions and tigers and bears have a god?
     
  12. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    I don't know about that. The L*kers are incompatible with the Blazers, but we can still respect them.:dunno:
     
  13. BrianFromWA

    BrianFromWA Editor in Chief Staff Member Editor in Chief

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    I'll leave this after reading Denny's post, but the equilibrium stuff I was talking about was this:

    In all decay equations, you have to have some knowns. Decay constants are measurable and, well, constant (after some small fudge factor either way, but that's not really an issue). New technology allows for a much more accurate count of the radioisotopes you're looking for (C-14, in the cases we were talking about) than Liddy had in the 50's. We can measure the ratio of C-12 to C-14 in currently living organisms, but to project that back 5000 years (or billions, in the case of things like potassium-argon or thorium dating) you need to assume a few things:
    Assumption 1: The original number of unstable atoms can be known. Scientists assume how many unstable (parent) atoms existed at the beginning based on how many parent and daughter atoms are left today.
    Assumption 2: The rate of change was constant. Scientists assume that radioactive atoms have changed at the same rate throughout time
    Assumption 3: The daughter atoms were all produced by radioactive decay. Scientists assume that no outside forces, such as flowing groundwater, contaminated the sample.
    The one that I have the most trouble with is #2: that the earth is at equilibrium in its rates of formation and decay, and that it's been that way the entire time.
    Those are some pretty large ifs, right? I mean, it's great that he had an assumption until proven invalid, but I think it has been. C-14 is NOT at equilibrium right now...in the 50's and 60's the amounts fluctuated significantly due to nuclear testing and such. If calibrated (and I'm not positive how that occurs, but I'll go with it), it seems to work for things at about 5000 years old (wasn't one of the original tests a log predicted accurately from a pharaoh's tomb or something?). But what isn't talked about much is that much of the stuff dated from King Tut's tomb were so far off that the Egyptologists dismissed Liddy's calculations.
    We're told that you can make the case that it can detect atoms counts so accurately that you can go back 65k years or so (so approximately 1/(2^12) or 1/5000 of the original). But all that's assuming that the rates of C14 increase and decrease (and the ratios of C-12 to C-14) have been constant the entire time, when we know that they haven't even been constant over the last 50 years! Even without the curves, though, we're told by the scientists that the errors are only on the magnitude of 200-800 years, so that if something reads, say, 25000BC, then there's a 100% certainty that it's from 24000-26000BC. However, more recently others have tried to duplicate Libby's measurements with more modern equipment and much greater accuracy. They concluded that the out-of-balance condition is real and even worse than Libby believed (I believe his rates were 18 for formation and 15 for decay). Radiocarbon is actually forming 28% - 37% faster than it is decaying.
    One of the things that's happened recently on this front is the attempt at upper-end measurement of the C-14 dating method. Diamonds were taken from rocks aged at around 100 million years old. Carbon-dating the diamonds showed an age of 65000 years. How could that be? I'm not an expert in anthropology...have any of the skeletons/dinosaur bones/etc. ever been tested for C-14? On one hand, you could say "they're so old (in the millions of years) that there's no C-14 left". You could also say "they died in the Flood, before there was appreciable C-14". Or you might see C-14 in there (like the diamonds) which shows that they're orders of magnitude younger than originally thought.

    Going back to the equilibrium thing: one of the factors that contributes heavily to the rates of formation is the effect of high-energy cosmic rays interacting with CO2 and other molecules in the atmosphere (especially in the 5-35k altitude range, for some reason). The hypothesis is that as magnetic field strength of the earth goes up, cosmic ray penetration goes down and less C-14 will be formed. Many people agree, however, that the rock record indicates that the magnetic field has varied in both strength and direction over time. This has serious implications on C14-C12 chemistry in the upper atmosphere.

    Say, for instance, that right now we have a 1 trillion to 1 ratio of C-14 to C-12 in our bodies. Assuming (as they do now) that it's been constant for millenia, if we found a skeleton tomorrow that had a ratio of, say 4Trillion to 1 (or 1/8 normal), they could say that the skeleton was pretty certainly 11000+/-500 years old---blowing the whole young earth theory out of the water. However, if 5000 years ago the earth's magnetic field was different, and allowed only 1/2 of the C-14 atoms to be formed, there would be a 2T-to-1 ratio at the beginning, and you'd be off by a half-life of 5500 years. Or perhaps there was an extremely weak field that allowed more to be formed, and you started off with a 1T-to-4 ratio. You'd be off (too young) by 2 half-lives, or 11000 years. What was the magnetic field like in 4000 BC? Or, if you believe the bible, what was the effect of a shield of water vapor surrounding the earth pre-Flood? If there had been this shield of water vapor, wouldn't C-14 formation been non-existent up until after the flood, and therefore the clock would've started at around 3000BC or so? That would sure mess with rates of C-14 decay and formation, and not allow anything close to an equilibrium situation.

