[ross hamilton hill]

What is reality, how can it end, how can it have a border between reality and what? if there is an end to reality, what is beyond that end, similarly how can reality as it gets smaller, end, how can smallness like bigness have a border, if say the border of smallness is x then where does half x exist, since anything can be divided there is no end to the small just as there is no end to the big. Therefore if reality is infinite how can it have a beginning or end, how can it have a creator, such a creator would have to exist outside of reality, where would that be? And who created this creator, another creator and so on, more infinite progressions.
It can be truely frightening to consider the true nature of reality but unless you do, you end up clinging to delusions, the delusion that 'god created the universe, or that the big bang created time, it's all intellectual hubris the desire to give certainty where none exists.

[Steve Bucknell]

Oh good, I'm glad that's cleared that up.

[Michael Cantor]

Yes. you can always depend on Ross.

[Steve Bucknell]

Don't forget Stephen.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Yes. you can always depend on Ross.

Michael, don't forget our very own equally reliable six-thousand-year man.

"Six thousand years?" you say. "How can that be? What about the dinosaur fossils? What about the fossilized remains of life-forms that lived, and became extinct, long before the dinosaurs? What about carbon-dating? What about the remains of Homo Habilis, Cro-Magnon man, Homo Neanderthalensis, and all the other early varieties of men who existed long before Adam and Eve?"

Well, don't you worry your pretty little head, Michael. It was all a prank on the part of God, admittedly not usually noted for his sense of humour. He created all that stuff, and all the apparent evidence, in the twinkling of an eye, just to fool you.

But actually, it's not six thousand years. The whole thing, including Eratosphere and its innumerable postings, was created a mere thirty seconds ago. You think you can remember what you had for breakfast this morning? No, you were created with a complete set of entirely fictitious memories.

And there's worse to come. It's all going to be obliterated in another thirty seconds. But God actually has a soft spot for his daily creations, and doesn't want to cause us unnecessary distress, so it will seem much longer than that.

[Rob Stuart]

Fossils were put there by Satan to make us doubt the existence of God, Brian, didn't you know? Probably about thirty seconds ago, as you suggest.

[James Brancheau]

Scientists generally give conservative estimates. It's worse.

[Julie Steiner]

The Creation Museum in Kentucky doesn't attribute fossils to Satan's deceptions. According to them, most fossils (including seashell fossils on mountaintops) are evidence that Noah's flood really did cover the entire earth. They also have lots of explanations for how the same cataclysmic event produced fossils of plants and animals (including dinosaurs) but not of the wicked humans also destroyed.

I think the following museum placard is relevant, tangentially, to the global warming debate:



Here's the text, if it's too small for you to read:

“Dinosaur fossils don’t come with tags on them telling us how old they are, where they lived, what they ate, or how they died. We have to figure that out from a few clues we find.

But because we never have all the evidence, different scientists can reach very different conclusions, depending on their starting assumptions.”

And that's the problem, right there--the idea that science is about coming up with clever explanations to make the observable evidence fit in with one's "starting assumptions".

Clearly, this is what the staff of creation museums do themselves. They assume that the Bible is factually true, and work backwards from there. The wording of the sign suggests that they expect their opponents in any scientific argument to be doing exactly the same thing that they are doing--i.e., "setting out to prove" a pre-determined answer, and imposing their own unchangeable starting assumption on the data throughout the process.

The erroneous impression that this is the way science works is encouraged by the widespread acceptance of industry-funded studies "scientifically proving" things that benefit those industries.

(BTW, I agree with Quincy that the unseemly East Anglia University email affair was blown out of proportion, but the fact that certain things could not be flatly denied did not exactly build public confidence in the objectivity of climatologists in general.)

Science contaminated by blatant confirmation bias is not science, no matter who does it. Although the scientific method does start with a hypothesis, the data is supposed to be allowed to confirm or deny that hypothesis by speaking freely for itself. The answer, whatever it may be, needs to come forth from the data, not from the desire to confirm or deny a presupposition.

That said, in the case of both evolution and man-made climate change, when enough data over time points in the same direction, large numbers of independent scientists start to agree that what they're observing seems consistent with a larger answer. However, that's not the same as starting with an answer, and then trying to shoehorn observable reality into it to produce results consistent with that answer. Cooking up data to produce the answers you want isn't science--it's fraud.

And yes, in the case of the Big Bang Theory, the idea came out of insubstantial data, and then additional experiments were developed. Still, the data had to be allowed to speak freely for itself. And the findings had to be reproducible by others, working independently.

