Are Evolutionists Delusional (or just in denial)?

[Mav88]

Science is a lot of people's religion. They believe it with all their hearts... The books say that the Geological Column is calibrated by the Strata, and then somewhere else in the book they say the strate is calibrated by the Geological Column... since the word "calibrate" means "compare to a known standard" they are lying.. nothing in that system is calibrated. So they have a belief system, not science. Further, they throw out any scientific readings on age that don't fit their belief system. 75% of readings are discarded because they don't fit their belief system... then they keep telling us all that we better believe their belief system because it's science...

A modern student can take an argument that merits a failing grade in Philosophy101, that of circular reasoning as demonstrated above, and march it down the hall to Anthropology101 and get an "A" with it...

Got to disagree with you there eight, since I am a trained scientist.

First geologic dating does not rely on one method, but the fact that several independent methods converge to the same result. Usually you have to far deeper than standard textbooks to get answers that are really fully decorated with all the science that went into them.

With that, science will never claim absolute answers, ever. All results are tentative and they gain credibility over time as they are further examined. This is the opposite of religion, where one is given absolutes at the beginning and told they are immutable. To critically question is to lack faith, and that is a sin. Faith is the fundamental requirement of religion, faith is believing something without any evidence -by definition. In science however skeptism and objective experiments are required, in fact I can get famous if I can overturn an existing accepted theory by empirical demonstration. In religion you will get shunned if you 'overturn' the standard dogma. Science evolves, religion does not.

As I trained scientist I actually have less faith than you do in science. I don't really have faith, it's tentative accceptance based upon the available information- but subject to change. I have often wondered what if suddenly space were no longer translationally invariant. I do not take for granted that the scientific theories used to build your computer will always hold. You know what though? The replacement understanding has always come from another scientist, it has never come from a pastor, imam, rabbi, or whatever. There has not been a single shred of useful technology developed from the Koran, Torah, or Bible. All of humanities material progress has come from science. So because of the extremely poor record of religion and it's complete reliance on faith, I'll take any tentative geologic explaination over creationism.

Most everyone has faith in science, the ultimate test of which is when you put a prescription drug into your body.

 

[Barth Vader]

Quote from stu:

Your question was answered back in 1948.
So your 100% certainty is obviously 100% misplaced.

Virtual Particles spontaneously jump into and out of existence in a vaccuum, from nothing, as observed by the Casimir Effect.
The problem with Zero+ Zero = Zero is, there is no Zero. But you clearly hadn't thought of that.

Classic demonstration of how Creationists are content to understand zero but are if necessary content to remain 100% ignorant and wrong against any science or facts.

Hello stu,

I became intrigued with Schrodinger's "theory" a few years back, and read everything I could get my hands on. Therefore, I advanced myself from blissful ignorance to laughable stupidity on the subject of theorectical quantum mechanics !

Your statement that "virtual particles" jump into and out of existence, seems to be a stretch. If memory serves, I think the correct interpretation would be that the particle would be "virtual" regarding the estimated location on the wave length.

For the argument to go from observable cavity resonance to particle "creation" from nothing is incorrect (unless something has changed in the last few years).

If you are stating that the Casimir Effect, as regards mechanical fluctuation supports the BB theory, I would remind you that BB theory assumes that there was not pre-existing space or vacuum.

 

[Barth Vader]

Quote from stu:

Your question was answered back in 1948.
So your 100% certainty is obviously 100% misplaced.

Virtual Particles spontaneously jump into and out of existence in a vaccuum, from nothing, as observed by the Casimir Effect.
The problem with Zero+ Zero = Zero is, there is no Zero. But you clearly hadn't thought of that.

Classic demonstration of how Creationists are content to understand zero but are if necessary content to remain 100% ignorant and wrong against any science or facts.

Your remarks brought something very similar to mind, but I could not recall exactly what it was..........upon further thought it was a statement by Aristotle ( we injure ourselves when we limit these arguments to our recent history, they have been with us for a very long time)

I quote Aristotle:

"...Hence, some philosophers, as Leucippus and Plato, fall back upon an energy that is always acting. For they declare motion to be always in existence, but why, and of what kind, they do not say, nor how this is true. Nor do they add a cause of this perpetual motion. Now nothing is set in motion without cause, but there must always be some individual cause in existence. Thus, a thing is moved in this way by nature, and again by some force, either mind or something else in a different way.

What is the nature, then, of the primordial motion? for this must be able to vary as much as possible. But Plato certainly cannot call that the first principle, which he sometimes so considers, which imparts motion to itself; for he (also) says that subsequent to and yet coincident with the world is the soul. Hence the assumption, then, of the previous existence of potentiality to actuality (or energy) is in one way correct but in another not...."

Aristotle goes on to state the case for his "First Mover" thesis, a God that moves matter but is not moved.

 

[stu]

Quote from Mav88:

"Negate the curiosity in mankind" is a quantum leap from what I suggested in my orginal statement. I seem to be more in awe of the Universe/Life/Existence than you since to my way of intuiting, and I might add some of the greatest scientists in history, the question of how or why can always follow any discovery that science breaks through on. Inquiry never stops. My curiosity isintact.

