ZOMG, an atheist blogger I've never heard of decided that a malformed question was too hard to answer and converted to Christianity.

This made the news.

There's a reason why this makes the news. It's man bites dog. Serious, religious person becomes an atheist. That happens all the time. Most atheists *ARE* former religious people. That's dog bites man. But, an atheist become Christian that's dog bites man. It's rare and it's rare for a reason. Religion (yours included) typically looks obviously wrong from the outside. So RA's conversion, or Patrick Greene's half conversion, or Flew's descent into dementia, actually gets some coverage because it's a rare enough event to care about, but only because Christianity is wrong enough to make it that rare.

In short, though this seems like a win for Christianity. The fact that it's report worthy is a failure for Christianity. It shows how rare your successes are. It's like that time when the Iraq war had zero US soldier casualties for a month. The fact that that got reported, is actually, viewed in a larger context a bad thing overall.

Why are nigeria scammers upfront with the whole they are Nigerian Scammers thing?

http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/167719/WhyFromNigeria.pdf

The bad spelling, the claiming to be from Nigeria thing, this is suppose to reduce false-positives. The last thing they want are people who are fooled enough by the well done font and professional looking design and the seemingly legit promises to respond initially and then take up their very real time and then balk at the part where you wire money to Nigeria. It turns out if you make it obvious, only the very very stupid will respond, and that's exactly the target demographic.

Wow. I wouldn't have thought of that.

Of suns and designers.

“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.  (Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005)” ― Steven Pinker

I see the sun it's like two inches wide. The earth is all around us and doesn't move. That stupid bright spot spends all day moving. It's obvious why people think the sun moves around the Earth, because it's obvious!

Now, why is it that evolved natural-selected things look so much like the handiwork of a designer? Why is that view the naive view. We can concede it's both the naive view and the wrong answer, but why are humans so inclined to think it's the right answer. What's the two-inch dot vs. panorama of planet reason why we think design is a good explanation for life, even if we scientifically know it's Darwin all the way back?

I'm excessively proud of this...

In reference to my propensity to argue with wrong people for a long time, a comparison was made to Don Quixote.

"I'm quite quixotic like that. I see a what may be a wayward intellectual giant that I can help, so I tilt my sharp wit and pointed remarks at what inevitably turns out to be a grinding experience by something dumb as a rock and powered by hot air."

 You see, it's making the whole attacking giants which turn out to be windmills thing into a parallel statement. It's overly impressive. Especially because I fear it will fall flat. 

Oh My Darling Clementine

Final Stanza

How I missed her, how I missed her,
How I missed my Clementine,
Til I kissed her little sister,
And forgot my Clementine.

How Absurd and Scary (more Java coding).

I wrote a class that scares me. It makes nodes into widgets and calls itself recursively.

import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.Point;
import java.beans.BeanInfo;
import java.beans.PropertyChangeEvent;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collection;
import javax.swing.Action;
import javax.swing.JPopupMenu;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.action.ActionFactory;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.action.PopupMenuProvider;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.layout.LayoutFactory;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.widget.Scene;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.widget.Widget;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.widget.general.IconNodeWidget;
import org.openide.nodes.*;
import org.openide.util.Lookup;
import org.openide.util.lookup.Lookups;

public class NodeWidget extends IconNodeWidget implements PopupMenuProvider, Lookup.Provider, NodeListener {
    Node node;
    boolean vertical;
    public NodeWidget(Scene scene, Node node) {
        this(scene,node,true);
    }
   
    private NodeWidget(Scene scene, Node node, boolean vertical) {
        super(scene);
        this.vertical = vertical;
        this.node = node;
        Image icon = node.getIcon(BeanInfo.ICON_COLOR_32x32);
        if (icon != null) {
            getImageWidget().setImage(icon);  
        }
        getLabelWidget().setLabel(node.getDisplayName());
        if (vertical) {
            this.setLayout(LayoutFactory.createVerticalFlowLayout());
        }
        else {
            this.setLayout(LayoutFactory.createHorizontalFlowLayout());
        }
        if (node.getActions(false) != null) {
            getActions().addAction(ActionFactory.createPopupMenuAction(this));
        }
        refreshChildren();
        node.addNodeListener(this);
    }

    @Override
    public Lookup getLookup() {
        return Lookups.proxy(node);
    }

