ragordon168
Active Member
the stars have nothing to with the earth though.
'god' could have had several atempts at making a planet with life and thats why stars are older than earth is. well thats what creationists could argue.
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The ToE and common ancestry of all life forms did not come from looking at the evidence
- Thread starter Man of Faith
- Start date
the stars have nothing to with the earth though.
'god' could have had several atempts at making a planet with life and thats why stars are older than earth is. well thats what creationists could argue.
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
So, MoF, we agree that evolution happens. Where we disagree is whether it is continuous and explains all new species, or whether first there were things called "kinds," and evolution happens only within a "kind," stopping at an imaginary and undefined line.
To visualize our differences, I'm saying that all of life would be organized like this:
and you're saying it looks like this:
Well, despite my Google-Fu I couldn't find a diagram, but instead of a single tree, it would have a forest of some unknown number of trees, each unrelated to each other.
(The actual tree of life is much more complicated than above, and looks more like this:
But it's still a tree, and I hope you can see that.
A close-up of a little piece of it looks like this:
Are we all on the same page?
To visualize our differences, I'm saying that all of life would be organized like this:
and you're saying it looks like this:
Well, despite my Google-Fu I couldn't find a diagram, but instead of a single tree, it would have a forest of some unknown number of trees, each unrelated to each other.
(The actual tree of life is much more complicated than above, and looks more like this:
But it's still a tree, and I hope you can see that.
A close-up of a little piece of it looks like this:
Are we all on the same page?
Last edited:
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
So we can use ToE to make lots of bold predictions about life on earth. If all of those predictions turn out to be correct, the theory is confirmed. I some of them aren't, the theory would have to be modified or even rejected.
I realize you haven't learned about the scientific method yet, but take my word for it, that's how it works.
Similarly, your hypothesis could be used to generate predictions. But that's really hard to do without actually stating what your hypothesis is. We don't know if there is one kind, 5 kinds, 500 or 5,000,000. And I'm sure you'll agree that what you would predict to see would depend on what a kind was, since that is crucial to your hypothesis. Without nailing down that definition, you can't support or falsify your hypothesis; you can't do science with it.
Because, like it or not, a lot of science is math.
For example, is it your position that all lizards are a single kind? Or are there 5000 kinds of lizard, or something in between?
Can you think of any specific predictions that we can make with your hypothesis? It should be something that we'll see if your hypothesis is correct, and won't if it isn't. That's called "potential falsification" and absolutely central to the scientific method.
I realize you haven't learned about the scientific method yet, but take my word for it, that's how it works.
Similarly, your hypothesis could be used to generate predictions. But that's really hard to do without actually stating what your hypothesis is. We don't know if there is one kind, 5 kinds, 500 or 5,000,000. And I'm sure you'll agree that what you would predict to see would depend on what a kind was, since that is crucial to your hypothesis. Without nailing down that definition, you can't support or falsify your hypothesis; you can't do science with it.
Because, like it or not, a lot of science is math.
For example, is it your position that all lizards are a single kind? Or are there 5000 kinds of lizard, or something in between?
Can you think of any specific predictions that we can make with your hypothesis? It should be something that we'll see if your hypothesis is correct, and won't if it isn't. That's called "potential falsification" and absolutely central to the scientific method.
Dirty Penguin
Master Of Ceremony
I remember the thread starting off..."The ToE and common ancestry of all life forms did not come from looking at the evidence"
With that said....what is the OP....opinion on Ardi.(http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1927200,00.html)..?
With that said....what is the OP....opinion on Ardi.(http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1927200,00.html)..?
tumbleweed41
Resident Liberal Hippie
Still waiting on this one.:sleep:
Once again MoF, they use more than one dating process. And all the methods used get a similar approximation. Which is so far removed from the idea that the earth is only 10,000 years old. It's completely laughable, we'll it would be laughable if people didn't really believe that.
He's working on it. It'll be peer reviewed in a scientific journal any minute now.
:biglaugh:
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
One thing I would like to point out about these two competing hypotheses, is that both are equally compatible with God as the creator and originator of all life. God could have created a single kind, 5000 kinds, or over 12,000,000 kinds. There is no particular number of kinds of animals that is more or less necessarily tied to divine creation.
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
Well, we already talked about one significant prediction. ToE predicted that the earth would be billions of years old. The people who figured out that the earth is about 4.56 years old were not biologists and had no investment in ToE. They were geologists who just wanted to know how old the earth is. Once they discovered radiation, they understood both why the earth was as warm as it is, and how to figure out its age. Because rocks decay at a specific rate, they function as a kind of clock that's been ticking since that mineral was formed.
But it's not necessary to understand radiometric dating, which is quite complicated. Picture it as a box that gives a certain answer. How can we check whether that answer is right--whether radiometric dating works? We find things that we know the age of by other means, and check the result against radiometric dating.
So scientists have come up with everything else they can think of that happens at a steady, measurable rate, and compared the results to radiometric dating. That include tree rings, ice cores, stalgmites, coral growth, and varves. (I can explain any or all of these to you as needed.) And what they find out is that they all give about the same results. When we count tree rings, the age given is about the same as the same material dated by radiometric method. Same for counting annual ice core layers or annual rock varve layers. We count them, and the result is the same as the radiometric method. So this allows us to calibrate radiometric dating and verify that it works.
So, MoF, in this post you're working on, be sure the address the key fact, which is that all the known dating methods come out the same. If radiometric dating doesn't work, why is it wrong in the exact same way as tree rings, varves, ice cores and everything else we've measured independently?
