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You need to read more; @angel'o'shere has it right, there are a lot of "flood stories" from cultures all around the world, even from cultures that live in the mountains.

Yeah: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

There's also a lot of evidence for a global flood. I live at over 700 feet above sea level and over 300 miles from a large body of water. Yet, there are all kinds of fossils of sea-dwelling animals around where I live. A perfectly reasonable explanation is the land masses used to be flatter, until something (like maybe a big asteroid hitting the earth?) caused the land masses to move in a significant way.

It's funny, science actually knows how those fossils got onto mountaintops: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC364.html

If the continents are shoved around, it's easy for mountain ranges to pop up after. The concepts are easy if you have an open mind to consider.

True, it was open minds that allowed plate tectonics to be seriously considered, tested, and become the dominant theory of geological evolution.

Still, people forget it was creationist geologists who proved the great age of the earth and the falsity of a global flood - over 180 years ago.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD200.html

You need to read more; @angel'o'shere has it right, there are a lot of "flood stories" from cultures all around the world, even from cultures that live in the mountains.

Yeah: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

There's also a lot of evidence for a global flood. I live at over 700 feet above sea level and over 300 miles from a large body of water. Yet, there are all kinds of fossils of sea-dwelling animals around where I live. A perfectly reasonable explanation is the land masses used to be flatter, until something (like maybe a big asteroid hitting the earth?) caused the land masses to move in a significant way.

It's funny, science actually knows how those fossils got onto mountaintops: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC364.html

If the continents are shoved around, it's easy for mountain ranges to pop up after. The concepts are easy if you have an open mind to consider.

True, it was open minds that allowed plate tectonics to be seriously considered, tested, and become the dominant theory of geological evolution.

Still, people forget it was creationist geologists who proved the great age of the earth and the falsity of a global flood - over 180 years ago.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD200.html

You need to read more; @angel'o'shere has it right, there are a lot of "flood stories" from cultures all around the world, even from cultures that live in the mountains.

Yeah: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

There's also a lot of evidence for a global flood. I live at over 700 feet above sea level and over 300 miles from a large body of water. Yet, there are all kinds of fossils of sea-dwelling animals around where I live. A perfectly reasonable explanation is the land masses used to be flatter, until something (like maybe a big asteroid hitting the earth?) caused the land masses to move in a significant way.

It's funny, science actually knows how those fossils got onto mountaintops: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC364.html

If the continents are shoved around, it's easy for mountain ranges to pop up after. The concepts are easy if you have an open mind to consider.

True, it was open minds that allowed plate tectonics to be seriously considered, tested, and become the dominant theory of geological evolution.

Still, people forget it was creationist geologists who proved the great age of the earth and the falsity of a global flood - over 180 years ago.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD200.html

No, there is evidence of regional floods, but nothing supports the hypothesis of a global flood.

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#implications

The most obvious question is "where did all the water go?"

We know it's not in the ground, not in the ice sheets and not in the atmosphere.

There's not enough water in the oceans to cover the entire surface of the earth unless the elevation of ALL the land on ALL the continents was much lower, just a few thousand years ago.

Literally everything in geology contradicts such an extraordinary claim.

The IPCC is a political organization. They're therefore selling something. Therefore, they automatically get dismissed as political propaganda - and rightly so - by skeptics.

https://skepticalscience.com/ reads like political propaganda. E.g., this https://skepticalscience.com/a... is a straight up political advocacy blog post. Again, any mixing of politics into your source taints it.

We learn early to dismiss as lies any claims that a salesman or politician makes.

Seriously, read through http://talkorigins.org/origins... it's short. Note the tone. Read a link to two of the FAQ page - they're interesting. The most convincing stuff there, BTW, is where they say straight up that some examples of evolution commonly taught in high school are just wrong, and that's why they seem wrong - blame the dumbing down, not the actual science.

But, hey, that would be about actually persuading people, not about pride in tribal belonging, and there's little interest in that.

Trump's EPA pick is certainly disappointing. An actual conservative would eliminate the department entirely!

