Linux Reconstructing Tree of Life?

vaderhelmet writes "Wired has a cool story about how the American Museum of Natural History, funded by the National Science Foundation is using Linux to "construct a pattern of relationships that biologists believe links all of Earth's present and past species -- from the smallest microbe to the largest vertebrate that existed during Earth's 4 billion-year history." They're using their very own homemade supercomputer which ranks in at 107 on the Top 500 supercomputers list. Quote from article: "Linux makes it so easy to create a supercomputer.""

Comments

It works!

[teamhasnoi]

I just found out that Politicians, Hillary Rosen, and Ashton Kutcher are all related to bottom feeding, brainless proto-slime!

Hurrah for technology!

Re:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe in evolution, you must acknowledge the same about yourself.

Re:It works!

[isorox]

If you believe in evolution, you must acknowledge the same about yourself.

Hell no, I'm related to the Noblonians, we were already 17 minutes old when the universe came into being

Re:It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

How cute!

Religion

[sporty]

Wow. Um.. this is NOT gonna bode well with religions (and the people involved) that believe in creationism. /catholic

Re:Religion

[Smallpond]

so?

Re:Religion

[Nagatzhul]

Sure it will. All religions believe and have explained that God created everything, they don't explain how He did it. And if He did create everything, then you would expect everything to be related in some kind of an organized hierarchy. All they are doing is using the computers to determine that hierarchy.

Re:Religion

[danratherfan]

Catholics don't nessecarily believe in creationism. As a matter of fact, a catholic preist was the first man to propose the big bang theory.

Re:Religion

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Sure it will. All religions believe and have explained that God created everything, they don't explain how He did it. And if He did create everything, then you would expect everything to be related in some kind of an organized hierarchy. All they are doing is using the computers to determine that hierarchy.

Um, actually, lots of religions do claim to explain how God created everything -- ever heard of something called Genesis? Which is the problem, and why Gould's "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" idea, as nice a solution as it should be to the creationism issue, will never work. Religion and science could be completely separate, but religion insists on making assertions about the nature of reality which contradict scientific observations.

I used to believe that the best way to deal with creationists was to try to understand their point of view, to make compromises, to explain things in a way that wouldn't cause controversy. Now I've come to realize that it's not worth it. Creationists should be mocked at every opportunity. Anyone who believes literally in any creation myth is a fool; anyone who believes in fake compromises like "Intelligent Design" is an empty-headed sophist. Their beliefs are no more worthy of respect than those of flat-Earthers, Holocaust deniers, and alleged alien abductees.

Re:Religion

[young-earth]

I used to be an evolutionist, and can spout and cite the exact same drek as evolutionists are known to do. I have a full education and background in the cosmic, biochemical, and biological "evolution" story line. And I know it's more of a fairy tale than the email hoax about Gates giving his money away if you forward some email chain letter.

However it comes down to a key point - it is mathematically impossible for life to arise spontaneously by stochastic processes. The Bible has it right from the first verse ("n the beginning God created the heaven and the earth") to the last (" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen"). If you choose to believe in evolution, that's fine, just be honest enough to admit that it is more of a leap of faith than believing in 6 day creation.

Re:Religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely, not impossible. It is however mathematically impossible for a being to exist, has existed *forever*, and can do whatever he wants. The existence of god used to explain a whole lot of stuff, now it makes more questions than it solves, aka, it would take ALOT to explain it, and most of the stuff it explained has been explained by science. In 2000 more years, I doubt many people(maybe .0003%) will believe in creationism.

Re:Religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Adam and Eve? Garden of Eden? The whole rib ordeal?

Re:Religion

[TychoBrahe]

If evolution was just some fairy tale, then why are there literal and figurative mountains of evidence for it? There is no other scientific theory that successfully explains biogeography, endogenous retroviruses, and anatomy. Creationism fails to even be a theory. Why would it be accepted by nearly every biologist and the vast majority of scientists? Surely you don't believe that there is some sort of vast conspiracy of scientists that has lasted more than a century that spans every field from astronomy to biology to geology. Is every scientist just stupid? Do you perhaps believe that you know more biology than every biologist combined, more astronomy than every astronomer combined, and more geology than every geolgist combined?

Please feel free to show us your calculations regarding abiogenesis--so far every creationist whom I've asked has either brought up with meaningless numbers unrelated to reality or simply run away. It's more than likely that your key point is nothing more than desperate wishing on your part. Furthermore, it's completely irrelevent to evolution. The fact that you conflate evolution with abiogenesis makes me rather doubt your claims to a full education regarding this subject. Ignorance isn't a crime, but when coupled with a creationist's overwhelming arrogance, it's difficult to take them seriously.

Your belief in the Bible is yours to hold, but don't pretend that it's anything but religion. Finally, just because you refuse to accept science because of your religious beliefs doesn't mean that the people who do accept science do so because of faith. In other words, kindly stop projecting.

Re:Religion

[young-earth]

Your assert:

It is however mathematically impossible for a being to exist, has existed *forever*, and can do whatever he wants.

Which shows a naturalistic assumption basis. However your concept of God is way too limited. God exists outside our time-space dimensionality; He is infinite, we and our universe are finite. To talk about Him being bounded in some way by time is a null-set discussion.

Re:Religion

[rusty0101]

He proposed it as a way of suggesting that it was the wrong way to do physics. He may have been wrong as well, but his intentions were not honorable.

-Rusty

Re:Religion

[young-earth]

TychoBrahe stated:

Please feel free to show us your calculations regarding abiogenesis

My pleasure. I will assume here that the readers have a basic knowledge of organic chemistry.

Since 19 of the 20 amino acids used in proteins are chiral, any abiogenesis must take this into account. The reason for the chirality is quite obvious to anyone who has investigated physical biochemistry at all; enzymes are only active when their 3d shapes are exactly as required. Those shapes are utterly dependent on the chirality of the component amino acids (and other things like temperature, pH, salinity, etc.). The minimum protein complement of a cell that could accurately self-replicate has been estimated at between 280 and 400 proteins. For the sake of discussion, let's use 280. The average complement of amino acids per protein in that hypothetical minimal self-replicant is about 400. Of those 400, use the observed ratio of up to 8% being glycine, which is not chiral. So there are 2^368 possible chirality combinations per individual protein required for this cell. That is 10^110. Since 10^50 is the accepted standard for impossible, clearly getting even the chirality correct in just one protein is far beyond impossible. If you then want to get into specifying the order of the amino acids, which is amazingly more complex, then the odds climb into the stratosphere. Sir Fred Hoyle (who coined the phrase "big bang", and was certainly NOT a creationist) calculated the probability of one cell arising by stochastic means as 10^40,000. He may have been a bit optimistic, but his number will do. When you consider our measurements of the universe show it to be 10^28 inches across, you get a feeling for the scale of these numbers.

I can go on from here, but I rather suspect that at this point you'll trot out something like the talkorigins site counter-claim about lipid globules and claim that randomness is irrelevant. Unfortunately for you and their claim, those globules cannot accurately reproduce. And since they cannot, they are not subject to natural selection. Instead, the second law will be operative and they will simply degrade over time. To get past increasing entropy, there must be a directed process. This requires natural selection, which absolutely requires nearly-perfect (but not totally perfect) reproduction. Otherwise gains made in the mutation set of a parent are more likely to be lost than passed on, and without that, there is no natural selection, no neo-darwinian evolution.

And to mirror your statement, your belief in evolution is certainly yours to hold. It's a faith as mine is a faith.

Oh and if you have mountains of evidence for macro-evolution (disproved things like Miller-Urey? Or Haeckel's embryos? Or peppered moths? Or vesitigial organs?) I suggest you go make yourself a quick $250K.

Re:Religion

[Black Parrot]

> And if He did create everything, then you would expect everything to be related in some kind of an organized hierarchy.

Why would you expect that?

Re:Religion

[20_ooodbye]

enzymes are only active when their 3d shapes are exactly as required

Nope. Enzymes can work pretty well with slightly altered shapes. Sometimes even better for a slightly different job or slightly different conditions cf. site directed mutagenesis, or DNA shuffling (directed evolution)

The minimum protein complement of a cell that could accurately self-replicate has been estimated at between 280 and 400 proteins. For the sake of discussion, let's use 280

Yes, in a cell. It's very unlikely life started out in a cell though. Stupid point.

Surely being a creationist you have heard of the RNA world right? The constituents of RNA turn up in the miller experiment, from there we get an RNA molecule, Thomas Cech showed in 1981 some RNA molecules can act as enzymes (so called rybozymes) at some stage one becomes a 'replicase' capable of replicating other RNA, at the same time tRNA and ribosomes evolve (all of the catalytic activities of the ribosome are carried out by RNA, which is highly conserved even between different kingdoms of the tree if life.) Now that there are ribosome an RNA-protein world develops and the short lived RNA molecules opt for the safety of double helical DNA and a proto cell is born.

Yes there are gaps, and we will quite likely never know how life started on earth but at least this shows a logical series of theoretically do-able steps (many of which have been observed in the lab) resulting in life as we see it and not falling back on "magic" or "miracles"

Re:Religion

[Copid]

I believe I have just enough background to follow what you're saying, but I'm not sure that where you're going is accurate. Admittedly, the finer points of ochem are lost on me, but I at least follow the concepts of chirality and what proteins are made of.

I have a stronger grasp of probability and statistics, however. Your preemptive strike against talkorigins.org notwithstanding, there is a good write up by Dr. Ian Musgrave there at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob. html. Let's assume that you're right about lipid globules. It still looks like Dr. Musgrave's statistical analysis hangs together quite a bit better than yours, and your post didn't come near addressing all of his answers to your claim. I'll assume you're leaving out details for brevity, but it does appear that there are a lot of assumptions in your post that stack the deck a bit. Also, 10^50 is the accepted standard for impossible? Please. Flip a quarter 165 times. The sequence you just got was one of more than 2*10^50 possible sequences. It was impossible. It should never have happened. You can't look backward and calculate a probability like that without some context.

Finally, the fact that you believe that Hovind's $250K offer is actually meaningful says a lot about how carefully you examine his works. He requires you to "Prove beyond reasonable doubt that the process of evolution (option 3 above, under 'known options') is the only possible way the observed phenomena could have come into existence." Read that last part carefully. THE ONLY POSSIBLE WAY. Not "the best theory" but the ONLY way. He's asking you to disprove all of theology. Not to mention it goes to a panel of "experts" hand picked by him (the person who has an interest in keeping the challenge alive and pointing to it to support his claims) whose identities he will not reveal. I have a challenge. Prove that you were conceived by human beings and born to a female mother. Prove it to the exclusion of all other possibilities, including the claim that God made you directly and faked all evidence of your birth. And prove it in front of a panel the I pick. I'll let you know what their verdict is. I promise. If you can do it, I'll empty my pockets for you and dance around naked in the streets.

I have a challenge for Mr. Hovind: Get one of your complaints about evolutionary theory published like a real scientist rather than writing popular bunk for the credible masses. Not a whole book that tries to shoot everything down. Write one paper that picks at one supporting detail. If you don't like radiological dating, write some original research that debunks it or calls it into question and GET IT PUBLISHED in a real scientific journal. That's a hell of a lot easier than his impossible challenge, and he hasn't even gone that far. In case you were wondering, that's what all the real scientists are busy doing. They're testing their work in front of scientists rather than in the court of public opinion.

Re:Religion

[young-earth]

If you're a probstat guru, then surely you understand the absurdity of saying "see, this happened, so it wasn't unlikely at all". Please. The issue is that exactly one precise protein is required, with its chirality exactly right. Flip your coin 368 times and see how often you get only heads. That's just to get the chirality correct, not counting the sequence as well.

As for the idea of having a complaint about evolution published, go research the sad story of Scientific American and Forrest Mims. No way is any mainline journal going to publish an anti-evolution paper if they know about it.

If you want to see the last case I'm aware of where such publishing did happen, check out Science and Nature for the 60's and 70's where they published Gentry's work. It was totally peer reviewed, but once it became known that he was a creationist, his ability to get published was terminated. You're basically asking for Bill Gates to publish RMS's credos in defense of the GPL.

And that talkorigins article is exactly the one I meant; again consider that natural selection cannot occur until reproduction is so accurate that traits are faithfully passed down. Globules don't have that ability, which is one reason why there is no prebiotic goo around now. That article is fast and loose with the facts, for example it uses 20 as the possible number of amino acids; actually it's 39 when you consider chirality. Then just to be accurate, consider that polymerization is always entropically disfavored, while depolymerization is always entropically favorable. So chains will tend to come apart if there is no energy around which is channeled into putting them together. And consider that growing polypeptides outside a living organism will preferentially join with many other reactants over another amino acid. Restricting the calculation to just known required amino acids is in itself a chemical absurdity. I just used that example to illustrate that even in those conditions it is impossible.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Yes, if you can't win with logic, then resort to insults!

Re:Religion

[young-earth]

Bzzzzt. Wrong. The components of RNA did not show up in Miller's experiment; they were racemic. The components of RNA are chiral. To say nothing of the utter impossibility of the conditions Miller used (even he won't defend that experiment any more). The carboxylic acids would dissociate any growing polymer, and there were more of them than of amino acids and purines.

The idea of spontaneous polymerization happening defies logic. The free energy change in two amino acids joining to form a dipeptide and water is between 20 and 33 kilojoules/mole, dependent on the selection of amino acids involved. The equilibrium constant is easily calculated for such a reaction; at 298K the value for that reaction is 0.007, which is not good news for abiogenesis.

A tripeptide is in even worse shape; the equilibrium concentration for a 100 peptide bond chain in an aqueous solution would be 3.2x10^-216 M. Since a mole is roughly 6x10^23, that means you'd need 10^(216-23) or 10^193 Moles to get one 100-peptide bond protein in equilibrium. However since the universe has only about 5x10^78 atoms in it, that is just NOT going to happen.

A typical response to this is to say "we'll just heat it to get rid of the water". Fine, that would alter the concentrations. It would also racemize the amino acids, for those few that don't break down at that heat/pressure.

Thermodynamics makes abiogenesis just plain impossible.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

That doesn't make sense, sorry. You confine God to our physical realm, presuming He must fit within the mathematical laws He created. That is a faulty assumption.

Not to mention that God is infinite while everything created is finite. Another problem.

God is the first cause, the creator, the origin. Atheistic evolution has no answer for first cause, while there must be one.

Btw, I'd be curious to see the maths you used to show it impossible that God existed.

In 2000 years, I fully expect evolution to be recorded in history as a time when people beleived that absurd idea that all life evolved over billions of years. They'll laugh at us as much as we laugh at those who believed in a flat earth.

Re:Religion

[usotsuki]

You mean

The Catholic Church's line has been open to the prospect of evolutionism, while the fundies have flatly denied it.

-uso.

Re:Religion

[Copid]

If you're a probstat guru, then surely you understand the absurdity of saying "see, this happened, so it wasn't unlikely at all". Please.

The point that I was trying to make is that a simple calculation that a specific event would happen looking into the past is not as simple as it may seem. There's a lot more to probability than than a simple calculation. It also has to do with your point of observation. I don't think we want to get too deeply into this, but the fact is, can't simply state that something is impossible because its probability is low, especially when you consider the probability of something similar happening (like any other HT combination) is exactly 1. The issue is that exactly one precise protein is required, with its chirality exactly right. Flip your coin 368 times and see how often you get only heads. That's just to get the chirality correct, not counting the sequence as well.

