Some interesting thoughts from Bob in that last post:
http://www.ras.org.uk/html/press/pn97-19.htm
If crimes are truly wrong, then a personal, loving, and just God does exist and you should ask Him for forgiveness for the hurt that you have inflicted upon others.
I would think asking the forgiveness of those you have wronged, apologizing and make appropriate amends to them would be more useful. Of what possible benefit is it to you or an eternal all-powerful being to ask him forgiveness for wrongs you did to others? I know, it shows obedience and submittal. Plus, it makes you feel better without having to actually do anything.
Atheists believe that the universe is less than 20 billion years old. Yet for chance (BA10-6) to develop one simple protein molecule (which is trillions of times less complex than the simplest living organism), if every atom in the known universe interacted a billion times per second with other atoms, the entire universe couldn’t produce that one protein molecule by chance in a trillion years. Mathematics indicates that this would not happen in a trillion years, with the entire universe, every atom in every star in every galaxy, working on that single task.
What's the source on this? It seems a Quixotically pointless probability calculation because the variables are so wild, so whose is it?
Scientists measuring the processing power of people estimate that the human brain can perform around 2,000,000,000,000,000 instructions
Scientists, eh? They're so ignorant they can't even get the age of the universe right, and they overestimate the age of the earth by orders of magnitude. Why on earth would you be so trusting of them today?
Again, it would be nice to have some sources please - that's how we can weigh the reliability of your evidence, Enyart.
See, the figures I found suggest this:
...It is fortunate that we understand the neural assemblies is the retina of the vertebrate eye quite well (structurally and functionally) because it helps to give us a idea of the human brain's capability.
The retina is a nerve tissue in the back of the eyeball which detects lights and sends images to the brain. A human retina has a size of about a centimeter square is half a millimeter thick and is made up of 100 million neurons. Scientists say that the retina sends to the brain, particular patches of images indicating light intensity differences which are transported via the optic nerve, a million-fiber cable which reaches deep into the brain.
Overall, the retina seems to process about ten one-million-point images per second.
Because the 1,500 cubic centimeter human brain is about 100,000 times as large as the retina, by simple calculation, we can estimate the processing power of a average brain to be about 100 million MIPS (Million computer Instructions Per Second ). In case you're wondering how much speed that is, let us give you an idea...
http://library.thinkquest.org/C001501/the_saga/compare.htm
and...
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
A creationist off by orders of magnitude? Imagine!
A benchmark with a Pentium 4 overclocked to 3.45 GHz reveals a Dhrystone score of 10526 MIPS for a single processor. Therefore, about 9500 Pentium 4 processors will approximate the processing power of the human brain.
Tangents aside, when one removes many zeros from Bob's wild miscalculation, things look a lot less intimidating. The other point is that Bob is using unreliable figures (I'm being polite) as his evidence and passing them off as if they were recognized truths.
I can't help but notice he didn't post the estimated MIPS score (not entirely sure how useful MIPS-scoring the brain is anyway - probably no more so than in benchmarks) for a chimp, so it's hard to assess how wild the difference is. Science at work, folks.
I'm surprised Bob's being so slack with his standards of evidence as after all, he has chosen to put himself on public show. It is too soon to conclude that to Bob, science is merely a rhetorical tool for ministry. Perhaps he's just not used to being questioned at Denver Bible Church?
Perhaps such simple calculations, along with math being the most pure science, explains why a higher percentage of mathematicians believe in God, 14.3%, as compared to other scientists (Nature, 1998, vol. 394, p. 313).
Hey look, a source! So we know Bob knows better than to post unsupported assertions. Why then is he doing it? Isn't that almost like lying?
Actually, I'm surprised that the number of theists in Math is so low. How much worse is it then for the natural sciences (you know, theoretical/experimental)? How does this correlate with the heavingly unscientific populace and their beliefs? Never mind, it's not necessarily casual.
Hey! Now I come to think of it, didn't Bob write:
Philip Paracelsus, died 1541, Chemical Medicine
Nicolas Copernicus, 1543, Scientific Revolution
Francis Bacon, 1626, Scientific Method
Johann Kepler, 1630, Physical Astronomy
Galileo Galilei, 1642, Law of falling bodies
William Harvey, 1657, Circulatory System
Blaise Pascal, 1662, Probability and Calculators
Robert Boyle, 1691, Chemistry
Isaac Newton, 1727, Gravitation
Carolus Linnaeus, 1778, Taxonomy
George Cuvier, 1832, Anatomy/Paleontology
John Dalton, 1844, Atomic Theory
For those who object that these brilliant men lived prior to the 1859 publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, consider the following scientific giants all of whom in a time of more open debate, publicly rejected natural origins and Darwinian evolution, and indicated that the evidence supports belief in a supernatural Creator:
Michael Faraday, 1867, Electromagnetism
Gregor Mendel, 1884, Genetics
Louis Pasteur, 1885, Microbiology
James Joule, 1889, Thermodynamics
Lord Kelvin, 1907, Thermodynamics
Joseph Lister, 1912, Modern Surgery
G. W. Carver, 1943, Modern Agriculture
I know, he covered his botox with "in the time of more public debate" and acknowledged that things were certainly different these days. And I will happily grant him that it is possible to be a Christian and an excellent scientist. Christianity does not reclude reason. Fundamental literalist Christianity, unfortunately, does.
