Posted on 12/23/2014 5:11:08 PM PST by BenLurkin
Scientists have discovered a fossilized fish so well preserved that the rods and cones in its 300-million-year-old [sic]eyeballs are still visible under a scanning electron microscope..
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Carefully dated? At that claimed age its more like hyper-assumed. What sceintific method has confirmed the beginning conditions were known; the beginning ratio of daughter to parent Isotope were known (zero date problem)l that there was a constant decay rate; that there was no leaching or addition of parent or daughter isotopes; that the forgoing assumptions have been valid for billions of years, etc. Not to mention the extreme difficulty in measuring precisely very small amounts of the various isotopes.
http://www.detectingdesign.com/radiometricdating.html
The article clearly identifies the source of this exceptionally well-preserved fossil (NOT soft tissue) as Hamilton Quarry in Kansas.
Hamilton Quarry is a well-known site of many well-preserved fossils from the Carboniferous era.
World-wide Carboniferous deposits are dated from around 360 million years ago to about 300 million years ago, and account for much of the world's coal supplies.
How is geological dating accomplished?
The gold-standard is radiometric dating, for which there are dozens of different materials that can be used, depending on a stratum's age.
For just two examples: carbon-14 is very accurate back to around 60,000 years ago, while Uranium-lead is accurate within around +-2 million years, but all the way back to billions of years ago.
Uranium-lead samples also come with built-in cross-checks using both U-235 and U-238.
Are all of these methods fool-proof?
No, of course not, they all have to be double-checked, cross-checked and re-checked to be sure the answers are consistent with everything else known about the samples.
But given that many thousands of such tests have been performed, over many decades and all over the globe, the consistencies of results are about as good as you can ever get in natural-science, and support every other theory we have (i.e., evolution) about the natural history of ancient Earth.
Yet dating systems other the carbon dating require many absurd assumptions that are impossible to falsify thus making them scholastic authority not the scientific method.
“There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method, the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are to be junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority”
From the short story “Lifeline” by Heinlein who was one of the first to speak out against the “settled science” of academia, way back in the 1940s.
No, because in any example where those assumptions were, if fact, false, they produce inconsistent results.
Only accurate assumptions produce the expected consistent results.
Indeed, it's multiple cross-checking and cross-referencing of results from different methods which provide some level of confidence that assumptions are confirmed.
And here is the ultimate confirmation of those scientific "assumptions": radiometric dating can predict which types of fossils will later be found in a particular geological strata, and/or the types of fossils found in a particular strata can predict the results of later radiometric dating.
So that's not "absurd assumption", but rather confirmed scientific theory.
Its only scholastic authority not sceintific method. Look again at the list of assumptions required for the radiometric dating theory. None of those is falsifiable but are taken as authority regardless.
What's this about my Christmas rods and cones being 300 million years old?? Now that is about the silliest thing I have ever heard. I have a lot of things in my attic that are older than I am but 300 million years? What good would a rod that old or pine cone for that matter---what's that?
What?
Ohhhh...
Yeah this stuff here sounds about as scientific as manmade global warming.
The fruitcake on the other hand......
If the assumptions are so absurd how come radiometric dating is such an accurate tool? If scientists want to go looking for a particular type of fossil, they look in rocks that have been dated to the period that specific type of creature lived because that’s where they are.
T Rex fossils are found in rocks dated to the Cretaceous period and not in any others. I often wonder if Creationists when they decide to go fossil hunting just pick up their tools and start digging randomly because that’s what the logic of their position on rock dating leads to.
Little-known by-product of hydrofracking, as it happens.
Fruitcake futures are bottoming out.
How come its claimed to be such an accurate tool when it cannot be falsified and is based on absurd assumptions?
Read it again, more carefully this time, nothing "circular" about it, FRiend.
Let me say it again, more slooooooooooowly this time:
But that term "definitive truth" was not used in the article, so you object to your own overheated imagination!
Yes, the article does say the discovery of such well-preserved fish-eyes provides "definitive proof" that complex eyes first developed at least 300 million years ago.
"Proof" is a legal term, not a scientific word.
The proper scientific term is "confirmed".
So, the news-reporter is just giving us his opinion that if presented in a court of law, a jury would consider it "proof" of the scientific claim.
Science itself doesn't' work that way.
Indeed, this article itself, dated December 23, 2014, uses neither terms "proof" nor "confirmed", but only "evidence" and "suggests".
Those are the correct scientific words.
Of course, like any theory they can all be falsified, by evidence contradicting them.
But no such evidence exists, and literal mountains of evidence confirm them daily.
Even the most basic assumptions of science are, at least theoretically, falsifiable:
That response is logical fallacy both circular and bootstrapping.
I also studied a bit of philosophy, certainly enough to learn there are limits to what reason, logic or science can tell us.
Science itself is a very limited, restricted enterprise -- restricted to those questions which can be addressed by its basic assumptions, such as "naturalism" and "uniformitarianism".
So science makes no claims to "higher truth", metaphysics or super-natural understandings.
Instead, science is all about, and only about "what works", physically, materially, naturally.
Indeed, just the other day I read a scientist discussing the scientific terms "hypothesis", "theory" and "law" and suggesting those words would be more accurately understood if we replaced them with the term "pattern", since that in essence is what they all mean -- patterns detected in nature.
Bottom line: if you are looking for "definitive truth" or even just "definitive proof", then you've come to the wrong place, you won't find them in science.
So instead you must go to philosophy or theology for "truth" and to law for "proof", not science.
The only things science can offer you for certain -- yes, a thin gruel spiritually -- is that whatever it says works does indeed work, until a better explanation (a more accurate pattern) can be discovered.
So what your philosopher-friends above are telling you is just that there is a realm of understanding outside & higher than the realm of science, and from the heights of that philosophical realm they feel entitled to pass judgment on lowly science.
And of course, they are correct.
So lowly science will continue to humbly do what it's intended to do -- keep our lights on, keep our homes warm, put food on our tables, clothes on our backs, move us from point A to point B, keep us healthy, solve our natural mysteries, and let us communicate at light speeds, etc..
Yes, it's often a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it...
And your response is nonsensical.
You know, FRiend, I've long suspected that "philosophers" like yourself must envy, even loathe, science because it produces a constant stream of near miracles, while most philosophers occupy a status one rung below starving-artists.
You produce nothing of value, but you are entitled to name-call and hand-wave at science for being "illogical", "circular" & "bootstrapping", etc.
The truth of the matter is that science is what it is, regardless of how "illogical" or "circular" you accuse it of being.
You of course are entitled to your opinions, just so long as you don't pretend they are "scientific".
On that you are wrong. The issue is what you call science is nothing more then Scholastic authority. It is not the scientific method. Its ideological theory masquerading as science that rejects any facts that tend to show its incorrect.
Junk science is not science. Arguing its science because you call it such does not make it so. That’s logical fallacy, bootstrapping, circular reasoning.
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