At this point I've heard so many "fantasy cabinet" picks it's getting silly, and I'm going to wait a bit before believing any of it. Much as I'd like to see Sarah Palin as press secretary, most if it is wishcasting right now.

In the meantime, think about how you might communicate persuasively about global warming to the 1/3rd of America who thinks it's a scam. Hint: calling them "as stupid as you can get" isn't very persuasive. This OTOH does a good job of being somewhat respectful of the other side: http://www.talkorigins.org/faq...

They very much can be, if you bother to understand them. Take creationism. The wonderful talk.origins FAQ website (along with the many FAQs linked off of it) does just that. Turns out a lot of creationism is based on debunking "evolution as taught in high school", which is in fact often wrong, because the textbook was really bad, or oversimplified too far.

No, you're confusing arguing errors in textbooks with arguing for creationism. They're two separate things.

Realizing that "oh, yeah, no scientist believes that either, it's just nonsense" can lead to actually resolving the disagreement based on proving new information.

Nope, that's not their intent, not at all.

In fact, most topics on which intelligent people disagree (often strongly) are simply based on reasoning logically from different starting points, or having different goals in mind because you have different values, leading to people arguing past one another forever.

Contention not proven, but not responsive to the already posted contention was that "There are plenty of issues on the right (most Obama conspiracies, 6000 year old earth, "creation science") that can't be logically argued." which is separate from whatever disagreements people have.

Of course, you didn't quote the whole paragraph for some reason, so let's try that:

There are plenty of issues on the right (most Obama conspiracies, 6000 year old earth, "creation science") that can't be logically argued. There are also loony left issues (anti-vaxxers, anti-GMO, almost anything they peddle at Whole Foods) that can't be logically argued.

On the other hand, I might not agree with everything that the likes of George Will, Paul Ryan, the National Review, or the WSJ say, but at least their views can be respected.

Goodness me, if you'd finished the post, you might have realized that you were repeating an already agreed premise.

Maybe you should stop arguing past someone.

There are plenty of issues on the right (most Obama conspiracies, 6000 year old earth, "creation science") that can't be logically argued.

They very much can be, if you bother to understand them. Take creationism. The wonderful talk.origins FAQ website (along with the many FAQs linked off of it) does just that. Turns out a lot of creationism is based on debunking "evolution as taught in high school", which is in fact often wrong, because the textbook was really bad, or oversimplified too far. Realizing that "oh, yeah, no scientist believes that either, it's just nonsense" can lead to actually resolving the disagreement based on proving new information.

Logical arguments can be based on false premises, and still be logical. (A lot of other arguments makes sense if you know a little, but not if you know a lot, but that should never be assumed to be the case.)

In fact, most topics on which intelligent people disagree (often strongly) are simply based on reasoning logically from different starting points, or having different goals in mind because you have different values, leading to people arguing past one another forever.

I'm a defender of evolution and a strong supporter of science education, and I think this survey question is bullshit because whether you believe humans, or elephants, evolved from different animals tells you NOTHING about how evolution works.

"Knowledge of evolution?" Give me a break. Ask them about natural selection, fitness landscapes, mutation, genetic drift, or molecular clocks. If someone tells you they believe elephants evolved from species xyz, ask them WHY they believe that. If the answer is "someone taught me they did," it's worthless "knowledge."

If you're really interested in the evolution of elephants then do some research into the paleontological record. Learn something, don't just parrot what you hear.

Before anyone decides to mod me down as a troll, consider that teh denialists still deny when even one of their stalwarts of denial - Exxon - has known for years that AGW was real, but decided on a tactic of "sowing doubt" http://insideclimatenews.org/n... while their own researcers concluded AGW was real.

Not being able to produce credible research to prove their denialism, they are left with a smaller and smaller set of cherrypicking data, character assassination, and the always popular "I looked out the window and its cold today - so much for global warming!"

