/sci/ - Science & Math

go here if you want an A
http://www.answersingenesis.org/

Talk.origins

wikipedia article for everyone one of those
list at least three sources for your answer to each question
if he starts dissing the sources, tell him to refute them, or offer alternative explanations for everything that lies within. he'll probably just blow you off, but you'll be in the right (and he will know that)

>>4830119
>>4830117
>>4830115

Thanks! All helpful

protip- radiocarbon dating is useful to about 60k years, so it isn't used to date human ancestors, dinosaurs, the planet, or much of anything else these idiots think it is.

discrediting C14 dating would screw with recent archaeology some but no other branch of science would give a fuck.

>>4830110
If you want one stop shopping for half of those, check:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_against_a_recent_creation

And while he may not like it, the last two:
>-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
>-If yes, who created nothing?
have correct answers of "Unknown".

>>4830125
That has been refuted. It's not that I'm agreeing or anything. I dont know shit. But yeah apparenty, that has been refuted:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-c14.html

>>4830128
Thanks
Will look into it

I don't come to /sci/ enough to know what the general opinion is on the video, but I found "A Universe From Nothing", a lecture by Lawrence Krauss that can be found on YouTube, enlightening. It's a few years old now, but still helpful.

Also, that last question is the kind of idiotic nonsense only a theist could think up. Who created nothing? I think the definition of the word "create" implies a process that results in something, and therefore it the only way to create nothing it to not act at all, which isn't a sort of behavior that requires an actor... Am I wrong?

Also, >>4830168
>Hovind
Obvious troll is obvious. I tried to watch one of his videos and got about five minutes in before I had to quit. No one who has ever created the kind of garbage this guy has on YouTube deserves to be taken even a little bit seriously ever again.

1. Yes, though bible-humpers will fallaciously think that carbon and not uranium or other long half-life isotopes is used to date very old things.
2. Reputable sources will say Homo sapiens has existed for between 80 and 200 thousand years, depending on the source.
3. 4.7 billion years old.
4. It best fits current mathematical and physical models of the universe. Not saying its perfect, but it fits what we know the best.
5. Asking what was before the Big Bang is like asking what was before time. The question doesn't make sense.
6. Irrelevant. Also, this assumes there was a "creator", where this assumption is not considered reasonable by any evidence.

If you dig a little deeper, you could find a better answer to 5 and 6 (see: imaginary time), but these answers will fulfill most purposes.

>-Is radiocarbon dating accurate?

For the most part.

>-How old is mankind?

Define "mankind". Homo sapiens sapiens is about 200,000 years old. Civilization is about 7000 years old.

>-How old is the earth?

Depending on how you define "the earth", 5 billion years is in the right ballpark.

>-Why is the big bang theory heavily considered?

Cosmic microwave background radiation analyzed by WMAP

>-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?

Null question, "before the Big Bang" is meaningless. The Big Bang started with a singularity, which is not nothing.

>-If yes, who created nothing?

Nothing cannot be created by anything, or created at all, as it would therefore be something.

-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?

As one Symphony of Science songs says:
Anything that happened before the big bang
Could not affect what happened after

>>4830222
I am not so sure about that; not because of the "Could not affect what happened after", but because their was nothing that could be claimed to be a time "before" the big bang.

>>4830224
I just quoted song.
Symphony of Science - 'The Big Beginning' (ft. Hawking, Sagan, Dawkins, Shears, Tyson)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HBkZPyfpdE&feature=BFa&list=PLFC4EE4355ADEBDB1

I don't quite understand the position that discounts any interest in events or their lack thereof before the big bang.
Clearly an event happened, and events have causes.

>>4830245
Time, as we know it, did not exist until after the big bang.
Therefore, it is fruitless to ask what happened "before" the big bang, just as it is fruitless to ask what is at the edge of the flat earths surface.

>>4830203
>5. Asking what was before the Big Bang is like asking what was before time. The question doesn't make sense.

This. Time does not stretch infinitely backward, it stretches backward to the Big Bang but no further. You might as well ask about the value of a positive integer smaller than 1.

>>4830245

>Clearly an event happened, and events have causes.

