Spoonseeking

This is part 11 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ C-14 Should be Missing McIntosh presents an argument that C-14 should not be found at all in a sample that is millions of years old, but that we do find that - which is a claimed problem with an old earth. Why should it be missing? A single piece of Nitrogen, an atom, has 7 protons, and usually 7 neutrons.  There is this thing that happens to nitrogen where it turns into carbon for a "short" while, then turns back into nitrogen. It starts when N gets hit with a neutron [N+n].  This causes a proton to get knocked out of the atom.  How an atom acts chemically is kind of based on how many protons it has, so this atom now starts acting like carbon [

This is part 10 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ Not Just What, but How I have made many blog posts about this.  For this one, I'll go a little deeper into how I researched this topic, and why my dismissals tend to be short and, at times, seem incomplete. Claims of Early Dating of Dinosaur Bones At 48:45, McIntosh claims: People who are on our side of the fence have done some C14 dating of dinosaur bones. And found significant amounts of C14.  So when you combine both issues, soft tissue and C14 significant measurements, what is that telling you?  That these bones are not 65 million years old.  By their own reasoning, concerning C14 decay, it has to be less than 100,000 years. He states this while dis

This is part 9 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ Catastrophe At 12:37, McIntosh is talking about a moth fossil with impressions of it swings and states: In order to get that impression, its telling you it must have been buried quickly [...] He returns this several times throughout the talk, showing examples of "fast" fossil formation of moths, damselflies, dragonflies, ferns, octopus, mass dinosaur / crocodile / turtle graves, and maybe more. He is saying that these fossils seem to require a fast burial.  McIntosh uses the term catastrophe. Evolution and Catastrophe It seems that one point he may  be making is that this type of fast burial is a problem for evolution.  If so, he needs to refere

This is part 8 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ Stasis One of McIntosh's main points is the concept of stasis .  This means that things don't change for a long time (things like feathers and turtles).  It seems the point here is: "so evolution is wrong". He seems to be saying that either everything evolves by changing constantly, or his version of young earth creationism is true.  There are many other options of course. It could be that evolutionary theory can explain this.  It could be that aliens made life on earth.  If this were indeed evidence against the current theory of evolution, that would not make it evidence for young earth creationism.  Maybe if every species could be shown to be in u

This is part 7 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ Evil-utionists Persuasive speeches often employ subtle techniques to influence the audience.  When listening to the video, one thing that immediately stood out to me was the way McIntosh pronounced "evolutionists". It sounds like he is saying "evil utionists".  I only bring this up in case anyone else has that reaction. The way McIntosh pronounces this is the proper pronunciation for the UK. Old Mouse At 5:56 McIntosh states: "[...] you can find a huge number of mammals displaced from the region where the evolutionists would say that they should be.  We do actually find mammals even down [...] in the Jurassic [period]" McIntosh does

This is part 6 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIwh6-KEe0 The Rest This post will address the rest of the presentation by McIntosh. One note: my response to many of these is that they represent an argument from authority.  I would like to pre-clarify that this is a response to the McIntosh presentation, not the external source.  Nagel may have a valid argument, for example, but we weren't presented with his argument.  We were just asked to accept it. And this is why I'm usually not swayed by these sort of things.  Rarely do you actually get presented with an argument. You get presented with experts and emotions. McIntosh does not go deep into these points, and I will not either.  I suspect the reason is time.

This is part 5 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIwh6-KEe0 Atheism's Claimed Contradiction McIntosh begins discussing this chart at 52:50.   He begins: “Atheism says that there is freedom to think what I want to think.” This is shown on the chart as "Freedom"  It describes something known as libertarian free will. Freedom to do as a person wants, without another person stopping them.  This sounds like a core part of many western human rights documents, but not sure I would want to draw a line between that and atheism.  Atheism is the lack of belief in god(s).  I do agree that most atheists would support libertarian free will.  This seems to fall short of showing atheism requires libertarian free w

This is part 4 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIwh6-KEe0 Software At 47:10, McIntosh starts discussing information, and quickly transitions to "software". He asks the following questions: Is software real?  The answer has got to be: yes! Is software material? Ahh.  Software is real, yet it is not material.  I saw no presented evidence for any non-material software.  McIntosh throws in his answer of "software [...] is not material", but he doesn’t justify it.  Software is in DNA (from McIntosh's point of view), which is material.  Software is on hard drives, in memory in computers, on your memory cards, and in the neurons in my brain.  All of that is material.  Software is alway

This is part 3 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIwh6-KEe0 Random Energy does not Build Machines Around 43:00 McIntosh goes into an argument about random energy and building machines. This argument seems to rest on the paper “Information and Entropy – Top-Down or Bottom-Up Development in Living Systems?” From the journal that published this paper: “ This paper presents a different paradigm than the traditional view. It is, in the view of the Journal, an exploratory paper that does not give a complete justification for the alternative view. The reader should not assume that the Journal or the reviewers agree with the conclusions of the paper. It is a valuable contribution that challenges the conventional vision

This is part 2 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material is related to material that was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIwh6-KEe0 Note that this exact slide was not presented at the local event.  Where it fits into McIntosh's argument against atheism can be seen in the video.  I presume it was omitted due to time.  If there is another reason and I am notified, I may withdraw this article. Note Andy McIntosh has notified me that the flagellum he presented is different than the flagellum discussed in the court case.  This is true, and it was not my intent to suggest otherwise. Bacterial Flagellum Around 41:00, the bacterial flagellum is discussed.  McIntosh goes on to discuss more complicated versions, eventually getting to the coup-de-chart: McIntosh

This is part 1 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIwh6-KEe0 Note Andy McIntosh has notified me that he disagrees with my analysis in this post. Dawkins Quote This quote appears in a discussion regarding feathers at around 39:30.  Complexity is being shown in the feather. A quote from Dawkins is shown and discussed McIntosh comments,  “ That showed that this atheist did not understand what faith was.  Faith is not: believing in something which isn’t there.  That’s what [Dawkins’] definition was.  Faith is: actually trusting in something that strongly indicates that it is there and that there is evidence for it. ” What is actually said by Dawkins in the interview? This interview can be seen at:  ht

This article is a few quick thoughts I have related to objective morality from a secular and naturalistic perspective. Secular When something is secular, it is set apart from the divine.  It is not against God.  The divine just is not considered. Buying groceries tends to be secular.  American government is secular by design. This can be confused with another term: Secular Humanism.  This is different than just "secular", and Secular Humanism has nothing to do with Objective Secular Morality. If you believe the divine, you can still participate in secular activities.  Secularism is an effective basis for a society made up of people that don't all agree on god. Objective Being objective means it is the same from all viewpoints.  Some also mean that it should be in some way absolute and binding.  I will address those aspects.  But my general use of "objective" will just mean that an objective fact is a fact that does not rely on a particular v