So in moves remarkably similar to tobacco idustry lawyers managing to deny that there was proof that tobacco caused cancer when there was ample evidence in the 1800's, or creationists claiming that dinosaurs and humans romped merrily together - but nol earlier than 4004 b.c.e. - based on long discredited fossil tracks in places like http://www.talkorigins.org/faq... Paluxy, Texas - Indeed, Ken Hamm's Creationism museum has that as biblical proof of young earth creationism - the denialists are getting backed into a smaller and smaller corner, soon to be left only with fingers stuck in their ears, and chanting "Neener never never - I can't hear you!"

So if anyone has the disproving research I'd love to see it. If not, just mod me down to oblivion, and prove what I just wrote.

It's well-supported by anatomy, physiology, and genetic studies, but okay. Here are some examples of speciation in plants and other insects, with more references. I do still encourage you to look at this site.

Speciation in a vertebrate. You may also find this website educational.

Several of them are listed here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faq...

We've never observed evolution yet

Wrong

some scientists only assume it from observed differences in the fossil record.

Not "assume", "infer", and anyway decades of molecular biology, genetics, and genomics have proven at least as useful as fossils. My favorite example here.

One of the laws of physics rules out evolution

No.

You have no possible way of determining it didn't happen "overnight". You couldn't tell if a geneticist today made an "upgrade" to an organism, and you have unlimited ability to analyze the organism directly. You have nothing like that for all of a species' history. You hope it isn't the case, for some weird worldview reason. That's all you have.

Nor do I have any idea that the world wasn't created 5 minutes ago by a puckish god or ancient aliens, and a pre-made database of everything up to 5 minutes ago just put in there for fun.

Nothing is ever 100 percent.

But too many things line up, too many things confirm, and more importantly, nothing contradicts. And as we learn more and more - it meshes. Still no contradiction.

And would only take one contradictory finding to upset the whole evolution wheelbarrow,

That's why we hear about strange conjectures, odd hypotheses like a speed of light that miraculously speeds up and slows down, or even ones about variable time (not relativistic) that try to debunk physics. Otrthings like radiohalos http://www.talkorigins.org/faq... which are interesting, but wrong because the basic underlying principle requires that you believe that the original bedrock that the earth was made from is granite - as well as a number of other fatal issues.

The big irony in all this, is that creationists unwittingly provide a good deal of the impetus to debunk their pet guesses. They provide their reasons for disbelief, and the scientists prove why they are wrong.

More to the point, it's impossible to independently (& personally) verify the data and claims of everything that you would like verified. There's not enough time in the world.

Very true. The rational man realizes this, and doesn't hold strong political opinions on the rest of it. We're all going to be ignorant of most science in the modern world - the time has long passed when the educated man could know all of the scientific knowledge there was. It's important to therefore set arrogance aside, and not try to tell others they're idiots, or force your uneducated opinion on others by law, unless you actually care enough to do the diligence first.

Far too many people mistake fashion for education. If you're going to call others fools for trying to stop the teaching of "evolution" in schools, call them fools because you took the time to understand the science, the counter-arguments, and why a smart, ration person could somehow not believe in evolution. Until you understand the other side, and why it's wrong, stay out of the argument. For the evolution case: if you had a solid biology class, this takes just a few days of reading the talk.origins site. It's not an undue burden, and otherwise arrogance about your uninformed opinion is just idiocy.

For newer fields like the climate change debate, it will take longer to dig up the details, as there isn't a handy website that collects all the pro and con arguments. For climate change, can read through the pro and con sites and understand where they're coming from, understand the Vostok ice core data for perspective, spend time pondering the satellite temperature data, and so on.

For any such issue, treat both sides as intelligent people who are in earnest in their beliefs and not trolling, and read enough to understand how this can be true. When you understand how intelligent people can disagree on the issue, and see where both sides are coming from, then you can act out of knowledge instead of arrogance, and stop polluting the debate with idiocy. If your only basis for argument is "everyone knows the smart people believe X, and the losers believe not-X", well, that's fashion, not knowledge. This pretty much applies to anything being debated politically, BTW, not just the science stuff.

