silkworm

Or shall we ignore everything apart from the ToE stuff?

No. We focus on everything that is misrepresented as valid science. It bothers me when nonscientists are lied to, intentionally or not, about science. Of course, if chapter 14 is any indication, there will be a lot of clarification needed for how the scientific community thanks the scientific method actually works.

Okay, so current roster: Insane Alien, yourdadonapogos, Dak, Azure Phoenix, and myself. I'm sure there are more coming.

I don't think Blike would mind. And if he does we can simply send it as ourselves. I plan to sign my real name, my school, and my major to it anyway, to show that I'm operating honestly.

It will be respectful. I'll have that draft up tonight for the "intro" for lack of a better word.

Good idea about Wiki. We need to send it directly too them as well. It would be good to have this exchange as public as possible to allow them the opportunity to explain themselves.

D2C just sounds too combative, and it's really not the point of our letter. The point of our letter is to address how science has been misrepresented in this video, and that there are many factual errors considering what is valid science. So the point here is not squashing creationism, the point is to inform them that they have misrepresented science and to ask them to not continue to do so. Respectfully and without consideration for religion.

It appears to me the most effecient method would be to each take a chapter, which are short, and simply and in as plain of language as possible to point out the factual error and explain what the truth is. I'll write a, respectful, draft for the head of the letter and post it here. We should also try to divy up the chapters based on our specific areas. I'll have to look again to see if there any many misrepresentations of chemistry specifically. Obviously expertise is not required by most of us because these errors are so basic, but it may help.

Do we dig?

Any other takers?

Agreed on both. Keep it chapter for chapter and very respectful. Let's not bring religion into it and focus entirely on poorly represented accepted science and poor methods.

We also want to keep it simple and keep it public so everyone who speaks English can read it and understand it.

Dak? Are you with us?

Let's also drop the whole Death to Creationism too and simply voice our concerns for flawed information.

Dak, you bring up some very interesting points in your post. I don't have enough knowledge about all of this to judge whether you are correct, or if the video is correct. You might want to e-mail ChristianAnswers and see what their response is to your statements.

I had an idea. Let's all chip in on a letter to the producers of this video pointing out when they misrepresented accepted science and sign it SFN.

I wonder what the response would be? Would they admit it or not?

I bet they wouldn't. And if they did not totally stand behind it, who wants to bet they take it down?

Let's do it. Anyone with me?

I've looked and when contacting Christiananswers.net they ask you to use this form: http://christiananswers.net/forms/creationform.html, unless your question deals with "other issues." Since our query deals with factual errors, they ask us to go here: http://christiananswers.net/forms/editorialdept.html

If we write a letter together I'm sure they'll respond. I mean, they're honest, right?

Also i believe i was wrong about water existing in a gaseous state. tycho said in another post about the molecule being ionized by solar radiation. i overlooked this because i wasn't thinking aboutthe higher energy radiation coming from the sun like x-rays. i guess this is what you get for living on a planet where the high energy stuff is filtered out by an atmosphere.

But that's still dependent on proximity right? Aren't some comets known to be water ice?

I think this was actually posted by silkworm. That is indeed a silly question.

I'd never say anything like that, I was quoting the video.

On a sidenote, that is an interesting poster. Anytime I attend a creation science meeting I'm asked to defend Hitler. At the last one, the speaker said, "I don't know why Hitler didn't get Charles Darwin to write the foreword to Mein Kampf." To which my friend yelled, "HE WAS LONG DEAD!"

Although I can see a very poor argument formed for Darwin's Natural Selection somehow fueling the Third Reich, and may I emphasize a very very poor argument and that Darwin had nothing at all to do with the Third Reich, how the hell could you say it was fuel for communism? I thought Marx was the wrong guy being blamed for that.

It's odd that you don't see Bert on that poster. What are those leopards doing? I can't tell.

How does this make you feel?

Psychology is not a natural science simply because it is based in what we interpret as behavior positive or negative behavior. It is WAY TOO objective to be considered a natural science, which is what neuroscience is. Most of it's data is equivocated and most of its conclusions are only philosophical. That is very different than a natural science such as, chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy.

Neuroscience deals with how the brain works, psychology deals with behavior. There's a lot of chemistry and biology in neuroscience. There's a lot of open ended questions in psychology. It judges mental processing versus mainstream brainwashing. Who cares?

I habitually must deal with a psychology PhD who wouldn't know science if it made him borderline, but he does well enough in his field.

I'm not calling it worthless. Developmental psychology has a lot of merit, but I would never call psychology a natural science.

This video makes a very slow transition between evolution and creationism. You need to watch the whole video from start to finish before you can start arguing with it. Even if you choose not to believe the creationism evidence near the end, how can you argue with all the evidence against evolution they make throughout the entire video? I looked, and a lot of this stuff just isn't on the TalkOrigins web site.

I guess I didn't make myself clear. The statements that I mentioned are so flawed and show such an ignorance to a BASIC UNDERSTANDING of EVOLUTION that it was an END GAME. Those arguments are so horrible that they show that there will be nothing valid in the entire video against evolution. There they have MISREPRESENTED EVOLUTION in order to ARGUE with THEIR OWN MISREPRESENTATION. How do they expect to argue with the Theory of Evolution without understanding its processes?

