HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mrl@st-andrews.ac.uk (  Michael Ladomery)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Question for Creationists
Date: 28 Sep 92 17:06:43 GMT
Organization: St. Andrews University, Scotland.

In article <1457@esl.ESL.COM> markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen) writes:

deletion

>Circular arguments do exist for a majority of people; I have not
>contradicted myself or sidestepped the issue.  I've clarified my
>position that many people have "faith" in science and the scientist
>much like many people have faith in religious leaders.

I have trouble understanding your analogy. I thought, BTW, that religious
people had faith in God, in the scriptures etc etc, not necessarily
in the "religious leaders." 

What are the "shrines" of science? The "temples" of science? In what
way does science claim to deal with the spiritual, whatever the
spiritual is? It doesn't. Therefore I really think we have a
problem of incommensurability here. 

>>So which is it?  Can you see that there is a difference?    Do
>>you realise that a good part of Science is in trying to make sure 
>>that you don't have to take things on faith?
>
>What world do you live in?  Look around at all the people who take
>science on faith.  They have no understanding at all of the scientific
>process and yet they believe what they are told by scientists.  This
>is no different than most religions.  The key is to ground yourself
>with basic principles of science or religion so that you don't have to
>work off of blind faith.
As a worker in science, you are encouraged throughout training to be
ultra-skeptical, and you certainly don't  or shouldn't base your
work on blind faith. In religion, I understand that a priest must
have a strong faith. It's a different matter; I'm not denigrating
faith but I do insist that we're dealing with incommensurable things here.
faith but I do insist that we're dealing with incommensurable
things here.
From: lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Randi's award (was Re: Observations)
Date: 1 Oct 92 19:46:00 GMT
 <1992Sep29.195145.19351@aurora.com> <qfji3vs@zola.esd.sgi.com> <1992Sep30.181531.4453@desire.wright.edu>
Distribution: world,local
Organization: University of Arizona
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <1992Sep30.181531.4453@desire.wright.edu>, sbishop@desire.wright.edu writes...
>Then there is The Amazing Randi, debunker extraordinaire, who has offered
>a $10,000 reward for years to anyone who can produce a genuine bonafied
>miracle for him.  So far, no takers, none, not one......

Oh, there have been plenty of people who have taken him up on his challenge--
over 50 of them, I believe.  None have collected.

Jim Lippard              Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
From: czl30@duts.ccc.amdahl.com (Chris Lee)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: pi=3 (was Re: Abuse By t.o Regulars
Date: 4 Oct 92 15:11:15 GMT
Reply-To: czl30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Chris Lee)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

In article <1992Oct1.174958.14160@wdl.loral.com> mab@wdl39.wdl.loral.com (Mark A Biggar) writes:
>Come on now, that's just a granularity of mesurement error.  Take a circle
>ten units in diameter, yes its circumference in 31.415+ units, but your
>messuring it by walking a 1 unit cord around the circle.  The arc length
>associated with a 1 unit cord is 10*arcsin(.5/100) = 1.004 units, so yes 
>it should have said 31 and a fraction cubits.  But all the other numbers
>are given in only 1 digit accuracy so 30 is close enough.  Remember the bible
>is not a blueprint for building the temple.  If you built a circular fish
>pond 10 yards in diameter in your backyard and someone asked how far around it
>was you would most likely just say "Oh, about 30 yards".

I agree: it's just what I would have expected the tribal recorder or
archivist to write. But then I dont go around saying that the bible is
totally accurate.

Unfortunately the creationist logic goes something like:
    "the bible is 100% accurate and everything is therefore 100%
     fact and therefore the genesis and flood stories are 100% true"

All you need to do is disprove the original assumtion. All you need to do
is point out 1 of the myriad contradictions so it can't be 100% accurate.
If it's not 100% accurate then you have to work out which bits to believe
and the creationist conclusions go out of the window because they started
from a false assumption.

But because creationists and other fundies base EVERYTHING on what they
find in the bible, they have to treat it as inerrant. And they freak out
when shown inaccuracies and contradictions.

Fortunately not all christians are fundies or creationists. It would be
a joke if they weren't so politically powerful.

>
>--
>Mark Biggar
>mab@wdl1.wdl.loral.com

Chris Lee
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: morgan@sitka.triumf.ca (Morgan Burke)
Subject: Re: Words to Think by
Organization: TRIUMF, Vancouver BC
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 00:27:56 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.165022@IASTATE.EDU>, kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub) writes:
|>   Hmm, even I can do that.  Draw a triangle on a sphere.
|> 
|>   If you wan't to stick with "planar" triangles it can sill be done.  Put a
|> black hole in the center of the triangle.  The "streight" lines will bend
|> through space due to gravitational distortions.  Depending on how you define
|> "streight" the angles will be greater than or less than 180 degrees.
|> 
|>   BTW, this is true even with a weak gravity source like the earth, though it
|> isn't as noticable.