    @Override
    public JPopupMenu getPopupMenu(Widget widget, Point point) {
        JPopupMenu pop = new JPopupMenu();
        for (Action action : node.getActions(false)) {
            pop.add(action);
        }
        return pop;
    }
   
    private Collection childnodewidgets = new ArrayList<>();
    private void refreshChildren() {
        if (!SwingUtilities.isEventDispatchThread()) {
            SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
                @Override
                public void run() {
                    refreshChildren();
                }
            });
            return;
        }
        for (Widget widget : childnodewidgets) {
            widget.revalidate();
            widget.removeFromParent();
            revalidate();
        }
        childnodewidgets.clear();
        Widget widget;
        if (!node.isLeaf()) {
            Children c = node.getChildren();
            for (Node n : c.getNodes()) {
                widget = new NodeWidget(getScene(), n, !vertical);
                childnodewidgets.add(widget);
                addChild(widget);
                widget.revalidate();
                revalidate();
            }
        }
        getScene().validate();
    }

    @Override
    public void childrenAdded(NodeMemberEvent nme) {
        refreshChildren();
    }

    @Override
    public void childrenRemoved(NodeMemberEvent nme) {
        refreshChildren();
    }

    @Override
    public void childrenReordered(NodeReorderEvent nre) {
        refreshChildren();
    }

    @Override
    public void nodeDestroyed(NodeEvent ne) {
       removeChildren();
       removeFromParent();
    }

    @Override
    public void propertyChange(PropertyChangeEvent evt) {
    }
   
}

 That's spooky. And looks terrible-ish. I'll remove that recursive children part and actually use it. But, it uses Virtual Library and cross connects Netbeans display Nodes. I dragged a directory out of favorites (and had an AcceptAction in the scene to grab nodes) and the sucker did an entire directory display all over the place.

On God and How I already know.

>>You know that God exists.

God is about as absurd as elves or unicorns. More even.

>>You want to fight that truth with everything you can,

Fight what truth? All religions make contradictory claims with the same quality of evidence. Why should I accept the Jewish Scape-goat blood sacrifice God of Jesus any more than the Norse collect you from the battle field God of Odin? It's culture invented deities. They don't actually make sense. Why should Odin send Valkyries to collect you from the battlefield? Isn't that just a cultural way to make people fight harder? Why should God sacrifice himself to himself? Isn't that just Jewish scapegoating and blood sacrifice to atone for sins. These aren't ways the universe should actually work. These are ways that primitive people would invent.


>>but it doesn't change the fact that He has made it obvious to anyone who doesn't intentionally blind themselves to it,

By providing better natural answers for everything?

>>and you know it to be true.

I think it's silly. It's hard pressed to suppose that that is me knowing that Allah is God or that the blood of Zalmoxis will make me live forever.

>>You also know that God has a moral standard to which he holds humanity accountable.

According to the Bible, women are chattel, and slavery is fine, and killing people for minor crimes is great. Picking up sticks on a Sunday is as great of a crime as murdering your father on a Monday. You only really use your own moral standard. And it's an insult to such a moral standard to credit your God with it. Your God would burn Gandhi in hell forever for failing to accept Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. Gandhi gets eternal torture for a thought crime.


>>Your own conscience tells you this to be true, and also tells you that you've failed to live up to it.

It really doesn't. Anymore than shaving makes me feel that I have changed Allah's creation.


>>There's nothing more I can do to show you these things - you already know them.

These things being the standards of your God? Which suggest that twice as sinful to have a female child as a male child, or that burnt flesh is pleasing to God? Or that God so loved me that he murdered his child, because apparently killing things is some kind of forgiveness. Which it clearly isn't but it's pretty clear why first century Jewish culture might think so.

>>If you continue to walk in willful blindness of the obvious truth,

I cannot express how honestly I think your religion is stupid.


>>then you'll unfortunately have to accept the consequences of denying that truth.

Eternal torment from a loving God, for thought crimes of not believing. Because when Hitler burns Anne Frank for being Jewish we say that he is evil, but when God burns Anne Frank forever for being Jewish that makes him good? That eternal torment is the just desserts for Gandhi or Buddha. Such absurdity should shock the mind of even a child.