Not when the event is "time starts". You can't have a time before time.

What is north of the north pole?
The big bang is at the beginning of time, "before" is completely meaningless because "before" does not exist. It starts there.

>>4830260
So causality holds only when moving forward in time, and since the Big Bang has no "before" it is not subject to causality?

>>4830261
yerp

>>4830260
I am not talking about time. I am talking about the concept of before.
When an event happens, there is a before that event, and then there is an after that event. That is an immutable law that does not depend on the passing of time in the way that we conceive of it.

>>4830264
But time, as
>>4830258
says, does not infinitely stretch backward. I am not sure what you are basing this assumption on.

>>4830264

Except "before" is inherently relevant to a timeline.

1 - No, its not a stopwatch, merely a guide upon which informed guesses can be made based on correlating observations, such as geology.
2 - Depends on the definition of mankinds beginning, could be around 60,000 years if based on fossil records of homo-erectus, could be a few billion years if you want to trace the genetic lines to origin.
3 - The earth is around 4.5 billion years old based on comparisons between earth geology and steller rocks
4 - BB theory is based on the current expansion of the universe and lingering background microwave radiation which can be heard with a radio or seen with an old tv, it simply makes sense.
5 - Unknown, predicitions in this field are purely speculative due to a total lack of any observable evidence
6 - Nobody, you cannot anthropomorphise a mystical creator based on projections of your own paranoia and inferiority simply because you do not have another answer

>-If yes, who created nothing?
>who created nothing?
>created nothing?

>>4830266
In a historical sense, yes, but the concept of before doesn't cover the same time as world time.
The same way if you draw a line starting at one point, it remains that there is something before that starting point.
Before is a thing that by definition comes with an event.
I'm not making a religious claim, by the way, but underlining the problem in all empiricism, which is the munchhausen trilemma.

>>4830283

Using your model, drawing the line at the beginning of the universe would only allow you to draw a line on a point, nothing outside of it. In common life, we're used to having extra space and time to work with. At that extreme end of time, our workspace is severely constrained.

Of course, if you insist that there is some place to draw the line, you can plot the universe in imaginary time. Just be sure you know what that implies before you jump to any conclusions.

>-Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
Yes, i dunno how many significant digits though
>-How old is mankind?
define mankind

>-How old is the earth?
like 4.5 billion years

>-Why is the big bang theory heavily considered?
heavily considered what?

-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
No one knows
since it's before existence, we can't say anything about it
even "nothing" would be undefined

-If yes, who created nothing?
see above

>-Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
It is accurate under known circumstances and has been calibrated by dating things of known ages like trees or relics of known creation date. It can't date things so old there is no more carbon (there are other radiometric dating techniques for those) and has trouble with things that have spent a lot of time underwater or deep underground because this effects carbon's radioactive decay rate.

>-How old is mankind?
This is sort of like asking how old is the bicycle. Were those crazy french dandyhorses with two wheels but no gears and peddles bicycles? or were panyfarthings with peddles but no chains and gears the first bicycles? You've got to pick some arbitrary point where an ancestor ape is enough like humans to be called a human. It looks like around 50,000 years ago stone tools made big improvements in a relatively short period of time, so I'll go with that date why not.

>-How old is the earth?
Well it cooled enough to have a solid surface around 4.1 billion years ago, and a billion years before that it was finishing clumping together from loose matter orbiting our star.

>>4830310
>-Why is the big bang theory heavily considered?
The Big Bang theory isn't what most people think it is. It's a model explaining how the universe developed after coming into existence not a model of how the universe came into existence. It is considered to be an accurate model because all of our observations of the universe thus far agree with it.

>-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
(unknown), but this question could be like asking if purple pancakes increase love mannequins; a set of words that don't really make a sensical question because time itself did not exist before the universe.

>-If yes, who created nothing?
By using the word "who" you are anthropomorphizing, assuming something like a person is responsible. We don't know how the universe formed, but we do know how stars and continents form, and its the product of physical laws, not thinking planning entities.

>Religious Studies professor
What kind of faggot tier university gives its engineers religious studies in the program?

>>4830314
You've usually got to take two or three liberal arts electives and its up to you to pick them.

