Starboy

Point taken, but are you saying that it is beyond the reach of the dedicated amateur?

Starboy

I find the interchange between xBobTheAlienx and the non-creationist very interesting.
I can’t help but think that your approach is futile. Have any of you ever managed to win over a creationist with these sorts of arguments?

Adios

Starboy

Autonemesis

This is a really insidious feature of blind Biblical inerrancy. People believe things that others tell them are in the holy babble, and when you try to point out that nothing of the sort is in the book, they come back at you with some inane rejoinder like "Why are you studying God's word so intensely if you think it is false?"

So questioning their beliefs becomes proof to the believer that the questioner secretly accepts those beliefs too, but just doesn't want to admit it.

xBobTheAlienx

About the earth's spin: The rotation of the earth is gradually slowing — losing time. The causes for this are many, including gravitational drag forces exerted on the earth by the sun and moon. If the earth is billions of years old, and it has been slowing down uniformly through time, the earth's present spin would be zero. Extrapolating backwards, the earths spin billions of years ago would have been so great that the centrifugal force would pull the land masses to the equatorial regions and draw them out to a present-day height of over 40 miles. The oceans would have been pushed to the poles and the overall shape of the earth changed from a sphere to a fat pancake. But the earth is still spinning, its shape is spherical, its continents are not crowded to the equatorial regions, and the oceans are not centered at the poles. What do we conclude? The earth is NOT billions of years old. lost the link to the site i got that from.

xBobTheAlienx

Ya know, there are like 8 of you and 1 of me and its getting really tiring arguing with all of you at the same time. Why in the world do you keep giving me links to 3-page long essays in every one of your posts!? i cant read that much on 8 year computer screen it hurts my eyes!
Maybe because its true?

I have an idea: lets all talk about 1 subject at the same time. You all go ahead and pick one.

notto

You'll find that if you want a discussion here, it would help if you can provide resources that are documented and researched so that others can check your facts. Why don't you look into the issue a bit yourself and get the stats on this rate of change (how much, how long, how is it measured and verified) and come back and convince us.

FYI - here is what I've found on the subject, can you dispute it?

<a href="http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF6/623.html" target="_blank">http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF6/623.html</a>

"With the growing needs of the scientific and military communities for extremely accurate timekeeping, this method was found to be totally inadequate. For one thing, variations in the rate of rotation of the earth were found to amount to as much as one or two seconds during the course of a year, and for another, it was found that the earth is gradually slowing down at the rate of about one-thousandth of a second every 100 years."

Now, lets look at the math
.001 seconds / 100 years = .00001 seconds/year

.00001 X 1,000,000,000 = 10,000 seconds

10,000 seconds = approx 167 minutes
167 minutes = approx 2.7 hours

So, at even 4 billion years ago (assuming a constant rate of spin decay - which is unlikely), the day was approx 14 hours long. Why do you think this would change the shape of the earth significantly? Please feel free to check my math.

You do realize that planets such as Jupiter have a much higher spin rate than the earth don't you? Are they flat as a pancake? Why not?

Why don't you
a) read the great resources you have been pointing to
b) give us your sources if you can so we can check to make sure that they say what you say they do
c) use a bit of critical thinking before you buy the explanations of creationist sites (especially ones that consider themselves "ministries" or "evangalism" sites
d) if you are trolling, QUIT IT!

Autonemesis

To the extent that textbooks regurgitate scenarios like that, without an exposition of the investigations and experiments that led to them, they are flawed, and misrepresent the scientific process. I'd much rather see elementary and secondary schools spend a lot more time on basic science as a methodology, and leave current research topics for advanced placement and college course.

Of course, this criticism leaves aside the question of whether or not creationists would be content if textbooks were modified to read "evolutionary scientists believe based on current understanding that humans and other primates evolved from a common ancestor that lived millions of years ago." Somehow, I think they would not - even though it directly addresses their most strenuous objections - but that's just my opinion.

The problem with creationism is that it doesn't even remotely resemble what scientists are actually doing. That creationism is referred to as a science is a lie, and teaching it as a science is very bad for the future of actual science.

Autonemesis

This is exactly what the religious right wants. Look at the result. Bob is resistant to reason and blind to evidence contrary to the dogma he is programmed with. His mind is literally imprisoned within a closed loop that he seems incapable of escaping.

Dr Rick

It's not realistic to expect to win over a particular creationist poster, but countering falsehoods and irrational arguments with sound evidence and reason educates the dozens and sometimes hundreds of lurkers that follow these threads.

rick

Autonemesis

The rate of deceleration is very very slow, and decreasing over time as well.

The Sun is not burning anything, not in the sense of combustion by rapid oxidation with release of heat. Nothing of the sort is occurring. That the Sun "burns hydrogen" is an unfortunate simplification that I wish had never been popularized. Is this really what you believe is happening in the Sun, burning in the same sense as a natural gas explosion? Please tell me it isn't so.

That's what I am afraid of....