Sometime in the spring I let a long-running discussion with pastor Joe Leavell taper off. I thought I’d be back to it more quickly. It’s that sort of summer.
In one of his last posts, Joe said he’d been to a lecture by some folks from the Institute for Creation Research, the same bunch that tried to hornswoggle Texas into letting them grant graduate degrees in science education and biology for teaching creationism to their students instead, as a way of injecting creationism into the schools stealthily but still illegally. Texas refused to give them the authority. ICR promises to appeal and sue for the privilege.
The response was rather lengthy, but they talked about the research that they have been doing over the past 7-8 years or so and the difference accredited scientists that are working for them. They also claimed that creationists get criticized for not writing peer reviewed articles in journals, but they claimed that they had submitted countless articles over the years and they all get rejected. They simply can’t get printed, was the claim, so they print their own stuff. They also pointed me to the RATE project, which honestly, without knowing a ton about science (though I do know some), is very convincing to me.
Here’s the link:
https://www.icr.org/rate/The main argument that I found convincing was the presence of helium in the rocks which wouldn’t be there if the rocks were millions of years old. They said they’ve been working on this project about 8 years and have spent $1.5 million on it. They also submitted all of their research to top labs in the country to make sure they weren’t accused of “fudging” the evidence. Check it out (if you have time) and let me know what you come up with.
I’ll be brief in my response here, at least to start: Same old fraud, not even new wineskins.
Dr. Russell Humphreys, a famous creationism crank (to serious geologists and other scientists), claims that the amount of helium he detected in some zircon crystals was so high that the crystals could not be more than a few thousands of years old, rather than the millions of years old all other dating methods by all other scientists produce. Humphreys’ findings have never been submitted to any science journal for publication, but were instead distributed to donors to a creationist ministry.
Oh, Joe: These guys depend on a lack of normal skepticism and a lack of knowledge to perpetrate these frauds on honest Christians. I do wish more Christians would hold their feet to the fire.
A few observations:
First, this project exhibits most of Bob Parks’ seven warning signs of bogus science. Those signs are:
- The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. In this case, to media and donors.
- The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. This thread runs through all ICR work. Humphreys’ later attempts at character assassination against his critics specifically for their critiques of the RATE project are exactly the warning sign of bogus science that we should expect, from bogus science. (See the final three paragraphs here.)
- The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. This sign, not so much.
- Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. In place of the usual description of methodologies used so other scientists can replicate the measurement, we get a story about samples for other purposes, purloined for this measurement. Most of the critical references to the conclusion were unpublished, or revealed only in crank science publications.
- The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. See the paper: “Many creationists believed . . .”
- The discoverer has worked in isolation. In this case, it’s difficult to know for certain; there is no methodology, no statement of where the work was carried, by whom, and no peer review. No other labs appear to be working on these issues. Dollars to doughnuts this work at government laboratories in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos is not catalogued in the labs’ work records, nor is it reported to Congress. Not only working in isolation, but completely on the sly.
- The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. Humphreys had earlier proposed diffusion rates far in excess of anything measured, and in this case, he assumes similar, completely uncorroborated conclusions.
Second, the conclusions have been challenged (“debunked” might be a better description) by scientists who know the subject matter. There’s a thorough discussion on Talk.Origins, by Kevin Henke (at the University of Kentucky); to summarize, there is no reason to think that helium could get out of those zircon crystals at depth, especially under the pressures at the depths the samples were recovered from; plus there are other problems:
Throughout Humphreys (2005), Dr. Humphreys stresses that his YEC conclusions must be correct because his Figure 2 shows a supposedly strong correlation between his “creation model” and vacuum helium diffusion measurements from Humphreys (2003a, 2004). However, Dr. Humphreys’ diagram has little scientific merit. First of all, his helium diffusion experiments were performed under a vacuum rather than at realistic pressures that model the subsurface conditions at Fenton Hill (about 200 to 1,200 bars; Winkler, 1979, p. 5). McDougall and Harrison (1999), Dalrymple and Lanphere (1969) and many other researchers have already shown that the diffusion of noble gases in silicate minerals may decrease by at least 3-6 orders of magnitude at a given temperature if the studies are performed under pressure rather than in a vacuum. Secondly, because substantial extraneous helium currently exists in the subsurface of the Valles Caldera, which is only a few kilometers away from the Fenton Hill site, Dr. Humphreys needs to analyze his zircons for 3He, and quartz and other low-uranium minerals in the Fenton Hill cores for extraneous 4He. Thirdly, chemical data in Gentry et al. (1982b) and Zartman (1979) indicate that Humphreys et al. and Gentry et al. (1982a) may have significantly underestimated the amount of uranium in the Fenton Hill zircons, which could reduce many of their Q/Q0 values by at least an order of magnitude and substantially increase Humphreys et al.‘s “creation dates.” Dr. Humphreys needs to perform spot analyses for 3He, 4He, lead, and uranium on numerous zircons from all of his and R. Gentry’s samples so that realistic Q/Q0 values may be obtained.
The “dating” equations in Humphreys et al. (2003a) are based on many false assumptions (isotropic diffusion, constant temperatures over time, etc.) and the vast majority of Humphreys et al.‘s critical a, b, and Q/Q0 values that are used in these “dating” equations are either missing, poorly defined, improperly measured or inaccurate. Using the best available chemical data on the Fenton Hill zircons from Gentry et al. (1982b) and Zartman (1979), the equations in Humphreys et al. (2003a) provide ridiculous “dates” that range from hundreds to millions of “years” old (average: 60,000 ± 400,000 “years” old [one significant digit and two standard deviations] and not 6,000 ± 2,000 years as claim by Humphreys et al., 2004). Contrary to Humphreys (2005), his mistakes are not petty or peripheral, but completely discredit the reliability of his work.
I think ICR is affect loaded. For years they argued that because there is so little helium in the atmosphere, the Earth cannot be very old. Helium gas floats to the top of the atmosphere and drifts off into space, so there can never be a large accumulation of the stuff in the air. ICR is making a similar argument here: That helium must migrate out of rocks and drift away. Alas, there isn’t much support for the claim that helium cannot be contained in a rock matrix, especially under significantly greater pressures achieved in large rock masses, deep underground. There are a lot of examples of gases being trapped in rocks; that helium in the air drifts away does not mean helium in rock will drift away.
Third, the RATE project tends to rely on disproven or highly questionable claims, rather than solid science. The claims of polonium haloes once were published in a reputable journal, but retracted by the journal after scientists trying to replicate the results discovered that the author had sampled much newer magma intrusions in granite*, and not the base granite at all (* that is, lava that squeezed into cracks in the granite). ICR continues on as if the paper had not been found faulty, as if the results had never been retracted. In any other context, this would be considered academic fraud at best. Were it done as research under a federal grant, it would be a felony.
Fourth, there is the issue of whether RATE can do anything other than fog up the area. One of the original goals of RATE was to date the rocks from Noah’s flood. As you know, claims that such a flood ever occurred are regarded as crank science among geologists. After several years of discussion and meetings, RATE participants announced they had been unable to distinguish which rocks on Earth are pre-flood, and which are post flood. Consequently, dating the rocks of the flood was precluded because they could not be found, reliably (or at all!).
This is long-term scam stuff, Joe. How many little old ladies and upstanding men in how many congregations have given how many millions of dollars to this quackery? Imagine what good could have been done had those dollars gone to honest enterprise among Christians.
Joe, does this stuff make you angry? It should. ICR confesses to have spent $1.5 million in this project over eight years — ostensibly a science project, and yet not one single publishable science paper out of it.
This is academic fraud of the most foul kind, to me. It angers me that ICR carries on these frauds with money contributed by trusting Christians. One has a right to expect better ethics from people who claim to be engaged in ministry for Jesus, I believe.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
And Ken is away. Hit and run creationism.
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Regarding the video, quickly I’d say that as a materials scientist working in graphenes, James Tour is way out of his area, and rather arrogantly dismisses the work of experts. He’d not take kindly to their doing that in his field.
It’s an hour long video, and it features some involved discussion of chemistry that was beyond the ken of his audience.
Gary Hurd, who practices science and explains evolution for a living, noted some of Dr. Tour’s errors; be sure you read his crticism: https://stonesnbones.blogspot.com/2019/04/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html
What does James Tour say that intrigues you? Can you state it simply, from your understanding of chemistry?
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Ken wondered:
Short answer:
Carbon 14 dating is usually said to work back about 50,000 years, but some labs have pushed it to 100,000 years with high accuracy. Radioisotope dating is based on the principle Christians should be familiar with, that God is steadfast, therefore the universe is steadfast, and the rules of physics work the same everywhere in the universe and over time.
Radioactive decay is among the most consistent rhythms in the universe. So isotope dating is only limited by the amount of the radioactive substance deposited, and the half-life availability of the radioactive isotope being used.
Carbon-14 decays to almost nothing in 50,000 years, and to even closer to nothing in 100,000 years.
But there are plenty of other radioactive elements that can be used to date rocks (or whatever the object is that fixed the amount of the element). Uranium has a half-life of about 4 billion years, so it works well for dating the oldest rocks on Earth and in our solar system. Argon dating is a good method to use to date lava flows and tuffs; argon dating is used to establish the age of the sedimentary layers Lucy was found in, for example. The Laetoli footprings, by three members of Lucy’s species, were made right in a layer of volcanic ash, and so can be dated very precisely.
Here’s a good explanation of how radiometric dating is used to date fossils and very old organic things:
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/radioisotopic_dating
Here a scientist from Purde describes a refinement in dating methods used on some recent fossils.
Radiometric dating isn’t easy. Scientists are always working to be sure the methods they use are accurate; here’s a paper that describes a problem with some rubidium/strontium dating. Note that the errors do not mean all radiometric dating is wrong, nor even that all rubidium/strontium dating is wrong.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170131104433.htm
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A list of evolution skeptics! Oh, my!
1. Science isn’t a democracy. Petitions generally don’t count, because they’re inherently political and not based on science.
2. You have 3,000 signatures? Any biologists among them? I did a quick check; almost every signatory with a designation in biology teaches at a religious university where no actual biology research is done, where no advanced degrees in biology can be earned or awarded. In other words, they are not biologists in the thick of working in biology. Far too many are in fields wholly divorced from biology, and some aren’t in science at all.
3. Are you familiar with Project Steve at the National Center for Science Education?
NCSE calculated that about 1% of all scientists are named “Steve” or something similar. So they started a petition that can ONLY be signed by scientists named Steve, and they represent ONLY less than 1% of all scientists.
Here’s a description and a link to the list of 1,457 Steves who endorse evolution, teach it, and research with it:
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Please explain this video.
If ID is just a myth and creationist nonsense.
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If as we are led to believe by mainstream science.
That Carbon 14 dating methods are accurate.
If the Half life or decay rate of carbon14 Radio isotopes is some 90,000 years.
How can Science date anything biological older than 90,000 years??
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If the argument for Evolution vs Creation is over and done.
How do you explain this list of Scientists who are skeptical of The Darwin model of Evolution.
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How do you explain this if The argument is over??
Here is a list of Over 3,000 scientists who are at least skeptical of Darwinian evolution.
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Much evidence of large floods, but falsification for one, massive, Earth-drowning flood. There may be a few T.rex fossils in shallow seas near shore or in rivers, but there is no evidence anywhere I’m aware of that shows a great flood mixing bodies of land and sea animals. Just didn’t happen.
Large floods include many glacier lake floods when ice dams burst, with several scouring across the land from the ancient Lake Missoula through the Columbia River Valley to the Pacific. That flood shows us, in the Washington Scablands, what the geologic signs of a Noachic flood would look like. Those signs show up in only a few areas of the world, always in a river valley. They were large regional floods, in other words, not worldwide.
