Posted on 11/28/2005 3:40:35 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The fuel driving this science education debate is easy to understand. Scientists are suspicious that Christians are trying to insert religious beliefs into science.
They recognize that science must be free, not subject to religious veto. On the other hand, many Christians fear that science is bent on removing God from the picture altogether, beginning in the science classroom--a direction unacceptable to them.
They recognize that when scientists make definitive pronouncements regarding ultimate causes, the legitimate boundaries of science have been exceeded. For these Christians, intelligent design seems to provide protection against a perceived assault from science.
But does it really lend protection? Or does it supply yet another reason to question Christian credibility?
The science education debate need not be so contentious. If the intelligent design movement was truly about keeping the legitimate plausibility of a creator in the scientific picture, the case would seem quite strong.
Unfortunately, despite claims to the contrary, the Dover version of intelligent design has a different objective: opposition to evolution. And that opposition is becoming an increasing liability for Christians.
The reason for this liability is simple: While a growing array of fossils shows evolution occurring over several billion years, information arising from a variety of other scientific fields is confirming and extending the evolutionary record in thoroughly compelling ways.
The conclusions are crystal clear: Earth is very old. All life is connected. Evolution is a physical and biological reality.
In spite of this information, many Christians remain skeptical, seemingly mired in a naive religious bog that sees evolution as merely a personal opinion, massive scientific ruse or atheistic philosophy.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Then are there any 'statistics' that Evolution uses that can be proven to be accurate?
And I can only keep referring you (and your playmates) to my post, in what's fast becoming a vain hope that you will eventually be able to "get it".
As non-serious, game-players have already learned on this thread, the response they get from me is one they earn.
"In fact, they seem to not be able to grasp the point that one cannot model probabilities with that many boundary conditions with any accuracy at all, and that one cannot look at statistics in hindsight with any meaning."
As I said, they were being generous. The _Chemistry_ prevents it from being possible at all. If you would like to instead argue it on the chemistry, then great. It simply isn't possible.
"No one is claiming the abiogenesis model does this to a tee yet, and it may never."
In fact, chance and necessity do not have the causal power to do this, period. This was what the article argues. Not only have we been utterly failures so far, but that chance and necessity simply DO NOT have the ability to build a full Shannon-Weaver communication system and appropriate messages by themselves.
"This doesn't in any way falsify the vast amount of evidence that still supports evolution through the well-documented 3.5 billion year history of life on earth"
It does falsify the idea of life emerging on its own, which is precisely the underlying basis of Universal Common Ancestry. Without life arising from chance and necessity, Universal Common Ancestry is no longer necessary. See here:
http://crevo.blogspot.com/2005/04/overselling-universal-common-ancestry.html
http://crevo.blogspot.com/2005/03/some-comments-on-homology.html
As for the 3.5 billion year history of life on earth, being an expert in mantle processes, he does in fact have the skillset to analyze this. And, he shows why the Paleozoic and Mesozoic are the result of giant world-wide catastrophe, not a slow sedimentation over billions of years. This is, in fact, his specialty, for which he is hired by Los Alamos National Laboratories, and for which NASA uses his code.
This essay is actually the culmination of a multi-year Origins debate. You can see the debate in full here: http://globalflood.org/letters/letterindex.html
"SNL". You mean Saturday Night Live"? If a child under 12 years old is allowed to be up that late, the child has some other, more pressing problems than television. Perhaps his/her parent(s).
I read about this recently. They traced a certain Y chromosome marker lineage along the Pacific coast which differed from that of most other Native Americans. I was surprised to learn that. Then again it is pretty amazing when you consider how all of those remote Pacific islands were colonized by early peoples using primitive watercraft.
The evidence for the world-wide flood is in the paleozoic and mesozoic, not in the cenozoic which is where these artifacts are found. It is possible that the date of the flood could be pushed back a few thousand years, but there are many secular geneologies that go back to Noah which support the current date, as well as the Mayans which support the same date for the flood.
Tree-ring dating is not as accurate as many believe. It was once thought that the bristlecone pines gave accurate tree-ring dates, but Lammerts discovered evidence that they can grow many in a single year.
I personally think that historical records from multiple, independent groups should be believed over tree rings. But I guess that's where a lot of the differences between creation and evolution lie.
Paleozoic: 570 to 245 million years ago
Mesozoic: 245 to 65 million years ago
Cenozoic: Last 65 million years
Neither of these has anything to do with the date of the global flood. We are talking 4,000-5,000 years, not millions of years. I do not believe even creationists can twist the data to say otherwise, though they may try. You can ignore some parts of science, but to ignore the results of hundreds of years of research by thousands of scientists, in multiple fields of research, with millions of facts and thousands of very well tested and documented theories is tough to do.
Tree ring dating:
It might interest you to know that trees go back at least 8000 years without being disturbed by Noah's flood! Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence going back to 6273 BC (Popular Science, November 1979, p.76). It turns out that such things as rainfall, floods, glacial activity, atmospheric pressure, volcanic activity, and even variations in nearby stream flows show up in the rings. We could add disease and excessive activity by pests to that list.Different locations on the mountain also affect tree growth in that factors such as temperature, moisture, soil thickness, soil type, susceptibility to fire, susceptibility to wind, and the amount of sunlight received vary, sometimes dramatically. For example, a tree growing near a stream would be less susceptible to the effects of drought. Even the genetic inheritance of a tree plays a role in that it will magnify or retard the above factors. Thus, even trees on the same mountain, of the same species, don't always cross-date as nicely as one might think.
Creationists sometimes seize upon such isolated facts in their desperate bid to discredit tree-ring dating. They either don't understand--or don't want to understand--that careful statistical studies have settled the issue beyond a reasonable doubt.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea2.html#proof27.
