As I pointed out to the other poster, the problem with Behe's work is that even if his examples are correct (which is becoming increasly unlikely given recent experimental work[1]), it doesn't provide any barrier to evolution.
Your analogy to quantum machanics is irrelvent to this topic, as quantum machanics doesn't involve selection events in the same way as natural selection (unless we are looking at certain work such as L. Seolin (sp?)).
The major flaw in your reasoning can be found in this line; "It is fair to say that irreducibly complex systems can result by random chance". Darwins great theory is anything but random. While random chance does play a important role in evolution, you are ignoring the other part of evolutionary theory; natural selection. This renders simple probability arguements moot (some of Richard Dawkins popular science books provide a graphic example of this via. a simple program).
As for Behe's intellectualy honesty, I disagree with you. He misleads his readers about the state of molecular evolution (ironically when I first saw his book, I was living with a molecular biologist and given that there were papers and books on molecular evolution all over my flat, I could help but be amused). Also he choses to ignore the peer review process, and publish his work in a popular science format, which (when the material is new) is never a sign of sound science. In fact it reaks of pseudoscience.
Actually, I read Darwin's Black Box, and I don't seem to recall Behe putting forward any theories. Instead I saw him pointing out problems with classical and neo-Darwinism. Being able to account for one or two of the issues in no way accounts for all of them. Behe should need only one counter-example to disprove all of evolution, assuming evolution is a scientific theory of course.
He put forward a theoretical barrier to evolution at the molecular scale (irreducible complexity), and then provided examples of it nature.
The problem was that IC isn't a barrier to evolution (there are many situations in which in could occur), and that his examples aren't irreducibly complex.
I get the feeling Behe has been more swept under the rug than anything.
If he has been, it's entirly his own fault. He chose to ignore the scientific community and present his work in the popular press. Apparently what's good enough for all other scientists isn't good enough for him.
Secondly, the archaeology in the silly stories is better than outside them, and has been for nigh on 2k years.
Very debatably point. One which a whole heap of archaelogists would disagree with you.
Thirdly, said silly stories happen to frequently predict the future (from the writers' POV) with pinpoint accuracy, and also record fulfilments of some earlier predictions.
Once again very debatably point. The dates in which the Bible was written are up for considerable debate.
And given the Bible's inability to get past occurances (from the author's POV) correct (such as Jesus's year of birth), makes me very scepticalabout it's ability to predict the past.
Fourthly, physical copies of texts from before 2k years ago have been found, and despite claims of babelfishing, they're still accurate.
Examples???
Fifthly, to believe in evolution, you have to lay aside critical thinking. Really! Ask Steve Gould and the other punkeekers to show you why Darwinian evolution doesn't work, and he will. Ask their Darwinian opponents to show you why punkeek doesn't work, and they will. End of story. No Creationism, `silly stories' or even Intelligent Design, required so far.
This is completely false. Neither side has disproven the other, they are argueing about details not the fundamentals. This is just slander put forth by a peusdoscience which gave up any attempt at honesty a long time ago.
I'd say that the acceptance of neo-Darwinism as a complete explanation for the origins of life, despite its complete inability to explain the only recently understood complexities of biochemistry, reflects a similar bias. (Consult Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe---a believer in both intelligent design and evolutionary processes---for more information.)
Judging by this statement, I going to assume that you aren't aware that not only has Behe's theory of irreducible complexity (which has also never been published in a scientific journal, just in the popular press - always a good sign of pseudoscience) has been completely disproved (many of the examples he has chosen have been shown to be reducible), and that the evolution can explain irreducible complexity as well.
Actually, economists have demonstrated time and time again that the alternatives will be developed long before needed. Prices for transportation will continue to drop [juliansimon.com] unless government intervention comes to "help us", in which case prices rise. Thanks, gov't., for the "help".
This statement is quite a misleading simplification of a very complex reality. For more information on the not so perfect free market, perhaps you should read some of Amartya Sen's work.