Among the most famous such flood is the flooding of what is now the Black Sea at the end of the last ice age. An ice dam at the Bosporus held out sea water from the Mediterranean, until the dam broke, and the plains that had been farms and small villages filled with water, at the bottom of the Black Sea. That’s a good possibility for the origin of the Noah and Gilgamesh stories. But again, it’s a large regional flood — and it’s too recent to have left fossils.
Falsifying world flood stories are many places that have never been flooded, places where the geological column of sediments is 100% present, and places that should have been flooded, but weren’t. For example, archaeologists (yes, Christians among them, too) find the site at Jericho has been continuously occupied for at least 15,000 years, and no evidence of a major flood. That’s particularly salient here because Jericho is about 800 feet BELOW sea level — had the world flooded, Jericho would have been under 800 feet of water. Physicists calculate that had Jericho been flooded within the past 15,000 years, it would still be underwater. Not enough time for the water to have evaporated out.
Humans didn’t separate from apes over 77,000 years. Humans remain great apes.
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Although I don’t believe in a 6000 yr old earth, there seems to be evidence of a great flood (fossils of marine animals mixed in with tyrannosaur fossils); and the feet of fossilized humans and apes seem to be separate; plus the possibility of wholesale changes from ape to man in the 77000 year span provided by one study is ludicrous.
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Well one of the easiest indicators that a creationist like Wendell doesn’t know what they’re talking about is when they bring up entropy in a discussion regarding the theory of evolution.
Btw, I’m still waiting for that apology for your asinine assumption about me, Wendell. Pony up
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Thanks.
I usually try to explain it to creationists — almost always unsuccessfully — by noting that if we have a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, either over time or with the addition of heat to combust, the formation of H2O is not random, but certain.
And so with almost all the chemicals of life, certainly the precursors to RNA and some RNA molecules themselves, and the precursors to DNA, and cell membranes — not random, but certain.
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http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/borelfaq.html
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Don’t know. What’s Borel’s Law?
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Let me explain this to you, Wendell.
I’m a Catholic. We Catholics have had no problem with the theory of evolution for the better part of the last century. We simply believe that God used evolution, among other tools including the Big Bang, as a means to an end.
But here’s the difference between me and you.
I am not so confused as to pretend that my religious belief is science. Nor is my faith so damn weak that I need science to confirm my faith for me.
We don’t pretend that God can or needs to be scientifically proven..we recognize that it is not science’s job to hold up our religious beliefs as valid and dismiss everyone elses religious beliefs as invalid.
Because the second you make the statement “the universe/all life had a designer and it can be scientifically proven” the next question is “Who was the designer?”
And if you haven’t been paying enough attention to human history..that question more often then not ends up in people dying.
From where I sit, Wendell, you and your fellow Creationists are playing a dumb and dangerous game.
Especially when it comes to the public schools.
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Ed, he isn’t resorting to Borel’s law is he?
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and don’t lecture me about objectivity, Wendell, because you’re not even remotely close to being objective.
For some reason you want science to pat you on the head and tell you that your religious belief is correct.
Why you think that is an objective position I have no idea.
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I’ll make this choice simple for you.
Science can remain neutral on the subject of God..or it can say God doesn’t exist.
Which would you rather have? Because the second you want science to say God exists and then argue probability is also the second you open the door to science actively saying God doesn’t exist because of that same probability.
Can you scientifically prove God? Answer: No. Can you devise a scientific test to prove God and that God did anything?
Again…no.
Leave the religious belief to church and leave science to science.
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To quote: Like it or not PROBABILITY and MATH is a tool of science. The probability of something occurring randomly and not occurring randomly, with REASONABLE assumptions IS SCIENTIFIC.
As for your 500 million light year question, I can’t tell. the answer is not as simple as 500 million light years. Again, you folks who are supposed to be so doggone scientific want to figure the universe based on the earth. How long would it take for the light of a star 500 million years away (The 500 Billion version would be outside our “light cone”)?
Well first off…science doesn’t say we, earth and the universe happened randomly. That is a false claim by you creationists.
Secondly…that still doesn’t scientifically prove God did anything. You probably should go learn about the logical fallacy called “God of the Gaps”
Oh and btw..the purpose of my question was to point out that the universe is far older then you creationists/intelligent designers want to claim.
It simply isn’t science’s job to say that God did anything..science can’t prove God exists after all.
Hence my statement that creationism and its mutant bastard child Intelligent Design is religious belief…not science.
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TO quote: Well James, it is fairly clear that your distaste for the notion of God has clouded your objectivity, which is supposed to be the bailiwick of the scientific crowd.
I’m Christian, child, so would you like to apologize for your bearing false witness?
Or should I just proceed to hand you your head on a platter for your dumb assumption?
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That wasn’t the question Ed.
The question was how long it would take the starlight from a star 500 million light years away to get to earth, not how long it (probably) took the starlight I’m seeing right now to arrive from a star 500 million light years away when I saw it.
The earth isn’t now and isn’t likely to be fixed in place for the next 500 million years. It’s moving. A star already 500 million light years away is much more likely than not moving further away from the earth in relative terms in an ever expanding universe, and will be further than 500 million light years distant, 500 million years from now. You disagree?
You know what else? I’m even dumb enough to think the 500 million year old photon that just struck my eye was less than 500 million light years away when it fired its shot!
Ignoring all possible factors except the speed of light and distance (admittedly, it is hard for me to just ignore other factors), shouldn’t the light’s travel time increase when the distance it must travel does?
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The star whose light took 500 million years to get to us is 500 lightyears away, as the light photon flies. The star we measure to be 500 million lightyears away emitted that light 500 million years ago, to the nanosecond, from when the photo excites the receptors in your eye (or more likely, on your CMOS detector).
Neither the dissembler nor the wanker will tell you. I just did.
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My experience is that those who assume Darwin was wrong, and then search for some sciency peg upon which to pin their argument, are loaded with hubris, and assume much that is not in evidence — like your assumption that Mr. Kessler is not a man of faith, and a scientist.
Most often, we avoid gross error by first observing and getting the facts straight, before opining on causes and effects.
If you assume much in the universe is random, you’re already off on the wrong path, loaded with incorrect assumptions that will hide the answers from you.
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Well James, it is fairly clear that your distaste for the notion of God has clouded your objectivity, which is supposed to be the bailiwick of the scientific crowd.
Like it or not PROBABILITY and MATH is a tool of science. The probability of something occurring randomly and not occurring randomly, with REASONABLE assumptions IS SCIENTIFIC.
As for your 500 million light year question, I can’t tell. the answer is not as simple as 500 million light years. Again, you folks who are supposed to be so doggone scientific want to figure the universe based on the earth. How long would it take for the light of a star 500 million years away (The 500 Billion version would be outside our “light cone”)?
I can’t tell James – there is not enough data to even make a wild guess. Where would the observer be in your thought experiment? Earth? You are assuming the source of the light was exactly coordinated with Earth time so that at the exact trillionth of a second when the light was emitted in the direction of Earth, the stop watch of the measuring person on earth punched their stop watch, that the distance between the points never changed (impossible in an expanding universe over such distances)? Shall we assume no gravity, dark matter, black holes, and that both the Earth and the light source are fixed in place? Distance equals rate x time needs more than minor adjusting to figure your question.
Hopefully, you don’t think that because you can see the light of stars far away now, stars that in the past were MUCH closer since the universe is expanding (remember, all the mass of the entire universe was in the head of a pin!), this is proof positive now that the universe has to be as old as we can see off in the distance now! Is that what you think? You are venturing dangerously close to FLATLAND! And you mock the creationists as unscientific?
Now, on the other hand, if you know the approximate distance of a newly witnessed stellar event, such as a nova, that previously was not visible on earth, but suddenly is at a definitive time on Earth, and it is not so far away that you can’t make reasonable corrections for the distances involved and where the object actually was when it became a nova relative to where the Earth is and was, and figure out how long it took the light from where the event happened to where the light would have gone to, and that happens to be a VERY long time, then you can reasonably conclude that minimally the amount of time it took to cover the distance at the speed of light, adjusting for relativity, has expired. NO PROBLEM with that James. God bless you!
The universe is expanding per the Big Boomer theory and doing so at an accelerating rate. Right? The Hubble constant has been narrowed, but still there is uncertainty of a few percent. There is also a question of whether the expansion is entirely symmetrical.
In our own little Milky Way, we are being dragged along by our star, which is rotating at about one-tenth of the speed of light at our radius, faster further out, while the whole mass of our galaxy that began in the space smaller than a pin along with the other 100 billion galaxies we can see if we had the time to look, is zooming away from the point of singularity well-documented in the anti-creationist lounge with reversible scientific data, especially the very moment of the boom, probably with a few cocktails thrown in.
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and to fix my bad sentence structure: Your gripe should be that creationists keep on claiming that creationism and its mutant bastard child ID keep on trying to claim that its science when it is nothing but religious belief.
That should read “Your gripe should be that creationists keep on claiming that creationism and its mutant bastard child Intelligent Design are science when they’re nothing but religious belief.”
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correction…500 million years, not billion.
Typo on my part.
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To quote: My gripe with the anti-creationists is they want to look at everything from the point of view of the earth, especially time keeping, and how old objects appear here.
Your gripe should be that creationists keep on claiming that creationism and its mutant bastard child ID keep on trying to claim that its science when it is nothing but religious belief.
All we “anti Creationists” do is point out that Creationism and its mutant bastard child Intelligent Design aren’t science.
btw, I have a question. A star that is 500 billion light years away would take how long for light from that star to get to earth?
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That’s right James. God could have used any method he chose.
My gripe with the anti-creationists is they want to look at everything from the point of view of the earth, especially time keeping, and how old objects appear here. Similarly, six day creationists want to put all of God’s actions into a 24 earth hours per day creation box, as if God (who theoretically could travel anywhere as fast as He chooses for his sovereign purposes) created everything based on earth time.
Radioactive dating of unstable elements involves applying measured half lives of the unstable elements to a sample object and inferring the age of the object based on the very high probability that half lives don’t vary much. Indeed, they typically don’t. It is a sensible scientific method of estimation. With good precision, the math shows objects indeed being very old as measured in earth years. It is what the measurement shows. If that is what it shows, that is what it shows. There is an extremely high probability, the item is that old as measured in earth years.
However, that has little to do with the natural time keeping of the universe — God time if you will.
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That’s right Ed. Muons are useless for dating the age of old objects. They are quite useful though for showing that relativity experimentally works. The clock of the muon in motion to earth is very different than a muon at rest at sea level. Their half lives are no different, but their clocks are different. Not many muons should make it to earth from altitude because they should decay first using earth clocks, but they don’t, because their timekeeping is far different than on earth. That’s been my point all along. Trying to measure creation with 24-hour per day earth clocks is not meaningful.
You are right also that C14 is quite useless for dating very old objects.
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Wendell, you may want to look at the American Geological Institute’s explanation of radio-isotope dating of rocks, here:
http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution/datingfossilrecord.html
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From that paper, I can tell you that dating using muons would be rather pointless.
Uranium 238’s half-life of 4.468 billion years makes it useful for dating objects as old as 4 billion years. Carbon dating craps out because, without stretching, it’s only good back about 50,000 years, or less than half the span Homo sapiens is usually calculated to have been around.
Muons have a half-life of less than a second? That would make them unusable for calculating ages of millions of years.
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wendell if you’re bringing up entropy in regards to the theory of evolution…don’t…just don’t.
Now I got a question for you.
Why is it that God couldn’t have used evolution and the big bang, and whatever else you’re objecting to because of your religious beliefs, as a means to an end?
After all the Bible doesn’t say how God created the universe, earth and all life..it just says He did.
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To quote: Wendell Mooer said:
I’m not the only one who thinks that science has been victimized by egos.
That coming from the person who is trying to victimize science by subjecting it to their ego regarding their religious beliefs.
