One more thing, as I understand it we have more in common with frogs and pigs genetically than we do with apes anyway.
-----
You understand wrong. I suppose you got this from one of the
creationist rags out there on the web and didn't bother to check up on
any of the "facts" they presented. In reality, the building of the
phylogenetic tree of life was first attempted as early as 1967(1). As
we sequence more and more genomes, the phylogenetic data only strengthen
the theory of common decent. The conclusion is inescapable unless you
have some religous hangup with the conclusions and are forced to ignore
the data. Flat earth. Geocentricism. Creationism. History repeats
itself.
1. Construction of Phylogenetic Trees, Walter M. Fitch and Emanuel Margoliash, Science Vol 155: 279-284.
Micro evolution is valid, organisms change to adapt to a
environment. Its Macro evolution we are discussing.
-----
Wrong. Organisms don't evolve, populations evolve. Care to cite any reference that confirms this mysterious
creationist "wall" between micro and macro evolution? Do you even know the difference?
taftman writes:
-----
My only point is that the changes each made, to each different
environment, didnt change the species enough to keep them from being
compatible. So they didnt change to different types of humans, still the
same thing, but with differences.
-----
This is hard to parse, but you seem to be saying that that speciation is impossible. This is patently false since
speciation has been observed both in the lab and in the wild.
taftman writes:
-----
Evolution is akin to a tornado hitting a junkyard and creating a fully
functional 737, these are the kinds of trial and error odds we are
talking about.
-----
Fred Hoyle is turning over in his grave.
This is another popular creationist strawman. Random mutation provides
the raw material for evolution, but this completly ignores the fact that
natural selection is the sieve through which the randomness is filtered.
taftman writes:
-----
Sorry to not be at your level of expertise, i only know what makes sense
to me and what comes from the research I've done. But please be a little
more civil, why does a debate have to be lined with subtle personal
attacks.
-----
What research have you done? Apparently you just regurgipost long
refuted creationist claptrap.
Evolution is a very complex and diverse scientific field requiring
years of research and study to fully comprehend. The creationist rags
just present overly simplified, and outright wrong, interpretations of
evolution that aren't even internally consistant. The best places to
find information on evolution is in the primary literature. There are
dozens of scientific journals dedicated to biological evolution. All
are peer-reviewed and consistant. Check out your local university
library sometime. Try to find even a single scientific paper on
creationism. If the creationist rags were correct in their views,
and evoultionary theory is so wrong, then there should be hundreds of
scientific papers criticizing evolution.
Excepts from the webage you claimed to have read:
"The second law says that everything in our world and in the universe is
like a wound-up clock that is running down. "
Increasing life complexity. Evolution teaches that life increases in
complexity, and therefore defies the second law. But when a person is
born, he has all the complexity built into him to start. It unfolds as
he goes through life. Everything was in the utterly complex DNA code
at the beginning of that person's existence. In addition, at birth a
person is in the most physically perfect condition he will ever be in
this life. The more he develops, the more blemishes and imperfections
appear, until they gain the ascendancy and he dies.""
Actually the second law says:
dS=dQ/T
The creationist claptrap you cut-n-pasted is a strawman based very
loosely on a very special case of the 2LoT involving ideal gasses.
I will present a mathematical proof that the creationist thermodynamic
(2LoT) argument against evolution is effectively dead.
We'll use a dog's genome in this proof. A dog's genome has about 3
billion (3.0e9) base pairs 60.6% (1.8e9 base pairs) of which consists of
AdenineThymine and 39.4% (1.2e9 base pairs) GuanineCytosine. In
the simplest chemical terms, a genome duplication consists of:
G_dog + (1.8e9)A + (1.8e9)T + (1.2e9)G + (1.2e9)C + (3.0e9)H_2PO_4- + (3.0e9)DR + E ---> 2G_dog + (3.0e9)H_2O
Where:
G_dog == Dog Genome
H_2PO_4- == Di-Hydrogen Phosphate ion
A == Adenine (a DNA base)
T == Thymine (a DNA base)
G == Guanine (a DNA base)
C == Cytosine (a DNA base)
DR == Deoxyribose (a sugar)
E == Energy(1)
Since we're not realy concerned much with most of the reactants, we can simplify to:
G_dog + (stuff) ---> 2G_dog + water
Since this is a mathematical equality, we can add a cat genome to each side of the equation:
Similarly, we can subtract a dog genome from each side of the equation:
G_cat + (stuff) ---> G_dog + G_cat + water
So there is nothing thermodynamical nor chemical that prevents a cat from becoming a dog in a single genome duplication.
