Human common descent ancestor discovered - Page 8

Isn't that a little too convenient? Why even bother? Really, why even bother?

Tartarus, all you need to do is claim that God created the universe as is 6000 years ago. The light was already on its way, the universe was already expanding, the Sun already fusing, the Earth already formed with evidence for plate tectonics, the fossils already buried, the flora and fuana already existing. There is nothing you can to prove what I just said is wrong. Your ideas about "laws" of science not being constant through time is so obviously fallacious compared to what I just said.

It's an ultimate fallback. Turtles all the way down. There is nothing that can be done to disprove God or a belief in God.

I might get back to some other stuff in this thread later, but this little gem deserves special attention.

Do you honestly think the above represents an example of hypocrisy, or are you dishonestly using the all-to-common bad debate tactic of trying to find any way you can to call your opponent a "hypocrite" for some trumped-up reason?

Let's say a bunch of Tin Foil Hat Wearers (TFHWs) are standing around about to drink the Special Koolaid because they believe The Comet is coming to take them away, hah hah.

As the moment of the koolaid drinking approaches, a few TFHWs start to have misgivings. TFHW Joe says to TFHW Sally, "Maybe this isn't such a great idea."

I would firmly believe that all of these people were nuts. If, however, I overhear this conversation and say "Hey, Sally, perhaps you should listen to Joe. He's one of your group, and even he has his doubts"... am I suddenly a hypocrite???  Would this point to some terrible logical inconsistency on my part, or some dishonesty in my original assessment that the TFHWs were all nuts, just because I ask one TFHW to consider that even a fellow TFHW has doubts?

The situation is exactly the same here with Giant. He's pointing out that even by the standards of Humphrey's fellow creationists, Humphrey's science is bad. Do you really, really think that this reveals some sort of hypocrisy, some sudden inconsistent elevation of the status of creationist credentials on Giant's part?

That someone even has to point out to you such simple matters of reasoning and understanding context is quite sad. If you can't even grasp this, or are dishonest enough to pretend not to grasp such simple things for tactical reasons, how can you at all be trusted to deal intelligently and/or honestly in a conversation with as many complexities as this one?

Not been on the Internet long, have we?



What is this "science" they speak of?

That's pretty good bait -- and a pretty good misreprentation too.

Bezene, instead of blindly latching onto junk science, why not spend time focusing on possible biblical astronomical events that are actually cool, interesting and verifiable, like the conjunctions of venus and jupiter in leo during 3 and 2 BC?

It wasn't meant as bait. It was an illustration of your position. It isn't possible to prove your Creationists belief as wrong because you can resort to the supernatural.

So, when is the campaign going to start for a warning label on plate tectonics, stellar formation, cosmological origins (galaxy formation, big bang et al), radioactivity? Are Creationists going to put a warning label on the theory of where oil comes from? They all undermine the Bible too.

My earlier statement still stands. Creationists have no other agenda than to impugn any sort of scientific theory that says the universe is billions of years old. It is FUD. All in the hope that they can keep their fantastical beliefs alive. If you want to prove it wrong, formulate the hypotheses, gather the evidence, test it, submit it for review, have others replicate the results, and gather more evidence. The community will always welcome it as long as the evidence is there.

Yet all the action goes towards preventing the school kids from learning to think in a scientific way. Preventing them from learning the prevailing theories in science properly. If successful, it will only spell the doom of American scientific prowess.

I think you are missing the point here -- how much of plate tectonics, star formation, etc, are acutally able to test?

I'm about half way through The Sacred Cosmos, a good book on this subject by a GASP old earther. Your certainty of the origins of the universe isn't well founded as there are many issues which are completly up in the air. You should at least be honest about that.

But again, were back to "proving" what can't be proven -- going nowhere fast.

The scientific community needs to open it's mind, to look at things with ALL possibilities open, to test things as objectivly as possible and stop cutting off their noses to spites their faces simply to defend their cosmic hermuntic. Theories need destructive testing. Test Run Debug, Test, Run, Debug --- does it have a weakness? hmmmmm.... lets try to break it -- not prop it up for no other reason than it fits an agenda.

