Tardigraves are also multicellular life. If anything came long on the comets or meteors, it was single celled. it also probably died while the meteor or comet went through the atmosphere. The temperatures would have baked it.
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How do you define evolution?
- Thread starter YoursTrue
- Start date
Tardigraves are also multicellular life. If anything came long on the comets or meteors, it was single celled. it also probably died while the meteor or comet went through the atmosphere. The temperatures would have baked it.
it is true that none of the individual chemicals in your body are alive. But, the way they interact (the chemical reactions) is what makes them alive. Life is a process, not an added thing.
Yes. Life didn't get started until liquid water appeared on Earth. And life got started long before there were animals or plants.
No, water is a chemical. When it interacts with other chemicals, *that* is a chemical reaction.
Unicelluar=single celled.
But, I am guessing you are asking if all *multicellular* life evolved from single celled life. Yes. The first unicellular life appeared about 3.8 billion years ago. The first multicellular life appeared about 1 billion years ago. That's almost 3 billion years of *only* single celled life.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
The Abiogenesis discussion was getting long so let me add a few extra things, here. Back in the 1950's and 1960's experiments were run where single cell life as dehydrated see what would happen at different amounts of water removed. Even though all the organic and ionic materials were still present, there was no sign of life after a critical amount of water loss. Some types of cells hibernate at low water, but in all cases life appeared to stop if too much water was removes. If we add the water back, like magic life reappears. There was something about the water that imparts life to inanimate organic chemicals.
Other parallel experiments were then run to see if this life giving was only specific to water They added other possible solvents for life, to the dehydrated single cells, to see what would happen. It turned out that not only did life not reappear in any of these other solvents, no enzymes would work properly without water. The results suggested that water had its finger in every pie. This is expected since life evolved from scratch in the chemical environment that was defined by water. Water is still the majority component in life. The organics can evolve and change with time, but water remains the same, never changing; rock on which life is built.
The analogy is the polar bear has thick fur due to the needs created by its cold polar environment. Thin fur would not work in the Polar regions, nor would it be naturally selected for evolution. The same is true of the water environment n which life is bathed. Even the DNA was designed with water in mind, since it does not work in other solvents. It is the most hydrated molecule in the cell which implies it is almost one with water. This was a goal from day one due to the unique potentials of water.
An interesting observation is as science searched for new and old life forms for both biology and evolution, nobody has even seen life starting from scratch in nature among these findings. It may have been a unique period where the potentials of earth chemicals and water were correct. These potentials must have changed, since we cannot find life from scratch, but only life changing; changing internal nano-environment.
One of the key ways water helped and still helps to life, can be seen in the water and oil affect. If we mix water and oil and shake it, we can form an emulsion. This creates high surface tension due to so much tiny bubble surface area. If we let this set, it will slowly reverse and the water and oil will separate and segregate. This is much slower at zero gravity. At earth's surface gravity this occurs much faster.
The point is if we had a mixture of random organic chemicals, in water, because this will increase surface tension, the water can cause the organics to separate into compartments. Cells are still set up this way via specialty compartments. Other solvents do not have the same surface tension with organics. So the organics tend to merge with these solvents; not conducive to directed change.
The lipid bilayer membrane is designed to lower surface tension in the water. It reforms the same way time after time due to the inherent dynamics. This segregation is never perfect, so surface tension still exists at the larger surface interfaces. This can help evolution with water-organic free energy at surfaces. Enzymes still do this at the command of water.
Even proteins after they are assembled at ribosomes, will feel the push of the water and will began to fold in a way that minimizes the tension with the water. This folding in water is very specific, allowing millions of duplicates all based on the water-oil affect. Evolution needs to address the water more, and not just depend on the inanimate organics without water. The current way needs the gods of chance since the organics are the motor without the gas.
Other parallel experiments were then run to see if this life giving was only specific to water They added other possible solvents for life, to the dehydrated single cells, to see what would happen. It turned out that not only did life not reappear in any of these other solvents, no enzymes would work properly without water. The results suggested that water had its finger in every pie. This is expected since life evolved from scratch in the chemical environment that was defined by water. Water is still the majority component in life. The organics can evolve and change with time, but water remains the same, never changing; rock on which life is built.