Of course, in reality, the odds of this are astronomical, but that's a different argument.
The creationist thermodynamic (2Lot) argument is unsound. Q.E.D.
1. In the cell, this reaction requires energy to drive the machinery
which is supplied in abundance in the form of ATP (Adenine
tri-phosphate) which is ultimately derived from the sun via thermionic
coupling. To duplicate our dog genome, 4.7e10 ATP
molecules are converted to ADP resuting in the consumption of
about 2.37e11 Joules of energy. The sun radiates
3.9e26 joules of energy into the empty space around
it every second. The entropy loss in our genome duplication is
insignificant compared to the massive entropy gain of the sun-earth
system so the 2nd law is not violated.
Please, in future if you are going to claim that a quote was out of context - check that that is true first. That way I don't have to waste 30 minutes of my life correcting a mistake that didn't have to be made.
Well, since I read the article, and re-read it before posting (wasting over an hour of my life on the likes of you), I can only assume that you are willfully ignorant and you can't see past your religous blinders. I won't waste anymore of my life on you.
"You can't reason a person out of a position they did not arrive at by reason."
I know how quick you are to forget, so quickly again this is why
mDNA defies the evolution model. mDNA shows that all females have
a common ancestor about 6,000 years ago. Evolution, however, says
that Aboriginees in Australia have been isolated for at least 40,000
years. And I'm sure it's not just Australia.
Did you even bother to read the primary literature? The site you
referenced (www.creationscience.com) as is typical of creationist sites,
finds a snippet from a legitimate scientific article that upon the
surface seems to support whatever the creationist claim de jour is at
the moment, but upon closer investigation says quite the opposite. To
wit: www.creationscience.com quotes the following from Science
Volume 279, Number 5347, Issue of 2 Jan 1998, pp. 28-29.
Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the
effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have
calculated that "mitochondrial Eve"--the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral
to that in all living people--lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in
Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.
The very next line is: "No one thinks that's the case..." And goes on to
describe a number of reasons for the descepency. Another clear-cut example of creationist "quote mining."
After reading the article, it seems that this is a complex of silicon, gold, hydrocarbons, etc. all combined into a system that can manipulate and detect a state change in a single cobalt atom. While a major accomplishment (previously quite a bit more stuff was needed to manipulate and detect single atom state changes) I would hardly call it a single atom transistor.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure that a 5-mile ball would be over the critical mass/volume envelope for an uncontrolled chain reaction of the U-235 and U-233 present in uranium ore. The fact that the Earth hasn't exploded suggests that uranium is not concentrated into a ball. Anyone with the fast-neutron cross section data care to work this out?
Not likely. See the Oklo data. The thermal fissionable isotopes would be diluted by the shear volume of U-238. Fast neutrons from U-238 spontaneous fission cannot induce fission in U-235 without thermalization by a moderator. There would be no adequate moderator in the molten core.
Re:Are we rewriting science history today?
on
Reactor at Earth's Core?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The "self-excited dynamo" theory of geomagnetism has always been shakey and based on a lot of unwarrented assumptions; but, until now, has been the best explanation.
Natural radioactive decay is not the same as a fission reaction.
As usual, the pop science publications do this little justice. The primary literature is published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is published online at: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/20/11085 and certainly makes the case sound more convincing.
The article at EV world doesn't didn't, to my dismay, discuss the electro-magnetic implications at all. It sounded like a stretch to me to conflate geomagnetism with a nuclear process.
Quote mining. The last refuge of the creationist scoundrel. I'm sure those are all out of context, but I'm not going to bother looking. It is clear enough that you don't care about reality. Just for the record, I did do a quick search for Richard Lewontin as I've seen his work before and I know that your characterization of him is absurd. Here's a typical creationist misquote of Lewontin:
The WTBTS book, Life -- How Did it Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?
Requoting Jim Lippard
>
> That question has already been resolved--they sure have. For examples,
> see Hector Avalos, "The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower Society,"
> _Free Inquiry_, vol. 12, no. 2, Spring 1992, pp. 28-31. A couple
> instances:
>
> _Life_, p. 143: "Zoologist Richard Lewontin said that organisms 'appear
> to have been carefully and artfully designed.' He views them as 'the
> chief evidence of a Supreme Designer.'"
