I think you guys need to see this creation vs evolution thread. bonus noahs ark

[pianodwarf]

Facts?  Nobody wants the facts!

Strawman.

How life emerged and the formed is irrelevant to evolution!  They're two completely different things.

That's correct... I think maybe you're finally starting to get it.

Evolution is proven.

Evolution is observed; a theory has been formed to explain why it occurs; the theory thus far is supported, to the extent that the matter is considered settled (that's why it's called a theory, not a hypothesis).  What part of this is so hard to understand?

Everything else is a big question mark for evolutionists

What "everything else"?

but creationists are still irrational to doubt all the evidence for evolution.

Yes, they are.

Ask anyone in here how the hummingbird evolved or how sexual reproduction evolved.  Nobody seems to know.

I've lost count of how many times you've asked this question[1] and received replies.  I'm not sure whether you're just mind-bogglingly stupid or intellectually dishonest, but the net effect on the reader is the same.

Ask an evolutionists how the Big Bang was created

You know, I generally try to be courteous and so forth, here, but this time, I'm going to allow myself to vent my spleen.

Jesus.  Fucking.  Christ.  On.  A.  God.  Damn.  Crutch.  How many times do you need to have this told to you before it penetrates?  The Big Bang has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.  The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain why life forms change over time.  The Big Bang is a theory of how the universe began.  They are absolutely, totally, and in all other ways unrelated to each other.

Asking an "evolutionist" how the Big Bang was created is like asking a computer desktop support technician why telomeres shorten after mitotic cell division, then, when he says "I don't know", crowing that that must mean that telomeres actually lengthen during mitotic cell division.

But ALL the evidence points to evolution.

Yes, it does.

It's bizarre land in here.

Only since you showed up...

1.	and I count various different questions as one question; for example, if you ask "how plants evolved", receive an answer, and then ask "how hummingbirds evolved", receive an answer, etc etc ad nauseam, to me that counts as one question, justing using different words

[Seppuku]

Facts?  Nobody wants the facts!  How life emerged and the formed is irrelevant to evolution!  They're two completely different things.  Evolution is proven.  Everything else is a big question mark for evolutionists, but creationists are still irrational to doubt all the evidence for evolution.  Ask anyone in here how the hummingbird evolved or how sexual reproduction evolved.  Nobody seems to know.  Ask an evolutionists how the Big Bang was created...nobody seems to know....But ALL the evidence points to evolution.  It's bizarre land in here.

I'll bite.

Big Bang and the theory of evolution are not related theories. Why is it creationists always tie the two?

Evolution is proven because it has strong evidence to prove it, but we do not have the data to show exactly how every single thing to have ever existed evolved. But that's not gaps in the theory, not gaps in how evolution work and not gaps in the evidence. It's gaps in the data. We know the theory of gravity has strong evidence, we can prove it, but just because I do not have a baseball[1]and therefore I cannot drop it to demonstrate that gravity works on a baseball does not mean the theory of gravity is invalid. I can drop a pen however, I can drop a book, I can drop my XBox 360 controller, I can drop my laptop if I really had to (a ThinkPad, it should survive the fall). There's a whole array of things I can use to 'test' gravity, sadly, a baseball isn't one of them. If I were to test a baseball, I'd have to acquire it. As for where there's gaps in information, we just have to acquire the data. Sadly, this data isn't as easy to obtain as walking into a sports shop and buying it.

The big bang theory, the evidence supports that it happened. But the data isn't clear on what caused it or what was before it. From my understanding at least, I am going on what I was taught at school.

Science deals with what they can test and therefore know. Creationism deals with answers, even when there's no evidence to support those answers, when there's no way of getting the evidence for those answers and even when there's already answers and they have evidence they're disregarded because they contradict their reading of the bible.

But there's no shame in not knowing the answers to everything, we humans are finite creatures, we can't just conjure up the answers from thin air.

1.	Using this as an analogy because it's simple and concise

[inveni0]

No.  god is not similar.  Not in any way shape or form.  When we say "I dunno" we are talking about a natural process or event we do not understand.  But we know it happened because we did the math.  When you say "I dunno", you are talking about a guy who has superpowers and he's invisible and he created everything either for us or to show off to us how awesome he is. I've bolded the ridiculous parts for you.  And you didn't do the math.  You believe it because people have said it for generation after generation.  Any similarity is strictly coincidental or fantasy.

Sorry I'm upsetting you so.  How do you know the Big Bang happened based on math?  All I'm saying is that we both believe in something that we can't explain.  That's all.  Do you agree?

