Genesis says:
First God made heaven & earth
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep;
and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters

Sefer Berechit says (attached pic):




I am sure they do not tell the same story.

Bruno

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Tim Attwood wrote:
> vehemence of anti-Christian rhetoric lately

This wasn't anti-Christian rhetoric, tho. It is clear the author is 
indeed Christian. This is anti-Stupidity rhetoric.

Don't confuse "bashing stupid Christian's stupidity" with "bashing 
stupid Christian's Christianity".

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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Vincent Le Chevalier <gal### [at] libertyallsurfspamfr> wrote:
> Warp a ?crit :
> > There's a difference between an attitude like "I think this is a very
> >  plausible theory, and I'm going to try to find even more evidence to
> >  support it", and "this theory is the truth, and anyone who doubts it
> >  is nuts and deserves ridicule".

> And which one you think is more common among creationists?

  Who was talking about creationists? I wasn't. I was talking about
scientists.

  Or are you trying to say that since creationists ridicule scientists
it then becomes ok for scientists to ridicule creationists? That's
flawed logic.

> What do you think happens when a tenant of the first attitude tries to
> discuss the matter with a tenant of the second attitude? No discussion
> is possible, that's what happens.

  That's why it's impossible to discuss with some scientists (or, more
usually, scientist wannabes).

> > I don't disagree that any pseudoscientist or religious fanatic who 
> > presents completely unscientifical and implausible claims with no
> > proof nor evidence deserves to be ignored and if such claims get
> > widespread, it very much deserves scientifical debunking.
> > 
> > However, debunking and ridicule are two different things. The former 
> > shows scientifical thinking, the latter shows arrogance.
> > 

> Debunking has been done and redone and re-re-done, at some stage it
> needs to stop.

  So the next logical step is to start mocking and ridiculing? Yes, that
makes a whole lot of sense.

> Ridiculing a religious nutcase
> is in my opinion a valid weapon to use.

  Valid for what purpose? It certainly isn't constructive and can only
make things worse.

> I'm all for doubting a theory as long as something else, new experiments
> or a new interpretation of the old ones at least, is offered that makes
> some sense. Doubting for the sake of doubting is not really interesting,

  That's exactly the flawed logic. "Since there's no alternative plausible
theory, this theory must be true."

> because then you doubt, and then what?

  I don't even understand what you mean by that. Are you talking
philosophically now? Do you get some kind of existentialist crisis
if you doubt something and have no plausible alternative theory?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Anti-christian atheists 

By the way, the author isn't an atheist, and atheists aren't 
anti-christian, they're anti-theist. :-)


-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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Phil Cook <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
> No not really, feel free to doubt it. if you do then you must have a  
> reason to do so, which implies you have another theory

  Once again, that is completely flawed logic.

  There's no law in science which says that you must have an alternative
theory in order to reasonably doubt an existing theory.

  "I don't know an explanation for this, and this presented explanation
seems too implausible to me" is a perfectly valid way of thinking, even
scientifically. You don't need an alternative theory to be able to do
that in a completely rational and valid basis.

  Take any unsolved question in science, which science has yet not an
answer to, and present the theory "it happens because invisible gnomes
do it from inside the Earth". Even if the scientist doesn't have any
alternative theory to that, it's still completely valid for him to doubt
that presented theory.

> (unless you're  
> saying that you don't like a theory as it doesn't explain everything, in  
> which case welcome to a permanent state of not liking things).

  Is this some kind of philosophical question now? Do you get an
existentialist crisis if there's something you don't know how and
why it works?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> and atheists aren't anti-christian, they're anti-theist. :-)

  In my experience the majority of self-proclaimed atheists vehemently
oppose christianity, usually much more than any other religions. Usually
they have a more or less indifferent attitude towards other religions,
while loudly opposing anything related to christianity.

  (I have even witnessed extreme cases, where devoted atheists have had
a *positive* attitude towards other religions, up to the point where they
frown upon criticising them, while still loudly criticising christianity.)

  Ok, I admit it, I'm falling into making the same kind of generalization
as the "anyone who opposes the evolution theory is a creationist". OTOH,
in my experience in many cases it's just true.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Wouldn't that be, "Why it doesn't make sense to doubt it?"

Yah. Forgive me. I've been ill. :-)

> this guy makes some common mistakes. First one is suggesting that their 
> are some huge number of *possible* combinations that would work. Really? 
> How does he determine this? 

Actually, I read somewhere that someone had figured out (well after that 
article was written) that there are something like 12 different 
isomorphic ways you can arrange the codons to do the same job. So 
instead of 41^22! or whatever it was, there were at least 12. :-)

> do anything at all, such as INC X followed immediately by DEC X. 

