Anti-evolution, pro science conservatives

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.

[[One classic — “the second law of thermal documents” will live in internet infamy forever!]]

You’ve still failed to explain how moot examples of static geomentric patterns amounts to highly dynamic livign IC systems- the only ones laughing about misunderstandings are scientists who won’t touch the laughable examples of non living systems that show negative entropy equating to living systems in a law abiding world- I can give you many examples of scientists-= secular scientists who wouldn’t tough Schnieders rediculous ‘open system’ arguments- I asked you before if you wanted to step in it by asserting moot examples can show ‘Macroevolution can violate the second law’- but you tucked tail and ran- per usual.

Here- for your reading pleasure- Wallace rips Schneider a new science hole on this issue: http://www.trueorigin.org/9907.asp

[[because you can’t pick and choose the results you like and discard the results you don’t like]]

Says the man who picks and chooses everythign about Macroevoltuion to suit his needs.

[[The earth is far older than 6,000 years and there’s nothing the YECs can do about it other than denial of both the results and the methods of science.]]

Says the man who picks and chooses which dates he accepts and which he doesn’t

[[ And the reasons they come up with for denying science are generally both hilarious and pathetic]]

No more so than the reasons Macroeovlutionmists give for denying science by insisting a biolgocially impossible hypothesis ‘could have happened’- infact- the science ID does adheres far more strictly to scientific methods than anythign you’ve produced so far- but far beit from me to nitpick at ‘science’

[[Is any method other than radiometric dating used to determine the particular time of death?

If so, how?]]

Yes, all of the following:

Superposition
Not a valid dating method- too manyvariables must be taken into account- too many suppositions
http://www.fbinstitute.com/powell/evolutionexposed.htm

Stratigraphy
http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/bulletins/135/home.html

Dendrochronology
Up to 10000 years tops

Radiometric Dating Methods
problems with radiometic http://www.specialtyinterests.net/carbon14.html

Obsidian Hydration Dating
Many obsidians are crowded with microlites and crystallines (gobulites and trichites), and these form fission-track-like etch pits following etching with hydrofluoric acid. The etch pits of the microlites and crystallines are difficult to separate from real fission tracks formed from the spontaneous decay of 238U, and accordingly, calculated ages based on counts including the microlite and crystalline etch pits are not reliable.”
http://trueorigin.org/dating.asp
http://www.scientifictheology.com/STH/Pent3.html

Paleomagnetic/Archaeomagnetic
Very little info on this method
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/tecto.htm

Luminescence Dating Methods
http://karst.planetresources.net/Kimberley_Culture.htm

Amino Acid Racemization
http://www.creation-science-prophecy.com/amino/

Fission-track Dating
http://www.ao.jpn.org/kuroshio/86criticism.html

Ice Cores
Varves
At best- the two methods above are only accurate to about 11,000 years due to numerous conditions and environmental uncertainties

Pollens
Corals
Highly unreliable- you’d need constant temps to maintaIN reliable growth pattersn http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v14/i1/coral_reef.asp

Cation Ratio
Fluorine Dating
http://www.present-truth.org/Creation/creation-not-evolution-13.htm

Patination
Known times only throuhg analysis of the patina
Oxidizable Carbon Ratio

Electron Spin Resonance
Cosmic-ray Exposure Dating
Closely related to the buggiest dating methods of Carbon dating

why it’s wrong:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html#Carbon
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3059

RaDio helio dating disproves:
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/369
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/
http://www.rae.org/

[[And the reasons they come up with for denying science are generally both hilarious and pathetic. One classic — “the second law of thermal documents” will live in internet infamy forever!]]

I’ll issue the challenge to you again- just like I did in hte last thread on the issue where you ‘mysteriously’ went silent after I posted the links- anbd I’ll even be gracious and issue another warnign that you’ll come away looking as foolish as Schneider did when he too tucked his tail and stormed off whinging and complaining about Wallace and refusing to answer the questions that made him look rediculous. Care to defend the idea that an open system allows Macroeovlution? (Hint- you might want to go to trueorigins and type ‘second law’ into the search bar before you answer)

Schneider- for those who aren’t familiar is a ‘scientist who wrote a much cited article on talkorigins- problem is that no reputable scientists would touch his claims and examples with a ten foot pole because htey are so rediculous. Schneider main argument was that because ice crystals can ‘show negative entropy’ in an ‘open system’ then Macroevolution ‘could have’ violated the second law (supposedly at trillions of steps of ever increasing complexities, and ever increasing self-organizing processes along hte way- this despite the FACT that there is not one shred of scientific evidence to support any living system having done so- but mind you- if htere’s a snowballs chance in hell- this is good enough in the minds of Macroevoltuionists to conclude that Macroevolution beat hte odds at trillions of steps- no wonder scientists laugh at Schnieder- Yet less knowledgeable Macroevolutionists continue to this day to cite Schneider as the gospel truth because apparently this is the best they can offer) Keep laughing Coyote- it speaks volumes.