Which protien are you referring to? This is what I'm not understanding here. Your claim is that based on the simplest (I assume) modern organism, the proteins in that modern organism are the ones required to begin life. I don't see how that has to be the case. All that notwithstanding, there's a lot more to evolution than abiogenesis. In fact, the theory of evolution doesn't seek to explain abiogenesis. It simply complements it as a more complete theory of how things may have progressed. This is similar to Hovind requring that one proves the origins of the universe to prove so-called "macro" evolution. Bull.

As for the idea of having a complaint about evolution published, go research the sad story of Scientific American and Forrest Mims. No way is any mainline journal going to publish an anti-evolution paper if they know about it.

As much as I disapprove of SciAm's behavior here, it's not exactly a real scientific journal. It's a commercial magazine for educated lay people.

If you want to see the last case I'm aware of where such publishing did happen, check out Science and Nature for the 60's and 70's where they published Gentry's work. It was totally peer reviewed, but once it became known that he was a creationist, his ability to get published was terminated.

That sounds a bit dramatized. If you're talkign about Robert Gentry, you're referring to polonium halos. I'd be outside my field to comment on this directly, but as I understood it, the theory just hasn't really caught on. If you'd like to post some more evidence that indicates that his creationist background had something to do with it, please do. Gentry was publishing an alternative view of known data. To make an alternative view that conflicts with the mainstream view stick, it has to be pretty damned convincing. From the looks of his bibliography, Gentry got his shot in several publications. This kind of thing happens all the time. Sometimes your pet theories don't catch on when there's one that explains things just as well and also matches up with other theories.

You're basically asking for Bill Gates to publish RMS's credos in defense of the GPL.

Ahh. The ever popular "vast conspiracy of the scientific establishment" argument. The problem with Hovind and his kind is that they go to the popular press trying to tear down thousands of separate, well-supported pieces of scientific all at once and expect it to fall like a house of cards. That's not how the real world works. The reality is, to get something published, it should have solid data and stand on its own. If you find something really wrong with a scientific practice, present your argument and your data. If they're as irrefutable as these people seem to think they are, it will get published. Many journals allow anonymous publication, and as long as you don't try to take on too many theories at once with your lone data set, you should survive. Also, note the difference between publishing new evidence and publishing an alternate view of old evidence. It's easier to go agai

Re:Religion

[usotsuki]

I'm surprised that you haven't been modded Flamebait right now, but I firmly agree with you.

We do not necessarily know it all. It is possible that God is deliberately hiding knowledge from our eyes. He knows all, and who are we to question his infallible (at least IMHO) Word?

-uso.
If you like the Bible you'll love the 1576 Tomson NT. :)

Re:Religion

[young-earth]

Ah, now it's clear. You're objecting to my seeming to pick one specific protein out that is what is in a current day cell. Actually that's not what I was doing; the process was using a theoretical calculation of how many proteins would be needed in a cell to minimally survive, based on current knowledge. No life form is known (past nor present) which is as simple as this hypothetical minimal form. Your point about a single protein is a good one, but to accomplish the functions required to, for example, catabolize ATP or to replicate DNA the proteins required are very specific, which is why picking one is fairly accurate. And in doing the probability calculation, I ignored things like the equilibrium gradient, other reagents, temperature and pH problems, steric hindrance, etc. Since any of those objections is sufficient prevent polymer chain growth alone, picking one specific protein instead is a pro-abiogenesis stance.

As for the references on Gentry, unfortunately I lent my copy of his book out, and don't have it here to dig out the specifics. If you're actually interested in the case, email me your email and I'll get it to you when I get the book. It had to do with failing to allow him to respond to Odom and Rink's article, which was a huge breach of courtesy and practice. That's an immense oversimplification though, so don't criticize based on just that info.

I too have issues with Hovind, but the part about publishing is another story. Take a look at the history of science; investigate how de Broglie was about to be denied his PhD until his advisors ridiculed his ideas to Einstein at a lunch one day, and Einstein, instead of laughing back, commented on how insightful the idea was. Concepts that go against the grain have always been tough to get into publication, ideas that are in sync with the masses slide right on in. An unfortunate part of human nature. Not restricted to pure science, it happens all the time in medicine as well. I worked in the medical field at one time, in a treatment facility that had immense capabilities. However it was not pushed by a major drug company, not written up in JAMA, and of 600+ doctors on staff only about 3 used it. People were dying and they were not treated in a facility that would have high odds of helping them. Tragic, yet very real.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Why do you bother to make the argument that if so many scientists believe it it must be true? Don't you pay any attention to history? Why does it need to be a conspiracy theory if we happen to think most people are wrong on a certain point? It's happened in the past, it will happen again.

Re:Religion

[fluffy666]

I used to be an evolutionist, and can spout and cite the exact same drek as evolutionists are known to do. I have a full education and background in the cosmic, biochemical, and biological "evolution" story line.

That's strange, considering that in the next post you propose a mechanism for abiogenesis which is not taken seriously be any scientist in the field. This suggests that you are a liar.

Re:Religion

[Mal-2]

Their beliefs are no more worthy of respect than those of flat-Earthers, Holocaust deniers, and alleged alien abductees.

I take it you haven't been anally probed yet.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

God is the first cause, the creator, the origin. Atheistic evolution has no answer for first cause, while there must be one.

Incorrect. Since time is relative (this is scientific fact), there cannot be a first cause. Events that appear to be happening in a particular sequence when viewed from a certain location, can appear to happen in a different sequence when viewed from different location. Who is going to decide what sequence of events is correct (hint: they both are)?

In 2000 years, I fully expect evolution to be recorded in history as a time when people beleived that absurd idea that all life evolved over billions of years. They'll laugh at us as much as we laugh at those who believed in a flat earth.

Perhaps we'll have an even better theory describing the origins of life by then, but let me assure you that theory will *not* be creationism.

In your first paragraph you indicate (correctly) God is a metaphysical concept and one cannot confine this concept to the physical realm. If you agree on a metaphysical God, you'll never be able to prove (or disprove) his/her existance scientifically, so (scientifically/physically speaking) you can't attribute any actions to him/her. This is why creationism will *never* fly.

Re:Religion

[fluffy666]

Since 19 of the 20 amino acids used in proteins are chiral, any abiogenesis must take this into account.

Did the first form of life use this many ammino acids? [Hint: No]

enzymes are only active when their 3d shapes are exactly as required.

Are, however, the Metal-ligand active centers of many enzymes (which form naturally..) active without protein coats? [Hint: Yes]

The minimum protein complement of a cell that could accurately self-replicate has been estimated at between 280 and 400 proteins.

However, the minimum protein count of a prebiotic metabolic reaction chamber is... [Hint: zero]

In other words, your argument is based around a number of amazingly incorrect assumptions.

..Unfortunately for you and their claim, those globules cannot accurately reproduce...

Actually, reproduction followed by differing development pathways is all that's required. And as long as an energy source is present, things will not have to degrade.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

You will have to explain why time being relative means that there cannot be a first cause. It is possible for a train to be moving at 30km or 60km, but only ever being able to move forward. As such, there will never be a point where two different events occur in a different sequence. In other words, I don't understand what you are saying.

Your assurances that the theory in 2000 years will not be creationism do little to persuade me, as you can probably guess.

If creationism is demonstrated true, then God's existence is proven. Or do you say that creationism being proven would not necessarily prove the existence of God?

A fool looks at a watch and says that it has no creator. Evolutionists ask me to believe in the possible as if it were rational. And yet it is *we* who are accused of believing fairy tales and myths.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

As such, there will never be a point where two different events occur in a different sequence. In other words, I don't understand what you are saying.

Assume there are two guys with a gun standing one mile apart from eachother, both firing the gun. Depending on where you stand the sound of one gunshot will reach your ears earlier then the sound of the other gun. Now assume the second guy fires the gun when he hears the first guys gunshot, but you are standing 2 miles away from the first guy and 1 mile away from the second guy. You can't do better (from your standpoint) then saying both guys fired their guns simultaniously.

If you think about this scenario on a cosmic scale (and with light instead of sound), you can never tell what event happened first, it completely depends on where *you* are in the cosmos.

If creationism is demonstrated true, then God's existence is proven. Or do you say that creationism being proven would not necessarily prove the existence of God?

If you prove God by proving creationism, you also prove God is *not* metaphysical. If God is physical, he can't be infinite, omnipresent, allmighty etc. So if you prove Gods existence this way, you've proven the existence of a God different from then the one you (and the Bible) are talking about.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Your example of the gunshots merely proves that we have difficulty determining what events occurred first, not that both occured simultaneously first and last. The first guy *did* fire first, whether you stand 2 miles from him or 1 mile. The differences is in your perception of who fired first.

You need to explain in more detail why proving creationism true proves that God is physical and therefore not infinite?
Here is why creationism would affirm God's existence:
1. It would show that the history in the Bible was accurate and true
2. Having demonstrated this as true, we would then understand that God was the creator
3. There is no atheistic/materialistic/naturalistic option for a creation theory - that the earth is ~6000 years, began with two of each kind, etc.

One could not deny the existence of God if creationism was proven true. I fail to see how this would prove God is physical and therefore not infinite.
It seems to be a common claim of atheists that you cannot prove the existence of God. However, they base that claim (as I suspect you do) solely on the assumption that evolution is true - for if evolution is true, then there is no way to be certain if God guided it or if it occurred apart from Him. But if we eliminate evolution and have creation theory upheld, then there is no option but to acknowledge His existence.

Re:Religion

[20_ooodbye]

This is a ridiculous argument. No one has ever claimed that proteins started making themselves. I'll think you will find you have a lot of proteins in you, do you think god made them personally, no 'cos that is stupid. Do I think that they made themselves with amino acids floating round in solution? No, that's stupid Ribsomes are very good at making proteins. I can draw you right now a e way in which a ribozyme could evolve into a ribosome, with an mRNA equivalent built in. RNA does all the catalysis in ribosomes (which are rRNA molecules with protein added) If you make a random pool of RNAs some of them will be capable of binding to amino acids, kinda like tRNA. Now you can start making random proteins. A random pool of proteins tend to have some kind of function, there is no need for a 'perfect' enzyme to turn up by chance, it just needs to be capable of doing something better than the competition for natural selection. You use of the terms racemic and chiral make me wonder about your level of knowledge here.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Your example of the gunshots merely proves that we have difficulty determining what events occurred first, not that both occured simultaneously first and last. The first guy *did* fire first, whether you stand 2 miles from him or 1 mile. The differences is in your perception of who fired first.

I didn't prove it is difficult to determine the correct sequence of events, I proved it is *impossible* on a cosmic scale. The only means man has to measure and quantitize his surroundings is careful study of his own perceptions. (In our example, if you don't know which guy fired first by other means then observation, there is no way of telling who did.)

You need to explain in more detail why proving creationism true proves that God is physical and therefore not infinite?

If God interacts with the physical realm, there must be a point of connection between the physical and the metaphysical realms. Because manipulation of the physical realm is possible only by physical means, God must (at least in part) be physical. As you stated yourself, nothing physical is infinite (and thus not omnipresent).

It seems to be a common claim of atheists that you cannot prove the existence of God. However, they base that claim (as I suspect you do) solely on the assumption that evolution is true

Nope, it's much simpler than that. If you want to prove the existence of God scientifically, you can't do so by reasoning about him exclusively; you've got to have measurements, physical data, to build a mathematical model of "God". This model can be discussed and checked by the scientific community by repeating the measurements/experiments. Do you see now why you don't want Gods existence proven scientifically?

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Ok, you may have proved it is impossible on a cosmic scale. That still doesn't eliminate a first cause. All you've done is shown our weakness in determining the precise order of events.

If God interacts with the physical realm, it does not imply He is at least physical. I believe the physical can be manipulated by spiritual means. Besides, this is all moot. When God incarnated as Jesus the Christ He became part physical. He was fully human and fully God. We don't fully comprehend this, but the two are not mutually exclusive - just beyond our understanding. You are making a number of claims and assumptions that don't seem to be possible to back up.

Now your treatment of the scientific community confuses me. Explain more fully why creationism being demonstrated as true would not prove God's existence?

I'm starting to get a bit concerned...it sounds like you are saying a number of catch phrases with no meaning or unfounded assumptions. Please - get straight to the point. What's your argument and the evidence for it or the reasoning behind it? What do you mean by not being able to prove God by reasoning about Him exclusively? What does that mean? Why wouldn't I want God proven scientifically? What are you saying?

Re:Religion

[PhilHibbs]

The differences is in your perception of who fired first.

I'm afraid he's right. Simultaneity travels at the speed of light. Here's a good reference.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

I'll read it later, right now I'm pretty tired. If you could tell me what he's right about though I would appreciate that.

Re:Religion

[ravenousbugblatter]

It's actually an accepted part of the big-bang theory that it is mathematically impossible to know what came before the big-bang, therefore it isn't really correct to state that evolutionists believe everything came from nothing -- they just don't know what, if anything, they came from.

I would have to disagree with you about it being more of a leap of faith to believe in six-day creation than evolution, but regardless I think the Buddhists have got it straight -- it doesn't really make a bit of damn difference.

As for the Tree of Life project, more power to it. The construction of such trees is not easy though, and small variables can lead to the formation of dramatically different trees. It's too bad it relies on a lot of subjective information, but if we want to include extinct species we of course can't build a tree soley on genetic information, which would be the optimal method for such a thing.

Re:Religion

[PhilHibbs]

That events cannot be determined to have been in a specific order. The ambiguity is equal to the spatial separation in light-time. Thus two events A and B separated by, say, 300,000 kilometers that appeared to be simultaneous to an observer half way between them occured both A one second before B, and B one second before A. There is no single answer to "which occurred first".

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Ok...I have no problem with that. What he was trying to say is that events do not occur in a specific order. What the theory actually says is that the order of events cannot be reliably determined.

There is a world of difference in those two things.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Ok, you may have proved it is impossible on a cosmic scale. That still doesn't eliminate a first cause. All you've done is shown our weakness in determining the precise order of events.

No I didn't, I tried to show the "precise order of events" is subjective/relative. In cosmology, we don't start with a universe aged 0, we start with a universe that is already 1 Planck-time old when it comes into existence. Within this Planck-time, there is no causality, no cause and effect.

Now your treatment of the scientific community confuses me. Explain more fully why creationism being demonstrated as true would not prove God's existence?

Because you can't prove creationism without proving Gods existence, Gods existence is a precondition to creationism being true. To prove creationism, you *first* have to prove Gods existence. If you try to do it the other way around, you end up in cyclic argumentation and bad logics.

What do you mean by not being able to prove God by reasoning about Him exclusively? What does that mean? Why wouldn't I want God proven scientifically? What are you saying?

If you prove something by reasoning alone, it's called philosophy, theology or logics. If you want to prove something scientifically, you have to build a mathematical model. To build a mathematical model, you have to quantitize (measure) what you are modelling, you need numbers to do your math with. Other scientists will check both the measurements and the model to see if they correspond with reality.

So to prove God scientifically, you would first have to measure Gods physical properties. Assuming this (physical) God exists, wouldn't it be a sacrilege to go and probe him physically?

Re:Religion

[vaderhelmet]

Having submitted the story, and being a Catholic... I think I'm qualified to say that I think this is all very cool. Sure, I believe that God created everything. That's not to say that I don't believe in evolution, in fact I think it's one of the most exciting fields of study. Genesis in the Bible claims that the world was created in 7 days. Then again, there's another book (and I don't remember which one) which says that there are only 144,000 spaces in heaven (a belief Jehovah's Witnesses stick too)

Most Catholics (including the Pope himself) don't read the Bible as the definitive guide to everything. It was written by simple-minded fools long ago, and they were expressing things in the way they understood them. With our advanced understanding of how things are now, it's easy to dismiss things like this as myths and such unless we take a look deeper into what it's all about, and understand that just because Catholics(and Christians of all kinds) rely on the Bible as a guiding work, as it details the history of our God . But not everyone thinks it's the final say, and not everyone memorizes it.