Evolution is an example of this, while starlight and KAr dating (I am vexed to admit) is not.

Anyway.

A consumer christian book really isn't the best place to find out detailed, objective information on this.

There also seems to be this tendency with psuedoscience devotees to disregard everything just because they think thing like 'scientific truths sometimes get proven wrong' or because a given theory doesn't *yet* explain every detail. While this tendency obviously shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the fields it attacks, as well as the scientific process itself, perhaps the worst tendency among these folks is to throw out the observations as well. For some things, like cosmology, we have abundant data. While we certainly will get more and refine our understanding of what that data means, there are certain things that a whole lot of unrelated data points to, like the big bang. The big bang is a great example of multiple very deep lines of direct evidence surrounded by a halo of very deep circumstantial evidence.

I find this ironic. \

The scientific community is always open to testable hypotheses. The genesis story is not a testable hypothesis. Nor is the existence of god, by default. These are thus rationally excluded from "science".

So you are recommendating a warning label for the theories?

In plate tectonics, the crustal plates are recorded to move x inches per year, mountains are recorded to increase in height y inches a year. Their movements are traced back in time through radiometric dating, common chemical composition, and common flora and fauna fossils. That's not testing or experimenting to you?

There is zero evidence for catastrophic movement of the plates as proposed by Creationists. I even remember being taught that catastrophism was one of the two big theories in the history portion of the course. It obviously fell by the wayside because all the evidence was pointing towards slow movements of the crustal plates.

Stellar formation is observed at various stages through observation. Their composition is verified through observation. Their age is modelled on basic physical forces. Their fusion processes are verified through the observation of fusion byproducts. The models are verified through further observations. That's not testing or experimenting to you?

Answers in Genesis essentially has no answer but "God did it" for the apparent age and process for the Sun or stars.

What would you have taught as a competing theories in science class?


I don't have certainty over anything. I do see a lot of evidence in support of said theories while there is zero evidence for Biblically-based assertions. If there is evidence against biological evolution, I would and everyone else, would love to see it. But the last hundred years of research has only supported and refined it.

Am I 100% certain, no. There is always the possibility of countervailing evidence. That is taught in every science class - to have doubt about what you do and believe is right, that everything must be supporting through evidence.

Since there is really no counter-evidence so far, biological evolution is pretty much it. I remember that there were 2 or 3 theories of the origin of the universe in class: steady state and big bang. All evidence supported big bang, and steady state fell away. My beliefs will change when and if there is evidence supporting a better theory.

Will your beliefs in Creationism change?


Evolution has had over a century of test, run and debug cycles. The vast majority of research over that time has only supported it.

And you would know that these are all assuming the rates of movement of the stated plates have stayed the same. As for radiometric dating, same exact preconception. Even the calibration curves for radiometric dating fall back on a naturalisitic dating scheme. It's a nice little tautological package.


Yeah...like local floods can account for all of the fossils we see, which were obviously formed very rapidly. Also, given the rates of mountain uplift, their suface formations would have eroded long ago. If you're trying to prove millions of years, you will construe the evidence to fit your model. An example of this would be varves, where it is assumed each change in striations corresponds to annual rings. This is erroneous, because research by Guy Berthault, and Pierre Julien at colorado state university has pointed out. As a matter of fact, the vertical striations are actually caused by the sorting by size of flowing water.
It's very convenient to count these striations as years, if that supports your hypothesis, even if it files in the face of fact.
Btw, do you know about the fundamental problems about C14 dating past 50k years?
link.


Actually, the theory about stars "condensing" is far from perfect. link. Even so, there is nowhere in the bible that says this can't hapen. How exactly did you think that stars forming would support your position?


Actually, you have lots of problems if the sun is millions of years old, and especially if it's always been acting like it is now. Additionally, reference my statements about starlight and time.


I'd start at the very beginning and explain the paradigms of both camps, and then present the interpretation of the evidence from both sides. Let the students decide.