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Hello Again Ed,
It seems we don’t and likely won’t agree on very much.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/muon.html
Click to access 0405270v2.pdf
Boltzmann’s Brains are paradoxical. They’d be much less complex than a whole person, more likely to appear from a probability point of view than a whole person, a solar system, or 100 billion galaxies. Big Bang believers are confident everything that exists emanated from a point of singularity smaller than the head of a pin 13B+ years back in earth time (Though predictions about the instant before the big bang are problematic). Entropy in the universe is increasing. For the moment at least, the pace of universal expansion is accelerating. Dark energy, rather mysterious, plays a star role. However, why Entropy was lower in the past remains a mystery. The scientific method requires reversibility, no? Boltzmann worked on this long ago. Even you sound convinced of the absurdity of such an idea of brains randomly fluctuating in and out of existence (seems nonsensical, right?), yet it is a dramatically more likely scenario than some other ideas that are more palatable. Serious scientists have thought about it, yes, even within the last decade. I’m not saying they personally believe Boltzmann brains are out there, but they did not dismiss the notion and considered the logic of it from a probability standpoint (probability is important in quantum mechanics incidentally).
2+2 = 4 you say? It is settled? It is a fact? I say, it depends on what you are talking about. When you are talking about entropy, 2+2=6 and 3+3=15 combinations in a base ten counting system. If these items are atoms, and they interact, math addition doesn’t always work out perfectly. 2+2 going in might equal 2.9997 + 1.0001 coming out, with something not accounted for. Does radioactivity ring a bell? This is the common basis for most measuring the age of the earth, which does use some assumptions, even if you don’t want to call them that.
I’ve seen repetitive language in the trashing of data that suggested fresh lava flows were millions of years old. What was it (?)…xenoliths. Ah yes. Let’s come up with a name for the thing that polluted the sample that made fresh lava look many millions of years old. The data couldn’t possibly be right, or an outlier. It is wrong, because we already know what the facts are…. Xenoliths have made the experiment by others who do not agree null and void. Xenoliths aren’t from the lava you see. They are from the mantle, and they are to blame. Are they really, or are they to blame because this fits the mantra? Have there been scientific evaluations of the probabilities of the xenoliths polluting the sample and how much they would pollute the lava samples from the various places in the world where they were taken? This has been tested in the same lava section that the original data came from? Where is the counter experimental data to show the probability and magnitude of the error data from the naysayers regarding the Xenoliths? The data doubters can’t take a sample to see how many of them there xenoliths there are? They can’t separate out a reasonable amount of samples to get an error magnitude probability? You can’t test the xenoliths that supposedly are so amply present to see how much radioactive material there was or wasn’t and bring out the slide rules for fun to check the range of effect it could have? Just say the experiment is no good, totally invalid, and hop on the bandwagon of trash talkers to join in the chorus of how stupid others with a different point of view are? You think THAT is science?
Don’t get me wrong…I’m a fan of radiometric dating when you can reasonably prove that that the sample is righteous, and if not make tolerances for it. Let the data then show or imply whatever it does. Nothing I read trashing the creationists actually evaluated the results experimentally with a test of its own on a lava sample containing xenoliths with how many cubic centimeters of xenoliths there were in the sample and what that experimentally showed, tying it to a statistical error range, showing the data gathered from the lava was actually wholly invalid. Maybe it was. Maybe such a study took place and is documented. I haven’t found it, but maybe it exists. Maybe it doesn’t too. If not, what does that say?
Then we have the issue of the dating meteorites as a means of dating the earth and the moon. We radioactively date a meteorite, that admittedly did not originate on earth, a xeno-meteorite if you’ll allow the parallel, and that result is a fair basis to date the earth also? We can reliably date an item from another world based on our ways of measuring on earth, not knowing for CERTAIN the composition the xeno-meteorite had in its extraterrestrial place of origin? Do we know for certain the path the meteorite took to get where it was found? We know its acceleration history and directional speeds over its whole lifespan since formation? We know this completely?
PROBABLY the meteorite was formed about when our solar system was (we can make an estimate based on probabilities of known meteorites as originating in our solar system based on composition, assuming we have a composition baseline we can reasonably match), but is that known for certain? I say no. So we make an educated GUESS that it was, and conclude POSITIVELY what its age is, based on what we assumed to be true. Question: If I were to hand my seven-year old daughter a Ming Dynasty vase, would that make her between 370 and 646 years old as time is measured on earth? Do we know the speed of the meteorite we are aging over its entire existence and where it came from absolutely? Do we perhaps assume that the meteorite came from our solar system originally, was formed in our locale in space, and that its speed ALWAYS was always about what ours was, to take relativity out of the equation, and then say that the earth and the meteorite are all about the same age? Even with that, you have meteorites and the earth with long but not the same age with radiometric dating. You get differences of over a billion earth years (high to low 3.4B to 5.8B) from high to low, assuming your assumptions are right, which is fine as long as the assumptions aren’t forgotten about. Some half life predictors are very closely aligned, some aren’t. Do they tend to point to a very old earth as time is measured on earth? YES! They probably are very old, but it is not a fact that they are 4.5B years old – they could be younger and a lot older too. Likely? NO. It is an ESTIMATE, based on the measuring stick’s good and bad points. One bad point is quantum related. Half-life is based on probability. There is a high probability that half the radioactive material will decay very closely to the predicted half life of a large grouping of unstable atom. There is a very low probability that the half life will vary significantly at the half life point in a big huge way. However, that probability is NOT ZERO. There is a low probability that a Boltzmann brain will form on your dinner table spontaneously at your next meal, but I wish you that exciting experience. Though I don’t predict it will occur, such a probability is not ZERO either.
Scientists only work with data and facts? Huh? Number crunching isn’t the same as THINKING. This is what Mead was talking about in the article I posted a couple days back.
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Wendell Mooer said:
Yes, many who don’t understand science are of the opinion that scientists have big egos and are wrong.
Science is not a place for opinion, generally. Facts and data.
Who are those “self-proclaimed geniuses” you complained about? Might you be one?
Most scientists I know have good egos, and live as humble people. The geniuses among them do not think themselves geniuses, strive not to be arrogant about what they know since science is one long practice of discovering how much one does NOT know, and work hard to spread knowledge for the benefit of all.
Especially in those sciences that touch on, inform, and depend on evolution theory, I find scientists to be the opposite of what you claim. Compare the humility of E. O. Wilson with the astonishing arrogance of anyone at the Discovery “Institute,” for example.
Happy to have the discussion, if you’ll discuss.
I’m unfamiliar, I think, with what you refer to. I know of no one who claims brains randomly appear in space. Quite impossible, I’d imagine.
Most dating methods come in in the same neighborhood, younger than 14 billion years, older than 13 billion years. Any answers I’ve seen that vary from that range tend to lack science, and can’t be replicated, or even calculated. Good methods tend to arrive at similar or the same answers.
Darwin said the Earth had to be older than 200 million years, but that was a SWAG figure, though educated SWAG. Lord Kelvin disagreed, with hard calculations. Turns out that the good Lord assumed a makeup of the Sun that was not so, and a lack of heating of the Earth, which was. Darwin was on the more-nearly-correct side there.
Since then, various datings agree: Background radiation, isotope dating, red-shift, etc. Among the hard sciences, there is no evidence I’ve seen that puts the age of the universe significantly different from the science figures. Do you know of some?
I’m not sure why you say holding to answers, from different methods, that agree, is “politically correct.” No politics there, just science.
So, with Rutherford, we measure the age of the Earth from deep within; we take the age of the Vishnu Schist, and other basement rocks — and voila! — they agree. The Moon is roughly the same age (well, almost exactly the same). Other stuff from our solar system is in the same generation.
Relativity is at work. But that doesn’t mean time calculations are wrong.
The “assumptions” are tested to be sure they work. Once tested, once proven to the level of theory, it’s not accurate to call them assumptions, any more than it would be accurate say we “assume” that 2 + 2 = 4. That’s not an assumption any more.
But we still use atoms to date things, and more specifically, the decay of radioactive atoms. There are lots of smaller particles, some that go into making atoms, some that don’t. None of those smaller particles hints that radioisotope dating doesn’t work as theory indicates it should, and as experience shows that it does.
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Hi Ed,
I’m not the only one who thinks that science has been victimized by egos.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/20/carver_mead_on_the_future_of_science/
Politics influences science and “scientists” way more than reasonable. The title (…still fraudulent after all these years) invites some push back. I happened to stumble upon it, was irked in both directions by the commentary, and decided to comment myself.
Bolzmann Brains and Laplace’s Demons are examples of hypothetical constructs proposed by scientists in an honest effort to understand entropy. It still isn’t. Given enough time, a brain will materialize randomly in space and you don’t even need evolutionary processes to form one! It is merely a matter of waiting long enough for them to form spontaneously. Right? These notions were not from the creation science realm and neither am I.
There are scientific methods to date the earth at 13.7 billion years old or so (as it looks on earth, as time is measured on earth). There are methods to say the age is different than that, a lot different. All estimates do not agree, though some do to a high degree. So keep the good data that agrees and toss the rest, because it is politically correct in the scientist’s lounge. There also could be relativity at work. It is not valid to consider the age of the earth from the surface of the earth only, though that is one reference point you can pick. Time and how long something takes depends upon the assumptions used and whose watch is counting time (relatively speaking…).
Rumors in the scientific community has it there even things smaller than atoms nowadays.
Wendell
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P.S.: Who are these “self-proclaimed geniuses” to whom you refer, Wendell? Name them.
Or are you just one more creationist making stuff up, again?
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Time is not counted by decay of muons, but by the decay of entire atoms. Solid rhythm — the most consistent rhythm in the universe. God’s clocks.
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What I do not understand is the self proclaimed “scientific geniuses” who are so certain of the earth’s age in the 13.7 billion year range, only consider time passage and the age of the earth from the earth’s perspective. Relativistic time dilation is not hard for the geniuses to swallow. Muons at rest on average decay much faster than muon’s moving about (this is experimentally verified at altitude versus sea level). Time passes much faster seemingly on the earth’s surface than predicted based on the half life of a muon.
Why is it that so called scientists can envision a group of “persons” in a thought experiement, who calibrate their watches, have one stay on earth while the others in the group all zoom off at various accelerations and directions, and then hypothetically return to earth later, all having taken different speedy paths. When they see each other later, their watches are all different, though everyone has the same watch technology that was clearly calibrated when they sped off. Space time warps are just dandy to envision, though such an experiment with actual persons is not scientifically verified since no technology to move folks around so quickly actually exists, yet relativistic time dilation theory is overwhelmingly accepted out of hand. But no way could God do it! God has to be the one stuck on the earth’s surface, not even moving about like a snail.
You’ve got it exactly backwards! Stop thinking like a flat lander! You can envision 100 billion stars in 100 billion galaxies, but you can only consider time passage from perspective of the earth only? Picture a creator moving about in your mind’s eye rather than stationary on the earth and how time seems to them, moving about at just under the speed of light, and you’ll start to get the idea.
You don’t have to violate the laws of physics to have a day look like a billion years on earth. It depends on whose watch you are looking at.
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“The Oxford English Dictionary definition of theory – ‘an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain something’.”
a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained:Darwin’s theory of evolution
a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based:a theory of education[mass noun] :music theory
an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action:my theory would be that the place has been seriously mismanaged
Mathematicsa collection of propositions to illustrate the principles of a subject.
That is the full OED definition, as usual the poster can not even be relied on to give a full quote of the section he is copying from. Or even the complete sentence of the part of the definition he is trying to use.
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Charles writes:
DNA may be able to detect some small traces of biological relationship beyond fourth cousins and thereabouts, but it is far from a given, and nowhere near as reliable or established as you suggest.
Then have fun explaining why we humans share 90% of the same genes as the chimpanzees.
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Speaking as a Christian, Thomas…I wish I could disagree with you. But I cannot. You are absolutely correct.
