Another irrefutable proof that God created all things using mathematical induction. And a proof that The Bible is the word of God.

[TrueBeliever37]

You need to understand what the actual process is. The scientist asks herself questions such as, "What was Earth's atmosphere like 4 bn years ago? How hot was it? How much water was there?" She and her associates go looking for information, especially from geology, checking to see if James Webb can offer any possibilities from observing star formation, whether the Martian surveys might have anything relevant to think about, what the tectonic experts might be able to add ─ and so on. What lines of enquiry are suggested, what are ruled out, what are other scientists saying?

The team may not reach an important conclusion, in which case they may write up what they've been able to rule out and why.

Or they may find that a particular thesis supported by the evidence points in a particular direction ─ in which case they write that up as well.

What you read in the science press ─ which I trust you follow ─ will be only highlights, the conclusions reached and the alternatives ruled out. It's a summary of what our best-informed understanding of early times on earth presently is.

Science proceeds by empiricism and induction. It doesn't produce absolute statements, but it can verify from the evidence the statements it makes. Stories in books, including ancient books like the bible, don't have any such basis. Many of them are folktales, and read accordingly ─ Moses and Aaron's contest with Pharoah's magicians is a nice clear example, as is the Exodus, And you doubtless know that no archaelogical evidence supports the Egyptian Captivity reported in the bible.

And so on. The authors of the bible were up to date with the cosmology of their day, so they thought the earth was flat, and immovably fixed at the center of things and the sun stars and moon all went round it. (I can't recall whether I mentioned >these< to you before or not, but they're worth your consideration.)


The way you've phrased that, clearly not a dinosaur ─ but (if we imagine we have a suitably specific and detailed definition of "dinosaur") equally clearly a veryverynearlydinosaur.

You seem to think natural selection is purposeful. No, it's not. It works because it proceeds by a simple test of success or failure ─ did this critter live long enough to pass its genes on to another generation? If yes, that may be luck, or it may be that those particular genes produced one particular kind of advantage to surviving long enough to breed. And if the latter, then that advantage may be decisive and become characteristic of that particular species ("species" loosely defined here, since we're talking about changes to a species). Not only is evolution quite a simple idea but it works.

I appreciate so much the civility in your responses.

I still don't see how you could possibly think that they could figure out what the earths atmosphere was like, or how much water was here, or how hot it was, etc - 4 billion years ago. That is just impossible.

No matter what type egg is passed on, it would take a creature similar to what that egg would produce, to produce that egg. So where could that creature have come from?

I agree that natural selection would work by success or failure. That was what I talking about in my discussion regarding hearing. The minuscule changes that would be made in nature would have been unnoticed as either a success or a failure. It would have taken so long to develop into actual hearing, the little changes along the way wouldn't even be detected. The creature would still be deaf. So what would cause the tiny change to be passed on to begin with?

I'm sure you know about the hairs in the inner ear that help give us balance. What would be happening in nature that would cause those hairs to develop? Would we just be without balance for millions of years, until somehow natural selection helped develop those inner hairs?

 

[F1fan]

Yes I have heard that before. I wish you would start a new post on that.

So you have no rebuttal in how this allows humans to see what happened millions and billions of years ago? It illustrates how you are incorrct in your claim.

 

[TrueBeliever37]

@TrueBeliever37


Let's try this a different way.
I invite you to read this:

View attachment 88520

After you have done so, please tell us what you've learned.

I appreciate the change in your approach, it seems much more polite. Of course you aren't able to notice an exact first blue word.
But that is not natural selection above, that is intentional intervention. There would be nothing advantageous in nature that would cause it to continue changing. When we were dealing with hearing for instance, say you had a subtle change, if it was unrecognizable and you were still deaf what would cause that change to continue to keep being passed on?

What would cause hairs to appear in the inner ear for balance? With what you are proposing it would be nothing but fantastic luck.

Contrary to what you are implying I already did understand the concept you are putting forth. I haven't been saying that subtle changes don't occur. (That would be a strawman as you would say)

 

[TrueBeliever37]

So you have no rebuttal in how this allows humans to see what happened millions and billions of years ago? It illustrates how you are incorrct in your claim.

It doesn't indicate anything of the sort. It indicates I would have liked to discuss it in a separate thread. Quit being so arrogant.

 

[metis]

It is interesting to me the demonstrations by so many creationists that reveal a most dismal understanding of science and yet maintain a high confidence that they can evaluate scientific findings with ease.

Exactly, and this is one main reason why I left the church I grew up in and had been thinking about going into the ministry there.

