Secular science: Earth has a pulse of 27.5 million years

Image courtesy of Stuttercock.  

Joel Kontinen

Science can tell us an exinting source of things. Scientists are supposed to be objective. Sometimes, however, their conclusions are questionable. Mark Twain put it this way in Life on the Mississippi, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” Here is the context:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

A geological theory known as uniformitarism postulates that slow processes have formed huge formations such as the Grand Canyon over millions of years. Uniformitarism in geology was popularised by James Hutton (1726-1797) and Charles Lyell (1797-1875), inspiring Charles Darwin to use a similar approach to biological evolution.

Now, evolution has taken up science, Here’s want live science says about the pulse of the earth,

Most major geological events in Earth's recent history have clustered in 27.5-million-year intervals — a pattern that scientists are now calling the "pulse of the Earth," according to a new study.

Over the past 260 million years, dozens of major geological events, from sea level changes to volcanic eruptions, seem to follow this rhythmic pattern. 

 

But if you take away the flood of Noah’s days, the  days become longer, And days become millions of years,  

 

 

Source:

Saplakoglu, Yasemin. 2021.  Earth has a 'pulse' of 27.5 million years Live Science. 22 June. 

“We Are Zombies Rewriting Our Mental History,” Darwinian Researchers Say

Image courtesy of Jean-noël Lafargue, Free Art License.






Joel Kontinen

For Darwinists, free will is a hot potato that obviously should be avoided at all costs.

This also applies to consciousness that happens to be “a ghostly thing” in a naturalistic world. Evolution can’t explain it.

And so we are treated to a Darwinian just so story.

A new version features humans as zombies. Adam Bear and Paul Bloom conducted a series of experiments at Yale University. Volunteers looked at white circles and had to guess which one would turn red.

The test subjects managed to predict the right circle more often than if they had done so by mere chance, giving them a feeling of being in control.

However, the researchers “placed different delays between the white circles’ appearance and one of the circles turning red, ranging from 50 milliseconds to one second. Participants’ reported accuracy was highest – surpassing 30 per cent – when the delays were shortest.”

The researchers suggest that it “is possible that we perceive the order of events correctly – one circle changes colour before we have actually made our prediction – but then we subconsciously swap the sequence in our memories so the prediction seems to come first. Such a switcheroo could be motivated by a desire to feel in control of our lives.”

The results prompted Bear to suggest, “We are essentially zombie agents most of the time under the illusion that we’re always aware of why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

It might do us good to remember what Mark Twain famously wrote: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

Source:

Hutson, Matthew. 2016. We are zombies rewriting our mental history to feel in control. New Scientist (15 April).

Mark Twain on the Objectivity of Science

The belief in millions of years of earth history is based on "a trifling investment of fact".




Joel Kontinen

Scientists are supposed to be objective. Sometimes, however, their conclusions are questionable. Mark Twain put it this way in Life on the Mississippi, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” Here is the context:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

A geological theory known as uniformitarism postulates that slow processes have formed huge formations such as the Grand Canyon over millions of years. Uniformitarism in geology was popularised by James Hutton (1726-1797) and Charles Lyell (1797-1875), inspiring Charles Darwin to use a similar approach to biological evolution.

For a time, uniformitarism surpassed catastrofism as the ruling paradigm in geology, but in recent years catastrofism has regained some popularity. The eruption of Mount St. Helens in May 1980 laid down massive sediments and formed deep canyons in a few hours, indicating that catastrophes can do a lot in a little time.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), or Mark Twain as he preferred to be called, rightly criticised extrapolation in science. Darwinists often observe tiny changes in fruit flies or bacteria and then extrapolate their results ad infinitum. The result is the goo-to-you view in which long periods of time plus chance are thought to make an amoeba into an astrophysicist. As Mark Twain would say, this return is based on “such a trifling investment of fact.”

Source:

Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi. http://www.twainquotes.com/Scientists.html