The price of a soul is whatever you can get for it. At my uni, a couple of years ago, some students started to buy souls for a beer. I think they stopped after some Christian group went absolutely nuts at them, but before that sales were good. Assuming that the supply of and demand for souls hasn't changed radical since then, then the cost of a soul should be way under the cost of photoshop.
Because there is exactly zero evidence for it (and plenty that just plain contradicts it). If you want to accept it on faith, that fine by me. Personally I prefer the scientific method, but it's just a case of different courses for different horses.
Assuming that the above posters facts are in order, if the EU pays 55% of the worlds development aid, they pay more both in total and relative to GDP than the US.
I've read the orginal article, and it the same as the BBC report. Aparently the results were given at a talk in a conference, and a New Scientist journalist found it interesting enough to give it a write up.
One problem with the vapour diffusion theory, is that bacteria tend to have a wide tolence for varying environomental conditions. If one side was drying out, then I would suspect that the effects on the agar gel (I'm guessing that's what they are using as a growth media) would be visable, if the mosture levels got low enough to kill the bacteria.
1. For the airborne "messages" to be sent, I'm assuming that the E.coli cultures were in open air, and not in water. So each side of the divider was pretty much in the same system.
They were in a petri dish which had a dividing wall cutting it into two sections. There was a 5 mm gap between the dividing wall and the roof, so they weren't exactly in "open air"
2. If "pheremones" were able to cross through the gap, then the antibiotics should have been able to also.
To the best of my knowledge, antibiotics can't migrate through the air (there may be a few varities which can, but the vast majority can't), so they shouldn't migrate across the barrier.
If you have an ammount of antibiotics x, and another number of E.coli y, then you will have the ratio of antibiotits to bacterium x/y. If x is a large number compared to y, then the E.coli have small chance of survival... more "poision" per cell. But if you were increase y, then the ammount of "poision" per cell decreases in the system, thus improving the chance for each individual cell to survive.
This isn't exactly how the bacteria survive. Generally only a small amount of antibiotics is needed to kill a bacteria infection. However a tiny minority of bacteria (maybe one in a billion) will mutate (or already possess the mutation) so it is immune to the antibiotics. These bacteria will either repopulate the petri dish with their clones, or pass on the mutation to other non-clones (bacteria commonly swap genetic material) allowing them to survive. Therefore it isn't a simple x/y ratio.
Hawking himself doesn't test his theories, however, his theories to lead to testable predictions. I'm not a expert in this area, so I can't give many concrete examples, however, the prediction of Hawking radiation should effect the distribution of black hole sizes (he predicts that the smaller black holes should be unstable). Hence his theory has a testable prediction (there are others, but I don't know enough about his work).
In principle, these claims are testable predicitons. But because all methods of doing so are unable return data, they're useless in practice.
No, God, Angels and Heaven aren't testable, if we have no possible means to test them.
There are some theories that aren't testable at the moment, but there are proposed means to test them (R. Penrose is a good example of a scientist with theories that are currently not able to be tested, but can be if we are willing to to invest a whole heap of money in satellites).
Until somebody can come up with a "God measuring machine" (a physical impossibility if s/he wants to be hidden), then God isn't a testable phenomina. In principle or practice.
Firstly, for a link of Stephen Hawkings publications , check out this pdf. Most of the publications listed are in scientific journals. Given that Hawking publishs in scientific journals, calling him a scientist is correct.
As for the rest of your post, I'm not sure that you properly understand what science is. In a nutshell, science can be described as a process for finding the best possible explaination for the observed world. All science requires assumptions. That the laws of physics are constant is a common one. As a chemist, all of my work requires an assumption that atoms exists (plus many other assumptions). As there is no evidence against this, the assumption is resonable, especially given that no completing theory can come close to explaining all of the observations in the chemical world.
I say now that Hawking does not practice science, but rather the religion of science. Be he priest, prophet, or simple thelogian, he is no more a scientist than I am.
I would quite strongly disagree with your post. Just because one is a scientist doesn't mean that one practices science all the time. For example, plenty of scientists are religious, but that doens't make religion a science, nor does it mean that the science that they do isn't scientific.
To see Hawkings science, read his peer reviewed journal articles.