Re: Religion

[Black Parrot]

> I have a full education and background in the cosmic, biochemical, and biological "evolution" story line.

Please tell us about your education and background.

Not that I care; it's just that Creationist Credential Inflation (CCI) is rampant among, well, creationists, and a vague statement like "I have a full education" rings the alarm bells. So what exactly is your degree or degrees, what were the granting institutions, what fields were they in (as stated on the diplomas)?

> However it comes down to a key point - it is mathematically impossible for life to arise spontaneously by stochastic processes.

Please show your math.

> The Bible has it right from the first verse ("n the beginning God created the heaven and the earth") to the last (" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen").

What is the basis for this claim? (Especially when some of the intervening material is demonstrably false, e.g. the story of the global flood.)

> If you choose to believe in evolution, that's fine, just be honest enough to admit that it is more of a leap of faith than believing in 6 day creation.

No, because we have evidence refuting the six day creation and we don't have evidence refuting evolution.

And even if we didn't have evidence refuting the six day creation the two claims still wouldn't balance in the scale, because evolution doesn't claim the existence of anything other than the ordinary workings of matter and energy in well-observed processes of chemistry, genetics, and the behavior of individuals and populations. Special creation OTOH requires the existence of an omni*ent being with an individual personality, for whom not the slightest evidence exists, along with the additional claims that he, she, or it decided to actually do what creationists claim he/she/it did, and then decided to falsify the evidence afterward to make it look like he/she/it didn't do it.

There is no symmetry at all between science and religion.

Re:Religion

[Black Parrot]

> Here is why creationism would affirm God's existence:
> 1. It would show that the history in the Bible was accurate and true

As a good scientist you know that when observations falsify the consequences of a claim then that claim is false. And since we know that some of the history in the Bible is inaccurate and false, your claim must be rejected.

Re:Religion

[almiki]

I didn't prove it is difficult to determine the correct sequence of events, I proved it is *impossible* on a cosmic scale. The only means man has to measure and quantitize his surroundings is careful study of his own perceptions. (In our example, if you don't know which guy fired first by other means then observation, there is no way of telling who did.)

If you think about this scenario on a cosmic scale (and with light instead of sound), you can never tell what event happened first, it completely depends on where *you* are in the cosmos.

And what was the "cosmic scale" at the very beginning of the universe? It seems to me that at the beginning of the universe, everything may have come from a single point. If this was true, then any 2 events would occur at exactly the same place, and the only you (assuming *you* could even exist in such a condition) could observe them from is right there. So, there would be a definite order to any 2 events. You can't use analogies about people in a field when talking about things like the beginning of the universe... I'm pretty sure there might be some different rules at play.

This argument looks like 1 person claiming that God made everything, and 1 person trying to prove that it is utterly impossible. I think the first person is entitled to his opinion, but the second fails at even making a compelling argument. You can't *prove* anything of this nature, especially when all you have are scientific laws based on our observations of the physical laws around us.

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

Tyreth asserts:

God is the first cause, the creator, the origin. Atheistic evolution has no answer for first cause, while there must be one.

It's not clear from the context which thing you are talking about. When I hear people talk about "the creator" and "first cause", generally they are talking about the creation of the universe as a whole. But this is a thread about creationism, so you might be talking about the creation of life/man on earth. I'll answer the question both ways.

In regards to the first cause in the creation of the universe, it is qutie true that science has no real answers. It has some speculation (eg. an eternal cycle of big bang->expansion->contraction->big crunch->repeat), but these speculations are difficult or impossible to analyze scientifically. Since it cannot be answered by science, it pretty much has to be answered by faith, and it doesn't matter to me, or to science, if you feel that Jehovah made it with a word, Shiva danced it into existance, or it was sneezed out of the nostril of a divine goat. It's a matter of personal faith.

In regards to the first cause in the creation of life, Darwin doesn't really address that as far as I know, but modern biologists seem pretty well convinced that as the earth was cooling, you had a stage where the atmosphere was primarily methane, and there were oceans of "primordial soup" which was essentially key elements disolved in water. This was a high energy time, and a lot of heat was coming up from the earth beneath these oceans and from lightning from the sky. The energy interacting with the soup made for developing some interesting and exotic chemicals (eg amino and nucleic acids) which could, by random chance, combine into self-replicating forms. Once you have self-replicating chemicals, Darwin's theories take it from there just fine. Many of the steps involved in this process have been borne out either in the geological/paleontological record, or in laboratory experiments.

If you feel that your God had a hand in making the random collisions come out the way they did, there's nothing in science to contradict you; there's also nothing in science to support you. Again, that boils down to a matter of personal faith.

On the other hand, if you feel, as many "creation scientists" do, that the universe, the earth, life and man all were created in late October, 4004 BCE, there is a great deal of hard evidence against you. Such a belief is not a simple matter of faith, but a more complicated matter of blind faith. A faith that demands that you close your eyes to the world around you doesn't strike me as healthy, or likely to be true. It certainly doesn't count as science, or as something I'd want to see children being taught.

Re:Religion

[8282now]

No I didn't, I tried to show the "precise order of events" is subjective/relative. In cosmology, we don't start with a universe aged 0, we start with a universe that is already 1 Planck-time old when it comes into existence. Within this Planck-time, there is no causality, no cause and effect.
Why?
Rather why is it the case that causality is set aside at that point?
Can you give a reason for your belief in this assumption?

Re:Religion

[young-earth]

Your random RNA scenario is not going to accomplish anything. Again, without chirality, you don't have RNA. And how did the RNA polymerize? The equilibrium constants will be so vastly against it. And any RNA hanging around, once it gets past 15 pairs, spontaneously folds into a useless hunk.

Note that cytosine, one of the pieces of RNA, is not found in spark discharge experiments which you were citing. See Shapiro's work: Shapiro, R., Prebiotic cytosine synthesis: A critical analysis and implications for the origin of life, Proceedings National Academy of Science 96(8):4396-4401, 1999. Shapiro also found that the precursors to cytosine (cyanoacetylene and cyanoacetaldehyde) react strongly with amino acids, ending the synthesis path. And presence of H20 causes hydrolyzation of cyanoacetylene to the aldehyde, which is again quickly hydrolyzed further.

Also cytosine in a warm environment has a very short half-life; only 19 days in the hot-vent theory of origins. Not enough time for any appreciable concentration to accumulate. And racemization also occurs rapidly, so even if there were a naturalistic source of homochiral bases, they would racemize quickly in a non-living environment.

And if you have both sugars (such as ribose) and amino acids or other -NH2 compounds in the same "soup", you'll get gunk out. Well, imines actually, but as far as prebiotic components, imines are a dead end. You can see imine formation any time you see food browning. Watch it next time you don't finish an apple, there are sugars and amino acids there, and the imines form. (Imines are -C=N compounds.)

Stanley Miller (familiar name, eh?) points out that the half-life of ribose is only 44 years at the freezing point of water in pH 7 (see Larralde, R., Robertson, M.P. and Miller, S.L., Rates of decomposition of ribose and other sugars: Implications for chemical evolution, Proceedings National Academy of Science 92:7933-7938, 1995). At boiling (which many hot-vent theories assume) the half-life is down to 73 minutes. Neither short half-life does not allow for any significant long-term accumulation, which would be required to form the building blocks for your scenario to be remotely possible.

Re:Religion

[Dionysus]

Like the catholic priest at Santa Clara University said in the Biology class, when I asked him why they weren't teaching creationism in Biology, creationism is not science. And he was teaching science. If anyone wanted to discuss creationism, they should go to the religious studies dept.

Re:Religion

[Ramjet350]

I know this may be a stupid comment - but who cares? The religious folks are never going to be convinced that what they believe is wrong, even if there was immense proof (which will never happen). Religion has the position of being unprovable either way - science, on the other hand can be. The science folks are going to keep trying to explain how life and the universe got to where it is now. Sometimes they will get it right and sometimes not. We, as humans, have to keep trying to learn and improve ourselves - science isn't trying to disprove religion, but better understand the universe. Are we supposed to sit back and credit anything we don't understand to religion? If people never dug deeper than we would not have the technology we have now - religion needs to be left in its place of faith and science in its place of investigation. I don't consider them to be in the same playing field.

Re:Religion

[svyyn]

A bit deep for an Erisian... FNORD!

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Hmm, I think you replied to the wrong person. Thanks for your thoughts anyway.

Re:Religion

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Not really, the catholic church didn't had a problem with Darwins theory of evolution, it did had a big problem with the fact that Darwin had kicked God out of the picture (His theory explained evolution as a random process with natural selection to eliminate the bad choices, so it didn't need a God). Modern evolution theory now leaves a lot of room for any number of Gods (and other supernatural stuff).

Re:Religion

[svyyn]

To get past increasing entropy, there must be a directed process. This requires natural selection, which absolutely requires nearly-perfect (but not totally perfect) reproduction. Otherwise gains made in the mutation set of a parent are more likely to be lost than passed on, and without that, there is no natural selection, no neo-darwinian evolution.

Anyone who has written a genetic algorithm knows this isn't true. The algorithm will converge on a solution as long as a majority of the data is preserved. It will take it longer with more mutation, but the algorithm doesn't break until around the 35-45% for fairly complex problems. For simple problems, it can actually accept much more. If the problem is solvable with multiple solutions, then the amount of mutation can be even higher.

Re:Religion

[Josh Booth]

Okay, first, it is entirely possible that the train is going backwards; it just depends on your point of view. If you are going 55 down Route 1 to pass granny doing 35 in the fast lane is she going backwards and you forewards, you stopped and she backwards, or both of you forewards and the Earth stopped, or both of you spinning like a top with the Earth? Science says that it is impossible to experimentally prove any one of these, so they all are true. In fact, Quantum Mechanics says that indeed you can go back in time because time is merely another dimension. Imagine a film reel where each cell is a two dimensional world at a point in time. You can move the reel back and forth, moving time as you like. However, this is not that good of an analogy because nothing is static like that, not even time. No, not even physicists understand it really; they plug in numbers into equations and see if the results match the data from experiments.

If creationism is demonstrated true, then God's existence is proven. Or do you say that creationism being proven would not necessarily prove the existence of God?

Of couse if one is able to prove creationism true, God's existence is proven. Science would then test this proof (as long as it is not a string of logical statements that come from the Bible or other text, or some sort of "revelation" or something like "we exist, therefore God exists") and conclude as to whether it is true by scientific means, i.e. experiments. If the experiments agree, then science must accept creationism and therefore God.

A fool looks at a watch and says that it has no creator.

Depends on what you define as a creator. I personally see everything as some sort of process taking place in the Universe, meaning that everything is a result of something, not necesarily something one could identify as a "creator". The watch's "creator" is merely a complex chemical process that created it.

Although these are my views, I have not totally ruled out the existence of a god or supreme being. Like many other scientists, I don't belive in a "personal god" but I can't say there isn't a god. Japanese culture states that everything has a soul, and I have to agree with that. How can you tell the difference between a river that seems to have the will to flood towns and a madman that wills people to die by his gun. I define soul very loosely; therefore, God may indeed simply be the same as the universe. Indeed, I also believe that it is unimportant whether God does exist as long as you can't tell the difference.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Planck time (5.4 × 10e-44 seconds) is the smallest possible unit of time for which general relativity holds. Everything that happens within a Planck time unit is defined by (probablistic) quantum physics and can't be described by (causal/deterministic) classical physics.

So, it's not an assumption really, it's just quantum physics; there is no real causality in quantum physics, because in quantum physics determinism is lost.

Re:Religion

[Anonymous Coward]

No! Thank you, Jesus!

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Not at all, you can't confuse an empty mind. Eris teaches us to learn and laugh, even though the latter is a bit painful after the bombing and occupation of Eridu, which is of course the real reason for the war against Iraq. Saddam has WMD, hahaha hell no! Zan Zu has the Sacred Chao!

Damn, the Council of Five always said I was paranoid when I told them the CIA was after me and my cabal, but now we're occupied and all, nothing but an eerie silence comes from them. Hmmm...

Kallisti!

Re:Religion

[spence2680]

42.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

And what was the "cosmic scale" at the very beginning of the universe? It seems to me that at the beginning of the universe, everything may have come from a single point.

At the beginning of time, the *visible* universe was compressed to a single point. Remember the universe might be a whole lot bigger then the part we can observe.

You can't *prove* anything of this nature, especially when all you have are scientific laws based on our observations of the physical laws around us.

I intended to lead the argument towards a similar point. In science there is no absolute proof, only competing theories/models. Even worse, we don't *observe* physical laws, we *make* them to describe our observations of nature as good as possible (or better, we make theories that become so widely accepted over time we start calling them "laws").

In our objective observations, a theist God (a God that constantly interferes with nature) plays no part. The laws/theories we derive from those observations to the best of our abilities function better without a deist God (a God that creates the universe, but that's about all he does).

These are very strong arguments for the absence of a physical God, and since God plays no active part in our observations, and we can describe those observations coherently without introducing God (but we have difficulties if we do introduce him), the burden lays with the party that claims there is such a God anyway.

Note that we need a God that is at least partly physical to be able to create and/or manipulate nature. The philosophical argument here is the same as the "Cartesian Theater" argument that shows the (hypothetical) spirit has to be physical to control the brain (this casts a grim shadow over dualism).

This leaves us with a purely metaphysical God, confined to the world of abstractions; an idea, a meme (an egregore ;).

Re:Religion

[bucky0]

Not to jump in too much on you two's argument but this line confounded me

In our objective observations, a theist God (a God that constantly interferes with nature) plays no part. The laws/theories we derive from those observations to the best of our abilities function better without a deist God (a God that creates the universe, but that's about all he does).

These are very strong arguments for the absence of a physical God, and since God plays no active part in our observations, and we can describe those observations coherently without introducing God (but we have difficulties if we do introduce him), the burden lays with the party that claims there is such a God anyway.

Couldn't one argue that the non-determinism of quantum physics is the 'portal' if you will, which allows whatever 'God' there is to control the physical world from the metaphysical realm?

That may be poorly explained(it's late!) but hear me out...
1)God desides to influence the universe
2)God tweaks the solutions to the quantum mechanical equations to line up with his will.
3)The summation of all the various tweaks he has done to the universe at the quantum mechanical level causes the universe as we observe it to line up properly
4)God's existence can never be proven or denied since quantum mechanics holds a certain amount of improbability anyway.

What do you think?

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

You are making assumptions about what we may or may not care about.

If we can demonstrate creationism as being true apart from God - ie, that the history given in the Bible was in fact correct, from Adam & Eve, age of the earth, flood, history of the nations, etc. Then would that prove God as existing? Note what I'm saying - we've simply proven that the events recorded in the Bible did occur. If that happened, would God's existence be verified?

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

On the other hand, if you feel, as many "creation scientists" do, that the universe, the earth, life and man all were created in late October, 4004 BCE, there is a great deal of hard evidence against you. Such a belief is not a simple matter of faith, but a more complicated matter of blind faith. A faith that demands that you close your eyes to the world around you doesn't strike me as healthy, or likely to be true. It certainly doesn't count as science, or as something I'd want to see children being taught.

