Hubble Finds a Galaxy 12.8 Billion Years Old 134
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) has discovered the 12.8B year old galaxy now known as A1689-zD1. Using gravitational lensing of the massive Abell 1689 cluster of galaxies, they were able to find a surprisingly bright young galaxy from only 700 million years after the Big Bang, during the cosmic 'dark ages.' Researchers are itching to study the object with the upcoming Atacama Large Millimeter Array (to go online in 2012) and James Webb Space Telescope (to launch in 2013)."
Re:Do they cut it in half and count the rings? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Do they cut it in half and count the rings? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's starts with curiosity: "How do they know how old it is?"
Which gets extended to skepticism: "How could they possibly be sure? Maybe their assumptions are wrong."
Which somehow becomes rejection: "Scientists don't really know anything, it's all just belief!"
Then the gigantic illogical leap: "Thus any alternative hypothesis I propose is equally viable."
And then the 'reveal' which is: "So I bet my spiritual guide book could serve as a physics textbook if you interpreted it literally!"
Unfortunately, you can't really tell the difference between a normal reasonable person and a closet creationist until you're several steps in. It kinda pisses me off, the way the Creationists have adopted the strategy of Intelligent Design and hiding their beliefs as though they're just genuine scientific skeptics with an open mind, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Though I agree with you, in this case I think this was legitimate curiosity, and the GP was just being paranoid. It won't take that long to tell if I'm wrong.
Re:This kind of thing confuses me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do they cut it in half and count the rings? (Score:4, Insightful)
And do you believe that this same mechanism accounts for all genetic diversity? Because if you are only talking about selective breeding, then guess what? That's NOT capital-I-D Intelligent Design, you dumb fuck. That's "selective breeding", or in the case of attractive females "sexual selection", both about as mundane and mainstream of theories as evolution itself and not having special theory names.
What you're doing is like me going "Der, Evolution isn't necessarily about random changes altering populations through natural selection you moron! To me Evolution is about species wanting to change because they feel in their hearts that they can be better!" No, wrong, that's not what evolution is. And "Intelligent Design" is not the theory that some things on earth were designed by an (our) intelligence. It's a theory that is an alternate explanation for the diversity of all species. Though I give it more respect than it deserves by calling it a theory.
Look, it's like this: there is no God but there is Intelligent Design.
There is no Intelligent Design without God. Not because you have to believe in God to believe in ID, but because it naturally follows. The primary theorem of ID is that our intelligence is to complex to have arisen naturally, and must have been created by some other intelligence. Well where did that intelligence come from? The same ideas of ID suggest that it couldn't have arisen naturally, so there must be another designer... and so on. Now, if you're religious, that's easy, the original Intelligent Designer is a supernatural being with no beginning or end and thus no need for a creater.
If you're not religious and believe in Intelligent Design, then you're just a giant retard.
And furthermore, there is no difference between a normal reasonable person and a "closet creationist"
Of course there is. A reasonable person, including a reasonable Creationist, is up-front with their beliefs. Lying, duplicitous douchebags who inherently know that their position is not reasonable, but want to trick you into accepting it anyway, feign open-minded skepticism that suddenly turns into evangelism.
Anyway, in summary, you're a fucking idiot--I on the other hand, am quite a bit more gifted and talented than you--but hey bud, you can do better, and I'd like to help you.
Of course you are! Your mom was right, you're special!
Let me help you: there is, unequivocally, at least some flavor of intelligent design in our world.
And with no capital letters there, the answer is: duh! The computers we're using right now were "intelligently designed" by humans. That's not "Intelligent Design". You should at least know what something is before you defend it, jackass.
I fucking hate you.
Aw, but I love you! I think you're very stupid, but I still love you.
It'd be really, really hilarious to me if your whole retarded polemic was because I used the phrase "Intelligent Design" in obvious reference to the non-scientific alternate theory for speciation, while in your personal view there is something that could be called "intelligent design" but isn't what is commonly called -- by anyone -- ID.
Re:Do they cut it in half and count the rings? (Score:2, Insightful)
Realists know that betting against the current science when it regards dates is about as safe as a bet as you can make. It is 100% guaranteed to be found incorrect, probably within 50 years. Date setters just want attention. If they were intellectually honest, they wouldn't bother.
All right here's your person with a chip on his shoulder. Regardless as whether or not you take the calculations behind the age of the universe to be valid, to claim that date-setting is intellectually dishonest is rather stupid. Let's say that 100 years ago, I came up with a model of the universe that resulted in the age of the universe being 300 million years old. Later when evidence is found indicating that there exist objects that are 1 billion years old, my model will clearly be proven to be wrong. If I had never been "intellectually dishonest" by calculating the age of the universe, my model may have never been proven wrong.
These date-setters are basing their ideas on the well-accepted theories that allow much of the modern world to function as it does (i.e., relativity). I'm not claiming that holes will never be found in them. But to claim that no work should be done based on these models would be like saying that Bohr should have never published his model for the atom because it only worked for atoms with one electron.
Re:Do they cut it in half and count the rings? (Score:1, Insightful)
You can neither prove that the creationist is "wrong" nor that the scientist is "right". Nor can you prove that the creationist answer is "worse" or that the scientific answer is "better". It depends what you want out of the whole thing.
If you build bridges based on the teachings of the bible, you'll quickly find out that it doesn't work. (Churches have lightning conductors because they do work.) But if you try to use the discoveries of science to pontificate on the philosophical nature of life, you'll quickly find that it doesn't work either. Dawkins is simply wrong on a philosophical level, just as Genesis is simply wrong on an evolutionary level.
A bit of respect on both sides when faced with the fundamental unknowables of the universe would go a long way.
Re: Do they cut it in half and count the rings? (Score:1, Insightful)
Animal Husbandry is where we look for certain traits and breed for them, rather than allow nature to take its course with random pairings. The problem with this is that domesticated animals tend to need human intervention to survive over the long term. Especially animals which have been bread for "beauty" rather than work. Purebread Golden Retrievers have an incredibly high incidence of hip dysplasia due to this type of breeding, and tend to not live as long or comfortably as their mutt relations in the same type of household.
"Human design" is just a much more efficient version of Natural Selection.
Re:Do they cut it in half and count the rings? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you build bridges based on the teachings of the bible, you'll quickly find out that it doesn't work. (Churches have lightning conductors because they do work.) But if you try to use the discoveries of science to pontificate on the philosophical nature of life, you'll quickly find that it doesn't work either. Dawkins is simply wrong on a philosophical level, just as Genesis is simply wrong on an evolutionary level.
A bit of respect on both sides when faced with the fundamental unknowables of the universe would go a long way.
This is total crap.
Scientists aren't running around trying to push science as an alternative to philosophy; they're simply gathering evidence for physical, real-world things, making theories based on the evidence, and testing those theories. That's how science works.
It's the religionists who have declared war on science, not the other way around. The religionists are the ones who are trying to push their "philosophy" (if you can really call it that) as an alternative to science. Sure, churches may use lightning rods because they work, but since evolution mainly deals with things in the far past which can't be easily backed up with experiments, and since this directly contradicts the writings in their holy books, they attack it. If the Bible said that atoms couldn't be split, they'd probably be denying that nuclear weapons exist.
I'm sure the scientists will be happy to start respecting the religionists when the religionists stop trying to destroy science.