The analogy is the polar bear has thick fur due to the needs created by its cold polar environment. Thin fur would not work in the Polar regions, nor would it be naturally selected for evolution. The same is true of the water environment n which life is bathed. Even the DNA was designed with water in mind, since it does not work in other solvents. It is the most hydrated molecule in the cell which implies it is almost one with water. This was a goal from day one due to the unique potentials of water.
An interesting observation is as science searched for new and old life forms for both biology and evolution, nobody has even seen life starting from scratch in nature among these findings. It may have been a unique period where the potentials of earth chemicals and water were correct. These potentials must have changed, since we cannot find life from scratch, but only life changing; changing internal nano-environment.
One of the key ways water helped and still helps to life, can be seen in the water and oil affect. If we mix water and oil and shake it, we can form an emulsion. This creates high surface tension due to so much tiny bubble surface area. If we let this set, it will slowly reverse and the water and oil will separate and segregate. This is much slower at zero gravity. At earth's surface gravity this occurs much faster.
The point is if we had a mixture of random organic chemicals, in water, because this will increase surface tension, the water can cause the organics to separate into compartments. Cells are still set up this way via specialty compartments. Other solvents do not have the same surface tension with organics. So the organics tend to merge with these solvents; not conducive to directed change.
The lipid bilayer membrane is designed to lower surface tension in the water. It reforms the same way time after time due to the inherent dynamics. This segregation is never perfect, so surface tension still exists at the larger surface interfaces. This can help evolution with water-organic free energy at surfaces. Enzymes still do this at the command of water.
Even proteins after they are assembled at ribosomes, will feel the push of the water and will began to fold in a way that minimizes the tension with the water. This folding in water is very specific, allowing millions of duplicates all based on the water-oil affect. Evolution needs to address the water more, and not just depend on the inanimate organics without water. The current way needs the gods of chance since the organics are the motor without the gas.
I don't find this surprising at all. The proteins that make up a good part of living things interact strongly with water. Some amino acids are 'hydrophilic' (attracted to water) and others are 'hydrophobic' (repelled by water). These properties determine how the proteins made out of these amino acids will fold into complex three dimensional structures. And those structures determine function.
So, take away the water and the proteins don't fold correctly, meaning they lose function. Replace water by another chemical, and the same sort of thing happens.
Also, many of the reactions in life involve water in one way or another. For example, the process of joining two amino acids together in the construction of a protein involves the removal of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom: a molecule of water. The reverse adds in a water molecule chemically.
Now, what properties of water are important for these reactions? First, the water molecule is not in a straight line: the two hydrogen atoms are bonded to the oxygen atom, but at an angle to each other. This makes it so the oxygen atom is a bit more reactive than we might otherwise imagine. Also, the oxygen likes to form weak bonds with other hydrogens, which is the basis of the hydrophobic or hydrophilic properties of amino acids. Finally, water is a small molecules (three atoms) and so can get into small spaces and affect the reactions there.
So what other small molecules have these properties? Not many. Carbon dioxide, for example, has its bonds in a straight line and doesn't form the weak binds water does.
But ammonia does have many of the same properties as water: it has a nitrogen atom attached to three hydrogen atoms in a tent-like formation. It also forms the weak bonds.
But, ammonia alone is a gas at ordinary temperatures: so it is not suitable as a solvent for living things at the temperatures we usually think about.
In spite of this, there has been speculation that an 'ammonia based life' could exist at what we consider to be very low temperatures. Whether the rest of the chemistry required would actually work is not known, but the bet is that it wouldn't. We just don't know.
In any case, water is the one chemical with all the nice properties of a solvent required for the reactions of life.
Experienced critical thinkers understand that they never teach the faith-based thinker anything. If you've been on these message boards for any length of time, you have experimented with multiple approaches in the hope of getting through, none of them even making a dent. Eventually, one realizes that if he is to write posts in rebuttal to such people, it must be for his own benefit or that of people who might be reading along who can be reached by cogent argument and evidence, which are mostly people that already agree.