Actually, as I pointed out, you can't do research on evolution. The best example any evolutionist has every presented is bacteria adapting to a new environement, and then they make the jump and say that proves that pond scum eventually would walk around on two legs.


To even speak of possible problems with evolution has been grounds for dismissal, at least on the high school level. Contrary to popular opinion, that actually what the Ohio state school board was trying to do, not teach creationism (or even intellegent design).

My wife thinks I should respond to these request for the historical accuracy for the bible. I stumbled upon the christianswers site today while looking up some archaelogical questions. Ergo:

http://christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a009.html
http://christiananswers.net/archaeology/
http://christiananswers.net/abr/home.html
http://christiananswers.net/menu-at1.html

How about if it's billions of years old and hasn't always been the same?


I certainly agree that science shouldn't form an orthodoxy.

This is the core of your error. You simply are not open to ANY other worldview other than one that by definition MUST excluded God -- and delcares revelation IMPOSSIBLE. Materialism is the only mechanism you will accept, even at the cost of insiting on uniformity over millions of years --even though you must speculate as to that possibility. You can even look at the structures and systems that surround you, but still insist that order is the child of chaos -- even though the world you see and test has none of those qualities.

This is your center -- ultimate contingency with the sufficiency of the human intellect.

(BTW, Astronomy is mostly theory -- as to what is happening in stars, let alone what we still theorize about the planets in our own solar system.)

You just proved his point by citing that and you aren't even aware of it. Amazing.



So, do you just uncritically lap up any obviously wrong theory so long as it's promoted by a christian?

I think what you're missing here is that I WILL tell you that my position starts with faith and a materialist will [almost always] insist that his doesn't.

I WONT tell you that the 'problems' of starlight and KAr dating have been solved satisfactorily by Creationists for uniformatatians and materialists. At the same time I WONT sit there and try to build a absolute foundation on a swirling body of work that is constantly morphing its theories -- and nonsensically state that my faith isn't a blind leap on the currency of the human intellect alone.

Except there is no problem of light from stars. There just isn't.

We can actually see stars being born, burning, and dying. We can accurately measure the speed of light. We can deduce how distant and old stars are and we can accurately measure the speed they're travelling through the cosmos. We have no reason at all to believe that our sun's a special case and that its history is somehow extraordinary and unique in the cosmos. Absolutely none at all.

And when you say that cosmology's 'constantly morphing its theories', this is actually one of the great strengths of the scientific method. We can change our suppositions and our solutions according to what we discover, and since we're discovering things all the time our solutions are constantly being refined.

Bam. End of thread.

I'd like to add this, now that MarkUK's single-handedly done for Creationism.

It's a unique, defining human characteristic that we can ask ourselves who we are and how we got here. We've been doing it for 80,000 years at the very least and we've got very good at it indeed. Everywhere in the world we've stopped long enough to forget where our immediate ancestors physically came from we have another answer to fit the place we're in and the kind of people we've become.

I think that Creationism's, well, inhuman, frankly, because it seeks to put a stop to something we've been doing from the very moment we were capable, something that defines us as a species.

We keep on asking who we are and where we're from because that's what we do. The best explanation we have now is the one that gives us a better answer every time we ask itand coincidentally that's the explanation that almost perfectly fits with the facts as we can actually see and measure them.

Creationism's an attack on the imagination, since the truth's so flabbergasting, and it's an attack on our humanity. I think I'd go as far as to say that, and I'm not picking a fight or using Internet Hyperbole. I've been wondering why it frustrates and sickens me so much, and I think that that's probably why.

Mark UK and Hassan i Sabbah, I understand your antipathy to binding God to a specific revelation -- thereby "shutting our eyes to science", and limiting man and his 'possibilities.'

But at the same time you say "we have no reason" to expect the conditions surrounding starlight to change. Are you vouching for the nature of the universe? Can you vouch for how it has been from the begining -- a beginning where the even the Big Bang theories tell us that the laws of physics HAD to break down?