I will commend, however, groups like…
http://ausable.org/
http://www.creationcare.org/
http://eenonline.org/
Not sure where every individual in each organization stands on the matter of the lies spread by ICR. But at least THESE folks seem to give a damn about the actual creation…and preserving it for future generations.
God bless ’em.
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You have hit it on the head. The ICR is a joke. Their maganzine, Acts and Facts, for years sold videos about intelligent design and published numerous articles in support of it. Recently the ICR and the distributor of the videos have parted ways. In the most recent Acts and Facts they say intelligent design is bogus and all one needs to do is read the Bible and believe in creationism. Wow! They can’t make money off it anymore so they say it is bad. These ICR people, like most of the congregated religious groups, want to control your mind. They want you to believe in their interpretation of God’s word. The ICR gives Christians a bad name. They should be ignored.
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[…] stuck to the rules. ICR threatened a lawsuit. THECB stood […]
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Ed,
DNA may be able to detect some small traces of biological relationship beyond fourth cousins and thereabouts, but it is far from a given, and nowhere near as reliable or established as you suggest.
http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=284
But I know, you’re Evolutionists; as long as you want it to be the case, then that makes it a fact.
Concerning your ‘unique marker for descendants of Genghis Khan’, that, again, is far from established. You make it out to be a matter of fact, when actually it is highly speculative and hypothetical.
“It’s a bit melodramatic,” says Peter Underhill of Stanford University. The Y chromosome data are “consistent with a recent Mongolian expansion. That’s fine,” says Underhill. “It’s a question of if you want to imply that this is Genghis Khan’s Y chromosome and that he left all these living descendants. It’s hard to prove that.”
[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_6_163/ai_97997816/; the original article in Science News is accessible for subscribers only]
But you don’t need proof, do you? You’re Evolutionists. You are confident your opinion must be fact because of you esteem yourself exalted beyond all things.
For you as an Evolutionist, opinion = fact. And to you this is an entirely rational and logical position.
And although Evolutionists feel science is in the possession of some special meaning for the word ‘theory’ the definition employed by science remains exactly the same definition as the word has generally.
The Oxford English Dictionary definition of theory – ‘an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain something’.
That definition is true of scientific use (a scientific theory), economic (an economic theory), historical (an historical theory), as with any other normal usage of the word.
I have come across this Evolutionist tactic before where you claim a special meaning for the word in scientific usage so that it appears weightier and more substantial when used by scientists you want to agree with.
I love science and I recognise it uses normal words in normal ways. It does not distort the meanings of normal words because it is science.
Evolutionists, now that’s another matter; I accept you may indeed distort meanings of words at whim to suit whatever grandiose impression of your opinions you may wish to make at any given time.
But making up your own peculiar definitions of words to obscure the plain truth and elevate your opinions and speculations to the position of fact, while it might make you feel very impressive, does not transport ‘theory’ into anything other than ‘theory’.
And then you employ another little Evolutionist trick, where you move the goal posts a little to enforce your point.
‘And it is experimentally established that DNA does very well establishing cousin relationships,’ you say.
I don’t dispute that, but you moved from asserting ‘it is well established that DNA can identify cousins way beyond fourth cousins’, which a much more specific and larger claim to the general and more vague assertion ‘DNA does very well establishing cousin relationships.’
I know cousins can be identified by DNA, but the further away the cousin the less reliable identification of biological relationship becomes, until it reaches a point where identification is generally not possible.
Lets keep the same subject throughout any given point, shall we?
So, regardless of what ‘one guy who works with chimpanzees’ wryly suggested to you might be the case, my point remains that it is a logical fallacy to assert as fact that a degree of biological relationship must mean universal biological relationship.
And nothing you can say will alter that. A logical fallacy is a logical fallacy. You can’t change it into a logical step by the application of copious dollops of smokescreen, fudge and yet more logical fallacy.
You say –
‘In any case, there is absolutely no question in DNA-literate circles that DNA establishes familial lines clearly and well. Chimps and humans are closely related.’
Here you move from an uncontested general and vague point (DNA establishes familial lines clearly and well) to a conclusion about a wholly different and very specific point where you present speculative proposition as a statement of fact.
That DNA can identify familial lines is accepted. But it has limitations to what it can identify. And that does not mean chimps and humans are closely or even at all closely biologically related.
Your assert a logical fallacy –
‘In any case, there is absolutely no question in DNA-literate circles that DNA establishes familial lines clearly and well. Chimps and humans are closely related.’
Thank-you for taking the trouble to recommend a book to me, but I’ll have to leave Jared Diamond’s book, I have neither the time nor the inclination to plough through a volume of Evolutionist speculation right now. Even you note he was wrong.
Nick,
semantics?
Well, firstly I think the meanings of words are crucial when employing words in endeavouring to argue points of principle. Don’t you?
Secondly, am I to take it you mean to suggest that I am playing word games or something? If so, that would show that you incapable of recognising logic.
Before you keep going on and on about similarities between human and chimp DNA, please try to recognise the point that similarity does not necessarily equate to biological relationship.
Evolutionists do the same morphologically, although DNA blows that contention out he water, this the rethinking the tree of life.
If you assert that similarity must equal biological relationship, you merely employ a logical fallacy; and no matter how many times or in how many ways you do that it does not prove a universal history of biological relationship.
Similarity between chimp and human DNA fits a Biblical Creationist model perfectly, as they are similar and are designed by the same Creator.
To assert my position renders DNA worthless is but more of your asinine drivel.
You might think you are being clever making that sort of ridiculous wild statement, but it merely confirms you have no grasp of what you are talking about.
The fact you guys have come up with nothing but drivel, straw men and fudge only goes to show why I said you guys are such funny bags of hot air.
You have consistently shown that indeed, just as I said, your critical faculties have been obliterated by Darwinism. You have an aversion to logic and a penchant for asserting opinion as fact, assumption as evidence, and any other logical fallacy you can possibly lay hold of in support of your views, not to mention present red herrings, smokescreens and straw men.
Your intellectual incompetence alone should make anyone question whether Darwinism is really intellectually viable. If you guys believe it, perhaps it is a really stupid idea.
You have been duped by a pretentious and disingenuous idea bereft of intellectual merit, and it has rendered you daft.
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Ed, is it just me or is he now arguing semantics?
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Then surely, Charles, you can identify the other species of animal on this planet that we humans share 95% of the same genes with. Or a percentage around that number.
Your position renders DNA worthless.
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Not a “given,” no. Experimentally, it is well established that DNA can identify cousins way beyond fourth cousins. There’s a unique marker for descendants of Genghis Khan, for example, that allows us to identify with certainty that he has way more than a billion descendants on Earth today — a very prolific breeder.
So, it’s not “given.” It is theoretically accurate (and I mean “theory” as scientists use the word, not “hypothesis” or “some wild-a–ed guess.”). And it is experimentally established that DNA does very well establishing cousin relationships.
One guy who works with chimpanzees discussed that with me. With all the wryness allowed, he suggested that it may be that some chimps may be more closely related to some people than their sixth or seventh human cousins. In any case, there is absolutely no question in DNA-literate circles that DNA establishes familial lines clearly and well. Chimps and humans are closely related.
See if you can get a copy of Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee. He was calling humans the third chimp. That was published before a third chimp species was discovered, but they didn’t retitle the book.
In any case, the evidence is laid out quite clearly there, and Diamond isn’t even a molecular guy.
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Ed,
are you trying for the sympathy vote by showing you’re an imbecile? Well, you don’t have to; I had already guessed, and you already have my sympathy.
Nick,
No, you are the one who is employing logical fallacy; as I demonstrated.
And as you demonstrate again, you cannot escape from it.
‘The same situation just with a larger scope’ is exactly the inductive logical fallacy central to Darwinism.
You say –
‘You are in effect arguing that “Yes, DNA proves that I’m related to my father but it doesn’t prove that I’m related to my 4th cousin.”’
This is an interesting thing for you to come out with, because you make my case for me.
You yourself suggest a degree of relationship must indicate universal relationship, but whilst DNA could identify my father, it is not a given that it could identify fourth cousins and beyond.
So even those sections of DNA which can identify a biological relationship are limited in scope.
But I don’t dictate to God at all; rather I allow him to instruct my views, and I take his word over and above the ideas of the world, even over and above your views, Nick. I know, crazy, right?
But don’t you think it’s a little self-important of you to tell me you know better than God what he did.
I know you Evolutionists like to think of yourselves as the pinnacle of all human knowledge but do please try to find it in your heart to forgive me if I do not share your elevated opinion of yourself.
But actually, as the Holy Bible makes perfectly clear, it was indeed inspired by God and is inerrant and infallible.
Your comments make plain that you do not understand the Biblical teaching about that either.
But venting your ignorant criticisms of the Christian view of scripture and the Biblical teaching about creation does nothing to make Evolutionism any more credible. You do realise that, right?
You what that is, don’t you, Nick? Yup, it’s another of your logical fallacies again.
Pilin’ ‘em up! Pilin’ ‘em up!
It’s common for Evolutionists to try to deflect from the obviously indefensible position of Evolutionism by changing the subject to, well, almost anything they don’t understand about the Holy Bible. It’s just one more of the evasive tactics you have to rely on.
But do try to understand, Nick, that even though you are ignorant of Biblical teaching, that doesn’t make your defence of your belief in Darwin’s logical fallacy with other logical fallacies any more rational.
When you say that ‘To believe in Creationism is to deny the entire universe’ I can only surmise you’re just using Ed’s trick of trying for the sympathy vote.
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The sequencing of those codes, however, indicates family relationship.
Have you ever studied DNA? It doesn’t appear to me you know much about it.
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You’d deny your own father, then. You’d deny your own son.
Before the cock crows at all, you’ll deny your mother.
Obstreperousness and obnoxiousness cannot make up for sheer, unadulterated, intentional ignorance.
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Well, Nick,
I don’t feel I’m ignoring anything; but I think you are indicating various degrees of confusion in what you say.
You assert –
‘If DNA proves that two people who share a portion of the same DNA structure are related then it also proves that two species who share a portion of the same DNA structure are related.’
But this now yet another logical fallacy you present, asserting a particular degree of something equals a universal. It is an inductive fallacy.
It is the same thing Evolutionists do if some change is observed in an organism: because change ‘x’ occurs, therefore any change could occur.
This was the central speculation presented by Darwin himself. He said he didn’t see why there should be any limit to the changes that could occur with enough time. Such an idea, it should be noted, flies in the face of the fact that DNA is fundamentally conservative in nature, but that was the idea he came up with. Yes indeed, the fundamental idea of Darwinism is a logical fallacy.
You suggest a degree of relationship must indicate universal relationship.
Not necessarily so.
‘Because it’s doing the same job,’ you say.
But actually I think you’ll find it’s commonly accepted that DNA implements a huge variety of jobs in different locations.
If DNA is biologically foundational to all living organisms then it will indeed appear in all living organisms, and with varying degrees of structural similarity existing across the board for various reasons. Just because some indicate a degree of biological relationship, does not mean all do. Much or most may simply indicate similarity.
So you merely compound one logical fallacy with another. First, you assert biological similarity shows biological relationship (when actually it only shows biological similarity, you merely presume the history of biological relationship); and second, you assert one degree of relationship equals universal relationship (when actually a degree of relationship only indicates that degree of relationship).
You evidently find using these logical fallacies useful in support of Darwin’s initial one, but in reality they only serve to cloud your mind. Evolutionists consistently display this kind of sloppy, self-indulgent and fallacious argumentation because your devotion to Darwin’s idea demands you do whatever you need to in order to arrive at your desired conclusion.
And you cannot free yourself from the quagmire, because you cannot admit that Darwinism might be wrong.
And you call it scientific to make appear substantial and weighty what is actually
illogical, self-serving philosophical fluff. And then you try to use the appellation of ‘scientific’ to intimidate anyone who does not accept Darwin’s speculation.
You demand everyone be as intellectually incompetent as you or you pour scorn and contempt upon them.
