Anti-evolution, pro science conservatives

WorldNetDaily ^ | 3/29/2008 | Gary Bauer and Daniel Allott

[wastedpotential]

Of all the factors that led to Mike Huckabee's demise in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes (insufficient funds, lack of foreign policy experience), there's one that has been largely overlooked: Huckabee's disbelief in the theory of evolution as it is generally understood – without the involvement of the Creator.

Perhaps you're thinking: What's evolution got to do with being president? Very little, as Huckabee was quick to remind reporters on the campaign trail. But from the moment the former Baptist minister revealed his beliefs on evolutionary biology, political commentators and scientists lambasted him. Some even suggested those beliefs should disqualify him from high office.

We believe most Americans

[tokenatheist]

That isn’t the only, or even the main, way that radiometric dating is calibrated.

[Coyoteman]

Here are some good links for anyone interested in the science of radiometric dating:

ReligiousTolerance.org Carbon-14 Dating (C-14): Beliefs of New-Earth Creationists

Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.

This site, BiblicalChronologist.org has a series of good articles on radiocarbon dating.

Are tree-ring chronologies reliable? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)

How does the radiocarbon dating method work? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)

How precise is radiocarbon dating?

Is radiocarbon dating based on assumptions?

Has radiocarbon dating been invalidated by unreasonable results?

Tree Ring and C14 Dating

Radiocarbon WEB-info Radiocarbon Laboratory, University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Radiocarbon -- full text of issues, 1959-2003.

[tokenatheist]

Thank you for the information it is very much appreciated.

[AndrewC]

Science also uses evidence.

How do you know what can be used as evidence without using logic at some point prior to obtaining whatever it is that you call evidence?

[editor-surveyor]

The way that radiometric dating of rocks was “calibrated” was simply assuming the age that they wanted the rocks to be, and adjusting the result accordingly.

That is why dating of rock of known recent age doesn’t turn up a reasonable date.

[editor-surveyor]

"So... Am I to assume that you consider my attempts to maintain cordial relations with my fellow freepers laughable?"

Do you think that this is a logical place for a person that stakes the purpose of their life on something as ridiculous as evolution to turn up?

[Coyoteman]

How do you know what can be used as evidence without using logic at some point prior to obtaining whatever it is that you call evidence?

Well I certainly don't go look for some useless philosopher with his head in the clouds for an opinion on what is and what is not evidence. I'd probably get a lecture on postmodernism or metaphysics or some other foolishness.

[AndrewC]

Well I certainly don't go look for some useless philosopher with his head in the clouds for an opinion on what is and what is not evidence

That is your problem and the reason you end up with just-so stories. Your "useless" philosopher was the person who gave you "falsifiability".

[tokenatheist]

Radiometric dating is use for more than the dating of rocks.

[betty boop]

Not correct. Science also uses evidence. It is very possible, even easy, to reach an erroneous conclusion using logic.

Yes Coyoteman. I understand that. Gödel's incompleteness principle and all that.

But another danger lurks: One could be using logic to argue from/for an assumption or presupposition which isn't itself "true." (I use that word in the workman's sense....) In which case, one is engaging in a pointless exercise....

Let me ask you a question: Doesn't the scientific method rely on logic to select and qualify its evidence in the first place? It seems internally inconsistent to argue that logic is to be disparaged, then to use logic to select the evidence you use to illustrate your point.

You wrote: "Philosophy seems to do its best in the absence of evidence." Good grief man, you have to be positively stone blind not to recognize how universally pervasive philosophy is at the very foundation of human thought, of all human knowledge disciplines, including your own. This evidence is literally everywhere....

Thanks so much for writing Coyoteman!

[Ohwhynot]

Do you think that this is a logical place for a person that stakes the purpose of their life on something as ridiculous as evolution to turn up?

I am baffled as to why you would believe that I stake the purpose of my life on evolution.

I consider evolution a process, nothing more and nothing less. It is the means, not the end, and as such, does not modify the purpose of life.