Note what the book says - "He [Lewontin] views them as [literal quote]the
chief evidence of a Supreme Designer.[end literal quote]" Now if this
doesn't say that Mr. Lewontin holds this view, then I'm not who I think
I am! If you think that it doesn't say that, then English is not something
with which you are especially skilled.
The complete Lewontin response:
> Cited source: Lewontin, "Adaptation," _Scientific American_, September
> 1978, p. 213.
> Lewontin himself, complaining about this exact same misquotation as
> presented in an issue of the Institute for Creation Research's
> _Acts _Scientific American_, from which these snippets were lifted, was
> precisely that the 'perfection of organisms' is often illusory
> and that any attempt to describe organisms as perfectly adapted is
> destined for serious contradictions. Moreover, the *appearance* of
> careful and artful design was taken *in the nineteenth century before
> Darwin* as 'the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer.' The past tense
> of my article ('It *was* the marvelous fit of organisms to the
> environment... that *was* the chief evidence of Supreme Designer') has
> been conveniently dropped by creationist [Gary] Parker in his attempt to
> pass off this ancient doctrine as modern science." (Lewontin, "Misquoted
> Scientists Respond," _Creation/Evolution_ VI, Fall 1981, p. 35)
He clearly shows that He does not hold that view, and that the original
quote cleary stated that he was referring to belief's of people who are
all DEAD now! But the WTBTS clearly states that it is indeed _his_ view, now!
You keep spouting these mysterious "evidences" yet can't seem to come up with any that actually work. Where's the reports on this greenland airplane ice study? It took scientists over 5 years to select the vostok site to be absolutly sure that they were getting a core from ice that was not moving and that had remained undisturbed for millenia. Where's the fesability study for for the greenland airplane ice site?
Where's there any studies on the problems with radiometric dating? There are entire journals devoted to radiometric dating with all their data out there in the open for anyone to examine and critique. You'd think with all the so-called problems creationts claim there is with radiometric dating, at least one of them would submit a scientific critique to those journals. Maybe scientists doing real science actually come up with methods that work.
Do you think it is just a bizzare coincidence that ice-core layer counting, ice-core CO2 radiocarbon dating, ice-core 36Cl radiometric dating, cave stagmite layer counting, cave stalagmite 36Cl radiometric dating, stalagmite U-Th radiometric dating, overlapping oak tree-ring counting, oak tree-ring 14C dating, coral layer counting, coral 90Sr radiometric dating, and the SINT200 stacked geomagnetic record all just happen to give very similar overlapping calibration curves? The odds would be astronomical (something about a tornado in a junkyard comes to mind). All these dating projects were done independantly and at different times over the last few decades and remarkably, they all tell a similar story as to the age of the earth. Sure, creationists can spout off anecdotes about how such-and-such rock gave a date 5 million years off or somesuch, but they never seem to produce any real data to back up these claims. Its all hearsay, or outright fabrication. Even if they did have a genuine datapoint or two that didn't seem to fit, that pales in comparison to the mountain of data that do fit.
I kown you'll just brush this off too. Fine with me; live in your fantasy world. It's obvious you don't care about evidence or real science. You just cheerfully handwave it away. That's your right, but don't try and cram your religous propaganda into our public schools and at least have the decency to admit that creationism is a religion and has nothing to do with science.
Quote:
For example, in Greenland the "lost squadron" of P-38's landed there during WWII. In the 90's some guy from Kentucky (rich man with an obsession, I guess) went up there with advanced echo-location sonars and found them under the ice. He dug them out. When they got down there, they were still perfectly level. If they'd sunken into the ice, they are so front-heavy that they would be tilted downward. And on the way down, he saw hundreds to thousands of ice layers (seen as rings if looked at in a core instead of from inside a tunnel). He stated that those layers form sometimes in days, that they are warm/cold not summer/winter rings. The point of this is, don't just assume annual unless you've proved it.
If you want ice core data, then see:
Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
Petit, JR;Jouzel, J;Raynaud, D;Barkov, NI;Barnola, JM;Basile, I;Bender, M;Chappellaz, J;Davis, M;Delaygue, G;Delmotte, M;Kotlyakov, VM;Legrand, M;Lipenkov, VY;Lorius, C;Pepin, L;Ritz, C;Saltzman, E;Stievenard, M
NATURE
399: (6735) 429-436 JUN 3 1999
Here we see a painstaking description of the methodology used in dating the Vostok Antarctica ice core samples. Contrast this to your second-hand anecdotal reference to some airplane affectionado's wild-ass guess.
