Dinosaurs according to Genesis
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When the Crow said evolution was "just a theory" I knew he was beyond reason.
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@GNU Pepper said:
Oh, come on, guys. A recently registered user on a technology-related forum claims to hold extremely controversial beliefs about religion? And most of that user's posts so far have either incited or perpetuated arguments about those beliefs? And the TDWTF forums are actually susceptible to this kind of bare-faced, hackneyed trolling?
Hey, I wasn't the one who made a topic in the Sidebar of Noah and the ark. I'm just trying to get your facts straightened out.
@Salamander said:
Even if evolution was completely and utterly wrong, there is pretty much no evidence supporting creation.
They're pretty much the only competing theories. Unless you count the "intelligent evolution through godly guidance". ...I'm not in a position to rule that out, mind you. But I still find disturbingly little actual evidence for the claimed millions of years of existence of this Earth, let alone spontaneous macro-evolution (for you purists; yes, I did some reading).
@Zecc said:
@OldCrow said:
Just for curiosity, does anyone here actually know how large a T-Rex was when it got out of its egg?
Ah yes, the "were you there?" argument.No, I actually meant to ask if anyone here has seen one of the fossilized ones. I'm honestly interested in the size of the things. Some snakes make eggs nearly half of their own weight, but turtles make smaller ones. So how does a T-Rex egg compare?
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@joe.edwards said:
When the Crow said evolution was "just a theory" I knew he was beyond reason.
It's a theory until proven otherwise. There is very little actually credible evidence. Even less after this:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2001/may/10/carbon-clock-could-show-the-wrong-time
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@eViLegion said:
I wasn't actually trolling. I hold this opinion openly in real life at any religious people who mention their religion to me (I leave them alone if they stay quiet about it).
So free speech applies only when it's non-religious? I could understand it if missionaries were pestering you, but just by mentioning religion? And how far does your definition of religion reach? C# vs Java, Oracle vs Google, not to mention international politics, art, etiquette..?
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@eViLegion said:
Now answer this: What about all the fucking plants? Nowhere does the bible mention how Noah saved the fucking plants... you know, the ones that need both oxygen and carbon dioxide in large amounts, without which they will starve and die in less than 40 days. The plants that drown if given too much water, because they automatically just suck that shit up, regardless of how much of it there is, thereby killing themselves.
My advice to you dude, is that if you don't want to flood the sidebar with "another argument on evolution", you should understand that we're (for the most part) logical, scientifically minded people around here. Logical, scientifically minded people who are gonna rip you a massive new one if you dare to spew you're stupid religious shit EVEN IN REPLY to someone else.I am a scientifically minded person. Even to such an extent that I did not count out creation from the possibilities before studying the available evidence and accounts. Or is it now considered to be more scientific-minded to just take what you're given in class at school and never question? Are we still in the newtonian era, without Einstein's findings? OR if the school books are always right, is quoran right (in Texas, source: http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/texas-teaching-allah-is-the-almighty-god/ )?
And to answer to your question: Fungi survive surprisingly violent changes in their environment. And actual plants are typically capable of reproducing from seeds. The toughness of seeds vary, but I'd presume them all to survive a bit of flooding. It wasn't that long a flood.
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@arh said:
So free speech applies only when it's non-religious? I could understand it if missionaries were pestering you, but just by mentioning religion? And how far does your definition of religion reach? C# vs Java, Oracle vs Google, not to mention international politics, art, etiquette..?
I'm not chilling free speech.
They're welcome to continue talking about it, just as I'm welcome to tell them exactly what kind of fucking arsehole they are and inform them exactly how far they can fuck off.
And I don't mean just mentioning it in passing.... for example, if someone says "Sorry, I can't make it because I've got a friends baptism to go to" then that's fine; that is a simple fact, that the person has prior arrangements which happen to involve a baptism.
If, however, they say stuff like "sorry to hear your parents died. I'll pray for them and for you", or "you know, Jesus said...", or "woah, thats BLASPHEMOUS!" etc, then they can fuck off, and I'll tell them they can fuck off.
That also applies to anyone trying to teach bullshit to kids, anyone trying to claim persecution because they don't get special rules to allow them to break the law, and anyone who allows their religion to control their behavior to the extent that they ruin any other persons day (and/or life).
