Re: OT: Racial superiority / Intelligent design was Re: OT:Thanksgiving

On 11 Feb, 15:25, "Judson McClendon" <ju...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Arrant nonsense. Haven't you worked it out yet? I don't believe in god
or messiahs or heaven or devils. The existance of the Polonium (if it
does exist where it is said by some to exist) proves only that
Polonium exists in the granite (now magically trans-mogrified into
wood). There is no sign of a deity there.

Please give some *reasonable* hypothesis of how polonium particles could
come into existence and *completely* decay inside every grantie rock on the
planet, leaving 100% of the decay resudue in place, *without* evidence of
any other decay that could produce the polonium.

Uranium decays and bombards adjacent material converting it into
Polonium. Polonium has a maximum half life of 120 years (depending
upon which isotope you want) and if the earth had been created intact
6000 years ago then all Polonium would have long ago decayed into
other materials. The decaying uranium would also have vanished.

This is the situation as it
is known to exist. It is perfectly consistent with instantaneous (or nearly so)
creation of the Earth, with polonium particles embedded in the granite.

No it isn't - the Polonium would have disappeared 5880 years ago.

I is
not consistent with any reasonable theory on planetary creation that leaves
God out. If that's not physical evidence of instantaneous creation, what
would you  consider to be evidence?


How about his fingerprints? How about a personal manifestation of the
almighty? How about the moon crashing to earth and passing completely
through the earth without killing anyone or damaging the earth. How
about the moon just disappears overnight?


For a physicist you have a deplorable lack of understanding of
radioactive decay and half-lifes.

Perhaps so, but I know that radioactive decay gives off radioactive
particles, and leaves residue. And I know that the halos are caused
by the radiation and radioactive particles, and the residue is all there,
and the amounts of each correspond to what we would expect see if
the polonium were created there and completely decayed in place.

... or perhaps was the product of another decaying element bombarding
the material surrounding it. Look up polonium on the wikipedia and you
will see why you are so wrong.



That explaination *does not* fit the evidence, which I've pointed out
several times, and you simply don't care.

We have a reference to polonium halos in wood. You have not provided
any reference to polonium halos in granite. We have only your word for
what polonium in granite does and you do not even countenance the
possibility that you might be mistaken between wood and granite.
You are not listening to reason and your judgement is clearly flawed.
A reference that you may care to read is:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/

<QUOTE>

Creationist Robert Gentry has argued that ring-shaped discoloration
haloes in primordial granite rocks are the result of damage from alpha-
particle emission by radioactive isotopes of the element polonium
(Po). Since radiogenic polonium has a very short half-life (usually
measured in fractions of a second), Gentry argues that, if granite
takes thousands to millions of years to form as mainstream geology
believes, any polonium originally present would have decayed away long
before the granite could have formed and could not have produced these
haloes. Therefore, he feels that their existence is evidence for an
instantaneous and recent creation of these granite rocks, and by
extension the Earth. The following articles point out the flaws in
Gentry's argument.

"Polonium Haloes" Refuted
Professional geologist Tom Bailleul takes a second look at Gentry's
claimed polonium haloes, arguing that there is no good evidence they
are the result of polonium decay as opposed to any other radioactive
isotope, or even that they are caused by radioactivity at all. Gentry
is taken to task for selective use of evidence, faulty experiment
design, mistakes in geology and physics, and unscientific principles
of investigation and argument style.


Evolution's Tiny Violences: The Po-Halo Mystery
Amateur scientist John Brawley investigated Gentry's claims directly
by studying local rock samples, and concluded that there is no good
evidence that these "polonium" haloes are actually produced by
polonium at all, as opposed to longer-lived radionuclides such as
radon or uranium.

</QUOTE>

Note the first word 'Creationist' and further 'no good evidence they
are the result of polonium decay as opposed to any other radioactive
isotope, or even that they are caused by radioactivity at all' and
finally 'Gentry is taken to task for selective use of evidence, faulty
experiment design, mistakes in geology and physics, and unscientific
principles of investigation and argument style'.

That says it all. END OF CONVERSATION ABOUT POLONIUM.



Have you ever visited a graveyard where there are many granite
monuments? Every single one of them has these polonium halos.
Pointedly, they are *not* made of wood. :-)


See the above comments.

More preposterous: assigning a non-natural super-deity based
explanation to a natural phenomenon.