Quote:
And if you measure the growth rate of the Great Barrier Reef, it comes out to being roughly 4000 years old. Just old enough to have started growing right after the flood.
Another lie from the anonymous coward. See:
Geology 29, 483 (2001).
From the abstract:
Coral reefs are important as marine ecosystems, and their growth has been linked to the carbon dioxide content in Earth's atmosphere. However, the timing of major reef growth has been uncertain for many reefs, including Earth's largest, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Analysis by an international consortium of two recent drill cores taken from the Great Barrier Reef indicates that it began to form about 600,000 years ago. This age is based on magnetic stratigraphy through the drill core (and the absence of the marked geomagnetic reversal 790,000 years ago) and on the Sr isotope composition of the corals. This age implies that the Great Barrier Reef has grown by about 10 to 28 centimeters per year, which is similar to the growth rate of other reefs worldwide. Why reef growth started at that time is unknown, but it might reflect a period of increased sea surface temperatures, a connection with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, or both.
Let's narrow it down a little further and discus one aspect of the "turbulent water problem."
Since I don't have (nor intend to purchase) Woodromappe's book, how does he explain how coral could have survived a global flood? Coral is very sensitive to even the slitest climatic changes. Adding even a few meters of water--not to mention water contaminated by silt from ground runoff--is sufficient to destroy coral due to blocked sunlight(1). Coral is also very sensitive to temperature, salinity, and nutrient load changes(1).
For now, we'll ignore the fact that coral, like trees and their rings, show anual layering that can be counted and like tree rings show climatic changes(2). Nowhere in the coral record of several reefs is there any evidence of a global flood.
1. Biology and geology of eastern Pacific coral Reefs Cortes, J CORAL REEFS 16: S39-S46, Suppl. S JUN 1997
2. Photosynthesis and calcification at cellular, organismal and community levels in coral reefs: A review on interactions and control by carbonate chemistry, Gattuso, JP;Allemand, D;Frankignoulle, M AMERICAN ZOOLOGIST 39: (1) 160-183 FEB 1999
Strawman alert!
No one but creationists think that the laws of nature work by random chance. Even your hero Yockey claims that most of say a hemoglobin protein is just bulk and its amino acid sequence is superfulous http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199602/0123. html.
Anyway, you are arguing against abiogenesis. Please stop moving the goalposts. The math above shows that there is no thermodynamic reason why a dog genome cannot become a cat genome in a single step. I acknowleged the fact that it is statistically nearly impossible. Fortunately for science, none of this is necessary for evolution to work. Since abiogenesis research is not likely to ever give the exact answer on how the first self-replicator on this planet formed, I have no beef with theistic evolutionists who claim god made the first self-replicator and let evolution work from there. I take it that this is NOT your position however, right?
So to you printing 5 extra copies of the New York Times is an increase in information? And you think there's an increase also when a child grows to an adult (more cells with that DNA)?
--
Hmmm. I don't recall newspapers being able to SELF-replicate, nor do INDIVIDUALS evolve, so the analogy is flawed from the start.
At any given time a breeding population has n number of alleles in the gene pool. If one of those alleles in one individual becomes mutated, then there are now n+1 alleles in the breeding population. How tough is that?
Thermo strawman alert! Quote:
--
While it may be a decrease in entropy and therefore an increase in order, it is not an increase in information, merely ordering disordered matter into an already known pattern. There is a difference.
--
I can't make much sense of this, but you are clearly confusing thermo entropy with Shannon/Weaver entropy. Probably deliberately in order to equivocate.
Nonetheless, it is trivial mathematically to show that no thermo laws are broken by evolution. Let's take a dog genome, dg, and nucleotides AGCT, nu, and energy (ultimately from the sun), e:
dg + x(nu) + e -> 2(dg) + x(H_2O)
Now, let's add a cat genome (roughly the same size),cg, to each side of the equation:
cg + dg + x(nu) +e -> cg + 2(dg) + x(H_2O)
Now subtract a dog genome from each side:
cg + x(nu) + e -> dg + x(H_2O)
Now we see that thermodynamically, it is entirely possible for a dog to become a cat with no violation of thermo laws. Of course it is statistically so improbable as to be impossible, but it is clear that the thermo arguments are a strawman.
If you want to argue Shannon/Weaver entropy, then let's go.
Where is any law violated?