Darwin was quite some time ago, and while he had some remarkable deductions for his day, and deserves credit for establishing the field, he's practically speaking irrelevant to the science of evolutionary biology. Even in Darwin's day, however, before genetics, his theory made a remarkable prediction: that taxonomy would be cladistic (to use the modern term). That is, you could organize species in a hierarchy based on common features.

You can't do this with e.g vehicles: there are features common to all pick-up trucks, features common to all Fords, features common to all passenger vehicles made after a certain year, and so on: it's immediately obvious that you can't make any sort of hierarchy based on features with any predictive value. A pickup truck bed doesn't tell you who made the alternator, the Ford logo doesn't tell you whether a vehicle has airbags, and so on. Remarkably, you can do this with plant and animal species, and the millions of cataloged species all fit this model: extreme confirmation of the prediction made from the hypothesis of common ancestry.

But that's all old-school, pre-genetics naturalism: 19th century and early 20th century stuff.

"Evolution" means "the statistical distribution of alleles in a population changes over time". Evolutionary biology is about statistical models of dynamic systems: good, solid mathematical models used in research daily. There's even an engineering aspect, as it's sometimes preferred for research organisms to manipulate the genome without directly splicing genes, or to ensure a stable population with a given modification for long-term research.

TLDR: read the Talk.Origins FAQ I've linked to the best starting point, but there's a wealth of information there, that directly speaks to the claims of skeptics of evolution. The materials are 20 years old now, but they're very well written arguments with counter-arguments with all the flame wars removed.

we have not actually observed it happening

Um, wrong.

Tell me: What part of the evolutionary theory is falsifiable?

Claim CA211

What ISN'T bullshitted away by some asshole when you point out that animals don't breed based on genetics?

I don't understand what that means.

In any case, you may find that evolution doesn't answer all the questions as well as you would like and it may even be shown to be wrong one day - who knows - but I don't see how that would make creationism right.

- agbinfo

Again, obviously you can't recognize that your accusations are baseless, even though you reasonably should have known that.

This would be funny if it weren't such utter bullshit. We JUST had an exchange about that, and you admitted that my comments weren't "baseless". But now you make the same accusation again. Which is it? What are you trying to claim? [Jane Q. Public]

Link to the exchange with that admission, because it sounds like you're talking to imaginary voices again. Yet again, obviously you can't recognize that your accusations are baseless, even though you reasonably should have known that. I've been consistently saying that your accusations of fraudulent bullshit lies are baseless, and that you reasonably should have known that.

I am a person using a pseudonym, just as you are. I am no more a liar than you are. From the evidence, in fact, I'd guess I'm a good bit less of one. ... You haven't been able to demonstrate even one instance of my actually lying. So stuff it up there where the sun doesn't shine, as they say.

Again, you're a man named Lonny Eachus dishonestly posing as a woman on the internet. Unlike most of the misinformation you spew, this point is so simple and non-technical that your Sauron-class Morton's demon isn't an excuse.

The conclusion that Lonny Eachus is a pathological liar raises a disturbing question. I've previously defended contrarians like Jane/Lonny against suggestions that they're knowingly spreading misinformation:

"... You’ve previously asserted that contrarians know more than they let on, but I’ll defend Hanlon’s razor and the information deficit model to the dumb, naive, non-psychologist death. I refuse to believe that anyone who truly groks the Great Dying and the rate limits on adaptation via migration or evolution could keep spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation. I suspect that Morton's demon is far stronger than most people realize. For example, even Morton himself was later consumed by this demon in such a depressing way that I won’t link it. ...

... I refuse to believe that some know more than they let on. Considering the stakes involved, that hypothetical informed contrarian (who I don’t believe exists) would have betrayed humanity. Even arsonists usually have a personal escape route, but knowingly spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation has no plausible escape route. From my moral and pragmatic perspectives, the information deficit model seems to be correct.

Even as their numbers dwindle, I’ll keep defending the morality of contrarians. There’s no shame in being insufficiently informed about a complex scientific topic, as long as one eventually stops spreading misinformation that threatens the future of our civilization.

