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Earthlife 2.7 Billion Years Old
Dodja writes "Just as Kansas decides there's no reason to teach evolution, Aussie scientists are announcing signs of life a billion years older than previous findings."
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None of these theoies are presented as 'fact'. Not in university, nor in scientific publications.
Exactly my point. There is no point in present ANY scientific theory as 'fact'; rather, they should be presented as tested models which have produced useful results.
However, I would dispute the accuracy of your statement. Are you saying that in all of this century, in all schools and universities, in all scientific publications, there has never been any implication that these theories are true and factual? You speak of the ideal while I address the real. Regardless of what abstract science does, real flesh-and-blood people tend to make asses of themselves, regardless of the situation.
Please read the relevant FAQs before spouting off again. Evolution does not contradict evidence, logic, religion, or the second law of thermodynamics. Evolution and abiogenesis are different issues, and Behe's book is about the latter, not the former. Punctuated Equilibrium, whatever caricatures you may have heard notwithstanding, is really Darwinian evolution. And please don't say, "It is just a theory" or "What evidence do they really have?" until you have actually looked at what evidence has been uncovered from the combined efforts of several scientific fields for 150 years.
Oh, and those who claim that there is a debate, there is not. The last serious scientific challenge to the theory of Evolution was in the first decade of this century. (Brownie points to anyone who knows the substance of the challenge and/or the resolution!) If you think that you can turn up quotes contradicting this, check the original reference for the quotes before repeating them. There are a lot of out-of-context quotes which are spouted that do not - in context - mean what Creationists claim that they do. And there are a lot of upset scientists who are good and tired of being misquoted.
So please, read those FAQs before posting.
Thank you,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Why is every piece of evidence found that is linked to evolution always treated as proof. It's evidence, they even call it that, but then they treat it as proof.
Science is not the end all of everything. I think that the scientific world as a whole is quite arrogant.
Many people would say, "that's not logical. science is the system of logical truth finding, and is the basis of solid understanding."
That's true from the perspective of us looking out at everything, but in the perspective of everything out there and then how small we are, we are far to meek.
It's cool to search for truth, but don't think that you know.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
(gasp) a...a...a rational, noninflammatory discussion on slashdot? (swoon)
:)
email me at dillon_rinker@hotmail.com, as I'd like to continue the discussion beyond here.
Science does not assume that non-repeatable phenomena do not exist.
I would have to respectfully disagree. Given the same initial conditions, the same result will occur; this is the bedrock of the scientific method. Correct me if I'm wrong. If an observation is nonrepeatable, you can't really do much science with it.
Instead it deliberately tries to work with and extrapolate from repeatable phenomena wherever possible.
Unrepeatable phenomena yield no information. HOWEVER, what is at first glance a unique event may, upon sufficient abstraction, be found to be like lots of other events. If you drop a rock, it will fall to earth. This exact event will never happen again, as you will have aged, the earth will have moved, friction will have sheared off a few molecules, etc. Regardless, I still maintain that science is in the business of drawing conclusions from repeatable events.
Even in such cases science will try to figure out what happened according to rules that themselves come from repeatable phenomena.
Sure. This is where science is useful. On a some level, as I indicated, I don't think that any event is repeatable. But given a particular event and a high enough level of abstraction, you can ask if current theory could have predicted it, or if the event violates current theory.
The start of life.
Isn't there some hypothesis that given the number of galaxies, and the number of stars, and the number of planets, there should still be 10^? planets with life on them? And if we nuked the earth and dropped a few asteroids on it, doesn't current theory suggest that the return of life (possibly very different life) is at least possible?
The extinction of the dinosaurs.
If they existed again, they could be made extinct again. See previous bit about nukes and asteroids
The Big Bang
I don't know much cosmology. My understanding is that current theory can't predict what existed before the big bang - it's a singularity or something. My impression was more that the Big Bang was a conclusion, rather than a piece of evidence, with the logic going something like this:
- the stars are all moving away from a point; reverse the motion far enough and all matter was at that point.
- Do lots of other complicated math using other cosmological observations and quantum and relativity and chaos and other cool words and it quantifies this.
- Let's call that point (or rather the events that involve it) the Big Bang.
- If there were a Big Bang, there'd be background microwave radiation. There is; ergo there was a big bang.
Even if the Big Bang was a cosmologically unrepeatable event, it doesn't matter, because the big bang was not observed; it was predicted. Science can perhaps predict non-repeatable events, but it can't draw conclusions from them. You can't extrapolate from a point.
As for religion, I agree that some religious beliefs are contradicted by scientific findings. However evolution itself does not imply atheism, and there are many people who both are devout Christians and who believe in evolution.
Sure. I mainly meant to address your rather broad original statement "evolution does not contradict religion".
It is not silly of scientists in general to suggest that their epistemological beliefs are of greater value than others when there are several hundred years of evidence suggesting just that.