Well I'm pleased to hear your curiosity is in tact. If you don't mind though, you are being a little presumptuous and sound somewhat contradictory about a couple of things in regard to your original statement. You do say ultimate answers are going to remain a mystery, which if true would make ineffective the curiosity in humans by counterbalancing the effect of it with a definate pointlessness.

Apart from that , as matter of interest, what on earth makes you think you would be more in awe about the Universe/Life/Existence than I or anyone else?. What grounds and moreover, for what reason what has been discussed so far between us, lead you to presume such a thing?

Quote from Mav88:

Even the vaunted quantum mechanics is handmaiden of Truth and simply incomplete when it arrives at a conclusion that something comes
from nothing.

That's very poetic I'm sure, but hardly pertinent to the reality of virtual particles, which do come into and go out of existence from nothing. Are you suggesting that it is not the case? Or are you about to claim some sort of validity by arguing the semantics of what is it that actually amounts to something called "nothing"? You know, like a creationist would.

Quote from Mav88:

Wait a couple thousand years, by then the puzzle will be closer to complete when more of its pieces are added.

You know this how? Why would it not be possible to answer in 100 years, or 50, or 10, or next year exactly?

Quote from Mav88:

If you can feel content with saying the virtual particle comes from nothing then the creationist saying that God comes from nothing is no less rigorous in his beliefs. All this brings into question, are our ideas about cause and effect being a necessary ingredient in our way of making sense of the world valid? Maybe not but they're surely intuitive. Is what we believe to be bedrock real or virtual?

It's nothing to do with me feeling content or my personal beliefs. Virtual particles / quantum fluctuation was predicted about 100 years ago forming the basis of quantum mechanics. QM / virtual particles/quantum fluctuations - their property of winking in and out of existence is now a scientific reality and thereby provides understanding and knowledge without which for one thing, we would not be able to send messages into space and around the globe in the way we are doing here.
If QM / virtual particles were only wrong or incorrect in part, none of QM would stand at all.

Quote from Mav88:

Please don't tell me I misunderstood what you said then repeat the same thing, that does nothing to advance the discourse.

You said this :
" [1] I'm just advocating that any ultimate answer for all our questions will always be one step ahead of our pursuit of it and [2] that bedrock a mystery. "

I suggest you are either deliberately or mistakenly misunderstanding. What you say is the [1] dismissal of the ability to discover ultimate answers by [2] an assumption that they cannot be found.

 

[stu]

Quote from Barth Vader:

Hello stu,

I became intrigued with Schrodinger's "theory" a few years back, and read everything I could get my hands on. Therefore, I advanced myself from blissful ignorance to laughable stupidity on the subject of theorectical quantum mechanics !

Your statement that "virtual particles" jump into and out of existence, seems to be a stretch. If memory serves, I think the correct interpretation would be that the particle would be "virtual" regarding the estimated location on the wave length.

For the argument to go from observable cavity resonance to particle "creation" from nothing is incorrect (unless something has changed in the last few years).

If you are stating that the Casimir Effect, as regards mechanical fluctuation supports the BB theory, I would remind you that BB theory assumes that there was not pre-existing space or vacuum.

Hello Barth,

Firstly, Virtual Particles are real, they are not "virtual". This isn't a stretch. They come into and go out of existence from nothing, from the vacuum of empty space.
Quantum mechanics is grounded upon such information if any of which were , faulty, wrong or incorrect, would mean all of QM would be scrapped. But then if that were to be so, as I mentioned above, there would be no communications like this one going on between computers through space around the globe for one example. So you see, it really isn't going to be wrong about how it is explaining virtual particles.

Thank you for your reminder but as far as BB having no pre existing space or vacuum, with respect it is understood what the conditions are at a miniscule fraction of a second after a BB - not at the singularity itself where time = 0.
Therefore it is incorrect to say there was not pre-existing space or vacuum. It is not known what the circumstances are at a singularity.

My point is, virtual particles do come from nothing and they account for all the visible matter in the universe. The production of Virtual particles is a quantum mechanical event which can occur at extreme points where space is so small it can hardly be described as space at all.
I therefore suggest as they are more to do with matters that support quantum electromagnetic dynamics than a reliance on space, and virtual particles are known to be able to operate in an infinitesimally tiny amount of space at BB, which can hardly be described as space at all, it is not unreasonable to include particles as the necessity of all events and even singularities.
Then a particle could be called God if you like but it would nevertheless still be a universe starting quantum burp whatever name you gave it.
But then God would have to be so minuscule only a particle would surely take reasonable account for It, rather than what might otherwise be imagined.

 

[trendlover]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RiU2T4Psyc


She sings "How long before my soul gets it right?"

 

[Barth Vader]

Quote from stu:

Hello Barth,

Firstly, Virtual Particles are real, they are not "virtual". This isn't a stretch. They come into and go out of existence from nothing, from the vacuum of empty space.
Quantum mechanics is grounded upon such information if any of which were , faulty, wrong or incorrect, would mean all of QM would be scrapped. But then if that were to be so, as I mentioned above, there would be no communications like this one going on between computers through space around the globe for one example. So you see, it really isn't going to be wrong about how it is explaining virtual particles.