When I write such posts, I am getting more practice at composing cogent arguments and writing in general. I am also hoping to introduce an idea that will be of benefit to those people who argue the same points. I am not expecting the faith-based believer to participate in dialectic, by which I mean cooperatively examine ideas, each addressing points made by the other with explicit agreement or explicit disagreement with a reason why the answered argument is faulty. Also, answering all non-rhetorical questions. This is how people make progress in discussions. That just doesn't happen ever with many people. I say this to emphasize that I'm not really writing to the person the post is addressed to, and I don't expect the discussion to progress beyond that point. I expect no point to be rebutted (one or two may be dismissed with an unsupported opinion, but the others get no mention, as if they weren't seen or understood) and no question to be answered.
I try not to get angry or personal with these people, which is what you are objecting to above, I believe, but not because I think it makes my message more palatable to them, but more palatable to like-minded people.
Yes. That is what the evidence suggests. The first life on earth was a population of single-celled, living replicators. This population evolved to generate the tree of life we see today as well as all of the extinct forms found. What I was addressing with the amoeba comment to the creationist who wrote it was that amoeba was a poor choice of words to mean some as yet unknown ancestral population of single celled life that led to dinosaurs.
That post was typical of what I described above. It contained several assertions about that poster's claim that others define evolution a particular way that was rebutted by referring to the definitions given in this thread and that none resembled to one given as representative. Crickets. Also, the comment about amoeba. Crickets.
That is what is expected every time - nothing, no sign that the comments were even read much less understood. No effort to connect intellectually and work through a difference of opinion. Little to no knowledge of the issue being discussed. Nothing learned, and nothing of value returned.
There is no religion or faith involved in the hypothesis of abiogenesis or the research into it, where by faith I mean unjustified belief. It is perfectly rational to believe that abiogenesis might have occurred naturalistically, and that scientific research might elucidate how. Skeptics need no god, and yes, life is thought to have arisen from a long series of undirected chemical interactions.
Disagree. Naturalistic hypotheses are preferred over supernatural ones, since they don't require a conscious agent, making them more parsimonious, and therefore preferable. Choosing a less parsimonious explanation, though possibly a correct one, is not rational until one has evidence that the extra complexity of consciousness and intent are required. This is what the Intelligent Design people tried to do with their search for irreducible complexity in biological systems.
A world without irreducible complexity, which this one appears to be, might or might not have assembled naturalistically, but one with irreducible complexity present in biological systems can only be explained by a conscious, creative agent with intent and purpose. Absent that finding, the naturalistic explanation is preferable for being more parsimonious, that is, having no unneeded complexity to account for observation, the simplest idea accounting for all relevant evidence is preferred. If extra evidence requiring extra complexity to account for it arises, only then is adding that extra complexity to the hypothesis rational. Look at how the narrative on COVID and the proper approach to surviving it is evolving to account for incoming evidence and complexity. But these new features of the narrative are not added until they are needed to account for new discoveries. Why would they be?
It's your faith-based belief that such a god exists that determines how you view reality. Once you've decided that a god created the universe, then you will not be able to evaluate evidence objectively. You will not ask if this or that finding is better explained by a naturalistic or supernatural explanation because you have already decided what the answer is, just as a believer who accepts that the god of his Bible is morally perfect does not looks at acts attributed to that god and try to decide if it is good or evil, but tries to understand how it is good.
Once one has decided that this god exists, everything becomes evidence for that belief, and only that belief is rational. Only that belief is possible. Only that belief is true. And all other logical possibilities are dismissed unconsidered. It's called a faith-based confirmation bias. It filters and distorts evidence in the defense of the faith-based belief. And it tells you that belief in a god is more rational when reason says it is not.
The *conclusions* are an *assumption* based on what is *believed* to have occurred.....there is no way to *prove* that evolution ever happened on the scale that science *suggests* that it must have.
That is really difficult for the science buffs to admit, isn't it? I can see you cringing...
We can (and do) have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And I can see you cringing in return.
In the scientific view, life is a complex collection of chemical reactions that originally formed from the previously existing chemicals and their reactions. After that, we have genetics, mutations, and evolution. And, we know that mutation with natural selection along with competition for resources is enough to produce large amounts of complexity.
Except for all the examples of 'unintelligent design' where the evolutionary history puts constraints on the possible changes that can happen, leading to strange ways of doing things.
For example, in the human eye, light comes into the retina and the receptors are pointed *away* from the incoming light. Any reasonable designer would point them toward the light. But, because of the constraints of development, the only option for us is this bad 'design'.
And, the good 'design' is seen in other animals, so it isn't anything fundamental to designing the eye.
