There’s nothing going on of any interest to us, so let’s have another intellectual free fire zone.
To perk you up, we’ve provided a stimulating video by the brilliant and articulate leader of David Rives Ministries. This one is titled Why Young Earth? It runs less than two minutes, but the viewing may be a bit jerky — just be patient and it’ll resume again.
As with all our free-fire zones, we’re open for the discussion of pretty much anything — science, politics, economics, whatever — as long as it’s tasteful and interesting. Banter, babble, bicker, bluster, blubber, blather, blab, blurt, burble, boast — say what you will. But avoid flame-wars and beware of the profanity filters.
We now throw open the comments to you, dear reader. Have at it.
Copyright © 2012. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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Truly, David Rives is out to shuck a few buck off the Believers. I note that about half of the “suggestions” displayed (by YouTube) after the video is over are for horoscopes or astrologers. That tells us something about the sort of people Rivas is targeting.
Here’s a good rebuttal to David Rivas. Only 1:10s too,
My first thought is that David Rives is a moron. Which, of course, he is.
But, he’s also a huckster who knows how to pick the pockets of the same crowd that Ken Ham works: the knuckle dragging, dimwitted god bothering fools who daily shuffle thru the Creation “Museum” so they can mainline stupidity while filling the pockets of crass carnival barkers pushing iron and bronze age mythology on them. Of course, most of those benighted souls probably have never heard the terms “iron age” or “bronze age”.
They just know they love baby Jeebus and their Whollly Babble.
*Shrugs*
Who ya gonna believe? David Rives or your own lying eyes?
There’s one thing, though. After he’s done bloviating, there’s an ad for his DVD, filled with “easy-to-understand” language. I’ll bet that’s right. And that’s why we (those who stand for science and not mythology) have such a tough time. It’s a lot more difficult to understand evolution and how it works than to say, “Goddidit!” That makes our job of furthering the values of the Enlightenment that much more difficult. Further, when you’re rational, it’s really hard to know where irrationality will come from next. Many is the time I’ve heard some particular aspect of creationism / ID and thought, “Where the #**! did THAT come from?” So we’re always playing catch up. We’re always having to answer the stupidity, ignorance and outright deception (Here’s looking at you, David Rives!) of those who would take us back a couple of hundred years.
I was trawling through the interwebs this morning reading about Rick Santorum and wondering what happened to the GOP, when I came on this little antidote to dark thoughts:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/25/my-take-what-i-learned-from-my-46-day-beer-only-fast/?hpt=hp_c1
Now that’s something! Living on beer for Lent, and the guy lost weight. I’m pretty sure I could do the first with very little effort, but figuring out how to get the second one going seems to be the trick. Plus I’ll take beer over politics any day…
My usual question whenever someone argues for a young earth: Did they have the guts to challenge the DI as well as “Darwinists”? And if so how did the DI evade the challenge? If they didn’t bother to challenge the DI, or those OEC groups who would refute their challenge, then it is reasonable to assume that they at best lack confidence that the evidence supports a young earth. But feel free to suspect that their reasons for giving those other pseudoscience-peddlers a free pass reflect private awareness that they are all wrong.
Genesis 1:14-16 (which he quotes) says that the Sun, Moon and stars were put in the heavens on day 4 in order to divide day from night and to mark the passage of time. How, then, were there days 1, 2 and 3?
What strikes me about David Rives is how little he says. He claims to tell us how important the young earth belief is, but really doesn’t give any reasons other than it’s non-biblical to think otherwise. Huh? The astrologers that appear on the you-tube selections are probably more coherent. (I didn’t watch them)
Rives makes videos that are the intellectual equivalent of bumper stickers.
@Frank – very interesting article at your link.
I’ll say one thing for Rives, he’s got a nice telescope. It’s a 16″ Meade. I doubt if I’ll ever have enough to buy one of those, but I do have the LX200 GPS 14″. On his site he shows photos from it including one of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Do you think he knows that Andromeda is about 2.3 million light years from our galaxy?
Ian asks: “Do you think he knows that Andromeda is about 2.3 million light years from our galaxy?”
How could it be? The limit is 6,000 light years.
Curmudgeon (tongue firmly in cheek): “How could it be? The limit is 6,000 light years.”
As Rives knows, many (most?) evolution-deniers disagree. And most likely he does too, but will never admit it.
Waldteufel: “They just know they love baby Jeebus and their Whollly Babble.”
Which is just what the (probably-not-a-moron-but-definitely-a-huckster) wants you to say.
Rives has a video on parallax, in which he describes (fairly) the process of determining distance to nearby stars, but then states that scientists can only guess at the real distances to stars and galaxies. The implication is, of course, that it could be any distance. He doesn’t mention cephieds, supernovae, red-shift or any means of judging distance beyond the nearby stars.
Ed: “He doesn’t mention cephieds, supernovae, red-shift or any means of judging distance beyond the nearby stars.”
Which strongly suggests he’s a modern-day Elmer Gantry huckster. We have known about Cephied variables being reliable standard-candles since the 1800s — they were used by Edwin Hubble in the early 1900s to determine that the Andromeda Galaxy was at least a million light years distant (more precise measurements now place it ~2.2 mly away).