But it's not necessary to understand radiometric dating, which is quite complicated. Picture it as a box that gives a certain answer. How can we check whether that answer is right--whether radiometric dating works? We find things that we know the age of by other means, and check the result against radiometric dating.
So scientists have come up with everything else they can think of that happens at a steady, measurable rate, and compared the results to radiometric dating. That include tree rings, ice cores, stalgmites, coral growth, and varves. (I can explain any or all of these to you as needed.) And what they find out is that they all give about the same results. When we count tree rings, the age given is about the same as the same material dated by radiometric method. Same for counting annual ice core layers or annual rock varve layers. We count them, and the result is the same as the radiometric method. So this allows us to calibrate radiometric dating and verify that it works.
So, MoF, in this post you're working on, be sure the address the key fact, which is that all the known dating methods come out the same. If radiometric dating doesn't work, why is it wrong in the exact same way as tree rings, varves, ice cores and everything else we've measured independently?
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
He's working on it. It'll be peer reviewed in a scientific journal any minute now.
:biglaugh:
And here we have the wall of shame: Who we are: the people involved
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
MoF: Does your hypothesis have any prediction about the age of the earth?
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
Alright, that's one. Another crucial difference between the hypothesis of ToE and MoF is that ToE predicts that every living thing on earth will use the same reproductive mechanism. Again, remember, when Darwin created this theory, neither he nor anyone else understood the mechanism of reproduction. ToE says that every organism on earth descended from a single common ancestor. Therefore, the one thing that must be the same in every species, from a slime mold to an African elephant, is the mechanism of reproduction.
Further, this mechanism must accomplish a couple of things. It must cause offspring to be the same as their parents, but never exactly the same. It must explain why offspring are a little--but only a little--different from their parents. It must explain how traits from parents of different sexes are both carried over and mixed in their offspring. The agent of change must not be adaptation. That is, ToE says that giraffe's necks don't get longer because they reach for high leaves, rather some other mechanism makes some giraffes have longer necks, and natural selection chooses those giraffes to survive and reproduce. (Otherwise Lamarck would have been right. As it turned out, he wasn't.)
So Darwin predicted that such a mechanism would be discovered at some point in the future--Darwin's future, that is. He predicted that every species, not just some, would use the same mechanism.
And that is what was discovered several decades after Darwin died. He was right, all life on earth reproduces the same way, through DNA. And DNA does all of those things, as predicted. It explains the source of variation--mutation through copying errors. It shows exactly how those small variations must come into existence, due to the nature of DNA-based reproduction.
And I can use his theory to predict that if a new species of life is discovered next week in an underground cave in Nepal or at the bottom of the ocean, it will reproduce via DNA.
If I'm right, it confirms ToE. This prediction has been right, so far, about 12 million times.
Can your hypothesis do that?
Further, this mechanism must accomplish a couple of things. It must cause offspring to be the same as their parents, but never exactly the same. It must explain why offspring are a little--but only a little--different from their parents. It must explain how traits from parents of different sexes are both carried over and mixed in their offspring. The agent of change must not be adaptation. That is, ToE says that giraffe's necks don't get longer because they reach for high leaves, rather some other mechanism makes some giraffes have longer necks, and natural selection chooses those giraffes to survive and reproduce. (Otherwise Lamarck would have been right. As it turned out, he wasn't.)
So Darwin predicted that such a mechanism would be discovered at some point in the future--Darwin's future, that is. He predicted that every species, not just some, would use the same mechanism.
And that is what was discovered several decades after Darwin died. He was right, all life on earth reproduces the same way, through DNA. And DNA does all of those things, as predicted. It explains the source of variation--mutation through copying errors. It shows exactly how those small variations must come into existence, due to the nature of DNA-based reproduction.
And I can use his theory to predict that if a new species of life is discovered next week in an underground cave in Nepal or at the bottom of the ocean, it will reproduce via DNA.
If I'm right, it confirms ToE. This prediction has been right, so far, about 12 million times.
Can your hypothesis do that?
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Outstanding post!
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
*blushes becomingly*
Are there any YECs left in the room? Or, as so often happens by the time I get around to the evidence (that stuff that they say doesn't exist), have they all left, just when the party was warming up?
Are there any YECs left in the room? Or, as so often happens by the time I get around to the evidence (that stuff that they say doesn't exist), have they all left, just when the party was warming up?
MSizer
MSizer
Darwin also predicted that since humans and the other great apes were so similar, we must have a recent common ancestor, and that fossils of such ancestors should be found in africa, where all other apes are known to live. Nobody believed him for some reason, and people spent decades seaching for our ancestors in asia, where they found some, but eventually, as darwin predicted, the oldest hominids were indeed found in africa, exactly where all the rest of the apes are (and where humans thus all originate).
misanthropic_clown
Active Member
I think the evidence is something of a YEC repellent.
MSizer
MSizer
Ah, we have lots of bananas left all to ourselves now, and without them, it leaves more branches for us to lounge on anyway.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
... which highlights the silliness of the thread's opening post.
I personally think that - no offense intended - that certain people have taken this thread much to seriously by actually attempting to engage the topic thoughtfully.
Gunfingers
Happiness Incarnate
Somewhat irrelevant: is it just me, or does everyone on that page look like a pedophile?
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Not to me.
What I do see are men who were either unwilling or unable to participate in a thoughtful life despite (or maybe because of) their education. They couldn't get a job in academia, and no one in their right mind would publish their work. So they destroyed any hope of having a job in their field by working for the "Creation Science ministry."
I see failures. Complete failures.
I will say this as well.... there are so many Ph.D.s in scientific fields that I bet you can find 8 of them screwed up enough to unify for just about anything. So appealing to the "distinction" of the staff of "Creation Science ministry" is suspect.