There are more enjoyable hobbies. Hobbies that don’t stain one’s legacy. Video games, reading, scuba diving, etc."

Jane, I've been defending people like you for years, insisting that you're not knowingly lying. I've insisted that you're spreading misinformation not because you're dishonest but because you're unable to overcom

So you deny saying that the only way a guy could describe his ass as "smooth and shapely" like you did would be if he were a "flamer" who wouldn't be in your circle of friends because flamers irritate you vastly?

I don't know who that AC was, but I'm taking her on her word that she's actually female. That's actually another reason why your dishonesty is harmful; it'd be easier to take people at their word if pathological liars like Lonny Eachus weren't posing as women like Jane Q. Public.

How fascinating that you deny baselessly accusing scientists of lying and/or deliberately manipulating data to produce fraudulent results. Is this because you "forgot" all your accusations, or because your Morton's demon has such a tight grip that you can't admit your accusations were baseless?

This doesn't necessarily mean that he disagrees with evolution and mutation as a mechanism for change or that there is common DNA across a large number of species.

BTW, I couldn't let this one go. It's not just 'a large number'. It's the same DNA code across all organisms we know of. There are a couple of exceptions - but they edit the code back to the 'standard' one before the proteins are transcribed.

And the pattern of 'common DNA' confirms common descent to a ridonkulous degree.

Books used to be copied by scribes, and (despite a lot of care) sometimes typos would be introduced. Later scribes, making copies of copies, would introduce other typos. It's possible to look at the existing copies and put them into a 'family tree'. "These copies have this typo, but not that one; this other group has yet another typo, though three of them have a newer typo as well, not seen elsewhere..." This is not controversial at all when dealing with books, including the Bible.

Now, this process of copy-with-modification naturally produces 'family trees', nested groups. When we look at life, we find such nested groups. No lizards with fur or nipples, no mammals with feathers, etc. Living things (at least, multicellular ones, see below) fit into a grouped hierarchy. This has been solidly recognized for over a thousand years, and systematized for centuries. It was one of the clues that led Darwin to propose evolution. (Little-known fact: Linnaeus, who invented the "kingdom, phyla, genus, species, etc." classification scheme for living things, tried to do the same thing for minerals. But minerals don't form from copy-with-modification, and a 'nested hierarchy' just didn't work and never caught on.)

Today, more than a century later, we find another tree, one Darwin never suspected - that of DNA. This really is a 'text' being copied with rare typos. And, as expected, it also forms a family tree, a nested hierarchy. And, with very very few surprises, it's the same tree that was derived from looking at physical traits.

It didn't have to be that way. Even very critical genes for life - like that of cytochrome C - have a few neutral variations, minor mutations that don't affect its function. (Genetic sequences for cytochrome C differ by up to 60% across species.) Wheat engineered to use the mouse form of cytochrome C grows just fine. But we find a tree of mutations that fits evolution precisely, instead of some other tree. (Imagine if a tree derived from bookbinding technology - "this guy used this kind of glue, but this other bookbinder used a different glue..." - conflicted with a tree that was derived from typos in the text of the books. We'd know at least one tree and maybe both were wrong.)

The details of these trees are very specific and very, very numerous. There are billions of quadrillions of possible trees... and yet the two that we see (DNA and morphology) happen to very precisely match. This is either a staggering coincidence, or a Creator deliberately arranged it in a misleading manner, or... universal common ancestry is actually true.

(Single-celled organisms are much more 'promiscuous' in their reproduction and spread genes willy-nilly without respect for straightforward inheritance. With single-celled creatures, it looks more like a 'web' of life than a 'tree'. But even if the tree of life has tangled roots, it's still very definitely a tree when it comes to multicellular life. Which is the area that people opposed to evolution most worry about anyway.)

I'll do one better, there is not belief in evolution, it is observed. Yes, we've seen it happen a number of times in this lifetime.

There is a theory of evolution, and we're pretty close to having this theory completely mapped to biochemistry in the large. Soon "not believing" in evolution will require not believing in Chemistry.

