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<em>Rant about crappy programming which no one will read and which has hence been excluded</em></p>
<p>Here is a perfect example of a typical argument from a creationism apologist:</p>
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<p>Truth isn’t relativistic. A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it and a fact is a fact even if no one believes it. There is such a thing as fact and truth in science regardless of what constructivist philosophers wish to purport. “Truth” in religious matters is simply the opinion that has survived, not an honest, evidenced account of reality. </p>
<p>Voguish relativist intellectuals attempt to protest that absolute truth is a hollow concept: whether something exists or if something happened all defers to the circumstance of personal belief. To them, all points of view are uniformly valid and should be indiscriminately respected regardless of how asinine, non-evidenced, or belligerent the sophistry happens to be. Believing that religion and religious ideas are inviolable and harmless only makes it far more difficult to criticize faith-based extremism.</p>
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<p>These are actually quite hollow curiosities since intermediary species are actually quite abundant across the animal kingdom. (It’s also worth noting that the second question is stereotypically pervasive within the creationist community and an ignorantly conceived misrepresentation.) The evolution of the horse, for instance, perhaps provides the most well-documented transitional picture of any modern-day animal. </p>
<p>[Evolution</a> of the Horse](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse]Evolution”>Evolution of the horse - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Whales, aquatic mammals, trace their ancestry back to Pakicetus, a land-dwelling carnivorous mammal, which existed for a period of approximately 16 million years, dating back to the early Eocene period. Ambulocetus, Artiocetus, Mammalodon help to provide a more complete understanding of the transition.</p>
<p>[Access</a> : Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to artiodactyls : Nature](<a href=“http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v413/n6853/full/413277a0.html]Access”>Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to artiodactyls | Nature)</p>
<p>[Evolution</a> of the Whale](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_whales]Evolution”>Evolution of cetaceans - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Approximately thirty intermediary species exist between modern-day Homo Sapiens and Lucy the Australopithecine although not all are our direct descendents. Divergencies proceeded from the direct lineage of modern-day Homo Sapiens, but not all produced descendants.</p>
<p>[Hominid</a> Intermediates (with Photographs)](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hominina_fossils]Hominid”>List of human evolution fossils - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Creationists, though, typically choose to irrationally dismiss these discoveries and any new notable contributions to the fossil record, advance inaccurate distortions, or acknowledge the findings but press the need for more paleontological evidence. For instance, the rare creationists that do recognize the fossilized intermediates may insist on needing proof of filling additional gaps. By their reasoning, if one opening in the fossil record exists, fulfilling it produces two new gaps; when those are satisfied, there now exists four gaps; when those are gratified, eight gaps exist, ad infinitum.</p>
<p>Creationists typically argue under the pretense that any particular gaps in the fossil record stand as support for their position. In reality, however, evolution would be just as robustly evident even if no ancient remnants were ever preserved. Indeed, it merely serves as more damnable evidence against their ideological stance. It’s as if a felon is demonstrably culpable through indirect proof but is further confronted with video surveillance of himself committing the act, even if the footage is fragmentary or somewhat imperfect, yet overwhelmingly sufficient as evidential proof. </p>
<p>Here is a fabulous article published in Nature. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nature.com/nature/newspdf/evolutiongems.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nature.com/nature/newspdf/evolutiongems.pdf</a></p>
<p>”Radiometric dating procedures are an inherently inaccurate method of dating geological and zoological samples and haven’t been shown to be useful.”</p>
<p>This is a lie that must be perpetuated by young-Earth creationists (YEC) to uphold their literal interpretation of Genesis (the Earth and the entirety of its biology was created within a matter of 6 twenty-four hour days, the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years of age, and so forth). YEC absolutely adore their erroneous “evidence” of the young age of the Earth because doing so implicitly provides the impression that evolution and radiometric dating are invalid all while “proving” what their holy book says by means of fallacious “either-or” thought.</p>