(Said tokenathiest) Try the first 10 or 20 links at the following URL

http://www.google.com/search?q=evidence+of+common+descent&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Coyoteman, per tokenathiest's suggestion I'm reading through the first link of the list he provided me, which (at least at the time) was the 29+ evidences at talk origins.

However, on this page, we read:

Common descent is a general descriptive theory that concerns the genetic origins of living organisms (though not the ultimate origin of life). The theory specifically postulates that all of the earth's known biota are genealogically related, much in the same way that siblings or cousins are related to one another. Thus, macroevolutionary history and processes necessarily entail the transformation of one species into another and, consequently, the origin of higher taxa. Because it is so well supported scientifically, common descent is often called the "fact of evolution" by biologists.

It describes it both as a theory and as something that is commonly called fact.

Does the hypotheses that all diversity of life came to be by macroevolution(hey they used the word) really rise to the level of theory and fact?

In your post 407 you mentioned that the current scientific hypotheses regarding origins were plausible and based on limited evidence, but did not rise to the level of a theory.

Also, on this page, it seems to quite strongly indicate that the idea of "goo to you by way of the zoo" is theory and fact. They say in many ways and by many quotes from different authors that it is all theory and fact. Quoting Gould, they say "And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

That almost sounds like "We may not know how it happened, but we're certain it did happen." Also seems a little dogmatic to me.

Anyway, Coyote, my one question is whether these articles I'm reading are right on the money or a bit biased?

Thanks,

-Jesse

I would still like very much to hear how you determine who is a scientist, and whether Michael Faraday, Thomas Edison and the others I listed in post 632 , whether they were scientists.

If we're going to say that only scientists are qualified to define what science is or things like " You are not a scientist, and your opinions on what is or is not a science are meaningless", it becomes important to understand just what defines whether one is a scientist.

Does having a Ph.D at an accredited university always mean that the bearer is a scientist and is thereby qualified to define what science is or give opinions on it?

Thanks,

-Jesse

[The big bang] was a super-natural incident, since it happened beyond any known natural process.

I'm not sure the word "supernatural" applies to a state before there was any nature. The big bang brought our laws of physics and natural processes into being; it couldn't have violated laws that didn't exist. Beyond that, I don't think much about the big bang. It's a fascinating hypothesis, but I won't pretend to have enough physics expertise to assess its likelihood.

Have you noticed any facts or evidences, even just a few small ones, that don't make sense with your understanding of evolution or origins, or does it all make perfect sense to you?

As far as origins go, I have no opinion. As for evolution, no, I don't know of any facts that don't make sense with my understanding of it.

I guess I misunderstood your post.

Okay, let's recap. I said "scientists no longer look for a linear progression from dinosaurs to birds," by which I meant (as I explained later) that they didn't expect that all the dinosaurs would be replaced by more birdlike creatures which would be replaced by birds, step by step. (Imagine a crowd of people very slowly shuffing down the street--the center of the crowd can get from point A to point B without any individual member occupying both of those points. It's more like that.)

You asked a question that said "fossils found in the fossil record were laid down in a non-linear chronological progression."

I said that the fossils themselves were obviously laid down in a chronological progression, because some animals died before others. That's all I meant.

After that I think we were talking at cross purposes.

I'm not sure the word "supernatural" applies to a state before there was any nature.

But there are certain natural laws that we have known all our lives. We have no free-standing evidence that they have never not existed, but the big bang happened outside of all currently known natural laws. It was beyond natural, or super-natural. (By free standing evidence I mean non-circular. If we use the big bang as evidence that the laws of physics were once vastly different, then we cannot use the fact that the laws were once vastly different as evidence that the big bang could have happened.)

The big bang brought our laws of physics and natural processes into being; it couldn't have violated laws that didn't exist.