Examples like this abound in living things: places where the way things are done is so jury-rigged as to show that it was NOT intelligently designed.
You propose spontaneous generation of new kinds happening at various times throughout the history of the Earth. This is contrasted with actual reproduction and descent involving gradual changes in populations of the sort we *know* happens in the short term. So, yes, one is magical in thinking and the other is not.
The term 'beneficial' depends on the environment and is solely determined by the ability to pass on the genes. That is what the term means in this context. And yes, we know of many examples of beneficial mutations of this sort. It doesn't matter how many are detrimental as long as the population itself doesn't go extinct. And that is determined by the mutation rate per generation as well as how fast the environment changes.
OK, here are a few articles off the top of the list:
4 beneficial evolutionary mutations that humans are undergoing right now
Examples of Beneficial Mutation
What are some beneficial mutations in humans?
Once you step away from AnswersInGenesis, you get plenty of examples.
Once again, life is chemistry. The way the first life arose is being investigated, but we know it is chemical at base. Not magic.
No. This is a common mistake. Information is passed on in a number of ways: genetic, social (teaching), etc.
Yes. Upon death, the oxygen deprivation means other reactions happen that link different proteins together in a way that destroys their functionality. That means they can't catalyze the reactions required for life any longer.
Yes, it was alive before it started breathing. it started breathing because those that didn't start breathing died and didn't pass on their genes.
Mostly genetics. The key is what genes get passed on and how they interact. For example, in many species, a new male will eat the children of previous males, making sure only their genetics gets through. Females, on the other hand, only get their genes passed on if they protect their young.
It is alive because of the complex collection of chemical reactions, from photosynthesis, to carbon sequestration, to anabolism.
We can't reproduce it because we don't have that level of nanotechnology.
And that is why 99% of species that have ever been alive are extinct.
Not clever at all. Just the normal chemical reactions that would be expected from the initial chemicals that were on the Earth.
Tell that to a dead person.
Once again, what is the difference? That of chemistry.
Nope. That is not the reason. We know it can be achieved because the natural laws can produce situations of increasing complexity if there is reproduction and mutation along with competition for resources.
No, but it is being actively investigated. it is one of the central questions in abiogenesis research. Among the possible answers is the stereochemistry of clay. But we do not know.
it is a legitimate question. but saying it is due to some outside intervention without other evidence that there was even something that *could* intervene is going way beyond the evidence.
But how it started is of greater importance because if there is an Intelligent Creator who is responsible for putting us here and giving us a purposeful life.....then don't you think we would owe him something....at the very least some credit for his works?
Even if some creator set up the laws of physics and chemistry in such a way that life would happen on Earth, discovering those laws and the details of that process are the topic of science.
And if there is such an intelligent designer, and if it designed me to think for myself, it seems that I should use my brain and look around to see what, precisely, happened. There is *nothing* that would change in the science because of this possibility. We would still observe the data, think about how it fits together, and find the most general explanation that fits the data. The 'God hypothesis' wouldn't affect any of that in the least.
In particular, the evidence of evolution and the fact that it happened would not change at all. The existence or non-existence of a 'creator' is irrelevant to it.
As for credit, sure. if I see a signed work, I will gladly acknowledge the artistry involved. But 'purpose'? Why would I care what purpose was assigned to me by some creator?
Changes in the genes that express as new phenotypes protected by natural selection. With those new adaptations populations become increasingly optimized to existing environments or capable of exploiting novel environments. That is evolution Deeje.
Are you suggesting that Chinese women do not produce milk from their breasts or that Chinese infants can't digest mother's milk? That doesn't make any sense.
What you are talking about is known as lactase persistence and those individuals that have the trait do not experience lactose intolerance as adults. Infants normally tolerate lactose, because they produce lactase to digest milk. Lactase production tails off in a significant portion of the human population as it ages. Lactase persistence is a genetic trait that has recently evolved in some populations of people and does not exist as a tolerance formed through exposure. We know the changes and the genes involved in the main populations. If an increasing part of the population of China is expressing lactase persistence and is no longer lactose intolerant, it is due to a recent mutation or through gene flow. It is not due to suddenly having milk on the menu.