>>For your sake, I pray that you won't suppress the truth for the rest of your life. If you take your last breath in this life without repenting and believing in God, it will be too late. And you'll regret it for eternity.

And if you fail to accept Allah, and put partners unto Allah, he will mock you and then send you to hell. Such silly bits of threats of eternal phantorment do not make a good argument. If your God would eternally punish people for finite crimes, he is evil. If your God would eternally torture people for thought crimes, he is absurd. Your religion worships a tyrant in the sky, revels in the blood of his dead son, because culturally sacrificing living things to God to achieve forgiveness made sense to goat herders in the ancient middle east, but in this day and age... wake up!


>>Please, listen to reality. Please, listen to your conscience. Please, listen to truth.

Ditto.

I just ate some crow.

Speculating on the mockup chess board program I used below I suggested that it couldn't change height or width. And then looking at the code so as to alter it to be able to, I started seeing function after function would work with the given height. In the end I ended up seeing it fed in by the PHP itself and took a couple guesses what it was called.

http://www.apronus.com/chess/wbeditor.php?h=10

Makes an 8x10 chessboard.







The question at hand is given the promotion rule, when does the bias towards black's army of pawns even out with regard to the height of the board? At what height would an average player against an average player be more likely to win* with whites rather than blacks.

*winning defined as the capture of every piece.

Update: the answer appear to be greater than 8 and less than 12.

It seems like the queen can actually sacrifice her way to the back row, then take out all the pawns. The king retreats to the right and to safety. The only way the pawns win is by reaching the other side. And becoming exactly what they are rebelling against. Animal farm.

ZoomAnimator to specific location in Visual Library.

I totally wanted Visual Library in Netbeans to zoom in all nicely animated, so cue ZoomAnimator. Except that the damned thing zooms to the upper left corner. There's no choice in it, that's where it starts going. Which seemed rather odd. I mean the library files had MouseCenteredZoomAction and that zooms to a specific location (the mouse). So I tried to role up my own class and found it really odd. It kept messing up, being off here and there along the edges and not going where I told it to to go. So I looked up MouseCenteredZoomAction Source and found what it was doing. Then I fixed my class and quickly realized why it wasn't being consistent. The view.scrollRectToVisible depends on the current state of the view window. You cannot easily predict where the view window will be after the zoom. Which is why the MouseCenteredZoomAction class sets the zoom, forces it to validate the scene, and then checks for the window data. Thankfully that's pretty much identical to preTick and postTick in the Zoom Animator Listener class, and to straddle that with the pre and post ticks commands is rather easy.

You likely don't care about this, it's all greek to you (rare, likely imaginary, reader of this blog). But, mark my words. Somebody is going to google and find this and love the hell out of it. It will make their day.


You can ensure it zooms to a specific location by giving it a rectangle similar to the view field.

    protected void zoomrange(Rectangle rectangle) {
        Rectangle viewBounds = getView().getVisibleRect();
        double zoomw = (float) viewBounds.width / rectangle.width;
        double zoomh = (float) viewBounds.height / rectangle.height;
        double zoom = min(zoomw, zoomh);
        Rectangle normaled = new Rectangle(rectangle.x, rectangle.y, (int)(viewBounds.width / zoom), (int)(viewBounds.height / zoom));
        getSceneAnimator().animateZoomFactor(zoom);
        getSceneAnimator().getZoomAnimator().addAnimatorListener(new FocusZoomAnimatorListener(this, normaled));
    }

import java.awt.Point;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import javax.swing.JComponent;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.animator.AnimatorEvent;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.animator.AnimatorListener;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.widget.Scene;
import org.netbeans.api.visual.widget.Widget;

/**
 * @author Tat
 */
public class FocusZoomAnimatorListener implements AnimatorListener {

    private Point point;
    private Rectangle rectangle,viewRect;
    private Point center;
    private Point mouseLocation;
    private JComponent view;
    private Scene scene;
    private Widget widget;
   

    public FocusZoomAnimatorListener(Widget widget, Point point) {
        this.widget = widget;
        this.point = point;
        scene = widget.getScene();
        view = scene.getView();
    }
   
    public FocusZoomAnimatorListener(Widget widget, Rectangle rectangle) {
        this.widget = widget;
        this.rectangle = rectangle;
        scene = widget.getScene();
        view = scene.getView();
    }

