Need Help With Some Fact Verification

[Guest]

If any of you have read my thread in Rants the other day about the fundy and his "questions for evolutionists". Well, one guy on his blog wrote some really stupid shit, and I've crafted a reply to it, but I'm not exactly sure I have all the facts exactly right. I know I have the gist, but I want to avoid making any unfounded assumptions in my reply. I'm being civil on this site, because so far (after an initial period of doubt) the owner of the blog has been respectful to me so far.

 

Anyway, this is what he wrote

 

2. The sun burns something like 400 tons of mass a day (or is it an hour?) I don't know the exact figure, but I do know the sun is burning all the time since time began. Granted it is extremely large, it is burning off and thus getting smaller. I heard a scientist who did the math and said at the rate at which it is burning, if you went back 100,000 years the seas would be boiling. Life would be impossible. Go back a few million years and the surface of the sun would be touching the earth. I am no mathematician but by most evolutionary theories life as we know it would require millions and millions, if not billions of years to evolve from the primordial sludge that we are alleged to have emerged from. Not likely with the sun that close to our planet even just 100,000 years ago.

 

At first I said that this point was too crazy to even address, but on reflection I wrote the following, and ask if any of you here that know more than I do can tell me if I got this gist close enough to post.

 

Actually, I’ve changed my mind, and I do want to reply to your 2nd bullet about the sun, because it really needs explaining if this is common thought in the creationist camp. I must issue a caveat though that I am pounding this out from memory quickly today, and although I do not profess to have anything but a cursory understanding of astrophysics I do know the basics. This is really something that is quite easy to read up on yourselves, there are numerous books and online sites that are written with laymen in mind.

 

That said, your description of the sun extrapolated into the past is assuming the sun burns its fuel in a manner analogous to a tree log burning in a campfire. The log starts out a certain diameter and size and these measurements will steadily decrease as the log is consumed by fire. Is this so far correct? Because the sun does not “burn†it’s fuel in that manner, and that is why your description made me laugh.

 

The sun is a nuclear furnace. It is composed of mostly of hydrogen and creates its energy by fusing hydrogen into helium. This process requires intense pressure and heat in order to fuse atoms together because of the strength of the electric fields that bond the atoms together in the first place. When the sun successfully “squeezes†some hydrogen into helium, there are some extra electrons that are “popped off†the new helium atom. This is what the sun radiates as solar energy. When the hydrogen is used up, the sun will then fuse the helium into other elements.

 

Will the sun change in size? Absolutely, but it will GROW in the future, not shrink. Why is that? Its mass will change. This is the beautiful thing about stars; they are a perfect balance between a gigantic nuclear explosion and its own gravitational mass pulling this explosion into itself to create a star . So as the mass decreases, so will the gravitational pull keeping it a consistent size.

 

Thanks guys, I'm having some fun over there!

[xandermac]

I don't have any answers for you but I wanted you to know I've been watching the fun over there!

[hereticzero]

Will the sun change in size? Absolutely, but it will GROW in the future, not shrink. Why is that? Its mass will change. This is the beautiful thing about stars; they are a perfect balance between a gigantic nuclear explosion and its own gravitational mass pulling this explosion into itself to create a star . So as the mass decreases, so will the gravitational pull keeping it a consistent size.

 

Actually, the sun is set to become a black hole in the future, not a star. What is the URL where this argument can be found?

[Evan]

Will the sun change in size? Absolutely, but it will GROW in the future, not shrink. Why is that? Its mass will change. This is the beautiful thing about stars; they are a perfect balance between a gigantic nuclear explosion and its own gravitational mass pulling this explosion into itself to create a star . So as the mass decreases, so will the gravitational pull keeping it a consistent size.

 

Actually, the sun is set to become a black hole in the future, not a star. What is the URL where this argument can be found?

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInte...BlackHoles.html

 

go google go!

 

http://blackholes.stardate.org/resources/faqs/faq.php?id=4

[Guest Marty]

Actually, the sun is set to become a black hole in the future, not a star. What is the URL where this argument can be found?

 

I thought a star had to be larger than our sun to become a black hole. I'm pretty sure our sun becomes a white dwarf or something in death.

 

EDIT: Sorry, forgot the link.

