Slashdot Mirror
New Evidence About 'The Great Dying' 250 Million Years Ago
PornMaster writes "The Guardian is reporting that scientists have found the first direct evidence that the killoff of 80% of land species and 95% of marine species 2 billion years ago was due to a meteor." The project web site has more info, maps, etc.
So, they are saying that until now there has been no direct evidence and now they just have one piece.
Doesn't that make believing it a little sketchy. On such little evidence.
Evolution or ID?
not "first evidence"...
just like in judicial cases you can have circumstantial evidence, scientific hypotheses can be supported by indirect evidence.
"...scientists have found the first direct evidence..."
Direct evidence my arse. Scientists have found a few holes in the ground and some sediments. It amazes me that so many people just blindly accept these theories (and they are only theories) about meteors wiping most of the life out on earth long ago.
250mil years of evolution? That sounds about right.
Finding a very thin layer of irridium in the rocks laid down at the very end of the Permian would be compelling evidence. A layer of irridium, together with the crater in the Gulf of Mexico off the Mexican coast, made a good argument of what caused the dinosaurs to go at the end of the Cretaceous period.
Yup. The question isn't whether or not they died, we know they did. Just HOW they died.
WHAT?!? somebody actually questions the theory of evolution?? He must be a fundamentalist! Off with his head!
actually, if you look at the hard evidence, the whole concept of macro-evolution is nothing more than a wild guess in the dark. the theory is full of holes and most of the logic doesn't completely add up. but i guess people have to believe in something.
At first, abiogenesis was centered around the notion that a possible, but highly unlikely, chain of events happened billions of years ago. Supposedly, through billions of years of evolution, man evolved from creatures more primitive.
The theory was made at least partially plausible by the "logic of big numbers" - given enough time, anything is bound to happen, no matter how small the probability. Their explanation relied on faith in statistics, rather than God, and contained very little that was actually scientific. This explanation was little better than the creationist dogma that God created the Universe, Earth, and Man in a literally 7 24-hour periods.
Now, instead of four billion years, they've got to explain in it 250 million years. Given that they've already posited that mankind's ancestors appeared about 50 million years ago, they're down to a mere 200 million years to go from single-celled to upright and walking.
What really gets me is that none of the so called "scientific" origin-of-life theories are logically sound. Nor are they scientific, in the truest sense of the word - their hypotheses cannot be tested.
Ultimately, I think, it comes down to faith. I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't know the mechanisms by which life came about - whether God created mankind as a series of steps taking millions of years, or constructed modern man in a single instant of inspired creation. But, because I believe in God, I don't risk having my beliefs invalidated by a scientific discovery.
I think that this is hard point to get across. Evolutionary biology is not necessarily contradictory to faith in God. However, faith in evolution as the ultimate explanation for our existence leaves much to be desired, and because atheists have accepted this notion as a de-facto religion, true scientific progress is often held up by such biases. No atheist scientist could ever admit any finding which would cast doubt on the pre-conceived notions of abiogenisis, because to do so would destroy his religion. Christianity, OTOH, is not diminished by scientific discovery. Rather, science often illumines our knowledge of God - we discover the perfection of the Creator in witnessing the beauty of the created.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The article doesn't question the theory of evolution....
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
You're not "supposed to" believe it, where did you get that idea? Clearly you have no idea how science functions, why don't you learn what science is before publicly criticizing it? It is obvious from your post that you don't even understand the basics of the scientific method, despite the fact that you think you "know a bit" about science.
If you actually read up a bit about this, the scientists here are basically saying that this MIGHT BE a possible cause of one of the great extinctions (read "more research required"). Furthermore, this is now just one new "HYPOTHESIS" against two other major "HYPOTHESES" that alread exist that proposing other "POSSIBLE" reasons for this great extinction.
Certainly nobody has asked you to "believe" any of these possible explanations, and none of the scientists involved have claimed that their hypotheses are 'the truth' either. In fact, with things like this, scientists never really decide that any one theory is "the truth" - they basically often settle on a theory that is "the most likely" - they, however, ALWAYS "leave the door open" to other possible explanations that may appear in future that are better. Always. (This is all in refreshing contrast to religions like Christianity, where you are in fact expected to 100% completely believe something regardless of whether or not there is really evidence for it.)
The slashdot blurb has also spun this thing completely wrong. So even worse, now you make decisions about scientific theories based on a slashdot blurb. Sheesh.
It would seem the moderators don't see alternative viewpoints as neither valid nor worthy of discussion. I thought /. was about voicing on-topic opinions. Apparently I was wrong.
Visualize Whirled Peas
Um, if you RTFA, it never says that the murder is 2bn years old. It states the the history of life is 2bn years old. And if you read his post, you'll realize that he's talking about the headline, which says "New clues to 2bn-year-old murder". Don't be so liberal with your RTFA's. On a side note, I think this headline highlights a trend I've been seeing in which internet news agencies create misleading or incorrect headlines just to get people to click on them. They're generally remotely related, but tend to say things that aren't supported or even covered by the articles.
Like what?
But, when the science claims that then have evidence but no direct evidence I am supposed to believe it.
No. You are supposed to think that it represents a likely scenario and it is a plausible explanation of what happened. There is no "belief" in science, other than as a figure of speech.
That's just it. Good science (as opposed to junk science) does not assume anything of the sort.
You observe. You collect evidence. Then you interpret the evidence to see if it matches any posited hypothesis. Usually, you put forth an hypothesis first, and then you test to see if your evidence fits.
You do not massage data to make it fit, unless you have an agenda to fulfill.
The evidence in favor of a 4.5 billion year age of the Earth is vastly better than the evidence ever was in favor of phlogiston, with corroboration coming from almost every field of science. Expecting that figure to be overturned is like expecting future science to reveal that the Earth is flat.
On the other hand, there's still a lot of room to overturn mass extinction theories.
Leading univeristies have proven they can accually stop light, hold it in place, then speed it up on their command.
Well, firstly, that is not in empty space, which as I hope even you believe, is what exists between the stars.
Secondly, if light was stopped for a while, that would mean it took *longer* to get here from the stars, which would mean they were *even older* than millions of years!
For your argument to work, light would need to be speeded up. No-one has done that, of course.
(Also, they aren't really stopping light at all: they are simply storing the information in the light and then re-creating the light later).
when something really big hits something else really fast it tends to break up just a bit
if you notice, the moon has a lot of craters but no bolders sitting in the middle of them
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
It's a fight for mindshare.
This is absolutely correct. It reflects very accurately the situation in which we find ourselves: athiests feel threatened by the religious, faithful feel threatened by the non-believers. Why are we threatened? On the whole all of the people involved are decent, respectable folk, who would enjoy chatting with you on the street.
Once the battle lines are drawn (athiest vs. religious, liberal vs. conservative), though, it gets ugly. People on feel they are being attacked, and get worried that their way of life is being threatened by people who don't think as they do.
The greatest fear is that someone who thinks the other way will get into power, then force their beliefs on everyone... [Clinton, Bush, control of the SCOTUS]
Or worse yet, what if they indoctrinate the next generation! Hence the anger against the perceived secular/liberal control of the education system. This is why home schooling is becoming so popular: "They won't teach my child their godless/heathen/hippie ways! I won't have my kid brought up like that!"
If people believed that the President, or public school teachers, or the Supreme Court, or the local pastor, were rational, respectful people, who would do right by the community, this wouldn't be a problem.