You say –
‘Humans and apes share 95% of the same genes. That is scientific fact. The only conclusion that is intelligent and rational to make from that fact is…humans and apes are related’
‘The only conclusion,’ you say decisively.
‘The only conclusion that is intelligent and rational,’ you say grandly.
But in reality, although it is the only conclusion you are prepared to countenance, merely imposing your idea does not make it historical fact. And it never will, pretend all you want.
Indeed, diverse similarity in structure better argues for design than it does biological relationship. But you will never see that because to explore such a possibility is forbidden you. Thus you will remain blindly ignorant of the intellectual inadequacy Darwinism has demanded of you, whilst claiming all intellectual integrity for yourselves as you fling logical fallacies left right and centre.
And your ramblings about God, his acts and the Holy Bible are also ridiculous.
But what do you care? You have your Darwinism; your logical fallacy; your nebulous, unfounded idea; and nothing will shake your confidence in it, not God’s word, not the scientific evidence, not logic, and certainly not nasty little me. Right?
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Charles, you are purposely ignoring something that is very simple.
If DNA proves that two people who share a portion of the same DNA structure are related then it also proves that two species who share a portion of the same DNA structure are related.
Because it’s doing the same job.
Whereas for some silly reason you want to pretend that DNA does one job in one situation and a completely different job in a similar situation.
Humans and apes share 95% of the same genes. That is scientific fact. The only conclusion that is intelligent and rational to make from that fact is…humans and apes are related.
You can sit there and pretend otherwise all you want, Charles, but you are being delusional. And for what? Because your faith in God is so weak that you can’t give credit to God for doing things in a way that you don’t like?
At least the majority of Christianity has the sense to give credit to God for what He did instead of calling God a sociopathic liar and/or an complete idiot which is all your side of this argument does.
You can deify a human written book all you want, Charles, I’ll trust God.
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Hello again Nick,
Yes, your cousin and you are related.
(Bravo! Have a cuppa, sit down and rest up your poor exhausted noggin)
But are my neighbour’s cat and you related? Another question altogether.
The Evolutionist answers, “Yes, obviously, because the same basic raw biological materials are organised in similar ways; so the two must be biologically related.”
But in so answering the Evolutionist employ a logical fallacy, because the fact of basic raw biological materials organised in similar ways is evidence only of the basic raw biological materials being organised in similar ways, not that one organised unit developed into another.
You presume the historic relationship; every evolutionist does; all the time. But presuming it is scientifically and logically inadequate.
Logically and scientifically, you need to show it.
Which is where things like your highly flexible friend the ever nebulous tree of life come in.
But what Evolutionists do is say ‘x’ shows the historic relationship between ‘y’ and ‘z’; and then when asked how ‘x’ shows that relationship they say because of the similarity between ‘y’ and ‘z’; using the assumption as evidence of the assumption.
Logically fallacious and scientifically untenable.
Evolutionists apply their assumption and presume proof. You do it all the time.
But all life having the same basic raw materials organised in similar ways shows only that all life has the same basic raw materials organised in similar ways.
And that can just as easily be caused by all life being made and organised by the same power. Indeed, in the absence of any proof of common ancestry, it is actually the more logical position.
So, although you assert similarity is evidence of common ancestry (‘That we share 95+% of the same DNA as chimps and other apes, Charles, is evidence that we are related’) you are actually employing a logical fallacy. Because similarity is not evidence of common ancestry; only of similarity.
You accuse me of being stupid and blind because I do not accept your assumption about the historic relationship (which has never been proven to have been a reality; i.e. – ‘”We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality,” says Bapteste.’) but I am not the one who relies upon a logical fallacy to support my belief, Nick, old bean.
You Evolutionists have a real and enduring problem with logic; it has been noted a number of times. But you never get over it; you never make progress; because you refuse to allow the possibility that your assumption about common ancestry could be wrong.
So you dogmatically employ logical fallacy as the mainstay of your argumentation, demanding similarity be seen as evidence of historical biological relationship when actually it is only evidence of similarity.
You are terrified by logic; you refuse to admit it into your thinking. You persistently employ logical fallacy, rely upon it, and demand everyone else use it. Your critical faculties have been turned to mush by the need to defend your doctrine of common ancestry at all costs.
Thus Evolutionists are commonly found to be dogmatic, terrified and unreasonable;
defending in a vitriolic, bullying and unscientific manner an idea wholly without relation to scientific reality.
And no matter what the scientific tells you, you will always demand your idea is right; even having the audacity to call it a fact; and to top it all you will blather on about yourselves as if your views are the height of objective rational thought.
You are a deeply deluded bunch; and the stench or your arrogance is matched only by the stink of your intellectual dishonesty.
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Charles writes:
There you go, see, confusing biological similarity for evidence of evolutionary relationship, just as I said already.
Really? So because I share some of the same dna as say a cousin of mine doesn’t mean we’re related but that we’re just “biological similar.”
Then pray tell, child, why don’t we show such “biological similarity” with say..dogs? See thats the idiocy of your contention there.
You’ll say DNA can be used to show that someone is related to someone else..but you’ll blindly say that it can’t show if a species is related to another species. You’re trying to have it both ways. That we share 95+% of the same DNA as chimps and other apes, Charles, is evidence that we are related.
It is you that is being stupid and blind. It is you being an ideaologue to protect your precious belief.
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[…] […]
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DNA doesn’t just show similarity. It shows family. That’s why it’s the best forensic evidence we have.
If your mileage differs, check your odometer.
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You guys really are the best.
Nick,
‘No attempt to show where he or I was wrong’? Wrong about what? You feel either of you actually made an argument? Ah ha… you sure know how to write ‘em, Nick!
And here comes another one… ‘Evolution has been proven by science.’ Ah ha h aha haaa….
Oh please, guys, stop! Stop!
‘Why do we share 95+% of the same genetic structure as chimps and the other apes? Why is our dna nearly the same? Why is our skeletal structure nearly the same?’
There you go, see, confusing biological similarity for evidence of evolutionary relationship, just as I said already. Your assumption presented as evidence. And you expect me to dignify that drivel by calling it an argument?
And as for your questions about the flood, why should I bother offering you any answers when you are not interested? You play all the self-satisfied, pretentious games you want but count me out.
Ed,
You think you were in a debate? Wow, planet Ed, weird worlds. And you are under the impression gave a rebuttal to something? With data? Hey, crazy, man, crazy!
I didn’t miss the point of the article at all. To say I did ids not a statement of fact, it is yet another example of you elevating your opinion to fact; but then you’re an Evolutionist aren’t you, it’s how you get by in that crazy weird world of yours.
You seem to be under the impression that because neither Rose not Bapteste are said Evolution did not occur that you have somehow rebutted my point. But I did not assert that they said any such thing. You do love those straw men arguments, don’t you, Ed! Make you feel all big an’ intellectual an’ all?
You and logic just don’t get on, do you.
You do however have a very cozy relationship with sheer flights of fancy. You try to give the impression you presented ‘the real words of the authors’ to rebut what you presumably like to think of my unreal words of the authors. But that’s just your old buddies those straw men again, isn’t it. just because you don’t like what someone says, doesn’t mean it’ll disappear if you say it isn’t real, Ed.
I have not missed the point at all. The articles you refer to do not alter anything about the article I referred you to; all they do is say they disagree with what the evolutionary biologists said. Well, that’s hardly surprising, is it? You Evolutionists always get in a tizzy when one of you slips from the party line and owns up to something you prefer to ignore.
Far from my goofing up, I seem to have hit a real raw nerve with you guys. And I have been shown to be absolutely right when I said that your critical faculties have been obliterated and you have lost contact with logic.
It’s all that Evolutionary fudge, boys. Plays dirty tricks on the mind.
You consistently present straw man arguments, smokescreens, red herrings, opinion as fact, assumption as evidence, and indeed whatever other logical fallacy you can grasp, as well as deluded visions of your exalted intellectual efficacy, all to bolster your inflated opinions of yourselves and flatter your soft pudding brains.
Every time you stride forth and open your mouths you so very eloquently make my case for me.
Now, don’t forget guys – evolution is not necessary for evolution.
: D
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If you can’t stand the rebuttal, stay out of the debate. You claim my critical senses are “obliterated,” a pure attack on me instead of the data. When I respond noting that you missed the entire point of the science journal article and got it 180 degrees wrong — a statement of fact, not an unwarranted attack on you with no connection to the debate — you respond that I am being unfair.
Really? If you have a rebuttal, if I am in error about the article, show me. I gave you a link to a full text copy of the article.
My demonstrating your error by posting the real words of the authors may be devastating to you personally because you erred. It is not in any stretch an argument against you, personally, on non-germane grounds.
If you don’t want to be accused of missing the point, read the research articles first and be sure you’ve got it right. When you get caught goofing up like that, cowboy up to the podium and admit your error, or make the case that you shouldn’t be called on it.
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Nor did you attmept to explain where all the water that would be needed for a worldwide flood came from and where it went. After all, for a world wide flood to be possible it would have to be enough water to cover the tallest mountain in the world..and that would mean the water would have had to have reached the height of 30,000 feet. As I said…water doesn’t *poof* appear and *poof* disappear. Nor does it explain how in all of human history, from Asia to the Middle East to Europe to the Americas, there was never any indication that they all got wiped out of existance at the exact same time. And please tell me…exactly how did Noah get that many animals on his ark and keep the carnivores from preying on the herbivores? And exactly how did the fresh water creatures exist in salt water? Or how did salt water creatures exist in fresh water? You know what happens, for example, when a dolphin encounters fresh water? It sinks, it develops a rather severe reaction to it and it drowns.
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Charles writes:
The problem, Charles, with your argument is that all you did was ad hominem attack. You responded to Ed, he responded to you and then you simply in response did a pure attack with no attempt to show where he or I was wrong. Furthermore, little one, you attacked me when I hadn’t attacked you.
Evolution has been proven by science, it’s undergone all the tests and proofs that science uses, it’s been peer reviewed and it has evidence to back it up.
Creation….or rather Creationism, which is an heretical take on the Creation account in the Bible, has no evidence. All it has is a 2000 year old book written by humans trying to explain how we got here.
And you still didn’t respond to what I actually said originally. But I’ll put it in the form of a question for you…if evolution is false then pray tell why do we share 95+% of the same genetic structure as chimps and the other apes? Why is our dna nearly the same? Why is our skeletal structure nearly the same?
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Charles! Maybe you’re right!
See here:
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/dinosaur-and-human-tracks-together-get-yours-from-ebay/
Or maybe not.
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Nick,
Who said anything trying about proving you wrong? You merely presume. Second nature to you; the habitual behaviour of an Evolutionist.
If you find my comments insulting, and wish to criticize this, how come you haven’t criticised any of Ed’s ad hominem attacks? Didn’t notice them? Okay for Evolutionists to use them, but not anyone else? How very elevated a position you Evolutionists command. How very grand you are.
It is telling that you think I was attempting to debate you guys. I attempted no such thing. I consistently find Evolutionists are incapable of reasoned, rational debate. They wouldn’t know how to even begin such a thing. I think the fact you mistook my comments for an attempt at debate shows that very clearly.
As does the fact that you think Ed said anything substantial enough to warrant repudiation.
Continue your nonsense, Nick; you make my case for me every time you say something else.
Ed,
ditto, despite feeling you’ve given a reasoned argument you have said nothing to rebut.
Evolutionists assume the veracity of Evolution? Hey, you possess a genius for the comedic.
I didn’t claim the opposite of what they said. That’s just another Evolutionist evasion tactic you have to resort to. I said they admitted the tree of life probably isn’t accurate.
You make up whatever you feel like as you go along, don’t you?
How did I know you would?
You’re an Evolutionist.
You’re both hot air bags.
And funny as anything! : D
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Institute for Creation Research interviews any scientist:
Tip of the old scrub brush to P. Z. Myers.