    This is one of the reasons I'm a big fan of science. I'd love to have someone build a model that shows what the magnetic field has done over the last 10k years and hear the explanation why. It would be great if someone would say "you're right...the effects of that axiom being changed would cause a large error to be input into the equation". Instead, it's "you blindly follow Ken Ham, and therefore cannot possibly have any relevance in a big-boy science discussion".

    I'm fine with the thought that I'm a flat-earth guy, and unworthy to discuss these things. The thread was "religious debate", and I think everyone got their money's worth. I probably missed something in my novel of a post. Thanks for the discussion.
     
  14. crowTrobot

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    i'm referring to what people think is objectively true, not subjective opinion. presumably you don't "respect" a literal reading of the bible as a method for determining the age of the earth.

    adhering to the objectivity of science necessarily has to comes with the conclusion that someone who thinks their emotional response to a rainbow is evidence god exists is simply deluding themselves. to say you respect the views of someone you think is deluding themselves makes no sense.

    you can't have it both ways.
     
  15. crowTrobot

    crowTrobot die comcast

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    then why are you disagreeing with the virtually unanimous conclusions of the world's entire scientific community? are you the smartest person on earth?
     
  16. BrianFromWA

    BrianFromWA Editor in Chief Staff Member Editor in Chief

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    Nope. I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express this morning.

    But one of the things I do know a bit about is nuclear decay, rates of decay computation in casualty situations across nucleotides, determination of radioactivity left (useful after a reactor leak or spill)....stuff that wasn't calculatable in the 50's. When I take that government-supplied knowledge, and then read books like The Genesis Flood, or read papers detailing C-14 methodology, or the history of Liddy's publishing process, it doesn't make sense to me and I avoid buying into it as a matter of faith (completely unlike my faith in God). You can call that hypocritical, and may have a point. My core belief (my bias, if you will) is that the Bible is inerrant, that God is the Creator, and that Jesus lived a perfect life and died so that my sin wouldn't condemn me. And I totally understand if someone thinks I'm off my rocker for thinking that. Unlike the medieval Catholic church, when something comes along that challenges those beliefs, I necessarily have to take a hard look at it before adopting a new worldview. I don't willy-nilly dismiss something, unlike some of you have. In my professional experience I cannot buy into the assumptions Liddy made (and others make today, perhaps without even realizing it). As I said in the post earlier, I'm not a Hebrew scholar and am open to being corrected about the 6013 years age of the earth. Maybe it's 7500. Maybe not.
     
  17. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    are you worried the myans had nuclear bombs to change the radioactive levels?
     
  18. BrianFromWA

    BrianFromWA Editor in Chief Staff Member Editor in Chief

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    Nope. But I also didn't track the magnetic field. And the records from back then say there was a halo of water encompassing the earth. What does that do to cosmic rays? :)
     
  19. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    are you suggesting the cosmic rays dissipated the water? Because cosmic rays are the Juggernauts of physics. They ain't stopping for some pansy-ass water halo!
     
  20. zєяσ

    zєяσ Truth is beautiful

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    Coping out creation talking points is fun
    [video=youtube;BA7Jr__IeUw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA7Jr__IeUw[/video]

    It's not as if geologists haven't asked themselves the appropriate questions with respect to such matters, and have devised means of detecting relevant changes in a sample and compensating for them.

    Small seasonal oscillations observed are correlated with seasonal variations in neutrino flux from the Sun. This would make sense for beta-decaying isotopes, because beta decay is mediated by the weak nuclear force, and neutrinos are weak-force interacting particles.

    However, I don't think this would affect alpha-decaying isotopes, as alpha decay is mediated by the strong nuclear force, and neutrinos don't interact by a strong nuclear force. You could figure out the answer yourself. Just make a list of all the radiometric-dating elements and then look up which ones are alpha and which ones are beta. K-Ar dating relies upon an isotope that engages in electron capture or positron emission decay, which can be thought of as beta decay in reverse (though the exact physical interactions are more detailed than this). To deal with some of the problems inherent in K-Ar dating modern labs have moved on to Ar-Ar dating, which involves direct manipulation of the nuclides in question in a nuclear reactor, which produces known quantities of nuclides.

    Rb-Sr dating technique uses the Rb87 isotope, which is a beta-decaying isotope, but its half life is so long (4.88 × 1010 Yr) that the neutrino flux that would be required to shorten its half-life measurably would be enormous. Assuming for one moment that a reasonable relationship exists between neutrino flux and effect upon half-life, the neutrino flux that would be required to compress a 48.8 billion year half live into the 6,000 years needed by creationists would be equivalent to the output of trillions of simultaneously detonating supernovae in close proximity - in fact, it would probably need more neutrinos passing through the planet in one go than exist in the entire universe.
     

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