The left's anti-science: The culture of speculation, Global Warming and Evolution

The stakes are higher than most conservatives realize. When the fraud of man-made global warming finally dies, folks will start thinking: What else were we lied to about? How could the high priests of modern knowledge have confidently insisted something that was never remotely plausible?

A key element of progressivism is having wise philosopher-kings who make benevolent decisions for the masses. It is a core element of conservatism that you can make decisions for yourself. But for progressives, it is essential to convince the public that the designated authorities know better than you do, including what to eat, how to raise your kids, how to educate children, whom to vote for, etc.

Who will control society is up for grabs. The entire progressive religion depends upon maintaining public belief that their self-declared experts are all-knowing. Conformity is more important than truth. So desperate Warmists are intensifying their efforts even as their argument collapses in full view of everyone.

But a scientist with an opinion is not a scientist. A real scientist is cheerfully open to being proven wrong, eager for discovery more than for satisfying his ego. Many of the most important discoveries were not what a researcher was expecting. A scientist will have suspicions and a working hypothesis, but only with an open mind.

Instead, modern science has become a festival of speculation. Progressives simply speculate about what might be true and then read tea leaves for any hint consistent with their imagination.

We have special-effects television shows about dinosaurs showing the coloring of dinosaurs whose skin we have never seen and the sounds they make which we have never heard. Science shows tell us that the mother dinosaur is starting to worry that day about the storm approaching, and that the young dinosaurs are feeling playful.

Use of radioisotopes to date ancient rocks and fossils is an example. Rate of decay for any given isotope are assumed to be constant, because they have never been observed to fluctuate or change. You would have to find observations millions of years in the past to know absolutely that decay rates never change. However, measurements have been made for a sufficient length of time that scientists almost universally agree that they will remain constant. The key point is NO EVIDENCE HAS BEEN FOUND TO CONTRADICT THIS THEORY.

Yes, this is a perfect example of anti-science.

First, would we expect to find evidence to contradict this hypothesis? No. Humans have not been around long enough to detect any such variation.

So the fact that in the tiny sliver of time humans have been around we have seen nothing inconsistent with the hypothesis does not help us any.

It is entirely possible that radioactive dating is completely unreliable over a time span of millions of years or even tens of thousands of years. But the few hundred years that humans have even known about radioactivity would be incapable of detecting anything to confirm or deny the validity of radioactive dating.

But notice how totally unscientific this is.

Would you measure something without first CALLIBRATING your scale and setting it to a zero tare?

How can so-called scientists use radioactive dating when they are incapable of calibrating their instrument of measurement?

Unless you can go back in time millions of years and TEST the validity of radioactive dating, you are engaging in the worst kind of dishonest fraud by claiming that can measure the age of anything using radioactive decay.

Third, it is worse than just whether the rate of decay is constant. You have to make radically unreliable assumptions (guesses) about the ORIGINAL composition of what you are measuring in order to be able to compute the passage of time by the current level of radioactivity or ratios of isotopes.

So even if radioactive dating is valid for one sample, you cannot say that it is valid for another, because you cannot establish that the ORIGINAL composition of samples from different time periods and different locations was the same at the starting point.

No self-respecting scientists would mouth such nonsense.

There have been many observations made which confirm to most scientists satisfaction that billions of years ago the were only single celled organisms, and that more complex life forms appear millions of years later. NO EVIDENCE HAS BEEN FOUND THAT CONTRADICTS THIS

But observations are not science. Observations are observations.

The whole point of science is to impose DISCIPLINE to separate guesswork from fact.

There can be any number of explanations for an observation.

You walk outside in the morning and the sidewalk is wet. So you ASSUME that it rained overnight. But in fact your neighbor's kid was playing around with the water hose when he woke up at dawn.

Observations are not explanation.

Now as to the existence of single-cell organisms at one point in time and multi-cell organisms at later times, YOU DON'T KNOW THOSE TIMES.

Without a calibrated measurement of time, you don't know when anything happened. You don't know that the single-cell organisms were earlier than the multi-cell organisms, because you have no tool for measuring time that is calibrated or reliable.

To have a reliable measurement of time, you would have to build a time machine, go back in time millions of years, and calibrate your measurement tool for accuracy.

As I said, you haven’t a clue. Evolution is the theory that best explains all available information, and experiment, measurement and observation have not produced evidence that contradicts it, and have produced sufficient confirmation to convince scientists far more skeptical and intelligent than you or I.

Yes, it hasn’t been proven by millions of years of direct human observation, but it also hasn’t been proven that you weren’t born yesterday and the previous experiences you remember we’re just implanted holographically onto the clay tablet inside your skull. There has been no constant human observation of your existence, so applying your logic your existence (and intellect) can only be an article of faith. You can choose to believe you are more than one day old, but as you insist science does not support you.

If you have a better theory that explains all of the available evidence, put up or shut up.

The theory predicts that over billions of years, trillions of genetic mutations will accumulate throughout all segments of living organisms on Earth, and that the changes in habitats which favor one characteristic over another will result in organisms that range from single cells to Blue Whales.