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Yeah, that’s why I could see that what Baptest and Rose said assumes the veracity of evolution, while you claimed they said the opposite of what they did say.
Yeah, don’t be persuaded by the evidence, nosiree!
We shouldn’t hold our breath for a serious rebuttal backed by fact and reason, right?
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To translate Charles:
“I can’t prove Ed and Nick wrong so I’m going to pretend that I already did and insult them hoping to God they’re stupider than me and think an ad hominem attack is a way to win an debate. And I’m hoping to God that the rest of you are stupider than I think they are so you’re gullible enough to believe that what I said is intelligent debate instead of worthless junk.”
I find it curious, Charles, that in your response to Ed you didn’t even bother to disprove what he said in retort to you. Congratulations, Charles…you surrendered the debate and admitted you lost. Run along now.
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You lot really do drivel on. And you will continue to do so, no matter what. You confirm everything I have discovered elsewhere about Evolutionists.
Your critical faculties have been obliterated. You have been dissuaded from intellectual scrutiny and have lost contact with logic, presenting interpretation as fact, and assumption as evidence, and consistently confusing biological similarity for evidence of evolutionary relationship.
You present red herrings, smokescreens and straw men in the belief you are citing evidence.
And I love it when you guys cite DNA as evidence of Evolution! That’s just the funniest!
Thanks for the laughs, guys!
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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/rickthames/story/1171140.html
I bring that article up for two reasons. The first is that the author of the article puts for the conjecture that 90% of the world’s scientists and engineers will be in Asia in the coming decades.
The second is that, if that conjecture holds true, it will mean the downfall of the United States. Our power is based on science and engineering. And part of the reason, notice I say part, of the decline of the United States in the scientific arena can be demonstrated by Charles.
If every time science says something that some group doesn’t like then science is dismissed as a lie and scientists are dismissed as liars then what hope is there for this country? That is what is going on when it comes to the topic of climate change and that is what goes on when the topic is evolution. The scinece is ignored, said false by those who dont know better, that the world’s scientists are conjuring some world wide hoax, that they’re nothing but liars, that science can be ignored and dismissed at whim merely because some person or some group doesn’t like what science says.
So congrats Charles, you are a member of a coterie of fools destroying the United States.
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Darwin had an agile mind that covered the full range of science, but especially all those sciences of living things, which he united in one grand framework.
Dullness of the intellect in front of the page often masquerades as dullness of the penholder. Dull but important writing can be made sprightly by a higher intellect working to understand. Bowditch’s inspiration that Newton’s dull numbers would save sailors’ lives is one example.
Get Steve Jones’ update on Darwin, Darwin’s Ghost (review here; first chapter here). Or get the late Ernst Mayr’s What Evolution Is. I especially recommend Jonathan Weiner’s 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Beak of the Finch, a story of evolution in our time. Neil Shubin’s book, Your Inner Fish is a good waltz through evolution theory from the perspective of a team that found one of the most spectacular links between fish and humans in fossil form, Tiktaalik. Sean B. Carroll writes brilliantly, lectures wonderfully, and his Endless Forms Most Beautiful should convert even the most die-hard anti-reader. There are a dozen good books explaining evolution. Read some of them. If we fail to understand Darwin, the fault is not in our stars.
Nor does one have to study the Bible to understand Christianity, your reasoning holds. If one spends enough time in a pool room and hears the word “Jesus” often enough, Christianity is explained in enough detail to draw a conclusion.
If one wants a correct conclusion, one might be more careful.
One must observe those explanations at least before one can understand it, or at least observe a few of the examples in the wild and give them some thought. As Darwin aptly noted, in one man’s lifespan and understanding, evolution boggles the mind. One can’t take sideways glances at a book and understand it. You can’t explain that orchid Darwin found, with a throat on the blossom more than 11″ long, and explain how it is pollinated, without doing some serious reading or serious research. There is no Royal Road to understanding evolution, for anyone.
No Royal Road to reality, either. Come on over and live in reality for a while, you’ll begin to see how it works. For example, reality is that we have influenza. Evolution theory explains why we need to have annual vaccines instead of one lifetime jab. Where we try to save the lives of children from measles, malaria, yellow fever, Maple Syrup Urine Syndrome and sickle cell anemia, evolution theory is a great help and a road to treatments and cures.
You’re not in medical care, nor agriculture, nor any part of science, I gather.
One of the reasons Darwin’s book sold out the first day (an 1859 best seller!) was due to the extensive citations and numerous examples he offered from all parts of biology (botanical and zoological), and his lucid explanation of what people see every day but had not quite understood in the fullness of its beauty. Of course, if you haven’t read the book, you might have missed that it was, for its time and now, one of the most empirically-based pieces ever written.
Darwin spent 20 years trying to disprove the theory. He bred pigeons through hundreds of generations, duplicating fancy breeds from common rock doves and back again. A claim that Darwin is not empirically-based is similar to saying Jesus knew nothing of faith.
Excuse me, but I’m finding it very difficult to take your complaints seriously.
Tell us: What do you think could pollinate an orchid with 11″ between the flower opening and the pistils and stamen? You can cheat, and see what Darwin predicted and read about the astounding discovery of exactly what he predicted, or you could go out on a limb and show us the intellect you claim superior to one of the greatest thinkers in western history.
Do you know what “hubris” means?
Moran’s article, especially, explains exactly why it is incorrect to claim that there is any problem from this simplistic New Scientist article and for Darwin’s view of the “Tree of Life” as the chart has come to be called popularly. Cheerleading? It seems obvious to me that you either dismissively did not bother to read the article nor check any of the links, or that you fail to understand any of the issue you’re carping about.
Let me put it to you simply, perhaps in a way you can understand: If you draw out your family “tree,” including only the humans, going back as far as you can, you’ll get a tree similar to the one Darwin drew.
However, in your DNA we can find specific genes from fish, from plants, and from all of those kingdoms of one-celled animals. The branching is clear, the roots are tangled.
Now, if you want to deny that we can trace your history in such a fashion, and offer a plausible reason why that would be so — you are a space alien, you are not human but artificially created — you’d have a case.
Your dismissively ignoring the science and how it works, the reasons the charts are drawn as they are, and the reasons given by the great authorities cited in the two articles I offer you, do not make them in error. Nor does your dismissive attitude taint those articles. You didn’t write them.
Alas, I fear you don’t read them, either.
If you don’t want to be regarded as a troll, don’t live under the bridge and threaten eat the billy goats gruff.
Can you cite for us any research from Bapteste? I looked and did not find any for my last response.
But I invite you to look at a paper that looks to be the basis of the article. You’ll see that the authors fully support evolution theory — they question only a simplistic graphic model as too simplistic.
From their explanation that the model needs work in the light of what we actually know about how evolution works, The Guardian appears to have gotten an eye-grabbing headline. But it’s a misleading headline to people who don’t understand evolution much. You, Charles, for example, seem to think that claiming a need to modify the model of evolution means Darwin was in error — and I’ll wager you think that means one of the creation stories in Genesis is correct (though you won’t tell us which one, since that would necessarily invalidate the other, hence calling the Bible “false” in part).
That’s not at all what these guys conclude, when we track down an article with a more complete discussion (in Biology Direct):
They aren’t questioning the fact that evolution occurs. They only question the usefulness of a model which, they claim, hides the great dynamics of evolution in once-celled creatures. They say there is more evolution than Darwin’s quick-draw model suggests, not less. In no way do they suggest there is none.
Please re-read Larry Moran’s post. He notes that the hoo-haw about one-celled creatures does not change the fact that for multi-celled organisms, the “tree of life” remains perfectly accurate.
Because it’s just magazine conjecture as you present it. When we track down the actual articles, we discover neither Rose nor Bapteste questions the fact that evolution occurs, nor do they question in any way the use of a “tree of life” model in evolution for plants and animals.
How come you make false claims on the article without having read it?
You made a false claim based on a non-research article. Had you sought out and read the article, you’d see that your claim is not only not supported, but specifically denied.
So, you have cited an article talking about new complexities and new understanding for how evolution really works, but you claim instead it says evolution doesn’t work at all.
Shifting of goal posts? No, I still hate false claims from creationists of any stripe, and I wish they could find Jesus and the gumption to describe the World God Created accurately instead of making up fantastic phantasms.
My complaint is with your bogus conclusion. Frankly, it doesn’t matter where the information is published, if it’s correct. What you claimed is not what the research article you cited concluded. It’s the false conclusion, the misleading of the innocent, the denigration of science and research, that bother me.
Making accurate statements. That’s the only difference. Accuracy is everything in science. Accuracy is anathema to creationism. Creationists seem to be chronically and fatally allergic to accuracy. That’s a serious problem.
So far, everything we have observed in living organisms does, yes. Gene swapping is one way for genes to move quickly throughout a population, for dying organisms to preserve their beneficial mutations other than reproduction, and for evolution to make quantum leaps.
Gene swapping was not foreseen by Darwin, I don’t think. But it explains how evolution rapidly occurs in bacteria and other one-celled organisms.
Why do you claim gene swapping does not support evolution? It certainly does not support any claim that evolution does NOT occur, that alleles in organism populations do NOT change over time.
Why is it you cite a story you don’t understand, and then get your hackles up when experts like Larry Moran patiently explain your error? You don’t like accuracy, I gather, and can’t stand correction?
Go find us a fossil of a rabbit in the Devonian rock, will you? That would clearly refute much of evolution theory. Why, do you think, that with 200 years of searching for that bunny, none have appeared in the Devonian?
Does either Bapteste or Rose claim that a tree of life analogy is inappropriate for the evolution of seeded plants, or any part of the animal kingdom? No.
So, from where do you pluck that idea that the “tree of life” is not working?
And, did you wash your hands after you plucked it?
The unit of evolutionary speed is a “darwin.” Wikipedia gives a quick explanation:
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Peter and Rosemary Grant discovered and documented evolution of birds rolling along at 10,000 darwins a year. They are the heroes of Weiner’s book, The Beak of the Finch, and you really should read that book and some of their papers.
In short, they provide evidence using a Darwinian model that, while gradualism is one way that evolution occurs, evolution also occurs much more rapidly, without gradualism. Weiner notes, and Gould detailed, how Huxley and Darwin debated the point. Huxley pointed out that there is no inherent reason that evolution cannot proceed very rapidly using the mechanisms Darwin had so carefully catalogued (in a catalogue you won’t read). Gradualism would mislead some poor sucker who doesn’t read the rest of the book, Huxley said.
You’ve made Huxley’s prediction come true.
No, it’s not.
God’s creation has a different definition. Science sticks to what is observed, not what the dictionary claims should be observed. After all, it was Darwin’s comparison of what Paley said should be observed in the fixity of species with what actually occurs in nature that led him to challenge the view that species never change.
Now, 150 years later, we argue with latter-day Paleyists about the speed of evolution. Maybe that’s progress, of a sort.
Gradualism is not essential to evolution, and never has been. You know neither the history nor the science. Go read Weiner’s book. Get educated before you start spouting off, please. There are children present.
Crank science is crank science wherever it appears. I think it should be a crime to make such claims to children. You cite one chunk of crank science as if that justifies another chunk. As if a second murder makes the first one okay.
Why are creationists, all of them, so challenged in reasoning?
I stick to what the evidence shows, and I reject that which the evidence shows to be false. The key thing that separates a scientist from a creationist is the rejection of what has been proven to be false. In all other areas, creationists call such holding to false things bad. In this one area, creationists reject even Christian ethics to cling to falsehoods in nature. It’s beyond understanding.
That is one of the most famous lead-ins from creationists who have introduced red herrings, smoke screens, straw man arguments, false claims, and mined quotes, before they hightail it from the discussion without conceding they don’t know what they’re talking about. This is your last post?