<p>Moreover, simple radiometric techniques, such as C14, are very accurate when applied within the proper context (in this case, on objects aged under approximately 60,000 years) to achieve a statistically authentic reading. The precision of radiocarbon dating has been assessed on the basis of objects with dates that have already been apprehended through archived historical documentation, such as portions of the Dead Sea scrolls and lignified remnants from an Egyptian tomb. On account of the derived results, the analysis demonstrated that C14 agreed very closely with the historical information.</p>
<p>[Refuting</a> Creationism](<a href=“http://www.gate.net/~rwms/crebuttals.html]Refuting”>http://www.gate.net/~rwms/crebuttals.html)</p>
<p>I’ll elaborate on this response by providing an additional comment from the thread:</p>
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<p>The age of the Earth has already been determined with a fantastic degree of resolution. From: [Geologic</a> Time: Age of the Earth](<a href=“http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html]Geologic”>Geologic Time: Age of the Earth)</p>
<p>“Ancient rocks exceeding 3.5 billion years in age are found on all of Earth’s continents. The oldest rocks on Earth found so far are the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada near Great Slave Lake (4.03 Ga) and the Isua Supracrustal rocks in West Greenland (3.7 to 3.8 Ga), but well-studied rocks nearly as old are also found in the Minnesota River Valley and northern Michigan (3.5-3.7 billion years), in Swaziland (3.4-3.5 billion years), and in Western Australia (3.4-3.6 billion years). These ancient rocks have been dated by a number of radiometric dating methods and the consistency of the results give scientists confidence that the ages are correct to within a few percent. An interesting feature of these ancient rocks is that they are not from any sort of “primordial crust” but are lava flows and sediments deposited in shallow water, an indication that Earth history began well before these rocks were deposited. In Western Australia, single zircon crystals found in younger sedimentary rocks have radiometric ages of as much as 4.3 billion years, making these tiny crystals the oldest materials to be found on Earth so far. The source rocks for these zircon crystals have not yet been found. The ages measured for Earth’s oldest rocks and oldest crystals show that the Earth is at least 4.3 billion years in age but do not reveal the exact age of Earth’s formation. The best age for the Earth (4.54 Ga) is based on old, presumed single-stage leads coupled with the Pb ratios in troilite from iron meteorites, specifically the Canyon Diablo meteorite. In addition, mineral grains (zircon) with U-Pb ages of 4.4 Ga have recently been reported from sedimentary rocks in west-central Australia. The Moon is a more primitive planet than Earth because it has not been disturbed by plate tectonics; thus, some of its more ancient rocks are more plentiful. Only a small number of rocks were returned to Earth by the six Apollo and three Luna missions. These rocks vary greatly in age, a reflection of their different ages of formation and their subsequent histories. The oldest dated moon rocks, however, have ages between 4.4 and 4.5 billion years and provide a minimum age for the formation of our nearest planetary neighbor. Thousands of meteorites, which are fragments of asteroids that fall to Earth, have been recovered. These primitive objects provide the best ages for the time of formation of the Solar System. There are more than 70 meteorites, of different types, whose ages have been measured using radiometric dating techniques. The results show that the meteorites, and therefore the Solar System, formed between 4.53 and 4.58 billion years ago. The best age for the Earth comes not from dating individual rocks but by considering the Earth and meteorites as part of the same evolving system in which the isotopic composition of lead, specifically the ratio of lead-207 to lead-206 changes over time owing to the decay of radioactive uranium-235 and uranium-238, respectively. Scientists have used this approach to determine the time required for the isotopes in the Earth’s oldest lead ores, of which there are only a few, to evolve from its primordial composition, as measured in uranium-free phases of iron meteorites, to its compositions at the time these lead ores separated from their mantle reservoirs. These calculations result in an age for the Earth and meteorites, and hence the Solar System, of 4.54 billion years with an uncertainty of less than 1 percent. To be precise, this age represents the last time that lead isotopes were homogeneous througout the inner Solar System and the time that lead and uranium was incorporated into the solid bodies of the Solar System. The age of 4.54 billion years found for the Solar System and Earth is consistent with current calculations of 11 to 13 billion years for the age of the Milky Way Galaxy (based on the stage of evolution of globular cluster stars) and the age of 10 to 15 billion years for the age of the Universe (based on the recession of distant galaxies).”</p>