>>4830110
>-Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
We have to assume the physical properties of the universe have remained constant for the last few billion years. There is no evidence that they have changed.
>-How old is mankind?
Roughly 50,000-100,000 years I think
>-How old is the earth?
3.5 gigayears
>-Why is the big bang theory heavily considered?
There's evidence for it
>-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
That is not a requirement of the theory
>-If yes, who created nothing?
Can God come from nothing? If yes, who created nothing?

>>4830110
This set of questions is frequently thrown out by theists when debating atheists; usually very quickly at the start. There's some debate shenanigans going on you should be aware of. The theist is setting a trap, making his opponent feel he needs to answer all the questions in a detailed and concise manner. If the athiest falls for it he'll waste all his turns to speak before even getting to why "who created the universe from nothing" is a loaded question.

>>4830328
Meh. Just answer it like:
>-Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
More or less yes. Note that there are other radioactive dating methods based on other assumptions.

>-How old is mankind?
Dunno. Check wikipedia.

>-How old is the earth?
About 4.5 billion years or something. Again, check wikipedia.

>-Why is the big bang theory heavily considered?
The evidence for it, including expansion (derived from type Ia supernova and red shifting light spectra), and the cosmic microwave background radiation aka the last scattering surface.

>-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
Dunno.

>-If yes, who created nothing?
n/a, see above.

--

There, not that hard.

Christian here. No, not one of those whack jobs. They give Christians a bad name, make us all look like morons, and shit up the planet with their mental disease.

I don't like carbon dating but not because it makes assumptions about the rate of carbon's creation and decay but because as you go back in time, say, around 20,000 to 30,000 years it's accuracy becomes sufficiently lowered.

A much much better method of dating is tree ring and lake sediment dating. This is pretty much unassailable evidence that the Earth is far older than 6,000 years. Ask your dumbass professor to explain that shit to you and tell him another Christian told you to.

>>4830332
Except when you give answers like this your opponent can easily make it look like you're using science books or wikipedia the way he uses the bible. I think the best response is to explain to the audience the trick your opponent is trying to pull; that the age of Earth or mankind has nothing to do with the existence of god but you'll be happy to give detailed answers in the bar later, then hammer your opponent with your own questions instead of playing into his bullshit.

>>4830341
If he ever refers to Bible, ask him
"If I wrote a book similar to Bible right now, what would make it any less legitimate than Bible?"

>>4830341
I would respond with: The difference between your Bible and my citations is that we can go over there and talk to the guy who wrote that article, and repeat his experiments. No one's seen your Jesus guy, or the authors, in a couple thousand years.

Now, let's take this one step at a time. I propose that we charter a ship to the pacific ocean. There, we will see a large tectonic plate fault which slows expands. We measure its rate of expansion in like millimeters per year. We can look at the spreading sea floor and date it using several radiometric dating techniques. We can note that the age of the rocks agrees precisely with the distance from the spreading fault. Moreover, when we look at the magnetic field signatures, we see that there are bands of stripes on the ocean floor from the magnetic pole reversals, again wholly consistent with the purported age. Further note that if the floor was as "young" as you want it, then several pole reversals would have happened in recorded history, and yet it's not it's not there in the records.

Then, realize that there's a bazillion such evidences, all comparably compelling, that you're full of shit. I direct you to:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_against_a_recent_creation

>>4830341
Although, honestly, if I was in a rush, I would probably just show this picture. It's the best argument I have for those with a (semi?) open mind.

>>4830340
>Christian using arguments that falsify the book of genesis and therefore his entire religion

I think you just want to be a contrarian christian.

>>4830345
They usually respond with some variation of these:

Appeal to tradition/antiquity.
> That book you wrote hasn't been used to guide billions of humans for thousands of years.

Circular reasoning and appeal to emotion.
> The bible is the word of god because it says it's the word of god and I can feel in my heart this is true.

Apologetics:
> Look this passage about the antichrists totally predicted the rise of NAZI Germany, and this other one about how a seed can move mountains totally predicted atomic power. Bible's magic and stuff.