It's exactly comments like this that I buck against. Evolutionists are so very quick to pronounce the existence of "hard facts", or "mountains of evidence", or "overwhelming proof". Show me it! I've looked and considered creation and evolution for a long time. I believe that evolution is like an old wives fable that has been told so many times, and has so much circumstantial evidence built up around it (eg, those one in a million chance things) that people hear these tired stories so many times they come to believe it - "it's a widely believed fact" as Fry said in Futurama. I'm not interested in blanket statements. You tell me, what proof is there of evolution? Even better! What is the scientific theory of evolution by which we can test the theory? What is the scientific theory of evolution which creationists disagree with - that all life evolved from simple single celled life. Show me something we can test.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Grandma may appear to be going backwards to me, but that's only because I'm using myself as a point of reference. If we consider the beginning of the universe as the reference point, then we will see that every piece of time is moving forwards, won't we? Just at different speeds. And thats the point I'm trying to make - I don't care if event a appears to occur before event b, just that one of them *did* occur first relative to the beginning of time.

If you understand that proof of creationism is proof of God - then I encourage you to examine the issue with an open mind. Most or all evolutionists I have encountered simply do not understand our position. Having been brought up in an evolutionary world, it is easier for me to understand the theory of evolution, but for one outside it is not easy to consider something new.

I understand your point about a "creator" - but the difference I was trying to make was between intelligent design and random choices. I know you think intelligence is still random, but I'm guessing you *know* what I mean, and that's the kind of intelligence I'm referring to. It has the ability to organise things in a way that it desires, while random processes do not. Ah, I still see you are going to see that as random :) For me it is a great evidence of God and the fact that we are created beings - because our ability to comprehend our environment is beyond the scope of evolution. As your position proves, it reduces us to mindless, meaningless entities in which there is no morality. That is not only something I would fight and die to stop, but seems completely irrational. I agree with you that it is the logical conclusion of an evolutionary mindframe - but that *should* be cause enough for you, having seen that, to consider whether evolution really does make sense. We see a dice rolled, and that dice has no power to comprehend its activities. At what point did we gain this understanding? Does it make sense that we ever should?

Re: Religion

[Black Parrot]

> We do not necessarily know it all. It is possible that God is deliberately hiding knowledge from our eyes. He knows all, and who are we to question his infallible (at least IMHO) Word?

One boggles at the simultaneous claims that (a) God is deceiving us and (b) God's word is perfectly trustworthy.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Couldn't one argue that the non-determinism of quantum physics is the 'portal' if you will, which allows whatever 'God' there is to control the physical world from the metaphysical realm?

This is an exellent question. Quantum physics is a descriptive theory, it doesn't try to explain the phenomena it describes, it just tries to predict their outcome as good as possible. This creates the possibility for various interpretations of QM.

The standard "Copenhagen" interpretation claims there is no deeper reality then the quantum level. Other interpretations like the "Bohme" interpertation claim there is a deeper, unknowable reality that controls the randomness on the quantum level. These "hidden variable" interpretations have big problems:

They claim there is a part of physics that can't be studied, measured, etc (the hidden variables). This violates the very definition of natural science.

They are non-local, they allow distant particals to interact simultaniously. This violates relativity, there is information exchange faster then the speed of light.

This leaves you with two choices: either God is true randomness, so there is no meaning, predictability or intelligence to his actions; or God is truly unknowable and screws up fundamental physics, so you can't really think or talk about him, but you have to rethink important parts of physics instead. (The first option is more widely accepted, since it represents the Copenhagen interpretation.)

Re:Religion

[Black Parrot]

> God is the first cause, the creator, the origin. Atheistic evolution has no answer for first cause, while there must be one.

You don't seem to require a cause for God. You're simply trying to hold the opposition to a standard that you don't hold yourself to.

> In 2000 years, I fully expect evolution to be recorded in history as a time when people beleived that absurd idea that all life evolved over billions of years. They'll laugh at us as much as we laugh at those who believed in a flat earth.

Blissfully unaware that you already live in a time when people get laughed at for denying evolution.

Can you think of any instance where progress in science led to a theory that was more like previously rejected folkloric explanations, rather than to something even stranger than we had previously imagined?

ps - I agree that there is no mathematical proof that an eternal god is impossible. (Unless of course you pick arbitrary axioms to make it provable. But arbitrary axioms don't tell us much about reality.)

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Note what I'm saying - we've simply proven that the events recorded in the Bible did occur. If that happened, would God's existence be verified?

No it wouldn't. It would just verify the corectness of the Bible as a *historical* record, it wouldn't verify any claims the Bible makes to the cause of history. (Implication isn't equivalence, so you can't reverse implications. If A implies B, you can't claim A is true just because B is true. This is the bad logics I referred to in another post.)

Re: Religion

[Black Parrot]

> Ok...I have no problem with that. What he was trying to say is that events do not occur in a specific order. What the theory actually says is that the order of events cannot be reliably determined. There is a world of difference in those two things.

You have failed to grok the reason relativity is called 'relativity'.

Ancient intuitions about time, space, mass, human ancestry, etc., simply don't stand up to a check against reality.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Then tell me, if all the history of the Bible was shown true - 6,000 year old earth, origination of all species from two initial kinds (Adam & Eve the original two for humans) - then how could that possibly *not* prove God? In other words, what possible naturalistic atheistic explanation is there?

Re: Religion

[Black Parrot]

> If we can demonstrate creationism as being true apart from God - ie, that the history given in the Bible was in fact correct, from Adam & Eve, age of the earth, flood, history of the nations, etc. Then [...]

Since much of your 'if' has already been demonstrated to be false, your 'then' is dead code that doesn't really matter.

Re:Religion

[bucky0]

I'm not an expert on quantum mechanincs, but why would the "Bohme" interpretation be more unlikely? To me,(excluding God from this argument for simplicity) if there was an underlying reality of QM, we would never be able to study it. Since we can't very well produce the _exact_ same inputs to the "Quantum Equations", and since we can't study the output without much certainty (Heisinburg would come into play at the scales we would be measuring). I think it would be physically impossible to ever understand what goes on at that deeper level. That said...

They claim there is a part of physics that can't be studied, measured, etc (the hidden variables). This violates the very definition of natural science
Isn't it also possible that our view of natural science is too narrow for the world it tries to describe? Not to knock you one bit, but that argument sounds like, "We have this really neat hypothesis, unfortunately we have to throw it out the window because it's not the type of hypothesis we're looking for."

They are non-local, they allow distant particals to interact simultaniously. This violates relativity, there is information exchange faster then the speed of light.
This is a lot harder of an argument to deal with my limited knowledge of GR but I'll take a shot:
a)GR doesn't apply to whatever magic stuff we're talking about. It sounds like a copout, but how unreasonable is it that something which is different than any other object we've observed, and we havn't studied very much(relative to normal, classical mechanics) doesn't obey previous laws we created?
b)Once again, my naivity comes into play but, isn't it possible for information to be transferred at faster than the speed of light, just the underlying medium is prohibited from doing so? If I could remember the name of the article(I read it here). Someone had succeded in transferring information across copper at something like 14x the speed of light. They gave the analogy that it was like filling a cardboard tube up with ping pong balls, and then pushing one into the end. A ball comes out the other side in a shorter time than what would normally occur if you just looked at the speed of the ping pong balls.

This leaves you with two choices: .....or God is truly unknowable and screws up fundamental physics, so you can't really think or talk about him, but you have to rethink important parts of physics instead
I think that God is truly unknowable(on a physical level). To me, it seems like fallacy to try to try to describe the underlying physics of God when we can't even begin to describe the things he does. Not even speaking from a Christian or Monotheistic viewpoint. Most _any_ god would fall under that umbrella. That said, I don't think that one would have to modify physics to allow any god existense. It's possible that some of the current laws we believe the universe holds itself to are due to a god, we just can't notice it because that law is applied uniformly.

See ya :)br.

Re:Religion

[Nagatzhul]

If you think the statement through, it implies a hierarchy. Gratis, if you have never read the creation account, you would have no thoughts on it. But if you have, it is all about organizing matter out of chaos. That implies that order is being imposed.

Re:Religion

[Nagatzhul]

Actually, I have. It simply says that God created everything. That He imposed order on chaos. It does not say much about His process. And it states that he took 6,000 years to do it. It does not say HOW He did it, however, just that He did so.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

sn't it also possible that our view of natural science is too narrow for the world it tries to describe? Not to knock you one bit, but that argument sounds like, "We have this really neat hypothesis, unfortunately we have to throw it out the window because it's not the type of hypothesis we're looking for."

Our view of natural science is as broad as it can be. It holds that we can only model things we're able to observe directly or indirectly. If we model things we can't measure it's no longer physics, we've made a nice hyphotesis that neither can be proved nor falsified.

a)GR doesn't apply to whatever magic stuff we're talking about. It sounds like a copout, but how unreasonable is it that something which is different than any other object we've observed, and we havn't studied very much(relative to normal, classical mechanics) doesn't obey previous laws we created?

The nice thing about QM is it doesn't violate classical physics. If you apply QM to things that are above the quantum scale, you get predictions equivalent to those of classical models. If a theory predicts something on the quantum scale that can't be transposed to the larger scale of classical physics, that's a sign something might be wrong with the theory.

b)Once again, my naivity comes into play but, isn't it possible for information to be transferred at faster than the speed of light

No it can't, not according to GR. I'm not enough of a physicist to quarrel with Einstein :)

I think that God is truly unknowable(on a physical level). To me, it seems like fallacy to try to try to describe the underlying physics of God when we can't even begin to describe the things he does.

An unkowable God (on the philosophical level) is interresting, because every statement you make about such a God is undecidable. It resembles what some ancient mystics did when they chose the "Via Negativa" and started summarising all the things that God is not, but couldn't stop summarising because of their concept that God was true and would never decieve or confuse mankind.

That said, I don't think that one would have to modify physics to allow any god existense.

Agreed, but this goes both ways. If you want a God that is intellectually acceptable, you can't be a fundamentalist. You have to agree that your holy texts are allegories and rules for social interaction, not accurate descriptions of physical processes. If you use a concept of God that explains physical processes, you'll be on retreat as science advances. If you use a concept of God that validates a system of morals, you have to worry about competing religions with conflicting morals, but there will be no more arguments with scientists.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Simple, because you still haven't proved God created Adam & Eve and all the other initial couples. Even if we dug up all of their petrified remains, we still couldn't prove God created them.

That's what I tried to explain, if you could prove all of biblic history to be true, that still doesn't imply God had anything to do with it, that would just be one possible explanation. It matters little there would be no other feasible explanation, scientists would come up with different explanations once they got over the shock.

This is just how science works, a scientist is a professional sceptic that only accepts explanations (theories) that are as simple as possible but still explain as much as possible, and perhaps more important, only accepts explanations he can check for himself.

This is why including God produces questionable science, one can always find an explanation that doesn't involve the supernatural. The best of these physical explanations would have to be very, very unlikely to make explanations involving the supernatural more likely.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Well then, I see the Biblical history being proven true as indisputable evidence of God. For the very fact that we cannot think of an atheistic naturalistic explanation. You think people will come up with solutions - I'll tell you what those alternatives will be. They will range from polytheism to monotheism, and weirder spiritual ideas - but they will all involve some sort of god/gods. Creation being proven true would eliminate the already minority view of atheism.

Tell me, can you think of anything even remotely feasible that could explain the existence of the world if creation account was proven true?

Not to mention the enormous respect that would be given to the Bible for having given an accurate historical record.

But that's your choice to make. As the old saying goes, (was it by the imaginary Sherlock Holmes or someone else?) - "If, after having eliminated the impossible, then what is left must be the truth no matter how unbelievable" - in my own words. If evolution is proven false, then creation is the only alternative. Propose something else if you like, but until then, the consequences of evolution being proven false (proving creation true also disproves evolution, obviously) is that one must accept creation.

This is just how science works, a scientist is a professional sceptic that only accepts explanations (theories) that are as simple as possible but still explain as much as possible, and perhaps more important, only accepts explanations he can check for himself.

Hahaha :) How many scientists do you know that have checked whether the decay rate of K/Ar is constant over millions of years? How many scientists do you know have checked to make sure that the Archaeopteryx really was the ancestor of birds? None of the old earth dating techniques have been observed or tested scientifically. None of the claims about the supposed ancesotrs, missing links, etc, are scientific. They are hypothetical guesses. Evolution is founded on unscientific methods. I extend the challenge to you that evolutionists are so quick to give to creationists - what is the scientific theory of evolution by which we may test the theory? (Note: Do not quote the talkorigins.org statement, creationists do not dispute with that, nor does that definition encompass the evolution of simple celled life->today's life). Then we can test it and see if it's true.

Don't talk to us about questionable science, and babble about including God makes it unscientific. I am yet to see the scientific nature of the theory of evolution - by the standards that evolutionists claim creation is not scientific. If you can produce a scientific statement by which evolution can be tested, then I will produce a scientific statement for creation in the same manner. But I can't do that until I see what sort of test you consider scientific. Everyone has his own definition of science :)

This is why including God produces questionable science, one can always find an explanation that doesn't involve the supernatural. The best of these physical explanations would have to be very, very unlikely to make explanations involving the supernatural more likely.

You hold a lot of faith in naturalism. Take the time and look around. I stand with the skeptics society in condemning so-called psychic powers, etc. But you will find some instances in the world of supernatural occurances that defy natural explanation. One need but do some research. Anyway, that's up to you to take the initiative to look outside of how you perceive the world to be made up.

By the way, saying that the best of these "physical explanations would have to be..." - aren't you basically saying that if creation were proven true, then you would consider it almost certain that God existed? Since, in this case, the supernatural explanation is far simpler and has far greater explanatory power than the (nonexistent) physical alternative?

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

You think people will come up with solutions - I'll tell you what those alternatives will be. They will range from polytheism to monotheism, and weirder spiritual ideas - but they will all involve some sort of god/gods.

You don't get what I'm saying, or do you? Natural science will *never* come up with a solution that involves the supernatural. Never. Science like that would be called "supernatural science" or theology. Natural science has a methodology that prohibits one from introducing unquantifyable effects, and anything supernatural is by definition unquantifiable. To use God in a scientific theory, one would have to reduce God to something natural/physical.

Creation being proven true would eliminate the already minority view of atheism.

In Germany there is a saying that goes something like this: "If a hundred thousand flies eat shit, that still doesn't mean shit tastes sweet."; you can't claim the majority is always right. By the way: I'm not an atheist, I just can't understand fundamentalists.

If evolution is proven false, then creation is the only alternative. Propose something else if you like, but until then, the consequences of evolution being proven false (proving creation true also disproves evolution, obviously) is that one must accept creation.

Again, read my previous posts carefully. Yes, if creation is true then obviously evolution isn't true, I don't deny that. All I'm saying is this wouldn't automatically prove God did the creating.

Hahaha :) How many scientists do you know that have checked whether the decay rate of K/Ar is constant over millions of years? How many scientists do you know have checked to make sure that the Archaeopteryx really was the ancestor of birds?

Believe me, lots of them did. A scientist doesn't have to check every other theory for himself, that's what the peer review process is for. Theories that have been reviewed lots of times in the past have a high probability of predicting stuff accurately. The point is a scientist *could* review every scientific theory out there, it's just more productive to check new theories then to check theories that have already reached the state of "scientific law".

I extend the challenge to you that evolutionists are so quick to give to creationists - what is the scientific theory of evolution by which we may test the theory? (Note: Do not quote the talkorigins.org statement, creationists do not dispute with that, nor does that definition encompass the evolution of simple celled life->today's life). Then we can test it and see if it's true.

Sigh. Ok, you agree we can observe microevolution, and you probably also agree nobody witnessed God in the process of creation. So on a rational basis, what is more probable?

a) A process we can actually observe making little changes to living creatures would account for big changes to those creatures over long periods of time.

b) None of what you observe on a smaller timescale has consequences on a larger timescale. The only entity powerful enough to make history is God, but God in his mysterious ways never leaves any observable clues to his involvement. So consequentially, we have no physical proof or even an indication of truth to what we're claiming, you'll just have to believe the Bible and disregard anything that tells you otherwise.