<p>Scientists have determined the age of the Earth to be approximately 4.54 billion years of age, due to a continuous process of research that is into its seventh decade. Radiometric dating is designed to measure the age of certain samples by comparing the ratio of parent elements to daughter elements, which dynamically changes through radioactive decay (a constant process). Creationists and scientists are both privy to the fact that there may have been a loss or addition of either the parent or daughter element sometime during the history of the sample. Both groups acknowledge that concern out of objective necessity. To creationists, however, that reservation remains subsidiary to the primary motive of preserving a prescientific doctrine. </p>
<p>However, two primary tests have been formulated to minimize any possible age disparities – uranium-thorium-lead discordia / concordia method and isochron dating. These provide highly precise measurements by eliminating the need to pinpoint the initial quantity of the daughter nuclide. Creationists are inclined to believe that geo-/paleochronologists simply select some inherently flawed procedure, apply it, and definitively declare the reading to be the age of the rock/fossil/sample. Unfortunately for them, that’s not the way in which matters are conducted. Actual well-designed experiments undergo a far more rigorous criteria and process of investigation. </p>
<p>The age of the Earth, in particular, is best determined by meteorite samples, rather than native collections. Through satellite data, we know that the Earth’s surface is persistently reorganizing itself in response to plate tectonics. So it is quite evident that none of the rocks currently exposed on the surface of the Earth have been present since its formation without experiencing the processes of erosion, remelting, or metamorphism. </p>
<p>Meteorites, however, are curious by the fact that they all diverge to ages within a few million years apart (a tick in geological time) to 4.54-4.56 billion years. When asteroids were first formed in the solar system, they cooled relatively quickly, and haven’t been remelted since, which eliminates the possibility that present-day meteorites were reformed sometime during their history, an event that would reset the geological clock. Evidence from the lead, thorium, and uranium isotopes links the age of the Earth with the age of these meteorites, making the Earth 4.5-4.6 billion years of age. That is approximately 767,000 times off the primitive assumption proffered by fundamentalist Christians.</p>
<p>[Ages</a> of Select Geological Samples](<a href=“http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html]Ages”>The Age of the Earth)</p>
<p>Creationists ordinarily enjoy finding some sort of wide discrepancies found using a radiometric technique and erroneously use that to dismiss the entire practice. It’s tantamount to saying that because one wristwatch has failed to keep the proper time, all are functionally useless. For instance, Henry Morris, in his 1974 book Scientific Creationism used a publishing that employed the potassium-argon procedure for the dating of xenoliths, resulting in dating figures deviating from 160 million to 3 billion years of age. Of course, creationists will immediately criticize the process without understanding the underlying context of the disparity. Xenoliths are essentially rocks that aren’t directly derived from the original magma, but rather from the surrounding terrain. So with potassium-argon dating, what one is actually determining is not an specific age but rather the amount of time since the rock ossified from its liquid state – or the point at which argon, the daughter element, remains confined within the sample. Hence, any age determination in this respect is geologically meaningless. But, of course, creationists will neglect to mention this and rant about the age discrepancies without any type scientific context or honestly addressing the fact that radiometric determination must be adjusted in accordance with the proper circumstance.</p>
<p>One further episode of creationists’ dishonesty (or perhaps willful deception) regarding radiometric dating:</p>
<p>[Additional</a> Topics - Bad Dates](<a href=“http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/additional_topics/bad_dates.html]Additional”>Dave Matson Young Earth Additional Topics Bad Dates » Internet Infidels)</p>
<p>In short, of the forty or so radiometric procedures available, all provide figures within fantastic consistency to each other and supply a coherent account of the ages of specific samples, including fossilized remains and the age of the Earth.</p>
<p>[The</a> Age of the Earth - Google Books](<a href=“The Age of the Earth - G. Brent Dalrymple - Google Books”>The Age of the Earth - G. Brent Dalrymple - Google Books)</p>
<p>Although this argument hasn’t surfaced in this thread, young-Earth creationists enjoy asserting the old chestnut that the Earth could not have sustained life more than 20,000 years ago because the Earth’s magnetic field has been decaying exponentially (a solidly debunked conceit). This ignores the fact that the diminishing dipole of the Earth’s magnetic field has been counterbalanced by the non-dipole component. With paleomagnetic measurements conducted within the past sixty years, the Earth’s magnetic field has remained invariable. The Earth’s dipole has indeed been sinusoidal over the past 10,000 years, not decaying at a steepening nonlinear gradient as it pertains to the passage of the geological time – as creationists erroneously claim.</p>