 

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...logID=343778438

[scitsofreaky]

OMG, I could barely get passed "by Kent Hovind"

As usual (or should I say "still"?) many of these "questions" are either completely unrelated to evolution or are completely meaningless. Number 7 is, IMO, completely unanswerable because it is so incoherent. My head hurts just from reading that question.

I can't get myself to read much of the comments, they are too painful. I used to have a stomach that could handle this stuff, but I just can't do it anymore.

But, at talkorigins they have a response for pretty much every argument Hovind has ever made here.

[live and learn]

Not my area of expertise, but can one really assume that the sun has burned at the same rate over those millions of years? Have the parameters that affect that rate, such as pressure, been shown to be consistent? Like I said, I don't know anything about astronomy, but it seems like a fair question to me.

[scitsofreaky]

Apparently I'm a glutton for punishment.

 

First you should note that no one can give any scientific (or even remotely "scientific") evidence that the planet, universe, etc, are ~6-7000 years old. The best any of the arguments seem to get for them is just under 200000 years (which, of course is completely invalid). They can only attack, they cannot defend, and they probably wont try (oh god, I'm having flashbacks to "burden of proof" arguments). They seem to be able to do only two things: copy and paste arguments that are a million years old (hehe); quote Bible passages. For example, this "Brother Rob" clown says, in the most condescending way he can muster (I think he should ask himself, WWJD?), that we should read Romans 1 and 2. If we think we are "just" evolved monkeys and we reject The Bible, why would we care what it said?

 

Ok, the specific points.

 

1. It is not a fact. The missing link is still missing because it does not exist. If you are honestly in search of truth then face the fact that many of your main bits of evidence have been proven to be hoaxes. That is a verifiable fact. At least be willing to look into it. The key thing to remember (sic) is this: there is nothing verfiable (sic) on behalf of evolution at the amoeba stage. If it didn't happen at that stage it didn't happen later either.

Wow, that is a bunch of crap. First, evolution is fact and theory.

Second, I can almost agree with the second sentence, just not for the same reasons he has. There is basically no chance that we will find the actually creature (ie species) that was the ancestor of, just as an example, people and chimps. Fossils are rare, and it is even rarer (that's an awkward word) that we find the fossils, or enough of them to get anything useful from them. But we can, have, and still do find fossils that are good representations of what the “missing link†was like. He notes that just “many,†which can mean just about anything, of the main bits of evidence have been proven to be hoaxes (proven by scientists, which should be noted), not all. Really, the vast majority of transitional fossils have been validated. That is a verifiable fact. At least be willing to look into it.

I'm not sure what he means by the next sentence. We have nothing at the amoeba stage? You mean, like amoebas? Whatever.

 

I'll skip number 2.

 

3. Evolution is not science, but more like a religion that requires blind faith. The law of entropy however is science and it stands in direct opposition to the idea of evolution. Life is not evolving, it is winding down.

If by science you mean constantly tested, verified or falsified, then evolution is 100% science goodness. If instead you mean whatever you believe, than you are right, evolution is not science.

The entropy argument is a dead horse, no reason to beat it again here.

 

4. Natural selection, ha! (Now that's a contradiction) Random chance does not "select" anything. Choice requires intellect. But greater than that to consider is this : Explain where we get conscience. There is something within us that tells us what the right thing to do is and what it is not. We can ignore that and do as we please, but we cannot deny that it exists. It is a moral law which did not evolve, but was instilled in us by our Creator who is perfect and holy in all His ways. Survival of the fittest does not account for conscience. And what is it that our conscience is constantly telling us? We are sinners.

Natural selection is not the random chance part, genius. Genetic variation is the random part (it's a verifiable fact, if you are willing to look into it). Natural selection is the non-random selection of the random variations: the variations that are deleterious are not passed on to future generations. So there is no contradiction.

 

I'm guessing he has no scientific evidence for the rest of this “argument†so it can be dismissed.

 

5. Pick up a bible and read Romans, chapters 1 and 2. You may not be able to make sense of the rest of the bible because it is spiritual and , according to your own belief system, you believe yourself to be an evolved monkey, but you should be able to comprehend at least those 2 chapters.

Irrelevant.

 

Wow, that was some weak shit. I've actually heard better from kids. How sad.

[Outback Jack]

Marty, I'm no scientist but I watch a LOT of science shows. Everything you've written looks good as far as I can tell. The log analogy is very good.!

