Tinker, Little Tinks, and Honey Bear
Daisy, the best collie ever!
Posted on 05/01/2006 8:29:14 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Sure, I'll correct it -- as usual, AnswersInGenesis is full of crap, which is why I yet again have to wonder why you keep linking them at every available opportunity, instead of bothering to use *reliable* sources from actual science journals. Hint: AiG is in the business of propagandizing against real science, and they're not above completely twisting the truth to do it.
Dave, why do you keep using their material? Is it out of a complete disregard for accuracy, or out of outright dishonesty?
Let's take your above bit of nonsense, straight from AiG as an example. You mindlessly parrot them saying, "Really, anything over about 50,000 years old, should theoretically have no detectable 14C left". This is, of course, completely horse crap. 50,000 years is 8.7 half-lives of 14C, so after 50,000 years 2^(-8.7) or 0.24% of the original 14C will be present. This is hardly the same as "theoretically no detectable 14C" -- neither in theory NOR in practice. That's far above the sensitivity of AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) equipment,, and radiocarbon dating under good conditions can be accurately achieved on samples up to 58,000 years old. See for example ABOX radiocarbon dating of archaeological charcoal. AiG also "forgets" to mention, during all of its hand-waving attempts to try to dishonestly raise false doubts about radiocarbon dates, that the results of such testing -- even up to 58,000 years (well beyond the 50,000 that AiG claims is "impossible" even in "theory") -- matches the dates given by COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT methods of dating the same samples, such as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) techniques for example. How does AiG explain *THAT*? Oh, right, they don't. They wouldn't want to call their readers' attention to any facts that make it obvious that AiG is spinning bulls**t.
Dave, how about this -- if I can go through the two links you just provided, and show you, say, five examples of gross "error", and five examples of gross misrepresentation in an attempt to dishonestly "spin" the impression in the direction that AiG wants the reader to get (i.e., in order to falsely give an impression that radiocarbon dating is entirely unreliable), will you agree to finally stop posting their lies?
Or do you not *care* that you're providing grossly misleading and grossly inaccurate "information" to your fellow Freepers?
Well, your miniature horses are adorable...
Anti-evolutionism is evil, being based on intentional lies and misrepresentations.
Thanks for pointing out that "by their fruits shall ye know them".
Evolutionary biology, on the other hand, is no "evil idea", it's merely observations of how living things change over time. This is no more "evil" than observing and reporting how mountain ranges change over time -- no matter how much you guys froth and scream nonsense to the contrary.
I'm sorry that simply reporting reality freaks you guys out so much, but that's not *my* problem.
Actually, it does BOTH.
A common creator in the sense that naturally genes are very similar in the sense that the original design for life on earth followed the same basic pattern - so if you want to believe that this is due to God choosing that basic pattern you certainly can.
As far as the genetic similarity indicating the development of the species since the original creation of life on earth (ie, "the dreaded 'E' word"), well, it certainly does that too.
One need only examine the developmental stages that early human embryos go through (showing fish, then reptilian, and finally mammalian features) to get a clue - one would HOPE (against hope) at least....
Yes, the anti-evolutionists are in full swing. Those of us conversant with mainstream biology, on the other hand, are just amused.
I am happy to see you've considered my previous posts "substantive"
You have *really* got to work on your reading comprehension. No, that's not what I said.
although from the comments I've received in response, one could scarcely form that impression.
Perhaps you might get a clue from that fact.
And having noted the frequency with which frevolutionists engage in cheap shots and spiteful one-liners, I can hardly confess any guilt over mine.
It's hardly "cheap shots and spiteful one-liners" to accurately describe the behavior of the anti-evolutionists and the abysmal quality of their "material", although it is true that such frank assessments will be less than complimentary.
Seriously, Dave, when we call anti-evolution efforts "idiotic", it's not a "cheap shot", nor "spiteful", it's objective review. If that bothers you, get your cohorts to increase the quality of their material. We're tired of trying to educate them on a subject they're dead-set on remaining ignorant about, or filling their heads with Things That Just Ain't So because they find the false propaganda more comforting than the things they're afraid they'll find in the science journals.
Is it commonly thought then that all mammals (pigs, horses, whatever) were simpler in intelligence thousands of years ago than today? In other words, our modern day sheep are much more intelligent than they were a few thousand years ago? Every animal is evolving smarter in their intellect? 30,000 years ago did we have a bunch of dumb animals? And 30,000 years from now, if they're still around, sheep will be much more intelligent?
I really like little Blossom, shes quite the cutie...
The folks I told you about, who lived in back in my parents in California, and had a large number of the miniature horses, took us for a tour of their ranch...we got to see all their miniature horses...they were so cute, and friendly, just like dogs, ran up to us, nuzzled us, tried to get close to us, and investigate what we were doing...
In another part of the ranch, they had a smaller penned in area, with a small barn....in that smaller penned in area, they had about 4-5 miniature horses, that had some birth defects, supposedly because they were too closely bred with other minis on the ranch....they were so very sweet...most of their birth defects, showed up in their faces....
I remember this one little miniature horse, named Timmy...his whole snout was not as it should have been...it was too short, and much too wide...he was just the sweetest horse, and the absolute favorite of all the school groups that came through on tours...all the horses on that ranch were great, but special attention was always paid to those few horses with birth defects....
I guess one has to be careful when breeding them...