No, by religion I mean any system of core beliefs in which faith (and not fact) stands as the most important tenet. So, any belief in God, for example, is religion. Arguing the toss about programming languages, tech companies, and everything else does not count as religion by any sane person's definition, and, crucially, is arguing about shit that provably exists and about which we can make factual statements with a 100% certainty.
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@OldCrow said:
I am a scientifically minded person. Even to such an extent that I did not count out creation from the possibilities before studying the available evidence and accounts.
You might want to read Pascal's Muggle, and quite a lot of other stuff on the same site.
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@GNU Pepper said:
@arh said:
Seriously, in what scenario could you possibly envisage this argument not happen?
Allow me to reiterate my earlier post in plain language. OldCrow does not actually believe that Genesis is the literal origin story of the world. Internet forums have a long and storied history of people feigning all kinds of unlikely, controversial points of view in order to encourage lively debate and attract attention to themselves. This practice is known as "trolling", and some practicioners elevate it to an almost art-like level. They gather in IRC and occasionally other forums to brag to one another about their conquests and mock those foolish enough to waste their time and energy angrily debating a non-existent opponent. Hallmarks of trolling include:
- A new user with no established standing within the community attracting a lot of attention and creating a lot of controversy
- Over-correction in their attempts to hide their true motives, e.g. suffixing their outrageous statements with "let's not get into a big flamewar about it though"
- They very rarely engage in normal discussion that isn't about them or their controversial point of view
Internet 101, people. If it looks like a troll, smells like a troll, and bites like a troll, it's a troll. TRWTF is the laissez-faire administration of this fucking forum.
Literally? Perhaps not, after reading Searching Issues (Nicky Gumbel, 1994). There could be poetic license, as the language of men was not developed enough to contain the accurate story. And it wasn't necessary. But I'm very much against preaching as absolute truth a theory that doesn't have enough evidence to support it. Like how they stubbed Galilei; the man was a devout christian and his theory had proof from visible effects of gravity force (as I understand) AND wasn't in contradiction of any existing proven facts, but they still effectively jailed him.
And just so you know, I have posted on topics other than religion. ...At least once or twice.
There sure have been a lot or fights over evolution here, being a tech blog and all. But again, unless I'm Zecc, I didn\t start this topic.
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@arh said:
@eViLegion said:
I wasn't actually trolling. I hold this opinion openly in real life at any religious people who mention their religion to me (I leave them alone if they stay quiet about it).
So free speech applies only when it's non-religious? I could understand it if missionaries were pestering you, but just by mentioning religion? And how far does your definition of religion reach? C# vs Java, Oracle vs Google, not to mention international politics, art, etiquette..?
Free speech is not the same as free someone-will-listen-to-you.
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Most seeds will start to partially germinate in the water, then fail and rot.
I grant you that some specialist plants would survive, but any standing trees would have died and started to rot. Now, look up the age of the oldest known living tree. Its a fuck of a lot older than any dates your best academics have put on your stupid fucking flood.
And crucially, assuming your flood did happen, this tree could not have been tall enough at that stage in its life to survive with just the tips of its leaves (which anyway wouldn't be able to save it).
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@eViLegion said:
Most seeds will start to partially germinate in the water, then fail and rot.
I grant you that some specialist plants would survive, but any standing trees would have died and started to rot. Now, look up the age of the oldest known living tree. Its a fuck of a lot older than any dates your best academics have put on your stupid fucking flood.
And crucially, assuming your flood did happen, this tree could not have been tall enough at that stage in its life to survive with just the tips of its leaves (which anyway wouldn't be able to save it).If it were possible to accurately state the age of the tree, perhaps. But we can not know the age of the tree. Carbon timing is inaccurate due to changes in atmosphere of the substance measured (source: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2001/may/10/carbon-clock-could-show-the-wrong-time). Also, we don't know the rate at which the tree grew right after the flood, as I presume that the flood coincided with (or, yes, might have been related to, you think?) the change of concentration of carbon in the atmosphere.
I'd even say that we can't know the length of a year a few thousand years ago, as the Earth's orbit could have been changed along the way by meteors, but that kind of drowns in all the other inaccuracies. ...Would be nice to hear an estimate of that, too. But I doubt that it'd be significant.
Edit:
I thought that seeds needed to be exposed to good temperatures and minute quantities of atmospheric gases to even begin sprouting. But I could be wrong. I'm an engineer, not a biologist.
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@OldCrow said:
... just a theory...
@OldCrow said:
... macroevolution...