First of all, the Big Bang wasn't "created".  There was literally nothing before the big bang that we can ever understand because our model for understanding can't exist outside of space-time.  But science agrees that the Big Bang was a simple process.  The most basic of all basicness.  You, on the other hand, believe that the Big Bang was the most complicated of all complications.

That doesn't make sense.  Things don't start complicated, and your solution raises an infinitely large number of questions--all harder to study and quantify than a scientific view of the Big Bang.  And because we can never know, that just shows how insane your belief is.

So no.  We can't agree that we both believe in something we can't explain.  Because I CAN explain how the hummingbird evolved.  I CAN explain sexual reproduction.  I CAN explain how we know that the Big Bang is fact.  But I CAN'T EXPLAIN IT TO YOU.  I can't explain it to you because you are ignorant of the topics.  And that's how guys in that video make their living.

[Grogs]

I bet this person thinks E = mc^2 doesn't know that m = c^2/E nor does the person understand how to calculate the 'resting mass' of particle physics.  And these are the most basic equasions.  Actually, you'll find that this is one of the most important equasions, due to the fact that even Plank's (sp?) equasions on electricity and voltage are brutally similar in nature... ...

Actually, that first equation should be m = E / c².

For example, Einstein had arguments with peers over whether or not a black hole could be created.  Why is that?  It's because according to his equasions, if enough energy is expended you *should* be able to change one element to another.  But, this could cause a chain-reaction, and potentially lead to a very heavy element, in effect, creating a black hole.  However, the idea is that the energy required to do this is equivalent to a super-massive sun collapsing into iron fusion, meaning that for man this feat is impossible..

I'm sorry, but that bolded part is so wrong it's painful. A black hole isn't created by making a very heavy element. It's just a matter of having so much matter in one place that the gravitational attraction is strong enough to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion of the nuclei in the matter. Once that happens, there is nothing left to keep the matter from all collapsing to a single point. In a star, that process is held off as long as the star is burning fuel, but once it can no longer sustain fusion, it collapses into a black hole - the matter on the outside of the star rebounds and we get a supernova accompanying the birth of the black hole.

Time is an illusion if you study general relativity enough.  That's been proven by satellites - the fact that we have to alter their clocks to make it like it is on earth.  Did you know that standing next to the great pyramids causes time to slow down, just due to their mass? 

Absolute time is an illusion. Your watch will continue to click along at 1 second per second whether you're standing on the corner, floating just outside the event horizon of a black hole, or traveling at 99.999999% of the speed of light. It's only when you compare your watch to someone else's that you see that your watch has slowed relative to theirs.

[One Above All]

@Grogs: Actually, if I'm not mistaken, there is one place in the entire universe where the passage of time is "absolute" - its center of mass.

[Ice Monkey]

Sorry I'm upsetting you so.  How do you know the Big Bang happened based on math?  All I'm saying is that we both believe in something that we can't explain.  That's all.  Do you agree?

I, for one, am quite comfortable stating that I don't have a fucking clue what happened at the beginning of time.  I'm not the one who's part of a group that claims to have a pipeline to the Creator of the universe.  I would expect you to have all the answers, but I won't accept special pleading, or unnecessary steps.  Using "god did it" is not an answer, it's a place holder.  It's always been a place holder for questions we don't have answers for yet.  Over the past several centuries, we've replaced many place holders previously deployed with real answers. 

"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." ~ Dawkins

Integrity.  Get some.

[Azdgari]

@Grogs: Actually, if I'm not mistaken, there is one place in the entire universe where the passage of time is "absolute" - its center of mass.

Where is that?

[One Above All]

Where is that?

How the hell am I supposed to know? However, assuming the universe isn't flat, it should exist.

[Grogs]

Lucifer, you're thinking three-dimensionally. The universe isn't expanding into 3-D space, but presumably into higher order dimensions. Remember the balloon analogy - the universe is the surface of a balloon being blown up. Where is the center of mass of a balloon? It's at the center of the balloon, not on the surface. Translated to three dimensions that means it's not in the regular three space dimensions of the universe. There may be a gravitational center somewhere, but it would be outside of our space-time, so not something that we could measure. One of the theoretical underpinnings of relativity is that there are no preferred frames of reference, and if that were ever found to not be true the entire thing would need some serious modification.

[One Above All]

The universe isn't expanding into 3-D space, but presumably into higher order dimensions.

Where did you hear that?

[Azdgari]

Where is that?

How the hell am I supposed to know? However, assuming the universe isn't flat, it should exist.

In some models, sure.  Not in all non-flat models, though.  And in any case, why would time be "absolute' there?  Doesn't seem to follow, to me.