Because "common design" and "common ancestry" produce *very* different types of characteristic similarities *and* differences.
There are very specific kinds and patterns of similarities, *and* differences, along multiple independent and cross-confirming lines of evidence, which overwhelmingly support evolutionary origins. See this link if you want to start delving into the details, but the short form is that evolutionary processes would produce *very* specific kinds of similarities across lineages, and *very* specific kinds of differences -- patterns which would *not* be produced by "design" processes, unless the designer was being intentionally deceitful and purposely mimicking the byproducts of evolution. And those evolutionary patterns are exactly what we find when we analyze DNA, at every level, in every genome, in every way we've thought to test so far, hundreds of thousands of times over.
This is not some mere coincidence or loose "similarity". This is a rich, deep, detailed history of evolutionary "tracers" which are embedded in every genome in hundreds of conceivable ways.
It's no overstatement to say that to any objective observer who has taken the time to actually view and understand the DNA evidence, the debate over whether life on Earth evolved through common ancestry is *over*. The evidence is just vastly overwhelming that it did.
If you're unclear as to how science actually tests its analyses of the evidence to ensure that they are valid, see this post. This post also covers, in general, how common descent is distinguished from design hypotheses when testing the evidence.
Furthermore, people often use a programming analogy, it should be pointed out that no one could possibly mistake the results of "evolutionary programming" (like genetic algorithms, etc., whereby evolution is harnessed to produce program code without direct human intervention or programming) for the results of a program written directly by a programmer (i.e. "designer"), even one which incorporated a lot of "code re-use" or cut-and-paste from other projects.
The results of the two methods of producing programs are *vastly* different in character and structure, and any programmer could tell at a glance whether a particular program was actually written by a human, or "grown/evolved" via genetic algorithms. And the same goes for DNA -- it looks exactly like the results of an evolutionary process, and not at all like the results of a "design team".
Depends on the lab, sample, and methods.
There are experiments for the AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) method going back toward 80,000 years, but that is experimental, not yet a standard, commercially-available practice.
For some materials, contamination is a problem, and I would be careful. Charcoal can absorb humic acids, which, while the labs try to remove them, can be a problem with extremely old samples.
The smaller the quantity of remaining 14C (i.e., the older the sample) the more care needs to be taken with sample selection. That's why creationists are able to find dinosaur bones which date 35,000 or so years old--they get samples bone contaminated by groundwater. They love such contamination! Real scientists do their best to get clean samples. (How many samples did the creationists obtain with results like >50,000 years before they got one contaminated enough that they liked the result?
Lesson: Never rely on only one sample! If you have an old and important specimen, do several or many different samples and use a couple of different labs. Make sure the sample is not contaminated. (If its just a piece of shell from a 3,000 year old site, no big deal. The dates will come out just fine.)
And never, never, ever listen to the young earth types or creation websites when it comes to this kind of science. Their belief blinds them to actual data, and they will stretch things any old which way to try and match their beliefs. Scientists are not like that; if the data heads in an unexpected direction, we can accept it.
As Heinlein noted,
Belief gets in the way of learning.Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973
I think you will find a somewhat satisfying answer to your question here. (Not DNA, but strong biological evidence of another sort.)
Ironically, the very topic of this discussion lends further credence to the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, if anyone cares to dig deeper into the subject matter.
What percentage would suggest a different creator or different ancestry?
You miss my point. It is that if someone wants to believe God created everything, he/she does not need to try to "shoot down" the evolutionary evidence because the two issues - one Faith, one scientific, belong to different disciplines and are not mutually exclusive...I think that Pope John Paul II's statement on the subject is just about the only rational one that I have heard from a church leader that whose views I respect...
OK
*ducking*
Is it commonly thought then that all mammals (pigs, horses, whatever) were simpler in intelligence thousands of years ago than today? In other words, our modern day sheep are much more intelligent than they were a few thousand years ago? Every animal is evolving smarter in their intellect? 30,000 years ago did we have a bunch of dumb animals? And 30,000 years from now, if they're still around, sheep will be much more intelligent?
Well first, most of the time a few thousand years isn't going to cover a great deal of evolutionary change. You should look at much larger time spans to get a more "big picture" view.
But the primary point is that beyond a certain point, intelligence isn't that critical for a lot of animal species, and for those animals evolutionary pressures will likely be at work honing *other* abilities, not "IQ". For early humans, however, intelligence *was* more critical to our survival, and thus we "specialized" in better brains while cheetahs, for example, specialized in being fast enough to better outrun their prey. There's not just one "success strategy" in all of nature -- different species "specialize" in different abilities.
Often there are real tradeoffs. For example, blind cave fish are blind not only because they no longer need their eyes (since they live in darkness), but because a quirk in their biochemistry makes it so that by losing their eyes, they are able to smell better -- which is obviously a big help in a lightless environment. Their cousin species which still live in the open, however, are better off keeping their eyes, and getting by with a less acute sense of smell. There's a trade-off between the two senses, and which balance evolution achieves along the possible continiuum of the trade-off depends strongly on the exact needs of the species, and that depends heavily on its current environment.
It's a "Romantic Generation" (Charles Rosen) thing. Of course, I could just say, listen to the Chopin Nocturnes as explanation. (Or some of Schumann's earlier works.)
Thanks very much for that link...its a long, long read, and I am not sure how much of it I will be able to understand completely, but I think its worth my effort...I appreciate the link very much...
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