Slashdot Mirror
----- -----
You understand wrong. I suppose you got this from one of the creationist rags out there on the web and didn't bother to check up on any of the "facts" they presented. In reality, the building of the phylogenetic tree of life was first attempted as early as 1967(1). As we sequence more and more genomes, the phylogenetic data only strengthen the theory of common decent. The conclusion is inescapable unless you have some religous hangup with the conclusions and are forced to ignore the data. Flat earth. Geocentricism. Creationism. History repeats itself.
1. Construction of Phylogenetic Trees, Walter M. Fitch and Emanuel Margoliash, Science Vol 155: 279-284.
----- -----
Wrong. Organisms don't evolve, populations evolve. Care to cite any reference that confirms this mysterious creationist "wall" between micro and macro evolution? Do you even know the difference?
taftman writes:
----- -----
This is hard to parse, but you seem to be saying that that speciation is impossible. This is patently false since speciation has been observed both in the lab and in the wild.
taftman writes:
----- -----
Fred Hoyle is turning over in his grave.
This is another popular creationist strawman. Random mutation provides the raw material for evolution, but this completly ignores the fact that natural selection is the sieve through which the randomness is filtered.
taftman writes:
----- -----
What research have you done? Apparently you just regurgipost long refuted creationist claptrap.
Evolution is a very complex and diverse scientific field requiring years of research and study to fully comprehend. The creationist rags just present overly simplified, and outright wrong, interpretations of evolution that aren't even internally consistant. The best places to find information on evolution is in the primary literature. There are dozens of scientific journals dedicated to biological evolution. All are peer-reviewed and consistant. Check out your local university library sometime. Try to find even a single scientific paper on creationism. If the creationist rags were correct in their views, and evoultionary theory is so wrong, then there should be hundreds of scientific papers criticizing evolution.
dS=dQ/T
The creationist claptrap you cut-n-pasted is a strawman based very loosely on a very special case of the 2LoT involving ideal gasses.
I will present a mathematical proof that the creationist thermodynamic (2LoT) argument against evolution is effectively dead.
We'll use a dog's genome in this proof. A dog's genome has about 3 billion (3.0e9) base pairs 60.6% (1.8e9 base pairs) of which consists of AdenineThymine and 39.4% (1.2e9 base pairs) GuanineCytosine. In the simplest chemical terms, a genome duplication consists of:
G_dog + (1.8e9)A + (1.8e9)T + (1.2e9)G + (1.2e9)C + (3.0e9)H_2PO_4- + (3.0e9)DR + E ---> 2G_dog + (3.0e9)H_2O
Where: G_dog == Dog Genome
H_2PO_4- == Di-Hydrogen Phosphate ion
A == Adenine (a DNA base)
T == Thymine (a DNA base)
G == Guanine (a DNA base)
C == Cytosine (a DNA base)
DR == Deoxyribose (a sugar)
E == Energy(1)
Since we're not realy concerned much with most of the reactants, we can simplify to:
G_dog + (stuff) ---> 2G_dog + water
Since this is a mathematical equality, we can add a cat genome to each side of the equation:
G_cat + G_dog + (stuff) ---> 2G_dog + G_cat + water
Similarly, we can subtract a dog genome from each side of the equation:
G_cat + (stuff) ---> G_dog + G_cat + water
So there is nothing thermodynamical nor chemical that prevents a cat from becoming a dog in a single genome duplication.
Of course, in reality, the odds of this are astronomical, but that's a different argument.
The creationist thermodynamic (2Lot) argument is unsound.
Q.E.D.
1. In the cell, this reaction requires energy to drive the machinery which is supplied in abundance in the form of ATP (Adenine tri-phosphate) which is ultimately derived from the sun via thermionic coupling. To duplicate our dog genome, 4.7e10 ATP molecules are converted to ADP resuting in the consumption of about 2.37e11 Joules of energy. The sun radiates 3.9e26 joules of energy into the empty space around it every second. The entropy loss in our genome duplication is insignificant compared to the massive entropy gain of the sun-earth system so the 2nd law is not violated.
Please, in future if you are going to claim that a quote was out of context - check that that is true first. That way I don't have to waste 30 minutes of my life correcting a mistake that didn't have to be made.
Well, since I read the article, and re-read it before posting (wasting over an hour of my life on the likes of you), I can only assume that you are willfully ignorant and you can't see past your religous blinders. I won't waste anymore of my life on you.