>>4830358
>Bible prophesies in modern day
>not joking
To anyone that stupid, I have no time for them - except maybe to laugh. I might quip about asking if they have a handy quatrain format to look more like Nostradamus. Maybe mention something about aliens and Pyramid alien spaceship landing pads for good measure.

Answer the questions like this:

>Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
Accuracy can only be measured statistically, measurements made on the ambiant isotope ratios and half life of carbon are consistant with radiocarbon dating over the past 26 000 years within 200 years 95 times out of 100.

There are religious groups with whose ideology the ability to date objects this far in the past contradicts, many of these groups engage in a constant struggle to discredit radiocarbon dating, often without fully understanding the statistical methods which support it.

etc.

>>4830358
If anyone responds with any of these, just tell them straight away that they are not even worth to argue with and they probably never will.
This is not about theism anymore, this is about ignorancy and generally being stupid.

Or "Same for Qu'ran, why do you dismiss Qu'ran again"?

>>4830356
Hey, don't be a fuckwit for the sake of it. Many christians don't think the bible is literal truth, and you know this too.
Not that anon, or even religious.

>>4830373

The entire point of accepting Jeezus as your lord and savior is to do away with the original sin from Eve eating from the tree of knowledge.

If Eve never existed, then Jeezus is kind of pointless.

>>4830404
>missing the point.
A lot of Christians take Eve and the tree to be metaphors. They did not exist but are some analogy for something that did which is what Jesus has got to forgive you for.

>>4830417

>A lot of Christians

Oh please. Don't give me that. That is simply not true. Most Christians take the bible literally. Not only that, a lot of Christians hate gays because the bible tells them to, most just keep it hush hush. That is from my experience anyways. I used to think the majority of Christians are so-called moderatists. However, I started tutoring an online science-religion course at my uni, and I found out that most hold what are considered "extreme" views. It is a 13 weeks course, and in the first couple of weeks, they all seemed moderate, but they start expressing progressively more extreme views as the weeks go by. I found it quite shocking initially, but am used to it now.

>>4830525
anecdotal evidence, get the fuck out.

>>4830525
"Religious people who sign up for a science-religion course" is not a very random sample.

>>4830536
Well, yea, it is anecdotal. I know it's true though, so I know most theists are just moderate or rational on the surface because of social norms. There are also really intelligent ones who can out-debate most atheists, but there are usually less than 3 of those each semester.

Again, this is anecdotal. I'm just telling you my experience. You can dismiss it because you don't like what I have to say, but it's not against the rules, so I'm not going to fuck off.

>>4830541

True. May well be some self-selection bias going on there.

＞-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?

They seriously ask this?

>>4830417


Following a book of metaphors IS FUCKING RETARDED.

Truth:

>It wasn't written to be a book of metaphors

>A "Adam" and "Eve" did not populate the world

>No original sin

>Nothing to be saved from

>Jesus died for lulz

>You worship a dime a dozen "prophet"

/end rant


I hate religion.

-Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
Kind of
-How old is mankind?
About 50,000 years old, if we are discussing modern humans
-How old is the earth?
Around (give or take a few million) 4.5 billion years.
-Why is the big bang theory heavily considered?
It's one of the best theories we have at the moment. It is yet to have as many holes poked in it as, for instance, Magic.
-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
We don't know
-If yes, who created nothing?
Who is "who"?

I'll just leave this here. Christians - atheists 667-0

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm

sage
Not science related

>>4830313

>The Big Bang theory isn't what most people think it is. It's a model explaining how the universe developed after coming into existence not a model of how the universe came into existence. It is considered to be an accurate model because all of our observations of the universe thus far agree with it.

This. And asking what came before it is like asking a Neanderthal how an iPhone works. And, if the theory holds that the Universe is ever expanding, we'll never get a chance to find out.

The bible is written by man, which is fallible, and the meaning of many books of the bible have changed constantly based on the opinions of the people translating them. If theoretically it was god's word, it no longer is any more due to the extensive dilution of the original passages. In addition to this, prior to the actual publication of the bible. It was read in latin, by the church itself, meaning it was being interpretted by humans, to people who could not objectively argue it.