 

HereticZero is wrong about the black hole, but Evan's second link corrects that nicely (although I thought it was supposed to become a brown dwarf after expanding beyond the orbit of the Earth. Close enough for government work)

 

ETA: Good luck on your effort!

[Guest Marty]

OMG, I could barely get passed "by Kent Hovind"

 

I know! I called him on it (I am Blueberry Mourning on Myspace), and he said a person's character has nothing to do with whether or not they have a solid argument.

 

A politician or scientist who is maybe a little sexually too active, I'd agree with. But someone who lies and cooks the books in order to hide provable fact (Hovind's attempts to avoid paying taxes) is just too much like lying and cooking the science books in order to hide provable facts of evolution.

 

He has yet to respond to that.

[crazy-tiger]

I read through it... I read the comments/responses to it/the comments...

 

I can't believe no-one picked up on the statement about the Law of Biogenesis and how it states life cannot come from non-life.

 

If I could be bothered, and if I was insane, I'd start a MySpace account just to respond to that... but I'm not, so I'm putting it here.

 

 

 

To quote Wikipedia...

Pasteur's (and others) empirical results were summarized in the phrase, Omne vivum ex vivo (or Omne vivum ex ovo), Latin for "all life [is] from [an] egg". This is sometimes called "law of biogenesis" and shows that life does not currently spontaneously arise in nature in its present forms from non-life.

Strangely enough, ToE also says that... which makes you wonder how the hell people manage to get confused.

 

 

While I'm on the subject, a Google search for the Law of Biogenesis turned up this page... http://www.discoverymagazine.com/articles/d1992/d9204g.htm

I've not seen such a mass of complete bollocks and outright dishonesty since I checked DrDino.com...

[hereticzero]

okey dokey, the Blackhole Website says I am totally astronomically challenged and I don't know a blackhole from my arsehole! Actually, I made that up but I wuz wrong so I'll go study my homework!

[scitsofreaky]

OMG, I could barely get passed "by Kent Hovind"

 

I know! I called him on it (I am Blueberry Mourning on Myspace), and he said a person's character has nothing to do with whether or not they have a solid argument.

 

A politician or scientist who is maybe a little sexually too active, I'd agree with. But someone who lies and cooks the books in order to hide provable fact (Hovind's attempts to avoid paying taxes) is just too much like lying and cooking the science books in order to hide provable facts of evolution.

 

He has yet to respond to that.

I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that everything that douche has ever argued has been shot down. It is just an added bonus that he is a convicted liar and thief.

 

I'll probably regret this, but I think I'm going to join this little party, assuming others are still going to participate.

[Guest Marty]

I'll probably regret this, but I think I'm going to join this little party, assuming others are still going to participate.

 

He hasn't posted in a few days, he "says" he has other work to attend to, and will be back later in the week. I suspect that he just has to do a little research to try and keep his head above water. I have sent ALOT of rebuttals to him this week, and I keep challenging him on his "first cause" argument, since he won't let it go, and will not even try to resolve the illogic of it all.

 

He has said that complexity requires a creator, but has then told me that the complexity of the creator need not be questioned, because THAT complexity has always existed. Yet he has the balls to say that "given infinite time anything that could happen will happen" is the craziest thing he has ever heard.

 

[scitsofreaky]

I really want "brother rob" to reply, but I doubt he will.

 

I've been thinking it might be fun to bring out examples from the book I'm currently reading, Evolution of the Insects, because they aren't going to find arguments about the transition in the number of eye facets in male scale insects anywhere.

[Guest Marty]

I really want "brother rob" to reply, but I doubt he will.

 

I actually printed out the entire blog this morning because I am starting to think it will disappear soon.

 

When this guy first contacted me, I thought it was just a hit and run. I went to his site and answered a few questions on his blog, but they weren't posted right away, even though he had been on Myspace. I took this to mean that he was going to post questions about evolution, but not allow any responses in order to make it look like nobody can answer them. I was wrong because the next day he and others had posted and responded to them.

 

But my second batch of comments (not posted yet) that address' their "proofs" are quite damning, IMHO. I really do not think this guy has ever had his worldview challenged, his arguments are so weak and he genuinely seems suprised to hear some of the counter arguments. I would be suprised if he continues this past what is already posted, and would be VERY suprised if these volleys go into a third or fourth generation.