Rives has to know this, and he has to know that astronomers aren’t guessing.
OK, my head hurts now. Of course, that might have something to do with a yelling 3rd grader, but I’m blaming Rives.
So Goddidit because an old earth can’t explain the seven day week? I wonder why I hadn’t thought of that?
Ok, so I see the word “intellectual” in the title to SC’s article (“Intellectual Free-Fire Zone #12″)- then I see David Rives’ ernest young Christian face. My brain nearly disconnects, but I persevere. I watch, hoping the video won’t freeze, as SC suggests it might do. It might as well have, for all the intellect displayed in it. He says exactly nothing. Then I click on Tomato Addict’s link, and see, to my joy, Monty Python! Then- that video freezes, my computer locks up, and I have to reboot. Could Rives be on to something, as opposed to just on something?
Then, this. I read on Yahoo an article where Rick Santorum says: “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”
I’d like to know where exactly Santorum thinks an only-partial line can be drawn. It seems to me that the concept must be for an absolute separation, by its nature, or not at all. He goes on to misconstrue JFK’s famous 1960 speech about this issue like this: “To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? What makes me throw up is someone who is now trying to tell people that you will do what the government says.” Of course, JFK said nothing of the kind- he only said he would not use his personal religious faith as a basis for making public policy decisions that would affect people who didn’t necessarily share that faith. That seems perfectly in line with Constitutional intent to me, and in no way implies that “people of faith” have no role in politics- only their use of faith to justify policy. Of course, Santorum strikes me as a cafeteria -Constitutionalist as well as -christian.
As far as astronomers just guessing the distances to the stars and galaxies, in particular those greater than 10,000 light years or so.
There are several methods of measuring distances. These measurements agree with one another, and there are predictions of what the results of the measurements will be which are regularly confirmed. What is the probability that these predictions will be confirmed, for example, when more precise measurements of parallaxes are made?
When we see events happening in the skies which have the appearance of occurring at great distances, and thus in the distant past, does this mean that the intelligent designer(s) designed the universe to have this false appearance? See, for example, the Anthropic Principle which tells us that if the universe were designed otherwise, then we couldn’t exist.
On the other hand, if the only reason that we have for thinking that the universe is “young” is a particular reading of the Bible, what reason do we have for thinking that we are reading the Bible correctly? If we can be fooled by our reasoning about the stars, can’t we also be mistaken in our reasoning about the Bible?
TomS asks: “If we can be fooled by our reasoning about the stars, can’t we also be mistaken in our reasoning about the Bible?”
Duh, no! The bible is true in every word, because it’s the word of god, and we know this because it says so in the bible. See, no reasoning required- it’s absolutely fool-proof, and impossible to argue with.
Here’s a copy of what I just posted in the comments responses to that video (i.e., there at YouTube):
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You start off with “Many people don’t understand the importance of believing in a literal 6 day creation.” However, truth is greater than some particular religious doctrine. It’s an empirical fact that the universe and the earth have been in existence far, far longer than just 6,000 years or so. (In the case of the universe, we literally witness the distant past in astronomical observation.) Therefore, young earth creationism is a false doctrine, simply because it’s false.
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I just noticed the comments here about parallax, It’s true that in general the limits of parallax is currently out to around 1,600 light years (that was with the Hipparcos satellite back in the late 1980s, which substantially increased the parallax limit at that time). Apparently next year the European Space Agency is supposed to have a satellite called Gaia using latest, greatest technology which will push the parallax limits out to beyond 10,000 light years.
However, there are isolated cases where “reverse parallax” can be used. A well known example is SN1987A. One fortuitous circumstance of that supernova (in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy) was that before it exploded it happened to be encircled by a gas ring (actually 3 gas rings, but here we’re concerned with the central ring). The ring was large enough, even at the distance of the LMC, that the Hubble Space Telescope could resolve the angular displacement. Additionally, the time from the onset of the stellar explosion to when the light energy from the explosion first reached the gas ring was accurately observed. Thus, using the speed of light, the distance from the star to the ring was calculated, and using a basic trigonometric equation (with the angle between the star and the ring, and the distance between the star and the ring) it was calculated that the supernova occurred approximately 168,000 light years from Earth (and thus, about 168,000 years ago, from when we observed).
However, even after pointing this out, which I think is one of the beautiful examples from astronomy that so clearly shows hot utterly bogus young earth creationism is, we do have to acknowledge the fact that when you’re dealing with a young earth creationist whose using argumentation based on the premise that today it’s a credible idea in astronomy that the universe is no bigger than 12,000 light years across, you know you’re dealing with the most scientifically illiterate among the scientifically illiterate. When it comes to the astronomy, Rives obviously has less than no clue what he’s talking about.
Steve Greene — thanks for pointing out the reverse parallax made possible by SN1987A, and how “When it comes to the astronomy, Rives obviously has less than no clue what he’s talking about.”
I think you’re being charitable concerning Rives’s motives. I’d say he knows full well about the astronomy, but is out to fleece the flock.
How about a little more MP as a bookend?
The Galaxy Song: http://youtu.be/44DlSj6bnn4