<p>[Specific</a> Arguments - Magnetic Field](<a href=“http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_arguments/magnetic_field.html]Specific”>Dave Matson Young Earth Specific Arguments Magnetic Field » Internet Infidels)</p>
<p>Another popular creationist “proof” of the young age of the Earth is measuring the rate of any environmental phenomenon, assuming the rate has remained constant, and asserting a ceiling on the Earth’s age. YEC creationists will selectively choose phenomena that can be distorted to facilitate a asinine argument for a young age of the Earth. The accumulation of specific medals in the ocean is quite popular. The Earth would be 260 million years of age according to the accumulation of sodium. To underscore the inanity of this fatuous conceit, the Earth would be one hundred years old according to the accrual of aluminum. The case of aluminum demonstrates the abysmal logic associated that metal amassment isn’t a constant process. Moreover, it patently ignores the fact that these ions are not accumulating in sea water but rather maintaining a concentration at or near a dispersive equilibrium. In short, metal buildup is a very scatterbrained and scientifically preposterous approach to geological age determination.</p>
<p>[Specific</a> Arguments - Salt](<a href=“http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_arguments/salt.html]Specific”>Dave Matson Young Earth Specific Arguments Salt » Internet Infidels)</p>
<p>The helium argument is equally useless. YEC enjoy claiming that the quantity of helium in the atmosphere fortifies the “evidence” for a youthful planetary age. They look at the sources of helium accumulation (notably the alpha particles from radioactive decay) but neglect the ways in which helium effuses from the Earth’s atmosphere. </p>
<p>The plain truth of the matter is that YEC have absolutely no evidence to buttress their claim that the Earth is on the order of 6,000-10,000 years of age. The only predominant tactic is to a futile attempt to disassemble the prevailing research and to highlight any erroneously perceived shortcomings. Secondly, creationists may prepare a dish of half-baked fallacious schemes that don’t work (as demonstrated by multiple sources) while adding a dash of scientific rhetoric to make it seem superficially credible. To adhere to such is tantamount to concluding that the width of North American, as measured from San Francisco to New York, is roughly five yards in diameter. That is precisely the sheer proportion of error that we are speaking of. The belief in a 6,000-10,000 year-old Earth is simply a fatuous proposition devoid of the slightest ounce of believability. When it is a matter removed from the innocent, passive gullibility of early youth and one is mentally capable of comprehending and assimilating the evidence, anyone who indiscriminately trusts such a deduction, considers the “evidence” to favor such, or believes it to be a realistic possibility on the basis of “natural indicators” is either staggeringly ignorant or possesses an unbelievably corroded intellect. Then, it becomes an issue entirely divorced from honest ignorance and into the realm of some ideological denial.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious question one should ask is this: Who is the best authority regarding these matters? A group of religious fundamentalists who have little to no direct knowledge of science (unfortunately, this fact is often shrouded by superficially academic writing which is nothing more than flagrantly inaccurate scientific distortions) who purely hope to promote a particular theology of the Bible or scientists who objectively study the world as it is and publish in peer-reviewed publications?</p>
<p>Scientists have absolutely no reason to affirm that the Earth is between 4.5 and 4.6 billion years of age other than that it is supported by the decades of research and the thousands of independently verified conclusions from the testing of numerous samples. </p>
<p>In reality, creationism has not produced one intellectually compelling, scientifically testable hypothesis about the natural world beyond those that were tested and refuted by science as long ago as the nineteenth century. Nothing about the ideology provides the slightest overtone of science. It is rather a profoundly human symptom of the desire to preserve a beloved idea – even if it requires manipulating the rules of science to serve one’s own ends. </p>
<p>Objectively derived facts are more valid than beliefs, and if beliefs happen to be inconsistent with the facts, then it is the beliefs that need to change, because the facts won’t, no matter how rigid the belief.</p>
<p>More sources to investigate:</p>
<p>[Transitional</a> Vertebrate Fossils FAQ: Part 2A](<a href=“Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ: Part 2A”>Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ: Part 2A)</p>
<p>[Transitional</a> Vertebrate Fossils FAQ](<a href=“http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html]Transitional”>Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ)</p>
<p>[The</a> Age of the Earth](<a href=“http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html]The”>The Age of the Earth)</p>
<p>[Human</a> and Ape Chromosomes](<a href=“http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html]Human”>http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html)</p>