And that's when you step over the line into either the troll camp, or the ignorant camp. Neither are worth arguing with.
Seriously, in this day and age of instantly available information and widely refuted fallacies, if you're bringing up any of these two, then all your arguments are instantly invalidated. At this point you might as well be arguing for calculating the speed of light in the ether, phrenology, or spontaneous generation.
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@Lorne Kates said:
@OldCrow said:
... just a theory...
@OldCrow said:
... macroevolution...
And that's when you step over the line into either the troll camp, or the ignorant camp. Neither are worth arguing with.
Seriously, in this day and age of instantly available information and widely refuted fallacies, if you're bringing up any of these two, then all your arguments are instantly invalidated. At this point you might as well be arguing for calculating the speed of light in the ether, phrenology, or spontaneous generation.
Gravity is just a theory so I don't have to believe it if I don't want to.
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@Ben L. said:
@BC_Programmer said:
I'm not sure you could keep two blue whales on the titanic. Maybe one if you removed the interior walls and the hull...I've always liked how the Arkis like a quarter of the size of the Titanic. I'm not sure you could fit two of every animal on the Titanic either.
But then you would need to put in a tank with walls 60 feet by 10 feel that could withstand the pressure of 18,000 cubic feet of water.
It's not like Noah keeps that kind of thing in stock.
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The method of measuring the age of living trees does not rely on radio carbon dating... dendrochronology doesn't suffer from the same accuracy issues.
Part of the reason I picked this argument, is that I knew you'd try and knock it down, assuming I was basing my position on radio-carbon-dating. Unfortunately dendrochronology doesn't have the same accuracy issues. Disagree with it if you want, but you've just been out-facted.
Anyway, I've got some work to do now, so I'm gonna have to simply declare myself the winner here, blow a raspberry at my monitor, close down chrome and get on with it. I shall also chuckle happily to myself in the knowledge that you'll probably bother to reply and I won't notice.
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@Lorne Kates said:
@OldCrow said:
... just a theory...
@OldCrow said:
... macroevolution...
And that's when you step over the line into either the troll camp, or the ignorant camp. Neither are worth arguing with.
Seriously, in this day and age of instantly available information and widely refuted fallacies, if you're bringing up any of these two, then all your arguments are instantly invalidated. At this point you might as well be arguing for calculating the speed of light in the ether, phrenology, or spontaneous generation.
IF those were fallacies and IF they were truly refuted. What makes you think that this widely available information is right? If most americans believe that being covered in gold paint kills a person, do you deem it correct by virtue of it being a widely accepted fact? (Reference: James Bond and The Goldfinger, movie) If I do not agree with this widely accepted fact, does it make me ignorant? I'd say it makes me cautious of falling to propaganda.
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@OldCrow said:
What makes you think that this widely available information is right?
The large amount of evidence, probably.@OldCrow said:
If most americans believe that being covered in gold paint kills a person, do you deem it correct by virtue of it being a widely accepted fact?
No, you base your assessment on the evidence, rather than how many people accept the fact.@OldCrow said:
If I do not agree with this widely accepted fact, does it make me ignorant
If the fact is backed up by lots of evidence, yes it does. If the fact is an urban myth from a Bond movie, no.@OldCrow said:
I'd say it makes me cautious of falling to propaganda
Apply that level of scepticism to the Bible then.
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@OldCrow said:
IF those were fallacies and IF they were truly refuted.
I repeat myself.
@OldCrow said:
If most americans believe that being covered in gold paint kills a person, do you deem it correct by virtue of it being a widely accepted fact?
A misconception that has been refuted by widely available facts, which are easily discoverable in this day and age of information.
I repeat repeating myself.
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@eViLegion said:
The method of measuring the age of living trees does not rely on radio carbon dating... dendrochronology doesn't suffer from the same accuracy issues.
Part of the reason I picked this argument, is that I knew you'd try and knock it down, assuming I was basing my position on radio-carbon-dating. Unfortunately dendrochronology doesn't have the same accuracy issues. Disagree with it if you want, but you've just been out-facted.
Anyway, I've got some work to do now, so I'm gonna have to simply declare myself the winner here, blow a raspberry at my monitor, close down chrome and get on with it. I shall also chuckle happily to myself in the knowledge that you'll probably bother to reply and I won't notice.You won't know it, but I'm sure someone will share it with you.
