metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
It's for the same reason why mixed-breed dog, on the average, is healthier than a pure-breed dog.
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Verifiable evidence for creationism?
- Thread starter leibowde84
- Start date
Thief
Rogue Theologian
you actually believe a complex life form can split in two?
james bond
Well-Known Member
I wished you explained it, but the article is correct and I'm wrong. Must've been dozing or missed class that day. Your article stated, "There are four major concepts in science: facts, hypotheses, laws, and theories." What are principles then like Archimedes Principle?
Got it. I did know scientific hypothesis can become theories, but wrongly thought laws were above that. Laws only describe what is being observed on a regular basis and can be expressed usually mathematically. It can change if shown it is wrong by some situation or observation. I think Newton's universal law of gravity changed because of the gravitation waves found, but the equation still holds true over 99%+ in calculations no matter where you are in the universe.
james bond
Well-Known Member
I'll have to digest this stuff and get back to you. Just am familiar with creation science arguments. I'm curious, what do you do for a living? Are you in physical science or a science field? Thanks.
james bond
Well-Known Member
We finally get admission, so it's funny that evos and atheists like to claim evolution is a fact ha ha.
Take your time. I could use a bit of a break myself.
I wish! I'm sitting on a BS in biology but can't find any good use for it. I don't have the necessary experience to apply for a lab job. Although I graduated from college, I feel like I could have used it to better potential than I did. I regret that now. Instead, I'm stuck at UPS. It has great benefits, but the work isn't exactly what I was hoping for.
james bond
Well-Known Member
Well, hang in there. You're not the only grad who is struggling in this tough economy. My best friend's son was in a similar situation for almost three years but then got a break with a hospital out the area. He's still in state, but just further away from home. I finally was able to validate that Salvador Dali litho I mentioned. It wasn't under the English title, so looking by artist's name and year did not bring it up. I found it under a French title and Spanish art. Once I got the French title, then I found a page online in the Albert Field catalog (his official archivist). It's not a great representation of his work but it's cheap and a Dali. I guess what I'm saying is to keep an open mind and sometimes you have to try something else or some other method to find what you're looking for.
gnostic
The Lost One
A hypothesis is explanation with prediction(s) that
A) hasn't been tested yet,
B) or is currently undergoing testing, waiting for results
B) or is currently undergoing testing, waiting for results
Theory on the other hand (except for theoretical science, like superstring theory, M-theory), have been tested, repeatedly, and tested again independently by their peers (hence peer review), and have been accepted. A theory is supposed to well-substantiated explanation, and it is supposed to explain the fact, through observation (like evidences or tests).
Theory is like hypothesis that has "graduated".
Law, on the other hand, is a very brief statement that might include mathematical equation. A theory is more in-depth in the details with the explanation, and if there are any law, the theory will explain the law, like explaining the mechanism or how it can be used (ie real-life application).
Zosimus
Active Member
With the intent of objectivity? Perhaps. However, the reality is that bias is well documented in scientific endeavors.
Zosimus
Active Member
This doesn't answer the question. You are comparing two sexually-created offspring as proof that sexual reproduction is better than asexual. Even you must see the flaw in this reasoning. Bacteria never have inbred offspring.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
The thing is, I've seen all this stuff about theories, laws and hypotheses explained to you more times than I can count now, and by people who know what they're talking about who are much more well informed than you and I. But I've seen you dismiss such people. And you're still making the same old claims. I see you do the same thing with claims about Lucy. I have to wonder why.
Archimedes Principle is apparently a law of physics.
Zosimus
Active Member
I referred to asexual reproduction. This does not necessarily require a complex life form to split in two. Do you think it's is theoretically impossible that a fish, for example, could simply lay 1,000 eggs that are (nearly) genetically identical to the mother? Or do you think it's more practical for the fish to grow its own testicles so as to impregnate herself as done by this one?
Zosimus
Active Member
Newton's Universal Law of Gravity hasn't been abandoned, per se, although it is universally agreed that the law is defective in that it cannot explain the precession of Mercury or the bending of light in gravitational fields.
Additionally, I dispute the idea that the law of gravity holds true no matter where one is in the universe. The Law was formulated to better explain Kepler's Laws, which predict that a planet orbiting a star will sweep out equal areas in equal time periods. Stars in orbit around galaxies, however, do not obey Kepler's Laws. The current fad is to believe that the universe is crammed full of undetectable and unverifiable "dark" matter that physicists can randomly sprinkle wherever they want to hide the fact that the current laws and theories are completely unable to explain the motion of the things we see around us.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Which is why we have a mandatory process called "peer-review".
Now, will you tell us how much objectivity is involved in your religion?
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
It's not a matter that single-cell division doesn't work, it's a matter that geneticists well know that cross-breeding has advantages that the other doesn't. Even a veterinarian will tell you that.