Which scientists? The IPCC? That was mostly signed by environmentalists and politicians. There was a whopping 1 climate scientist that signed it. On the other hand, this petition [oism.org], signed by over 15,000 scientists suggests otherwise.
Perhaps your unaware of the state of environmental science, but the Bush adminstration asked the National Academy of Sciences to evalute the IPCC (which is very different to your FUD) claims, and they found in favour of the global warming. (Link)
Meanwhile the global warming petition is just a PR exercise. Science is done by a bunch of non-specialists (I'm not a climate scientist, yet my qualifications would put allow me to add my name to the petition) voting on it. Especially, when parts of the petition's supporting information are boarderline fraud.
This might be evidence of global warming, but not unlike the ozone hole, it is mainly speculation.
I personally find this spectulation quite amusing. Last year, I had the honour of attending a lecture given by F. Sherwood Roland (who won the Nobel prize in chemistry for his work on atmospheric (and most importantly ozone) chemistry) on the state of atmospheric chemistry. He felt that the scientific evidence pointed towards human induced global warming.
Oh really? That contradicts existing information to-date, and doesn't speak about what has happened in the last 23 years that we have a satellite temperature record for (and that shows no warming whatsoever).
You should really change your peusdoscience source.
Global warming is a accepted scientific theory. Whereas the warming-skeptics gave up on science a long time ago, and have reduced themselves to a PR agency.
For a good overview of the science behind global warming, this link gives a pretty good overview (with links to the peer review lit.).
The problem with your list of textbooks (and hence evidence to support your claim) is that it doesn't include the context in which they use ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Futuyama, for example, doesn't use teach that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, rather it mentions it (and Haekel's diagram's, in later editions) in context of the history of evolutionary thought.
I haven't read the other textbooks, but given your misreperesentation of Futuyama's textbook, I would be very surprised if you have the context correct.
Wow, completely ignoring my post... Morton's demon seems to be in more than one place.
Nebraska man was a misintrepreted bone. You stated that it was a fake. This is totally incorrect. If your going to dismiss reality because it doens't fit with your worldview, that nice, but I've never lost so much respect for a person so fast. I agree, there is no point carrying on these posts. Have a good day.
Ok, let me get this straight, Odom (who respects Gentry, and see's him as "the acknowledged expert in the field") publishs a natural explanation of the Po halos, despite knowing that Gentry (who he respects etc etc) has already rebutted his findings in early papers (there is no way that Odom can't have read Gentry's earlier papers). Sorry, but that means that eith Odom and the reviewers of his article have no crediablity, or Gentry is full of it.
Giving his replies (I have read a webpage (which I can't quite remember where it is) which stated (and I'm assuming that it is based on Gentry's rebuttal to Brewley's work) which claimed that Po halo's couldn't be due Rn, because of the lack of cracks for Rn to diffuse through, and the lack of Po path's formed from decaying Rn) to people such as John Brawley's Rn theory, ignores several important parts of Brawley's theory (that Rn can travel through very very spaces, such as gaps in the xtal lattice, and that it U decay's into Rn at a very small rate), I'll would suspect that Gentry is full of it.
I understand that it's disturbing to see hard evidence against something that you believe strongly; are you willing to possibly consider looking into it rather than just throwing words around?
Perhaps you should ask yourself the same question, remeber that even if no natural explaination can explain Po halo's (which I doubt very much), you still have to ignore all of modern geology to get a young earth (have you ever wondering why the vast vast majority of earth scientists believe in a old earth? - it's not because of the a great evolution conspiracy, nor because they are stupid). From what I've seen of your posts over the last few days, you seem like a intelligent person, but one who has been duped by a bunch of frauds and liers (I'm talking more about Steve Austin and co, rather than Gentry - who I have a lot more respect for). Perhaps you should check out some of the online work that provides a Christian perspective of evolution?
Could you please produce evidence (peer reviewed, of course) for these claims.
You seem to be using a whole heap of selective evidence. Perhaps you show check out this post from talk origins, from a ex-creationist on his use of selective evidence.