 

[F1fan]

It doesn't indicate anything of the sort. It indicates I would have liked to discuss it in a separate thread. Quit being so arrogant.

Your hostility towards science makes it relevant.

And I find it ironic that you accuse me of arrogance when it’s you rejecting science due to religious beliefs.

 

[metis]

No matter what type egg is passed on, it would take a creature similar to what that egg would produce, to produce that egg. So where could that creature have come from?

I'm quite certain that eggs have also gone through an evolutionary process since there's no such evidence for them during the cambia explosion for example. Why should we assume that there always have been eggs when there's no evidence fora them earlier in history?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I appreciate so much the civility in your responses.

I still don't see how you could possibly think that they could figure out what the earths atmosphere was like, or how much water was here, or how hot it was, etc - 4 billion years ago. That is just impossible.

One thing that you should never do in life is to assume that since you cannot do something that no one ese can either. That does not apply just to the sciences. It applies to all walks of life. You would need to talk to an astronomer for details, but I can tell you that they have observed millions of star of all sizes and at all ages of their life spans. They probably have observed stars the size of the Sun that were very young to stars the size of the Sun that were very old. That would give the amount of energy that they gave off over the years. For the Earth they can analyze materials by their isotopes of elements in them. The isotope percentages of some will change as the temperatures change. And the atmosphere can at least partially be determined by the sediments that are being deposited.

There is nothing wrong with asking "How can they determine this" but don't ask too many in one post because you will only get very shallow explanations as I have and try to find the right person to ask.

No matter what type egg is passed on, it would take a creature similar to what that egg would produce, to produce that egg. So where could that creature have come from?

That is true, but small changes add up over the ages. So with the almost nonexistent information that you gave how is one to determine what a species would look like? Also, evolution does not mean that an animal is always getting bigger. Bigger is not necessarily better. Mice and rats are some of the most successful mammals that there are right now. They do well because they are small. So an ancient ancestor may have been much smaller than some of the giants that you are used to seeing in museums. Also most land animals do not leave fossil evidence behind. The smallest dinosaurs also decay very quickly. Or are food for larger dinosaurs while they live or after they die. We see a lot of giants because when they died they did not always get consumed, at least not their bones. And even those often have gnaw marking on them.

Longer answer but from what you gave we cannot tell. Much more info would be needed.

I agree that natural selection would work by success or failure. That was what I talking about in my discussion regarding hearing. The minuscule changes that would be made in nature would have been unnoticed as either a success or a failure. It would have taken so long to develop into actual hearing, the little changes along the way wouldn't even be detected. The creature would still be deaf. So what would cause the tiny change to be passed on to begin with?

Would they though? It only takes a small percentage of an improvement in some things to make a critter more likely to survive and have offspring. And small changes add up. There are all sorts of ways to detect vibrations and if you are small it means "run!!". A better ability to detect directions or levels would make for a critter more likely to pass on its genes.

I'm sure you know about the hairs in the inner ear that help give us balance. What would be happening in nature that would cause those hairs to develop? Would we just be without balance for millions of years, until somehow natural selection helped develop those inner hairs?

I don't know. And earlier land life did not need balance. It only needed a sense of up and down at the most. There are multiple ways to do that. But the earliest land life were all quadrupeds. They do not fall over when they stop walking. Bipeds were a later development. But they had the millions of years to evolve balance. I do not even know how birds balance.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Exactly, and this is one main reason why I left the church I grew up in and had been thinking about going into the ministry there.

That's interesting. My mother had some notion that I would make a good minister. I thought about it for a second or two. In my view it would have meant turning my back on many things including my free will.

That's one of the reasons I have so much trouble with literalists demanding that the only "true Christians" are those that do as they say.

 

[metis]

That's interesting. My mother had some notion that I would make a good minister. I thought about it for a second or two. In my view it would have meant turning my back on many things including my free will.

That's one of the reasons I have so much trouble with literalists demanding that the only "true Christians" are those that do as they say.

Same here, plus with me there's the issue of if salvation is only through Jesus, then what about all the people who existed more than 2000 years ago and/or those who never heard of Jesus?

As an anthropologist, whereas religion is one of the "five basic institutions" all societies have and have had back through recorded history, what sense is it that supposedly only one is supposedly correct?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

The question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, is a question designed to give the desired answer to a larger question for which the asking is being avoided or there is no understanding of the fact that it is the real question. As such, this smaller question of chickens is not a sound question regarding evolution. I'm just not completely sure that some creationists understand why it is unsound and whether they are going with it out of actual ignorance or contrived ignorance.