Purely subjective, extremely anti-God bias, zero evidence. And that
is your idea of science? Apparently so. :-)

My idea of science does not require me to believe in ghosts, fairies,
deities or any other superstitious nonsense.


Show me your evidence. I certainly won't take your word as gospel.

The real point is you won't accept any evidence,

Unless you can give me authoritative references I certainly will not
be taking your approach to anything. You have consistently refused to
provide any evidence to this discussion beyond saying: 'it says in the
bible...'. If I believed in god then I would not be taking your word
for any aspect of his existence or behaviour, past, present or
future. You have a very warped view of god. Others on this newsgroup
are christians and present a more acceptable view of their god and of
how a christian should behave.

If there were a god then he/she/it would not expect its' worshippers
to believe verbatim a 2000 year old collection of fairy tales and
propaganda. He/she/it would expect you to think for yourself (only a
mindless moron would slavishly believe every word of the bible and
gods don't want mindless morons as worshippers after all, it doesn't
say a lot for a god who delights in being worshipped by morons) and to
find your own path through life.

It annoys me that people such as yourself and fundamentalist muslims
take the Insh'Allah approach to life and waste the most precious gift
that your god gave you: independance.

because you *don't
want* there to be a God.

I would love there to be a god. I would love it if he/she/it was
something like the loving and caring entity that I believe a god
should be. However, I gave up on ever seeing that materialise when I
realised what a hypocritical sham christianity was. Read 'Vicars of
Christ' by Peter da Rosa and you will soon see how much of a sham
christianity was. Did you know that there was at one time three heads
of the Catholic Church each claiming to be the only true Pope?

A true scientific attitude would be to accept
whatever explanation was true.

A true scientific attitude would involve hypothesis (Ho: there is no
god; H1: there is a god), experimentation (what is the effect of a
church saying prayers for the recovery of their sick hospitalized
brethren?) and observation (saying prayers for hospitalized sick
congregationists results in their decline and frequently unexpectedly
early deaths). Prayer hastens death so it has a negative effect that
is not consistent with christian theories.

Science practice does not start by taking the bible and extrapolating
from there. It was once that way and many excellent early scientists
were alchemists and/or men of the cloth (Isaac Newton for one).
Fortunately, the body of evidence supported by hypothesis,
experimentation and observation, has taken us beyond the point where a
blind faith in the word of the bible is all that one needs for life.

You see science as *necessarily*
excluding God.

God was once in everything and everywhere. Since science started it's
works the area for god has been reduced and, IMHO, there is no longer
a need to see the hand of god in creation or the works of the
universe. That does not mean that scientists must not believe in god
but that it is no longer a pre-requisite to following a career in
science.

Science should not care whether an explaination is
God or natural processes apart from God, and simply look for the
truth.

Science does not care whether there is a god or not. If science
exposed evidence that proved the existence of god then I have no doubt
that it would publicise that material. Unfortunately for you, science
has failed to prove your case for you and has so marginalised god that
I see no place for god in our universe. Rather, I see that if we could
divest ourselves of superstitious belief systems then we could start
on building a new world for all mankind which would transcend the
image of heaven that christians and muslims propound. And the only
hell would be in the blackest of hearts and twisted minds.

This is the antithesis of what scientific attitude should be and is,
on the face of it, proof of bias against even the possibility of God
having any part in creation or the functioning of the universe in general.
This is what I've been saying all along. :-)

I see no evidence for a god, past, present or future. That is not a
bias against a god it is merely a strict adherence to the scientific
method.



Lava flows that formed in front of cameras,
and known to be a few days old, have been radioisotope dated to
thousands of years old.

Geologic processes, outside of the bible, take millions of years.
Radioisotopes within those rocks would have been formed before the
rock cooled at the surface.


I am neither a religious uniformitarianist nor a geological one. I
recognise that geologic processes (eg plate tectonics) have not been
uniform throughout the existance of the earth (there was a time when
the land consisted of one giant continent so plate tectonics at that
time did not occur). So why should they remain unchanged in the
future?

Yet you just criticized possible geologic changes

I don't understand your argument. I have stated that geological
processes are not uniform over time. The rate of volcanism varies, the
rate of meteorite impacts varies, plate tectonics is not something
that has happened for all time. These, and any valid arguments that
you can come up with, have natural explanations.

Swallow your pride and admit your error.

.

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