For example, your paragraph on proto-humans is extremely misleading. You when you ignore the fakes (incidently both Java and Nebraska men weren't fakes), you don't get to Neandertals. The source of your information is being highly dishonest. Perhaps you are unaware of Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, and Homo heidelbergensis. For a very good reference source check out this page. As for your orthodondist (could you also please supply a citation to his peer reviewed report), my girlfriend has studied archeology and biology under both Colin Groves (very famous evolutionary biologist) and Alan Thorne (discoverer of the Mungo Man), and from her, I am well aware that the researchers take into account bone diseases. Plus your claim that Neandertals are just heavily arthritic old people is proved false by mitochondria DNA studies, which show them to be very far removed genetically removed from "mainstream" humanity (Check out here and here, as well as Krings M., Capelli C., Tschentscher F., Geisert H., Meyer S., von Haeseler A. et al (Nature Genetics, 2000, 26:144-6) for more information).
Your other points are just as weak as the human evolution one detailed above. If you want, I can go into detail on them.
As for rephrasing the Medal and Darwin comments; when Darwin first proposed his theory, the common held view about genetics (that traits where blended, ie, the child of a small person and a tall person would be of a medium height) provide a theoretical barrier to evolution (at least of the theoretical model of evolution provided by Darwin), this lead to the Darwin's predicting that the genetics was wrong. The answer to this problem came from Medel's work on peas, while this was done in Darwin's time, it was largely unknown (ironically, Darwin had a large book on genetics which included Medel's work, but never made the connection between Medel's peas and his own theoretical problem). This problem was solved by a variety of researchers who combined Darwin's theory with Mendel's, the synthesis of the two being call neodarwinism, which is the currently accepted view of how evolution occurs.
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As I pointed out to the other poster, the problem with Behe's work is that even if his examples are correct (which is becoming increasly unlikely given recent experimental work[1]), it doesn't provide any barrier to evolution.
Your analogy to quantum machanics is irrelvent to this topic, as quantum machanics doesn't involve selection events in the same way as natural selection (unless we are looking at certain work such as L. Seolin (sp?)).
The major flaw in your reasoning can be found in this line; "It is fair to say that irreducibly complex systems can result by random chance". Darwins great theory is anything but random. While random chance does play a important role in evolution, you are ignoring the other part of evolutionary theory; natural selection. This renders simple probability arguements moot (some of Richard Dawkins popular science books provide a graphic example of this via. a simple program).
As for Behe's intellectualy honesty, I disagree with you. He misleads his readers about the state of molecular evolution (ironically when I first saw his book, I was living with a molecular biologist and given that there were papers and books on molecular evolution all over my flat, I could help but be amused). Also he choses to ignore the peer review process, and publish his work in a popular science format, which (when the material is new) is never a sign of sound science. In fact it reaks of pseudoscience.
Actually, I read Darwin's Black Box, and I don't seem to recall Behe putting forward any theories. Instead I saw him pointing out problems with classical and neo-Darwinism. Being able to account for one or two of the issues in no way accounts for all of them. Behe should need only one counter-example to disprove all of evolution, assuming evolution is a scientific theory of course.
He put forward a theoretical barrier to evolution at the molecular scale (irreducible complexity), and then provided examples of it nature.
The problem was that IC isn't a barrier to evolution (there are many situations in which in could occur), and that his examples aren't irreducibly complex.
I get the feeling Behe has been more swept under the rug than anything.
If he has been, it's entirly his own fault. He chose to ignore the scientific community and present his work in the popular press. Apparently what's good enough for all other scientists isn't good enough for him.
Secondly, the archaeology in the silly stories is better than outside them, and has been for nigh on 2k years.
Very debatably point. One which a whole heap of archaelogists would disagree with you.
Thirdly, said silly stories happen to frequently predict the future (from the writers' POV) with pinpoint accuracy, and also record fulfilments of some earlier predictions.
Once again very debatably point. The dates in which the Bible was written are up for considerable debate.
And given the Bible's inability to get past occurances (from the author's POV) correct (such as Jesus's year of birth), makes me very scepticalabout it's ability to predict the past.