This would not be using planar triangles.  The reason the triangle bends
in gravity is because of gravitational distortions of space-time.  The 
resulting geometry is decidedly non-Euclidian.

-- Morgan Burke (morgan@reg.triumf.ca)
From: adpeters@sunflower.bio.indiana.edu (Andy Peters)
Subject: Re: Words to Think by
Organization: Program in Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, Indiana University
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 02:50:23 GMT

In article <97302@bu.edu> colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby) writes:
>In article <BvGIzD.F0H@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> adpeters@sunflower.bio.indiana.edu (Andy Peters) writes:
>
>>In the same chapter (or maybe the second), Burke tells about St.
>>Augustine (I think), who made a list of things even God couldn't
>>do.  Among them was, "make the interior angles of a triangle sum to 
>>other than 180 degrees."  I liked that.
>
>What if you drew the triangle on a curved surface (such as a sphere)?
>The sum of the angles would be less than 180 but I'm not sure if you
>could still call the three sided figure a triangle. Just curious,
>anyone knee deep in geometry trivia out there?

Damn.  I knew someone was going to bring that up.  Change "triangle"
to "Euclidean triangle."  

I know zero about geometry (since I didn't have the Burke book with
me I had to get out a geometry book to make sure that it was, in fact
180 degrees that the angles of a triangle added up to), but I'm sure
there's some bizarre geometry out there where the 180 degree thing is
violated.

>
>>* Andy Peters                     * "Slugs are small and portable    *From
>
>Chris Colby 	---	 email: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu	---

-- 
* Andy Peters                     * "Slugs are small and portable    *From
* Program in Evolution,           * Just stuff 'em up your nose      *"Slugs,"
*      Ecology, and Behavior      * They'll fit beneath your armpits *by David
* Indiana University, Bloomington * Or right between your toes"      *Greenberg
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Subject: Re: Creationist CRAPOLA!
Reply-To: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 19:26:39 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.190354.1895@aurora.com>, isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)
writes:
> In article <1992Sep30.115509.26590@city.cs>, lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun)
writes:
>> 1. The water came from the water vapour canopy around the earth.
>> 2. The water ended up in the oceans.
> 
> As a gift to Creationists, I present the following alternate view of
> where the water went.
> 
> The water was dissociated to become molecular hydrogen and oxygen.  The
> hydrogen, being light, escaped our atmosphere.  The oxygen is still here.
> This implies that there was less oxygen before the flood, but this is
> consistent with the long lifespans then.  After all, oxygen is highly
> corrosive, so it obviously must decrease life expectancies, right?
> 
> As to how the atoms in the water became separated--it was apparently done by
> the high electromagnetic radiation from Saturn.  Either that, or God did it.

   This is a much better explanation than Lionel's; it would be slightly harder
to poke holes in (trapped air in the Greenland ice...  ...hmm... ...nope, not
enough oxegen differential...  ...oh well).  The problem is that it requires
either a miracle or Ted Holden appearing in revalations somewhere to get the
oxegen seperated out.  Lionel won't put Ted in the Bible and we don't credit
miracles not specifically mntioned in scripture, not even for creationist
explainations :).

> Mark Isaak           "Every generation thinks it has the answers, and every

Dan
Danwell@IASTATE.EDU
"Socrates, who knows he knows nothing, is thus the wisest of men"
-what I should have rememberd yesterday.

Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
Subject: Re: macroevolution
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 18:25:26 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.191337.20109@cs.joensuu.fi> asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen) writes:
>ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik) writes:
>>However, note that it's *not* zero. Same with let us say huge stars,
>>the size of a N-size star (let's see: Be A Nice Girl Kiss Me 
>>Right Now) is so big, it's improbable. However the star exists. As
>>I said earlier, we humans have our own narrow view of propabilities
>>and sizes, and this is the problem that is ultimately shown in 
>>narrow-minded religious and scientific theories, especially creationism.
>
>	Hey, you gave a good answer ! It's only a matter of belief. 

No, it's only a matter of bogus use of prior and posterior statistics.
(Hey Bob! Care to answer that post of mine sometime before my workstation
becomes obsolete?)

The question here isn't how [im]probable something is _a priori_, but how
[im]probable it is _a posteriori_. The universe and life exist in *this*
form, right here and right now; the question of how likely are various
different scenarios for their origin is *not* the same question as how likely 
were various different possible outcomes before anything happened.

>		Andreas - Siperian Sirri   Siberian Stint
>
>	No ITU, love, evolution.           Tuusniemi ! Siis imein suut !
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Always been curious about this bit. I like the love and evolution [maaan]
part, but I have a funny feeling about that ITU.