You hold a lot of faith in naturalism. Take the time and look around.

The only faith-based part of my beliefs is my rejection of solipsism. I accept naturalism on a *rational* basis; I think it's logically correct to state everything we can observe in nature is natural and therefor has natural origins.

Since, in this case, the supernatural explanation is far simpler and has far greater explanatory power than the (nonexistent) physical alternative?

The supernatural explanation isn't any good, because it may explain *why* something happened, it doesn't explain *how* it happened physically. In

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Ok lets wind this up then.

I understood perfectly you were saying naturalism will never come up with a supernatural explanation - that is precisely why I asked you later for a scientific statement by which we could test evolution.

Next topic, I said: How many scientists do you know that have checked whether the decay rate of K/Ar is constant over millions of years? How many scientists do you know have checked to make sure that the Archaeopteryx really was the ancestor of birds?

You replied, Believe me, lots of them did. A scientist doesn't have to check every other theory for himself, that's what the peer review process is for. Theories that have been reviewed lots of times in the past have a high probability of predicting stuff accurately. The point is a scientist *could* review every scientific theory out there, it's just more productive to check new theories then to check theories that have already reached the state of "scientific law".

You missed my point. Not a single scientist has verified those claims I made. Not a single scientist can prove, scientifically, that the Archaeopteryx is the descendant of dinosaurs and the ancestor of birds. Not a single scientist can prove (or at least has proven), scientifically, that K/Ar has decayed at a constant rate over the last, say, 50Ma. That was my point. You claim scientists check the facts. Evolution is based on thousands of stories that are purely conjecture, and not at all science. At least not by the definition of science that evolutionists try to hold the creation theory to.

If you are closing up, then I will make this statement rather than pursuing another question. Your attempt at a scientific theory of evolution was nothing more than a "which do you think is more likely scenario". That has nothing to do with science. It's not testable in any way. I cannot look at what you wrote and say, "Yes, looking at that I can see how we can falsify evolution". The challenge will remain up, to provide a scientific falsifiable theory of evolution that causes the controversy.
Besides, the answer to your question is (b), but your wording portrays a view that we don't hold - namely, that we see the changes occurring but ignore the possibility that these changes could produce something largely different...as if we watched stones rolling off a mountain and believed that the mountain could never fully erode away.

The reason we reject mutations leading to new creatures as evolution requires, is because the mechanism to produce that has never been observed. Ever. All we've seen is inheritence of already existing traits, or the modification of existing data. We have not seen what can bring new information that could possibly change a simple celled single life into something more complex. The philosophy of evolution as presented by talkorigins.org and everywhere else in the world is untested. It cannot be tested. The mechanisms it requires have not been observed, nor have they been tested.

Regarding the supernatural. I believe the supernatural realm has power over the physical/natural world. It was Christians who began science, believing, perhaps a priori, that the world is rational and can be explained by rational means. Having been created by an intelligent being, it must make sense. I extend that view to the supernatural realm too - though it's laws are perhaps above the physical realm, it does have laws of it's own which it must follow. It is not some chaotic place of lawlessness. When the supernatural crosses into the natural, it produces changes in the natural. And though we cannot observe or test the supernatural cause, we can observe and test the changes it preserves. To use an example from roleplaying games, if a wizard cast a fireball, though we could not explain or understand the creation of that fireball, we can measure and test the results it produces.

Re:Religion

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was religions who didn't accept the idea that earth was round. If i remenber well, the first pope that admitted that Earth was round was pope John Paul II.

Re:Religion

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

You missed my point. Not a single scientist has verified those claims I made.

The fact that you don't understand how they did it, doesn't mean they didn't do it. Please accept that when scientists produce theories that get accepted by other scientists after torrough investigation, thoste theories are scientifically valid.

By shouting form the rooftops they aren't you only demonstrate your failure to understand; you're not contributing to constructive scientific discussion in any way.You can only contibute by proposing a theory that's better then the one you reject. (And no, creationism is not a better theory scientifically speaking.)

All we've seen is inheritence of already existing traits, or the modification of existing data.

This is the nonsensical claim of all creationsts. What you're all saying is analogous to stating if you mix the letters of the alphabet randomly you can never create new words, only words that already exist or gibberish. Fortunately, language evolves (just like life).

Regarding the supernatural. I believe the supernatural realm has power over the physical/natural world. It was Christians who began science, believing, perhaps a priori, that the world is rational and can be explained by rational means. Having been created by an intelligent being, it must make sense.

In the western world, it was the alchemists who started what we today call science. Most alchemists where not Christians but Hermeticists, and were persecuted by Christians for their beliefs. What where those beliefs? Almost exactly what you write above, except their God was Hermes Trismegistus, not Yahwe. Also, in the medieval times it was a heracy to claim man is capable of discovering the meaning behind Gods actions. Please don't propagandize historical lies.

PS: this is getting ugly, you may now have the last word.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

PS: this is getting ugly, you may now have the last word.

Thankyou for the honor. (sincerely)

The fact that you don't understand how they did it, doesn't mean they didn't do it. Please accept that when scientists produce theories that get accepted by other scientists after torrough investigation, thoste theories are scientifically valid.

By shouting form the rooftops they aren't you only demonstrate your failure to understand; you're not contributing to constructive scientific discussion in any way.You can only contibute by proposing a theory that's better then the one you reject. (And no, creationism is not a better theory scientifically speaking.)

My point is simple. A scientific theory is a theory which, in it's description, shows how the theory can be falsified. For the Archaeopteryx, there is no scientific theory that can be falsified which states it is the descendent of dinosaurs and the ancestor of birds. How can that theory be falsified? It is simply not science. Regarding K/Ar, that method is based on a number of assumptions that have not been proven correct. In fact most/all of these assumptions have been shown to be false in a number of cases. Hence, that theory has been falsified. I'm not a scientist, I haven't made great contributions. But I don't need to to comment on these things - It's simple facts. If you can prove me wrong on them, then the information should be there. But I stand by what I've just said (obviously). I'm interested in facts - I don't just accept blindly what scientists say, because they have been wrong many times. Enough said on this anyway. Since you won't be responding, I won't go in too much depth.

This is the nonsensical claim of all creationsts. What you're all saying is analogous to stating if you mix the letters of the alphabet randomly you can never create new words, only words that already exist or gibberish. Fortunately, language evolves (just like life).

This betrays a misunderstanding of what I said. The analogy you provided is totally incorrect. The correct analogy would be to start with a single letter, and over time have additional letters form and randomly organise themselves into words that make sense. I'm not saying shuffling of letters can't produce new words. I'm saying that the problem lies with how those letters arrived there in the first place. And that's something anyone can understand.
On the topic of mixing existing letters, you will find no true beneficial mutations - all mutations that can be argued as beneficial also include some disadvantage or loss. That is exactly what you find with bacteria(?) which is claimed as evidence of evolution - they don't truly evolve in the same way that simple->complex evolution requires. Their evolution is like the mixing of letters as you describe, and their change in information harms them in other ways. There's plenty of research done about this. I can direct anyone who is curious to them.

In the western world, it was the alchemists who started what we today call science. Most alchemists where not Christians but Hermeticists, and were persecuted by Christians for their beliefs. What where those beliefs? Almost exactly what you write above, except their God was Hermes Trismegistus, not Yahwe. Also, in the medieval times it was a heracy to claim man is capable of discovering the meaning behind Gods actions. Please don't propagandize historical lies.

I am sorry, you are right - I have erred here a little, but not entirely. Science itself was not begun by Christians, since it has been practiced in some form or another for thousands of years. However, it was Christians in the West who began the scientific move from an a priori belief that the universe makes sense, the result in the belief that it was created by an intelligent designer. One can search google for such topics as "origin of science" to find out history. So I had erred, but I still see in history that it was Christians who brought about the

Re:Religion

[Anonymous Coward]

We haven't proved that there's anything outside the universe, so if God exists outside the universe, then what's to stop me from saying that God doesn't exist?

Re:Religion

[BluedemonX]

RE: Well then, I see the Biblical history being proven true as indisputable evidence of God. For

Didn't God say he would destroy Tyre "for ever"? (Tyre was never overthrown, and still exists albeit under a different name). There are loads of other humorous mistakes like that.

RE: Creation being proven true would eliminate the already minority view of atheism.

Which account of Creationism are you trying to prove? The one where the fowls were created out of the water, or the one where they were created out of the land? Rabbits don't chew cuds and bats aren't birds.

There's no way any SANE human can hold the Bible up to be fact, 100% error free and reliable.

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

A post in parts. Part 1 The Scientific Method

There is no proof of evolution. In fact, there is no proof of any scientific theory. Science doesn't work by proof.

You have a body of observation that has developed over the years. Someone, let's say Darwin, comes up with an explanation as to the specifics of how nature is functioning, this is called a hypothesis. Among other things, the hypothesis will point out predictions of future observations. A number of scientists will test the hypothesis by performing observations, and seeing whether the predictions the hypothesis made are borne out or not. If the hypothesis matches all of these predictions, it becomes a theory, otherwise there's evidence the hypothesis is false, and it's either discarded or reworked to match the new observations. Once a theory is accepted, it's not set in stone, but future observations can still show it is incomplete or wrong.

This is the scientific method:
Observation -> Hypothesis -> Testing -> Theory
If you aren't following the scientific method, it's not science. Most (though not all) "Creation Scientists" show no understanding of the scientific method, spew statements that violate or ignore the scientific method, and wonder why people say that it's not scientists.

The next thing that I feel I have to make explicit before going into your argument is the nature of Scientific Observation. For an observation to be scientifically useful, it needs to be direct, and it needs to be repeatable. Direct means that you are reporting what your senses tell you, with little or no interpretation. For example, if I'm doing electrical experiments, I don't say "the battery put out 20 volts", because you didn't see any volts, you say "the voltmeter, when attached with the positive lead on terminal A1 and the negative lead on terminal B3, indicated a voltage differential of 20 volts". Repeatable means that, if another scientist were to folow your directions at a different location, they will obtain the same observation. For example, the whole "cold fusion" flap a few years back was not because cold fusion bucked the mainstream scientific community, but because the researchers went to press before they confirmed that their observation was repeatable.

Many "Creation Scientists" show their lack of scientific understanding by presenting non-scientific observation as if it were scientific observation or even as just plain "truth". As important as the Book of Genesis may be to you, a line of scripture in it is not a direct observation of the events described, nor is it likely to be repeatable. Even if you personally have directly observed a miracle, and report it with scientific rigor, the event can be as true and real as the nose on your face, it would still be irrelevant to science, because a miracle is by its very nature unrepeatable in the scientific sense.

This is a limitation on science, science just can not touch certain subjects unless or until we can figure out how to come up with direct repeatable observations of the subject. By accepting this limitation, however, science has become the most useful predictive tool of those subjects it can address.

Another point that needs to be explored before I get to the meat of your request, is what happens when there are multiple hypotheses addressing a set of observations. First, you review the observations, make sure that there isn't one that knocks one or the other out of the running. Next, you look at the tests each hypothesis offers, if a hypothesis offers no tests for a significant chunk of its conjecture, it must be discarded as not scientifically useful. It is said to not be falsifiable, there must be a way of potentially disproving a hypothesis before it can be accepted. Lastly, if both hypotheses have survived to this point, most scientists use a rule of thumb called Occam's Razor, "One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

A post in parts, Part 2 Evolution Theory

Tyreth asks:

You tell me, what proof is there of evolution? Even better! What is the scientific theory of evolution by which we can test the theory? What is the scientific theory of evolution which creationists disagree with - that all life evolved from simple single celled life. Show me something we can test.

You ask as if it's hard to find. The core of Evolution Theory is found in The Origin Of Species, by Charles Darwin. It can be found onlne at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles _darwin/origin_of_species/index.shtml.

Darwin's hypothesis was borne from very detailed observations Darwin did, that could be easily repeated. Among his observations were, the techniques and effects of animal and plant husbandry, the variations of finches in the Galapagos islands, the fossilized findings of the relatively new field of paleontology. His theory has been widely tested, and has directly enhanced the industry of husbandry. Other fields of study started independantly of Evolution (eg Genetics) were found to dovetail so neatly that Evolution is considered to have very strong observational backing. It is a strong theory that has been so useful and accurate it has become one of the cornerstones of modern biological science.

As time went on and more things got observed, the theory was tweaked in places, and expanded upon in places, but at it's core, modern evolution theory is very close to what Darwin expounded in his books. It pretty much boils down to:
1) Within a species of organism, there is a certain amount of variation.
2) A population of an organism is under a set of environmental pressures (eg. scarce food, predators, etc)
3) These pressures will be more effectively met by some variations within the population than others, the better adapted variations will thrive in relation to the more poorly adapted variations. This process is called natural selection
4) Since different populations can be under widely different sets of pressures, natural selection can encourage variations to increase between populations, sometimes to the point where they are no longer the same species as each other.

As far as evidence goes, as well as falsification tests for pieces of modern theory, I can't possibly do better than the people at talk.origins. You can find their examination of the subject at http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Re:Religion

[Copid]

I'll have to bow out of the discussion on chemistry, and I'll look into Gentry on my own. What little I could find doesn't seem to present both sides of the story particularly well thus far.

I will comment on a few other things.

I too have issues with Hovind...

Then I strongly recommend against using his $250K pseudochallenge as anything other than an example of dishonest public grandstanding and an attempt to fool people who don't understand the issues. It's a transparent insult to the intelligence of anybody who looks into it, and I don't think that Kent Hovind is the type of person you want your ideas to be associated with.

Take a look at the history of science; investigate how de Broglie was about to be denied his PhD until his advisors ridiculed his ideas to Einstein at a lunch one day, and Einstein, instead of laughing back, commented on how insightful the idea was.

The important note here is that de Broglie wasn't denied his Ph.D. in the end. It took some work, but his theories were accepted and he eventually won a Nobel Prize for them. He didn't do it by claiming that there was a conspiracy to keep his ideas out of press. He met with resistance in the academic world, but he didn't try to start a grassroots uprising of the uneducated. He didn't opt for the popular press and condemn the scientific establishment. As far as I know, he didn't claim that they had any religious attachment to the prevailing theories. The fact is, de Broglie's case is just another case of where peer review eventually works. Sure, it rejects good ideas sometimes. But it rejects a lot more bad ones that would otherwise make it impossible to tell which ideas had been tested and which had simply been asserted.

In a more exteme example, take the FDA. I'm sure it keeps a lot of good treatments off the market, but you can bet that if it didn't exist, half of the medicines on our shelves would be placebos, a quarter would be downright dangerous, and nobody would know what to trust.

My advice to anybody suspicious that the scientific establishment is keeping you down: It's probably not. Keep trying. Maybe people will eventually come around. Be warned, though: the fact that they say you're wrong doesn't automatically make you a martyr or a misunderstood genius. It more likely than not means that you're wrong.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Not a thing here I disagree with. I understand that the "science" of origins is not based in the scientific method. I don't think I ever claimed that. A creation scientist is one who practices science and believes the origin story as presented in the Bible. It's not because they believe they can scientifically examine unrepeatable history.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Thankyou for your post, but...

You went to great lengths to explain to me the proper scientific method, then you present this. In Darwin's origin of species, where does he describe how his theory may be falsified? I've heard one say, "if a creature were to spontaneously come into existence it would falsify evolution". Would it really? I don't think so. For this would explain for evolutionists quite nicely how the first simple single celled life came into existence.

