>>BroJoeK wrote: "To all -- in any post like this I should apologize for being off-topic, but in this case I am simply following wherever Kalamata's arguments might lead.
To all -- I apologize for being off-topic, but in this case I am simply following wherever Joey's arguments might lead. As aforementioned, I am a "counter-puncher;" and you may recall that Joey initiated this off-topic discussion by bringing up a previous discussion he and I had in another thread. This is the first two paragraphs of #250, Joey's first post to me on this thread:
"You might have noticed that Kalamata is a newcomer here, and with all due respect, a formidable poster. He comes to us fully equipped with a huge inventory of relevant quotes, an arsenal of logical tricks, a defensive shield of barbs & insults, and utter disregard for facts or reasons which might falsify his own unique outlook.
"Undoubtedly, Kalamata is thoroughly anti-American, but in the sense of, for examples, a Ken Ham (Ark Encounter) or Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box) -- these people have declared & waged intellectual war not just on the USA, but on the very idea of reality itself as we perceive it, scientifically. Perhaps with some justification they feel assaulted by blatant scientific atheists like Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and strike back with their own equally aggressive anti-science ideology/theology.
So, as you can see, Joey is not simply following the topic: he initiated it. You cannot trust Joey to be a straight shooter.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "When Joey cannot find any facts to support his assertions, and he cannot think of a clever comeback, he resorts to sand-box tactics."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "So claims our own Sandbox Olive-boy."
See what I mean?
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Joey cannot seem to grasp the concept of ‘Daughter Elements’."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Olive-boy's assault on science begins with his claims that, according to his own interpretations of the Bible, the Earth is only ~10,000 years old. Therefore any scientific evidence such as radiometric decay rates which might suggest millions or billions of years are necessarily false."
Not true. Radiometric dating is necessarily unreliable due to the impossibility of determining the initial quantity of daughter elements.
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>>BroJoeK wrote: "However, for purposes of this particular post Kalamata is hoping to obscure his real beliefs behind a smokescreen of technical terms like "parent" & "daughter" elements."
That is basic chemistry that is easily explained, even to the less-scientifically-challenged, except for, perhaps, Joey. Here goes, in my own words:
"When a radioactive element decays, it produces one or more daughter elements. For example, Carbon-14 decays into the daughter element Nitrogen-14, which is stable. Uranium-238 decays into a long chain of daughter elements; the last in the chain, Lead-206, is stable, so there is no further decay. The trick to radiometric dating is to determine how much of the daughter element(s) existed back when the Uranium-238 first showed up on the earth. Did the U-238 show up by itself, and then begin decaying, or was it already mixed with a certain quantity of daughter elements? If it showed up by itself, the quantity of daughter elements produced determines the age. If not, then it is impossible to determine the age.
Now do you see the problem with radiometric dating?
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>>BroJoeK wrote: "Like any believer in "operational science" Kalamata is perfectly willing to acknowledge radiometric decay which can be measured today, but not any discoveries which suggest it's been going on for billions of years."
True.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Joey doesn’t understand physics, either. The existence of our universe, not to mention the existence of life itself, defies the basic laws of physics. The only solution is special creation using laws we cannot comprehend."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Science has never claimed 100% omniscience, far from it. Science doesn't know all the basic laws of physics and scientists well understand that at certain levels some very strange things can happen, for example, what Einstein called, "spooky action at a distance".
Joey tends to confuse "science" with the interpretations of data by scientists. Big difference!
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>>BroJoeK wrote: "So there is a very long list of things science doesn't know, beginning with the most important of all -- where did the Universe come from? Thousands of years ago philosophers and theologians answered that question, and science has never come up with a better answer."
Joey is always good for some useless pontification.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "For the record, there is no such thing as evolution: not in observable science, not in the laboratory, and not in the fossil record."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "And that is a flat-out lie, accomplished with the help of Olive-boy's self-lobotomization and Denial Tactics."
Science must be empirically testable and observable. Evolution fails those tests. If you read Charlie Darwin's silly book, "On the Origin of Species," with an objective mind, you will soon realize there is no science in it – at all!
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Get a grip, Joey? I never deny science: only pseudoscience, such as evolutionism and big-bangism. LOL!"
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Right, notice now Olive-boy admits to denying not just evolution but also "big-bangism", meaning not just the scientific basis of geology, biology, chemistry, paleontology & archaeology but also of physics and astronomy, at least as it relates to anything happening before ~10,000 years ago."
I love science, and I have studied all of the branches of science that Joey listed. What Joey refuses to admit is, as soon as we venture back before written civilization, everything tends to be based on guesswork. We simply have no scientific way of knowing what happened back then. That opens the door for charlatans, like Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell, to make up stories and pretend it is science.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "So, you do believe in Intelligent Design."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Sure, as you well know but constantly lie about, FRiend, I believe God created the Universe intelligently. I don't pretend to know which events since then were the necessary consequences of God's original creation and which resulted from God's specific interventions, "mid-course corrections" you might say. I prefer to think that God's perfect creation (the Universe) didn't need "mid-course corrections", but will not be disappointed if I learn, in due time, otherwise."
I am not sure what to make of that statement.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "It is strictly a science thing. The geological column shows clear evidence of a global flood"
>>BroJoeK wrote: "And that is a total lie, conclusions arrived at dishonestly for strictly theological reasons."
I admit I was and am astonished at the correlation between the data and the written record of Moses in Genesis.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "I was a theistic evolutionist, until my eyes were opened by scientific data."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Nonsense, you mean until you drank the koolaid and lobotomized your brain. In fact, your arguments here are at least disingenuous when not outright dishonest."
Joey is nasty and hostile because I reject his faith-based religion of evolutionism. Evolution truly is faith-based. There is not a shred of solid evidence anywhere on earth that supports it. There are plenty of just-so stories, and plenty of highly imaginative drawings and museum mockups, but no evidence.
The following excerpt is from a seminar of some of the world's top paleontologists. The speaker was Colin Patterson, who was the curator at the Natural History Museum in London for 30 years. He was explaining to the scientists present that he had previously asked several groups of scientists if any of them knew anything about evolution that was true, and NO ONE could answer his question, sorta. Read carefully:
"Well, this time that isn't true. I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either of them. One or the reasons I started taking this antievolutionary view, or let's call it non-evolutionary, was last year I had a sudden realization that for over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. Then one morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled for so long."
"So either there was something wrong with me, or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks, I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people."
"The question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar at the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said, "Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.'"
[Colin Patterson, "Can You Tell Me Anything About Evolution? A Lecture by Colin Patterson." American Museum of Natural History, Nov 5, 1981, p.3]
Hear him say it for yourself. This is the Audio:
Audio: Can You Tell Me Anything About Evolution?
Incredible, huh?
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Joey cannot tell the difference between scientific data, and an obligatory kiss of Darwin’s ring. A scientist must be able to rightly-divide the data from the ideology, or he will be in the dark as much as Joey."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "And here Kalamata alleges motives to the authors of a Nature scientific article he quoted from, alleged motives of which there is zero evidence."
There is plenty of evidence in that research, Joey; but the evidence is against evolution, not in support of it. The scientists are obliged to name-drop Darwin to protect their careers from the establishment, but the research reads the same if you remove all references to evolution.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Child."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Kalamata often responds to my comments with this single enigmatic deprecation, "Child"."
Only when you are acting like a child, Child.
Mr. Kalamata