Once again, no. Finch species with different beak conditions exist concurrently. Beak condition arose as genetic adaptations in a founding population leading to diversification and speciation as those with novel beak conditions radiated out to exploit new niches. There are now species of finches in the Galapagos with different beak conditions and lengths. And none of these appeared by your magical transformation mechanism.
Oh Deeje... Not magical transformations again.
Peppered moths prior to the industrialization of England were predominantly the lighter pepper form, but black variants existed naturally in the population. Those black variants were not protected by natural selection under the pre-industrial environment. Numbers of those were kept low until selection changed and the peppered form was no longer protected. Individuals of the peppered form did not suddenly change color in response to the increased environmental quantities of industrial soot. The population phenotype shifted to favor a phenotype already present within the population.
And no one expects to see it, since it is not a prediction of the theory of evolution nor is there evidence to point to a conclusion like that. However, changing time scale and reviewing existing evidence you see the evolution of higher taxa.
You see these genetic roadblocks? Deeje from Australia with no scientific background or specialized training in any field of biology sees these? Then why have you never published and shown up for your Nobel? Why haven't you shown them to anyone? Ever? What are they? Show us.
All you are doing is arbitrarily assigning a definition to the word kind that fits how you want your narrative to play out. But your use of it does not fit any logical pattern of evidence supporting your meaning and connecting that back to a biblical meaning.
Barriers to interbreeding have been known for a long time. You didn't just discover them when no one else had. These barriers are not confined to genetic incompatibility either. It could be as simple as two populations never encountering each other. Geography is a barrier that is not in the genes.
Except that hybridization in nature has been observed and documented. Different species sometimes do interbreed and new species have evolved as a result. It is one mechanism of speciation.
No one expects to see magical transformations and you appear certain of a lot of things that you are wrong about.
Another fine example of you not knowing the basics to even hold your own in these discussions. You proselytize the erroneous notion that all higher taxa exist as is and maintain the false idea that the ToE predicts a species in one family will suddenly jump to another family. That is just rubbish and nonsense.
We are all aware of the straw man that you regularly beat here in lieu of a valid argument criticizing the actual science. Your model is a fine example of rubbish science. Fortunately the actual model isn't the one you beat on.
I can trace my ancestry back 10 generations or so. Using your logic, I would have to conclude that the 11th generation doesn't exist. Do you think that my family line sprung into existence fully formed 350 years ago with no antecedents?
I agree. All this is from your imagination and it is not a fact.
Sorry, I didn't include any funny yellow guys in my response.
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Nimos
Well-Known Member
Just wondering
Do you believe that humans were created approx. 6000 years ago? or how old do you think humans are?
Do you believe that Adam and Eve were the first two humans? If not, you would agree that adding all the ages together in the bible you can reach that Adam and Eve ought to be around 6000 years ago or so?
So even if you don't accept this and the days in the creation refer to millions or billions of years.
Why do you think that God would have the dinosaurs living on Earth for such a long time? Because looking at how long they lived, clearly God must have preferred them to keep them around for millions and millions of years.
Lets just look at the Smilodon, which is not even a dinosaur:
Smilodon is an extinct saber-toothed cat which lived approximately 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago – from the Early Pleistocene Period through the Modern Period.
Why would God spend so much time on these animals to just kill them all, to then suddenly decide that now he want Adam and Eve and humans are the ****? To only communicate with us for like less time than the blink on an eye, compared to the age of Earth. And not only that his communication is so poor, that no one have any clue what on Earth he is talking about and can't agree on it or even prove that he is real.
Just think about it, if we say that modern humans have existed for about 200000 years, this cat have been on Earth for 2.5 million years. (And they have even found a fossil 5 million years old.) But lets just go with the 2.5. Just try to put that into perspective.
If God thought humans were so special, why on Earth would he spend so much time on a "stupid" cat, to just let them go extinct? Why not create humans and drop all the dinosaurs and other nonsense, which is not important before us? But he gave them billions of years to live on Earth, before we came along.
I don't think I have ever heard anyone give a good explanation for this.
Obviously young earth creationist will argue that we lived side by side, which at least is an explanation. Despite being absolutely nonsense.