Tell me how evolution can be falsified, else it is not a scientific theory. Tell me, according to your previous article, how we can repeatedly test evolution.

I'm afraid like most evolutionists you don't really understand the creationist position. We believe in natural selection. It's proven, tested, and observable. It's maths, a fact of life and logic. We don't dispute that. Your list of four points, we agree with them all. And this is not where our dispute with evolution lies. It lies with the fact that simple single celled life could *never* produce more information to become complex lifeforms like we see today for many reasons. Among those reasons are the amazing odds against it, the irreducible complexity of many creatures, and the greatest of all - the fact that no information producing mutations have been observed that could explain it. The theory of evolution as presented by those who believe in long ages has not had the mechanism it needs observed. The simple single celled life would never become something other than what it is.

If you think that the Galapagos finches are evidence of what he [Darwin] taught, then you are mistaken. I don't really know how much you already know about the creation theory, but I suggest it's not enough at any rate.

I'm looking for the falsifiable theory that explains simple single celled life->today. So much of evolutionary theory, and it's history, is based not on science, but on things that cannot be repeated or observed - such as the evolution of supposed intermediary creatures in the past.

And regarding those 29+ evidences of evolution - every single one of them has already been addressed by a creationist. You will find on the talkorigins website a link to a response by one of their own to the creationist's response. On that creationists website you will find a response of the response to the response :) A long chain, but needless to say, it's been dealt with and we don't need to go into that.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Didn't God say he would destroy Tyre "for ever"? (Tyre was never overthrown, and still exists albeit under a different name). There are loads of other humorous mistakes like that.

Please provide the verse. I don't trust the paraphrasing of those who reject the Scriptures.

Which account of Creationism are you trying to prove? The one where the fowls were created out of the water, or the one where they were created out of the land? Rabbits don't chew cuds and bats aren't birds.

This has been answered elsewhere:

However, the Hebrew phrase for 'chew the cud' simply means 'raising up what has been swallowed'. Coneys and rabbits go through such similar motions to ruminants that Linnaeus, the father of modern classification (and a creationist), at first classified them as ruminants. Also, rabbits and hares practise refection, which is essentially the same principle as rumination, and does indeed 'raise up what has been swallowed'. The food goes right through the rabbit and is passed out as a special type of dropping. These are re-eaten, and can now nourish the rabbit as they have already been partly digested.

- "Do rabbits chew their cud?" by Jonathan Sarfati, Creation 20(4):56, September-November 1998

There's no way any SANE human can hold the Bible up to be fact, 100% error free and reliable.

Either you or I am insane then, since I accept the Bible in it's original form was 100% error free and reliable. I disagree though, a sane person can believe this.

Re:Religion

[Josh Booth]

Okay, I am not a physicist, but physics allows some really wierd stuff. Does it make sense? Not really. Does it work? Yes. Is it right? Probably not. What YOU don't understand is that there is no such thing as absolute time, as Newton believed. Einstein said that all that matters is what you can see from your point of view. If you can't see it, it doesn't matter. It may matter later, but you can't tell that. Newton said that your point of view doesn't matter, Einstein said that only your point of view matters. And no, neither event a or b occured first because it is impossible to prove which one did. You can prove that, from one frame of reference, event a occured first, but that won't be universally true.

However, I don't belive in true randomness. Things may appear random, but most likely they are not. Of course, this idea has never been proven, but there is much mathematical support of this. I've read most of S. Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, and what I've learned is that simple mathematical rules can be used to create things that appear totally random, even though they are obviously not because we know exactly why those things are how they are. Read the book -- it is very good. It also brings us back to the conflicts of Calvinism -- whether there is such a thing as free will. I get around this debate by saying that, depending on how you look at it, there is and there isn't free will. On a fundamental level, there are very specific processes that determine how your brain works. It appears that one could not have free will. However, they work together in such a way that it is impossible to determine what the eventual result will be. You could create a simulator to simulate someone's brain, but the precision required to determine the inital conditions and the computing power required to compute it is far out of our capabilities. Not only that, but we don't even know all the rules/processes. If you read the book, you will understand more of what I'm talking about. It's got really pretty pictures!

Oh, and I belive in morals also; they are simply the most efficient way to let the most people be happy. I have morals, and I would probably not be as happy if I stopped following them because I would piss people off and I would not be happy because I would be screwed.

So, to recap: randomness and free will: two sides of the same coin because both can be created out of simple mathematical rules (probably, it's never been proven but is highly likely with enough processing power); morals make a society better; physics is damn wierd and nobody knows if it is correct.

Oh, and FYI, I was brought up as a born again Baptist, taught to believe in Jesus Christ and all that stuff. However, I'm too open minded to buy too much in that stuff. I believe that science is the way to prove what is true, and the Bible can't possibly be correct. Sorry, that's my opinion. I'm only an agnostic for now, while my friend is a total atheist. He's screwed up somewhat anyway.

Re:Religion

[BluedemonX]

RE: Please provide the verse. I don't trust the paraphrasing of those who reject the Scriptures.

Try Ezekiel 26. Tyre destroyed for ever by "many nations" and never rebuilt. (Actually, Tyre was never destroyed and still exists.)

RE: The food goes right through the rabbit and is passed out as a special type of dropping. These are re-eaten, and can now nourish the rabbit as they have already been partly digested.

That isn't "raising up" food or cud-chewing. Nice try though.

RE: Either you or I am insane then, since I accept the Bible in it's original form was 100% error free and reliable.

Then tell me where I can buy it in its "original form". Cause I see things like this:

GEN 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

GEN 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

In this account, God created the fowl from the WATERS

GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

In this account, God creates the fowls from the land.

For the record, insects don't have four feet:

LEV 11:21 Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;

LEV 11:22 Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.

LEV 11:23 But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.

If you want me to believe that stuff, please explain to me, O inerrant one, a few things. 1) What are the ten commandments 2) how did Judas die 3) What were Jesus' last words

Oh, and you might want to consider this:

MT 16:28, MK 9:1, LK 9:27 Jesus says that some of his listeners will not taste death before he comes again in his kingdom. This was said almost 2000 years ago. (Note: This and many other passages indicate that Jesus was to come again in a relatively short period of time and not just "quickly" as present day Biblicists assert. All of his listeners are now dead, yet Jesus has not come again in his kingdom. All of the alleged words of Jesus recorded in the Bible are therefore suspect.)

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

Sorry for the delay, problems at home. Here is the last part, Part 3, "Creation Theory"

Tyreth wrote:

It's exactly comments like this that I buck against.

First off, I wasn't saying there was "hard evidence" for evolution, I was saying there was "hard evidence" against so called "Creation Theory". First, let me be precise about I'm talking about. There is a set of assertions, called "Creationism" or "Creation Theory" by its proponents. This assertion says:

1) The Christian Bible is literally true, including its discussion of creation in the Book of Genesis
2) That a calcuated chronology of the bible is correct, usually the chronology of Archbishop James Ussher, which places the first day of the universe on Sunday, October 23, 4004BCE. Occasionally they use a different chronology, but to my knowledge, none of them use a chronology that sets the age of the universe as more than 10,000 years old.

I have two problems with "Creation Theory", one semantic, and one political. Semantically, I have a problem with the fact that they call it Science, and they call their assertions a Theory, when neither is true, as I will demonstrate below. Politically, I have a problem with the fact that the proponents of "Creation Theory" try to convince school boards and politicians that Evolution Theory is not science, and that "Creation Theory" is. I don't necessarily think that you are a proponent of Creationism, but it struck me from your comments that you have at least been exposed to their arguments, and wanted to set the record more clear, the argument for Evolution as Science and Creationism as Non-Science from someone who does not take the knee jerk "Science is Truth" attitude that pollutes much "Scientific" thinking in this society.

The obstacle to using Creationism as a Theory is getting a proper definition of it. It claims the statements in the Bible are literally true, but which Bible? Which Book of Genesis? Most denominations of Christianity that I know of use either the Hebrew version or the Latin Vulgate translation as Canon, as the Truth. Most proponents of Creationism speak neither Hebrew nor Latin, their concept of the Bible is based on a translation, and not the version of the bible that their professed faith considers Truth. So there is an instant question mark, what Theory is being proposed?

Next, many (though not all) Creationists use quotations in the bible as evidence, as if it were to take the place of Scientific Observation. As I described in Part 1, scripture cannot qualify as Scientific Observation. It is not Direct (The person who penned the Book of Genesis, presumably Moses, did not directly observe the third day of creation), nor is it Repeatable (I can't go out and directly observe the third day of creation, nor was there an effort to get additional people to make independant observations of it at the time). Any assertion that depends on Scripture as evidence, regardless of whether or not you believe it is Truth, it is not Science.

Next, if you accept Creationism as a Hypothesis, it has been scientifically falsified. While there is a lot of dispute as to the exact ages of the Universe, of Earth, of Life, of Humankind, there is widespread agreement, and large amounts of independant evidence, that they each are more than a certain age. The universe is at least 10 Billion Years old, the Earth is significantly older than 3.5 Billion Years old, Life on Earth is at least 3.4 Billion Years old, Human Kind (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) is at least 100,000 years old. All of these time spans insist on a change in the chronology. All of them indicate that Creationism, as a hypothesis, has been falsified, and must be modified or discarded.

All of the modifications I've heard, "God made an old world", both depend on assertions that are not falsifiable (eg. the existance of God), and violate

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

Tyreth wrote:

Not a thing here I disagree with. I understand that the "science" of origins is not based in the scientific method. I don't think I ever claimed that.

I don't think you did either, was just trying to be as clear as possible as to where I stood.

A creation scientist is one who practices science and believes the origin story as presented in the Bible.

I disagree, there are many people who practice science, and believe in the origin story as presented in the bible, but those people don't call themselves "Creation Scientists". The people calling themselves creation scientists are people who claim to practice science, and present the origin story as presented in the bible as if it were science.

It's not because they believe they can scientifically examine unrepeatable history.

You can scientifically examine unrepeatable history. For example the Battle of Gettysburg is completely unrepeatable, but observations of it are repeated often. We find a new person's memoirs of it, offering an independant view of their portion of the battle, a new artifact is uncovered giving new, different or more complete information on its location, a new way of examining artifcats or the land itself are found, giving new observations.

Some parts of the Bible may be examined in this way, when there's an archaeological site assocated with the story, or independent observers writing their own descriptions of the events at the time. However, I don't see how the biblical story of creation can possibly be examined scientifically.

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

Tyreth wrote:

You went to great lengths to explain to me the proper scientific method, then you present this. In Darwin's origin of species, where does he describe how his theory may be falsified?

You don't need to explicitly say "This is how my theory can be falsified" for a theory to be falsifiable. The Origin of Species is long, I can't list every way it can be falsified. I will endeavor to list some.

If the biologists concept of "species" were to be invalidated, his theory would fall apart just like Newton's did when the physicists concept of "particle" were invalidated.

If it can be shown that mutations cannot be inherited, that would pretty much kill large chunks of his theory.

If it can be shown that mutation can not result in a new species, that would kill the "origin of species" part of his theory.

It's really pointless and impossible to make an exhaustive list, why don't you point to a portion of the theory that you find suspicious, and ask how that can be falsified.

Tell me how evolution can be falsified, else it is not a scientific theory. Tell me, according to your previous article, how we can repeatedly test evolution.

We can and do repeatedly test evolution. Each year, everyone from biotech firms to cattle ranchers to soybean farmers follow techniques that are entirely based on the Theory of Evolution in order to maintain their livelihood. The fact that Evolution is used to develop things that Darwin would never have dreamed of is a testimant to the testability of Evolution.

I'm afraid like most evolutionists you don't really understand the creationist position. We believe in natural selection. It's proven, tested, and observable. It's maths, a fact of life and logic. We don't dispute that. Your list of four points, we agree with them all. And this is not where our dispute with evolution lies.

I hate to break this to you, but that's the Theory of Evolution. Everything else is something else.

It lies with the fact that simple single celled life could *never* produce more information to become complex lifeforms like we see today for many reasons.

I don't understand, all muticellular life that we know comes from the information in a single cell, the zygote. This is an accepted fact, directly (well, through a simple microscope, anyway) observed repeatedly. If you have a problem with this, your beef is with the developmental biologists and medical doctors, not with evolutionary theory and Darwin.

Among those reasons are the amazing odds against it, the irreducible complexity of many creatures, and the greatest of all - the fact that no information producing mutations have been observed that could explain it. The theory of evolution as presented by those who believe in long ages has not had the mechanism it needs observed. The simple single celled life would never become something other than what it is.

Saying we haven't observed something isn't evidence against it, it's merely a lack of evidence for it.

I also fail to see how multicelular life coming from single celular life is so implausable. You have a single celled lifeform; a mutation happens that encourages it to form a colony life form (like many algae), and this version thrives; a mutation happens that causes some specialization to happen, say cells on the outside dedicate themselves to defense, while the inside ones dedicate themselves to eating (like the hydra), and this version thrives. There is no logical difference between this colony with specialized cells and a multicellular organism; from this point, the whole of multicellular evolution opens up.

If you think that the Galapagos finches are evidence of what he [Darwin] taught, then you are mistaken.

How do the Galapagos finches fail to be evidence for Darwin's theories?

I don't really know how much you already know about the creation theory, but I suggest it's not enough at any ra

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

Not sure if you are saying something here to dispute me or not. Your comments are very interesting, but not much I disagree with (except the agnostic/atheistic conclusions).

I have been thinking about this question of what order events occur. Sometimes we can know, but not always.
For example, in order for you to read this post, I have to write it first. So I know for certain that the event of you reading it occurs after the event of me writing it.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

I am a creationist, but I agree with what you say - creationism is not a scientific theory. At least not in the strictest sense of the word. It is not falsifiable. What I am trying to set straight is that the whole theory of evolution (not the strict definition that talkorigins.org gives, which creationists agree with) is also not scientific, since it is not falsifiable. Not in a scientific way. I've asked a few times now, and no-one's given me a falsifiable theory of evolution

I'll tell you why I think creation scientists may claim their theory is scientific (and this is just my guesses, I don't know for sure). Science is, ultimately, a more generic term than it's strictest meaning. In the strictest sense neither evolution or creation are scientific. But in a more general way they are - because the two theories use scientific facts (in the strict sense) to explain their model of the world. Like fruit in a fruitbowl - the fruit are not the fruitbowl individually, but they make it up. So do scientific facts (for so long as they remain fact) make up and explain or contradict the models of evolution or creation.

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

Tyreth Wrote:

I am a creationist, but I agree with what you say - creationism is not a scientific theory. At least not in the strictest sense of the word. It is not falsifiable. What I am trying to set straight is that the whole theory of evolution (not the strict definition that talkorigins.org gives, which creationists agree with) is also not scientific, since it is not falsifiable. Not in a scientific way. I've asked a few times now, and no-one's given me a falsifiable theory of evolution

The Theory of Evolution, that is to say the theory put forth by Darwin in The Origin of Species and updated and elaborated by him and other Biologists as time went on is scientific and is falsifiable. It is what is being discussed on the talk.origins site. That is the Theory of Evolution, and every step of the way, every piece of it is falsifiable (and the talk.origins site lists possible falsifications).

The Theory of Evolution is often misrepresented by the media, and occasionally by its proponents in science and education as well, but just because they claim the theory covers things doesn't mean the theory covers it, it just means the person is wrong.

For example, many people claim that the Theory of Evolution includes how life initially emerged from the primordial ooze, but to my knowledge it does not. Once you have life, the theory covers how you get increasingly complex life quite well, but it doesn't give any mechanism for life starting to begin with. Biologists have some compelling hypotheses regarding this (including the "Primordial Soup"), but to my knowledge none of them have been established to the point where they are called theories.