So, visually comparing tree tring patterns and getting a chain that goes on for thousands of years? If you want to believe in the accuracy of that, then by all means do that.
According to wikipedia it goes all the way back to 14,000 B.C. . Good for you. But before I take it at face value, I'd have to check how big leaps they allowed... and where they got 16,000 year old wood and how they confirmed the age of it. I rather fear that they checked the age of the wood with carbon timing, thus making a circular argument.
@nosliwmas said:
The large amount of evidence, probably.
It's that "probably" that scares me. Schools never seem to really get into the evidence. Then again, I studied engineering, not ...whatever one would have to study to go there.
I think I'll follow eViLegion's example and call it a day anyways. Follow the links in the links in the addresses I posted earlier to get to counterevidence, if you care.
Edit:
@Lorne Kates said:
@OldCrow said:
IF those were fallacies and IF they were truly refuted.
I repeat myself.
[quote user="OldCrow"]If most americans believe that being covered in gold paint kills a person, do you deem it correct by virtue of it being a widely accepted fact?
A misconception that has been refuted by widely available facts, which are easily discoverable in this day and age of information.
I repeat repeating myself. [/quote]
And then you can speculate how long it'll take until evolution theory is similarly refuted.
...Sorry. Couldn't resist.
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@eViLegion said:
I hold this opinion openly in real life at any religious people who mention their religion to me (I leave them alone if they stay quiet about it).
What do you hope to gain from pissing off religious people or, depending on their beliefs around the obligation to save errant souls, motivating them to try to save yours? You're every bit as unlikely to convince them that your point of view is correct as they are to convince you that theirs is. And you don't get brownie points from thinking atheists for acting like a boor.
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Look, you're making this way too complicated. Evolution is true because I say it is. No other reason needed. You can't refute that statement without recourse to arguments which equally well demolish your own hypothesis. Since you can only leave your hypothesis standing by assuming my statement to be true - and the two are contradictory - it's clear that your hypothesis is, in the most literal sense, nonsensical.
"Were you there?" I answer "yes". Prove otherwise, go-on.
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@TDWTF123 said:
Look, you're making this way too complicated. Evolution is true because I say it is. No other reason needed. You can't refute that statement without recourse to arguments which equally well demolish your own hypothesis. Since you can only leave your hypothesis standing by assuming my statement to be true - and the two are contradictory - it's clear that your hypothesis is, in the most literal sense, nonsensical.
You mean we could have skipped all those arguments and science things if we had just told the religious people that there was a book we found that was 6001 years old that proved evolution?
"Were you there?" I answer "yes". Prove otherwise, go-on.
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@Ben L. said:
You mean we could have skipped all those arguments and science things if we had just told the religious people that there was a book we found that was 6001 years old that proved evolution?
No, I mean that one can only argue against the existence of such a book using 'science things' - that is, the approach of critically analysing statements based on the evidence. Of course, demonstrating that a statement is nonsensical doesn't stop people believing in it, but I don't think anyone here has been trying to convert Old Crow: everyone seems happy demonstrating the fallacies in his arguments.
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@OldCrow said:
I'm an engineer, not a biologist.
I have long been fascinated by the confidence with which engineers in general and software engineers in particular are capable of expressing egregiously ill-informed opinions on matters unrelated to their own fields of expertise.
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@flop said:
@OldCrow said:
I am a scientifically minded person. Even to such an extent that I did not count out creation from the possibilities before studying the available evidence and accounts.
You might want to read Pascal's Muggle, and quite a lot of other stuff on the same site.
There's a guy on the internet that takes the genesis literally. You linked him to an article that uses bayesian probabilities, kolmogorov complexities, utility functions, advanced philosophical thought experiments and on top of that explicitly requires knowledge from several previous posts from the same site. You need to work on your inferential distances, son.
You could start by explaining him why it's not good to pay too much attention to links like the one he posted before, "Carbon clock could show the wrong time" (besides it being 12 years old).
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@flabdablet said:
@OldCrow said:
There's a name for that. The Dunning–Kruger effect. Unfortunately it's a term so abused that it's gonna lose all meaning soon, just like happened with "idiot", "moron" (which used to be legit scientific terms) or "troll".I'm an engineer, not a biologist.
I have long been fascinated by the confidence with which engineers in general and software engineers in particular are capable of expressing egregiously ill-informed opinions on matters unrelated to their own fields of expertise.