<p>[The</a> Evolution Evidence Page](<a href=“http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html]The”>http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html)</p>
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<p>Actually, what’s arrogant is an artificial facade as someone qualified to trump the scientific consensus of those who have worked in the field and dictate what is and what is not considered veritable scientific endeavor (not to mention the tens of thousands of peer reviewed publications and evidence from the fields of molecular genetics, paleontology, biochemistry, zoology, embryology, and so forth). You have already conceded that you lack a basic education in the subject of biology and you perpetually advance fraudulently designed claims about the scientific findings as a dishonest means of providing a default-type “verification” of the preposterous, intellectually-sapping falsehoods of creationism.</p>
<p>For any scientist who is aware of the overwhelming degree of evidence surrounding the field of evolution, it is inexplicably ignorant to believe that evolution is a delusional myth disseminated through scientific conspirators. If one encounters a person who claims to wholly repudiate the factual basis of biological evolution, they are either poorly educated, intellectually addled, logically inept, or mind-numbingly ignorant. One cannot possess the diametric opposites of those qualities and believe that they are “rational” by giving no credence to biological evolution. It’s a matter of tending to favor information that confirms ideological preconceptions – irrespective of factual fidelity – particularly those that are emotionally consequential and involve fixated theological leanings. There is no such thing as a nonpartisan approach when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is demonstrably false or when attitude polarization transcends to a heightened level although each party is exposed to the same evidence, yet reaches antithetical conclusions (in which only one is in any way supported by the evidence). Creationism is wishful thinking, with observed biases that cannot sustain under assessment from the massive amounts of documented evidence and with beliefs that persevere or strengthen even under absolute assault from contrary evidence. This because of a cult of halfwitted know-nothings who has acquired the political brawn to influence school boards and science curricula and propagate fatuous lies under the pretense that all religious ideology must be indiscriminately respected regardless of how intellectually regressive or empirically contradictory it may be.</p>
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<p>What an asinine conceit. I previously established logical argument that disproves the simultaneous possession of certain commonly established characteristics of divine existence along with the other baseless assumptions that it is “everlasting,” “eternal,” or not confined by the constraints of logic. I will enlarge on this point in a future post.</p>
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<p>Actually, it does egregiously conflict with the Genesis narrative. Regardless of how metaphorical or liberal one gets with the reading of Genesis – while not violating the textual evidence – it contravenes the evidence from the fossil record (and hence the order and relative timeline of evolutionary progress), basic concepts in astronomy (the Earth’s alleged existence before the formation of the sun and stars), and, indeed, common sense. The anachronisms between the Genesis account and scientific findings (not to mention the discrepancies that exist from the creation myths purported by other faiths and mythologies) are most particularly the misfortune of those who attempt to reconcile the Christian faith with the objective evidence. Many creationists delightedly emphasize the disparities and provide the harebrained conclusion that it is the secular chronology that requires revision. Naturally, one should find the following comparisons to be the basic starting point of argument:</p>
<p>[ul][<em>]Biblical Order:
[list][li]Earth precedes sun and stars[/li][</em>]Plants are the first life forms
[<em>]Fruit trees precede fish
[</em>]Fish precede insects
[<em>]Land vegetation before sun
[</em>]Birds before land reptiles
[li]Man as the cause of death[/ul][/list]</p>[/li]
<p>[ul][<em>]Scientific/Evolutionary Order:
[list][li]Sun and stars precede Earth[/li][</em>]First life forms are aquatic organisms
[<em>]Fish precede fruit trees
[</em>]Insects precede fish
[<em>]Sun precedes land plants
[</em>]Reptiles precede birds
[li]Death precedes man[/ul][/list]</p>[/li]
<p>[An</a> additional account](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064967259-post468.html]An”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064967259-post468.html)</p>
<p>Clearly, the Biblical account of the sequence of origins is patently imprecise. Neither is any creation myth collectively held by other cultures and systems of belief. Without the foundations and the objectively accumulated knowledge provided by the natural sciences, humans are not far removed from a epistemic penitentiary. It’s a universal phenomenon that humanity invents ingenious speculations, myth, and religious dwellings to account for ignorance of reality to fabricate meaning and subjectively satisfy the lingering curiosity of existence. Such mythos provides a subjective account to explain the ineffable. But such accounts are wrong, always wrong, because the world is too far isolated from conventional experience to be merely ideated by baseless contrivances. </p>