Zosimus
Active Member
Peer review is not a magical incantation that prevents bias. Even Michael Bellisiles' completely fraudulent work passed peer review. So if peer review doesn't even prevent outright fraud, what good is it against simple bias?
I am pleased to say that I know of no biased agnostics. Some people pretend to be agnostic—closet atheists—but that doesn't count.
Zosimus
Active Member
Completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Oh, so you think that because your an agnostic that you cannot be biased. LOL!
Peer-review does work, but nothing that works works perfectly.
The bottom line: evolution has happened and continues to happen, which includes speciation ("macro-evolution"), and either one accepts that or they've burrowed their head in the ground deep enough whereas reality no longer counts to them. It's just plain old common sense, thus it's an "axiom".
Again, I don't see where you have anything to offer here of any serious discussion.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
It's only "irrelevant" to those who have never taken a course in genetics.
Again, you have nothing to offer on this topic either, so...
moving on.
james bond
Well-Known Member
Parsimony, you got into isochrons, but let's discuss how you got there.
From Jonathan Woolfe's "Essay on Radiometric Dating,"
"I. Theory of radiometric dating
...radiometric dating is a way of determining the age of a sample of material using the decay rates of radio-active nuclides to provide a 'clock.' It relies on three basic rules, plus a couple of critical assumptions. The rules are the same in all cases; the assumptions are different for each method. To explain those rules, I'll need to talk about some basic atomic physics.
There are 90 naturally occurring chemical elements. Elements are identified by their atomic number, the number of protons in the atom's nucleus. All atoms except the simplest, hydrogen-1, have nuclei made up of protons and neutrons. Hydrogen-1's nucleus consists of only a single proton. Protons and neutrons together are called nucleons, meaning particles that can appear in the atomic nucleus.
A nuclide of an element, also called an isotope of an element, is an atom of that element that has a specific number of nucleons. Since all atoms of the same element have the same number of protons, different nuclides of an element differ in the number of neutrons they contain. For example, hydrogen-1 and hydrogen-2 are both nuclides of the element hydrogen, but hydrogen-1's nucleus contains only a proton, while hydrogen-2's nucleus contains a proton and a neutron. Uranium-238 contains 92 protons and 146 neutrons, while uranium-235 contains 92 protons and 143 neutrons. To keep it short, a nuclide is usually written using the element’s abbreviation. Uranium’s abbreviation is U, so uranium-238 can be more briefly written as U238.
Many nuclides are stable -- they will always remain as they are unless some external force changes them. Some, however, are unstable -- given time, they will spontaneously undergo one of the several kinds of radioactive decay, changing in the process into another element.
There are two common kinds of radioactive decay, alpha decay and beta decay. In alpha decay, the radioactive atom emits an alpha particle. An alpha particle contains two protons and two neutrons. After emission, it quickly picks up two electrons to balance the two protons, and becomes an electrically neutral helium-4 (He4) atom. When a nuclide emits an alpha particle, its atomic number drops by 2, and its mass number (number of nucleons) drops by 4. Thus, an atom of U238 (uranium, atomic number 92) emits an alpha particle and becomes an atom of Th234 (thorium, atomic number 90).
A beta particle is an electron. When an atom emits a beta particle, a neutron inside the nucleus is transformed to a proton. The mass number doesn't change, but the atomic number goes up by 1. Thus, an atom of carbon-14 (C14), atomic number 6, emits a beta particle and becomes an atom of nitrogen-14 (N14), atomic number 7.
A third, very rare type of radioactive decay is called electron absorption. In electron absorption, a proton absorbs an electron to become a neutron. In other words, electron absorption is the exact reverse of beta decay. The mass number doesn’t change, while the atomic number goes down by 1. So an atom of potassium-40 (K40), atomic number 19 can absorb an electron to become an atom of argon-40 (Ar40), atomic number 18.
The half-life of a radioactive nuclide is defined as the time it takes half of a sample of the element to decay. A mathematical formula can be used to calculate the half-life from the number of breakdowns per second in a sample of the nuclide. Some nuclides have very long half-lives, measured in billions or even trillions of years. Others have extremely short half-lives, measured in tenths or hundredths of a second. The decay rate and therefore the half-life are fixed characteristics of a nuclide. They don’t change at all. That’s the first axiom of radiometric dating techniques: the half-life of a given nuclide is a constant. (Note that this doesn’t mean the half-life of an element is a constant. Different nuclides of the same element can have substantially different half-lives.)