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@eViLegion said:
@OldCrow said:
I'll try in my nicest tone to explain that seeds from plants can be dormant for awhile.And yes, I do take Genesis as fact.... etc.
OK I'll bite, even though I take the view that people with religion are either:
(1) Trolling the entire world, hard, for their entire lives, and thus should really be ignored
OR
(2) Mentally ill, and thus should really be ignored
Now answer this: What about all the fucking plants? Nowhere does the bible mention how Noah saved the fucking plants... you know, the ones that need both oxygen and carbon dioxide in large amounts, without which they will starve and die in less than 40 days. The plants that drown if given too much water, because they automatically just suck that shit up, regardless of how much of it there is, thereby killing themselves.
My advice to you dude, is that if you don't want to flood the sidebar with "another argument on evolution", you should understand that we're (for the most part) logical, scientifically minded people around here. Logical, scientifically minded people who are gonna rip you a massive new one if you dare to spew you're stupid religious shit EVEN IN REPLY to someone else.
So basically, fuck you and your stupid beliefs.
And because I don't feel I've expressed this strongly enough, I'm simply going to repeat myself:
Fuck you and your stupid beliefs.If you take the Bible as it is supposed to be (in this particular case, Genesis), a story about the formation of the Earth, it's very accurate, taken from the POV of an observer on the surface of the world.
So quit being a douchebag. I'll repeat myself. Quit being a douchebag.
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@GNU Pepper said:
Oh, come on, guys. A recently registered user on a technology-related forum claims to hold extremely controversial beliefs about religion? And most of that user's posts so far have either incited or perpetuated arguments about those beliefs? And the TDWTF forums are actually susceptible to this kind of bare-faced, hackneyed trolling?
There is a certain minimalist elegance to it. To see how many hostile responses you can get with the least amount of effort, or how stupid a troll you can post and still get people to respond.
This guy's nearly as good as the gun who started a cross-posted flamewar between a Tolkein newsgroup and a D&D newsgroup by claiming that Tolkein ripped off Gary Gygax. That one had death threats going back and forth before it was over.
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@OldCrow said:
@nosliwmas said:
The large amount of evidence, probably.
It's that "probably" that scares me.
As in it's probably the large amount of evidence that makes people agree (as opposed to them deciding on a whim to go along with it), rather than the evidence making it probably right. Jesus...
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@eViLegion said:
My advice to you dude, is that if you don't want to flood the sidebar with "another argument on evolution", you should understand that we're (for the most part) logical, scientifically minded people around here.
If that were true of you, you would have immediately recognized the troll for what it is, and either ignored it, or responded in a snarky attempt to be funny, or mocked it in a self-effacing attempt to be funny.
On the other than, I recall the days of alt.syntax.tactical on usenet, too.
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@GNU Pepper said:
Internet 101, people. If it looks like a troll, smells like a troll, and bites like a troll, it's a troll.
Word. Many trolls do not realize they are trolls, but this guy does.
Rule #1: You cannot win.
Rule #2: The only way to not lose is to not play.
@GNU Pepper said:
TRWTF is the laissez-faire administration of this fucking forum.
As opposed to, for example, The Purple Suck, where people have been banned for refusing to do things that will get them banned?
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You and your narrow definition of winning.
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I want to find a suitable image macro for this thread, but there isn't one.
Seriously, though, Alex Papaoomowmow or whatever his name is should charge $10 to register for the Sidebar, because this is better than Something Awful.
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@drurowin said:
I want to find a suitable image macro for this thread, but there isn't one.
Seriously, though, Alex Papaoomowmow or whatever his name is should charge $10 to register for the Sidebar, because this is better than Something Awful.
Picard Face Palm should suffice.
Zombie Jesus if you want to go for the shock factor.
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@Nexzus said:
@drurowin said:
I want to find a suitable image macro for this thread, but there isn't one.
Seriously, though, Alex Papaoomowmow or whatever his name is should charge $10 to register for the Sidebar, because this is better than Something Awful.
Picard Face Palm should suffice.
Zombie Jesus if you want to go for the shock factor.
How about an image macro from 1905?
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Harry_Whittier_Frees_-_What%27s_Delaying_My_Dinner.jpg[/img]
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On second thought, img-timeline.gif woulda been better, but I haven't a copy.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@da Doctah said:
The "clean" ones. KJV says Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.ObBiblicalNitpick: Except that he took seven of some of them.
Which ones?