You sir are an idiot. And your mod +5 insightful shows the scientific illiteracy even on Slashdot. There is only one scientific method, and it contains "testable, provable (and proven) hypothesis", also called theories. Yes we do have only one universe and only one earth, but what makes a scientific theory successful is a) the explanatory power and b) testable predictions. How can we test that the earth is in fact 4.5 billion years old? For example by searching for old rocks and date them with the radioactive dating methods (no there is not just carbon-14, Wikipedia lists over 9 methods[1]) and geologists actively trying to find older rocks to push the limit of the age of the earth. Then we confirmed the age of the solar system (4.568 billion years)[4] and it confirms the age of the earth. Furthermore, we actually can see now protoplanetery disks (thanks to the hubble space telescope)[2] that confirms our theory of how a solar systems are formed. Please see How Old Is The Earth, And How Do We Know? [3]

The scientific method deals with models. There are no truths, there are best explanations. Only religion deals with truths and for that you do need faith. But science makes correct predictions, whereas religious "prophecies" are all failures.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
[3] http://www.talkorigins.org/faq...
[4] http://www.universetoday.com/1...

This is the problem at the heart of climate science. The key details for models are not published, and (despite being largely paid for by our money), not even available apparently under FOIA to "avoid competitive harm".

That sounds very much like commercial software development and very little like reproducible science, or even open source! WTF, guys? You wonder why so much of the public has a hard time taking climate science seriously? This shit is why.

Good science defeats skeptics through openness. "Look, here's the experiment, do it yourself if you don't trust me." Heck, even experiments on vastly expensive particle accelerators eventually become reproducible through cleverness or technological advance at other universities.

Openness, and beyond openness: the willingness to explain clearly, in detail, and in layman's terms led to the talk.origins FAQ, which takes seriously and answers seriously every common popular question and dispute about evolution, and likely led to the shift from old-school creationism to ID (which at least is progress). This is severely lacking in climate science.

In order to preserve their cherished notions about the "origin of mankind", creationists screw up pretty much everything about science. That's the "issue" you're not seeing.

Time stamp of these statements please??

I don't have an exact timestamp, but here are the full quotes: http://i.imgur.com/T7Zz0R2.jpg

anyway the first couple PicoSeconds of Time CAN NOT BE OBSERVED BY SCIENCE therefore are not within the realm of Science.

What are you even talking about? We can't observe what happened one second ago; we can only observe the present. We can extrapolate what happened in the past based on observations made in the present, though. Science is a mechanism for understanding the universe; there is nothing real that is outside of the realm of science.

And besides that, this discussion is about evolution as an explanation for the modern diversity of life, not the origin of the universe.

Now if you can show me a Tornado running through a car scrapyard and "evolving" a working airplane then maybe i might consider evolution as possible.

Or show me any Half This /Half that critters.

Saying those things only tells me that you have no idea what evolution actually is; you're just repeating arguments you've heard before in response to a strawman that exists in your head.

Pretty much any strawman argument you could prop up has already been debunked by http://www.talkorigins.org/, though.

BTW, that's the case with the Theory of Evolution. Here's my favorite example. (Some actual math here.) Interestingly, we know the Tree of Life with greater prescision than we know the gravitational constant G!

BTW, that's the case with the Theory of Evolution. Here's my favorite example. (Some actual math here.) Interestingly, we know the Tree of Life with greater prescision than we know the gravitational constant G!

Nope, read some non-creationist sources (so you can be a bit more sure they're not just making things up...)

http://www.talkorigins.org/ind...

Answer: the dating was for two *different* mammoths...

see : http://www.talkorigins.org/ind...

I was with you until we started talking about how old the earth is. How do you know? The analysis of radioactive decay is not ironclad.

Yes, it pretty much is.

I was with you until we started talking about how old the earth is. How do you know? The analysis of radioactive decay is not ironclad.

Yes, it pretty much is.

I was with you until we started talking about how old the earth is. How do you know? The analysis of radioactive decay is not ironclad.

Yes, it pretty much is.

How cute, you think evolution is falsifiable.