Chickens are birds. Birds lay eggs. There was a time when the evidence of the past demonstrates that no birds existed. What existed were dinosaurs that laid eggs. The connection between dinosaurs as ancestors of the birds has been demonstrated with evidence. So, for birds, the complex trait of eggs and egg laying came before birds. Applying a metaphorical question about order of origin between chickens and eggs is meaningless from the start in this discussion and putting all the eggs in one basket without warrant or apparent wisdom.

I do appreciate the seeming switch to a more civil approach that I'm seeing from the creationist side. I hope it is genuine. In my experience, I have been much disappointed in the past when this happened, but wasn't very long lived.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Same here, plus with me there's the issue of if salvation is only through Jesus, then what about all the people who existed more than 2000 years ago and/or those who never heard of Jesus?

As an anthropologist, whereas religion is one of the "five basic institutions" all societies have and have had back through recorded history, what sense is it that supposedly only one is supposedly correct?

I still have questions and often have to look further afield for answers, since they are often ignored or waved away by the people I think should be able to answer them.

A guest minister at church recently attempted to explain why bad things happen to good people and why God allows this. I was not convinced by his argument and it raised more questions.

I'm at the point of trying to decide whether to make a thread about it or not. Given how the evidence indicates that such a question would be attacked relentlessly and thus the asker gives me pause to consider the value of that.

 

[metis]

I still have questions and often have to look further afield for answers, since they are often ignored or waved away by the people I think should be able to answer them.

A guest minister at church recently attempted to explain why bad things happen to good people and why God allows this. I was not convinced by his argument and it raised more questions.

I'm at the point of trying to decide whether to make a thread about it or not. Given how the evidence indicates that such a question would be attacked relentlessly and thus the asker gives me pause to consider the value of that.

I hear ya.

My view of God is more along the lines of Spinoza. If you're not familiar with him, here: Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I hear ya.

My view of God is more along the lines of Spinoza. If you're not familiar with him, here: Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia

I have ideas that are antithetical to certain interpretations of the Bible, but not to belief or salvation. I can find no reason that one interpretation has sway over others out of some individuals personal opinion or that those holding those interpretations get to decide who is or isn't Christian.

Why give us the abilities and intelligence to explore the world around us if that wasn't a desired intent? It makes little sense to deny that in my view or to deny what is discovered.

 

[blü 2]

Darwin's IllusionI appreciate so much the civility in your responses.

I still don't see how you could possibly think that they could figure out what the earths atmosphere was like, or how much water was here, or how hot it was, etc - 4 billion years ago. That is just impossible.

You may find it helpful to check on how we know know the age of the earth at all, and how radiometric dating works. There are a number of possible sources of information, some of them relatively direct and some of them quite subtle, but smart and informed people have been looking into these things since the end of the 18th century. And computer modeling of the early universe, the early solar system, the history of earth's tectonics, and a great deal more, has allowed a variety of possibilities to be tested. (One of the important benefits of Hubble and James Webb is vastly better information about the universe than we've ever had, confirming some of our ideas and requiring modification of others ─ which you could argue was the history of science in a nutshell.

No matter what type egg is passed on, it would take a creature similar to what that egg would produce, to produce that egg. So where could that creature have come from?

In an earlier thread I posted an outline of evolution >here<, which may be helpful. Like all science, it too is a work in progress, but each stage is a story of change across generations, sometimes tiny, sometimes static, somethings gamechanging ("punctuated equilibrium").

But it starts from creatures of a single cell whose essential quality is the ability to reproduce itself; and three or four billion years later, here we are.

I agree that natural selection would work by success or failure. That was what I talking about in my discussion regarding hearing. The minuscule changes that would be made in nature would have been unnoticed as either a success or a failure. It would have taken so long to develop into actual hearing, the little changes along the way wouldn't even be detected. The creature would still be deaf. So what would cause the tiny change to be passed on to begin with?

The details call for expert opinion, but the survival advantage of being able to gain information from first waterborne and later airborne vibrations is self-evidently substantial. And as well as your point about hairs that assist balance, you might find >this article< interesting.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Of course you aren't able to notice an exact first blue word.

And in the exact same way, you aren't able to notice a "first spanish speaking person" or a "first homo sapiens" or a "first egg".
This is the nature of gradual change over time.

But that is not natural selection above, that is intentional intervention.

Way to miss the point.
That point being that in gradual change over time, there is no FIRST.