Cheers

Simon
-- 
Simon Clippingdale                simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk
Department of Computer Science    Tel (+44) 203 523296
University of Warwick             FAX (+44) 203 525714
Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K.
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Subject: Re: self-deceptive belief maintenance
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Distribution: world,local
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 23:46:29 GMT

In article <1487@esl.ESL.COM> markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen) writes:
>
>In other words, creationism does not include the doctrine that
>ascribes the origins of all things to God's acts of creation using
>evolution?

	But evolution, or any other natural process mechanism, either
does not comment on the possibility of the Hand of God, or it doesn't
require it. It also doesn't demonstrate against it.

	Now is the issue that you WANT any explaination to possitively
assert the Hand of God, and why should anyone care? I don't. The whole
matter is moot to me. What matters more is wny anyone argues for the
necessary intervention of God quite inspite of having no means to
prove His existence or not. I repeat, my concern is NOT about proofs
for God's existence but an argument for His necessity in the absense
of any decidable information. I should add that I am neither theist,
atheist, or agnostic. I just think that the whole question of God's
existence is both meaningless and beside the point, which is a trancendant
justification of human values, quite apart from the ephemeral nature
of humanity. The latter is often oh such a dirty business!

Bruce Salem


Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: Darwinism is dead !
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 21:16:23 GMT

In article <7162@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM>, alanf@tekig6.PEN.TEK.COM (Alan M
Feuerbacher) writes:
> For my information:  How do people actually determine what is junk-DNA?
> I have the impression from reading about fruit-fly experiments, where
> severely mutated strains of flys reverted to the original form, that at 
> least some of the DNA has some sort of error-correction function.  True
> or not?

  Someone mentioned those experiments earlier, but refused when asked for
references.  Do you have any we can look up?

 Aslo, do not confuse mutations due to changes in DNA with mutations due to
misreading of the DNA (ie. siamese twins, etc).

 |  __L__   *******************************
-|-  ___    * Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub   *
 |  | o |   * kv07@iastate.edu            *
 |/ `---'   * Iowa State University       *
/|   ___    * Math Department             *
 |  |___|   * 400 Carver Hall             *
 |  |___|   * Ames, IA  50011             *
 J  _____   *******************************
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik)
Subject: Re: evolution through time
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 02:22:34 GMT
Organization: Apple
Followup-To: talk.origins

In article <97807@bu.edu>, colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby) wrote:
> In any case, substantial change has been made (IMHO) to evolution
> to make the theory fit the data (which keeps growing in quantity
> and quality). The rate of change seems, however, to be tailing 
> off. The biggest changes of late are probably the neutral theory
> of molecular evolution and directed mutagenesis.

I'm curious to know if biologists are looking at the evolving
mathematical theories dealing with chaos and complexity, especially
in combination with evolutionary forces?

Cheers,
Kent
	Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to	investigate. -F.M.
Knowles
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
DISCLAIMER: Private activities on the Net.
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Real issues for Antti
From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Date: 1 Oct 92 06:29:21 EST
Organization: Wright State University 

In article <1992Sep30.085657@IASTATE.EDU>, kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub) writes:
> In article <1992Sep28.184330.19054@cs.joensuu.fi>, asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti
> Siivonen) writes:
>> isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak) writes:
>> >I propose a more basic quiz for Antti:  Accurately state the
>> >theory of evolution by natural selection.  Briefly describe
>> >at least four independent lines of evidence which support it.
>>           --------------------------------------------------- 
>> 	Ha ha ! How can I answer such question, when I claim that there are 
>> 	no supporting lines of evidence at all !
> 
>   You missed the point.  You claim there is no supporting evidence, therefore
> yopu must have seen what Evolutionary Biologists claim is evidence and found
> errors in it.  Otherwise your claiming that there is no supporting evidence
> would be like my claiming there is no evidence for birds with colored eggs when
> I have never looked at any eggs but Chicken eggs.
> 

OOPS!  Bad example, Warren.  There are chickens that lay colored eggs, I
used to have some.

It's a South American breed.

Sue

>   So, since you know that the evidence is false, you must know what that
> evidence is.  He wasn't even asking you to point out where the mistakes were
> made (which please do by all means) but just to list them.
> 
>   If you cannot list them then your claims the evidence is false are extremely
> dishonest, one cannot find fault with an argument one has never seen.
> 
>  |  __L__   *******************************
> -|-  ___    * Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub   *
>  |  | o |   * kv07@iastate.edu            *
>  |/ `---'   * Iowa State University       *
> /|   ___    * Math Department             *
>  |  |___|   * 400 Carver Hall             *
>  |  |___|   * Ames, IA  50011             *
>  J  _____   *******************************
From: markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: self-deceptive belief maintenance
Date: 30 Sep 92 05:37:31 GMT
Distribution: world,local
Organization: ESL Inc., Sunnyvale, CA

In article <1992Sep29.220858.25649@trl.oz.au>
jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:

>markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen) writes:

>>Define creationist, please.