Fourthly, physical copies of texts from before 2k years ago have been found, and despite claims of babelfishing, they're still accurate.
Examples???
Fifthly, to believe in evolution, you have to lay aside critical thinking. Really! Ask Steve Gould and the other punkeekers to show you why Darwinian evolution doesn't work, and he will. Ask their Darwinian opponents to show you why punkeek doesn't work, and they will. End of story. No Creationism, `silly stories' or even Intelligent Design, required so far.
This is completely false. Neither side has disproven the other, they are argueing about details not the fundamentals. This is just slander put forth by a peusdoscience which gave up any attempt at honesty a long time ago.
Minor correction, Nature is one of the best science journals out there (I would be absolutely over the moon if they would only publish my stuff).
I'd say that the acceptance of neo-Darwinism as a complete explanation for the origins of life, despite its complete inability to explain the only recently understood complexities of biochemistry, reflects a similar bias. (Consult Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe---a believer in both intelligent design and evolutionary processes---for more information.)
Judging by this statement, I going to assume that you aren't aware that not only has Behe's theory of irreducible complexity (which has also never been published in a scientific journal, just in the popular press - always a good sign of pseudoscience) has been completely disproved (many of the examples he has chosen have been shown to be reducible), and that the evolution can explain irreducible complexity as well.
...these would include his sons Lachlan and {name escapes me at the moment, though I want to say James}...
I'm not 100% sure of this, but you may have mixed in James Packer (son of Kerry Packer, the other (ex-in the case of Murdoch) Australian media giant).
Incidently both Lachlan and James have both screwed up big time recently with daddies money when they invested in One. Tel
Actually, economists have demonstrated time and time again that the alternatives will be developed long before needed. Prices for transportation will continue to drop [juliansimon.com] unless government intervention comes to "help us", in which case prices rise. Thanks, gov't., for the "help".
This statement is quite a misleading simplification of a very complex reality. For more information on the not so perfect free market, perhaps you should read some of Amartya Sen's work.
The price of a soul is whatever you can get for it. At my uni, a couple of years ago, some students started to buy souls for a beer. I think they stopped after some Christian group went absolutely nuts at them, but before that sales were good. Assuming that the supply of and demand for souls hasn't changed radical since then, then the cost of a soul should be way under the cost of photoshop.
Surprising that. If you give your copyright to someone else, they have control of it. Whatever next?
Why is this so hard for people to accept?
Because there is exactly zero evidence for it (and plenty that just plain contradicts it). If you want to accept it on faith, that fine by me. Personally I prefer the scientific method, but it's just a case of different courses for different horses.
Assuming that the above posters facts are in order, if the EU pays 55% of the worlds development aid, they pay more both in total and relative to GDP than the US.
I've read the orginal article, and it the same as the BBC report. Aparently the results were given at a talk in a conference, and a New Scientist journalist found it interesting enough to give it a write up.
One problem with the vapour diffusion theory, is that bacteria tend to have a wide tolence for varying environomental conditions. If one side was drying out, then I would suspect that the effects on the agar gel (I'm guessing that's what they are using as a growth media) would be visable, if the mosture levels got low enough to kill the bacteria.
1. For the airborne "messages" to be sent, I'm assuming that the E.coli cultures were in open air, and not in water. So each side of the divider was pretty much in the same system.
They were in a petri dish which had a dividing wall cutting it into two sections. There was a 5 mm gap between the dividing wall and the roof, so they weren't exactly in "open air"
2. If "pheremones" were able to cross through the gap, then the antibiotics should have been able to also.
To the best of my knowledge, antibiotics can't migrate through the air (there may be a few varities which can, but the vast majority can't), so they shouldn't migrate across the barrier.
If you have an ammount of antibiotics x, and another number of E.coli y, then you will have the ratio of antibiotits to bacterium x/y. If x is a large number compared to y, then the E.coli have small chance of survival... more "poision" per cell. But if you were increase y, then the ammount of "poision" per cell decreases in the system, thus improving the chance for each individual cell to survive.