 

This is my first debate with fundies since my anger started to wane last year, and I am having so much fun! I can think clearly without the anger welling up inside me. Being challenged by xtians is the best way to solidify my science understanding and asure myself I have done the right thing by asking questions and searching out my own answers instead of trusting someone else to tell me what things say. Their comments are so asinine I can't believe grown adults believe them!

 

I've posted it elsewhere recently, but I am really thankful for this site. Not becoming hot with anger everytime I hear a xtian speak is very liberating. This reduction in anger is directly related to becoming firm in my dis-belief. Words cannot express how much I have enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts overs the last few years, and how much it has helped me knowing I am not the only one that has been mind-fucked by the cult!

[scitsofreaky]

I really do not think this guy has ever had his worldview challenged, his arguments are so weak and he genuinely seems suprised to hear some of the counter arguments.

I agree. I doubt he has ever allowed to have his worldview challenged, which is why I agree that I doubt this will go any further. He's probably used to just having those that agree with him tell him how they agree, like the first response to the blog by Jason. Is the line, "it takes more Faith to believe what evolutionist believe" in a book that every creationist reads? I swear at some point it comes up in the discussion.

 

But, that Darwin's Myth guy looks like he could be some fun My god his site is offensive to the eyes. And anyone who has that much Hovind can't not be fun. Edit: Oh shit, and Audio Adrenaline! Holy crap that takes me waaayy back. I'm surprised he doesn't have any DC Talk.

[Eric_PK]

If any of you have read my thread in Rants the other day about the fundy and his "questions for evolutionists". Well, one guy on his blog wrote some really stupid shit, and I've crafted a reply to it, but I'm not exactly sure I have all the facts exactly right. I know I have the gist, but I want to avoid making any unfounded assumptions in my reply. I'm being civil on this site, because so far (after an initial period of doubt) the owner of the blog has been respectful to me so far.

 

Anyway, this is what he wrote

 

2. The sun burns something like 400 tons of mass a day (or is it an hour?) I don't know the exact figure, but I do know the sun is burning all the time since time began. Granted it is extremely large, it is burning off and thus getting smaller. I heard a scientist who did the math and said at the rate at which it is burning, if you went back 100,000 years the seas would be boiling. Life would be impossible. Go back a few million years and the surface of the sun would be touching the earth. I am no mathematician but by most evolutionary theories life as we know it would require millions and millions, if not billions of years to evolve from the primordial sludge that we are alleged to have emerged from. Not likely with the sun that close to our planet even just 100,000 years ago.

 

At first I said that this point was too crazy to even address, but on reflection I wrote the following, and ask if any of you here that know more than I do can tell me if I got this gist close enough to post.

 

Actually, I’ve changed my mind, and I do want to reply to your 2nd bullet about the sun, because it really needs explaining if this is common thought in the creationist camp. I must issue a caveat though that I am pounding this out from memory quickly today, and although I do not profess to have anything but a cursory understanding of astrophysics I do know the basics. This is really something that is quite easy to read up on yourselves, there are numerous books and online sites that are written with laymen in mind.

 

That said, your description of the sun extrapolated into the past is assuming the sun burns its fuel in a manner analogous to a tree log burning in a campfire. The log starts out a certain diameter and size and these measurements will steadily decrease as the log is consumed by fire. Is this so far correct? Because the sun does not “burn†it’s fuel in that manner, and that is why your description made me laugh.

 

The sun is a nuclear furnace. It is composed of mostly of hydrogen and creates its energy by fusing hydrogen into helium. This process requires intense pressure and heat in order to fuse atoms together because of the strength of the electric fields that bond the atoms together in the first place. When the sun successfully “squeezes†some hydrogen into helium, there are some extra electrons that are “popped off†the new helium atom. This is what the sun radiates as solar energy. When the hydrogen is used up, the sun will then fuse the helium into other elements.

 

Will the sun change in size? Absolutely, but it will GROW in the future, not shrink. Why is that? Its mass will change. This is the beautiful thing about stars; they are a perfect balance between a gigantic nuclear explosion and its own gravitational mass pulling this explosion into itself to create a star . So as the mass decreases, so will the gravitational pull keeping it a consistent size.

 

Thanks guys, I'm having some fun over there!

 

On the energy side, with the exception of neutrinos (which are weakly interacting and mostly just fly off in straight lines), the energy from fusion thermally heats the star, and the heat is radiated as light from the surface.