The scientific method excels above all else at increasing knowledge of the physical but fails dreadfully where the metaphysical is concerned. That may not even be an issue to you; I don't know.
The priests used to say that faith could move mountains, but nobody believed them. The scientists tell us that science can level mountains and nobody doubts them.
Reflect on that for a while...
Ummmm...Ok, done. Campbell was wrong; millions believed them. Scientific American this month says that science can't build an effective natinal missile defense system. Does anyone doubt that? And I would ask "Should we level the mountains?" To me, that is the point of this particular discussion. Science can answer some questions, but it cannot answer all questions. I believe it is foolish to believe that the only important questions are the ones science can answer, or that science can answer all important questions. Reflect on the following...
Is there a god?
What is right and what is wrong?
Is there life after death?
When does life begin?
Are people happier now than they were before modern science existed?
Should we map the human genome?
What will humanity be like in 10,000 years?
What do women REALLY want?
Nope...we're all hominids - I mean mammals - I mean vertebrates - I mean...
Names and categories are a useful for communication, but they prove nothing.
The strange thing is that the religious people themselves agree with you. Something about "The Lord is my shepherd" comes to mind.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, that's the official Catholic Church position - theistically guided evolution. So there are indeed some religious people that agree with you. Opposition to evolution remains mostly among the fundamentalist American protestants.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Now look what you've done.
You've spawned a definition of foobar which is different from other foobars. From now on web searchers will be distracted from their search for the common ancestor of foobar by finding this foobar discussion. And now that you've created this foobar meaning, all other foobars will vanish.
Why do you assume that someone who believes in evolution has never examined the evidence given for Creationism?
The person you are responding to asked "Are you willing to consider evidence that people with religous beliefs might be right?" Are you?
I have, in fact, considered such evidence in then past.
Approaching religion on the basis of scientific evidence strikes me a lot like approaching science by praying to Einstein, Feynman, and Bohr and being disappointed when they fail to answer.
Is that the act of a moral, honest, and straightforward person?
So you've discovered that there are charlatans who will take advantage of gullible peoples' religious beliefs. Too bad more people don't take the time to do that.
If Mosaic evolved into Netscape and Explorer then why is Mosaic still here?
Or am I missing something?
Rumours that the brain cells of one of the passengers were amongst the find were hotly denied. "We have never had any brain cells, here!" said one spokesperson.
Further investigation shows that, throughout history, a mysterious figure has always lurked in the background, getting people to make dysfunctional products. Speculation that these figures may be one and the same person, and that they may be a robot, made from primeval sludge and controlled by microbes in the cranial region, is intensifying.
An intrepid reporter, on the scene, reports that the people from Redmond felt the fossil remains were too complex for whatever function they intended. More, on this story, as it happens.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
is that here on /., the plethora of geeks, programmers and students who witness evolution each and every day, fail to make the mental leap and apply it to human evolution.
Let's look at software. We start with a conceptual framework of a program. Code it, run it, refine it... Evolve it until it solves the problem it is intended to solve. Then the problem domain changes, and we revise the code. The bad or ineffective changes we make result in 'dead' programs - ones that can not survive the environment of the problem. The good changes we make result in the 'fittest' solution to the problem. This is the same process as human evolution.
Now, the nature of the programmer is what is really the question. It is not rational or reasonable to question evolution. But who spurrs the changes in our DNA? Is it random mutation that just happens to hit it right, in a few of the millions of delta's in each generation? Is it cosmic radiation, radon exposure, valium consumption in teenage mothers who smoke and drink while pregnant?? Or is it a divine force which escapes our reason?
Or, and this is my personal view, the means that science condones (randomness, mutagens) are the tools of the divine, omniscient but non-conscious universe that just plain IS.
It's been said that mankind is the universe's attempt to comprehend itself. That all of creation is God made manifest. That we, being part of creation, are each a different face of God.
That part of the universe that is not us, has read each of the messages posted here about religion and evolution, and is, right now, laughing hysterically behind our collective back.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
This is not intended to insult ANYONE'S intelligence but I find it suprising that you would jump down someone's throat without even knowing the concept yourself.
C dating compares the ratio of the C14 and C12 isotopes of carbon in the sample to the ratio found commonly in nature. Nitrogen never enters the picture.
The premise is that a living organism ingests, inhales, or otherwise absorbs carbon into itself with the ratio of C14 to C12 being relatively constant. Over time, the natural ratio of C14 to C12 changes, hance dating can only be done within a window of several tens of thousands of years. (Volcanic eruptions, meteorites and other non-linear evens tend to change this natural ratio).
Anyways, when an organism dies, it stops absorbing carbon, and the C14 starts to break down into C12. This process has a well known half-life of 5730 years, and so by measuring the ratio of C14 to C12 in-sample to the current natural ratio, the age of the sample can be estimated.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I'd say Atlas, but I hear he's disqualified, on account of holding things up.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)