    @Override
    public void animatorStarted(AnimatorEvent ae) {
    }

    @Override
    public void animatorReset(AnimatorEvent ae) {
    }

    @Override
    public void animatorFinished(AnimatorEvent ae) {
    }

    @Override
    public void animatorPreTick(AnimatorEvent ae) {
        if (point != null) {
            viewRect = view.getVisibleRect();
            center = widget.convertLocalToScene(point);
            mouseLocation = scene.convertSceneToView(center);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void animatorPostTick(AnimatorEvent ae) {
        if (point != null) {
            center = scene.convertSceneToView(center);
            view.scrollRectToVisible(new Rectangle(
                    center.x - (mouseLocation.x - viewRect.x),
                    center.y - (mouseLocation.y - viewRect.y),
                    viewRect.width,
                    viewRect.height));
        } else {
            viewRect = scene.convertSceneToView(rectangle);
            view.scrollRectToVisible(viewRect);
        }
    }
}

Which is better Loop or System.arraycopy on modern Java 7?

It's irrelevant.

The compiler will replace your loop with the System.arraycopy anyway.


What was once true in 2007, apparently is largely irrelevant.

Testing array copy vs. for loop with 10 elements...
Copying with System.arraycopy took 33 ms.
Copying with for loop took 45 ms.


Testing array copy vs. for loop with 100 elements...
Copying with System.arraycopy took 8 ms.
Copying with for loop took 16 ms.


Testing array copy vs. for loop with 1000 elements...
Copying with System.arraycopy took 97 ms.
Copying with for loop took 145 ms.


Testing array copy vs. for loop with 10000 elements...
Copying with System.arraycopy took 1583 ms.
Copying with for loop took 1584 ms.

Testing array copy vs. for loop with 100000 elements...
Copying with System.arraycopy took 46101 ms.
Copying with for loop took 47080 ms.

That's right, baby... the compiler replaced the loop with the System.arraycopy natively. And then the Netbeans IDE flagged the loop with a note that it should be replaced with System.arraycopy. You are no longer allowed to do it wrong.

-----

* I ran some more test cases and it turns out you can trigger older loop characteristics for copying variable subsets of the array. If it will loop and copy (at times) less than the full array the loop loses about 20%. And if it's a function set to copy a subset and you use very large numbers it can loose ~50%.

 If you loop with a static final int for small number the loop will compile as an unrolled loop and beat the pants off System.arraycopy.

Looping appears to be much more fickle to optimizations (of which clearly replaced with System.array copy is one.) You likely are better off System.arraycopy in all cases. At least in Windows 7 (Since System.arraycopy is a native function it might differ from one OS to another).

But Jesus died so horribly...

We are to accept that God needed blood to fix the universe, and only his own blood had enough magic to do it, so he gave himself a body and killed it.



Telling us how terrible crucifixion is doesn't make the story make more sense. A religion built on the idea of blood sacrifice doesn't make sense in reality. That we should have an unfathomably vast universe and the most important aspect of it are the blood carrying cells of some critters on this one tiny speck of a planet. However, that is exactly what a culture obsessed with primitive blood magic would invent as a religion. Telling us that Jesus suffered greatly, though not as greatly as people who actually survive for a while on the cross before dying, or die of cancer or something like that. Doesn't change the nature of the story and why it doesn't make sense. God sacrifices himself to himself to sooth his human anger emotions towards his creations. It's a rather gaping plothole. But, it's exactly what would have been invented if Christianity were invented. The Jews were obsessed with primitive blood magic and scapegoats, and the Romans were obsessed with the children of the gods and their wacky adventures. You invent a religion in that context, and you invent Christianity. Where the wacky son of God dies as a scapegoat for those who accept it. -- Telling us how horrible that death was, doesn't make the story make any more sense.

Bayesian thought, the End of Christainity

I'm currently reading The End of Christainity and was hoping Richard Carrier's chapter on Neither Life nor the Universe seem Intelligently Designed would be better, it's a great chapter mind you, and certainly worth it the price of the book in and of itself.

But, more and more I find myself thinking in a Bayesian sense. It's worthwhile to ask yourself whether you can go from hypothesis A to conclusion c cleanly. Does ~A get there cleanly? And what do we observe. Even for seemingly basic premises and thought that haven't so much as occurred to me ever such thoughts illuminate arguments I've never heard or thought about.