This isn't exactly how the bacteria survive. Generally only a small amount of antibiotics is needed to kill a bacteria infection. However a tiny minority of bacteria (maybe one in a billion) will mutate (or already possess the mutation) so it is immune to the antibiotics. These bacteria will either repopulate the petri dish with their clones, or pass on the mutation to other non-clones (bacteria commonly swap genetic material) allowing them to survive. Therefore it isn't a simple x/y ratio.
Hawking himself doesn't test his theories, however, his theories to lead to testable predictions. I'm not a expert in this area, so I can't give many concrete examples, however, the prediction of Hawking radiation should effect the distribution of black hole sizes (he predicts that the smaller black holes should be unstable). Hence his theory has a testable prediction (there are others, but I don't know enough about his work).
In principle, these claims are testable predicitons. But because all methods of doing so are unable return data, they're useless in practice.
No, God, Angels and Heaven aren't testable, if we have no possible means to test them.
There are some theories that aren't testable at the moment, but there are proposed means to test them (R. Penrose is a good example of a scientist with theories that are currently not able to be tested, but can be if we are willing to to invest a whole heap of money in satellites).
Until somebody can come up with a "God measuring machine" (a physical impossibility if s/he wants to be hidden), then God isn't a testable phenomina. In principle or practice.
Firstly, for a link of Stephen Hawkings publications , check out this pdf. Most of the publications listed are in scientific journals. Given that Hawking publishs in scientific journals, calling him a scientist is correct.
As for the rest of your post, I'm not sure that you properly understand what science is. In a nutshell, science can be described as a process for finding the best possible explaination for the observed world. All science requires assumptions. That the laws of physics are constant is a common one. As a chemist, all of my work requires an assumption that atoms exists (plus many other assumptions). As there is no evidence against this, the assumption is resonable, especially given that no completing theory can come close to explaining all of the observations in the chemical world.
I say now that Hawking does not practice science, but rather the religion of science. Be he priest, prophet, or simple thelogian, he is no more a scientist than I am.
I would quite strongly disagree with your post. Just because one is a scientist doesn't mean that one practices science all the time. For example, plenty of scientists are religious, but that doens't make religion a science, nor does it mean that the science that they do isn't scientific.
To see Hawkings science, read his peer reviewed journal articles.
Which scientists? The IPCC? That was mostly signed by environmentalists and politicians. There was a whopping 1 climate scientist that signed it. On the other hand, this petition [oism.org], signed by over 15,000 scientists suggests otherwise.
Perhaps your unaware of the state of environmental science, but the Bush adminstration asked the National Academy of Sciences to evalute the IPCC (which is very different to your FUD) claims, and they found in favour of the global warming. (Link)
Meanwhile the global warming petition is just a PR exercise. Science is done by a bunch of non-specialists (I'm not a climate scientist, yet my qualifications would put allow me to add my name to the petition) voting on it. Especially, when parts of the petition's supporting information are boarderline fraud.
This might be evidence of global warming, but not unlike the ozone hole, it is mainly speculation.
I personally find this spectulation quite amusing. Last year, I had the honour of attending a lecture given by F. Sherwood Roland (who won the Nobel prize in chemistry for his work on atmospheric (and most importantly ozone) chemistry) on the state of atmospheric chemistry. He felt that the scientific evidence pointed towards human induced global warming.
Oh really? That contradicts existing information to-date, and doesn't speak about what has happened in the last 23 years that we have a satellite temperature record for (and that shows no warming whatsoever).
You should really change your peusdoscience source.
Global warming is a accepted scientific theory. Whereas the warming-skeptics gave up on science a long time ago, and have reduced themselves to a PR agency.
For a good overview of the science behind global warming, this link gives a pretty good overview (with links to the peer review lit.).
The problem with your list of textbooks (and hence evidence to support your claim) is that it doesn't include the context in which they use ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Futuyama, for example, doesn't use teach that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, rather it mentions it (and Haekel's diagram's, in later editions) in context of the history of evolutionary thought.