So you're saying that the big bang brought about gravity? Do you ever wonder where the source substance for the big bang came from? It sure looks like an article of faith to me.

Beyond that, I don't think much about the big bang. It's a fascinating hypothesis, but I won't pretend to have enough physics expertise to assess its likelihood.

Understood. I don't find the evidence compelling myself. (Or even plausible.)

As far as origins go, I have no opinion.

OK.

As for evolution, no, I don't know of any facts that don't make sense with my understanding of it.

I'm assuming here that we're talking about "macroevolution" or from amoeba to a man, rather then the easily observed variation between individual generations. (I grew up on a small family farm so I certainly know that while you tend to get black kittens if you breed black cats, that the kittens won't be exactly the same as their parents.)

What about the drastic gap between the intelligence of the human and his next closest living non-human ancestor? Wouldn't you expect there to be some intermediate, if evolution is true?

What about the lack of the millions of "As of yet undiscovered intermediate species" -- do you wonder why if there were these millions of generations, why we don't find a complete array of finely incremental fossils?

After all, it takes an enormous number of generations to get from amoeba to man. And man wasn't even the only end result -- there was the lines leading to the whales and the cows and horses. So there had to have been literally millions of generations. Man has been breeding horses and cows and all sort of farm animals for all of recorded history, which goes back several thousand years, and yet animals and people are still pretty much the same. So we can see that a thousand generations (Most animals are ready to reproduce after a year or two.) isn't a significant number when talking about speciation. So it must have taken millions or billions of generations.

Now if there had only been a thousand intermediate species needed to build a finely divided developmental path from amoeba to man, and we only found 10, I'd say "Well, yeah, it's going to be hard to find all of that few in such a big world." But with the number of generations that would have been required plus the number of different branches there were, we should be seeing enormous numbers of fossils -- not just a few dozen specimens which appear to be some sort of intermediate.

How would you rate your certainty that the hypotheses of "Amoeba to man" is correct? "Maybe?" Probably? Certainly? Somewhere between Knowing it and Believing it?

Thanks,

-Jesse

Jesse-- There are two different issues here.

The first issue is that origins must be separated from evolution. The second is that fact must be separated from theory.

Your question regarding "goo to you by way of the zoo" mixes all four of these together. I suspect it was designed to do so, a strawman with a catchy rhyme and meter as well.

Once you separate origins from evolution things become easier to study. I think that origins, as I suggested earlier, are covered in science by several hypotheses which account for the data. But that data is limited and none of these hypotheses has gathered either a lot of support or advanced to the level of a theory. The jury is still out.

As far as evolution, it is in fact both a theory and a fact. The fact of evolution can be seen in every generation -- it differs from the previous generation. Even creationists admit to evolution the fact as they accept "microevolution." Some even accept "macroevolution" as they posit all existing species being formed from the original kinds since emerging from the ark. That would be macroevolution at several hundred times the speed posited by scientists. One ("Woodmorappe") even posits that various species of fossil man developed after the flood, so he sees macroevolution as occurring much as scientists do but several hundred times faster and in reverse!

So it is clear that evolution the fact is almost universally accepted. Now comes evolution the theory. The theory seeks to explain the facts of evolution. Because scientists can see evolution occurring all around us, and can see quite a bit of complimentary evidence in the fossil and genetic records, and because virtually all of the data points in the same direction, they theorize common descent.

This is one of those theories that is probably 99.999% documented, and so it is often called a fact. Technically it is still a theory, just as the "fact" that the sun rises in the east is still a theory. But when something is so well supported it is often spoken of as a fact.

So to your question, it does look like the evidence supports common descent and humans descending from ape-like critters. While there are still details to be worked out, that is the direction things are headed based on a huge amount of data that we currently have. There are virtually no hypotheses or evidence suggesting the contrary.

There are other ideas floating around: humans are the result of space aliens tinkering with the genomes, or are the result of transplants from other planets. But there is so little evidence supporting these ideas that they can be ignored for the time being.

It is pretty much the same for "intelligent design." This is an idea that is inspired by religion and which has suggested some lines of investigation that science can address. Those lines of investigation, such as irreducible complexity, have not yet panned out. The primary examples of IC (flagella and the eye) have all been explained using existing theory and evidence, negating the claims of ID. Until ID can come up with some evidence that withstands scientific scrutiny, it will remain no more than just an idea.

Hope this helps.

Methodological Naturalism is based on dogmatic assumptions that, among other things, there is no God.