 

On stellar size, the sun will get bigger because it will get hotter when it the core collapses after it can no longer fuse hydrogen, and hotter still when it starts fusing helium. That's the red giant stage. When the helium is gone, the core collapses, gets smaller and hotter, and the outer layers eventually become a planetary nebula, with the core becoming a white dwarf. It will hang around forever unless it starts pulling gas gravitationally - if it does, it will eventually get big enough for the gravity to overcome the electron degeneracy pressure, it will get a lot smaller quicker, and then explode in a type I supernova.

 

Stars bigger than the sun may go on to fuse other elements heavier than helium, and too may end up as white dwarfs.

 

If they're big enough, however, they'll eventually start creating iron. But, because of the way atomic energies work, it takes more energy than it produces to fuse iron, so iron accumulates in the core. When there's enough to overcome the electron repulsion, the core collapses (to neutron repulsion), the whole star's envelope falls down, and rebounds in a type II supernova, which can produce 10 billion times the light of the sun for months or years.

 

Then you have the core left. If it's less then 2 or 3 solar masses, it becomes a neutron star. If it's bigger, it will collapse again, into a black hole.

 

There's great info here on this: http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/bmendez/ay10/2...ycle/cycle.html

 

IIRC correctly, the 100,000 year figure came from early calculations based on lack of understanding of nuclear reactions. The math there is pretty easy - the sun converts about 3.9 x 10^9 kg of matter to energy every second. But it masses 1.9891 ×10^30 kg, so if it could fuse all of its mass, it would take 5.1 x 10^19 seconds, which is 1.6 x 10^12 (1,600,000,000,000) years.

 

As it is, it will only fuse a small amount of that, and it only has perhaps 7-8 billion years left.

[Sexton Blake]

Back in 1989 I was in Los Angeles and reading a local newespaper and came across a letter from DOCTOR Duane Gish of the Institute for Creationist Research (hahahaha!) who said that if all stars were made of hydrogen and helium, where did all the other elements in the universe come from? Surely god had made them? I informed him of what any ten year old with an interest in astyronomy could have told him and continued pointing out his mistakes for years until he had one of his staff tell me he was at death's door. What a loser.

 

One of my favourite sites for such ignorant people :

 

 

http://www.fstdt.com/fundies/top100.aspx?archive=1

[Guest Marty]

UPDATE***

 

OK, just as I suspected, the xtian is back, and has NOT posted my responses to his blog. Just like the one I posted here, I took some time to craft well thought out, accurate posts that were not insulting to his intelligence or beliefs, and it got me nowhere.

 

What REALLY gets me is that I kept calling him on his claim evolution hinges on "blind chance" and he finally asked me "If not blind chance, then what?" I sent a long, detailed post outlining 2 aspects of natural selection, namely sexual selection and enviromental pressure. Nothing posted.

 

HOWEVER, he did post another xtian comment (bro Rob) claiming DNA proves ID!! Yet, of course, he stops there, no need to offer any evidence as to how DNA proves ID.

 

Anyway, I have moved this discussion to my blog site, and I would like to invite anyone who may have issued a comment to re-write it on my site. I do not want this to disappear, if anything, SOMEONE may stumble onto my or his site and actually have a desire to learn.

 

Anyway, my blog is here: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...iendID=92361505.

 

Thanks for all your help/comments on this guys!!

 

M

[scitsofreaky]

I'm glad you copied this to your blog. I did respond to bro. R's baseless claim about DNA and ID, and that I don't care what Romans 1&2 says. Now we see if it is accepted.

[Guest Marty]

I'm glad you copied this to your blog. I did respond to bro. R's baseless claim about DNA and ID, and that I don't care what Romans 1&2 says. Now we see if it is accepted.

 

Post it to my blog too. I'd like to have a good discussion on my site anyway. I have off on Mondays and Tuesdays, I'm gonna re-write all my posts then.

 

I also wrote that reading Romans is irrelavant in a discussion on evolution. I bet that will get posted, but my detailed essay on how the sun works gets deleted because it makes them look stupid. He is planning to make it look like we have nothing but "belief" to back us up too. That's why I copied it all to my site, with all the links included. Someone can compare what is posted to my site and posted to his and see the honesty of xtians.

 

M