It occurred in the paleozoic and mesozoic. You are still referring to the cenozoic, much of which is considered post-flood (the exact boundary is not certain, but usually either at the mesozoic/cenozoic boundary or late cenozoic -- see http://www.trueorigin.org/cfjrgulf.asp and http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v10n1_cainozoic.pdf)
Sorry, flood is claimed to be 4,000-5,000 years ago. That is not in the paleozoic or mesozoic. Those are geological periods, we archaeologists deal with soils--very much younger and very easy to date.
There is also mtDNA continuity for 11,000 years on the west coast of North America, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. With the latest differentiation in Haplogroup A, experts have been able to track one of the population movements, and to establish in which direction it went.
No, I agree very much that this is one continuous population.
When you have a laboratory that can date something back to about 40,000-50,000 years, at which point the signal gets lost in the background noise, it doesn't take much contamination to give a reading in that range.
Actually, the equipment they used is accurate to 90,000 years. The background that was checked against was 70,000 years. There is no reason to discard dates at 50,000 years.
90,000 years is not correct. Some labs using AMS are striving for that but the standard labs top out at 50,000 or less. Please believe me over the creation websites, as I deal with radiocarbon dating on at least a weekly basis.
The real question is whether calibrated dates from the last 10,000 years are accurate, and that is something that everyone but the creationists can agree on. They are quite accurate.
Actually, two points.
(1) Those dates don't call creationism into question. While creationists disagree, it is a rather minor point.
(2) Creationists aren't the only ones disagreeing.
But, as I said, it is a rather minor point. My personal take is that I'll take written history over other methods any day. The other methods must assume a history to be accurate. With the historical method, the history is written down instead of assumed. But if you disagree and have a slightly elongated timeline its really not a major issue.
I think your replies, though polite and well reasoned, are saying that you believe the bible and will ignore or twist any data to make the answers come out right.
If this is not the case, let me know and we can continue. As enjoyable as these discussions are, I really have to get some work done occasionally!
yes
Well I hadn't meant to personalize nature,,,let's call it Macro Evolution then just to satisfy your need for a depersonalized universe!
As I said before, calcuations of probability in systems with that many boundary conditions are not possible at all. The model was not "generous", it had no bearing on reality whatsoever.
Abiogenesis is a hazy area of science, but it certainly hasn't been falsified. In any case, it has nothing to with any other theories of evolution, such as humans and apes evolving from a common ancestor, for example.
And, he shows why the Paleozoic and Mesozoic are the result of giant world-wide catastrophe, not a slow sedimentation over billions of years.
Absolutely ridiculous. Anyone with a full understanding of a high-school level earth science course could understand why. Geologists abandoned catastrophism over 300 years ago because it doesn't explain anything observed in the geological world. The advent of radiometry in the 20th century was the final nail in the coffin of this line of reasoning, lone crackpots aside.
"Geologists abandoned catastrophism over 300 years ago because it doesn't explain anything observed in the geological world."
Incorrect. They abandoned it on philosophical grounds, and have been recovering catastrophism a little at a time ever since.
Read 1Corinthians chapter15 for the whole picture...Paul speaks of the vanity of preaching the Gospel, if there had been no resurrection of the dead...look at verse 31 and 31"I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If after the manner of men I have fought with the beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.
Ecclesiastes 8 has the original "Eat drink and be merry, quote", Paul no doubt had it in mind when he was explaining in chapter 15 the necessity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ...he states in verse 5 and 6 that 500 persons who were still yet alive when he wrote the book could claim to have witnessed Jesus Christ alive and resurrected...not just the chosen 11(the twelth hung himself). I call this the spiritual cause and effect chapter...look at verse 21 and 22(one of the Handel's Messiah pieces by the way) "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead....For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" Note the "tit for tat", dare I say "eye for eye" symmetry...man screwed up, it would take a man to unscrew up everything... for that seems to be the Natural balance demanded by the "Word" or "Logos". Of course man couldn't do it so the "Logos" himself became flesh...or A Man. (John chapter1 verse 14...and the Word{LOGOS in the greek} became flesh)
Paul from 2000 years ago could cite 500 names and witnesses who saw Christ alive at the time he wrote the Letter to the Corinthians. Of course they'd all be with the Lord now, but unless science can conclusively prove scientifically that the resurrection never happened, or that it was just some kind of plot...then Christianity will continue to butt heads with science and vice versa.
Not helpful.
Also rather ironic, given that for the Protestant's Salem Witch Trials, there was a whole Inquisition started by Catholics.
I know plenty of scientist that believe in God.
You don't have to be anti-God to be a scientist.
You also can believe in evolution and God.
I do have one question for you. Adam and Eve had two sons. I forget who killed who, but the killer left Adam and Eve and got married. Who did he marry?
It certainly can. My brother just died of skin cancer at 48.
OK, I allow you one question.
Cain Kill Abel.
Cain married his sister. The best thing about marrying your sister is that your mother-in-law won't complain that her daughter could have picked a man who came from a better family.
Even if it is aggressively treated, it can still kill.
I just posted my brother died at 48, and without treatment he would have died in his 20s.
My kids do not watch SNL, but they do stay up late occasionally and they are all under 12.
They stay up late when:
it's New Year's Eve
they have sleepover
we go to the drive-in movies in the summer
we do other family activities that are late in the evenings
I used to watch SNL when I was a kid. It was much tamer back then (John Belushi, Steve Martin days). I routinely stayed up until 12 on the weekends and during the summer, and nothing bad happened to me.
I'm so sorry to hear that.
"Protestant's Salem Witch Trials"
Which only lasted a whole 6 months by the way, after which the entire Puritan community was quite ahamed of itself, having the deaths of innocents on their consciences for having been taken in by the hysterics of several young girls.
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