"The Origin of Specious Nonsense"

Oh dear, this is all getting rather fraught.

As a diversion, I offer the current spat between creationists over the origins of gorillas and girls, centred on the recently-discovered ~2M year old South African ape fossil Australopithecus sediba.

Palaeontologists place sediba in the increasingly bushy family tree that evolved after our ancestors split from the proto-chimps. Creationists see things differently, and they're busy trying to decide whether it is human or ape. :eek:

Creationist Todd Wood - who forever seems on the verge of seeing the evolutionary light - published a Creation Science (TM) paper that lumped A. sediba in with the humans, whilst grouping the much older A. afarensis (popularly known as 'Lucy') with modern day chimps and gorillas. Lots of other creationists got very upset and denied this, citing various weird and wonderful theological problems they dreamed up. And now Todd's gotten cross right back at them.

So we have creationists arguing over whether a fossil ape is related to chimps or to humans. But of course, as they insist on telling us, there are no transitional fossils!

This would all be quite funny were it not that mixed in amongst the Hovinds and Hams are some genuinely talented people who are sadly wasting their careers with this rubbish, and persuading their students to follow them.

darjeeling wrote: »

Oh dear, this is all getting rather fraught.

As a diversion, I offer the current spat between creationists over the origins of gorillas and girls, centred on the recently-discovered ~2M year old South African ape fossil Australopithecus sediba.

Palaeontologists place sediba in the increasingly bushy family tree that evolved after our ancestors split from the proto-chimps. Creationists see things differently, and they're busy trying to decide whether it is human or ape.

humans are apes!

:eek:

Creationist Todd Wood - who forever seems on the verge of seeing the evolutionary light - published a Creation Science (TM) paper that lumped A. sediba in with the humans, whilst grouping the much older A. afarensis (popularly known as 'Lucy') with modern day chimps and gorillas. Lots of other creationists got very upset and denied this, citing various weird and wonderful theological problems they dreamed up. And now Todd's gotten cross right back at them.

So we have creationists arguing over whether a fossil ape is related to chimps or to humans. But of course, as they insist on telling us, there are no transitional fossils!

This would all be quite funny were it not that mixed in amongst the Hovinds and Hams are some genuinely talented people who are sadly wasting their careers with this rubbish, and persuading their students to follow them.

Yep mass delusion, depressing in all its glory and so easy to fall into too. The tobacco industry practically wrote the book on how to do it. It's really easy too. First, get some "scientist" to publish a journal in a piece of crap journal. Next get some other scientist to write a serious article (usually a review paper) for a prestigious journal and include in that paper citations to paper published in piece of crap [POC] journal. If possible make as many references to a plethora of papers published in POC journals. Next over the course of a few months use the fact that you have pseudoscience referenced in a genuine peer review paper to argue that your pseudoscience is science and you are now ready to begin phase II.

Inform the Public of the new emerging opinion in science and most importantly be sure to inform them about the motives of those who hold the actual scientific view. Science, has ironically, shown that the majority of public simply trust scientists and the quality of their science on the basis of what they perceive these scientists motives to be. So in the case of the creationism crap, all you have to merely do is point to stuff like nazism being apparently linked to evolution. As we all know, the aforementioned pseudoscience paper will not get published in an genuine journal, this is where we begin phase III.

By now the proponents of the pseudoscience should have the public significantly confused, in which case, once the pseudoscience paper is rejected they brew up a media **** storm by declaring they are being censored by the traditionalist and closed mind views of those in the scientific community. These pseudoscientists are the new modern day "Galileo's" - They aren't, but they just portray themselves in the public light as being so. Again, such is human nature, that this notion agrees with the lay person's notion that authority is being forceful and unfair. At which point the journal has only two options, publish the paper or reject it.

Publishing the paper is undoubtedly lowering the quality of science. Rejecting the paper, is seen as censorship in the general eyes of the public and they lose trust in the scientific community. It's a lose, lose situation that preys on the ignorance of everyday people. It's scary because it's true and Climate science has been riddled with it so effectively. Minority dissent in science is so important, it's what helps keep science in check, but when these folks get washed over by an ideological movement then the standard and rate of progress in science undoubtedly drops.

Also at this point you usually have enough confusion spread across the public that many scientists themselves and potential scientists have been hoodwinked into thinking the pseudoscience is genuine.

pH wrote: »

You know posts like this amaze me, if new people want to debate/argue with J C (or even some old hands try again) why not? It's one thread, if people are interested they'll participate, those that aren't just ignore it (and yes I appreciate that the mods mightn't have this choice.

