Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Those who are saying that God doesn't exist are not the ones making a claim. Belief in God is not natural; You aren't born believing in a God. It's something that is taught and learned.
Those who claim the existence of a God are the ones making the positive claim, therefore, it is them who own the obligation to prove it.
WRONG!
The poster I responded to made the claim. It is up to HIM to PROVE his claim.
The poster I responded to made the claim. It is up to HIM to PROVE his claim.
Generally speaking, it is impossible to prove something does not exist unless there are very specific constraints on the existence criteria.
For instance I can prove there is no dragon inside a box in my car, with "inside a box in my car" being the constraints. I can't prove that there are no dragons in existence, anywhere in the universe. What I can prove is that thus far we have no valid evidence indicating that creatures matching the descriptions of dragons exist.
Applying this to God(s):
I cant PROVE that somewhere inside or outside the universe something matching the description of the God(s) of some random yahoo's religion does not exist. What I can say is that I have never been presented with any convincing evidence that some random yahoo's God(s) exist.
Generally speaking the lack of objective constraints put on things like God(s) makes them unfalsifiable. The only things that can be proven related to religious God(s) are usually specific attributes or actions of said God(s). For instance, we know because of copious amounts of evidence there was no global flood and the logistics described in the narrative are impossible, so we can disprove the literal interpretation of the Noah story. In that instance we have a specific context to look at and can make a factual determination.
Of course all this goes out the window if someone wants to say that God(s) made it look that way on purpose as a faith test, disposing of the constraints (the constraints this time being rational cause and effect holds true) and making the story unfalsifiable again - which is exactly the zone where most religions want their mythos to stay, because they have a long long history of looking foolish when they try to take their religion and use it to make assumptions about reality.
Last edited by zzzSnorlax; 01-06-2017 at 11:07 AM..
For decades, we’ve been pumping billions of tons of harmful greenhouse gases into the air, and for decades plants have been obligingly sucking it back out again. In fact, a good 45% of the carbon dioxide we emit is absorbed back into the biosphere by the world's vegetation and oceans.
...
Between 2002 and 2014, plants appeared to have upped their game, pulling more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than in previous decades.
... The experts were puzzled. Human activity was still polluting the air, but the amount of man-made carbon that lingered there appeared to be in decline. “That portion that stays in the atmosphere – that’s called the airborne fraction," said Trevor Keenan, co-author of the report, "and that has reduced by about 20% over the last 15 years.”
Experts can't figure it out.
Later in the article, they claim people will be polluting faster, and plants will not be able to keep up. How do they know? Because they obviously do not have a clue about what the vegetation is doing now.
And of course, they mention that "climate change" is still happening... They have no clue.
The fact that people need to anthropomorphize plants in order to understand the basics of ecosystems is a sad indictment of our country's science curricula.
The Ph of the ocean averages around 8.3 ish. There isn't enough acid product to pour into the ocean if we tried to make it acidic. All we can do, if we work very hard for millions of years is maybe slightly reduce the alkalinity of the oceans by less than a few fractions of a Ph.
You aren't acidifying an alkaline when adding acid unless it becomes acid or can become acid based on what you are adding, you can only make oceans less alkaline. Apparently NASA and friends launched a satellite to measure ocean acid levels - New Satellite Maps Reveal Global Ocean Alkalinity | Geography, Geophysics | Sci-News.com any scientist will tell you the ocean is alkaline, measuring the acidic quality of the ocean will always be meaningless, it isn't and never can be an acid.
The use of acid is to scare people, most don't know what a base or alkaline means.
Estimate , quantitatively (THIS MEANS NUMBERS AND MATH), how much CO2 it'd take for the ocean to acidify if atmospheric CO2 gas can produce carbonic acid (like it does in your blood, which if not extremely fine tuned and controlled is incredibly toxic to a living mammal). Don't try to use non-scientific arguments with words. Use fundamental physical chemistry principles, starting with the definition of the acid dissociation constant and pKa. I'll wait for your answer to see whether or not your claim of 'there isn't enough acid product to pour into the ocean if we tried to make it acidic' is accurate. FYI, nobody has to pour anything into an ocean, it can absorb gasses as well. Also, clearly define, using the Lewis definition, what base or alkaline means, just so we are all clear hear that even YOU at least know chemistry 101.
No, the biological "purpose" of photosynthesis is strictly to synthesize sugars to be used for energy by the same photosynthetic organism. In other words, it's to convert light energy to chemical energy. Oxygen is a waste product. Photosynthetic organisms don't care (and are unable to care) about/what happens to the oxygen they produce. Aerobic organisms (ones that use diatomic oxygen to produce energy) were able to develop since photosynthetic organisms increased the oxygen concentration of the atmosphere. The biological reason they developed was because aerobic biochemical pathways are generally more efficient than anaerobic biochemical pathways.
Meanwhile, stars (that includes the Sun) don't exist to beam light to the chloroplasts of plants on Earth. The sun doesn't care (and is unable to care) about what happens to the energy it generates. And once the star dies, so will life that remains on the planet.
You can give all kinds of theories about the whys of oxygen production. At the basic level, plants produce oxygen, and humans require oxygen to survive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CT_Native
You're getting closer to some truths. The Earth's orientation relative to our solar system's star allowed for much of the planet to have liquid water at its surface for much of its history (but not all of it). Organisms (alive and/or extinct) that we study today were able to develop thanks to the organic (chemically speaking) soup that was able to come together thanks to water existing in a liquid state on the planet.
These pieces (stars, planets, water molecules, organisms) of the cosmos don't exist intrinsically to serve the purpose of anything. That doesn't mean that things in the universe aren't connected to each other (in fact, everything in the cosmos is connected, in some respect).
