Posted on 10/03/2011 5:29:32 AM PDT by spirited irish
Karl Popper (1902-1994) was a British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. Because he is regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century, what Popper had to say about Darwinism is of utmost importance to the desperate political struggle fought between creationists and methodological and ontological naturalists. This is because the America of the Founding generation is firmly grounded in the Genesis account of creation, Old and New Testament morality and Christian theism, yet the original meaning and intent of U.S. law — as now controlled and defined by anti-God naturalism — has been radically changed so that it now reflects the doctrinal decrees of imperialist atheist evolutionary naturalism.
Whereas the Founding generation esteemed the Bible and used it to teach their children to read, comprehend and think logically as well as to properly train them in morality and self-discipline, in contemporary America, God, Bible, and moral absolutes have been banned in favor of evolutionary science, atheism, moral relativism, and self-gratification. The still-unfolding consequences of all of this are destructive and terrible, adversely affecting every level of society from the individual to the family, community, and cultural institutions to local and national politics.
In post-Christian America atheist evolutionism is taken for granted throughout the college curriculum, just as it is in all aspects of modern thought and experience, especially within the progressive liberal community. Evolution not only undergirds biological and earth sciences, but also Freudian and Jungian psychology, anthropology, law, sociology, politics, economics, the media, arts, medicine, and all other academic disciplines as well.
Evolution-believers range from atheists and scientists to esoteric Free Masonry, Hollywood insiders, occult New Age spiritists, Satanists, powerful Transnational Progressives, and large numbers of people who call themselves Christian. Among this last group are Liberal Christians, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Emergent Church leaders Brian McLaren and Rob Bell, growing numbers of the Evangelical contemporary Church, and an increasingly vocal community of Christian scholars and scientists such as Dennis Venema. Venema is a senior fellow at BioLogos Foundation, a Christian group that tries to reconcile the Bible with evolutionary science, and as a consequence teach that humans emerged from apes.
Evolutionary naturalism is poisoning and destroying America's traditional foundations, and when the foundations have finally been destroyed, all that is built upon them will be destroyed as well.
Americans have been deceived, and are needful of learning the truth about Darwinism — and all other evolutionary theories, by whatever name they are called.
Evolutionism: Spiritual...not Empirical
Though Popper esteemed evolutionary theory and natural selection, he also forthrightly stated that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but rather a metaphysical research program. By this he means that not only is Darwinism metaphysical (spiritual), but so are its' two most important foundations, classical empiricism and the observationalist philosophy of science that grew out of it.
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that contradicts itself by asserting that human knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience rather than the mind while observationalism asserts that human knowledge and theories must be based on empirical observations....instead of the mind. For this reason, Popper argued strongly against empiricism and observationalism, saying that scientific theories and human knowledge generally, is conjectural or hypothetical and is generated by the creative imagination.
In other words, all three theories originated in the mind, a power of which is imagination. As mind is a power of soul, then Darwinism, empiricism, and observationalism are spiritual. In short, all three theories are frauds. They claim to be what they are not in order to obtain an advantage over the Genesis account of creation by imposition of immoral means.
In Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, soul and imagination are respectively defined as:
1. Soul: "The spiritual, rational and immortal substance in man, which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason."
The Founding generation knew that mind is a power of soul, and imagination the power by which mind conceives:
2. Imagination: "...the power or faculty of the mind by which it conceives and forms ideas of things communicated to it by the senses....The business of conception (and the) power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones so as to form new wholes of our own creation...(imagination) selects the parts of different conceptions, or objects of memory, to form a whole more pleasing, more terrible, or more awful, than has ever been presented in the ordinary course of nature."
In conclusion, evolutionism is an invention of imagination, an invention more terrible and more destructive than has ever been presented in the ordinary course of nature. It imagines that God is dead, that life somehow emerged out of nonlife, that man is not created in the spiritual image of God the Father but is rather a soulless, mindless ex-ape of evolution. It imagines there is no sin, no "hell below us, and above us only sky."
Evolutionism is an invention of imagination, and it has taken the post-Christian West by storm.
copyright 2011 Linda Kimball
I thoroughly researced the methodology used to establish Earth age by the current standard of analysis of uranium decay.
I acknowlege that there are other methods of dating, using different physical properties of different substances, that are of differening accuracy, within differing time ranges.
Now I've acknowleged the existence of these other clocks, but my doing so has not changed the decay rates of uranium and it's daughter elements. To what end is that acknowlegement to be used?
What you are doing is not science - rather it is a personal attack and an attempted smokescreen to avoid anything unpleasant about that which evolution cannot explain either.
Asking you a question you are unable to answer is a personal attack?
That is really funny!
The theory of evolution through natural selection of genetic variation has an answer at the ready to explain why bacteria have a gene for an error prone DNA polymerase that is expressed during stress.
It is what is known as a “textbook example” of how mutations can lead to beneficial outcomes.
Your total inability to apply what you are deluded into thinking is true should trouble you.
Your total inability to answer a simple question about biology should be troubling to you.
The fact that you find the question itself to be a personal attack is really illustrative of how much a Creationist must shelter their naive and inapplicable view of the world from the harsh glare of reality.
