[Bobboau]

JCDN, your problem is you are arguing something completely orthogonal to the current subject of the thread.

[zookeeper]

JCDN, your problem is you are arguing something completely orthogonal to the current subject of the thread.

He didn't start that argument though. He started out by saying that he likes to also look at what sort of real-world actions are or have been rooted in or justified by evolution/creationism, and after that everyone else started arguing with him about whether moral issues affect the validity of a scientific theory or not.

[Bobboau]

do you really want to start an argument about why we were arguing?

[zookeeper]

do you really want to start an argument about why we were arguing?

Depends on whether you're arguing that he's the culprit for the derailment.

[Kosh]

do you really want to start an argument about why we were arguing?

Depends on whether you're arguing that he's the culprit for the derailment.

It's questionable that this was a derail given that the topic was initially quite preachy in the first place.

[Bobboau]

do you really want to start an argument about why we were arguing?

Depends on whether you're arguing that he's the culprit for the derailment.

ah, so you would rather argue about who is responsible for the arguing about an argument about why we were arguing.

I would rather mr goat respond, haven't heard from him in a while.

[achtung]

I feel G0atmaster started this as a troll thread. He just popped in after nearly two years of silence spouting about God on a generally secular forum. I feel you guys are being trolled softly.

[Luis Dias]

Aww damned! A religious thread and I missed the heated part of it !

Anyways, and perhaps surprisingly, I side a bit with the OP... I make a kind of a vacation of my strident atheism in these moments, easter and christmas, because I understand the religious orgasmic experiences that sometimes go along with seeing cosmic stuff. People get out of things what they will. For instance, I take from this kind of observations of the universe that we are a speck of a dust of an atom of an almost nothingness inside a huge supermegaunimaginable bubble of meaninglessness. And it's wonderful.

Other people see it exactly the other way around. They see the wonderfulness and the size of the cosmos and think "Whoever created this must be even more awesome than I previously thought!". And how can I blame them? At least, there's a warm fuzzy feeling in knowing that we all share the awe of these sights. At least, we are worshipping a "god" that is manifestly more interesting than the one who cares (and judges) about the thoughts I have when I see Scarlett Johansson.

[General Battuta]

I feel G0atmaster started this as a troll thread. He just popped in after nearly two years of silence spouting about God on a generally secular forum. So I do feel you guys are being trolled softly.

That's the best kind of thread :allears:

Also I think that this thread is a representation of how religion began. Some dude was sitting on a beautiful mountaintop watching the beautiful stars and he began to wonder how they got there. So he invented some stories for his tribe about earth mother and sky father jizzing the stars everywhere in their rapturous divine coupling.

Meanwhile the guys on the next mountain over looked at the stars and were like '****, I bet those things are hot' and had a long discussion about how hot fire was and eventually used the heat of their fires to make hardened spears and then slaughtered or enslaved all the skywatchers. SCIENCE

[Luis Dias]

Well that would have been great, but I'm guessing that's not exactly what happened.

[General Battuta]

No it is exactly what happened, I read it in my holy text about how religion and science began

[newman]

No it is exactly what happened, I read it in my holy text about how religion and science began

It's true I read it too! Sure you can't prove it but science has often been wrong too so that's proof that we're right.

[Luis Dias]

No it is exactly what happened, I read it in my holy text about how religion and science began

Touché

[zookeeper]

do you really want to start an argument about why we were arguing?

Depends on whether you're arguing that he's the culprit for the derailment.

ah, so you would rather argue about who is responsible for the arguing about an argument about why we were arguing.

I don't know. I can't really wrap my mind around that.

[watsisname]

Anyone want to do some quick math?   Measure the amount of decay in the rotation speed of the Earth.  Now measure the amount of decay in the magnetic field of the Earth.  Now calculate back 1,000,000 years.

More?

Ok, measure the rate of supernovae...  now count the supernovae remnants.. calculate backward.

Measure the amount of sediment at the mouth of the major rivers on the Earth.  Calculate back.

Measure the rate at which topographical features such as mountains erode.  Calculate back.

The age of the Earth isn't a certain thing.

Absolutely none of your proposed calculations is in any way practical or useful for deriving the age of the earth.  As BW had mentioned the rotation speed of the earth actually can be tracked back quite a ways, but relating it to "the amount of decay in the earth's magnetic field" is completely nonsensical.

BW's done a good job discussing the ones involving geology.  Now let's look at this one:

Ok, measure the rate of supernovae...  now count the supernovae remnants.. calculate backward.

Biggest issue: how do you even correlate this to estimating the age of the earth?

Then, how do you go about actually counting supernova remnants?  The expanding shells of debris of a SNR disperse back into the interstellar medium fairly quickly, within a million years.  Just compare how much the Vela remnant has spread out (exploded ~11,000 years ago), with the Crab nebula (957 years ago), and SN1987A (24 years ago).

The dead stellar cores (neutron stars, pulsars, black holes) from a SNR do of course last much longer (essentially forever) but can be quite hard to detect.  A solitary black hole or neutron star can be completely invisible, as can be a pulsar if its beam does not sweep past earth.  You would need to take into account the relative number of remnants you can detect versus how many are out there that you cannot.

Finally, the idea has a major flaw in that the rate of supernovae occurrence is not constant.  It is a function of how many young, massive stars there are at the given moment, which is dependent upon the rate of star formation, which is not the same from one galaxy to another, or even in one galaxy over long periods of time.  As a galaxy ages there is less gas available to form new stars (since the process of star death does not return 100% of the gas back to the medium).  Galaxy interactions can also affect the rate of star formation.