There would be nothing advantageous in nature that would cause it to continue changing.

Yes there is. It's called natural selection. We've known about this phenomena for 200 years. Time to catch on.
EVERY individual is born with micro-changes (mutations). We call it the "mutation rate". In humans, that rate is ~50 mutations per individual.
Those are 50-ish genetic changes that are unique to YOU, which you dit not inherit from either of your parents.

These changes accumulate. Most of these changes are neutral (which is to say, they have no effect on fitness). Some are harmful (to fitness). Natural selection weeds those out quickly (these individuals tend to die before spreading their genes). Some are beneficial (to fitness). Natural selection favours those. Which is to say: these individuals tend to have more succes in spreading their genes. They have higher chance of survival, higher chance of reproducing.

The accumulation of these changes = gradual change over time.

Is it starting to sink in?

Once more: in evolution, there is no "first" eye, no "first" human, no "first" egg.
Just like in that text, there is no "first" blue word.

When we were dealing with hearing for instance, say you had a subtle change, if it was unrecognizable and you were still deaf what would cause that change to continue to keep being passed on?

Once again you are not thinking correctly. You see things in black and white: sharp hearing or deaf. There's a WHOLE range in between those two.
Hearing is the perception of vibration (which is what sound is).

What would cause hairs to appear in the inner ear for balance? With what you are proposing it would be nothing but fantastic luck.

No. Once again, you are focussing on the present trait, which is the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
Our mammalian ear bones, used to be part of jaws in our ancient ancestors. In fact in reptiles, they still are.

You might want to read up a bit (again).

You are talking about traits that literally took hundreds of millions of years of gradual evolution to get to the state they are today.
You keep talking about them as if they somehow showed up overnight.
In analogy of the textual color example, you are jumping from red straight to blue.
This is not how evolution works.

Contrary to what you are implying I already did understand the concept you are putting forth.

It doesn't sound like it since you keep making the same mistake over and over and over again.

I haven't been saying that subtle changes don't occur.

And yet, here we are... you insisting on asking about the "first egg" and now similarly with a complex trait like mammalian ears, which literally have an evolutionary history going back hundreds of millions of years.

 

[joelr]

You're just falling for a false narrative. No matter what you say that egg had to have been laid by something. And that something came from an egg. And even if you had an egg, it had to be fertilized.

It did not have to be laid by something, there are not just reptiles and reptile eggs? All reproduction has extra cells around the birth.
Pre-cursors to reptiles still gave non-egg birth but slowly over time they evolved a stronger group of cells for the young to remain dry, inside the parent. At some point this harder group of cells continues after the actual birth, giving protection to the young.
Why would you think an earlier creature would need a fully formed egg? It might have been in the womb first only, evolution takes many paths.

And all of this has evidence. You just won't look at it.

How would a little pond egg ever give birth to a dinosaur?

Pond eggs became small pond creatures.
Dinosaurs are far down the evolutionary tree. Why are your questions like 3rd grader questions?

And a reptile is totally different from a chicken forerunner. And a chicken wouldn't evolve from a reptile egg, that is for sure.

Mammals were derived in the Triassic Period (about 252 million to 201 million years ago) from members of the reptilian order Therapsida.

So yes, over millions, even billions of years of gradual change you can go from reptiles to mammals. At this point you are starting to sound like a troll. You cannot be serious with the level of mis-understanding of these questions?

 

[joelr]

So when you present things as facts such as, it happened 325 million years ago. Is that eastern standard or mountain pacific time?

Oh wow, so it's not just evolution, you are completely misinformed about many things.

Fossils are dated many ways, one way is their relative positions in the ground.
They also use radioactive elements—often radiocarbon or potassium—present in fossils to determine when a rock was formed, or when an animal or plant died. Some techniques work best with materials millions or even billions of years old. Others only work for much younger materials. And each method only works for certain materials, ranging from volcanic rock to charcoal to bone. Lot of options to use to double check the answers.

Living plants and animals absorb carbon from the atmosphere, including carbon-14—a radioactive form of the element produced when cosmic rays from the sun interact with nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. But when organisms die, they no longer take in any carbon, and the carbon-14 in their bodies begins to decay at a known rate. Scientists use particle accelerators to measure the amount of carbon-14 in biological materials to determine when that organism died.

Gray volcanic tuffs—produced when layers of hot ash are laid down after volcanic eruptions—are dateable and can help date fossils found in adjacent layers. As ash layers cool, radioactive potassium-40 contained within begins to break down into the rare gas argon at a known rate. By comparing the amounts of stable potassium and argon, paleontologists can estimate how much time has passed since the volcanic tuff was formed.
There are other ways as well.