I don't want to get into Benzene's critisisms, because I think if you try to prove Creation, you end up disproving Creation, just as when you try to prove the resurection, you end up disproving it as just another unrelated particular. Although I will say in the case of evolution, that I am dumfounded that those who rely so heavily on math and the facts it produces blithely shruging off the statistics when it comes to the possibilities that evolution could even occur -- there I see eyes wide shut.

In the end you either are sufficient to youself, or you're not. I haven't seen a post modern approach that I believe can account for the mind being able to recieve 'facts', so I don't see the point in pursuing a secular approach to reason -- and that is the true difference here. Neither of you can vouch for the nature of all things, simply because those issues are far from settled. You say that the fact that science is in flux (in a true pfflamesqe way) is it's strength -- and that the connected conciousness of man will 'save' you through allowing you to pursue 'reality' as you wish. I just don't see that you can account for the keys, lock, hinges and latches to open that reality -- if it exists at all. On the contrary, I see you enjoying a reality that only Christianity can account for, but trying to convince yourselves -- using tools you should not have -- that Christianity is the only possibility that can't be true.

I'll let you guys have it from here.

Okay, it's not much of an intellectual argument, but it's funny and to the point.

Found on iTunes

"The item you requested is not available in the Canadian store."

Oh I'm open. As repeated once before it must be repeated again. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. If you provide none, I have no reason to believe you.

If we've finally come to the point where belief in Creationism is all about faith. Then we can stop. But as far as science, its methods, and its theories, I can not abide by something that abandons its rules and reason. Creationism has no place in science classes. Creationists shouldn't be campaigning to teach creationism in science classes.

Why don't just you list every other Creationist talking point while you're at it. Can you present an even more stereotypical image of a Creationist.

Crustal movement is verified through various dating methods, radiometric dating methods among them. Dating methods using different isotopes are consistent. C-14 dating is only used to date objects less than 50k years. Mountains come and go due to Earth's dynamic geology, ie, plate tectonics and volcanism. Berthault has been repudiated by YECs let alone sedimentologists.


The link you give exactly supports my position. Evidence is gathered. Models are proposed. Further evidence is gathered.


So, you would have two interpretations for the evidence? That's really scientific. It's either A or not A, B or not B, ad infinitum. I'm still waiting on evidence for Creationism to even be presented. All Creationist talking points so far has been misrepresentations of science.


Research on evolution is done every single day. Fossils are continually found. Animals are continually studied. Genetics are continually researched. Evolution is continually refined.

CNN: 'Intelligent design' mandate spurs lawsuit


Good. It clearly does. We cannot allow another inch of the separation of church and state to be eroded.

So the reason I didn't "win" in this supposed battle was because God didn't want me to.
Wow, that's...deep.

benzene, MarcUK's got a good point.

It's not enough that the God of Israel's gone out of his way to conceal the evidence for His work as effectively as he possibly could haveif he can't make His supporters convincing with the power of His revelation up His sleeve I'm sticking to the evidence of my own eyes.

Acctually, there are more examples now for observations of speciation. There is a documented case of some fish in a lake that got seperated - I forgot the details, but the point is that it's not just bacteria and virus evolution anymore.

Then again, I think it is wrong to disregard all the human selected "species" of animals and plants. These are all examples of selection resulting in a new group (species) that has changed genetically from its ancestors.

However, I guess all of the many examples i could give you wouldn't help with the "big" changes. I'm time constrained right now, but let me just say that statements like turning pond scum into bipeds work well to make it look like such complexity just can't be generated randomly. However, if you look at what has been learned about the many types of mechanism that exist at a genetic level to generate new proteins and, more strikingly, new morphologies, then the whole evolution thing becomes much more imaginable.

This is not true. You still are only seeing manipulation of existing DNA, lactose-tolerant bacteria substituting backup genes in 9 days, aside.

Doubtful. All you seem to be an expert on is that "sun god" nonsense you keep ranting about.
Have you convinced even one person on this board about it since you showed up here?

Thought so.

I'm really busy, you wouldn't just take my word for it, would you?

No. I've had a revelation that you're wrong.

You haven't been on the internet very long have you.

You guys crack me up.

Have either of been to the Antonine wall -- does it still exist?