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To: Rudder; Ichneumon
The following is from Ichneumon to me :

what you don't know about petroleum geology would obviously fill volumes.

Hint: The vast majority of petroleum is from *plant* matter.

My ignorance of petroleum geology is only matched by the above poster's arrogance. He advances theory as truth without regard to new theories of abiotic oil formation which might upend his beliefs about petroleum creation.

I mention this for 2 reasons. The first reason is to show how belief in scientific theories is dangerous to learning anything new. Once we accept a theory of evolution (or of oil production, or of global warming) we generally hang on to that theory without really examining it or our belief in it.

Our schools are not into teaching critical thinking as a path towards learning how to observe the world around us and come up with theories about that which we see. Our schools give the students theory and ask them to make any observation fit the theory. Critical thinking is a nuisance when you have general agreement that "global warming" or "evolution" or "petroleum is a non-renewable resource". This is my objection to the original article and to what I perceived as the author's arrogance.

The 2nd reason I mention this is solely to piss off Ichneumon.

121 posted on 10/21/2005 12:50:16 AM PDT by freebilly (Go USF Baseball!)
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To: freebilly
He advances theory as truth without regard to new theories of abiotic oil formation which might upend his beliefs about petroleum creation.

It's rather odd that you use a debate among geologists (okay, geologists and at least one astronomer) as an avenue to slam scientists. Abiotic oil formation is an interesting topic (if not yet a particularly highly regarded theory in geological circles), but it is a debate among the scientists you seem to enjoy mocking. None of the people involved in the science of that debate, to my knowledge, are simply throwing up there hands and saying "oil was obviously intelligently designed because I don't understand how it was formed". No, they are actually looking at things like C-12/C-13 isotope ratios and correlation of known deposits to periods of high biological sedimentation rates and doing real, scientific research -- it's what scientists do. It's how they learn things.

Somehow, when science procedes as science should, to Creationists this is some sort of proof that science is invalid. It would seem that to them, the fact that we are not still blindly following Aristotle's theories is proof that science as a whole is some sort of sham.

126 posted on 10/21/2005 4:51:03 AM PDT by RogueIsland
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