>Ah yes, not everyone owns a dictionary.

>From "The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English
>Language, International Edition":

>creationism n. Theology. 1. The doctrine ascribing the origin of
>all matter and living forms as they now exist to distinct acts
>of creation by God. Compare evolutionism. 2. The doctrine that 
>each human soul is a distinct and new creation by God. Compare
>infusionism.

>From "The Collins Dictionary of the English Language":

>creationism n. Theol. 1. the belief that God brings individual
>human souls into existence at conception or birth. Compare
>traducianism. 2. the doctrine that ascribes the origins of 
>all things to God's acts of creation rather than to evolution.

In other words, creationism does not include the doctrine that
ascribes the origins of all things to God's acts of creation using
evolution?
                                                               
-- 
   We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
   -- Wernher von Braun
From: sieferme@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Sieferman)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Favorite astronomer jokes
Date: 2 Oct 92 21:15:09 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <36@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
>
>It appears obvious to me that the twentieth century American
>scientific community in general and the astronomical profession
>in particular, are, in the next century, going to come in for a
>great deal of opprobrium, calumny, criticism, ridicule, abuse
>etc. etc. for the manner in which Immanuel Velikovsky was dealt
>with and for the steadfast refusal of establishment scientists
>to deal with the emergent discipline of catastrophism until at
>least two generations of them have died out altogether.

Boo hoo.  Maybe astronomers will burn in a catastrophic hell after
Velikovsky returns to Earth in power and glory.

It's interesting that you put "calumny" and "criticism" in
the same list of astronomer crimes.  "Criticism" is considered
a normal part of good science; "calumny" and "ridicule", while
wildly entertaining, are not part of good science.  Is
St. Immanuel as confused about this as you are?

What is this stuff about the "emergent" discipline of
catastophism?  My reading of the history of western
science is that the idea of catastrophism dominated
geology and astronomy up to the 17th century (or so).
Emergent?  NO.  Bad idea whose time has passed?  YES.

>Maybe
>the term I want is DISSIN', as in "He was dissin' my woman, so I
>snuffed him out with my Uzzi..."  Our present astronomers are
>going to come in for some DISSIN' in the next century.

Oh, Ted, you're so hip.

[tedious and old "jokes" deleted].

Anyone got a punchline for this one:
How many catastrophists does it take to shift the orbit of Venus?

-- 
| Eric Sieferman            |    sieferme@u.washington.edu          |
| U. of W., M.C.I.S.        |    (206) 685-3104                     |
From: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu (Chris Colby)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: fossil, schmossil... what about the bug!?
Date: 5 Oct 92 19:17:31 GMT
Organization: animal -- coelomate -- deuterostome

In article <1992Oct5.174235.18587@news.nd.edu> scharle@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (Scharle) writes:

>    In a recent issue of Science, there is a review article and a
>research article about a dryopithecine fossil (Dryopithecus branchoi)

Bah, another rock... who cares? Turn to page 1933 in same issue and
read something interesting 8-) DeSalle, et. al., have sequenced DNA
from a 25-30 million year old termite encased in amber. They then
dumped the sequence into a computer program that draws phylogenies
and guess what? The "fossil" DNA clustered with DNA from a morpholo-
gically similar termite species living today. You know, sort of
like the theory of evolution predicts. Question to creationists:
do you have a theory that predicts anything? Just wondering.

Of course, the article deals mainly with using this information
to address a scientific question, not as a "here's more evidence
for evolution" sort of thing. No real scientist take creationism
seriously. The type of termite found was thought to be near the
proposed phylogenetic split between termites and cockroaches and the
authors use the data to help get a better idea of the pattern
of relationship of between these groups. The groups results support
the idea that this type of termite is not a "missing link" between
these two groups as a few others had previously suggested given
their analysis of morphological data.

There is also a News article that reports (amidst some _Jurassic
Park_ nonsense) that preliminary results indicate that some
guy has got DNA from a 200 million year old fish and some woman
is trying to get DNA from 400 million year old brachiopods!

REFERENCE:
DeSalle, et. al., 1992, DNA sequences from a fossil termite in
Oligo-Miocene amber and their phylogenetic implications, Science
257: 1933-1936

>Tom Scharle                |cm65n6@irishmvs(Bitnet)

Chris Colby 	---	 email: colby@bu-bio.bu.edu	---
"'My boy,' he said, 'you are descended from a long line of determined,
resourceful, microscopic tadpoles--champions every one.'"
 	--Kurt Vonnegut from "Galapagos"
Newsgroups: talk.origins