True, other English translations interpret this as seven pairs of each clean animal, but it's definitely not as simple as "just take two of everything".
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@flabdablet said:
What do you hope to gain from pissing off religious people or, depending on their beliefs around the obligation to save errant souls, motivating them to try to save yours? You're every bit as unlikely to convince them that your point of view is correct as they are to convince you that theirs is. And you don't get brownie points from thinking atheists for acting like a boor.
Regarding the "thinking atheists", that's pretty funny. Aside from the fact I've put considerable thought into the topic, and have developed a number of arguments of my own, you seem to be saying that any other atheist with intelligence wouldn't agree with me (or my way of putting it). Well, here's the thing - my aim isn't to convert anyone to my viewpoint... that's the kind of thing that religious people find the need to do. In general, the people who free themselves from the shackles of religion do so by thinking a little for themselves, and no external pressure will help; most never make it however. So what is the point in even trying??
Also - my aim isn't to impress other atheists. Generally speaking most atheists are fucking pussies, who refuse to smack down obviously retarded theists doing obviously retarded stuff. Most atheists seem to respect other peoples right to behave stupidly and to teach their children to do the same. Those atheists should have the courage to tell the theists exactly how it is... they don't get any brownie points off me for acting like cowards. So fuck them and their cowardice as well.
Anyway, to address your question... what DO I get out of it? 2 things:
The first is a smug sense of superiority, as I deliver a devastating smack down to some total arse. This might technically make me a douche, but I'd rather be a correct douche than an idiot.
The second and most useful thing I gain is certain knowledge that the religious nutter won't ever make the mistake of mentioning it in my presence ever again. This is a total result.
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@spamcourt said:
@flabdablet said:
@OldCrow said:
There's a name for that. The Dunning–Kruger effect. Unfortunately it's a term so abused that it's gonna lose all meaning soon, just like happened with "idiot", "moron" (which used to be legit scientific terms) or "troll".I'm an engineer, not a biologist.
I have long been fascinated by the confidence with which engineers in general and software engineers in particular are capable of expressing egregiously ill-informed opinions on matters unrelated to their own fields of expertise.
That is not actually the Dunning-Kruger effect. What you're talking about is just plain old "people talking shit about something they know nothing about".
Dunning-Kruger effect is the cognitive bias such that ignorant/unintelligent people are so ignorant that they're unaware of just how ignorant they are and give positive estimation on their capabilities,
whereas experts/intelligent people know so much more that they're aware of just how much they don't know and thus give negative estimation on their abilities. Just saying.
Edit: although to be fair, what you said is a consequence of the D-K effect, if not the actual effect itself.
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@eViLegion said:
The second and most useful thing I gain is certain knowledge that the religious nutter won't ever make the mistake of mentioning it in my presence ever again.
THAT'S AN IRRATIONAL BELIEF AND YUO ARE STUPUD.
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If you use the definition of "flesh" as stated in 1st Corinthians 15:39, you could fit 7 of each kind in a rowboat.
Kind != Species
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@taustin said:
@eViLegion said:
My advice to you dude, is that if you don't want to flood the sidebar with "another argument on evolution", you should understand that we're (for the most part) logical, scientifically minded people around here.
If that were true of you, you would have immediately recognized the troll for what it is, and either ignored it, or responded in a snarky attempt to be funny, or mocked it in a self-effacing attempt to be funny.
I disagree dude... It is entirely appropriate to respond to trolls, even if you know (or suspect) that they're trolling, if you feel that you wish to do so.
For example, you might be interested in their technique. You might not be particularly discussing the issue with the troll, but feel that the topic raised is a valid one for discussion anyway, so are simply using their post as a jumping off point.
Anyway, take a look at my first post on this topic. It starts with "Ok, I'll bite". Now, that ought to have suggested to you that immediate recognition had occurred.
None of my answers fit into your categories of Ignore/Snarky-Funny/Self-Effacing-Funny, yet clearly I know whats going on.
Therefore either I'm not a logical, scientifically minded person, or I simply have aims that you do not understand (or which do not fit into your world view), thus I behave in a way which appears to not make sense to you.
So, you can assume the former if you like (though, given the quality of my reply to you here, I suspect you won't, unless you don't mind allowing your own churlishness to deceive you),
or you can accept that other peoples motivations are not known to you therefore judging their capabilities based on their behavior at a specific time will not lead you to valid conclusions.@taustin said:
On the other than, I recall the days of alt.syntax.tactical on usenet, too.