The half-life is a purely statistical measurement. It doesn’t depend on the age of individual atoms. A sample of U238 ten thousand years old will have precisely the same half-life as one ten billion years old. So, if we know how much of the nuclide was originally present, and how much there is now, we can easily calculate how long it would take for the missing amount to decay, and therefore how long it’s been since that particular sample was formed. That’s the essence of radiometric dating: measure the amount that’s present, calculate how much is missing, and figure out how long it would take for that quantity of the nuclide to break down. Because it’s a statistical measurement, there’s always a margin of error in the age figure, but if the procedure is done properly, the margin is very small.
Obviously, the major question here is "how much of the nuclide was originally present in our sample?" In some cases, we don’t know. Such cases are useless for radiometric dating. We must know the original quantity of the parent nuclide in order to date our sample radiometrically. Fortunately, there are cases where we can do that.
In order to do so, we need a nuclide that’s part of a mineral compound. Why? Because there’s a basic law of chemistry that says "Chemical processes like those that form minerals cannot distinguish between different nuclides of the same element." They simply can’t do it. If an element has more than one nuclide present, and a mineral forms in a magma melt that includes that element, the element’s different nuclides will appear in the mineral in precisely the same ratio that they occurred in the environment where and when the mineral was formed. This is the second axiom of radiometric dating.
The third and final axiom is that when an atom undergoes radioactive decay, its internal structure and also its chemical behavior change. Losing or gaining atomic number puts the atom in a different row of the periodic table, and elements in different rows behave in different ways. The new atom doesn’t form the same kinds of chemical bonds that the old one did. It may not form the same kinds of compounds. It may not even be able to hold the parent atom’s place in the compound it finds itself in, which results in an immediate breaking of the chemical bonds that hold the atom to the others in the mineral.
Why not? you might ask. Well, an atom’s chemical activity pattern is a result of its electron shell structure. (The exact details of this are rather complicated, so I won’t go into them here.) When the number of electrons change, the shell structure changes too. So when an atom decays and changes into an atom of a different element, its shell structure changes and it behaves in a different way chemically.
That’s it. That’s the sum total of the chemical and physical basis of radiometric dating. That’s all you really need to know to understand radiometric dating techniques.
How do these axioms translate into useful science? In the next part of this article, I’ll examine several different radiometric dating techniques, and show how the axioms I cited above translate into useful age measurements."
As a layman (or former Chem 1A, 1B student), the above is understandable. I've seen the half-life curve can be shown experimentally with dice. The other parts can be shown via explanation using the periodic elements table and the using different elements to show alpha, beta and gamma decays and what elements they change to. Is there an experiment to show the different radioactive decay to get a visual feel of radioctive decay? On youtube are several explanations of half-life and radiation and radioactive decay, so you would have to come up with something else to differentiate yourself (assuming you want to teach radiometric dating). I agree with his axioms and with "how much of the nuclide was originally present in our sample? In some cases we do not know. Such cases are useless for radiometric dating. We must know the original quantity of the parent nuclide in order to date our sample radiometrically." Where the creation scientists disagree with is, "Fortunately, there are cases where we can do that." We can get into that next.
http://answersinscience.org/RadiometricDating-Woolf.htm
From Jonathan Woolfe's "Essay on Radiometric Dating,"
"I. Theory of radiometric dating
...radiometric dating is a way of determining the age of a sample of material using the decay rates of radio-active nuclides to provide a 'clock.' It relies on three basic rules, plus a couple of critical assumptions. The rules are the same in all cases; the assumptions are different for each method. To explain those rules, I'll need to talk about some basic atomic physics.
There are 90 naturally occurring chemical elements. Elements are identified by their atomic number, the number of protons in the atom's nucleus. All atoms except the simplest, hydrogen-1, have nuclei made up of protons and neutrons. Hydrogen-1's nucleus consists of only a single proton. Protons and neutrons together are called nucleons, meaning particles that can appear in the atomic nucleus.
A nuclide of an element, also called an isotope of an element, is an atom of that element that has a specific number of nucleons. Since all atoms of the same element have the same number of protons, different nuclides of an element differ in the number of neutrons they contain. For example, hydrogen-1 and hydrogen-2 are both nuclides of the element hydrogen, but hydrogen-1's nucleus contains only a proton, while hydrogen-2's nucleus contains a proton and a neutron. Uranium-238 contains 92 protons and 146 neutrons, while uranium-235 contains 92 protons and 143 neutrons. To keep it short, a nuclide is usually written using the element’s abbreviation. Uranium’s abbreviation is U, so uranium-238 can be more briefly written as U238.
Many nuclides are stable -- they will always remain as they are unless some external force changes them. Some, however, are unstable -- given time, they will spontaneously undergo one of the several kinds of radioactive decay, changing in the process into another element.