<p>Even by today’s standards, when understanding is far from complete, it is much more emotionally gratifying – yet intellectually idle – to account for the nature of existence through deference to a supreme being. However, each folk tale of creation is created unsystematically through misguided intuition and that, along with the entire faith centered around it, typically only propagates through political conquest. And as ideologies die, the account of creation and the gods and spiritual animisms worshipped as part of it are lost to the annals of history.</p>
<p>To respond to an emphatic variation of the same assertion:</p>
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<p>In reality, your willful ignorance toward evolution is completely a consequence of your religious fundamentalism, not because you have some sort of objective outlook regarding the matter. Regarding the issue of evolution, you have had your intellect completely sapped by subscribing to the fundamentalists’ dishonestly formulated bag of tricks to the point in which you have the audacity to propagate lies, metaphysical conceits, and evidential misrepresentations. If it were a passive, correctable gullibility, it would be forgivable; but all too clearly, it is an active, unabating willingness to be deceived.</p>
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<p>I have presented this evidence (in Post #639 and in great abundance above); others have attempted to show it to you, but you mechanically spin it out of context, willfully contravene the science to present your own biased misinterpretation, provide embarrassingly incompetent assessment, or downright lie about evolution. Like most creationists, you probably aren’t doing this intentionally, but rather from your own misunderstandings and contrived falsehoods that you’ve integrated into your individual judgment. But just as it is impossible to show a blind man color, it is fully inconceivable to teach you truth, logic, and what genuinely fulfills the basis for evidential proof.</p>
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<p>Evolution has supplied an overwhelming abundance of evidence to corroborate its validity. By contrast, creationism and intelligent design, teach students not to acknowledge legitimate truth on the basis of evidence, but on revelation, authority, and faith. To deny children the privilege of realizing where we come from is a sad deprivation of a wonderful opportunity.</p>
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<p>The mind does indeed yearn for a permanent existence and it compensates for this fear of death and the unknown by fabricating the concept of an afterlife. It’s a very simple mental invention: dutifully worship a particular entity – or entities – within the faith and follow the creed dictated by scripture and one will be resurrected or rematerialized within some earthly or celestial paradise. Failure to submit to these demands, they claim, and you will be ordained to some unpleasant, fiery underworld. It’s a very ingenious method of vindicating the subordinating imperative of a social existence and is perpetuated from one generation to the next and subsequently codified within formalized doctrine and individual belief. However, it is not prescribed from a god (or gods) as is so self-righteously proclaimed. It has evolved as a vital tool of survival within social contexts.</p>
<p>I personally do not have any desire for immortality although those easily impressioned into the concept of an afterlife typically differ. However, in a 1996 survey of American scientists, a predominantly secular group, only 36 percent, or approximately one-third of those surveyed, expressed a desire for immortality. </p>
<p>The most common argument in eschatology is Pascal’s Wager and I will elaborate more on that argument later.</p>
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<p>There is honestly no legitimate reason why faith should be blindly respected and exempted from the ordinary descent of criticism that is imposed upon other branches of study. In fact, in terms of historical context, religious belief has been one of the most mulish and subverted misuses of intelligence that we have ever conceived. The most hazardous conviction, in my opinion, is the one most incorrigibly associated with Christianity: that we were not born to be of this Earth – that we only have an interim existence and that temporal concerns are ultimately of lesser significance. By expecting a subsequent life, distress can be tolerated, especially in other individuals, which only fabricates a justification for, and praise of, pious martyrdom.</p>
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<p>Yes, it’s a very good business tactic. It satisfies psychological needs to invent an imaginary support system that monitors against the detrimental forces of uncertainty. As I’ve stated before, I honestly don’t believe religion, or any belief system consisting of some celestial ally or mystic grounding (i.e. astrology, superstition) has any pertinent association with reasoned argumentation. It’s accepted purely on emotional pretext.</p>