As I said, I've researched the basis for Earth age estimates, and I have some interest in nuclear physics (my son is a "glow worm" (nuke) on one of our fast attack subs).
However, if the various dating methods don’t agree for one layer, they can’t be relied on for other layers.
Age estimates based on radiometric analysis do no rely on "layers". You seem determined to disprove it's accuracy based on inclusion of a factor that was never part of the analysis.
As I said, I've researched the basis for Earth age estimates, and I have some interest in nuclear physics (my son is a "glow worm" (nuke) on one of our fast attack subs).
However, if the various dating methods don’t agree for one layer, they can’t be relied on for other layers.
Age estimates based on radiometric analysis do no rely on "layers". You seem determined to disprove it's accuracy based on inclusion of a factor that was never part of the analysis.
Well you could state all of the assumptions applied - for instance the ratio of father to daughter elements when a clock is reset. You might also acknowledge since there are no instruments that can withstand these temperatures you have no certitude regarding uniform decay rates for all temperature extremes. Maybe you could also indicate that for all the known layers of strata there is no where on Earth where all ten major epoch layers are represented.
Heck you might even check the link I gave you or the other young natural clocks I cited instead of thinking strictly in radiometric clocks.
Nah forget it - you are much too certain of your methods to allow for any uncertainty. Afterall evolution has been declared a proven scientific theory so why waste anymore time.
Again, we’re arguing different use cases, but they do have the one thing in common - radiometric dating. And if this common method is unreliable in one use case, how can it be reliable in another.
Now, you’ve said you’ve researched earth dating methods, but have you “researched” anything besides information coming from an old/ancient earth assumption?
Usually, what I hear is that “scientists say” such and such.
Well, OTHER “scientists say” have other conclusions, and these scientists are just as credentialed as the first group.
So, if you are intellectually honest, you have to examine the conclusions of both groups. The thing about young earth creation scientists is that they WILL acknowledge that they have a particular worldview or presupposition. You won’t find that admission amongst old earth evolutionists. They have a big, vehement blind spot about their assumptions and how their conclusions are affected by those presuppositions.
Because they're different use cases. Carbon-14 dating is useless for dating anything beyond about 50,000 years because it has a relatively short half life. It's generally used to date organic artifacts, and they won't all accumulate it at the same rate during their lifetime. There are many more variables and unknowns is some use cases than in others.
The "simplification technique" from the PsyOps manual seems to be heavily relied on by whoever you're getting your information from.
I f you were at all honest you’d admit the bacteria is still bacteria after all is said and done. That science has much more that it doesn’t understand than does. AND that historical ‘science’ is by it’s very nature not science at all.
Furthermore, you would investigate creation science with an open mind and the realization that evolution simply can not answer correctly for why things are as they are [i.e. the caterpillar, bombardier beetle, polystrate fossils, living fossils like the coalecanth, etc].
Sure it’s personal if I feel attacked and demeaned, which is how you debate by your very nature. In fact you step it up anytime I answer with same. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, but you simply must see that when this happens the debates end and it all devolves rapidly
I’m fairly certain I’m not going to change your mind, and I’m quite certain that you aren’t going to change mine with the quality of arguments you’ve presented.
Yes, the bacteria is still a bacteria - only a fool would expect otherwise. A bacteria doesn’t express error prone DNA polymerase during stress in order to become other than a bacteria - it does so in order to maximize survival.
Now how would expressing error prone DNA polymerase during stress maximize the survival chances of a bacterial population?
Does your total inability to answer trouble you?
It should.
I do believe I’d already answered your question in a previous post. But since you think you are the teacher and I am the student I’m certain it was not the exact answer you were looking for therefore you feel empowered to assign me a ‘failing’ grade - whatever...
You’ll not break free from your brain-washed paradigm as long as you remain spiritually dead.
Scientific naturalism is not really science at all. Didn’t Einstein say something similar w/ regards to science and religion? The problem is evolution is your religion.
No one mentioned C14. I fully understand the limits of C14.
From that chart I gave you, from a university source, the other isotopes can be used to date “to the origin of the earth”.
U238->lead207
U235->lead206
Rubidium-87->Strontium-87
Potassium-40->Argon-40
See? No carbon 14, and no accusatory namecalling, OK?
You are unable to answer coherently why a bacteria has an error prone DNA polymerase gene that is expressed during stress.
If you knew the answer and had previously learned it you wouldn't be making the incorrect and ignorant statements you made about mutation.
So what is it about the answer that you find so difficult?
You are embarrassed because the answer shows just how useful mutations can be to a bacteria under stress?
Because it shows just how ignorant your previous statement about mutations is?
Speaking of which - how many large genome species went extinct due to mutation? Do you have even a single example - or is this something you “learned” from Creationist sources and think is true despite a total lack of evidence?
Your are spiritually and intellectually in a dead end that leads nowhere. I will pray for you.
Ah, yes, resort to ridicule. Much easier than admitting you like your science best b/c so many ‘experts’ and laymen have accepted this paradigm & it can’t possibly be wrong. Why just look at all the scientific books and articles produced.