But this is patent nonsense, as anyone with common sense can immediately recognize, if not bending over backwards to avoid the truth.

Those genetic mutations are much SMALLER in increment than Darwin ever understood.

So it is impossible to have a mutation that leaps from one VIABLE species or function to another VIABLE one.

The mutation will lead to a DEFECTIVE species which will DIE.

Consider: Birds have hollow bones to make them light enough to fly.

SO if a species evolves hollow bones first, then it would DIE OUT because its bones are too fragile to survive as a land animal, but it has not yet evolved wings.

If a species evolves wings first, without the hollow bones, it would be too heavy to fly, and it would again DIE OUT.

If a land animal begins to evolve wings, when it is partway between legs and wings, it would have a defective, useless set of non-functioning limbs, and it would DIE OUT.

When you look at the big picture from 40,000 feet, you can imagine that 1 species could gain an advantage by making GIGANTIC LEAPS from one design to the enxt.

But that's not how genetic mutations work.

Mutations are such small steps, that the mutated specimen will be DIASADVANTAGED and will DIE OUT.

Evolution is the theory that best explains all available information,

But that is the very definition of a HYPOTHESIS. You are only on Step #2 of the Scientific Method.

First, of course, the meaning of "evolution" keeps changing so it does NOT explain the available information because "it" has no fixed meaning.

Now you must design an experiment that can test if the hypothesis is true or false.

and experiment, measurement and observation have not produced evidence that contradicts it,

There have not been any experiments. None. Not a one.

And then they have to be REPEATED independently under varying conditions by unrelated teams in different locations.

All you have is faith.

If you want to believe that a Pharoah had eggs and orange juice for breakfast 5,000 years ago, you are free to believe that. But there is now ay to prove it.

Darwin’s theory was the beginning of the story. That was over 150 years ago. As I said, there has been enough evidence collected by independent research after the theory was published to convince the scielntifically literate. You Canute impression does not impress the tide of information consistent with the theory that continues to roll in.

Maybe you could see if they will let you take some science courses at a local high school strange or community college. The root purpose of science is so that we can know more about the world around us. The second purpose is help keep us from looking like idiots when we make claims about that world.

Unless you can go back in time millions of years and TEST the validity of radioactive dating, you are engaging in the worst kind of dishonest fraud by claiming that can measure the age of anything using radioactive decay.

Notice your use of the word assuming?

If you want to add an asterisk to every statement about events more than 5000 years in the past to the effect that

* Note: statements based on assuming the laws of nature operated 500 million years ago pretty much like they do now. Also that we weren't all created last Thursday with all our memories intact.

then be my guest. Meanwhile, scientists will smile and go on about their work.

You Canute impression does not impress the tide of information consistent with the theory that continues to roll in.

"information consistent with" is NOT science.

Aristotle was convinced that a large cannonball will fall faster than a small cannonball. He was brilliant. He was highly educated. And he was WRONG.

Actually, there is more information IN-consistent with evolution than consistent. Evolution convinces only those who are unwilling or unable to confront the reality of a sovereign God, to whom they owe allegiance and obedience. Even those who give lip service to the existence of a God, do not mean a real God, but only a societal construct like the Easter Bunny or Santa Clause. They don't really believe in an actual God.

There is no reason to believe in evolution other than as the only way to escape the existence of an actual, real, genuine God who created you.

There is information that is both consistent with and inconsistent with evolution. And there is a 3rd category of information which is NEITHER -- but which evolutionists falsely claim as their own.

For example, if a Creator God created many species, it is entirely consistent with Creation for God to use a common design, down to the chromosome level. So the patterns that evolutionists point to in biologic design, organic chemistry, and the use of DNA is CONSISTENT with CREATIOMISM just as much as with evolution.

So one of the errors that the disciplines of the Scientific Method avoids is the error of assuming that observations are consistent ONLY with one hypothesis, when in fact they are consistent also with alternate hypotheses, too.

Sure. I'm comfortable assuming that the laws of physics--e.g., the rate of decay of radioactive elements--have stayed pretty much the same through Earth's history, rather than fluctuating as wildly as they would have to for all the calculations of the ages of rocks to be wrong. First, that is religious faith, not science. Your assumption -- and your comfort with your assumption - is faith, not science.

Second, however, the severe defects in radioactive dating is far worse than consistency in the rate of decay.

Radiation was only discovered about 100 years ago. So to extrapolate the behavior of radioactive isotopes over hundreds of millions of years based on FAR LESS than 100 years of very organized observation of radioactivity is totally irresponsible. Measuring hundreds of millions of years of events based on maybe 60 years of formal study of radioactivity is voodoo, with apologies to voodoo followers.

But that's not the worst problem.

You don't really understand your own arguments.

Radioactive dating has to begin by assuming that YOU KNOW what the sample's composition was hundreds of millions of years ago.

You measure the radioactivity today (the ratio of isotopes), and then extrapolate backwards by ASSUMING WHAT THE ORIGINAL SAMPLE WAS.