[One Above All]

In some models, sure.  Not in all non-flat models, though.  And in any case, why would time be "absolute' there?  Doesn't seem to follow, to me.

Two things[1] affect "time" - gravity and speed. If the gravitational pull is the same in every direction, it cancels itself out[2][3].
Also, note that  I wrote absolute with quotes because it's the only place that shouldn't suffer from time dilation[4], but all time is still relative.

1.	AFAIK.
2.	For lack of a better term.
3.	AFAIK.
4.	AFAIK.

[Grogs]

Where did you hear that?

I didn't mean to imply that the universe is actually expanding "into" some higher dimensional space. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_expansion:

The universe is not expanding "into" anything outside of itself. A frequently used analogy is the expansion of the surface of an expanding rubber balloon. In this analogy the universe has two spatial dimensions (the surface of the balloon) rather than three. As the balloon expands, any two points on its surface get farther and farther apart. Another common analogy is a rising loaf of raisin bread—as the loaf expands, the raisins inside it move farther and farther apart from each other.

Following the analogy, if the surface of a balloon is a 2-D structure expanding along 3 dimensions, an expanding 3-D object would be expanding along four dimensions. That may not be strictly correct though, especially if the universe is infinite in extent.

[One Above All]

Following the analogy, if the surface of a balloon is a 2-D structure expanding along 3 dimensions, an expanding 3-D object would be expanding along four dimensions.

Makes sense.

That may not be strictly correct though, especially if the universe is infinite in extent.

I highly doubt anything could be infinite. It may be a lot bigger than what we can comprehend, but not infinite.

[screwtape]

Sorry I'm upsetting you so. 

Malarkey.  That is your raison d'etre.

How do you know the Big Bang happened based on math?

Look it up yourself, you lazy sack.  I'm not wasting effort on you.  If I thought it was an honest question born of genuine curiosity, I would answer.  But you have shown repeatedly it isn't.  It is a springboard for you to launch into your same idiotic, unsupported claims.

All I'm saying is that we both believe in something that we can't explain.  That's all.  Do you agree?

Ultimately, yes.  But that does not make them qualitatively equal.  We have pushed as far as our abilities allow  to understand and improve our explanation and we continue to push.  Your explanation is a conversation stopper, a dead end.  Your explanation finished 2500 years ago.  "Some guy did it, now shut up." 

You believe all sorts of scientific explanations which, 400 years ago, would have conflicted with xian thought.  Why?  Because you know science is the better explanation.  You trust thermodynamics insofar as it makes your AC and refrigerator work.  But it is the same thermodynamics that explains the Big Bang.  If thermodynamics is wrong about the Big Bang, it is wrong about refrigerators.  You trust physics to manage the non-trivial feat of satellite telecommunication.  But that is the same physics that explains the Big Bang.  If physics is wrong about the Big Bang, then your cell phone does not work.

Did you know that the invention of the lightning rod in the 1700s caused a fairly major theological crisis?  Many "holy men" refused to put them on their churches because they thought it was usurping god's will.  Now, you may look back and chuckle at their naivete.  But that is only because religious leaders adapted.  They changed their beliefs to fit into reality. 

They did not continue to rail against it, as you and other fools and liars do against evolution.  And hopefully sooner than 300 years from now, they will adapt their beliefs again to fit into the reality of evolution.   So, while you may think you are on the side of reason and righteousness here, you're not.  You are on the side of the a-lightning rod crowd, ultimately headed for obsolescence, to be giggled about by future generations. 

[Azdgari]

Two things affect "time" - gravity and speed. If the gravitational pull is the same in every direction, it cancels itself out.

Speed is relative.  There is no "objectively true" reference frame.  As for gravity, that doesn't decrease in a straight-line relation according to distance.  A single star close-by would unbalance the gravitational equilibrium of the "center", unless an identical star existed on the exact other side from it, ad nauseum.  There are probably plenty of objects in the universe that achieve close-to-no gravitational acceleration.  So what?

Also, note that  I wrote absolute with quotes because it's the only place that shouldn't suffer from time dilation, but all time is still relative.

See above.  Objects there would experience time-dilation, unless the universe was somehow perfectly symmetrical.

Note I said "objects".  A location does not experience or not-experience time-dilation.  Time dilation affects objects, not locations.

[One Above All]

Speed is relative.  There is no "objectively true" reference frame.

True. I forgot about that.

<snip>
A single star close-by would unbalance the gravitational equilibrium of the "center", unless an identical star existed on the exact other side from it, ad nauseum.
<snip>

That's not what I was taught. You don't need symmetry; you just need enough mass on all "sides" at a certain distance from that point to cancel everything out. However, I may be mistaking two similar concepts. Right now I'm not sure.