Why can't people in heaven or hell communicate with Earth? I mean you can't really get from the premise "there is an afterlife" to the conclusion therefore that afterlife will be completely barred from communicating with the living. But, necessarily that's a requirement if there is no afterlife. While one could conclude that there are a myriad of afterlives that could have that restriction, it's not what we should expect of Christianity. Why not allow the living to occasion to hear the screams of torment of the damned. Or of the blessings of heaven? Why allow a child to lose their faith when their mother dies and goes to heaven? Why not allow the mother a couple quick words to save their child's eternal soul? It seems as though this restriction would be both counter productive and arbitrary. But, if there were no afterlife, it simply would be the obvious result. There is no undiscovered country, there is only death.

Or how can you cleanly go from the premise, there was a historical Jesus to there will be no evidence for a historical Jesus. You can very cleanly go from "there was no historical Jesus" to there will be no evidence for a historical Jesus. It's not about proof but that, on balance, the premise "there was no historical Jesus" would be stronger. And while the question could be reversed rather suddenly by a well placed piece of paper, it can't be the case that the evidence for a historical Jesus outweighs the opposite claim if every prediction of the opposite claim that must be true actually seems to be true.

How does one get from God exists, to therefore God should become a demigod and sacrifice himself to himself to appease God's human-anger emotions towards innocent people for the crimes of their ancestors. Well, I don't see an easy way to get there. But, on the premise that there is no God, I should expect to find religions everywhere that are simply the product of the cultures they were invented in, and in a culture that is obsessed with primitive blood magic, atonement of sin, appeasement of gods, punishing innocence to allow the guilty to go free, god's emotions, etc. Such cultures we know actually existed, and which did have strong and rather new pagan influences from Rome, we should almost expect Christianity. In fact, if you mix Jewish thought of the Messiah with Pagan love of demigods and the wacky adventures thereof, we should almost perfectly predict Christianity to arise from that very culture. And we should see gods all over the world, the product of their own cultures. And this seems to be exactly what we do see. But to actually assemble a universe based on the oxygen carrying cells of some terrestrial animals on this tiny speck of dust in a universe of 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, seems a little freakish. The actual universe actually hinges on blood magic being true? That's not something I could really get from "God exists". However, I could conclude that from God doesn't exist. Because then if people are inclined to invent gods, and we generally should accept that they are, then they would invent gods that humans would invent. With human emotions and stray bits of human culture. Much like we see with Yahwah and Jesus. One could offer perhaps that that culture existing is unlikely. But, that's a sharpshooter fallacy. For if we have Viking culture, we end up with heaven being a pub in the sky where the best heaven is for those who died in valiant battle. Any culture that existed, could well have ended up with their own religion and we could just as easily be discussing that religion, rather than Christianity. The specific form of the culture doesn't matter, just that cultures should exist, and religions which reflect those cultures should arise within those cultures.

How do we get from God exists to God should punish people on the basis of belief. That there are two afterlives which are infinitely good and infinitely bad. How do we get from that premise to that conclusion? I don't rightly know. But, I know how we get there from no God existing. If God doesn't exist then these theological claims are made up by people, and people believe religions not based on truth (as they would all be false) but rather based on Public Relations (PR) and as such, infinite sticks and infinite carrots could do wonders towards propagating a religion, and the better it propagates the more it will propagate. So the religions would be optimized towards propagation and not towards dissemination of the truth. If you don't want infinite suffering believe this. If you want infinite bliss believe this. Teach it to your children, tell it to others, make them also believe. If God exists why doesn't he evangelize people himself? After all, shouldn't God be able to do a better job at it? Why depend on silly human agents? If there were no God, all there are are human agents. Each of these points actually provide rather strong evidence that religion is completely bogus. There a heck of a lot of assumptions we just take for granted that are actually hugely problematic if we think about them correctly. Why should Gandhi burn forever in hell for failing to believe the correct tenants of a religion largely believed in a region he was not from? Why should religions be hugely dependent on region? Why is the message delievered in book form, if books and languages change? How do we get from God exists to God will have human emotions? The list goes on and on. We accept a lot of things without question that we really should question profusely. Why are souls undetectable? If they don't exist, ofcourse they'd be undetectable. But, how do we go from "Souls exist" to "souls should be completely undetectable"? Wouldn't seeing souls leave the bodies of dying people, tell people that they have souls and perhaps they go somewhere and could be saved?  There's a lot of baggage concern religion, and why should the supernatural be undetectable? If I developed Jedi powers, anybody could tell I had them, and even if they didn't I could, with a wave of my hand, convince them that I did have those powers they were looking for. Such things would be supernatural and detectable so why are the only supposed supernatural things completely undetectable. How do we go from "The Supernatural Exists" to "The Supernatural is Undetectable". I do however see quite easily how we go from "The Supernatural Exists" to "The Supernatural is Undetectable". At best, the hypothesis "The supernatural exists" must by this argument be less likely than "The supernatural doesn't exist" because we don't detect it. That alone suffices to make it a better claim.