Complex organisms are not created from soup. It doesn't happen now. It's never happened. No one has seen it happen first hand. Humans, animals - created and designed in their own kind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CT_Native
So, obviously, humans weren't "created" -- but let me speak on your the bolded text. It can so easily be falsifiable if you think about it for a few seconds. What happens if, tomorrow, a meteor large enough slams into the Earth and causes a cataclysm? It happened before, where 75% of life on Earth went extinct because of it. You claim there is a solution or something already "put in place" for the humans species to utilize to prevent its extinction by this meteor that will strike tomorrow. So what is it? And it's apparently something that humans 50 years ago, 500 years ago or 5,000 years ago could have utilized.
In the Bible, God sent a cataclysm of his own in flooding the earth except for 8 people. When they exited the ark, they were able to survive. God ensured all systems were inplace. The sun was there, the water obviously was there, plant life was there (dove brought back an olive leaf).
Not sure how you can be 75% extinct... either you are or you aren't. Whatever the case may be, we need certain things to survive - oxygen, food, water, sunlight. God put these things in place for us. Whenever God wants us to be extinct from the earth (since our spirits are eternal), He will remove one or all of those things.
Well done. Revenue neutral carbon taxes would be the best approach. It would certainly make sense to be cautious.
However we do need to make sure advances are made. LEDs have made great strides as has solar. And again a slighter higher CO2 level might actually allow for a higher absorption rate, meaning we may reach equilibrium easier with bio-fuels. It would also be nice to revisit nuclear power without the bomb like designs, pebble bed for example.
In the Bible, God sent a cataclysm of his own in flooding the earth except for 8 people. When they exited the ark, they were able to survive. God ensured all systems were inplace. The sun was there, the water obviously was there, plant life was there (dove brought back an olive leaf).
As mentioned earlier, the above myth is false unless you abandon the assumed constraints of the basic principles of cause and effect that provide the foundation of human logic. This is one that can be proven, the only way around it is to invoke "magical thinking" and once you do that you aren't really proving anything except that you will say that the grass is blue and the sky is green if it coincides with or supports your pre-existing biases.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zzzSnorlax
Of course all this goes out the window if someone wants to say that God(s) made it look that way on purpose as a faith test, disposing of the constraints (the constraints this time being rational cause and effect holds true) and making the story unfalsifiable again - which is exactly the zone where most religions want their mythos to stay, because they have a long long history of looking foolish when they try to take their religion and use it to make assumptions about reality.
Last edited by zzzSnorlax; 01-06-2017 at 11:24 AM..
The fact that people need to anthropomorphize plants in order to understand the basics of ecosystems is a sad indictment of our country's science curricula.
I understand the need for you to put me down, but the fact is the way people learn is to make the unfamiliar, familiar, by using terms that they know. So - yes, often human terminology, or anthropomorphisms are used to describe things.
The Ph of the ocean averages around 8.3 ish. There isn't enough acid product to pour into the ocean if we tried to make it acidic. All we can do, if we work very hard for millions of years is maybe slightly reduce the alkalinity of the oceans by less than a few fractions of a Ph.
You aren't acidifying an alkaline when adding acid unless it becomes acid or can become acid based on what you are adding, you can only make oceans less alkaline. Apparently NASA and friends launched a satellite to measure ocean acid levels - New Satellite Maps Reveal Global Ocean Alkalinity | Geography, Geophysics | Sci-News.com any scientist will tell you the ocean is alkaline, measuring the acidic quality of the ocean will always be meaningless, it isn't and never can be an acid.
The use of acid is to scare people, most don't know what a base or alkaline means.
Tell them they are drinking carbonic acid when they have a Coke (TM).
Anyway the issue is in the mineral composition of coral and sea shells etc which will weaken. Corral reefs tend to be an important building block on the ocean flora.
Climate change isn't a good argument for creationism, it doesn't necessarily matter who or what created the universe, you may have and believe in your faith but your fate can be guided by another hand and God cannot or will not change it. We, as an intelligent species may not have the ultimate understanding of our sciences that God has, but if He created the sciences, then He will allow them to determine our fate. Physics and mechanics are at play, the balance of nature and our environment has existed for millions of years, the earth has experienced transitions throughout it's history from ice ages to warming. The problem with your theory that plants can balance the carbon surplus is the interference by man. For millions of years the oceans and plants have been able to sequester carbon dioxide through natural evolution, but today, and over the past few hundred years, man has simultaneously released sequestered CO2 (oil, coal, wood) and at the same time defoliated large swaths of land, especially in the tropics where it is most efficient. At the same time, we're probably going through a warming cycle that began tens of thousands of years ago. Rather than wait and pray for God to save us, what if He created us with the wisdom of a parent? What if part of His plan was to give us the intelligence to learn to save ourselves?
Don't know how you arrived at your first sentence...
God created the sciences, He can also override the sciences at His discretion.
I don't think I ever claimed plants balance the carbon surplus. The study I mentioned claims that plants/oceans are absorbing double the CO2 in the past 50 years. And the study mentions, as I replied to another poster, that the researchers will be observing how the plants/oceans will handle increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. But for 12 years, the rate of growth of CO2 in the atmosphere has went down.
Which is why I made the title of the thread as I did.
We have experts that can't predict the weather a week ahead of time... why do you assume we will be going through a warming cycle for years and years?
And look - I am not against anything that will improve the atmosphere that works and that doesn't not infringe upon rights, responsibilities, and well-being of human beings. But I don't want to make policy or respond to false information either.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
They have no clue.