To answer your question, though, I was reading this thread because it involved Huckabee; I tend to read Free Republic for matters related to domestic politics. For matters related to Science, Business, Faith, etc, I tend to stick to more specialized sites. I wouldn't have posted in the thread at all, but for the fact that your initial question seemed curiously phrased to me.

[Fichori]

I don't mean to butt in, but there are a couple things you might like to know.

To say that, because the universe in expanding, an explosion must have taken place, commits a basic logical fallacy called affirming the consequent. (see post 231 for an example showing the Fallacy of Verified Prediction.)

One example of a non-explosion powered 'expansion' is Lunar Recession:
Friction by the tides is slowing the earth's rotation, so the lenght of a day is increasing by 0.002 seconds per century.
This means that the earth is losing angular momentum.
The law of conservation of angular momentum says that the angular momentum the earth loses must be gained by the moon.
Thus, the moon is slowly receding from the earth at about 12 inches per year.

So we know that redshift indicates motion and would suggest that the universe is expanding.
(Keep in mind there may be other things that cause redshift also)
So if the universe is expanding like is popularly thought, that means it needs a driving force.

One possibility is cosmic rotation:

According do Dr. Max Tegmark, of the University of Pennsylvania, who has analyzed WMAP CMB data and reported:
"We found something very bizarre; there is some extra, so far unexplained structure in the CMB.
We had expected that the microwave background would be truly isotropic, with no preferred direction in space but that may not be the case."

They had expected to see no pattern at all but what they saw was anything but random.

"The octopole and quadrupole components are arranged in a straight line across the sky, along a kind of cosmic equator. That's weird."

"We don't think this is due to foreground contamination," Dr Tegmark said. "It could be telling us something about the shape of space on the largest scales. We did not expect this and we cannot yet explain it."

This is consistent with a slow general rotation of the matter in the cosmos(with respect to an inertial frame or the 'fabric' of space), because this would produce a quadrupole moment and possibly an octopole moment in the CMB, and would explain the 'cosmic equator'.

So, as you can see, there are competing theories as to why the universe appears to be expanding.
In summing up, we can measure the universe, we cannot mesure the big bang.

Hope that helps.

[hosepipe]

CAN... science, the scientific method, being a scientist... be a second reality?..

If so, then a hermetically sealed world would adjust all evidence and facts encountered.. Segregated from first reality by a mentally contructed second reality, the walls of that second reality would be all important..

This 1st and 2nd reality conversation impacts another discussion.. Being the "sheep pens" in John ch 10.. because that is what Jesus was talking about "AS" sheep pens.. i.e. a second reality.. Indeed the sheep pen is within us.. We construct it.. or slide toward one already constructed.. This would be true for a God believer or a God unbeliever.. as well..

Scientists are surely not immune.. possibly even more infected within a scientific discipline.. with thoughts oriented in a certain direction.. Yes, even mathematicians..

[Coyoteman]

CAN... science, the scientific method, being a scientist... be a second reality?..

If so, then a hermetically sealed world would adjust all evidence and facts encountered.. Segregated from first reality by a mentally contructed second reality, the walls of that second reality would be all important..

Nice try, but I saw you palm that card.

You are defining your reality as the first reality (presumably including your religion, notwithstanding the complete lack of evidence for the supernatural).

"a hermetically sealed world would adjust all evidence and facts encountered" -- that sounds like religion, not science. Just look at the anti-science attitudes we see on these threads because science comes up with the "wrong" answers! Science shows the evidence for evolution, and constructs a theory to explain that evidence but some folks here can't tolerate that so they deny the evidence, they twist the facts, they quote mine, they wrap themselves in a "a hermetically sealed world" of belief and dogma -- anything to avoid having to face what the evidence in the real world actually shows.

And you are then defining science, which looks at everything observable and testable, as a second (read lesser) reality?

And you folks (collectively) are lecturing me on logic and science?