BTW geology has primarily used uniform rates and circular logic. The fossils are this old because of the rock strata they were found in and the rock strata is this old because of the index fossils found at this layer. And we all know that weathering, layering, and even continental drift all occur at uniform rates because Lyell said so.
What would Lyell say about that last big earthquake in Japan where the land mass moved 7 to 8 feet?
Different "use cases" introduce different variables and unknowns. The presence or absence of variables and unknowns may dictated that one use may be prefereable to another. If these other radioisotopes can be used, why aren't they?
Do any of them produce results reliably consistent with a young Earth theory?
No time now, but here’s a link to the chart, just so you know where I got it.
http://anthro.palomar.edu/time/table_of_isotopes.htm
“why aren’t they?” You’re the one implying that they’re not. I don’t see anywhere where these other isotopes have been rejected for any reason, and since they all use the same assumptions of uniformity of decay rates, known starting quantities, assumption of no leaching, they should all yield pretty much the same results, but rarely do.
Well that is just swell. Now be sure to let me know when your religion is converted to faith. Where you trust the Bible more than the works of man.
Have you ever heard the expression?
‘Religion is man made, but faith is a gift from God’
And you have not - nor your links - convinced me mutations are good. Just surviving and/or mutating does not confer some new macro-evolution where the DNA is completely re-written. All life is devolving and extinctions are a matter of fact in the historical record. Isn’t it something like 99.9% of all life forms are now extinct?
This is an example of what I mean by the quality of the arguments not being likely to change my mind. This isn't about geology, it's about nuclear physics. I don't care about fossils - they aren't part of this equation.
You aren't going to convince me if you can't even stay on topic with regard to this exchange. Answering questions that weren't asked does not impress me. Doing it in lieu of answering the questions that were asked impresses me even less.
All science is historical. The data that is currently being collected by the Mars rovers takes about thirty minutes to arrive on Earth. By the time we see the data it is already historical. Similar data from this and other missions has been collected and stored. Sometimes it is years between when the data is collected and particular results are deduced. For example, it took some time between when the data was collected and scientists could assure themselves with reasonable confidence that there was water on Mars. Even if you are looking directly at something and trying to determine what is happening it takes milliseconds for the data you see to be processed in the brain sufficiently for you to reach a conclusion from that sense data. In a very real way it is impossible for us to live in the present. The only data we have ever received has been from the past.
There are those people who heard once that in order for a particular theory to be valid it has to be falsifiable. In their minds this means that something can only be a valid theory if someone can craft an experiment that can prove or disprove that theory. These people believe that there are no experiments that one can craft to test the various theories associated with evolution and an old age for earth. Because of this these people say that no valid evolution theory or theory about the age of the earth can ever be posited. These people are mistaken.
First off, the falsifiability theory is in doubt. Even if it weren't in doubt it should not be something that Christians should put much faith in. After all it was the central theorem of the logical positivists who were vehemently opposed to all religion and even non-religious metaphysical thinking. The falsifiability theorem is regularly dredged up to dismiss any and all religious claims, claims regarding miracles, claims about the Bible, etc.
Everything in the Bible is of an historical nature. Much has been gleaned from a careful historical analysis of the Bible. For example there are scientists who have gone back and associated certain astronomical events described in the Bible with astronomical events arrived at by "reversing" the history of the universe. These studies have added weight to the historical accuracy of the Bible while simultaneously verifying our understanding of the movements of the planets, stars, etc. This appears to me to be a very scientific process. I would not want scientists to stop engaging in such activities because someone mistakenly believes that it doesn't qualify as science.
All science is based on induction. Because of this nothing can be proved to be true over all time and space. It is possible that the Earth was created pretty much as it appears to us 6,000 years ago. It is also possible that the Earth was created last Tuesday, including us with our memories of events that appear to have happened years or decades previously. Those are possibilities, but neither is a useful one. Assuming instead that the laws of physics we have discovered today applied from the beginning of the universe has allowed us to develop a wide variety of useful technologies. If we find that radioactive decay rates are certain values today, and we have found that they have been constant for the forty plus years that we have been using them for measurements, it seems like a reasonable assumption that they have been constant throughout the history of the Earth. This is especially true since we don't just have the measured values, but a complete and consistent theory about what causes radioactive decay and why the rate would be unaffected by anything we can imagine happening throughout the past history of the Earth.
Geological strata, fossils, tree rings, ice cores, etc. are no different than images broadcast from Mars. They are artifacts that can be studied scientifically to generate reasonable hypotheses about what happened and will continue to happen in the future.
It could possibly be the case that there are no Mars rovers. That it is all a plot by the government to make us believe that our planet Earth is not much different than Mars thus undermining our special place in God's creation.
It could be that the Mars rovers were intercepted by an advanced civilization on Mars that is now sending back false images so that we can't see them as they prepare for a massive military attack against Earth.
It could be that the Mars rovers actually arrived on Mars and that the images we are receiving back are pretty good approximations of what is going on there (or went on there a half-hour or so ago.) Those images, although primarily historical, could tell us a lot about the past, present, and future of Mars if properly analyzed with sufficient scientific rigor.
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