Posted on 02/10/2009 8:25:43 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
...Coyne and Pigliucci tell us (again) that there is such overwhelming evidence for evolution. OK, put up or shut up. They don’t know what a species is, they don’t know what the target of selection is, they don’t know if natural selection is a queen or a jester, they don’t know what adaptive radiation is, they don’t know how speciation operates (the main reason for Darwin’s little storybook), and they can’t connect mutations to any actual benefit to an organism. Other than those little minor matters, evolution is so supported by such mountains of evidence that only a fool with an agenda could dare question it...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
That is true of “evolutionism” which is pseudo-science based on ignorance of the fact that there are a great many things that have not yet been discovered by science. A moment’s reflection should tell them that living things are also affected by environmental factors which are affected by yet more environmental factors all the way up to the scale of the universe and...beyond?
Well, it's not that clearcut. "The fossil record" is the object of much veneration, but really, it's somewhat circular in its reasoning. Fossils are dated based upon which rock strata they appear in. Rock strata, in turn, are often dated based upon which fossils appear in them, never mind that the same type of fossils are often found in wildly different types of strata, etc. Even the attempt at an independently-derived date for the strata is fraught with difficulties. Radiometric dating methods are quite inaccurate - largely because of the fact that they rely upon obviously wrong initial assumptions.
What am I talking about? Let's take the case of using K-Ar dating. K40 decays to Ar40 via beta emission, with a half-life of 1.248 billion years. Sounds good, right? I mean, with that long of a half-life, this method should be perfect for dating rocks - thought to be in many cases billions of years old - which contain potassium (a fairly common element in the earth's crust). Problem is, to date something by measuring the conversion of K to Ar, you have to know how much Ar was there to start with. So, rockdaterologists operate with the assumption that when a rock containing K was formed via volcanic processes, it did so with zero initial Ar trapped in the interstices. From there, you take a sample of rock, measure the amount of Ar trapped in it versus the %K ideally found in the rock's chemical compound, and voila (pardon my French), you have an amount of K that has decayed to Ar, and you can plug it into your half-life equation and find out the age of the rock.
Problem is, the "no-initial-argon" assumption is invalid. And this has been proven experimentally in the lab. Russian scientists experimentally re-created the formation of certain potassium containing rocks in the lab, using the suitable heats and pressures and whatnot, and found that actually, quite a bit of argon can be trapped in the interstices of rocks while they cool - it doesn't necessarily come bubbling out like was assumed. This, then, suggests that "real" rocks had the same phenomenon occurring when they formed - which throws the dates obtained from this method out of whack - and I mean by hundreds of millions, or even billions of years. It's all about starting assumptions - if those are off, then everything else dependent upon them will be too.
That was very touching. When we have kids, my wife and I will read that to them after we tuck them in.
‘Ah, evolution ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
However, an engineer could describe the forces operating in the aboveground part of the tower without reference to how the foundations were constructed. So they're linked, but not dependent.
Some fossils will be. Forams, for example, can be found in both shallow and deep-water sediments.
Beyond that, the geological scale was created long before dating methods came to pass. Geologists instead relied on estimates of how long various sedimentary formations took to be laid down. Also, if you look at the fountainhead of geology - the British Isles - you have clear progressions from Cambrian into the Carboniferous - and more complex life appearing in each age. So on the most fundamental geological level, there is a progression life.
Thanks for the ping!
But that goes right back to the same circular reasoning/initial assumptions issues as before.
Great. Geologists relied on "estimates" of how long sedimentary rocks took to be laid down. How do we know their "estimates" are right, or even remotely valid at all? We don't.
>>Nope. Both are necessary components to the theology of evolutionism.
>
>What if single-celled life forms came to Earth in comets? And evolved from there? The two can be separate concerns.
No, that’s just moving the problem to another place. Where did the single-cells on the comet come from? How did THEY move from non-living to living matter?
Not a creationists but this argument is just an attempt to get around the start of life thing. It doesn't matter if life came here on a comet, how did it start "spontaneously" on some other planet if it can't do it here, and how in the hell did it leap off a planet onto a comet? This argument is a cop out! So, no, you can't have one without the other.
You can study the same basic processes today. Oolitic limestone is being formed in the Bahamas. Dolomites off the coast of the Netherlands. Reef-building limestones in the Great Barrier Reef. Deep water shales on the ocean floor. Terrestial sandstones in the Sahara. Conglomerates at the foot of the Himalaya. Alternating shales/siltstones and bar sandstones in the Mississipi Delta.
The point is, there is no way you can reasonably postulate that the processes can be compressed to lay down over 5,000 feet of sedimentary rocks - sandstones repeatedly alternating with limestones and shales - to create the geological column we see at the Grand Canyon in a short period of time - there are just too many varying geological progressions going on. In addition, that column is deposited atop an even older angular unconformity - where rocks were metamorphized, folded and then eroded. There simply is no way that one can get anything remotely resembling a Young Earth. And throw in the fact that the sequences remain the same over a large area, and that index fossils can be used to map like formations, and you have a solid geological record to back up the core asserions of geology and the progressive, increasing complexity of life over time.
Once again, folks can debate over what causes that complexity - evolution versus long-running ID - neither is an affront to the geological record itself. But the geological foundation cannot be wished away by fanciful geological processes that are both contradictory and absurd.
Your fake science articles from creation safaris are always hilarious. Keep em coming.
Not at all. It is a quite valid theory. One can decide whether a higher power created that life or whether it arose of its own accord - just like we do and debate about now.
I guess if you look at the bright side, the more they are here posting this nonsense, the less they are out there in the "real world" scaring normal people away from Conservatism
No, it is not a valid theory, as I pointed out, it still does not answer the question of how life started, it avoids it, as if somehow life could start spontaneously on some other planet but not here, or even worse that it could start on some frickin' comet rushing around in a vacuum, without water, oxygen or other life giving nutrients. It is a BS argument and if you can't see that you are blinding yourself to reality.
Sorry but David Mindell never said such things in those contexts. See http://www.springerlink.com/content/f064077415818kj3/fulltext.pdf for a summary of that particular work
See also http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA215.html for more
I am sure Jesus is real proud of you for lying in his name.
Really. Comets are full of water and organic materials. Spores can freeze and remain viable for a long time. It is hypothetically a quite valid theory. You just don't want to hear it because it demonstrates you can separate the evolutionary history of life on Earth from how life started on Earth. And, like I said, you can still have a debate whether there is a process that created life or whether there was a higher power. IMO your goal is to try and discredit the basic concept of evolution with this approach - if science cannot explain how life formed, therefore the geological record of increasing complexity in life forms is bogus. That is just not the case.
Comets are mostly water. Oxygen is toxic to some of the ancient bacteria in Archaebacteria, so it is not a vital nutrient. There are ecosystems on Earth underground or around volcanic vents that do not require sunlight and photosynthesis to start the food chain - bacteria synthesize chemicals such as sulfur compounds and that is the foundation of the food chain.
Go back and read the article I sent you, dumb-dumb. The author wasn’t talking about Mindell, he was talking about Coyne’s response to Mindell. Further, your own link makes a very similar point re: the untility of Darwinism:
“As a professional evolutionary biologist, I share Mindell’s view that Darwin’s theory is indeed a great one. But I’m bound to say that I’m not convinced that evolutionary theory has been of much use practically.”
Next time READ and UNDERSTAND before spouting off like a FOOL.
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