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BuffDan

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About BuffDan

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  • Birthday 01/24/1982

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  1. Sure, but the fact is that evolution is based on the same scientific method that has been so successful in the past, be it in designing computers, sending us to space, curing diseases, or making predictions in quantum theory to a degree of accuracy that would blow your mind.So to doubt the scientific method in this case, but not the others, is illogical. Sure, scientists have been wrong, but the beauty of the scientific method is that it is self correcting. If a theory is wrong, there almost certainly will be an observation that shows us it is wrong (unlike that book of yours which is infallib
  2. Oh I agree that there must be serious problems with at least one, and probably both of QM and GR; what I should have said was that in most situations, we can effectively ignore either one or the other, much like how in most cases we can use Newtonian gravity as a very good approximation, even though it is fundamentally flawed.
  3. Wow. Just, wow.Back to the topic of your thread, I do think that relativity is easier to believe than evolution for a couple of reasons. One is that the principles it follows from (that one cannot distinguish between constant velocity and rest, that one cannot distinguish between acceleration and gravity, the speed of light is constant for all observers) are fairly simple to grasp, and each of them can be tested, in principle, today, whereas evolution requires us to look through the fossil record, and its proof is more of a statistical variety. But the fact that we cannot test it "now" (or at
  4. Also, the two theories of relativity are special relativity and general relativity. Special relativity deals with objects moving at constant velocity; it says, in particular, that since the speed of light remains constant independent of one's speed, it must be the case that time runs more slowly for those moving at higher speeds. Also, the length of things measured will be different depending on people's relative speeds.General relativity deals with objects which are accelerating or decelerating, and says that the effects of gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable from each other; in si
  5. As far as I know (as a person who minored in physics and reads the "popular" books on the subject but has no exact knowledge of it) both general relativity and quantum mechanics have been shown to agree with experiment to an insane amount of precision. So both work very well in the domains we use them; relativity in the case when things are very massive and quantum mechanics in the case where things are very small.The problem happens when things are very massive and very small (like black holes or the early universe); then the two theories are contradictory. But again, both work very well in d
  6. My bad. I misread what you posted. However, my point still remains; do you equate the existence of bank reports and other independent financial reports, each of which can be verified in principle to an unverifiable, inconsistent book whose sole purpose is to evangelize? Of course it may not be true. There may be a God, there may not; Jesus may have done all the things the Bible said he did or he may not have. The point is in the details; there are different degrees of "may not be true."As an example (this is just my own example), on one hand, you have a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and on
  7. Or rather that we must assume that everything written in books is true unless we can specifically prove they are false; the burden of proof is of course upon us, the reader.
  8. Ah, sweet, sweet irony.If you can't tell the difference between the existence of a person who is well documented in several independent sources, who we also have video evidence of, as well as the ability to wait outside his residence and thus spot him in person, and the belief in several incredible, miraculous claims of which the only source people who wrote them down with the sole purpose to evangelize (which is not too different from hundreds of other religions, ones that you believe are false, but that is neither here nor there) in a book that has countless internal contradictions, claims w
  9. QFTTo expand upon the rest of your answer, I also like to see what the "other side" is saying (on religion as well as other issues; its the same reason I watch fox news from time to time) and see if I really do believe what I think I believe, and whether my beliefs can stand up to scrutiny.
  10. Incidentally, if one does not believed that the same mechanisms that allow for small-scale evolution also allow for large-scale evolution, and wants to see evidence for macro-evolution, I found this website (which no doubt is well known to many; I had come across it before but I had not seen this particular section until now):29 + Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common DescentIt also gets rid of that pesky myth that evolution, and in particular universal common descent, is not testable, as it gives many examples of predictions that were made and confirmed, as well as plen
  11. I love how people can claim that the sun is a star which is only 93 million miles away from earth, yet there are other stars which are billions of light years away from earth. I mean, which is it, are stars close or far?The simple fact is that some evolution happens over a generation or two, and more evolution happens over millions of years.If you take the kind that happens over a generation or two, and extrapolate it over millions of years, you get more drastic changes. That is what we are trying to tell you, namely that these drastic changes are just small changes happening again and again a
  12. Ok you totally missed my point, but that is fine. My point was just in general how a series of small changes can have a large effect over a long time, without any specifics about how long a time was needed to get from one particular species to another. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable on the specifics can deal with the specific case of Hawaii or any other area for that matter; the fact that life didn't have to start from scratch but could migrate, swim, etc. probably had something to do with it. Also, even a million years is a pretty long time, as it is still more than we can fathom and is
  13. This quote is from the stickied thread above, and I think sums things up nicely (Yet again Yorke is the voice of reason). The point is, a billion years is a very, very, very, very, very, VERY long time; what started out as different looking members of the same species can turn, through a series of incredibly minor changes over an incredibly longg time to completely different species. And something that started out having only one cell, again through only minor changes, over an ever longer time could start to like like the multi-celled incredibly complex forms of life we have today.And on the t
  14. Kind of like the theory of gravity. Man I wish somebody could prove that one true.
  15. Not getting into the argument of whether or not these statements can be proven or to what degree (I'll leave that to others who are more knowledgeable than I), the point, which we seem to agree upon, is that there is no subjectivity here. It can't be a truth to you that he did these things, and a truth to me that he didn't. One of us absolutely has to be wrong, regardless of whether we can ever know which one actually is right. So I am not arguing with you about which one of us is wrong, but rather with others who say that somehow, in a subjective, relative way that we are both right.This is a
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