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YoursTrue
Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
I cannot answer right now for all of the points. But I do believe that God made the first man and woman about 6,000 years ago. Whether there were look-alikes, I don't know. Apparently there were in a matter of speaking. But as for man, it is said He decided to make man in His image. Different psychologically and spiritually from others. As for the rest of creation pertaining to the earth, it could have been millions if not billions of years. Why he made man was one of my first questions, and the only answer that makes sense to me is that He is God, a (or rather, 'the') creator and originator of life. Beyond that I cannot answer you, I have not found any viable explanation of why life is -- how it originated -- other than there is a creator.
What is your view of those that lived before that 6000 year mark? We have cities that go back farther than that, after all. And we have cave paintings that go back 4 times as far. Were these not made by humans? We have tool users that go back MUCH farther than that. Were these makers of tools not human? or related to humans?
Nimos
Well-Known Member
I don't think anyone can answer the question of why there is life in the first place. So a creator is as fair an assumption to make as anything else. That in itself is no problem.
But where the problems occur, in my opinion, when talking about religions is that they go way beyond this point. It is no longer just the possibility of a creator. It is an extremely specific and defined one, which is something that all believers in a creator ought to question. So want to make it very clear, assuming that there is a creator, no problem.
But to say that this creator then did this, this and that, because such being is like this and that, because it was written in an old book. That leads to a lot of questions, because such claims has to fit reality, unless one simply denies it.
That means one would have to somehow claim that the stone ages simply didn't exist as they go back approx. 2.5 million years, and we have absolutely no evidence that any other living beings that have ever lived on Earth are capable of making tools to the extend that humans can. So you would somehow have to fit these into the 6000 years or at least, accept that God have created other "human kinds", which miraculous vanished from Earth without a trace in the last 6000 years or so. Because these people were not even remotely capable of creating anything like an Ark. Yet they were intelligent enough to create, hunt and process animals using tools, which means that they were not like standard animals as we know them today, so how would they fit into the biblical narrative?
All these things should be important to ask, if one claims that a God created us 6000 years ago, the history of Earth still need to fit together and claiming that scientists, archaeologists, geologists, biologists etc. don't know what they are talking about, when our world is filled with technology, knowledge, medicine, food etc. which all is made possible because of what these people discover seems a bit absurd to me.
YoursTrue
Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
I would have to go over the dating process in order for me to investigate the claims of dates about when the city came about. Or the cave paintings. I remember when I was in college and took an art history class, yes, the instructor did say the cave paintings were discovered that were 10,000 years old. That was a while back, though, and since then I think estimates are even older about wall carvings or paintings. But since I really do believe what the Bible says about human history, I also do believe that the dating of these things is wrong. Part of that is the dating process of the combined materials (that of rock and paint, for instance).
YoursTrue
Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
You are close to target here, imo. That is why so much emphasis in the Bible is about the relationship between God and Adam, and Adam's progeny. Abraham is one example of the focus, going on to Moses and the Israelites. While the Bible account does mention gods other than Yahweh or Jehovah, the main focus is on Jehovah and His relationship with His people, including true Christians. There are some good discussions about dating and archaeology at www.jw.org. I have found many satisfying answers there.
YoursTrue
Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
There are those who would say the Bible is not inspired, that is, spirit driven to be directed by a Higher Power. But as I think about the words in the Bible about a Creator and why humans are in the mess we are in today, it becomes very clear to me that the idea of a Creator rather than (mindless) evolution is true. I know not everybody will agree with that. Nevertheless, it seems abundantly clear to me now that evolution as described by Darwin and supporters is not viable. Except in hypothesis. Which the closer I look at it, doesn't really make sense as if things just came about by themselves, or a magnetic physical force, etc. Can I explain how God did it? No. But then the Bible is not a science textbook.
So it's safe to say your level of understanding biology and evolution is not equal to experts in their areas of science? If so I'm curious why your opinion has any value. Isn't it more straight forward to say you reject expertise and science because you prefer religious dogma instead?
Nimos
Well-Known Member
JW will basically cast doubt on our dating method of these things as their defense (From JW):
"Dating by certain radioactive clocks cannot corroborate evolutionists’ claims. The reliability of these clock instruments is seriously questioned. Results are open to wide speculation."
Which is not incorrect, not all dating methods work well within the same time period. But the way they write it here is highly manipulated to sound as if these dating methods are very flawed. Which is not the case. The people which perform these dating tests are well aware of these things and also why we use different ones for different things. But when JW doesn't provide any details to how this actually works and people don't care to examine it, obviously it sound like a good argument. Here is a list of some of the most common ways of dating including a brief explanation:
Given that these people are open about how all these dating methods works, highlight potential problems with them, having figured out why certain methods have issues and only work well in a given timespan. Why would they use them if they didn't work?