That's a completely different point. That just means there are genes 
that don't code for anything. He's assuming that there's no good reason 
for the bit patterns in the instruction set to be arranged in any given 
pattern for a particular instruction.

> But none of that really matters, since the article says *nothing* about 
> the likelihood of macro vs. micro,

So here's the question: What is "macro vs micro"?  How do you know when 
you have "macro" evolution? What makes something of two "kinds"?

I suspect you'll wind up coming up with a tautologically false answer, 
if you want to invent something that hasn't been observed.

> There is nothing in there that would suggest denial of common descent of 
> macro evolution.

Sorry. I meant it as an explanation of evidence in favor of common 
descent, regardless of how I misworded the original statement.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   The article and the photo series was nothing more than mocking for the
>>> sake of mocking. "Have a look at these photos and have a good laugh."
>>> There was no other point.
> 
>> Yes. And I feel it's entirely appropriate to mock people who are trying 
>> to get others to act in self-destructive ways.
> 
>   Mocking for the sake of mocking is not constructive nor helpful. It only
> increases aversion between different groups.

Yes. I want to mock the stupid dangerous group in order that people who 
hear my mocking might avoid them, or recognise how silly they are.

> Is that really the correct way of doing things?

If I could figure out how to make the stupid dangerous group less stupid 
or less dangerous, that would obviously be the right way to go. In my 
experience, religion is illogical (in the mathematical sense of the 
word), so it's almost impossible to convince someone to change their 
religion with mere evidence. You have to get to the unreasoning 
emotional underpinning. Of the various ways to do that, mocking would 
seem to be the least damaging and easiest to control.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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> Who was talking about creationists? I wasn't. I was talking about 
> scientists.
> 
>> What do you think happens when a tenant of the first attitude tries
>>  to discuss the matter with a tenant of the second attitude? No 
>> discussion is possible, that's what happens.
> 
> That's why it's impossible to discuss with some scientists (or, more 
> usually, scientist wannabes).
> 

Oh, so you are just saying that some scientists are not as open minded
as they should be. Who would have thought, really ;-)

As far as I can judge, it is not the case of the one that wrote the blog
post...

>> Debunking has been done and redone and re-re-done, at some stage it
>>  needs to stop.
> 
> So the next logical step is to start mocking and ridiculing? Yes, 
> that makes a whole lot of sense.
> 

Well what would be your next step then? I'm not saying it's the only
thing that can be done...

>> Ridiculing a religious nutcase is in my opinion a valid weapon to 
>> use.
> 
> Valid for what purpose? It certainly isn't constructive and can only 
> make things worse.
> 

For a purpose that I tried to make clear in the rest of my post that you
didn't quote. In order to cause a shift of mentality in a part of the
population that unfortunately would not understand a scientific
debunking. It is possible that the slight shock, or comical effect, make
people think about it...

So of course it's lost on the strongest proponents of the "alternative
theory", but everything is lost on them. There is nothing constructive
you can do about it. It's not a reason not to do something.

>> I'm all for doubting a theory as long as something else, new 
>> experiments or a new interpretation of the old ones at least, is 
>> offered that makes some sense. Doubting for the sake of doubting is
>>  not really interesting,
> 
> That's exactly the flawed logic. "Since there's no alternative 
> plausible theory, this theory must be true."
> 

It is true as far as we can check. If really you want to talk about
absolutes, define truth, then.

If you bring something different or new to the table, it's another story...

>> because then you doubt, and then what?
> 
> I don't even understand what you mean by that. Are you talking 
> philosophically now? Do you get some kind of existentialist crisis if
>  you doubt something and have no plausible alternative theory?
> 

Existentialist crisis is a bit over the top ;-) , but yes, it's a problem...

As Phil put it earlier:
> (unless you're saying that you don't like a theory as it doesn't 
> explain everything, in which case welcome to a permanent state of not
>  liking things)

If you doubt everything without doing anything to make something better,
well, from the general point of view it's exactly as if you were
agreeing with the current theories... Except that it makes you look
angry ;-)

-- 
Vincent

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>   Take any unsolved question in science, which science has yet not an
> answer to, and present the theory "it happens because invisible gnomes
> do it from inside the Earth". Even if the scientist doesn't have any
> alternative theory to that, it's still completely valid for him to doubt
> that presented theory.
> 

The doubt in this case is for a completely valid reason. A key point 
with any scientific theory is that you have to be able to challenge it. 
Your little gnomes are hard to test for empirically...

So the scientist still does not have a scientific theory, in that case.

-- 
Vincent

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