It seems relevant to mention again that the cosmologist who came up with the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic priest. Msgr. Georges Lemaître considered theology and science to be two completely different means of seeking truth. He didn't see any advantage to trying to make them confirm each other. From a book edited by astronomers Stephen Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson:

It is tempting to think that Lemaître’s deeply-held religious beliefs might have led him to the notion of a beginning of time. After all, the Judeo-Christian tradition had propagated a similar idea for millennia. Yet Lemaître clearly insisted that there was neither a connection nor a conflict between his religion and his science. Rather he kept them entirely separate, treating them as different, parallel interpretations of the world, both of which he believed with personal conviction. Indeed, when Pope Pius XII referred to the new theory of the origin of the universe as a scientific validation of the Catholic faith, Lemaître was rather alarmed. Delicately, for that was his way, he tried to separate the two:
“As far as I can see, such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being… For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God… It is consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in the beginning of the universe.”

[Longer excerpt here.]

This has been a rather a long digression from the global warming topic, but I think it may shed some light on why some people show such vehement cognitive dissonance on the question, despite the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that human factors are driving climate change.

No one can be an expert at everything. Everyone has to take some things on faith. With scientific matters, most people are completely at sea, and need to rely on someone else's guidance. Frankly, many would rather that that "someone else" be a trusted religious or political party leader, rather than a bunch of scientific strangers with unknown motives (or a gang of mockers on a poetry forum's General Talk board).

[Charlie Southerland]

Well, you did step willingly into it, Brian. Where you guys are now with Earth's and the age of man, was where I was as an adolescent some 40 odd years ago. Personally, I could give a rat's tail about how old the earth is or how long man has occupied it. That's just the bait. Coming full circle back to the subject of Global Warming/Climate Change is the trap you stepped into.

If the earth is as old as you cite, millions, if not billions of years or longer, man has certainly not occupied it for all of that time, by your own measuring. For the sake of argument though, let's pick a number we might all agree on, say two million years. Does that sound about right?

We might even agree that the land mass at one time was all connected— Pangea.
We can also agree that somewhere way back in earth's history that uncountable micro plants and micro animal types existed.

Since there is no recorded history of dinosaurs co-existing with man, one must conclude that they died, went extinct sometime before man drug his knuckles out of the oceans.

Mountains formed, valleys and rivers appeared. Deserts and jungles came about and both poles froze in ice.

Seas rose and fell, great fishes swam the seas. Floods and droughts came and went.

All of this happened without the influence of man.

There are various hypothesis' about all of the physical manifestations the earth went through.

At all times, there was breathable air for all of everything that breathed air and there was enough air for the fishes to breathe as well.

What you guys are telling me is that you are putting your "faith" in what evidence scientists have found, but have not agreeably given a definitive conclusion about how all of these happened.

For example, what happened to all of crustaceous life for it to either be miles down below the ground turning them into petroleum, or upon the highest mountains embedded in the rocky strata?

Same question with the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Same with the fish.

Same with the vegetation and trees.

Something apparently happened, no?

Some things happened over time, over millennia that destroyed them all.

What catastrophes came and went to kill them?

Again, scientists cannot agree on causation.
They can only speculate, which is why I used the term; Speculative fiction.

There is not a theory that you can cite that I have not heard, not one.
And scientists change their minds about earth's past history all the time.
There are many schools of thought out there which blow in the wind.
The only certainty you have is that something happened. That's it.



So in the face of all of that destruction and chaos, why was anything left alive?
All of those creatures breathed the same air, even when the environment they lived in changed.
Don't you suppose that global warming and global cooling happened on an fairly frequent basis? Don't you suppose that volcanos and hurricanes and earthquakes and other calamities happened with regularity? And yet, many species survived and thrived, and the Earth cleaned and rid itself of poison all by itself? Without man's interference or help or carbon credits or taxes or population? No matter whether one believes in a Divine Creator or not, these things happened. They were not man-caused.

And then when man showed up, he began using the resources stockpiled for his ingenuity and profit. Some of those elements are rare, some plentiful.

Men do not have control of nature. Yes, men pollute nature and the earth cleans up after them just like they never existed. When nature has had enough of man, it will be the judge, not the other way around. This theory is called order.

I have never subscribed to the belief of doing nothing to keep the planet clean. I don't want to hear heinous platitudes either about— if this, then this.

I find it fascinating that cities and counties across the world are drilling into our garbage dumps to retrieve gas to use.

I also find it fascinating that millions of birds are slaughtered each year by windmills generating clean energy and solar farms are frying many millions more as the birds fly over the glaring solar panels. I find it more fascinating that there is no outcry from the progressive community about it. What will happen when progress kills all the birds? How many Chernobyl's and Fukushima's are there in the offing? Or TMI.s? What will happen to man when bio-engineered grains begin promulgating antibiotic resistant diseases or bio-engineered or cloned livestock becomes the norm?

The earth will still cool and heat at its own pace and people will adapt to smog.Until they don't.

That's what the scientists are saying.

We are all suckers.

But everybody's got to believe sumpin'.

[Gail White]

When medieval people found dinosaur bones, they attributed them to the giants who populated the earth in its early days, as per the Bible. This actually makes pretty good sense until you find the skulls.