"You don't understand the history of radiometric dating!"
Posted on 06/22/2006 1:28:41 PM PDT by Tim Long
600 dissenters sign on challenging claims about support for theory
More than 600 scientists holding doctoral degrees have gone on the record expressing skepticism about Darwin's theory of evolution and calling for critical examination of the evidence cited in its support.
All are signatories to the Scientific Dissent From Darwinism statement, which reads: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
The statement, which includes endorsement by members of the prestigious U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Sciences, was first published by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute in 2001 to challenge statements about Darwinian evolution made in promoting PBS's "Evolution" series.
The PBS promotion claimed "virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true."
The list of 610 signatories includes scientists from National Academies of Science in Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, India (Hindustan), Nigeria, Poland, Russia and the United States. Many of the signers are professors or researchers at major universities and international research institutions such as Cambridge University, British Museum of Natural History, Moscow State University, Masaryk University in Czech Republic, Hong Kong University, University of Turku in Finland, Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Mexico, University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, Institut de Paleontologie Humaine in France, Chitose Institute of Science & Technology in Japan, Ben-Gurion University in Israel, MIT, The Smithsonian and Princeton.
"Dissent from Darwinism has gone global," said Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman. "Darwinists used to claim that virtually every scientist in the world held that Darwinian evolution was true, but we quickly started finding U.S. scientists that disproved that statement. Now we're finding that there are hundreds, and probably thousands, of scientists all over the world that don't subscribe to Darwin's theory."
The Discovery Institute is the leading promoter of the theory of Intelligent Design, which has been at the center of challenges in federal court over the teaching of evolution in public school classes. Advocates say it draws on recent discoveries in physics, biochemistry and related disciplines that indicate some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
"I signed the Scientific Dissent From Darwinism statement because I am absolutely convinced of the lack of true scientific evidence in favor of Darwinian dogma," said Raul Leguizamon, M.D., pathologist and professor of medicine at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Mexico.
"Nobody in the biological sciences, medicine included, needs Darwinism at all," he added. "Darwinism is certainly needed, however, in order to pose as a philosopher, since it is primarily a worldview. And an awful one, as Bernard Shaw used to say."
I gave the definition of metaphysical several days ago.
The only issue here is that you want to use a definition of 'concrete evidence' that includes metaphysical explanations of a fact and I don't.
That is one of the main methods used to make 'evolution' appear stronger than it is. Talk about imaginary past events as though they are real. It fools the little evos every time.
That's why you are confused. It's not that difficult to understand.
In reality, the concrete evidence is the same with the only difference being the interpretations that are layered over that evidence.
Creation is equally valid as an explanation of the evidence as evolution. The evos are terrified to admit that fact though because they realize that they would lose all credibility if it became widely known.
Hence, the huge fight to conceal the metaphysical nature of evolution.
Nope, that's not what I said.
You don't understand the conversation.
I agree that I don't understand you.
When you find that billion-year-old mammal fossil in your basement, give me a ping.
So you're saying that if similar genes are found in species w/ 'convergent' function, that will falsify evolution?
No? I didn't think so.
You don't understand how fossils are dated. A billion-year-old mammal fossil is impossible *by definition*.
Fossil 'reworking' would be invoked to 'explain away' the out-of-sequence find. That's why the assumption was developed. To 'explain away' anomalous fossils.
The 'fossil record' is a mess and is a fiction developed by the mind of man. It represents nothing.
How similar?
Yes I do.
And you are incorrect. The problem you're having is that the leader of the ID movement has already testified, under oath, that ID does not require facts to make its case.
That's why you don't know anything about paleontology or radiometric dating. That would require using facts to support your position and there aren't any.
No, the "time frames" with regard to the laws used to predict planetary motions are NOT limited, strictly or otherwise. The are, in principle, arbitrary and unlimited, both as to prediction and retrodiction.
I mean, yeah, obviously the Apollo mission needed to know about the position of the Moon at particular times, but the principles they employed could have told them the position at any arbitrary time, past or future. That's the nature of the relevant equations. They don't "care" what date you solve for, or how distant it may be.
You can't say the principles are "metaphysical" or not "metaphysical" solely because of the particular date the equations happen to be solved for in one certain instance!!! Especially when you've offered no guidance whatsoever in determining which dates fall into a "strictly limited" time frame and which don't!
This is as good a place as any to start.
That's not what you said in #815. There you said:
And yes, drawing conlcusions from *facts* is metaphysical because it involved 'abstract thought'. The only way you can avoid this is to observe 'concrete evidence' (a fact).
Under this criteria ANY time you go beyond sheer fact, it's metaphysical, even if you do so in order to provide a theoretical explanation for a phenomena that is observable and repeatable in the present. For instance the theory of photosynthesis would be "metaphysical". EVERY scientific theory would be, since they ALL involve "abstract thought" and ALL "[draw] conclusions from" (or, more correctly, are logically related to so as to be testable in terms of...) facts.
So which is it? Your two criteria for determining that something is "metaphysical"
are incommensurable. As noted above #2 includes explanations of present observable phenomena, as well as explanations of past and unobservable phenomena. Even beyond that it includes far, far too much as "metaphysical". That is it includes EVERYTHING in science, excepting only sheer facts, with no inferences from or implications thereto allowed.
#1 isn't quite as bad, but it still includes things as metaphysical that clearly aren't. E.g. criminal forensics. It also includes many, many other difficulties, for instance, as previously noted, accounting for the status of the many scientific laws (e.g. Newton's laws of motion) that, in principle, do not themselves distinguish between past and future.
No, that can't be the "issue" because by your dopey defintion ANY and ALL explanations of facts are "metaphysical".
"You don't understand the history of radiometric dating!"
No, paralogs are deduced from their sequence. And their common descent can be traced by tracing the seqeunce of mutations from species to species, back to where they diverged.
Evolution doesn't predict anything, yet explains everything.
For example, evolution predicts the genetic structure of organisms we haven't even discovered yet.
It is unfalsifiable.
All you need is a rabbit in the Cambrian. Don't mistake 'unfalsifiable' for 'never falsified'. My wedding vows are breakable, but they have never been broken.
"Lies" = Evolution
Show me the fossil record of these evolving species .... they have found NOTHING !
They have many different species of dinosaurs, complete skeletons, and yet not the first "missing link" between us and a monkey.
Evolution is a LIE
Except for the hundreds -- if not more -- of examples of transitionals between species, you are correct
WHERE ? Where are they ?
He won't listen. Such data completely refutes his worldview, so it will be dismissed out of hand. If you receive a reply to this, don't expect it to be substantive.
"The first members of the new group are not bizarre, chimeric animals; they are simply a new, slightly different species, barely different from the parent species. Eventually they give rise to a more different species, which in turn gives rise to a still more different species, and so on, until the descendents are radically different from the original parent stock. "
Yeah, thats the ticket fellow.
When was the last time you noticed a new species spring forth ?
I've never seen an acorn grow out to be a pine tree ... have you ?
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