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To: RFEngineer
There is an awful lot of research and data for you to refute before you can make this claim.

Not necessarily. Most of what evos believe to be "evidence" for evolution, per se, has nothing actually to do with evolution. It requires a philosophical pre-acceptance of the evolutionary paradigm, before it becomes "apparent" that such evidence really, truly constitutes evidence.

For example, take genetics. Evos assume that the very existence of genetics is "proof" for evolution. It is not. Genetics is simply a mechanism - it makes no claims about origins. One must first accept the a priori assumption of evolution before genetic evidence qualifies as "evidence." No evolutionist has, or even can, demonstrate that macroevolution actually exists from genetic evidences, to the detriment of creationist arguments involving microevolution and so forth.

Another example would be the radiometric dating techniques relied upon to give extremely old ages for rock layers. The problem with this, conceptually, is that it relies upon assumptions about the "starting condition" of rocks (no initial daughter nuclei, impermeability to argon, etc.) that are specious at best, and at worst have actually been proven through repeatable laboratory experimentation to be false. Essentially, radiometric dating methods, in and of themselves, are just tools. Yes, radioactivity exists, yes it is for the most part constant in rate (though there is evidence which suggests this to not always be the case), but no, we cannot rely upon the spurious assumptions made by evolutionists who require these assumptions so as to make their long-age dates "work." You simply cannot assume, for instance, that in K-Ar dating there is no initial argon present, even in a newly-formed rock, since we know through observation that this is not the case. Yet, evos make this assumption because to not do so would suddenly make their zircons not 200 million years old.

Hence, evos rely upon a lot of mythology that they have built up for themselves, but which is not obvious if one does not pre-accept the underlying philosophical substrate. Simply having a large body of "evidence" means nothing if that "evidence" is all internally self-referential, but externally spurious.

122 posted on 12/12/2009 9:41:21 AM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Conservatives unite behind conservative Republicans in the primaries!)
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus

“Most of what evos believe to be “evidence” for evolution, per se, has nothing actually to do with evolution. It requires a philosophical pre-acceptance of the evolutionary paradigm, before it becomes “apparent” that such evidence really, truly constitutes evidence.”

What did you just say?

“Evos assume that the very existence of genetics is “proof” for evolution.”

I don’t know how you could possibly make this claim - or if you insist on making it how you could exclude anything, including genetics as proof of just about anything.

“No evolutionist has, or even can, demonstrate that macroevolution actually exists from genetic evidences, to the detriment of creationist arguments involving microevolution and so forth.”

Nor have they tried. They’ve made observations, taken data, and openly presented conclusions, as science requires. No creationist has presented any data refuting the evolution data - so the theory stands. If you present Genesis, then you are entering a whole different arena than science.

As for the rest of your post.....the science is not nearly so tenuous as you claim. Nonetheless, it is openly presented and is subject to modification as better data comes along. Nobody has ever been able to demonstrate the mechanism by which radiometric dating is “wrong” - rather there has been much research on the error margins, but nothing substantiated that would make it completely wrong.

You assume that science would not accept such a sea change if such were to come to pass. You assume that there is such calcification in the beliefs of scientists that they would refuse to look at new findings, should they appear.

You are wrong about that, to be sure.


127 posted on 12/12/2009 9:55:51 AM PST by RFEngineer
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