I can't as a student of science condone anything that bad. If you talk to them and tell them to delete Chapter 14, and they DO, I will look further. Until then, there is absolutely no point, because that argument is such a misrepresentation of science that it is both vulgar and insulting.

I watched it in good faith, and I was severely disappointed with their misrepresentation. You can't tell me it has anything to do with the transition the video is making. If you say either of those things at any point, it shows you have no idea what happens in evolution.

I'm sorry, but I'm just telling you the truth.

I do agree that it is well produced, and I watched the introduction and I was impressed with their lack of misrepresentation, in the first chapter specifically. It stayed very basic, but I can't make any complaints on Chapter 1.

So, I decided to keep watching and I fast forwarded to Chapter 14 "More Problems," that's where the wheels fell off.

It starts out with a Biblical assumption:

"In Genesis it says God created all creatures of their own kind to fill the Earth, and that's exactly what we see."

Who's to say? But that's fine. I can accept that. I'll grant the producer's a mulligan there, in good faith because I'm rooting for a valid argument. But then this happened.

"If as evolutionists claim a reptile evolved into a bird who would the first bird mate with?"

This is a charming question but it shows complete ignorance of a basic understanding of evolution. The line of reptiles that evolved into birds would mate with each other, and the first of that line would mate with its own species, of reptiles from which it came and was still part of before isolation among those with similar traits brings forth speciation, as its traits become more numerous among their population. Natural selection acts upon the individual, evolution acts upon a population. A population of reptiles evolved into a birds. They mate with each other. It's not that suddenly a reptile gave birth to a bird, and it's not that a reptile suddenly gave birth to a half-bird/half-reptile as it continues to claim.

"Furthermore, all intermediate forms would be fatal. What good is half a wing or half a beak?"

It seems I have to say this alot, but I'll say it again. A transitional species from A to B is not equal to A+B/2. There are variations among all populations and these variations are constantly being tested by nature. Half of what? Half of the sum of variation? It makes no sense. It's the expression of a trait. We're all in transition, we're in transition right now. All living things are in transition.

I gave it a shot, herme3, and I did so in good faith. But this lack of a basic understanding of evolution was a deal breaker. I'm sorry. I don't know if they don't know, or if they're purpously misrepresenting good science to make their arguments make more sense. Either way, I'm forced to shut it off.

One way to lose the water is for it to go down into the planet. As we increase the temperature and pressure of water we reach its critical point. At the critical point, water can do nasty things to minerial. One possible scenario, is if the core of the earth cooled enough, the water will dissolve downward to corrode the iron core, gradually depleting the surface water. Maybe this is what happened to Mars?

I don't see that happening whether the earth is geologically active or not. While it is the water would not reach the core or get anywhere near it because of the immense heat. It would reach a point, vaporize and travel back up. If the earth were geologically dead I doubt the density of the material near the center would be penetrable by water.

Agreed insane. But I'd like to know what you think about this.

Say you have water in interstellar space. And assume with me it has had enough energy to remain as a gas until this very moment. Once these water particles bump into each other they'll stick, will there be a liquid phase at all or will it be immediately to solid?

I can't imagine a liquid phase in that scenario, no matter how short.

Insane, I didn't mean to imply that what you were saying the scale was wrong. I was making a joke that a drunk exagerrating something only twice as much is an underestimate. I'm taking AP's position of belittling people who drink, it makes me feel big.

Interesting link. I'd like to know for sure why the doubling was used. I see your point, but is it really necessary to express a half a percent for something your drinking? I mean, I can see needing to be precise enough to be within a couple of a percent, but a half? Who knows when proofs got to be accurate at all?

We need Robert Wuhl.

If planets die and loose their water and life, become a barren planet. Were does the water go?? does it beak down into its atom state or what??

A planet would have to experience extreme circumstances in order for water to leave a planet large enough to support it in liquid form. The most feasible is an EXTREME impact with another body. But the collision of the impact would have to be strong enough for the water to overcome the force of gravity of both bodies and escape the atmosphere and enter interplanetary space. For that to happen to all water, we're talking about a collision that would likely destroy any planet, definitely Earth, in the first place. So that event is highly unlikely, though I'm sure it has happened, in the universe, several times. The odds are big though.

Secondly, in space, water will either exist as a gas or as ice, the solid form of water. Space is a vacuum, it has no pressure. When you lower pressure, you raise the likelyhood of something being a gas. With water in space, that's very likely until the gas gets far enough away from a star to be cold, where then it becomes ice. Although I don't know of any studies on it, I'm fairly certain it will not go through a liquid form in this transition. Special conditions must exist to support liquid water, substantial pressure and gravity.

I hope that answers your question.

I think it comes from the tendency of drunk people to exagerrate. I don't think 2 is the appropriate scale though.

You also can't prove that God did do it. It's just as likely that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe as it is God did. It's just that scientific theories such as evolution have plenty of evidence behind them.