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<p>This is patently wrong – and also a very ridiculously biased form of reasoning. It’s essentially tantamount to saying, “I’m can’t comprehend account A (or, perhaps, more specifically, “I don’t want to comprehend account A”), so account B must be correct” (either-or fallacy). As far as abiogenetic and evolutionary matters are concerned, one could simply resort to the default explanation (“God/gods did it”) and remain comfortably exempted from any kind of valid explanation until relatively recently. But not any longer. </p>
<p>Cosmogenesis, is the upcoming scientific enigma that will require a Darwinian revolution of its own. But if anything has been learned from science and history, one must be extraordinarily dubious towards any model of supernatural design purported in other realms of inquiry. Simply providing the intellectual default (“God did it!”) is a very simple method of immediately liberating any ignorance on the topic, but it doesn’t methodically resolve anything. Like everything else in which it involves itself, it has been the great intellectual cop-out. </p>
<p>There are various proposed mechanisms on what caused the Big Bang, each on trial until the proper technological means and relevant physics become available. Unfortunately, a relatively small portion of the population has any interest in explaining universal origins according to objective evidence – rather than the archaic mythology inscribed by ignorant men – so when an explanation comes, it inevitably won’t spark much interest in the layperson and even the majority of those educated (or at least consider themselves to be). As for the current state of endeavors, I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I can provide a qualitative description on the current state of understanding:</p>
<p>As is currently held, the concept of inflation has been the enduring scientific consensus for properly modeling the physical data and qualitative observations provided by cosmological studies. The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) has provided perhaps the most significant contribution to the current understanding of universal origins and has provided a very prominent piece of evidence for the Big Bang model of the universe. It is uniform to one part in 100,000, which may seem extraordinarily insignificant, but at smaller levels, it has a very specific pattern of fluctuations. Inflation successfully explains this, as it does the classical conundrums of why the universe is homogeneous, isotropic, and relatively flat when, on basic principle, any type of three-dimensional expansion should result in a heterogeneous universe with a spherical geometry. The CMBR also explains the large-scale structure of the cosmos as ordinary quantum mechanical fluctuations, due to the uncertainty principle, that have been expanded by inflation to the size of the universe. Also note that this is not simply a baffling fable – it is a set of very detailed quantitative predictions, which have been tested to a very high accuracy.</p>
<p>Part of the present issue concerning cosmologists is that the answer to how cosmogenetic circumstances arrive isn’t unique – there a variety of valid mechanisms that can cause inflation to begin. I will attempt to describe the most descriptively uncluttered explanation – and perhaps the most likely.</p>
<p>When a quantum field undergoes a phase transition, it’s pressure and energy change, similar to bubbles of water vapor in a pot of boiling water. Pressure and energy determine the gravitational field and the structure of spacetime and any phase transition may substantially alter universal expansion. </p>
<p>Specifically, inflation will occur if a quantum field (a physical quantity associated with a microscopic portion of spacetime) has a constant, or nearly constant, nonzero potential energy. If a field undergoes a change from one value of potential energy to another within some small region, either through quantum tunneling or through basic thermal fluctuations, this can nucleate an inflationary bubble of space. Inflation will continue until the potential energy invariably falls to zero. And through the conservation of energy, that potential energy must undergo some type of state conversion and provide effect elsewhere. This energy goes into reheating the universe, creating a very hot assortment of particles and antiparticles.</p>
<p>But, of course, it is unknown which quantum field behavior is responsible for this behavior and the underlying interactions, which affect other variables. That’s an open question, and a very important area of research. More precise measurements of the CMBR can give some assistance to this and, as is theoretically likely, an applicable particle could appear in accelerate experiments. </p>
<p>But when an answer comes, it certainly won’t be derived from intellectually shallow, pseudoscientific conceptions but rather through methodical inquiry that remains unwaveringly honest to reality. Appealing to the “common sense reasoning” that something cannot come from nothing is at odds with a modern understanding of physics; hence, it is not intellectually honest.</p>