Tat's Trivia Bot, v. 3.65

Tat's Trivia Bot 3.7

Latest Version: Tat's Trivia 3.69

Download: Tat's Trivia Bot, 3.65

Update: 3.66
A version for every day of the year.

It mostly adds a couple hooks for awards, namely on Champ, TeamAnswer, and TeamVictory


I also added a command /trivia.team.credit

This is to allow one to give points to the entire team (the will transliterate from *) points. Apparently some people don't want to play on teams if the only points you get are individual. That seems reasonable, and I'll make it able to be fixed by you folks on an individual basis. So for pretty much everybody save Brett this version will do nothing for you.

(Fixed odd oversight with 3.61 included)

Grey's Anatomy Quote

“It’s awful, it’s tense and it’s cold and it’s dangerous, it feels like defusing a bomb, in an haunted house, that’s built on a minefield, and there are bears everywhere, and the bears have knives. You have to tame them, or you will die, we will all die. Their hate will destroy this hospital and then the whole planet. I am counting on you Bailey… We’re all counting on you.”

—	Callie Torres -8x21

Into the breech...

Wow this is a boring slog.

Apparently the rule about creationists taking twice as long to refute as they take to make a claim presents us with a divergent series and thus an exchange which expands at about 2^n.

>>You also accuse the studies shown of not taking this into account. However, you then provide no evidence and no data to back that up.

You posted the studies. Do they show tectonic forces being taken into account? We're discussing the study you posted. I'm pointing out something it fails to note. Does it fail to note the massive amount of salt loss?

http://orgs.usd.edu/esci/age/content/failed_scientific_clocks/ocean_salinity.html 

It continues like this for 15000 words. Literally, I did a word count. 15623 in total. Below the fold.

The RSS feed is stuck/broken. You need to actually visit to see new posts.

I mean if somebody is hook line and sinker stuck in cargo cult science. How do they ever free themselves? If they suppose that all the pieces fit together even if they had to glue the thing together with God and hope. How does one rend themselves away from such thinking?


Arguing with BaseSixForty on Youtube, it seems pretty intractable. Apparently the oceans level of salt needs to be overflowing with salt if the earth is old. But there's really only a finite amount of the stuff and it cycles around. The salt from the land typically was once salt from the ocean that was taken away by tectonic forces as salt today is taken away. And independently geologists have found that the level of salt in the ocean has been static. It has not changed. 


Also the Earth Magnetic Field is getting exponentially weaker. Because Barnes at one point made that argument based on 200 years of data. Better readings have found that the field fluctuates all the time and often even reverses every 80k years or so. And that's bipole strength rather than overall field strength. So Barnes got swept aside. So then Humphreys comes along and says that the Earth Magnetic Field is getting exponentially weaker without even Barne's evidence of reading 200 years of data and extrapolating from that exponential decay (the line even better fits linear if you read the data and ignore that there's way more data now). Because such and such and such, but now with zero evidence rather than one point of horrible evidence.

It's rather sad. It's like somebody who knows astrology so well they can tell you  calculate the meaning and signs other than your sun sign and figure out how things work. It's getting really really good at something really really foolish.

BaseSixForty: "The first is the issue of tectonic activity. You claim that this is the major player in removing salts from the ocean. You also accuse the studies shown of not taking this into account. However, you then provide no evidence and no data to back that up. ... Both are rather strong propositions to make without evidence or data. If you think it would be relevant, then provide the evidence to either support or refute the argument."