There's also another point that needs to be made. At the first CORR meeting my ally and I were trying to explain how science is conducted to a creationist with a PhD (in Psychology). Our point was the existence of God was irrelevent to science, because you can't control for supernatural beings (science is limited by nature). He showed us though, or so he thought, creating his own experiment (and using it as a commentary on the difficulty of waiting for something to speciate in the lab) that consisted of waiting for Jesus to return, and when he gets here he will be correct.

We agreed, "You would be correct that Jesus came back, but you would have done nothing to disprove evolution. Nothing at all."

Whatever God did or didn't do is irrelevant to the validity of evolution. Science does not consider it either way. What God does or doesn't do is commented on by religion, what is observed objectively in nature is what science comments on.

Neither one has anything to do with the other. I don't understand why that is so hard to comprehend.

if you feel that science threatens your beliefs, then either you don't understand the science(often the case) or your beliefs are wrong.

Or you don't understand that the existence of God is irrelevant to science because the existence of God can not be proven or disproven with science, is not commented on in scientific journals, and can not be controlled for.

It is not the position of science that God does not exist, it just is not taken into consideration. Neither is the presence of any other supernatural being or force. Science can only study the universe, the natural world.

The entire controversy has been made by those who do not understand science or the science involved in what they're fighting. The side opposing evolution does so because they make these assumptions that it is insulting to have the ape as an ancestor, that evolution and atheism is the same, that a "belief" in either means that everyone will start raping each other, and that to acknowledge evolution requires belief.

When I say "species" to any biologist or anthropologist I talk to we all know that means members of the same species are is "reproductive isolates."

Reproductive isolates can breed with one another, and do so in nature, and produce viable offspring, that can themselves have offspring.

The most common way to illustrate this is with a horse and a donkey. The designations of female and male are ommitted in my explaination as it's a given and for brevity.

Two horses can have another horse that can also have a horse with another horse. These horses are all the same species. The same is true with donkeys.

But also, a horse and donkey can have a wild night and produce a mule. The mule can not have offspring of its own, so horses and donkeys are not the same species.

A mule is just a mule.

Hope that helps.

It doesn't appear to me that evolution is accepted by scientifically illiterate people. That may, however, be just where I'm from.

It will though, inevitably. A few other unrelated things must happen that I refuse to talk about to keep from jinxing them first.

Okay okay. I'll throw one out there. When we find any form of extraterrestrial life we're going to see a huge sway to acceptance of evolution. But that's all I'm saying.

I wish there would be such a thing as a creation free web search, but I can see how that would be a problem. A better option would be to have a major organization endorse scientifically valid websites, so those who don't know much about their subject can trust the information they're being given if the site they're at is endorsed.

Everyone tries me to get a myspace, because I thought I was the last one left. I'm so glad Atheist didn't have an account either. I refuse to get one because I'm already surrounded by losers and my life has already been ruined.

That's a post from me earlier. Since then I saw a few people I know with myspace accounts and I couldn't resist. MySpace is nice, not because I can go out and stalk internet pray, be "friends" with many bands and models, or because I can't resist internet scrapbooking. It's nice because I have 71 people on my friends list. 2 from here and 69 that I know from real life. I have access to them whenever I want and they still can't bother me with a phone call or stopping by. It's freedom and I enjoy it.

It's because we live in a bubble of lies that has been created by generations of our intellectual species, hell bent on making ourselves feel special by divorcing us from nature.

The most honest thing you can do to a fancy woman is bite her butt when you meet her. And that is shallow, but only because you're behaving honestly and not repressing/lying in the most kind of ways. That isn't valued in a world where bullshit like money, religion, and the law dictate everything.

Actually, the same phenomenon is why standup comedians are so funny. They generally just stand up there and tell the truth.

If it helps, I heard on Science Friday today that the genus Homo appeared about 2.7 million years ago.

As for modern humans, I was born in 1981 baby.

Well, obviously you're just starting. And I don't know if you have to choose now, I wouldn't. If you don't, if I were you I'd take as many math, physics, and chemistry courses as humanly possible. The more of those you take, the more opportunities you have and the easier it will make whatever decision you decide to go with.

Good luck.

I agree, Geochem has a lot going on. Biochem also provides many opportunities and seems to be the most worshipped area of chemistry by the general public.

It depends on your perspective. I'm physics/chemistry because it's the most fundamental you can get and everything is easily grasped from there.

If you want an area of chemistry that is most broad go with Analytical Chemistry because it is the most broad, it analyzes everything.

I'm not sure what you really want to do or what your motivation for being a student of science is so I thats all I can say.

Generally I would agree with Darkblade's statement that IUPAC is where it's at and all other stuff is garbage. The IUPAC system is one that such when told the name of a molecule you know its structure. It's a great system, and I'm a huge fan.

However, what we're talking about here is formaldehyde. It is true that the IUPAC name is Methanal, but formaldehyde is formaldehyde. It's a superstar in the world of chemicals, and if you wanted it you'd order formaldehyde and not methanal.

The way I like to write the chemical equation for formaldehyde is H2CO to quickly point out that there is a carbonyl (=C=O). If you're writing formaldehyde by hand, it's communicated best by simply writing its structure.