But you don't know what the original sample was. So the rate of decay from an UNKNOWN STARTING POINT cannot reliably tell you anything.

In order to "date" a sample, you have to calculate the rate of decay and the observed decay from a KNOWN STARTING POINT. But you don't know the starting point.

And you must also assume that the original composition is the same everywhere and for all time.

So if one sample really did come from 500 million years ago and another sample really did come from 10 million years ago, you have to assume that the initial starting point, the initial composition, is identical in both cases.

The only way you can do that is to go back in time and measure the ORIGINAL sample as it was then, and then calculate radioactive decay forward to today.

Is there such a thing as a law? If so, what is it besides an observation that has been recorded in every relevant circumstance? So if an observation can be universal enough to be called a "law," I think I'm entitled to label an observation that as far as I know is universal "law-like."

The only thing that science can call a law is the product of repeated experiments capable of testing a hypothesis (which is well-designed so as to be capable of being proven true or false) performed over time by many different times of unrelated researchers under varying conditions and in different locations.

Nothing else is a law in scientific terms.

And there can never be a "law" concerning an event that happened only once in history.

What did the Pharoah of Egypt have for breakfast 5,000 years ago? This is not a "law." This is not a proper subject of scientific inquiry.

Historians might find a record chiseled in stone telling us what the Pharoah had for breakfast. We might find the orders to the kitchen. But science cannot explore a single event that happened only once in the past, and is not repeating.

Indeed, something that does not happen now in the present is in violent contradiction to the concept of a scientific "law."

The laws of thermodynamics are not based merely on observation, but based on EXPERIMENTS that confirm the principles stated.

So we can't know anything about anything that happened before, say, 5000 years ago because we can't go back then and no one was around to write it down? Is that what you want to hang your hat on? And that things "might have been" different because you don't like the conclusions that come from assuming that things were more or less the same?

That is a true statement (the first sentence) and unavoidable reality.

One of the problems with modern "science" (which is not science) is that we want to know things that we simply do not know and cannot know. Our desire overwhelms truth.

We want to know things that are un-knowable. And the pressure to "publish or perish" contributes to the lowering of standards and the attempt to claim things that are unreliable.

We have to accept the limitations of our tools. But instead, "scientists" keep stacking card upon card in a house of cards, straining to say that we know things we cannot know.

But what "might have been" is problematic, because it is (a) subject to alternate explanations and (b) subject to alternate explanations WE MIGHT BE UNAWARE OF AT THE TIME, and (c) subject to alternate explanations for which we have blind spots or simply don't want to see.

So you say that information is "consistent with" a certain concept. But how do you know you have all the information? The disciplines of science protect us from erroneous assumptions.

You might be one discovery away from information INCONSISTENT with the hypothesis. So you don't claim something to be true until you have TESTED it with reliable experiments.

I can see that you are emotionally invested in this, which is strange because you seem to have no other theory about how all these species came to be present on the Earth, all having a genetic structure based on the exact same type of molecule. You have no theory about why there are conifers and fungi, mammals and reptiles and all the other varieties of life on Earth. Why the fossil record shows only simple organisms in the earliest fossil beds, with more complex and differentiated species showing up in more recent strata.

I majored in physics, including studying organic chemistry and astrophysics.

But this is important, what you say.

REAL SCIENCE DOES NOT ENSHRINE THE "LEAST BAD EXPLANATION" as true.

The "least bad explanation" is always "I DON'T KNOW (yet)."

We don't come up with scientific truth based on "Heck, I don't know, but I can't think of any other explanation."

Yet that is exactly what science has degenerated into. It is not science at all.

Of course, I do have an explanation, but it doesn't matter. The existence of another explanation or not does NOT justify calling something true simply because we can't -- at the moment -- think of any other explanation.

I am glad practicing scientists do not limit themselves to what you say SCIENCE is. I prefer to live in a world of increasing knowledge, rather than one in which every time we want to try to understand something outside our direct experience, someone runs up and shouts, "Stop! You can't know anything about that!"

Your points about radioactive dating ignore the fact that in many cases, multiple techniques confirm the same age. If the age is wrong because the original composition included more daughter element than expected, that would have to be true for each element by just the right amount for them all to give the same error. As is often the case with creationist arguments, yours requires one-off exceptions to the rule to explain everything.

The only thing that science can call a law is the product of repeated experiments capable of testing a hypothesis

No, that's what you call a confirmed theory (e.g., the theory of evolution). Newton didn't perform repeated experiments on different planets before coming up with the law of gravity.

You might be one discovery away from information INCONSISTENT with the hypothesis.

Yes, of course. I'm happy to acknowledge that we might be one discovery away from disproving the theory of evolution, or the theory of the age of the earth. Hasn't happened yet, though.

Apparently your faith in God rests on placing artificial barriers around SCIENCE and putting asterisks on everything we figure out, or think we figure out, that we can't perform repeated experiments on. (Do you accept that Titan probably has lakes of methane, or is that something else SCIENCE can't say anything about until we've brought back multiple samples?) Fortunately, my faith isn't that fragile.

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