(What were those signs at the creation "museum?" Something like "Don't think -- Believe!" Yeah, that's doing science all right! That's how to establish reality!)

[metmom]

And you are then defining science, which looks at everything observable and testable, as a second (read lesser) reality?

That's about the size of it, I'd say. There's so much in life that cannot be reduced to a scientific experiment.

What does science do about beauty, morals, truth, decision making, emotions, society, relationships? Aren't those things real? If so, how do you describe them scientifically?

If science deals only with that which can be observed and tested, then it automatically eliminates a chunk of reality. It's only looking at a subset of reality, which then makes it fairly useless for describing the whole, which it has never dealt with.

[Ohwhynot]

Ah, thank you, I hadn’t heard of that theory before. I’ll have to read more about it when I have some free time; it sounds interesting.

To clarify myself a bit, however, I wasn’t intending to discount other theories (though I do believe some of my lines betrayed a gross ignorance of the field I’m discussing) - I was just arguing that the Big Bang theory is not inherently contradictory with a belief in God, as some seem to suggest.

In all honesty, I know next to nothing about the Big Bang - my astronomical interests lie in explaining more recent phenomena.

[Coyoteman]

What does science do about beauty, morals, truth, decision making, emotions, society, relationships? Aren't those things real? If so, how do you describe them scientifically?

Of course they are real, and science deals with them.

You don't need to come up with magic and supernaturalism to deal with those subjects! They can be observed and measured. Perhaps the fields that deal with them are in their infancy, but they are not something that science can't address.

If science deals only with that which can be observed and tested, then it automatically eliminates a chunk of reality. It's only looking at a subset of reality, which then makes it fairly useless for describing the whole, which it has never dealt with.

A subset of reality? That subset called science currently excludes magic, superstition, wishful thinking, old wives tales, folklore, what the stars foretell and what the neighbors think, faked moon landings, omens, public opinion, astromancy, spells, Ouija boards, anecdotes, a flat or hollow earth, Da Vinci codes, tarot cards, sorcery, seances, sore bunions, black cats, divine revelation, crop circles, table tipping, witch doctors, crystals and crystal balls, numerology, divination, geocentrism, faith healing, miracles, palm reading, the unguessable verdict of history, televangelists, magic tea leaves, new age mumbo-jumbo, hoodoo, voodoo and all that other weird stuff.

If science is the poorer for excluding all of that nonsense -- well, I'll take science any day. You can have all of that nonsense and you're welcome to it.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Without any knowledge of the truth, there's simply no way to determine if something is a lie.

I've read you say something like this before, and I still wonder why not. It's very easy to determine if something is a lie without knowing what the truth is. If my son comes home from school and tells me they went to China on a field trip that day, I know it's a lie, even if I don't know what they really did do. If someone tells me that 25-foot tree was planted yesterday, I know that's not true even if I have no idea how old it really is.

I'm always surprised when anti-evolutionists come up with arguments that boil down to, "We can't know anything."

[metmom]

Of course they are real, and science deals with them.

How? I though you didn't go in for the soft sciences.

They can be observed and measured.

How do you measure beauty? Decision making? Relationships? How do you test them?

You guys are the ones who keep saying that science only deals with what can be observed and measured and tested. You're the ones putting the limits on what science deals with in the entire world.

Perhaps the fields that deal with them are in their infancy, but they are not something that science can't address.

OK. What's the test for beauty? Morals? Emotions? Will?

Those fields are not only not in their infancy, they're not even in existence.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

A subset of reality? That subset called science....You can have all of that nonsense and you're welcome to it.

I'm more willing than you are to entertain the idea that there are real things that science can't (at least not yet) measure that aren't all nonsense. The problem is, everyone insists that their idea of what that is is the right one, but since it can't be measured, there's no way for them to demonstrate it. Letting them argue amongst themselves over who's right, and meanwhile coming to one's own personal conclusion about it, is mostly harmless sport. It's when they start insisting that the stuff that science can measure should be ignored that it stops being harmless.