Eh? Is what you're recalling a thing that people should be aware of?
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@TDWTF123 said:
@eViLegion said:
The second and most useful thing I gain is certain knowledge that the religious nutter won't ever make the mistake of mentioning it in my presence ever again.
THAT'S AN IRRATIONAL BELIEF AND YUO ARE STUPUD.Heheheh very good - OK:
Not certain knowledge, but it does massively decrease the likelyhood of being pestered by a theist again...
and on the off chance that they have a second go, I'll give them a second grilling, thereby entertaining myself again at their expense.
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@OldCrow said:
No, I actually meant to ask if anyone here has seen one of the fossilized ones. I'm honestly interested in the size of the things. Some snakes make eggs nearly half of their own weight, but turtles make smaller ones. So how does a T-Rex egg compare?
Fair question. My answer: I have no idea. I'm not interested enough to research, but by all means if anyone knows this then go ahead and illuminate us.
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@eViLegion said:
@spamcourt said:
@flabdablet said:
@OldCrow said:
There's a name for that. The Dunning–Kruger effect. Unfortunately it's a term so abused that it's gonna lose all meaning soon, just like happened with "idiot", "moron" (which used to be legit scientific terms) or "troll".I'm an engineer, not a biologist.
I have long been fascinated by the confidence with which engineers in general and software engineers in particular are capable of expressing egregiously ill-informed opinions on matters unrelated to their own fields of expertise.
That is not actually the Dunning-Kruger effect. What you're talking about is just plain old "people talking shit about something they know nothing about".
Dunning-Kruger effect is the cognitive bias such that ignorant/unintelligent people are so ignorant that they're unaware of just how ignorant they are and give positive estimation on their capabilities,
whereas experts/intelligent people know so much more that they're aware of just how much they don't know and thus give negative estimation on their abilities. Just saying.
Edit: although to be fair, what you said is a consequence of the D-K effect, if not the actual effect itself.
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@OldCrow said:
You won't know it, but I'm sure someone will share it with you.
So, visually comparing tree tring patterns and getting a chain that goes on for thousands of years? If you want to believe in the accuracy of that, then by all means do that.
According to wikipedia it goes all the way back to 14,000 B.C. . Good for you. But before I take it at face value, I'd have to check how big leaps they allowed... and where they got 16,000 year old wood and how they confirmed the age of it. I rather fear that they checked the age of the wood with carbon timing, thus making a circular argument.
[img]http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x274/Nemesis_Z06/Gifs/imgtimeline.gif[/img]
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@drurowin said:
@OldCrow said:
You won't know it, but I'm sure someone will share it with you.
So, visually comparing tree tring patterns and getting a chain that goes on for thousands of years? If you want to believe in the accuracy of that, then by all means do that.
According to wikipedia it goes all the way back to 14,000 B.C. . Good for you. But before I take it at face value, I'd have to check how big leaps they allowed... and where they got 16,000 year old wood and how they confirmed the age of it. I rather fear that they checked the age of the wood with carbon timing, thus making a circular argument.
That better goddamn be on a log scale!
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@OldCrow said:
Now, how about those marsupials (Kangaroos and such) that only live in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand? Was it him who saved them? How about penguins who live in Antarctica?And yes, I do take Genesis as fact. The flood explains why we have now zero live dinosaurs, but a lot of perfectly preserved bones. But that's about all I'm going to say about this. Let's not flood the Sidebar with another argument on evolution, shall we?
How about elephants? There are about 10 living species of them, suppose each is at least 5 ton (a pair is 10 ton).
How about American and Asian animal species?
Suppose they all could fit on the Ark. How would Noah be able to gather them all from those remote places (which were not even known to the Bible writers)?
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@OldCrow said:
If you want to look for inbreeding-induced defects in the post-flood generation, the how about the average lifespan? Before the flood, everybody lived a lot longer. Hundreds of years.
I obviously have no way of proving or disproving this, but I wasn't really arguing with you anyway. I was just making a joke about how all the incest maybe has made us worse (and I was actually thinking about the Biblical "people lived to be really, really old" thing when I wrote it.)
@OldCrow said:
The Canarians might have been described as a bit retarded every now and then, but no-one has had any complaints about the Icelanders.
Pfft, says you. The people live in what is basically a muddy, sulfurous pit. Of course they're retarded.
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