You’ll return to lay more “gems,” but you won’t bother to make the effort to understand God’s creation. One more demonstration of how creationism is opposite Christianity, and far, far from knowledge and wisdom. Other people, people who love learning, who love books, who love ideas, who like science and seek the facts and the truth, will continue to wonder why you hold creation in such contempt.
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To quote charles:
Indeed, many, if not most, people who believe Evolutionary theory do not read original research, they rely upon the media to inform them. They get their information from magazines, news broadcasts, newspapers, etc etc. So how come I’m not allowed to get information from such sources?
“Indeed, many, if not most, people who reject the theory of evolution do not read original research, they reply upon so called religious leaders and fake scientists employed by the ICR to inform them. They get their information from churches and charlatans.”
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Oh by the way, Charles, all the proof necessary to prove evolution to be true can be said by one simple three letter word.
That word is DNA.
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Charles, you do realize that the Oxford dictionary is going to give the laymans definition of the word “evolve” and not the scientific one? You know…like how the dictionary gives the layman’s definition of the word “theory” and not the scientific one.
As for the flood..the reason it isn’t considered real by science is that there is no evidence of it. Water doesn’t *poof* appear and *poof* disappear. There is not enough water on the planet to pull of a world wide flood.
And yes..it’s much more believable to believe that an god that can’t be scientifically proven somehow conjured all life out of thin air on this planet then, if God exists, that He did it how the planet and life on this planet actually indicates. Because we all know that a human written book written 2000+ years ago couldn’t possibly be wrong about things that happened billions of years ago.
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I tried to read Darwin once. It was just about the most tedious piece of writing I can recall trying to read; I was truck by the dullness of the intellect behind the pen. I might try again sometime; if I feel strong enough to endure the brain-numbing tedium.
But I don’t have to read Darwin to understand Darwinism, as ably demonstrated by Dawkins who said he was a Darwinist before he had read Darwin. Evolutionary theory is explained in detail all over the globe.
I understand what Evolutionary theory is and what it predicts. And I find neither the theory nor the predictions to have anything to do with reality.
The theory is an innately nebulous, empirically unfounded idea which its proponents feel entitled to fundamentally change at will. And its predictions are logical fallacies which rely upon that innate flexibility to appear to maintain integrity.
The articles you refer me to are precisely the sort of dismissive, evasive, smoke-screening, cheerleading damage control I have come across elsewhere that presents theory as truth and assumption as fact.
As regards your dismissive comment about ‘magazine conjectures ’, I would suggest that, firstly, if you have a problem with conjecture then you really ought not to be an Evolutionist.
Secondly, the article I referred you to quoted Michael Rose, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, and Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.
How come you like to declare reliance upon scientific authority for your theory but when you don’t like what a scientist says it’s just ‘magazine conjecture’?
And thirdly, I do actually enjoy reading research published in science journals as and when I can (not very often), but you merely present another red herring. Because the point is that what was said was said. You Evolutionists always try to denigrate opinion you don’t like by shifting the goal posts when convenient.
Indeed, many, if not most, people who believe Evolutionary theory do not read original research, they rely upon the media to inform them. They get their information from magazines, news broadcasts, newspapers, etc etc. So how come I’m not allowed to get information from such sources?
What makes your ‘serious critiques’ so serious but the insights of evolutionary biologists Michael Rose and Eric Bapteste, of the University of California the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris respectively, so unworthy of your accolade ‘serious’?
Concerning your views about gene swapping supporting Evolutionary theory, let me point out that according to Evolutionists EVERYTHING supports Evolutionary theory. The idea is so nebulous and flexible that this is precisely how it endures. No matter what the scientific evidence says, Evolutionary theory merely adjusts its parameters accordingly to accommodate, thus effectively side-stepping every factual contradiction.
Such as when the tree of life is not working; so just change it; but be sure to claim at the same time that you are positive common ancestry of all life on Earth is a fact.
And you provide another perfect example when you assert that ‘Gradualism isn’t necessary for Darwin’s theory’. Because if you actually apply a rational, logical analysis of that assertion you will see how absurd, self-indulgent and evasive it is.
Darwinism IS gradualism. Gradualism is the essence and foundation of the Evolutionary ideas proposed by Darwin.
Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘evolve’ – ‘develop gradually’.
You remove that essential concept from Darwinism whilst at the same time still claiming Darwinism just gets stronger and stronger.
I suggest that it is rather you who seems not to understand Darwin’s theory very well. Which is why you come over as so funny trying to defend it.
And as for your accusations about ICR, yes, certainly, I am concerned that true science be upheld, but I think your piece above is far too packed with the usual tactics of Evolutionist propaganda to warrant credibility. Just one example: your sweeping derisory comment – ‘As you know, claims that such a flood ever occurred are regarded as crank science among geologists.’
Well, I know claims of the factual nature of Noah’s flood are regarded as crank science among Evolutionists, but not all scientists are Evolutionists, and neither are all geologists.
But you will present whatever impression is convenient. You are an Evolutionist.
I haven’t time to debate red herrings, smokescreens, straw men etc with you. I will have to just conclude by repeating that you say some very funny things Ed. Keep up the good work. I shall return periodically to look for more gems.
“Gradualism isn’t necessary for Darwin’s theory.”
Ah ha ha haaaa… oh where are those tissues?… ah ha ha… ooohh, it’s acracker!
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Charles, you should read Darwin sometime, and you should learn what evolutionary theory is, and what it says and what it predicts.
Gene swapping not only could not falsify Darwin’s theory, it supports it.
Here, read up on a serious critique of the magazine article you found:
Now, can you tell me: Why is it that what you guys consider “major challenges” to Darwin’s theories almost always come from magazine conjectures, not from research published in science journals?
Why is it that you don’t understand Darwin’s theory well enough to figure out that gene swapping supports the theory, rather than contradicts it?
Why aren’t you concerned about the untruths coming out of ICR? Is false witness something you normally approve?
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Ed Darrell says some funny things, doesn’t he?
“Evolution theory has grown only stronger in the past 60 years.”
Oh I love it when I hear that one! You Evolutionists are just so funny!
The fact that microbiology has forced the admission that the tree of life probably isn’t accurate is just one of those minor little tweaking jobs, isn’t it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jan/21/charles-darwin-evolution-species-tree-life
And ‘Gradualism isn’t necessary for Darwin’s theory’, oh that’s a cracker too!
That’s right, keep the old party morale up. Keep the propaganda circulating! – Evolution theory just gets stronger and stronger, doesn’t it?
Just a couple of minor tweaks here and there about gradualism and the tree of life and Hey Presto! There you are! All as it should be.
Oh yous guys!
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Joe, just FYI:
Another of thousands of found “missing links”:
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/found-another-missing-link-primitive-feathers/
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I’ve spent some decades trying to end ICR superstition fooling conservative Lutherans in America. So far, little success. Just recently I’ve posted some comments on the very informed “Stupid Dinosaur Lies” site. For instance, you should appreciate Job 28:25-28 as contradicting Henry Morris (1976 etc.) denying a creation-time hydrology. His whole 1976 “The Genesis Record” is totally bogus “geology.” In the comments above, I did appreciate the thought that God could have created Earth to look billions of years old. Just hold that thought, and ask “Why?” Because creation “reflects” the Creator (who is eternal, after all). Because only God never changes, therefore everything (!) about his creation has to have at least an “appearance” of change in it. Because, maybe, God intended for created bones (worldwide) to prompt his warning for a holy humanity far from Eden, “So your bones can be, if you choose to forsake me.” And if “dominion” was an issue, then your use of gold (a rare element) would require a created appearance of the natural processes over time that concentrat(ed) it. So what we’re doing is giving fellow Americans a “tertium quid” — a third option, where neither catastrophism nor long-age beliefs are possible for so many Bible Christians. If you want to get in touch, let me know. GLL
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How would you describe the science? It can’t be replicated. It deviates from common practice as tested and described. It doesn’t use agreed-upon methods by professionals in the field. And it produces a result that is contrary to anything anyone else can do, but which, oddly and probably not coincidentally, pleases the people he asks to give him money. Plus, he refuses to submit it to other scientists for verification, which is a usual route for cranks, crooks and frauds.
Should I call him a “fraud” instead? Perhaps that’s more accurate.
I’d be pleased to not label him a crank, but I won’t do that until he stops using crank methods to get crank science. I’m a Christian, and we regard it sinful to mislead people trying to learn, especially children.
You’re right: “Creationism” makes “crank” redundant. But I was trying to be charitable to Joe, leaving room for a creationist who is not basely dishonest. Perhaps that’s leaving too much room?
“Science elites?” You mean like the “intelligent” and “educated” people the creationists complained about in the Pennsylvania trial?
You bet. I always aim to please intelligent, well-educated people with accuracy. In most enterprises we call that “honesty” and “decency.” I’ve sworn oaths to that effect.
There are no assumptions made. Every criticism is based on replicable, documented, peer-reviewed science. That’s rather the point.
When you ask us to disqualify all of atomic theory, nuclear physics, chemistry and geology, you are already out of the realm of reality. “Crank science” is a lot more polite than “dastardly dishonest” or “total lunatic jeeberjabber.”
But don’t take my word for it. I listed Dr. Henke’s work so you can check it out for yourself. Or you can spend several hours in a good library and check the geology journals. Either way is fine. I’ll wait for you to corroborate.
Some people are so far into crankery that politeness won’t work, though. Do you put Humphreys into that category?
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When I hear name calling and grand generalizations like this: “Dr. Russell Humphreys, a famous creationism crank … a few thousands of years old, rather than the millions of years old all other dating methods by all other scientists produce.”
“CREATIONISM CRANK, ALL OTHER DATING METHODS, ALL OTHER SCIENTISTS.”
Sounds to me like the person responding to Joe does not have a good argument so name-calling is substituted objective criticism and the use of “ALL” sounds like the responder is fishing for corroboration from the science elites. The rest of the responders comments lack facts. His response is full of assertions and assumptions, not science. Show me where I’m wrong.
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Denton’s book is dated, seriously, nor was it ever particularly accurate. Evolution theory has grown only stronger in the past 60 years. Things Denton claims as problems are not. Gradualism isn’t necessary for Darwin’s theory. To the extent Denton made any claims against evolution, his claims have all been answered now, and evolution is much stronger than it was then.
You might do well to check out a few more recent books on the issue. Try Jonathan Weiner’s The Beak of the Finch, a story of evolution in our time (though it’s only 8 years newer than Denton, it’s well written and chock full of science). Or try Stephen Jones rewrite of Darwin’s big book, in the light of evidence we have now, Darwin’s Ghost. Or see Carl Zimmer’s Evolution, the companion volume to the PBS series “Evolution.”
Detailed responses to Denton are still available through Talk.Origins.
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A good book about the theories of evolution (they change–“evolve”) is EVOLUTION: A THEORY IN CRISIS by Michael Denton. He addresses problems with the original theory, problems foreseen by Darwin, as well as with later theories trying to establish gradualism. He isn’t grinding any religious ax: as far as I can learn he is not a Christian and probably not a theist at all. This is an old book, published in 1986, but I think that the problems discussed still apply.