[Azdgari]

Well, let's say there was a star at 4 distance-units with mass 2 out one side, and another two stars, each with mass 1, out the other, at distance 1 and distance 7, all in a straight line with each other.  Star #1's center of gravity is at 4 to the left, and the center of gravity of stars #2 and #3 is 4 distance-units to the right.  I've bolded the centers of gravity of the matter out the left side, and out the right side.  Let's see their effects on an object at C:

S - - - C S - - - - - S

S are stars, C is the center.  Now, F = G(m₁*m₂) / R².  We're only interested in relative force here, so G will cancel out, and it's all acting on the same object at the center, so m1 will cancel out as well.  Here's the force from the left:

2/(4²) = 1/8 or 0.125

Now the force from the right, added from each of the two stars:

Star 1:  1/1²
Star 2:  1/7²
Combined:  1/1 + 1/7 = 8/7 or 1.143

So in this situation, though centers of gravity representing equal mass exist at equal distances to the left and to the right, and though the overall center of mass is at C, the force from the right is over 9 times as strong as the force from the left.

[inveni0]

Time is an illusion if you study general relativity enough.  That's been proven by satellites - the fact that we have to alter their clocks to make it like it is on earth.  Did you know that standing next to the great pyramids causes time to slow down, just due to their mass? 

Saying that time is an illusion is the same thing as saying that space is an illusion.  Do you even know WHY time slows down (relatively) near high-mass objects?  It's because of the effect mass has on space-time.  We see this effect every day in the form of gravity.

I'm starting to teach my 7-year old about physics starting tomorrow, and I've come up with a nifty visualization for just this fact.  Let me share it with you:

Take a sheet or blanket and suspend it in the air, stretched out so that there's no slack.  Now, take three or four objects (balls work great--golf balls, ping-pong balls, tennis balls, baseballs, etc) and put one in the center of the sheet.  You'll see the sheet dip.  The sheet represents space-time, and the balls represent matter.  The dip is the affect matter has on space-time.  Now, if you leave that first ball and add a second ball, you'll be able to observe these two masses "gravitate" toward each other until they collide.  If it were frictionless, the result would be more like what we observe in the solar system.  Planets orbit the sun, not because the sun "pulls" on them, but because space-time is distorted around the sun, and so the planets follow a curved line around it (like those donation wells where you drop a coin and it rolls around the funnel...except with no friction).

We're lucky that gravity can be quantified as a force, but it's not actually a force at all.  It's just a side effect of the warping of space-time.

Now, welcome to first grade.

[One Above All]

<snip>

Alright. NVM what I said then. Perfect universal symmetry is off the table due to the ridiculously low odds of such a thing.

[Hatter23]

One day, you'll see the error there, and you'll feel pretty stupid.

I think you are giving him more credit for intelligence than evidence suggests.

[jeremy0]

Time is an illusion if you study general relativity enough.  That's been proven by satellites - the fact that we have to alter their clocks to make it like it is on earth.  Did you know that standing next to the great pyramids causes time to slow down, just due to their mass? 

Saying that time is an illusion is the same thing as saying that space is an illusion.  Do you even know WHY time slows down (relatively) near high-mass objects?  It's because of the effect mass has on space-time.  We see this effect every day in the form of gravity.

I'm starting to teach my 7-year old about physics starting tomorrow, and I've come up with a nifty visualization for just this fact.  Let me share it with you:

Take a sheet or blanket and suspend it in the air, stretched out so that there's no slack.  Now, take three or four objects (balls work great--golf balls, ping-pong balls, tennis balls, baseballs, etc) and put one in the center of the sheet.  You'll see the sheet dip.  The sheet represents space-time, and the balls represent matter.  The dip is the affect matter has on space-time.  Now, if you leave that first ball and add a second ball, you'll be able to observe these two masses "gravitate" toward each other until they collide.  If it were frictionless, the result would be more like what we observe in the solar system.  Planets orbit the sun, not because the sun "pulls" on them, but because space-time is distorted around the sun, and so the planets follow a curved line around it (like those donation wells where you drop a coin and it rolls around the funnel...except with no friction).

We're lucky that gravity can be quantified as a force, but it's not actually a force at all.  It's just a side effect of the warping of space-time.

Now, welcome to first grade.

You're not telling me anything I don't already know.  Also, I was up pretty late last night arguing with this guy, and my brain was turning to mush.  Thanks for 'correcting me'...  ref. rockv12 user..