In Six Days (A Biology PHD looks at Evolution)

In Six Days ^ | 02/17/05 | Timothy G. Standish, PHD biology

[Moral Hazard]

"all carbon 14 should deplete by 90,000 years"

The half-life of Carbon 14 is 5,730 years. In 90,000 years it should deplete by to .0019 % of it's original amount. Why would that be the same as disappearing?

[shubi]

What about scientists who might be seeking Christ and because of the literalist apostasy turn away from religion because they think it is full of ignorant loonies?

[shubi]

LOL! For starters I was a Navy linguist in Hebrew. I have six years of seminary under my belt and an Ulpan besides.
I have been working on understanding the real meaning of Genesis for over 15 years.

[shubi]

Carbon dating is only useful to a maximum of 50,000 years.

There are about 40 different methods of dating including K-Ar etc. These can date much older samples.

Synchronous dating is pretty foolproof and all doubts about old Earth should be discarded, if reason was involved in this issue.

[microgood]

If you think macroevolution is any different than the process of microevolution, you are a creationist.

There is no evidence for macroevolution, so to get people to believe it the scientists say it is the same process as microevolution. It is the classic bait and switch, and really not becoming of the scientific community, since they should deal in facts. But the evolutionary sciences have been taken over by rabid atheists who push this on us.

If macroevolution is so based in fact, why did Gould have to come up with punctuated equilibrium in the 70s to try to save it?

I believe we werer created but I do not believe in studying it as a science. Science is a tool, good for some things, bad for others. It is bad at explaining the origin of the universe and the origin of life. Those theories may be useful for scientists but really involve much more speculation than theories that can be scientifically tested.

For example, the concept that since we have similar bone structures to earlier living things that we have a common ancestor is an inference. It is either true or false as an inference independent of the evidence. Since there are many possible explanations for these similarities besides the concept of common descent, I find the inference highly speculative; it certainly cannot be logically proven.

[Moral Hazard]

"There's a theory I have about God and time. God interacts with time differently than we do. This must be true for Him to be able to tell us the future, and yet we have free will. But If He can tell us now about the future because He's been there, then He can also go into the past from here and change things. It's possible that He created the Earth when there were no stars, go to day 4 of the Creation week and created the stars, but created them at a point in time, far enough back to have the light arrive at Day 4. This wouldn't be deceptive. It would just be a demonstration of His power, that we arrogantly took to mean He had lied, because we didn't understand the scope of His power."

This seems like a bizarre approach to bend science to equate with your religious belief. Two huge problems with this are that:

1)Free will and predeterminism are mutually exclusive. If you can know what state a system will be at any point in time it is by definition a deterministic system.

2)According to the laws of Quantum mechanics, the spin of a particle (to give one example) cannot be known before it is measured, not even by God. Therefore it is impossible for anyone, even God, to know the future.

[Fiddlstix]

Bump
To read later

[SalukiLawyer]

The Navy has Hebrew linguists? What, are we spying on our Israeli allies? LOL (I was an Arabic Linguist 98 Golf 20 years too soon, but I am proud that not a single Arab terrorist harmed the vicinity of Clarkesville TN when I was in the Army in the 70s.)

[1 spark]

And then there's Zecharia Sitchin claiming the answer to the "missing link" is in the Genesis story.

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc142.htm

[shubi]

"There is no evidence for macroevolution"

I don't think you understand what the definition of macroevolution is. Many have been deceived by the charlatans at ICR or AIG.

Here is the conclusion of an article on the subject:

There is no difference between micro- and macroevolution except that genes between species usually diverge, while genes within species usually combine. The same processes that cause within-species evolution are responsible for above-species evolution, except that the processes that cause speciation include things that cannot happen to lesser groups, such as the evolution of different sexual apparatus (because, by definition, once organisms cannot interbreed, they are different species).

The idea that the origin of higher taxa, such as genera (canines versus felines, for example), requires something special is based on the misunderstanding of the way in which new phyla (lineages) arise. The two species that are the origin of canines and felines probably differed very little from their common ancestral species and each other. But once they were reproductively isolated from each other, they evolved more and more differences that they shared but the other lineages didn't. This is true of all lineages back to the first eukaryotic (nuclear) cell. Even the changes in the Cambrian explosion are of this kind, although some (eg, Gould 1989) think that the genomes (gene structures) of these early animals were not as tightly regulated as modern animals, and therefore had more freedom to change.

Here is a link to the article:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html

Here is another article on 29 evidences for macroevolution.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

[Walkingfeather]

the hebrew word for day also is the same word for Period of time.

[shubi]

I could tell you what we were doing, but then I would have to kill you. :-) Just kidding!

Remember the spy ship Liberty? I was going to be a replacement for one of the sailors the Israelis killed.

[montag813]

I don't believe in Evolution at all, I only believe in Creation.

Why can't you believe in both? I fail to see a contradiction.

[SalukiLawyer]

What about scientists who might be seeking Christ and because of the literalist apostasy turn away from religion because they think it is full of ignorant loonies?

What, and they couldn't figure out how to become Episcopalians :-) Well, that's all for me. Good night, and happy evolving!

[microgood]

I don't think you understand what the definition of macroevolution is. Many have been deceived by the charlatans at ICR or AIG.

I have been all over talkorigins.org. It treats evolution as a religion. The section on transitional species convinced me even more that there is no macroevolution and I have read all 29 of the supposed evidences of macroevolution.

But for me macroevolution goes all the way back. If it cannot show how we got from a single cell to a human being, I will not believe it can go from an ape or as of this week a platypus to a human.

To go from a single cell to a creature with arms and legs and a brain and even over 100 trillion years by random mutation is simply not believable. And of course many evolutionists back away from that and just do the ape to human stuff, but it still does not answer the basic question of why if we came from a single cell, and there are not creatures turning into different species with partially formed arms or legs (since such a complex thing cannot occur in one mutation).

Thus the latest inference is punctuated equilibrium and here we are.

[shubi]

OK, for only $19.95 you can get one of my aluminum hats.

My conclusion is you are closed to rational analysis of this subject, but it is just a theory.

[microgood]

.My conclusion is you are closed to rational analysis of this subject, but it is just a theory.

Not at all. Its my philosophy degree. Too much symbolic logic, I guess. Anyway, I do admire and thank you for your service as a Navy linguist.

[scottywr]

Dinosaurs and humans did not co-exist.Where is your evidence. If you read the Bible there are various passages about dragons and the leviathan. Dinosaur is a relatively new term invented in the 1800s...

If dinosaures and humans co-existed cave paintings made by early man would show them hunting T-Rex and Diplodicus as well as mammoth and bison.

The word dinosaur was coined in the 1800's to describe the ancient and gigantic bones that were being unearthed. Before the 1800 many great dinosaur fossils were found and destroyed by people who picked them up and didn't know what they were. Just because something didn't have a name didn't mean it did not exist. The term automobile didn't exist until they actually had to name it.

[fella]

In other words what would the Creator consider a day? Would a day to the Creator be like an epoch to us? If so then the order of creation in Genesis would mirror science fairly well. Dwelling on the 24 hour day is the anti-creationists hobbyhorse.

[shubi]

"Dwelling on the 24 hour day is the anti-creationists hobbyhorse."

The 24 hr day nonsense is just an example of the empty argument the creationists pose. They try to replace a misinterpretation of the Bible in science classes, harming our kids and our country.

It is a big scam to hide behind psuedo scientific nonsense to get their brand of religion into the schools. The fact is, their brand of religion is less well reasoned than their science, which makes their religion negative on the scale of factual information.