Or if they say an egg was a certain thickness millions of years ago. How do they know? Did they measure it with a ruler or a micrometer?

Yes, Fossil dinosaur eggshell fragments can be recognized based on three important traits. Their thickness should be roughly uniform, they are usually slightly curved, and their surface is covered in tiny pores. Less frequently, the concave underside of the eggshell fragment will preserve bumps known as mammillae.-

There are no witnesses to these things. It is just speculation. Claiming something happened a billion years ago is not proof.

All of science is about taking all of the evidence, "Seeing things" is the least reliable form of evidence. What scientists claims to have a new theory "because he saw it"?????????

You are coming out with joke-level creation apologetics, I am skeptical.

I don't trust what they are presenting as factual in those articles one bit.

You are not being honest here. You don't want to trust these articles because you feel evolution is a threat to your religious beliefs.
This is exactly flat earth. You cannot tell a flat earther facts, if they ask about facts and why they don't make sense, and you show them the facts do make sense, they will immediately switch to it must be a conspiracy.

Science wants to debunk science. A theory is tested over and over by multiple teams. It has to continue to work in all future senarios and if any evidence contradicts it that is a big deal and people will work on the to see which is wrong.

Everything presented is well established. You wouldn't know because you won't bother to study evolution. You don't want it to be true and will refuse to believe it for any reason you can find. Actual truth is long gone from your care.

write to Forrest, ask him a question, he loves helping creationists. Tell him you are one. (in case you actually wrote him, I doubt that)

https://www.youtube.com/@RenegadeScienceTeacher

They guess and make things up and then have to say it might have been, based on weathering rates, it appears to be, etc.

No they do not make things up. Weathering rates may be a small part of a chain of evidence. You would have to be speciffic. Ask an actual question that can be answered. You are taking vague concepts and making like that is all evolution is based on, ignoring all the strong evidence.
I don't think you are ready for scientific truth. It's flat earth, until one is ready to listen they will delude themself.

 

[joelr]

What you say does not mean it's the truth and nothing but. Further, some snakes lay eggs and some do not, they eject live little snakes. Scientists may give projected reasons, but nothing is for sure. What is for sure in my mind is that there is a God who cares and He can work wonders.

The difference is snakes, snake babies and evolution are real and can be demonstrated. A supernatural thing in peoples mind is none of those things.
If a child reads Lord of The Rings and doesn't know it's fiction , in his mind the characters exist. Gandolf cares and can work wonders.

Has no impact on reality.

The evidence for that god is he is a literary creation, starting out like all other Mesopotamian deities, in a pantheon, under EL who was supreme, has a wife, Ashera, thousands of Ashera figurines are found in early temple sites.
With Persian occupation they learned about monotheism and messianic expectation, a final war between god/devil and with Hellenism we added heaven and souls as a place souls go.
Then Aquinas added Platonic philosophy onto Yahweh and we eventually get to a modern version. Made up of many cultures mythology.

25,000 people, 10,000 children die every day from starvation. Many more die in horrible wars. What god cares?

 

[YoursTrue]

The difference is snakes, snake babies and evolution are real and can be demonstrated. A supernatural thing in peoples mind is none of those things.
If a child reads Lord of The Rings and doesn't know it's fiction , in his mind the characters exist. Gandolf cares and can work wonders.

Has no impact on reality.

The evidence for that god is he is a literary creation, starting out like all other Mesopotamian deities, in a pantheon, under EL who was supreme, has a wife, Ashera, thousands of Ashera figurines are found in early temple sites.
With Persian occupation they learned about monotheism and messianic expectation, a final war between god/devil and with Hellenism we added heaven and souls as a place souls go.
Then Aquinas added Platonic philosophy onto Yahweh and we eventually get to a modern version. Made up of many cultures mythology.

25,000 people, 10,000 children die every day from starvation. Many more die in horrible wars. What god cares?

Yes, I believe there is a God who cares and He will put an end to wars, starvation and sickness. There are many scriptures that allude to that.
On the other hand, how much would you say mankind cares, since merciless and violent acts take place regularly? These types of things will not go on forever. Some have made the change now to become a better and more caring person. But until God stops badness, the earth is not going to be a better place. I have faith He will do that (remove wickedness) because that is what the Bible says and I believe it. Notice Micah 6:8, which says:
"He has told you, mortal one, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness And to walk humbly with your God?"