So even if theoretically god DID exist, his message is so poluted by fallible man, it has lost all meaning. In which case, if you consider yourself a true christian. The most objective thing to do is lead as good a life as possible. Follow the moral lessons of the Bible, and cut out the fat, such as indoctrination and personal opinion.

>>4830666

Some might argue that this might "go against god's will" but one of the biggest messages in the Bible is that god created man in order to have free will. And it makes no sense to pass down rules to follow from on high. But more rather instill hope and belief and happiness into his children. Not to make them murder other children, or to worship you, that is not free will, and therefor it's antithesis to the word of God.

I do not believe in prayer or mandatory services, but I believe a church has a role to play as a social gathering free of bad influences such as bullies or criminal activities. When ofcourse such holy men are not raping our children. If I ran my own christian denomination, even though I myself am non-theistic. It would be about the message of hope and being good to your fellow man. The only thing that is actually good about the Bible.

>a Religion vs Science homework.

"I am an engineer so I am a faggot and I know nothing about higher-level physics and evolution."

you make me ashamed to call myself an engineer.

that's like going to mexico and calling yourself a stupid american so that they help you out

youre fucking pathetic

>-Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
Accurate to 20,000 years, at which point other forms of radioactive dating are more accurate

-How old is mankind?
Approximately 60,000 years

-How old is the earth?
Approximately 4.5-4.9 billion years
-Why is the big bang theory heavily considered?
Expansion, observable through red shift and microwave phenomena

-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
No human can be certain with the current information

-If yes, who created nothing?
How do you create nothing?

>>-If yes, who created nothing?
>>who created nothing?
>>CREATED nothing
>>WHO

what? the? fuck?

Every other question on there is justifiable from an unbiased point of view.
But your professor has fucking loaded that last question full of his own beliefs.

WHO created nothing?
you have got to be fucking kidding me... How do you even answer that? Seriously, ask him what are all the possible answers to this question.
Is it even possible to answer this question seriously with anything but "god"?
The question is forcing you to name a being.. It is OBVIOUS that he wants you to put "god"... who else could you possibly put? YOU? the professor? Donald Duck?

So if you want to treat it seriously you only have two options, either put down "god" like he wants you to, or refuse to answer the question.


Not only that but
>>created nothing
That is another assumption being implied by the question. Nothing is not a THING which can be created.

If that professor is trying to troll you I would say he is a master of the highest caliber

>>4830110
I'll give buddhist version and you can label it as buddhist version if you want

-Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
Most accurate
-How old is mankind?
We're an evolutionary species, mankind as a homo genus is 2.3 million years old. Homosapiens(modern) is about 50.000 years old
-How old is the earth?
4.5 billion years old
-Why is the big bang theory heavily considered?
Because it is how we explain the expanding universe
-Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
Before big bang there was singularity, before singularity is is an unknown cause
-If yes, who created nothing?
Nothing is a human conception that relates to another conception called "something"/"everything".

Also if no, the causes are unknown, but it surely isnt an eternal god.

lelelelele

this thread is not sci related
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>>4830110
Why are you even in a religious studies class as an engineer?

>>4831506
Why not? I took sociology and philosophy as options to up my GPA a bit. Besides it's nice to get out of the competitive environment and just learn because it's neat instead of because you're graded on a curve and there are Asians in the class.

>>4830639
>(1) Eric Clapton is God.
>(2) Therefore, God exists.

Fuck, can't really argue with that one.

The thing I don't understand is why don't theoretical physicists use the logical inverse of the big bang. Namely a fixed boundary that has internal objects shrink at a uniform rate. There is no possible metric or medium for the universe to expand into, but internal re-scaling works perfectly fine. I find a lot of atheists have an ultimately confused worldview because they frame universal origins on expansion, instead of contraction.

>Is radiocarbon dating accurate?
Yes to a specific degree.
>How old is mankind?
Define mankind.
>How old is the Earth?
Several billion based on known scientific consensus.
>Why is the BBT heavily considered?
Because there is evidence to support it, both direct and through inference.
>Before the Big Bang, was there nothing?
What "before"?
>If yes, who created nothing?
Created nothing? Dafuq?