Attention Hef: We want to see Lisa in an upcoming Playboy issue dedicated to Women in Science and not in a Twenty Questions!
Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This statement is utterly ridiculous. You obviously haven't attended any seminars or perused any papers by prominent cosmologists lately.
Yes, the discovery of an accelerating universe is requiring some fine tuning to cosmological theories, but the Big Bang is still the theory that best fits observational evidence; more specifically inflationary Big Bang theory, which still stands strong after decades.
As far as God goes, cosmology doesn't have anything to really say about it. Physicists don't know what happened before the Big Bang. Scientists have varying opinions about God but virtually all physicists acknowledge the Big Bang theory based on physical evidence.
"Cosomology is in utter disarray. All the popular theories of the past 30 years have been killed. The Biblical origins still remain the most credible. "
Really? Perhaps you'll edify us with a list of those theories which are no longer in play. Since you make the statement, you must have such a list at hand, along with the reasons those theories are no longer being considered. I'll await your post with bated breath.
Do you think the theory of gravity says that if you drop something, it falls? That people didn't know that before Isaac Newton?
Newton DID think he was literally sent by God to enlighten the world. I am sure his earlier observations just became a little more, um, nuanced. :)
Attention Hef: We want to see Lisa in an upcoming Playboy issue dedicated to Women in Science and not in a Twenty Questions!
1. because in doing so they feel clever
2. because it annoys those who know better
3. because it might fool the ignorant
You could as easily say that creationists don't think God is powerful enough to build a universe that doesn't require constant tinkering to make it work.
I understand that after a long time of repeatedly fielding nonsense and thoroughly debunked arguments, people can finally hit their breaking point and go off.
They remind of the adults (adults!) who wanted their money back when they found that the automatons in the "Dinosaurs Alive!" travelling exhibit weren't real dinosaurs.
now, ya see, THAT is a PRIME Prime.
who is thew babe.
no, screwball - the BABE, the one on the right.
I know who the harridan is: Dorothy's house missed one.
The Bible actually says that light was created on the first day, plants on the third and the sun on the fourth. The plants therefore could have had light on the third day. Plants require light to live, not the sun. Perhaps the Bible is indicating an extraterrestrial origin for life? Plants may have been living on planets other than the earth for millions or even billions of years before the sun formed.
Lisa Randall, Professor of Physics, PhD 1987, Harvard University.
Elsie is absolutely convinced that there is a dichotomy between Christianity and evolution. Elsie believes that both cannot be true and quotes copiously from the Bible in support of that position. The problem with this argument is that if it is successful it can only convince rationalists of the falsity of the bible, since there is abundant physical evidence available to us right now that evolution is fact. The falsity of the Bible probably isn't the conclusion that Elsie would like us to draw.
"Don't forget, in one paragraph he says that all the popular cosmological theories in the last 30 years have been killed, then in the next he uses String Theory and Quantum Mechanics to support creation."
Disney physics. Newton discovered that apples fall from trees.
There is no proof in hypotheses. There is merely evidence supporting that your hypothesis is valid, or not. A million positive tests still does not show that your hypothesis is valid. There can be a condition or variable you did not take into account that would ruin it. Proof is for math.
However, regarding the Holy Spirit and the power of Jesus Christ, that is not faith.
Faith is all that it is. Personal experience may give you a "truth," but that is not scientifically aceptable. It cannot be reproduced. That is not to demean your faith, only to show that the concept of faith belongs in religion, and not in science. Likewise, the concept of requiring proof, evidence or reproducability belongs in science, not in religion.
Science cannot deal with love, the soul or the common cold, yet you have faith that it is superior to the Creator of the universe.
I have no faith in science. I only see that its method has been extremely successful at showing how our material world works, and therefore how to manipulate it.
Notice "how." That's different from the "why" of religion. You believe religion is everything, so you try to apply it to everything, often failing miserably. I know science cannot be applied to everything, so I don't even try.
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