<p>And, as a general point, when these types of discussions become unnecessarily philosophical or rife with metaphysical conceits, one accomplishes nothing.</p>
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<p>Demanding negative proof to avoid the burden of proof is an argumentative fallacy. The theist asserts the belief in such – not the agnostic, freethinker, atheist, or secularist. If I were to say that gravitational force is facilitated by the perpetual effort of an infinite number of invisible leprechauns, I ought to prove that. It wouldn’t be up to anyone else to explicitly disprove it.</p>
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<p>That’s only true for the latter, not the former. Atheism is the absence of belief and cannot be properly labeled as the belief in non-belief. I think that it’s more objectively sincere to describe an “atheist” as an individual that lacks gullibility towards non-evidential, fraudulent, or otherwise defective, poorly considered ideas (regarding scientific explanation). It’s basically an unnecessary term – we don’t have a designation for the lack of belief in astrology or voodooism. And I can positively assure you that we are all atheists to other gods that have been dislodged from the religious and metaphysical realm are now a part of literary entertainment, known purely through historical documentation, or those that have been relegated to the religious scrap heap without any record of their “existence.” In essence, nobody takes their previously perceived actualities seriously because very few today believe in their existence.</p>
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<p>Using the ostensibly commonsensical assertion that everything must have a cause and effect fails miserably with a modern understanding of physics. Not all physical interactions pair an effect to an underlying cause; to propagate the notion that “all effects must have a cause” is an enormous conceit. </p>
<p>However, one cannot simply say that “God did it” since it absolutely sidesteps the question of how the god or gods under consideration came into existence. A god that created a universe would be at least as complicated as the universe that it creates. Thus, it too requires a designer and a designer of the designer, ad infinitum. Theistic arguments simply hide under the presuppositional cloak that complexity has always existed. Hence, it is a complete fallacy for the theist to believe that such a fatuous argument is exempted from its own infinite regress. This will be expanded upon later.</p>
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<p>I don’t believe any sane individual has said that one must not believe in anything supernatural to engage in some form of objective inquiry. Methodical naturalism is the central philosophical principle underlying scientific pursuit. That is, it is a de facto adoption on the basic premise that science – and its corresponding use of the scientific method – departs from the ignorance of metaphysics and does not depend on the basis of such abstractions for its success (although science has an inevitable effect on metaphysical assertions). Methodical naturalism is an epistemological consideration that takes a special concern for evidence-based reasonings and procedures of obtaining knowledge, notwithstanding one’s metaphysical, philosophical, and religious stances.</p>
<p>As far as this is concerned, the private lives of scientists may be oddly and even comically diverse but it doesn’t hold any particular bearing upon the essence and merit of their work. Roughly two-thirds of all scientists classify themselves under the heading atheist, agnostic, or religious skeptic. As individuals obligated to the pursuit of the collection of objective evidence, in order to provide a logically articulated structure of reality, this shouldn’t be surprising. </p>
<p>Scientists must be necessarily endowed with a form of skepticism – which is a mindset profoundly separate from an irrational denial of evidence that conflicts with preconceived ideological leanings – and typically have an understanding that judgment must be withheld under circumstances devoid of evidence. Scientists also must possess a certain degree of raw intellect, a developed grasp of logic, and a sense of reflection that provides a mindset privy to the fact that religious beliefs are a jumbled collection of separate mythologies rife with assertions with no basis in reality. And like workers in most other professions, scientists typically fall along a bell curve in terms of quality and productivity, and the further one proceeds right along the curve, the greater the preponderance of non-belief. To illustrate this point, 92%-93% of those elected to the National Academy of Science have no faith-based religiosity. Biological scientists have the scarcest rates of belief (5.5% in a transcendent force, 7.1% in immortality). The explanation is quite simple – the more one understands the evidence of the function and history of living systems and the fundamentals of the physical universe, the more one is propelled towards the lack of belief in supernatural governing.</p>
<p>[Nature</a>, “Leading scientists still reject God” July 23, 1998](<a href=“Top Cash Earning Games in India 2023 | Best Online Games to earn real money”>Top Cash Earning Games in India 2023 | Best Online Games to earn real money)</p>