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SOLOMON SAMI AZAR said…
And in the continued spirit of such claims- i have solved the energy crisis-period-:)
Hello, my name is Solomon Azar- I HAVE FOUND THE ROAD TO SAFE CLEAN NUCLEAR FUSION- When this is found and understood- the energy crisis will end- I have been looking at this system since 2002 and it is perfect in every way. I finished my experiments April-2007. I have since that time tried to the best of my abilities to inform many people upon the net- there is no question I have done so in an unorthodox manner- but in time it will be found my road traveled to solve this energy crisis was unorthodoxed -all my motives are for the betterment of mankind- you have your way- I have mine- it will make complete sense when heard in public of my approach- have faith :)
I have performed an experiment never done before in science- I used a Tesla coil for its use in high voltage high frequency and apply its discharge plasma not upon the dielectric of free air- but to the dielectric of water itself- specifically I used ultrapure reagent grade water from manufacture NERL-this is to establish the high degree of insulation needed for plasma (you cannot have contaminants for conductivity)- I doped my water with heavy water from the manufacturer UNITED NUCLEAR-(however- a full concentration of heavy water is desired)- I built my 1 million volt Tesla coil entire tunable- every aspect of it- as it must be done to TUNE THE OUTPUT DISCHARGE OF THE TESLA COIL to the water itself- once the arc is stable- the voltage may be increased- I have written in my pdf file in my website of noblefuse.com that a prerequisite of 750 kv is needed as an electric field gradient about the charged particles used in fusion( in this case the hydrogen bound in the water molecule) because of voltage drops as expected as in all electrical systems upon the load (load here is the water)- a much higher voltage is needed in order to distribute the voltage gradient upon entire arc plasma length between electrodes in water- THUS- THE HIGH THE VOLTAGE- THE BETTER- within my website you will find a link to youtube showing my primitive experiment- BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THIS- THIS IS THE FIRST TIME EVER DONE BEFORE – I propose nuclear fusion of water/heavy water- my little experiment IS THE ROAD TO NUCLEAR FUSION- we must universally connect the dots- put two and two together- and conclude this- MY EXPERIMENT MUST BE REPEATED ON A LARGER SCALE- my system is a direct replacement of nuclear power plants particularly of the pressurized water reactor which uses heavy water already – a vessel already built for gamma radiation and other high energy flux which will emit with the plasma arc-
Power reactor in which the heat is dissipated from the core using highly pressurized water (about 160 bar) to achieve a high temperature and avoid boiling within the core. The cooling water transfers its heat to the secondary system in a steam generator. Example: Grohnde Nuclear Power Plant in Germany with an electrical output of 1,430 MW.
Replace the rod assemblies and use electrodes to conduct the Lightning bolt! High Voltage High frequency will create the magnetic pinch to slam the isotopes of hydrogen together which is bound in water- helium and oxygen are the outgassed products recaptured by expansion tanks-it is absolutely perfect!
_ I HAVE FOUND THE TRUE PURPOSE OF THE TESLA COIL- the answer was always in the lightning bolt- understanding of gamma bursts from lightning discharges have only been recently vindicated from satellite in late 90s—
CA 94305 United States
Said, R ( ) , STAR Lab, Electrical Engineering, 350 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305 United States
Smith, D M ( ) , Physics Department and Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 United States
Lopez, L I ( ) , Astronomy Department and Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 United States
The observation of brief (<1 ms) bursts of intense γ-rays, the so-called Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs), by the BATSE γ-ray experiment was one of the most unexpected discoveries by the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory.
Let me try to give another analogy to make the point. think about striking a match, if all conditions are proper , one knows that to strike a match, you must go a minimum speed- you cannot strike the match too slowly- this is understood as more speed is more friction and thus more activation energy necessary to create combustion of the match material. the same applies to this fusion system, first, imagine my system as inside a pressurized water reactor used in fission plants- the moderator is already heavy water- we shall use it as the fuel. I have said the plasma arc looks exactly like our friend the electric lightning bolt- but I talk about in my pdf file- that the so called lightning bolt must be understood in regards to high voltage and frequency- just like the minimum speed needed for the match- so it is with the combination on high voltage and frequency to not only resonate with the dielectric molecule of heavy water- but more so- to create a minimum velocity upon charged particles in the fuel water. this velocity is also exhibiting itself as a magnetic field-think of the cathode ray scope- in a snap shot instant in time for analysis, look at when the maximum energy is being applied on a per strike basis of the input cycle- or shall we say the highest amplitude of the ac signal. if for example- an input energy of one megawatt was injected into the strike of the arc- a magnetic pinch shall be directed upon the charged particles in transit of the discharge- in a thermodynamic extraction process such as this – we need at least 5 times more energy out of the system to recoup our initial energy input- and a surplus for commercial energy supply- thus- via fusion of hydrogen to helium- with each strike- a minimum voltage and frequency SHALL give the minimum activation energy required for magnetic pinching and fusion of the isotopes of hydrogen. to increase the q of the reaction in this system- a magnetic toroid may be used around the plasma arc for increased efficiency= such as used in tokamak devices. I hope this analogy helps those who question this system- THANK YOU–
Here is a thought experiment for electromagnetic fusion with Einstein in mind
Pretend you are water-you are an oxygen atom- you are stable- you are noble- 8 protons-8 neutrons-and 8 electrons- there are only 5 magic shell nuclear elements of the periodic table- oxygen is one of them- it is very stable-
Therefore- you are stable and noble- you have no need for fusion- yet it could happen- but the probability of another element such as hydrogen and its isotopes would be made to fuse together in some kind of fashion mankind tries will occur way before oxygen does- – ok-so now you are this noble one and you have outstretched in your hands a hydrogen atom and or its isotope deuteron and you hold it out to mankind as a gift-
Man understands the gift of fusion for many years and is desperately trying to do such-
I propose electromagnetic fusion- I propose the BENNET pinch used in poloidal currents used in plasmas of tokomaks- but much further-
Here we go – the thought experiment- you are this oxygen atom with two hydrogen’s and you stand amongst your friends similar in nature. You are placed in a large vessel filled of your kind-now imagine that two walls opposing in this vessel are the plates of a capacitor- who cares what is applied to the capacitor plates (electrodes of system)-for all you know as a noble oxygen and the hydrogen you have in your hands is nothing more than the electric field upon the plates-
You are composed of charged particles- thus you will interact with the applied electric field of the plates-this is common electronics and electric knowledge-
However, I speak of dielectric breakdown- I speak of the lightning bolt- let us now assume we have made the capacitor plates oscillate at 1 million volts peak to peak as way of a tesla coil
Think of the electric field- everything will be controlled by this field- a dielectric breakdown will occur- and all discharge current will begin to flow and oscillate as a function of the applied voltage-
Now- you are in the heart of a lightning bolt- you who are noble as a oxygen probably lost all your valence electrons due to the magnitude of such a high electric field- every charged particle in transit of the discharge current is surely ionized and talks of being a complete water molecule should be erased- the state of this plasma current is nothing more than ionized hydrogen and oxygen and a complete sea of electrons-
Let us think first of the electrons- 1896 times smaller than protons- no question it will oscillate much faster as a function to the applied voltage- remember the cathode ray scope- basic physics also will say this charged particle will also have a magnetic field about itself because of the electric field that has driven it-thus- this oscillating electron current will have an intrinsic magnetic field
Let us now think of the protons- oxygen has 8 and surrounded by 8 neutrons and is far less likely for reaction than isotopes of hydrogen for fusion- this should merely be understood by refereeing to atomic tables of elements and known theory- but this hydrogen is a singly bound proton with mass one- unless we speak of a deuteron- it will also be controlled exactly the same way as the electron is affected by the external applied voltage- however- it is opposite to the electrons motion-and much slower by its mass – however-its magnetic field will add to that of the electrons- this is standard knowledge of magnetic field generation of charged particles by way of electric fields-
Thus, in this thought experiment- within this state of dielectric breakdown- I like to say the lightning bolt- can you now see the oscillation of the charged particles by such a large magnitude of the applied voltage plates- can you now see the probability at a certain moment in time- particularly when the applied ac signal is greatest- that all magnetic fields of charged particles in transit can have the power to be magnetically pinched-
Magnetics have push and pull- it is well known that high frequency causes a constriction upon electrical currents- whether in copper lines and forcing such to the surface- or in plasma and made use to constrict it – high frequency is known to constrict the currents- thus- do you see the forces I am referring to as this dielectric breakdown has occurred upon the most perfect fuel of the heavens- water- this oxygen atom holds the hydrogen for us- we shall apply a high voltage (high is relative- I have stated 750kv in the vicinity of the hydrogen for fusion- I come to this by way of understanding the beta decay of a free neutron- if it can disintegrate- it can come together- made into a deuteron- then made into helium)-
Thus –we make helium and oxygen is then unbound and must also be recaptured- this is easy in expansion tanks- the byproducts are helium and oxygen-truly noble-
To increase the q of this system- a simple toroidal magnet as used in tokamaks for plasma control may be used for additional pinching-
I hope this helps- however- you must always think of the applied electric field and its magnetic inducement upon the charged particles- we will stably run the Tesla coil upon the dielectric of water itself (more appropriately heavy water) and turn up the voltage for greater acceleration speeds and thus magnetic fields- we can control pressure in this vessel- we can control electrode spacing and so much more-
that is my thought experiment for you to understand it is my intention to use all input energy by way of oscillating a very large electric field which will induce the proper magnetic flux density in units of Tesla for a pinching- not established hot fusion whereby all energy input is chaotic and the probability of fusion comes by way of statistics from a gas equation- no- high voltage and high frequency in an orderly manner by the construction of a man made lightning bolt with controllable parameters inside an existing pressurized nuclear reactor- everything is off the shelf- the world will run on steam power again globally-from trains-factories-ships-and all power plants- I offer the Watt steam engine again- not with two sticks to make fire and boil the water- but electromagnetic fusion with two electrodes to induce fusion of hydrogen isotopes to boil water and make steam- it is absolutely perfect.
To the CEO’s of nuclear power plants-or pressurized coal fired- you have spare reactors in the back yards of your plants- take a 1 million volt tesla coil and do what I have said- you will measure its fusion reactions and you will conclude this – I have found the road to safe clean energy.
I speak plain science- please connect the dots and let us end this energy crisis for a world that desperately needs energy- May the light of God shine upon all our actions for the betterment of mankind
Solomon Sami Azar
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Can’t necessarily criticize them for not publishing, so long as they do not then claim that what they have NOT published is good science.
The ethics of science require sharing results and data. No sharing, no playing. That’s a good rule, on the playground, in the laboratory, on the farm and in the cancer wards.
Are you suggesting that creationist studies could not get published? So far, every paper ever written supporting creationism has been published. At least two were later retracted.
But creationists cannot honestly claim that there is any bias against publishing creationist research when there is no demonstrated bias, and when any evidence supports claims of a bias in favor of publishing creationism.
In the Arkansas trial, it became quite clear that creationists simply refused to submit anything to any journal. That’s not the fault of science and the journals. In later trials, it has become clear that one of the key reasons there are no papers submitted is because there is no research being done, and hence, no research to write up to submit.
Creationists are not stopped from publishing by science. Creationists are stopped from publishing by their own lethargy in research and flaccidness in writing.
The threads here are open always. Drop by and comment when you have time.
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Hey Ed,
I’m still around, but like you, have let the conversations slip away because of a super busy schedule. Just thought I’d check in to see what you’ve been up to and say “Hi” but then saw this thread, of course.
Just a quick question in here: If no one ever WOULD publish their findings in a peer reviewed journal, is it right to criticize it for NOT publishing it? If you can find where they have turned down peer reviewed journals then I may join your criticism here, but as far as I’ve seen, this is not the case.
It’s like you blocking me from ever posting on your blog here and then questioning and mocking me for posting on my own blog that my own friends look at because no one else will let me post. It wouldn’t make sense. I haven’t really had time to look into your other claims, but this claim that they don’t get peer reviewed when I have read many articles by scientists who say they wouldn’t give their stuff the time of day anyway, is just ridiculous!
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Any claims about work at an Oak Ridge or Los Alamos lab should be cataloged and findable using http://www.scienceaccelerator.gov, http://www.science.gov, or worldwidescience.org. Public funded research papers, abstracts, conferences, websites, and pre-print material are managed by the US DOE OSTI. OSTI is located in Oak Ridge, TN.
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I just thought of an interesting scenario to pose to Dr. Humphreys (and all the other the-earth-is-only-6K-years-old-ers):
“Maybe God designed the Earth so it would appear that it’s 4.5 billion years old. Maybe he’ll be angry if you claim it’s not.”
It would be interesting to see how long it takes them to come up with an excuse for that one.
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