The theory of Common Descent (Evolution) makes quite a few falsifiable predictions [1] consistent with observed evidence.

Of course, what the Creationists tend to have a problem with isn't Evolution per se (though that's where they focus their efforts), but rather abiogenesis, the concept of a lifeform coming into existence naturally from non-living materials. That is completely separate from Evolution, which is the concept that all life on Earth can trace its origins back to a single living organism (however it came to be here).

[1] Theobald, Douglas L. "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent." The Talk.Origins Archive. Vers. 2.89. 2012. Web. 12 Mar. 2012 <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/>

Yes, or no. Do you deny that given the size of the body of evidence, the probability of ALL available evidence being against the ideas of creationism or "young Earth" is very close to zero? Do you deny that a corollary if this is that SOME evidence must almost certainly be supportive of creationism?

Yes, I deny that any fact supports young earth or old earth creationism. Yes, I deny that there is any evidence supporting young earth or old earth creationism. I'm a denier.

You've repeatedly claimed that some facts support the creationist position. Again, you can either find an example that isn't ridiculously wrong, retract your absurd claim, or keep pulling a "Jane" by doing neither. Since you probably won't surprise us on this account, perhaps lowered expectations are in order. Earlier, you claimed:

Just one example: The fact that radiometric dating relies on certain assumptions has been one of their favorite talking points. Are those assumptions reasonable? I think so. But they ARE assumptions, and that is a fact. Therefore, there do exist facts that can be said to support (or at least not refute) the creationists' arguments. ...

I replied by saying "No, isochron dating only relies on nuclear decay rates being constant, which has been confirmed by SN1987a, etc. Try again." and your response was "Okay, maybe it was a bad example."

Any example may be a bad example, so that wasn't a retraction. Your example actually was a bad example, and anyone who understood my point would have the intellectual integrity to admit that without weasel words. So perhaps my website was down; here's the relevant part:

Isochron dating results of old rocks depend only on nuclear decay rates being constant in time. Isochron dating isn’t dependent on initial quantities of elements, and the analysis method automatically produces error bars on the obtained age. The oldest rocks we have agree that the Earth is 4.55 billion years old, plus or minus 100 million years or so.

Just to be clear, we can’t be sure that nuclear decay rates are exactly constant. But experiments have placed constraints on the size of any variation in decay rates:

1. Supernovae produce many radioactive elements which slowly decay after the explosion. At first they shine brightly in a spectroscopically unique manner, but over the course of several weeks they fade to half their previous brightness. The amount of time it takes the brightness to fade is a direct measurement of the nuclear decay rate. The best example is supernova 1987A, which lies ~169,000 LY away. That means that when scientists looked at that light in 1987, they were measuring the nuclear decay rate as it was around 169,000 years ago. The results were experimentally indistinguishable from current decay rates, and have been confirmed by similar experiments on SN1991T, which is 60,000,000 light years away.
2. The Oklo natural nuclear reactor left evidence that can be used to determine the fine structure constant and neutron capture rates, both intimately entwined with quantum mechanics’ predictions of nuclear decay rates. This experiment is more ambiguous and as a result the error bars are much larger than the SN1987A constraint, but it’s also consistent with a constant nuclear decay rate. Since the Oklo reactor was active 1.8 billion years ago, the Oklo evidence only supports a change in the fine structure constant of one part in 10 mil

> Evolution is not science. Do not confuse the two.

It's sad that people think this, and just shows how far we have to go in this country in improving science education. Creationists have shown you a strawman version of evolution that is not science. Unfortunately, few lay people really understand what either evolution or science is.

Evolution is falsifiable observable fact and theory. It is science.

> Evolution is not science. Do not confuse the two.

It's sad that people think this, and just shows how far we have to go in this country in improving science education. Creationists have shown you a strawman version of evolution that is not science. Unfortunately, few lay people really understand what either evolution or science is.

Evolution is falsifiable observable fact and theory. It is science.

> Evolution is not science. Do not confuse the two.