"You can't reason a person out of a position they did not arrive at by reason."
I know how quick you are to forget, so quickly again this is why mDNA defies the evolution model. mDNA shows that all females have a common ancestor about 6,000 years ago. Evolution, however, says that Aboriginees in Australia have been isolated for at least 40,000 years. And I'm sure it's not just Australia.
Did you even bother to read the primary literature? The site you referenced (www.creationscience.com) as is typical of creationist sites, finds a snippet from a legitimate scientific article that upon the surface seems to support whatever the creationist claim de jour is at the moment, but upon closer investigation says quite the opposite. To wit: www.creationscience.com quotes the following from Science Volume 279, Number 5347, Issue of 2 Jan 1998, pp. 28-29.
Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that "mitochondrial Eve"--the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living people--lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.
The very next line is: "No one thinks that's the case..." And goes on to describe a number of reasons for the descepency.
Another clear-cut example of creationist "quote mining."
After reading the article, it seems that this is a complex of silicon, gold, hydrocarbons, etc. all combined into a system that can manipulate and detect a state change in a single cobalt atom. While a major accomplishment (previously quite a bit more stuff was needed to manipulate and detect single atom state changes) I would hardly call it a single atom transistor.
Probably because we're getting better at looking for them (not good enough obviously).
Kinda makes you wonder how close (or how big--or both) some others may have been in the past when we didn't have the technology to find them.
Not likely. See the Oklo data. The thermal fissionable isotopes would be diluted by the shear volume of U-238. Fast neutrons from U-238 spontaneous fission cannot induce fission in U-235 without thermalization by a moderator. There would be no adequate moderator in the molten core.
The "self-excited dynamo" theory of geomagnetism has always been shakey and based on a lot of unwarrented assumptions; but, until now, has been the best explanation.
Natural radioactive decay is not the same as a fission reaction.
As usual, the pop science publications do this little justice. The primary literature is published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is published online at: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/20/11085 and certainly makes the case sound more convincing.
The article at EV world doesn't didn't, to my dismay, discuss the electro-magnetic implications at all. It sounded like a stretch to me to conflate geomagnetism with a nuclear process.
You keep spouting these mysterious "evidences" yet can't seem to come up with any that actually work. Where's the reports on this greenland airplane ice study? It took scientists over 5 years to select the vostok site to be absolutly sure that they were getting a core from ice that was not moving and that had remained undisturbed for millenia. Where's the fesability study for for the greenland airplane ice site?
Where's there any studies on the problems with radiometric dating? There are entire journals devoted to radiometric dating with all their data out there in the open for anyone to examine and critique. You'd think with all the so-called problems creationts claim there is with radiometric dating, at least one of them would submit a scientific critique to those journals. Maybe scientists doing real science actually come up with methods that work.
Do you think it is just a bizzare coincidence that ice-core layer counting, ice-core CO2 radiocarbon dating, ice-core 36Cl radiometric dating, cave stagmite layer counting, cave stalagmite 36Cl radiometric dating, stalagmite U-Th radiometric dating, overlapping oak tree-ring counting, oak tree-ring 14C dating, coral layer counting, coral 90Sr radiometric dating, and the SINT200 stacked geomagnetic record all just happen to give very similar overlapping calibration curves? The odds would be astronomical (something about a tornado in a junkyard comes to mind). All these dating projects were done independantly and at different times over the last few decades and remarkably, they all tell a similar story as to the age of the earth. Sure, creationists can spout off anecdotes about how such-and-such rock gave a date 5 million years off or somesuch, but they never seem to produce any real data to back up these claims. Its all hearsay, or outright fabrication. Even if they did have a genuine datapoint or two that didn't seem to fit, that pales in comparison to the mountain of data that do fit.
I kown you'll just brush this off too. Fine with me; live in your fantasy world. It's obvious you don't care about evidence or real science. You just cheerfully handwave it away. That's your right, but don't try and cram your religous propaganda into our public schools and at least have the decency to admit that creationism is a religion and has nothing to do with science.
Have a nice day.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/55
Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica Petit, JR;Jouzel, J;Raynaud, D;Barkov, NI;Barnola, JM;Basile, I;Bender, M;Chappellaz, J;Davis, M;Delaygue, G;Delmotte, M;Kotlyakov, VM;Legrand, M;Lipenkov, VY;Lorius, C;Pepin, L;Ritz, C;Saltzman, E;Stievenard, M NATURE 399: (6735) 429-436 JUN 3 1999
Here we see a painstaking description of the methodology used in dating the Vostok Antarctica ice core samples. Contrast this to your second-hand anecdotal reference to some airplane affectionado's wild-ass guess. Another lie from the anonymous coward. See:
Geology 29, 483 (2001).