It would be tough to be a creationist in science these days, but not necessarily impossible. And it seems to me that if the evidence is so clear and so certain for a 6,000 year old earth then someone somewhere would champion it. There's a whole planet of scientists and it's not like we're living in a time of scientific paucity, is it?
So, from Kepler and Newton to a mere 14% of mathematicians as theists, yet we agree that human knowledge has vastly grown since that time, yes? Surely if Bob were correct, the trend should be the other way around as science confirmed the clockwork creation?
Man, I'm looking forward to the creationist smoking gun that will turn cosmology and evolution on its head. Any idea when that will happen Bob, do you think?
...how did the caterpillars survive this rather unnecessary midlife crisis of turning themselves into sludge?
You know, that's an excellent question. However, I find the appeal to design hardly more satisfying. As you say, it's rather unnecessary. Perhaps you'd care to shed some light on the design requirements. After all, we hear all the time from creationists what a parsimonious and thoughtful designer the speculative creator is what with his reuse of genes As Enyart points out, we're more than 95% similar to our Bonobo buddies. Enyart's grandfather may not have been a monkey, but his genetic structure makes them almost kissing cousins.
So what was the design consideration behind the caterpillar/chrysalis/butterfly blueprint? Was it a joke? Designed by committee? What?
Back in 1995, NASA widely predicted that a soon-to-be-developed Hubble photograph of the tiniest point of night sky would show galaxies in their early stages of formation. At the same time, a Christian TV talk-show host, Bob Enyart, predicted on air in 80 cities that the atheistic NASA astrophysicists were wrong, and that the galaxies photographed would look just like any other group of galaxies. Zakath, who do you think was vindicated, the atheistic NASA engineers in 1995 predicting that a developing Hubble photo would show galaxies forming, or the Christian talk-show host predicting the photo would show typical, not early, galaxies? Hint, see photo below.
I'm interested to know what "the Christian talk-show host" thought early galaxies were going to look like.
The major breakthrough that has unravelled the enigma of galaxy formation is the discovery last year of so-called primeval or proto- galaxies. These are embryo galaxies caught at a very early stage of their life cycle, when they are forming stars in profusion for the first time. This discovery was made by an Anglo-American team of researchers using some of the best and largest telescopes in the world.
They first identified candidate protogalaxies by measuring the colours of faint images using the British William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands. The tell-tale signs are the blue colour of young stars, together with the a missing chunk in the spectrum of their light, absorbed by intervening gas clouds during its long journey from the early universe to terrestrial telescopes. Some of these candidate proto-galaxies were then reobserved with very long exposures at the 10-m Keck Telescope in Hawaii, the largest telescope in the world. The detailed data clearly revealed that these are the long-sought after primeval galaxies. The same technique was subsequently applied to data from the Hubble Deep Field, the longest exposure ever made of a small patch of sky. Many more primeval galaxies were found in this way, covering a range of look-back times.
The Royal Astronomical Society
http://www.ras.org.uk/html/press/pn97-19.htm
Or you might check out an informative article on Space.com, which comes complete with a picture of Abell 2218, the earliest known galaxy cluster.
A sample follows:
Nearer to Earth in space and in time, about 2 billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers see protogalaxies. These are compact objects (though larger than the suspected building blocks) that are forming new stars at a high rate and appear to represent an intermediate stage in galaxy formation.
About 4 billion to 5 billion years after the Big Bang – that is, 8 billion or 9 billion years before now – the first mature galaxies appear. These come in the same varieties astronomers see today in the nearby universe: spiral galaxies, with their classic pinwheel shapes; elliptical galaxies, which look like football- or basketball-shaped swarms of stars; and irregular galaxies, which are disorganized and ragged.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/cosmic_galaxies_020122-1.html
*sigh*
Oh Bob, Bob, Bob, whatever shall we do with you? Why do you have to
lie to us to bolster your case? Or is it that you just don't know?
Either way, I'd advise you to stay away from science in future when you have this argument. It's making you and the foundation to your science arguments look bad. I should listen to Hilston if I were you - you might have a bit more luck trying to swallow your own tail.