I'll tell you why I think creation scientists may claim their theory is scientific (and this is just my guesses, I don't know for sure). Science is, ultimately, a more generic term than it's strictest meaning.

Lay people use the word science in a sloppy way, but that doesn't excuse so-called scientists from using it in a sloppy way. It doesn't protect these "scientists" from being called out on it when

In the strictest sense neither evolution or creation are scientific

In the stricted sense Evolution is quite scientific, you have failed to demonstrate that it is not. In the strictest sence a few non-scientific things have been attributed to the fringes of Evolution, but these should not be taught as science either. It doesn't change the fact that the Theory of Evolution is science and is scientific.

But in a more general way they are - because the two theories use scientific facts (in the strict sense) to explain their model of the world. Like fruit in a fruitbowl - the fruit are not the fruitbowl individually, but they make it up. So do scientific facts (for so long as they remain fact) make up and explain or contradict the models of evolution or creation.

That is not science, not even in the general sense. If I look at my computer, and all the scientific facts and observations regarding the processor in my computer, and claim that there are no moving electrons within my microprocessor, but rather thousands of non-corporeal, invisible spirits who listen to the electrons on the wire, talk to each other really quickly, make decisions, and push electrons onto the wire; that they watch for logic probes and other analytic tools and affect them according to how they should act if there were moving electrons. This is based on scientific facts, it might even be true (I certainly can't prove it false), but it's not science, and not even reasonable laypeople would call it science.

You can't just keep reasserting "Evolution is not falsifiable" without backing it up. What about Evolution is not falsifiable?

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

I'll reword it. Evolution as described on talkorigins is falsifiable, but it is also accepted by creationists. This strict use of the term evolution is not what causes controversy.

Biological evolution is a change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time. That this happens is a fact. Biological evolution also refers to the common descent of living organisms from shared ancestors. The evidence for historical evolution -- genetic, fossil, anatomical, etc. -- is so overwhelming that it is also considered a fact. The theory of evolution describes the mechanisms that cause evolution. So evolution is both a fact and a theory.

The first sentence is what they pull out when asked what is the falsifiable theory of evolution. This, of course, is something creationists do not disagree with. It is the second part of their statement which we do - where they no longer say it is falsifiable, but rather that "the evidence is so overwhelming" - which is an argument in logic rather than science. It deals with the unrepeatable unobservable past.

I have a reply to one of your other posts in progress, I'm still trying to work out how I should respond best.

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

If it can be shown that mutations cannot be inherited, that would pretty much kill large chunks of his theory.

A worthless "falsifiable" evidence, since we know that mutations can be inherited. I'm looking for things we don't know.

You say:
Saying we haven't observed something isn't evidence against it, it's merely a lack of evidence for it.
And you also say:
If it can be shown that mutation can not result in a new species, that would kill the "origin of species" part of his theory.

This is something that would be a lack of evidence for. Couldn't it always be said "we simply have not seen mutations result in a new species"?

I'm afraid like most evolutionists you don't really understand the creationist position. We believe in natural selection. It's proven, tested, and observable. It's maths, a fact of life and logic. We don't dispute that. Your list of four points, we agree with them all. And this is not where our dispute with evolution lies.

I hate to break this to you, but that's the Theory of Evolution. Everything else is something else.

Well then call me an evolutionist. I still believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, and that all creatures originated from an initial kind (humans from Adam & Eve). Do I still qualify as an evolutionist?

How do the Galapagos finches fail to be evidence for Darwin's theories?

You sound like a reasonable person. I haven't felt insulted by you or mistreated, which I commend you for. Usually I find evolutionist to be mocking, sometimes disguised, sometimes very openly. But I've yet to find one that understands the creationist position, and I wonder if that's why they (you) are so quick to reject it?

Well, I guess I'd rather ask you a question rather than assume. The reason why the Galapagos finches fail to be evidence for evolution is two-fold:
1. They are just as much "evidence" for creation theory as they are for the GTE (general theory of evolution, in which I include long ages, the change from simple life forms->complex, etc)
2. The Galapagos finches do not show the process of change which would ultimately result in new creatures. This is where I fear the problem of misunderstanding will lie. People forget that most changes in a species or population are due to already existing genetic traits - not mutations. Evolutionists just assume that all the traits around today originated from mutations, but we've never *seen* that. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'd like to see what your thoughts are first. Do you see how this is evidence for the creation model also?

And regarding those 29+ evidences of evolution - every single one of them has already been addressed by a creationist. You will find on the talkorigins website a link to a response by one of their own to the creationist's response. On that creationists website you will find a response of the response to the response :) A long chain, but needless to say, it's been dealt with and we don't need to go into that.

I could not find this link on the talk.origins site, could you please give it to me?

Sure, I wrote a list of them all for someone else on slashdot, so here it is:

Initial article
Response by Camp to initial
Response to Camp
Response by Camp to the response of his first response

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

That isn't "raising up" food or cud-chewing. Nice try though.

One thing left to say on this. "chew the cud" is an english translation of the hebrew original. The original meant raising up what had been swallowed. Check yourself. It's not a matter for dispute - it's a fact of the original language. The information is out there (google is your friend).

This link says Tyre was destroyed and never rebuilt. What was the source you were quoting? This link provides more details.

You strike me as the sort that will pick at any odd word and claim it's wrong without even considering the ways in which it could be correct. What I mean, is those circumstances were only one of a few possible interpretations makes no sense.

I don't feel like responding to your "problems" with Scripture - you will either pull out some more, and I'll waste more time when you should use your brain yourself - or you'll argue in trivial words such as you did for chewing the cud. So you tell me - what would it take to show you that the Bible is correct? Obviously for you to answer this question honestly yourself, you would take the verses above and look yourself to see if they can be resolved. If you are looking for an argument and to try and convince all that the Bible is faulty, then you will do as you have done.

Persuade me that these are genuine concerns of yours, or tell me what your real problem is, or don't bother to waste our time. I'm not convinced you aren't just looking for an argument, and to play "devil's advocate".

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

This is where you are confusing me, you say you accept the theory as presented by Darwin, and by talk.origins, but you say don't accept the "common descent of living organisms". The common descent of living organisms from shared ancestors is the subject of Darwin's The Origin of Species, and the theories referenced on talk.origins. It is part of the theory you claim to accept.

Specifically, Darwin addresses the topic at length in Chapter 4 of The Origin of Species . Also, on talk.origins, the entire discussion of Phylogenetics is a discussion on the theory behind the "common descent of living organisms", and it explicitly includes potential falsifications. This is one of the places where Darwin's case needed to be strenghtened by modern biologists, since Darwin did not know of the work of Mendel and later biologists in the field of Genetics, which is key to explaining the role of mutation in the variation that Darwin speaks of.

To phrase it a different way:

1. We know that mutations occur, and have observed them repeatedly and in detail;
   
2. We know that some mutations will result in a new species, this too has been observed;
   
3. To corroborate the above, we have recreated certain mutations in the laboratory, verified that they results in a new species, and confirmed that the results matched (and in fact bred with) the corresponding mutations in the wild.

This is what people mean when they say the "evidence is so overwhelming" for evolutionary processes (variation/mutation, competition, natural selection) resulting in new species.

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

Tyreth wrote:

This is something that would be a lack of evidence for. Couldn't it always be said "we simply have not seen mutations result in a new species"?

You could say it, but you would be wrong. We have seen mutations result in a new species, we have seen it often, both in the wild and in the laboratory. The talk.origins site has a page devoted to speciation evidence.

Well then call me an evolutionist. I still believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, and that all creatures originated from an initial kind (humans from Adam & Eve). Do I still qualify as an evolutionist?

If you are asking whether you can simultaneously believe in your view of Creation, and accept the theory of evolution as valid, you most certainly can. Remember, science is incapable of producing truth, merely increasingly accurate predictions. There is nothing stopping you from saying "I believe the Truth is, God created the Earth 6000 years ago, but I accept Evolution theory as a useful and valid means of predicting biological events, even though it implies things that I consider untrue."

Please, however, keep in mind that we don't get the age of the universe from the Theory of Evolution. You would need to say similar things regarding: Astrophysics, Astronomy, Geology, Paleontology, Archaeology, Anthropology, and probably many other sciences I haven't thought of.

If you are concerned with more aspects of Creationism than the age of the universe, keep in mind that it also says things like we are all descended from eight people (Noah, his three sons and their wives) who, according to Ussher, didn't land in the Arc until Wednesday, May 5, 1491BCE. According to historians, the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt was thriving before, during and after the period of time that Bishop Ussher claims the world was underwater and the only survivors were non-Egyptians.

I would also point out that many people who believe in God and the Bible are quite willing to accept that the word commonly translated as "day" in the Book of Genesis does not necessarily equal a 24 hour day-night cycle, that a "year" in the ages of biblical figures does not necessarily equal a 12 month year as we currently understand it, and that admitting that the Bible does not clearly define a specific moment as when the universe begins is not contrary to a faith in God. Some parts of the Bible are clearly and explicitly metaphors, why not the Book of Genesis too?

A metaphor isn't false, it's merely trying to explain something hard to understand using terms that are easier to understand, I think it goes without saying that most versions of the Creation of the Universe are pretty hard to understand.

You sound like a reasonable person. I haven't felt insulted by you or mistreated, which I commend you for. Usually I find evolutionist to be mocking, sometimes disguised, sometimes very openly. But I've yet to find one that understands the creationist position, and I wonder if that's why they (you) are so quick to reject it?

I find no need to insult or mock, and you are clearly a thinking person, even though some of your beliefs don't match mine. However, you would find me a lot harder to get along with if you were actually threatening me with Creationism. Far too often, lately, Creationism hasn't come up as a matter of personal belief, but in terms of "Creation Science", and in school boards being pressured to teach "Creation Science" to their students as science (along with or instead of Evolution). Not only do I object to the views of Creationism being presented as science to impressionable minds, when it is not science, but I also strenuously object to the political movement that is trying to get Christianity taught in our public schools, in direct contradiction to the Establishment clause. I think this movement is unhealthy

Re:Religion

[Tyreth]

I'm responding to your other post in this one too.

A clarification, I didn't say anywhere that I agree with the theory of evolution as presented by Darwin (if I did, it was a mistake, I apologise), but rather that I agree that natural selection occurs, that creatures adapt over time and eventually become new species, and as talkorigins.org said, that "a change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time" takes place.

We have seen mutations result in a new species, we have seen it often, both in the wild and in the laboratory. The talk.origins site has a page devoted to speciation evidence.

I was unable to find any mention of the word mutate or mutations, except in one of the references. The creation model in fact accounts for speciation, and indeed counts on it. More on this below (perhaps not in a way you will recognise).

If you are asking whether you can simultaneously believe in your view of Creation, and accept the theory of evolution as valid, you most certainly can. Remember, science is incapable of producing truth, merely increasingly accurate predictions...Please, however, keep in mind that we don't get the age of the universe from the Theory of Evolution. You would need to say similar things regarding: Astrophysics, Astronomy, Geology, Paleontology, Archaeology, Anthropology, and probably many other sciences I haven't thought of.

It may not surprise you that for a long time I have known that certain parts of the general theory of evolution are correct, such as natural selection, and observed speciation. I have difficulty from person to person using the correct words. Each person has their own view in which certain words should be used, eg "evolution". Some are very quick to discount other fields besides biology, while people like yourself (rightly) point out that these fields are equally important to the GTE. After all, if geology shows that the earth is as young as the creation model states, then the GTE would be incorrect. Ultimately, what I reject are:

a. That the earth is older than ~6,000 years (I do not reject an old universe, read Starlight and Time by Russell Humphreys)
b. That all living things share a common ancestor
This implies a number of things. Not so obvious, or explicetly mentioned in the above is that I reject that humans and apes ever shared a common ancestor.

I imagine from your perspective it seems quite rational and natural to assume that if we see species changing and morphing today, that this process could have been happening for millions/billions of years. This is where creationists can point out the many problems with that assumption - not to mention that the speciation and adaptation we observe today is not the result of mutations at all, but rather of already existing genetic traits. This however, should be dealt with in more detail later. I'll respond to some other portions now.

If you are concerned with more aspects of Creationism than the age of the universe, keep in mind that it also says things like we are all descended from eight people (Noah, his three sons and their wives) who, according to Ussher, didn't land in the Arc until Wednesday, May 5, 1491BCE. According to historians, the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt was thriving before, during and after the period of time that Bishop Ussher claims the world was underwater and the only survivors were non-Egyptians.

The flood occurred around 1632 years after the creation of the world. So if Ussher's date of 4004 BC is correct, that places the world underwater around 2372BC. I'm not sure what's happening here then, either you read Ussher's date wrong for the flood, or he had it wrong. But I personally, along with many others, have calculated from the Bible the exact year of the flood (1656 under lunar calendar) from the creation of the world.

Regarding the meaning of 24 hour days, I am convinced that it is 24 literal hours, if you were on earth when creation took place. I know some compromise on this poin

Re: Religion

[PhilHibbs]

I'm not sure what relativity has to do with human ancestry.

Re:Religion

[Gleef]

[Sorry for the long delay in responding, I felt your thoughtful post deserved a thoughtful reply, and life kept getting in the way of me having time to do so]

I was unable to find any mention of the word mutate or mutations, except in one of the references. The creation model in fact accounts for speciation, and indeed counts on it. More on this below (perhaps not in a way you will recognise).

The most common biological definition of mutation is "a permanent change in genetic structure that is inheritable by future generational offspring". The site refers to many permanent changes in genetic structure, it discusses their inheritance by future generational offspring. Therefore, it is talking about mutation.

Mutation is the key difference between Modern and Darwinian Evolution theory. Darwin knew that there was variation and inheritance, but the field of Genetics hadn't started yet, so there was no body of theory for him to draw on to explain them. Genetics theory supplied that explanation, and the underlying process is mutation.

It may not surprise you that for a long time I have known that certain parts of the general theory of evolution are correct, such as natural selection, and observed speciation. I have difficulty from person to person using the correct words. Each person has their own view in which certain words should be used, eg "evolution".

I have found it safest to use the words as defined by the scientific community for scientific terms (eg "evolution", "mutation"), as there is maximal precision and minimal variation, particularly since we are talking science here. For religious terms, I try to use the terms as defined by the person I'm talking to, as my religion is not well known, and usually irrelevant to the conversation. For lay terms, I try to explicitly define what I'm talking about as soon as I suspect confusion.

Some are very quick to discount other fields besides biology, while people like yourself (rightly) point out that these fields are equally important to the GTE. After all, if geology shows that the earth is as young as the creation model states, then the GTE would be incorrect.

Not necessarily. If Geology suddenly changes its interpretation of its data, and gives a completely different chronology, it would affect the chronology of when we think certain ancestral species existed, but probably not the order in which they occured. The theory of evolution (GTE) would be essentially untouched, since it describes a process, not a chronology.

Ultimately, what I reject are:
a. That the earth is older than ~6,000 years (I do not reject an old universe, read Starlight and Time by Russell Humphreys)
Your main beef here is with the scientific theories in the field of Geology, not Evolution then. Even if you somehow manage to completely disprove the Theory of Evolution, that doesn't change the fact that the Evolution says nothing about the age of the earth.

b. That all living things share a common ancestor

This is a core premise of Darwin's, but to my knowledge it's only being held up by Occam's Razor, since the fossil record of early life is very fragmentary. If you accept evolution as the source of all modern life, any multiple ancestor explanation is just astronomically unlikely without further evidence. Of course, if you don't accept evolution, there's no need to accept a common ancestor either.