From the abstract:
Coral reefs are important as marine ecosystems, and their growth has been linked to the carbon dioxide content in Earth's atmosphere. However, the timing of major reef growth has been uncertain for many reefs, including Earth's largest, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Analysis by an international consortium of two recent drill cores taken from the Great Barrier Reef indicates that it began to form about 600,000 years ago. This age is based on magnetic stratigraphy through the drill core (and the absence of the marked geomagnetic reversal 790,000 years ago) and on the Sr isotope composition of the corals. This age implies that the Great Barrier Reef has grown by about 10 to 28 centimeters per year, which is similar to the growth rate of other reefs worldwide. Why reef growth started at that time is unknown, but it might reflect a period of increased sea surface temperatures, a connection with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, or both.
Let's narrow it down a little further and discus one aspect of the "turbulent water problem."
Since I don't have (nor intend to purchase) Woodromappe's book, how does he explain how coral could have survived a global flood? Coral is very sensitive to even the slitest climatic changes. Adding even a few meters of water--not to mention water contaminated by silt from ground runoff--is sufficient to destroy coral due to blocked sunlight(1). Coral is also very sensitive to temperature, salinity, and nutrient load changes(1).
For now, we'll ignore the fact that coral, like trees and their rings, show anual layering that can be counted and like tree rings show climatic changes(2). Nowhere in the coral record of several reefs is there any evidence of a global flood.
1. Biology and geology of eastern Pacific coral Reefs Cortes, J CORAL REEFS 16: S39-S46, Suppl. S JUN 1997
2. Photosynthesis and calcification at cellular, organismal and community levels in coral reefs: A review on interactions and control by carbonate chemistry, Gattuso, JP;Allemand, D;Frankignoulle, M AMERICAN ZOOLOGIST 39: (1) 160-183 FEB 1999
See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodmorappe-review . tml
then bring up one or two points to argue. The entire paper is beyond the scope of critque on /.
Strawman alert!. html.
No one but creationists think that the laws of nature work by random chance. Even your hero Yockey claims that most of say a hemoglobin protein is just bulk and its amino acid sequence is superfulous http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199602/0123
Anyway, you are arguing against abiogenesis. Please stop moving the goalposts. The math above shows that there is no thermodynamic reason why a dog genome cannot become a cat genome in a single step. I acknowleged the fact that it is statistically nearly impossible. Fortunately for science, none of this is necessary for evolution to work. Since abiogenesis research is not likely to ever give the exact answer on how the first self-replicator on this planet formed, I have no beef with theistic evolutionists who claim god made the first self-replicator and let evolution work from there. I take it that this is NOT your position however, right?
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Hmmm. I don't recall newspapers being able to SELF-replicate, nor do INDIVIDUALS evolve, so the analogy is flawed from the start.
At any given time a breeding population has n number of alleles in the gene pool. If one of those alleles in one individual becomes mutated, then there are now n+1 alleles in the breeding population. How tough is that?
Thermo strawman alert!
Quote:
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I can't make much sense of this, but you are clearly confusing thermo entropy with Shannon/Weaver entropy. Probably deliberately in order to equivocate.
Nonetheless, it is trivial mathematically to show that no thermo laws are broken by evolution. Let's take a dog genome, dg, and nucleotides AGCT, nu, and energy (ultimately from the sun), e:
dg + x(nu) + e -> 2(dg) + x(H_2O)
Now, let's add a cat genome (roughly the same size),cg, to each side of the equation:
cg + dg + x(nu) +e -> cg + 2(dg) + x(H_2O)
Now subtract a dog genome from each side:
cg + x(nu) + e -> dg + x(H_2O)
Now we see that thermodynamically, it is entirely possible for a dog to become a cat with no violation of thermo laws. Of course it is statistically so improbable as to be impossible, but it is clear that the thermo arguments are a strawman.
If you want to argue Shannon/Weaver entropy, then let's go. Where is any law violated?
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Of course they can argue, but it is obvious they are wrong.
How hard is it--for even an average American with our paltry math/science knowlege--to not see that n+1 > n?
Even if you only consider animals, Insects make up more biomass than all other animals put together!