The age of the Earth isn't a certain thing.

Depends what you call certain.  It is very well supported.

[jr2]

Anyone want to do some quick math?   Measure the amount of decay in the rotation speed of the Earth.  Now measure the amount of decay in the magnetic field of the Earth.  Now calculate back 1,000,000 years.

More?

Ok, measure the rate of supernovae...  now count the supernovae remnants.. calculate backward.

Measure the amount of sediment at the mouth of the major rivers on the Earth.  Calculate back.

Measure the rate at which topographical features such as mountains erode.  Calculate back.

The age of the Earth isn't a certain thing.

Absolutely none of your proposed calculations is in any way practical or useful for deriving the age of the earth.  As BW had mentioned the rotation speed of the earth actually can be tracked back quite a ways, but relating it to "the amount of decay in the earth's magnetic field" is completely nonsensical.

BW's done a good job discussing the ones involving geology.  Now let's look at this one:

Ok, measure the rate of supernovae...  now count the supernovae remnants.. calculate backward.

Biggest issue: how do you even correlate this to estimating the age of the earth?

Then, how do you go about actually counting supernova remnants?  The expanding shells of debris of a SNR disperse back into the interstellar medium fairly quickly, within a million years.  Just compare how much the Vela remnant has spread out (exploded ~11,000 years ago), with the Crab nebula (957 years ago), and SN1987A (24 years ago).

The dead stellar cores (neutron stars, pulsars, black holes) from a SNR do of course last much longer (essentially forever) but can be quite hard to detect.  A solitary black hole or neutron star can be completely invisible, as can be a pulsar if its beam does not sweep past earth.  You would need to take into account the relative number of remnants you can detect versus how many are out there that you cannot.

Finally, the idea has a major flaw in that the rate of supernovae occurrence is not constant.  It is a function of how many young, massive stars there are at the given moment, which is dependent upon the rate of star formation, which is not the same from one galaxy to another, or even in one galaxy over long periods of time.  As a galaxy ages there is less gas available to form new stars (since the process of star death does not return 100% of the gas back to the medium).  Galaxy interactions can also affect the rate of star formation.

The age of the Earth isn't a certain thing.

Depends what you call certain.  It is very well supported.

Those are all unrelated.  Separate clocks, if you will.  Just curious to know what they say.  At the time value of 1,000,000 BC. Cause I for one would like to know how we evolved if the magnetic field of the Earth was so strong that the Earth was liquefied.  And spinning so fast that it was flat like a pancake.  And had mountains that reached the Moon.  (Well, obviously if you didn't count the first two clocks.) Speaking of the Moon... I'm pretty sure it's orbit would do some rather interesting things too if tracked backward a bit.  Unless we didn't have a Moon until recently.

[General Battuta]

Those are all unrelated.  Separate clocks, if you will.  Just curious to know what they say.  At the time value of 1,000,000 BC. Cause I for one would like to know how we evolved if the magnetic field of the Earth was so strong that the Earth was liquefied. And spinning so fast that it was flat like a pancake.  And had mountains that reached the Moon.

Your timeline is way off. First, the Earth was never liquefied by its own magnetic field, never spinning so fast it was flat like a pancake, and never had mountains that reached the moon - at least not within the timespan of the existence of biological life on Earth.

Second, at 1 billion BC the Earth was actually in pretty good shape. Multicellular life had developed and there was an oxygen atmosphere. Human evolution proper didn't begin for millions and millions of years after that.

Speaking of the Moon... I'm pretty sure it's orbit would do some rather interesting things too if tracked backward a bit.  Unless we didn't have a Moon until recently.

Prevalent theory and evidence suggests the Moon was actually originally part of the Earth, formed from accreted material knocked into orbit by an enormous impact about 4,500,000,000 years ago. Rocks gathered from the moon supported this hypothesis.

[watsisname]

jr2:  You did not answer my primary question.
How do you even correlate the supernovae rate and number of remnants to estimating the age of the earth?

Speaking of the Moon... I'm pretty sure it's orbit would do some rather interesting things too if tracked backward a bit.

Indeed it does.

Unless we didn't have a Moon until recently.

To paraphrase Battuta,
nope.jpg

Edit:  Oh look, empirical geologic evidence that the moon existed all the way back in Precambrian time.  Isn't science beautiful?

[G0atmaster]

Sorry guys.  Today's been super busy.  If you'll note, I posted last at about 4 AM, while I was trying to start a 1000 word essay on the question of God.  I had a final at 8 AM this morning, and after that, took a much-needed nap, and have spent the past few hours getting my car fixed.  I have a bible study to go to tonight, and I'll need to finish writing that paper, but somewhere in there I'll try to write a worthy response within the next few hours.

No, I'm not trolling.  I've missed this place.  Life's been crazy lately, though.  Like seriously insane.

Also, is there any way I can alter my forum name a bit?  I feel absolutely ridiculous every time one of you writes out my name, including the stupid 0, to address me.

P.S. Whatsisname, are you serious??  That article was written by two gentlemen, one whose first name is "Jihad," and the other whose last name is "Wisdom."  And your forum handle is whatsisname.  Oh the freakin irony.

[watsisname]

P.S. Whatsisname, are you serious??  That article was written by two gentlemen, one whose first name is "Jihad," and the other whose last name is "Wisdom."  And your forum handle is whatsisname.  Oh the freakin irony.

Are you making a subtle suggestion that you don't think the conclusions of the article are valid?