This implies a number of things. Not so obvious, or explicetly mentioned in the above is that I reject that humans and apes ever shared a common ancestor.
Not so surprising, but here you are coming up against more than just evolution. The genetic difference between humans and apes is minisculely small, implying a common ancestor. The paleontological record shows many intermediate species that imply a shared ancestor. Psychologists and sociologists discuss numerous cognitive and social paralells between us and apes. Again, feel free to bel

heh.

[pb]

They're using their very own homemade supercomputer which ranks in at 107 on the Top 500 supercomputers list. Quote from article: "Linux makes it so easy to create a supercomputer."

<Insert Beowulf Joke Here>

Re:heh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of... Oh, wait...

(Something like that you mean?)

Another Linux based supercomputer

[$exyNerdie]

"Linux makes it so easy to create a supercomputer.""

BARC unveils Linux based 202 GFLOPS supercomputer

In unrelated news...

[BlackCobra43]

"Linux makes it so easy to create a supercomputer."" In an unrelated happening,1000 Slashdot readers were found dead today in their homes, having choked on their ego after reading a certain article...

Re:In unrelated news...

[BoomerSooner]

It may be easy for him but purchasing 256 Xeons is out of my price range. Not to mention the other stuff that goes into it.

Re:In unrelated news...

[MrLint]

ya know i vaguely recall the need for an actual computer when you make a super computer. But hey perhaps if you hang the printout of linux from the ceiling it can emulate the structure of fairy cake (obscure reference;)

Re:In unrelated news...

[Pedersen]

it can emulate the structure of fairy cake (obscure reference;)

And then, using the piece of paper (and some highly complex math) we can determine the location of the nearest supercomputer, and go install Linux on it! :)

AMNH getting lots of press

[Snags]

That's two stories in a row related to the AMNH (where the Hayden Planetarium is). Some groups get all the press.

Tree of Life?

[breon.halling]

Tree of Life? We'd better keep an eye out for these guys! =)

Tree of Life?

[elmegil]

And here I thought it would be about uses of Linux for Cabbalism!

Third Impact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shh! Don't tell Cmdr. Ikari, or SELE, otherwise their plans of using the evangelions to cause third impact will be crushed!

Re:Third Impact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evangelion? Regardie weeps.

Re:Third Impact?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that Pen-Pen secretly controlled NERV, and Pen-Pen was Tux in disguise.

Neandrathals?

[kramer2718]

When I navigated the tree, I did not find neandrathals. I know in the past they were considered a sub-species of Homo Sapiens and the tree does not have such fine granularity, but I thought that recent evidence had classified them as a seperate species...

Can anyone with more anthropological training answer this for me?

Linux and Tree of Life

[Boglin]

Once again, old news. Or am I the only one that's ever used Yggdrasil?

Obligatory

[Jeremiah Blatz]

What about a beowolf cluster.. of... oh, right

Frequent flyer points via SETI

[Bob The Lizard]

Act now!
For every 50,000 seti packets you get 1 space mile!
Yah!

WTF?

[Bob The Lizard]

This was posted to a different story.
errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr??????????????????

Re:Neandrathals? They are everywhere!

[ratfynk]

Just surf the web long and enough and you will find the Neandrathals, they are everywhere. Most even have blond hair and blue eyes, have eaten their enemies brains, infested Northern Europe and bashed the skulls of the little people who came from the south and east or took them as slaves.

At times they have been called many things one of the most recent designations was the Original Pure Arian race.

As for where they are on the tree of life, that is a decision best left to the future.

The tree of life has very little to do with humanities and everything to do with the evolutionary links between species. There is a huge debate as to whether or not Neandrathals actually died out! The only solution might be if some usable Neandrathal DNA is found to do more detailed sequencing. It could very well be that the genetic traits left by Neandrathals have mostly become recessive, like blue eyes and blond hair. Or more radicaly that some non-arian traits tend to be or become dominant. All these views are not very popular in RedNeck/Nazi science, but need to be explored.

I'm not surprised.

[jromz03]

It's fast, efficient, stable and free. But we should all know that by now :)

Re:I'm not surprised.

[gilesjuk]

Not to mention there's quite a lot of clustering experience out there. Knowledge you can actually gain for free instead of employing some Windows expert to design you a solution.

Linnaeus Meets Linux!

[Cy Guy]

Since it was Carl Linnaeus that is considered the "Father of Taxonomy" it only seems appropriate that Linus & and Linux play a role on bringing it into the 21st century.

Obligatory Post Catalog

[Anonymous Coward]

[obligatory Beowulf cluster joke]
[obligatory Beowulf cluster metajoke]
[obligatory Windows bashing]
[obligatory BSD is dead comment]
[obligatory Windows bashing]
[obligatory Windows bashing]

Both of you are SO mind-closed

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, the Bible isn't a scientific text, it is a symbolic text, full of metaphores, and writen, not for 20th century Einsteins or 2003 Slashdotters, but instead for people who live many centuries ago, without a Hubble, without a Darwin and without fossils in a Natural Museum.
It talk about the "6 days of creation" but... what is a day? Earth days? Jupiter days? Antares Days? Do you really believe that we are so important that the entire creation of the Universe was based in OURS time scales?? Give me a break! What an arrogance! And also why think that God has to do all manually... I mean if I drop a lighter in a... forest (for example), and this cause a fire that burn it all, I can clame that I burn the forest, and I'm right, when in fact I just drop a lighter. Returning to God, he (or it) can just set the initial conditions of the Universe, knowing what will be happen... so he create the universe AND the evolution, no contradiction there... why you are still fighting?

Re:Historical Sciences

[fluffy666]

I understand that the "science" of origins is not based in the scientific method.

Well, it is. In this case our observation is that life of some form arose under the conditions prevalant on earth around 3.8 billion years ago. Other observations - such as the current composition of life forms - provide more observations; the laws of physics provide constraints. Hypotheses can be tested against these.

A creation scientist is one who practices science and believes the origin story as presented in the Bible

Then that person is no longer a scientist. Supernatural explanations automatically disqualify you; as to preconceptions.

It's not because they believe they can scientifically examine unrepeatable history.

Well, if I'm ever up on trial for murder, I hope you're in the Jury. After all, we can't know anything from 'unrepeatable history', can we?

We can examine history scientifically. Observations can be repeated, and tested against present day processes and laws. Experiments can be done to test hypotheses; and predictions of future discovery made. This is science, as much as chemistry or physics is.

Re:Historical Sciences

[Tyreth]

I must say, I'm glad you are not the poster I was responding to, otherwise I'd have to accuse you of changing your story.

Well, it is. In this case our observation is that life of some form arose under the conditions prevalant on earth around 3.8 billion years ago. Other observations - such as the current composition of life forms - provide more observations; the laws of physics provide constraints. Hypotheses can be tested against these.

Under no language, or any law of logic or rational could anyone say that we've observed the formation of life 3.8 billion years ago. You are just playing with the word "observation" here, trying to make it sound like it was in context. We can observe and repeat a number of experiments today that can provide clues into the past, but that does not constitute an observation of the past.

Then that person is no longer a scientist. Supernatural explanations automatically disqualify you; as to preconceptions.

I suggest you relook at this. I'm saying that these are people who practice science, and believe in the origin of the universe was from God. I didn't say that they believe they use science to observe and repeat the unobservable, unrepeatable past. I simply said they were scientists who believe in creation. I don't care who you are - they have Ph.D's and they're recognised as scientists. Besides, atheists and naturalists have a preconceived notion of no God - they too are biased.

Well, if I'm ever up on trial for murder, I hope you're in the Jury. After all, we can't know anything from 'unrepeatable history', can we?

We can examine history scientifically. Observations can be repeated, and tested against present day processes and laws. Experiments can be done to test hypotheses; and predictions of future discovery made. This is science, as much as chemistry or physics is.

Evolutionists go to great lengths to prove creationism isn't scientific. Their proof - we can't provide a theory that is falsifiable. That same problem exists with the theory of evolution we disagree with.

Now try to understand this - while I do not believe the method of science can explain the past, I *do* believe in logic and rational. The realm of philosophy and reason uses scientific data to prove it's point. Ie, that method is not itself scientific, but it uses science. If you were on trial for murder, I wouldn't apply the principles of science because it wouldn't be appropriate. I'd use logic to deduce whether you were guilty or not.

The only reason I quibble over the meaning of these words is because of that devious tendancy of evolutionists to accuse creationism of being unscientific when their beloved theory falls by the same sword.

Re:Historical Sciences

[fluffy666]

Under no language, or any law of logic or rational could anyone say that we've observed the formation of life 3.8 billion years ago.

As I said, we can make historical observations; that you personally dismiss them is pretty much irrelevant. When a geologist examines a rock, he/she is making a historical observation. That rock is evidence of what happened in the past; since other people can observe the same rock, it is repeatable.

I suggest you relook at this. I'm saying that these are people who practice science, and believe in the origin of the universe was from God.

BUT do they put this in the papers they write? Do they allow their conclusions to be constrained by what the bible says? If not - and they could hardly get papers published with supernatural explanations - how would you tell their papers from those written by athiests?

Evolutionists go to great lengths to prove creationism isn't scientific. Their proof - we can't provide a theory that is falsifiable.

Actually, you [creationists] can't provide a theory that does not resort to supernatural explanations, and is hence unscientific. Or even one that agrees with present day data.

That same problem exists with the theory of evolution we disagree with.

Evolution could be falsified in any number of ways. Just one [properly observed and documented] fossil out of place would be enough.

If you were on trial for murder, I wouldn't apply the principles of science because it wouldn't be appropriate.

Could you explain this a bit further? Looks like you are throwing out all forensic, circumstantial and eyewitness evidence here.

I'd use logic to deduce whether you were guilty or not.

How? Having thrown out all the evidence, you're just guessing now.

The only reason I quibble over the meaning of these words is because of that devious tendancy of evolutionists to accuse creationism of being unscientific when their beloved theory falls by the same sword

Let me ask you - what is more likely to get a scientist fame and recognition:

a) A small extention or addition to an exsiting theory, or

b) The complete demolition and replacement of a major scientific theory.

Re:Historical Sciences

[Gleef]

fluffy666 wrote:

> I understand that the "science" of origins is not based in the scientific method.

Well, it is. In this case our observation is that life of some form arose under the conditions prevalant on earth around 3.8 billion years ago. Other observations - such as the current composition of life forms - provide more observations; the laws of physics provide constraints. Hypotheses can be tested against these.

The point I was originally making regarding the science of origins, and the point which Tyreth appeared to be agreeing with, was that past a certain point, Science can't go, because observation can't go, and testing can't go. Assume that Science establishes the Big Bang as the origin of the universe, you cannot Scientifically examine what happened a minute before the big bang, anything you say about that would be pure conjecture, not Science.

Re:Historical Sciences

[Tyreth]

I'm going to skip most everything else you misunderstood, and hone in on one casual challenge you threw.

Evolution could be falsified in any number of ways. Just one [properly observed and documented] fossil out of place would be enough.

I doubt that you really believed this when you said it. "In the Grand Canyon, in Venezuela, and in Guyana, spores of ferns and pollen from flowering plants are found in Cambrianh and Precambriani rocks--rocks deposited before life supposedly evolved." - these were documented in the following places:

. R. M. Stainforth, "Occurrence of Pollen and Spores in the Roraima Formation of Venezuela and British Guiana," Nature, Vol. 210, 16 April 1966, pp. 292-294.

. George F. Howe et al., "A Pollen Analysis of Hakatai Shale and Other Grand Canyon Rocks," Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 24, March 1988, pp. 173-182.

Then there's also the many living fossils that remain mostly unchanged, yet were thought to be extinct many millions of years ago.

Anyway, that's just one example. I found a list of 20+ such fossils, and that was just with a very quick search, I'm sure you can find more than enough to falsify evolution in your mind by searching google with "out of place fossils".

So skipping the rest (since I think it's important that you think evolution can be falsified), I'll wait for your response on this.

Re:Historical Sciences

[fluffy666]

I doubt that you really believed this when you said it. "In the Grand Canyon, in Venezuela, and in Guyana, spores of ferns and pollen from flowering plants are found in Cambrianh and Precambriani rocks--rocks deposited before life supposedly evolved." - these were documented in the following places:

Strangely enough, I don't have access to 1966 issues of Nature. But I'd be prepared to bet quite happily that the pollen concerned was a later emplacement by wind or water through cracks in the rock.

Then there's also the many living fossils that remain mostly unchanged, yet were thought to be extinct many millions of years ago

And the problem is???

Anyway, that's just one example. I found a list of 20+ such fossils, and that was just with a very quick search, I'm sure you can find more than enough to falsify evolution in your mind by searching google with "out of place fossils".

Well, if the above were your best examples, I won't hold my breath on the rest. Perhaps I should have added 'Not reworked' to the definiton.

Re:Historical Sciences

[Tyreth]

Well, if the above were your best examples, I won't hold my breath on the rest. Perhaps I should have added 'Not reworked' to the definiton.

No, actually, I just picked one example mostly at random. I figured no matter what I present you will say either "it was mixed up somehow" or "out of place fossils do not falsify evolution".

It's really up to you - I gave you the search terms to use in google, go look for yourself if you really care. There are enough examples out there of out of place fossils that I'd have thought it important from your perspective (since you believe it would falsify evolution) to be sure that they are not what they seem.

Re:Historical Sciences

[fluffy666]

It's really up to you - I gave you the search terms to use in google, go look for yourself if you really care.

So now *I* have to look for evidence to support your case...

Actually, it is surely more important to you, if you wish to build a solid case against evolution. I've done the field work; I've seen the evidence. I'm happy with it. I strongly suspect you haven't bothered with any of this - it's hard work and takes years. Reading a few creationist web sites is much easier, I'm sure.

Re:Historical Sciences

[Tyreth]

I'm not asking you to look for evidence to support my case. You said one out of place well documented fossil would falsify evolution (evolution that teaches simple life=>complex forms). I gave you an example, and you picked on unfair details. So I assume that you are going to do that for every example I present.

So I reasoned with myself, if he's just going to pick on every detail, I'll post the necessary steps to find many examples - if he's interested, then he can see them right there. If he's not, well maybe another reader will see something there.

So I told you what type into google - out of place fossils. There's no looking involved, it pops up examples in the first few pages. It's no different from me posting a direct link. I cannot predict your response, so this way you can find from the many examples which one you find most persuasive (if any).

Re:Historical Sciences

[fluffy666]

You said one out of place well documented fossil would falsify evolution

Note the phrase 'well documented'.

(evolution that teaches simple life=>complex forms).

Well, that's not what it teaches, and shows you could do with educating yourself about evolution from some non-creationist sources.

I gave you an example, and you picked on unfair details.

If you are going to disprove a very long standing scientific theory in daily use, which usefully explains a literal mountain of evidence, your examples *must* be absolutely rock solid. It is most certainly not unfair to pick on details.

So I reasoned with myself, if he's just going to pick on every detail, I'll post the necessary steps to find many examples - if he's interested, then he can see them right there. If he's not, well maybe another reader will see something there

There are huge numbers of poorly documented UFO sightings, Miracle healings, Past-life experiences, Government consprircies, antigravity machines, Elvis sightings, etc, etc, etc... does this mean that it is my responsability to track down and disprove every one? Absolutely not - it is the responsability of the person proposing that these things exist/happen to track down and fully document real cases. They cannot say 'there are hundreds of vague reports, some must be true'.

For example, having looked through the first 60 results of such a google search, I haven't found anything even vaguely approaching properly documented. Lots of vague or very old references, quite a few deliberate misunderstandings, some outright lies, but nothing solid.