Tatarize: "The study excludes what geologists say is taking up the vast majority of salts. The problem here is the study says they've accounted for "all" the outputs. And that's just not true, or really even that possible. The fact that they missed what geologists have pointed to as the biggest player is a serious flaw. But, worse than that is the steady state of the salinity. It doesn't matter one jot what the magnitude of the various inputs and outputs might be if the overall effect is no change. Which was the more important point. Regardless of the actual values (See Pinet 1993 and various other estimates of the magnitude if you really care), the point obviously fails if geologists are right. For the last 100 million years the salt level in the ocean has been static, which I'll address shortly."

Unfortunately, you have once again simply made a claim, with no support. You claimed that tectonic activity is the major player in removing salts from the ocean. You claimed that this is what geologists have pointed to as the biggest player. However, you have provided no evidence, as I asked. You have made the claim, but have provided no support. If tectonic activity is responsible for removing vast amounts of salt from the oceans, then provide data. Provide measurements. Provide support. If there isn't any actual data, then provide evidence of the mechanism with approximations for why it should balance things out. Quite frankly, you can talk all you want about such a mechanism, but if it actually exists, then back it up. Don't just sit there and say it exists - show it exists. Honestly, for someone who seems to put such a huge weight upon the methods of science as supporting beliefs, I'm shocked at your double standard to refuse to provide any evidence for your claims but still cling to them as absolute fact.


BaseSixForty: "The second issue seems to be the issue of a steady state of salinity levels."

Tatarize: "http://www.clays.org/journal/archive/volume%208/8-1-203.pdf Paleosalinities is an actual bit of science. Goldschmit determined the relationships needed to directly calculate the salt levels in the ocean over time. They have remained steady. They have been steady and therefore cannot be used as a clock."

This is unfortunately circular reasoning again. All the Goldschmidt's paper really claims (as his conclusion at point number 5 shows) is that the paleosalinities of the sedimentary rock layers at the times they were laid down show no real change in salinity levels. I won't even dispute that. I'll grant you that just for the sake of your argument. Unfortunately, the conclusion uses the assumption that those rock layers are hundreds of millions of years old, and then extrapolates that to show that ocean salinity levels haven't changed over millions of years. But as mentioned, that's circular reasoning. Those sedimentary rock layers aren't actually hundreds of millions of years old - they are only a few thousand years old. As such, all Goldschmidt's data really shows is that the salinity of the ocean hasn't changed significantly in the last few thousand years - a perfectly acceptable conclusion for a creationist.

Arizona to teach the Bible. Bad Move Religious People.

Arizona passes a law to require schools to add a specific elective. Namely, The Bible.

I don't think this will end well for the religious folks pushing this for two reasons. 1) Secular education must be secular, you cannot use such a class to preach. So you must learn facts about the Bible. The facts about the Bible do not put the Bible in a good light. 2) Students might read the Bible. The Bible does not put the Bible in a good light. People tend to think the Bible is full of peace and wisdom; these people have not read the Bible.

The World of Religion

Evidence and surprise.

Evidence typically conforms to Bayes theorem. And as such you really can have bad evidence and good evidence and you can rather clearly measure the quality of the evidence. Typically based on the surprise factor. If the thing in question should be true vs. false. How surprising is this particular bit information.

If Christianity is true, how surprising should it be that it supposes a demigod whose blood sacrifice propitiates the alpha-male human-anger emotions of the creator of the entire universe for wrongdoings of human ancestors in a middle-eastern creation story, rather than the particular humans in question. Is this what we should expect as the actual way the real universe actually works? No. It's certifiably insane.

If Christianity is false, how surprising should it be? Well, it isn't. It was first practiced in areas with newly found pagan influences where demigods and their wacky adventures were commonplace, where blood sacrifice to appease an angry God were common. That the sins of the father were given to their children, that one could atone for the sins of another allowing the guilty to go free, that a human sacrifice was the best kind of sacrifice, that the creator of the universe wanted things killed for him. And such a system that allows for god donning a baby suit and sacrificing himself to himself to appease himself, wouldn't shock the mind of anybody and would be expected of the creator of the universe. If somebody around that time invented a religion, it would be a lot like Christianity.

The story of Christianity, the claims that it makes, are remarkably good evidence that it's false.