There are two common kinds of radioactive decay, alpha decay and beta decay. In alpha decay, the radioactive atom emits an alpha particle. An alpha particle contains two protons and two neutrons. After emission, it quickly picks up two electrons to balance the two protons, and becomes an electrically neutral helium-4 (He4) atom. When a nuclide emits an alpha particle, its atomic number drops by 2, and its mass number (number of nucleons) drops by 4. Thus, an atom of U238 (uranium, atomic number 92) emits an alpha particle and becomes an atom of Th234 (thorium, atomic number 90).
A beta particle is an electron. When an atom emits a beta particle, a neutron inside the nucleus is transformed to a proton. The mass number doesn't change, but the atomic number goes up by 1. Thus, an atom of carbon-14 (C14), atomic number 6, emits a beta particle and becomes an atom of nitrogen-14 (N14), atomic number 7.
A third, very rare type of radioactive decay is called electron absorption. In electron absorption, a proton absorbs an electron to become a neutron. In other words, electron absorption is the exact reverse of beta decay. The mass number doesn’t change, while the atomic number goes down by 1. So an atom of potassium-40 (K40), atomic number 19 can absorb an electron to become an atom of argon-40 (Ar40), atomic number 18.
The half-life of a radioactive nuclide is defined as the time it takes half of a sample of the element to decay. A mathematical formula can be used to calculate the half-life from the number of breakdowns per second in a sample of the nuclide. Some nuclides have very long half-lives, measured in billions or even trillions of years. Others have extremely short half-lives, measured in tenths or hundredths of a second. The decay rate and therefore the half-life are fixed characteristics of a nuclide. They don’t change at all. That’s the first axiom of radiometric dating techniques: the half-life of a given nuclide is a constant. (Note that this doesn’t mean the half-life of an element is a constant. Different nuclides of the same element can have substantially different half-lives.)
The half-life is a purely statistical measurement. It doesn’t depend on the age of individual atoms. A sample of U238 ten thousand years old will have precisely the same half-life as one ten billion years old. So, if we know how much of the nuclide was originally present, and how much there is now, we can easily calculate how long it would take for the missing amount to decay, and therefore how long it’s been since that particular sample was formed. That’s the essence of radiometric dating: measure the amount that’s present, calculate how much is missing, and figure out how long it would take for that quantity of the nuclide to break down. Because it’s a statistical measurement, there’s always a margin of error in the age figure, but if the procedure is done properly, the margin is very small.
Obviously, the major question here is "how much of the nuclide was originally present in our sample?" In some cases, we don’t know. Such cases are useless for radiometric dating. We must know the original quantity of the parent nuclide in order to date our sample radiometrically. Fortunately, there are cases where we can do that.
In order to do so, we need a nuclide that’s part of a mineral compound. Why? Because there’s a basic law of chemistry that says "Chemical processes like those that form minerals cannot distinguish between different nuclides of the same element." They simply can’t do it. If an element has more than one nuclide present, and a mineral forms in a magma melt that includes that element, the element’s different nuclides will appear in the mineral in precisely the same ratio that they occurred in the environment where and when the mineral was formed. This is the second axiom of radiometric dating.
The third and final axiom is that when an atom undergoes radioactive decay, its internal structure and also its chemical behavior change. Losing or gaining atomic number puts the atom in a different row of the periodic table, and elements in different rows behave in different ways. The new atom doesn’t form the same kinds of chemical bonds that the old one did. It may not form the same kinds of compounds. It may not even be able to hold the parent atom’s place in the compound it finds itself in, which results in an immediate breaking of the chemical bonds that hold the atom to the others in the mineral.
Why not? you might ask. Well, an atom’s chemical activity pattern is a result of its electron shell structure. (The exact details of this are rather complicated, so I won’t go into them here.) When the number of electrons change, the shell structure changes too. So when an atom decays and changes into an atom of a different element, its shell structure changes and it behaves in a different way chemically.
That’s it. That’s the sum total of the chemical and physical basis of radiometric dating. That’s all you really need to know to understand radiometric dating techniques.
How do these axioms translate into useful science? In the next part of this article, I’ll examine several different radiometric dating techniques, and show how the axioms I cited above translate into useful age measurements."
As a layman (or former Chem 1A, 1B student), the above is understandable. I've seen the half-life curve can be shown experimentally with dice. The other parts can be shown via explanation using the periodic elements table and the using different elements to show alpha, beta and gamma decays and what elements they change to. Is there an experiment to show the different radioactive decay to get a visual feel of radioctive decay? On youtube are several explanations of half-life and radiation and radioactive decay, so you would have to come up with something else to differentiate yourself (assuming you want to teach radiometric dating). I agree with his axioms and with "how much of the nuclide was originally present in our sample? In some cases we do not know. Such cases are useless for radiometric dating. We must know the original quantity of the parent nuclide in order to date our sample radiometrically." Where the creation scientists disagree with is, "Fortunately, there are cases where we can do that." We can get into that next.
http://answersinscience.org/RadiometricDating-Woolf.htm