Look at this list and just imagine how much research and time have been put into figuring these things out. And then compare it to the explanation that JW give as counter argument:
"Dating by certain radioactive clocks cannot corroborate evolutionists’ claims. The reliability of these clock instruments is seriously questioned. Results are open to wide speculation."
Almost 1.5 line of text without any explanation or anything, just throwing out some general statement as if it was a fact. And people just eat it raw as if this is true.
Wouldn't you assume that these people that actually date things, know what to look out for when they date stuff?
And why on Earth, if you want to learn about dating methods or archaeology or any fields of science for that matter, would you get your information from JW.org, it is not a science website? Why not get your information from people that actually base their knowledge on hundreds of years of studies, which have been put to the test, to make it possible to create a list as above?
Again look at the list, how do you think they figured out about all the decay rates, the magnetic fields and chemistry etc. that have gone into this. And to me this is a huge problem with some religious people's way of getting information. For things you highly want to be false, you go to the worse sources possible in order to get your information on a given topic, rather than going to those that are considered the most accurate ones, because they can be backed up by scientific studies.
No wonder, that evolution seems highly unlikely, if the sources you get your information from have no clue what they are talking about or misrepresent things. How often do you not hear religious people make the statement that "I can't believe in evolution, because I don't believe humans descended from monkeys!!". Well evolution doesn't teach that, if they cared to learn about it, they would know that and stop making that statement.
The reason that JW and other religious people can even make the claim as above about some dating methods being flawed, simply proves that science works, because it is science that have figured this out, that in some cases things seems to be dated wrong and therefore gives very wrong results. So what they do, is to figure why that is the case and they correct the method. How do you think that they figured out that radiocarbon dating works best in that age range and not so much outside it and only for some materials? I highly doubt that they figured this out from reading a religious text.
So when JW and other people cast doubt on this, they are referring to cases which have been corrected, which initially gave the scientists problems, but later have been fixed. Exactly as the age of Earth and the Universe have been better dated, because of better and better methods for determining things. That is not a flaw in science, it works exactly as it is suppose to, we improve our methods as more and more knowledge gets discovered. The problem is that these religious sites where people get there information doesn't tell that side of the story, because if they did, they would conflict with the religious text. Which is why religions can't and never will lead to any new knowledge, it is not science and constantly have to adjust or fit into what science figures out, meaning that it is always steps behind.
Yes and im one of them, because it have never been demonstrated.
It is not unfair of people to be skeptical about this as they would about any other claim. The problem is that religious people are more than happy to claim that there is no evidence for evolution and therefore they dismiss it. Yet, when it comes to a statement like the one you made, there is absolutely no questioning being done, why is that? Why don't you demand evidence for it? What would evidence even look like, how does divine inspired things look like, how do you know that it is divine and not something else?
Yet, no questioning is being done, don't you think that is a bit inconsistent?
Again, that is simply not true, what you have a problem with is macroevolution, because I doubt you would disagree that medicine, animal breeding, food that have been modified etc. doesn't work, right?
The issue is, that there is no difference between micro and macroevolution when it comes to the mechanism they are using, it is the exact same thing, one is just on a large scale and the other on a small scale.
Microevolution happens on a small scale (within a single population), while macroevolution happens on a scale that transcends the boundaries of a single species. Despite their differences, evolution at both of these levels relies on the same, established mechanisms of evolutionary change: mutation. migration.
Evolution doesn't talk about how things came about, others are working on that. Evolution is purely about how living organisms evolves.
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ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
But you appear to know virtually nothing about the theory of evolution. The description of "as if things just came about by themselves, or a magnetic physical force" is pretty much an admission of that because it, it's not even remotely like what the theory is saying.
You also claim there is no evidence but when people post links to evidence (example, example), quote sources of evidence (example), or even summarise in their own words when you asked for that (example), you just ignore it (or pick out a tiny part that you think you can dismiss).
In what way do you think you've looked into it if you don't understand the mechanism ("as if things just came about by themselves, or a magnetic physical force") and you won't look at the evidence?