No, it's not. It's based on the reality that methodological investigation and measurement of natural phenomena is the most effective way to produce scientific results. This assumption is reinforced both by the methodology's usefulness and success, and by the unavailability of any useful or successful methodology for investigating or measuring supernatural phenomena.

In short, no one has yet come up with a "methodological supernaturalism" that produces repeatable or practical scientific information.

Scientists Interpret the available evidence according to Methodological Naturalism.

As they must. Scientific information must be ideologically neutral to be of use. You may personally choose to put a subsequent theological spin on derived information, but the archive of scientific information is itself unconcerned with your theology.

It is these Atheistic assumptions being applied to science that YEC's have a beef with.

And the best way to express this "beef" with methodological naturalism is to propose and demonstrate a "methodological supernaturalism" that has some practical application for science.

I, for one, would be very interested.

You continue to miss his point. He is saying plainly that intelligence can be purely mechanical and does not require any assumption of supernatural intervention.

Phillip Johnson reads Shapiro’s statement the same way I do:

“That sounds like a ringing endorsement of Behe’s scientific claims, but Shapiro nonetheless blasted Behe for arguing that those unexplained biochemical systems might be designed. Raising that possibility was “fighting the battles of the past rather than seeing the vision of the future.” That’s another illustration of how strong the hold of materialist philosophy is on the minds of contemporary biologists. If Behe’s science is accurate, why should the vision of the future exclude design?

Shapiro then proceeded from philosophical prejudice to a form of confusion we have seen before. What Behe failed to recognize, he wrote, was that we now have experience with computers. “Having exemplars of physical objects endowed with computational and decision-making capabilities shows that there is nothing mystical religious, or supernatural about discussing the potential for similarly intelligent action by living organisms.”

“James Shapiro, the University of Chicago, is working on pre-programmed adaptive capacity. And my friend, Paul Nelson, went and talked to him; they were on a panel – Shapiro said, “You know, I can’t make heads or tails of what you guys are talking about with intelligent design.” And Nelson went to talk to Shapiro and he said, “Look, you’re really into this idea of pre-programmed adaptive capacity as a kind of alternative to strict Darwinism. We think that’s a neat phenomenon. Let me ask you a question, Jim. Where does the programming come from in the first place?” And Shapiro apparently said to Nelson, “You know, I rarely think about that.”

http://www.discovery.org/a/3505

You are reading things into Shapiro that he doesn’t intend. Neither Shapiro nor Hubert Yockey believe that evolution requires supernatural or outside intervention.

Does having a Ph.D at an accredited university always mean that the bearer is a scientist and is thereby qualified to define what science is or give opinions on it?

To my way of thinking science is defined by following the scientific method.

Of course there are a lot of folks out there without Ph.D.s who are scientists, while some folks with Ph.D.s are not following the scientific method.

Anyone can give opinions on science, but ones level of education must be taken into account. My opinions on quantum theory should not be taken very seriously, even though I have a Ph.D. -- I know absolutely nothing about that field.

Now one problem arises when Ph.D.s, well qualified in one field, opine in another field. Expertise in one field does not necessarily extend to another field. Another problem arises when experts jump off the train and ignore the scientific method. We see this in some of the leading creationists. By accepting religion as the overriding source of "knowledge" in their lives they cease to follow the scientific method. They are no longer doing science, and their judgment is no longer to be trusted. Most folks take a middle ground and separate the beliefs of religion from the methods and results of science.

I have seen several articles on radiocarbon dating, one of my fields of study, which posit a need to recalibrate radiocarbon dates based on the effects of the global flood on carbon isotopes in the atmosphere. This is an example of religion overriding evidence. So far there is no evidence for a global flood, let alone that it seriously altered the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere. Folks who propose ideas like this are arguing from religious belief, hoping to twist the scientific evidence enough to somehow squeeze it into their required framework. The more twisting and bending that is required to make things fit the less reliability an idea has.

That is why the theory of evolution is considered to be such a strong theory. It could have been seriously damaged by the new field of genetics in the last 50-60 years, but it was supported instead. New findings have been fitting in quite well, with only very minor tweaking of the details. None of the finds since Darwin wrote 150 years ago have suggested that the overall structure of the theory of evolution is incorrect. That wholesale bending and twisting of evidence that is required to make, for example, the global flood fit the data, is not required for the theory of evolution.

So to summarize, scientists are those who follow the scientific method regardless of training or background.

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