These are discussion boards, if new people want to discuss something that has been discussed before who are we to stop them?

Personally I dropped out of the BCP thread long before the lock. While there was certain fun in backing J C into corners to make him declare that distant galaxies were probably smears on astronomers lenses, or that the chalk of the cliffs of Dover could be laid down in a particularly wet weekend, I personally tired of the triviality and stupidity of the whole thing.

However, if the next generation want to go at him, why not? Maybe the thread could be appropriately labelled - I suggest "Contains J C"

You see, the problem is that the thread is supposed to be concerned with the launch of a book and the participation of a Minister of State in said launch. It was quite an interesting thread. Granted, the launch has now passed and discussion of the actual content of the book would perhaps be a logical next step.

What is has turned into is a series of largely unreadable posts and something which no civilised person would call a debate. It's essentially a bunch of posters responding (ill-advisedly) to what is clearly trolling.

If people want to have a ridiculous debate that goes nowhere, that's fine, I just wish it wasn't inserted into the middle of a thread I was actually enjoying. At least I could then ignore it.

I must admit I've never seen this BC&P thread, or if I did I'd forgotten it.
That may explain why I was toying with JC so much

However, a lot of the posts with JC got posters to provide evidence for
evolution, there is no loss in doing this, especially in a thread devoted to
John May & the hope is he'll eventually come across this thread and
actually read the posts. It's a long shot but at the least the 25,000+ may
come across these posts :cool:

I don't see how a thread talking about an evolution denier that had posters
contantly providing evidence for said theory is off-topic?

Ghost Buster: The problem is that the only way for J C to answer your question is by admitting that he has no idea what he's talking about.

As such an eminent scientist, philosopher and theologian as well a proponent of intelligent design could JC please explain redshift and the presence of introns.

This is a serious question to which I would appreciate a well constructed and serious answer.

J C wrote: »

The explanation for red Shift (courtesy of AIG) is as follows:-
The red-shift of starlight is a decrease in the energy of the light. This energy decrease results in a lengthening of the wavelength of the light, measured with an instrument called a spectrometer. Red is the rainbow color with the longest wavelength, hence the name "red-shift." Stars do not actually become red in appearance since the wavelength change is usually slight. Almost every star and galaxy is found to be red-shifted. The following list summarizes some of the alternative explanations for the origin of this stellar red-shift.

1. Stellar Motion. If a star moves outward from the earth, its light energy will be reduced and its wavelength stretched or red-shifted. Stars and entire galaxies show varying amounts of red-shift, therefore implying a variety of speeds for these objects. Police actually use this same effect with radar to measure the speed of cars. Stellar motion is often taken as evidence in support of the Big Bang theory. Stars are assumed to be speeding outward as a result of the explosion. This is not the only explanation of red-shift, however.

2. Gravitation. As light leaves a star, the star's gravity may slightly lengthen the wavelength of the light. A gravitational red-shift could also result from starlight passing near a massive object in space, such as a galaxy. As the light escapes from a strong gravity field, it loses energy, similar to what happens to a person struggling to the top of a mountain.

3. Second-Order Doppler Effect. A light source moving at right angles (tangentially) to an observer will always be red-shifted. This can be observed in the laboratory by using a high-speed turntable. A detector is placed in the center and a gamma radiation source is placed on the outside edge. The gamma energy is seen to decrease, or "red-shift," as the turntable speed increases. This is an intriguing explanation for stellar red-shift. When applied to stars, it implies that the universe may be in circular motion instead of radial expansion.

4. Photon Interaction. It is possible that light waves exchange energy during their movement across space and lose some energy in the process. A loss of light energy is equivalent to a "reddening" of its light. A theoretical understanding of this proposed "tired light" process has not yet been developed.

Any of these four explanations, alone or in combination, may be responsible for red-shift. We do not know enough about space to be certain of the source of stellar red-shift.

... and there are anomalies which indicates that red-shifts may not be connected with recession velocities and so may not be a reliable index to distances in an expanding universe after all.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/TJ/v11/i3/quasar.asp

And introns??

J C wrote: »

Part of so-called 'junk DNA' ... which is believed to be the currently non-functional residue from the speciation 'explosions' after Creation and The Flood.

Please explain "speciation 'explosions'" not heard of that before.

I don't know who brought up testicles, but they're on the outside to avoid overheating the sperm.


But then, maybe god should have made sperm able to withstand internal body heat. :P

It's hilarious how well this video describes the nonsense we've encountered:



I may be in love