It's sad that people think this, and just shows how far we have to go in this country in improving science education. Creationists have shown you a strawman version of evolution that is not science. Unfortunately, few lay people really understand what either evolution or science is.

Evolution is falsifiable observable fact and theory. It is science.

> Evolution is not science. Do not confuse the two.

It's sad that people think this, and just shows how far we have to go in this country in improving science education. Creationists have shown you a strawman version of evolution that is not science. Unfortunately, few lay people really understand what either evolution or science is.

Evolution is falsifiable observable fact and theory. It is science.

> Evolution is not science. Do not confuse the two.

It's sad that people think this, and just shows how far we have to go in this country in improving science education. Creationists have shown you a strawman version of evolution that is not science. Unfortunately, few lay people really understand what either evolution or science is.

Evolution is falsifiable observable fact and theory. It is science.

The other type of evolution is where a species mutates to become a new species. We speculate that it happens based on what we can prove with evolution at a much smaller scale. The proof that it happens simply does not exist. There is one claim that I found where a bird was said to have evolved into a new species of bird. The bird was identical to the control bird except for the beak. DNA length was the same, appearance and size was within range for the control bird, so it was a huge leap to claim that it was "a new species" and quite frankly disingenuous. This is what is termed "Macroevolution".

Actually yes, we have seen such "macroevolution": http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#observe

Actually, we do have observed it. Have a look here: http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#observe

... if you really want to talk to a young earth creationist (I don't know why you would), you need to show them the evidence. Really dig deep. If they want to discuss carbon dating, then dig in and show the evidence we have of why carbon dating works. Eventually, if they are willing to go along with you (and it will take a lot of work so they might not), they will turn into an old-earth creationist.

Carbon-14 has a half-life of ~5730 years, and isotope detection has a finite noise floor. Also, radiocarbon dating has to compensate for the varying rate of cosmic-ray induced carbon-14 production, and even then only works for objects less than ~45,000 years old.

One way to establish the ~4.5 billion year old earth is isochron dating like uranium-lead dating, which doesn't require knowledge of initial isotope ratios, so it doesn't require the above compensation. Isochron dating only depends on how close to constant nuclear decay rates are over geological time, which can be estimated using supernovae, the Oklo natural nuclear reactor, etc.

The physics bit on magnetic fields is hilarious. Basically God poofed the planets into existence, except they were initially made of water, with some fraction of their magnetic moments aligned to create the planetary magnetic field. Then God poofed the water into whatever the planets are now made of, but left the magnetic field to decay exponentially over time. Since the magnitude of the magnetic fields of Earth and Jupiter were known that provides a couple orders of magnitude to guess where Neptune and Uranus should be, and if you shoot for the middle of that range by golly you can align up some water molecules and hit that order of magnitude target. It really is that stupid, and PRMan really wants it taught as science.

Is Talk Origins "skeptical" using your criteria?

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

"how can it evolve? it will blow up if it doesn't get it just right!"

we should all realize that, unfortunately, creationists will immediately alight upon these gears as "intelligent design" and disproof of evolution

"how can it evolve? if the gears don't mesh, it doesn't move!"

you can't argue with the dull and intellectually dishonest

We can test all of those things. Not all tests are lab experiments. Those are ideal, of course, but not always practical and that doesn't make other things non-scientific.

Evolution and speciation has been shown specifically happening (of course, you can always claim that any variation is "minor" or stretch the definition of "intraspecies") -- http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html. We can also see if archaeological evidence fits into evolutionary theory. If we find a billion year old human fossil on the moon, that would nail evolution (or at least, humans having been the result of evolution -- that or we have time travel, which seems even weirder). What we can't easily test are those "just so" stories, like how ancient human males hunted mammoths while females gathered berries and guarded the cave-nurseries from sabertooth tigers.

Cosmology and astronomy gets very frequent tests because we predict what happens when certain other predicted stellar events occur. Any sufficiently common stellar event in our models that isn't easily predictable within those models (including not predictable because the timescale is too large) should still be observable.

Climate theories are not untested etiehr, though getting very specific is quite difficult. General trends are understood.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC250.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901.html