I haven't read the other textbooks, but given your misreperesentation of Futuyama's textbook, I would be very surprised if you have the context correct.
Wow, completely ignoring my post... Morton's demon seems to be in more than one place.
Nebraska man was a misintrepreted bone. You stated that it was a fake. This is totally incorrect.
If your going to dismiss reality because it doens't fit with your worldview, that nice, but I've never lost so much respect for a person so fast. I agree, there is no point carrying on these posts. Have a good day.
I did read your post, and it doesn't make sense.
Ok, let me get this straight, Odom (who respects Gentry, and see's him as "the acknowledged expert in the field") publishs a natural explanation of the Po halos, despite knowing that Gentry (who he respects etc etc) has already rebutted his findings in early papers (there is no way that Odom can't have read Gentry's earlier papers). Sorry, but that means that eith Odom and the reviewers of his article have no crediablity, or Gentry is full of it.
Giving his replies (I have read a webpage (which I can't quite remember where it is) which stated (and I'm assuming that it is based on Gentry's rebuttal to Brewley's work) which claimed that Po halo's couldn't be due Rn, because of the lack of cracks for Rn to diffuse through, and the lack of Po path's formed from decaying Rn) to people such as John Brawley's Rn theory, ignores several important parts of Brawley's theory (that Rn can travel through very very spaces, such as gaps in the xtal lattice, and that it U decay's into Rn at a very small rate), I'll would suspect that Gentry is full of it.
I understand that it's disturbing to see hard evidence against something that you believe strongly; are you willing to possibly consider looking into it rather than just throwing words around?
Perhaps you should ask yourself the same question, remeber that even if no natural explaination can explain Po halo's (which I doubt very much), you still have to ignore all of modern geology to get a young earth (have you ever wondering why the vast vast majority of earth scientists believe in a old earth? - it's not because of the a great evolution conspiracy, nor because they are stupid). From what I've seen of your posts over the last few days, you seem like a intelligent person, but one who has been duped by a bunch of frauds and liers (I'm talking more about Steve Austin and co, rather than Gentry - who I have a lot more respect for). Perhaps you should check out some of the online work that provides a Christian perspective of evolution?
Could you please produce evidence (peer reviewed, of course) for these claims.
You seem to be using a whole heap of selective evidence. Perhaps you show check out this post from talk origins, from a ex-creationist on his use of selective evidence.
For example, your paragraph on proto-humans is extremely misleading. You when you ignore the fakes (incidently both Java and Nebraska men weren't fakes), you don't get to Neandertals. The source of your information is being highly dishonest. Perhaps you are unaware of Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, and Homo heidelbergensis. For a very good reference source check out this page. As for your orthodondist (could you also please supply a citation to his peer reviewed report), my girlfriend has studied archeology and biology under both Colin Groves (very famous evolutionary biologist) and Alan Thorne (discoverer of the Mungo Man), and from her, I am well aware that the researchers take into account bone diseases. Plus your claim that Neandertals are just heavily arthritic old people is proved false by mitochondria DNA studies, which show them to be very far removed genetically removed from "mainstream" humanity (Check out here and here, as well as Krings M., Capelli C., Tschentscher F., Geisert H., Meyer S., von Haeseler A. et al (Nature Genetics, 2000, 26:144-6) for more information).
Your other points are just as weak as the human evolution one detailed above. If you want, I can go into detail on them.
As for rephrasing the Medal and Darwin comments; when Darwin first proposed his theory, the common held view about genetics (that traits where blended, ie, the child of a small person and a tall person would be of a medium height) provide a theoretical barrier to evolution (at least of the theoretical model of evolution provided by Darwin), this lead to the Darwin's predicting that the genetics was wrong. The answer to this problem came from Medel's work on peas, while this was done in Darwin's time, it was largely unknown (ironically, Darwin had a large book on genetics which included Medel's work, but never made the connection between Medel's peas and his own theoretical problem). This problem was solved by a variety of researchers who combined Darwin's theory with Mendel's, the synthesis of the two being call neodarwinism, which is the currently accepted view of how evolution occurs.