Thank you for your reminder but as far as BB having no pre existing space or vacuum, with respect it is understood what the conditions are at a miniscule fraction of a second after a BB - not at the singularity itself where time = 0.
Therefore it is incorrect to say there was not pre-existing space or vacuum. It is not known what the circumstances are at a singularity.

My point is, virtual particles do come from nothing and they account for all the visible matter in the universe. The production of Virtual particles is a quantum mechanical event which can occur at extreme points where space is so small it can hardly be described as space at all.
I therefore suggest as they are more to do with matters that support quantum electromagnetic dynamics than a reliance on space, and virtual particles are known to be able to operate in an infinitesimally tiny amount of space at BB, which can hardly be described as space at all, it is not unreasonable to include particles as the necessity of all events and even singularities.
Then a particle could be called God if you like but it would nevertheless still be a universe starting quantum burp whatever name you gave it.
But then God would have to be so minuscule only a particle would surely take reasonable account for It, rather than what might otherwise be imagined.

I don't know, stu, it almost seems your argument is mixing the actuality and the potentiality of a quantum entity. Whether the actuality of the observation is dated today or 300 years ago, it is then moved to the realm of classical physics where observable, measurable facts reign supreme.

Your "virtual particle" to the best of my limited knowledge falls more properly under potentiality. Wave Function and Schrodinger's equation is, for all intent and purpose, describing an infinite amount of locations, things, that MIGHT be observable if the quantum entity is measured at any given time. These remain only theoretical possibilities until the act of measurement, which then solidifies the various potentialities into one actuality.

So, I agree that some aspects that were assumable under the discipline called Quantum Physics, are an integral part of our every day existence, lets not mix potentiality with actuality !

I end with a story attributed to Neils Bohr [contained in the introduction of the book "Who's Afraid of Schrodinger's Cat?]:

A young rabbinical student goes to three lectures by a very famous rabbi. Afterward, he describes these to his friends. The first lecture, says the student, was very good - he understood everything. The second lecture was much better - the student did not understand it, but the rabbi understood everything. The third lecture, however, was the best of all, very subtle and very deep - it was so good that even the rabbi did not understand it.

 

[omegapoint]

They don't pop in and out of nowhere. It just hasn't been discovered where or how yet but obviously you've repeated it enough times to yourself that you've made yourself believe it.

Quote from stu:

Hello Barth,

Firstly, Virtual Particles are real, they are not "virtual". This isn't a stretch. They come into and go out of existence from nothing, from the vacuum of empty space.
Quantum mechanics is grounded upon such information if any of which were , faulty, wrong or incorrect, would mean all of QM would be scrapped. But then if that were to be so, as I mentioned above, there would be no communications like this one going on between computers through space around the globe for one example. So you see, it really isn't going to be wrong about how it is explaining virtual particles.

Thank you for your reminder but as far as BB having no pre existing space or vacuum, with respect it is understood what the conditions are at a miniscule fraction of a second after a BB - not at the singularity itself where time = 0.
Therefore it is incorrect to say there was not pre-existing space or vacuum. It is not known what the circumstances are at a singularity.

My point is, virtual particles do come from nothing and they account for all the visible matter in the universe. The production of Virtual particles is a quantum mechanical event which can occur at extreme points where space is so small it can hardly be described as space at all.
I therefore suggest as they are more to do with matters that support quantum electromagnetic dynamics than a reliance on space, and virtual particles are known to be able to operate in an infinitesimally tiny amount of space at BB, which can hardly be described as space at all, it is not unreasonable to include particles as the necessity of all events and even singularities.
Then a particle could be called God if you like but it would nevertheless still be a universe starting quantum burp whatever name you gave it.
But then God would have to be so minuscule only a particle would surely take reasonable account for It, rather than what might otherwise be imagined.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

They pop in from somewhere.

The atheist when they can't figure something out call it "nowhere" or if they can't figure out a pattern they call it "random."

I call it ignorance...

It is really quite funny actually, as science begins from ignorance, then moves as far as it can until it reaches a limit (which is also ignorance) then finds itself sandwiched in the middle of this Oreo they claim to be "knowledgeable."

Quote from omegapoint:

They don't pop in and out of nowhere. It just hasn't been discovered where or how yet but obviously you've repeated it enough times to yourself that you've made yourself believe it.

 

[Specterx]

Wow... all I can say is, are you f*cking kidding?

There are usually two sides to every issue, but creationism/evolution really isn't one of these. Science, whether in modern form or just trial-and-error to see which rock makes the best cutting tool, is responsible for all of mankind's material advancement since we evolved on this planet. We can see evolution at work every day: think of drug-resistant bacteria.

Religion is about ethics and morality. No more and no less. Holy books can tell you how you ought to approach life and treat other people, but they can't tell you the age of the Earth, where the universe came from, or how to build a computer.