Evolution

Yes DNA is one line of evidence suggesting common ancestry. Whether scientific (ironically) investigation finds potential purpose for some of the genetic material otherwise labelled junk or not, much of the genome has already been shown to be a legacy that does have a purpose - in other species!. The real question is why do all of us apes have this material in the exact same locations on the genomes? Taken with the undeniable fossil record, the geographical distrubution of species, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology etc the simplest answer is common descent. Your answer is that I cannot deny it might have been done by a creator. You can give me no evidence that it was done by a creator, you cannot formulate a hypothesis and conduct an experiment to show this either. Do I really need to debate further?

Your reply on the diversity seems somewhat contradictory, I presume this is the usual "I accept natural selection but not evolution" line. Basically you accept dog-breeding but not that this is something that occurs without guidance nor changes a species to a new species?

Are you aware of the Nobel Prize winning research on bacterial evolution that showed given enough time mutations do occur randomly and can result in species change?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

 

Didn’t you read this part of my previous post? I gave reasons for this (albeit in relation to retroviruses). Here it is again...

I also see the notion of "common descent" as a "simple" answer as well (but “simple” in a differing context you are probably referring to). I have already stated that what is deemed “simplest” is subjective depending on one’s viewpoint & understanding. Besides, are you suggesting that the Creation perspective is complex? I also can’t really see the significance of the relevance as to the simplicity of the hypothesis put forward in relation to the optimum viewpoint regarding this topic of life origins & development. After all, the realms of the biosphere is calculated, symmetrical, diverse, interrelated (symbiotic) & thus very complex.

Firstly, I wasn’t viewing this discussion as a debate. Secondly, you have not put forward a valid hypothesis with valid associated experiments/research that states evolution is a fact & thus has shown that is in fact working or has ever worked. You have only reported research that assumes this possibility as a result of insignificant changes (on the evolution scheme of things) occurring within the organism.

But let’s clear the air a little & summarize each other’s viewpoint:

1/ You claim that evolution is true. This meaning, that microbes over billions of years have changed via unguided random events of mutations (gene duplications etc...). Putting aside the general effects of mutations on an organism (i.e. beneficial, neutral & the more prominent fatal tendency), these mutations have acquired added complexity (dare I say more information) to develop towards for example, invertebrates, then to vertebrates, to the variety of animals we see today, one of which is the primate family, of which man & women (Homo Sapiens) have developed to what we have today. Putting aside the equally important origin of life i.e. when life first became life – an inanimate object became animated (which evolution doesn’t like to deal with)... Is this it, in a nutshell?

2/ I claim that a Creative entity set forth life (amongst other elements which were conducive to life to exist i.e. carbon, oxygen, gravity etc...). I believe there was a blueprint created for life (i.e. DNA) that then figured in all aspects of this Creative input; creating what I would call base line species (i.e. wolf = various breeds of dogs). These base line species had the information within their genome to diversify & change within their kind. This diverse information already present within the genome provided the variety we see in the animal kingdom today. It has enabled species to adapt to their environment to thus provide the best possible chance of survival. With this in mind, I believe humans have always been human.

Let’s be honest here. Both of the above examples require faith. Now, I suppose what you’re asking of me is that can I prove the Creator exists? Well, that depends – one could see evidence of this in nature everywhere i.e. the diversity/ beauty of flora & fauna & geometry of the universe etc... However, I know this isn’t a satisfactory scientific answer thus there is another way of looking at it.

For simplicity, let’s look at these two viewpoints as universes:

1/ The Evolution universe: consisting of 2 constituents... matter & energy.
2/ The Creation universe: here we also have matter & energy but we also have other constituent elements, namely spiritual or immaterial elements. One could say that these elements are supernatural – that is, they appear to transcend the laws of physics (i.e. matter & energy).

Now which of these 2 universes better fits the evidence – the science we know?

There is a Latin phrase which translates... “out of nothing... comes nothing”. Now the non-theist (or atheist) universe asserts (suggests, proposes) a universe that came out of nothing, for nothing, by nothing, because of nothing. This is an article of shear faith.

Now, everyone here is exercising faith. I have studied both sides of the topic. If anyone thought it was only the Creationist that exercised faith & the evolutionist does not, then you need to disabuse your mind of this – it is incorrect. Everyone is exercising faith in something.

- Let us take a look at the universe from which we find ourselves. The evolutionist/non-theist (materialist) believes that this grand, glorious, enormous universe came out of nothing, for nothing, by nothing, because of nothing. Now, I believe everything that begins to exist must have a cause i.e. there was a time when your computer, desk & chair etc... did not exist – it just didn’t spontaneously exist... someone made it. Now the universe began to exist, we know that the universe is not infinite but finite... & it is actually expanding (scientists: Edwin Hubble & Einstein). Therefore the universe had a cause (this troubled Einstein), & this cause must itself be an uncaused entity. Now by this I mean; there is (or has to be) a regress or a chain of causation i.e. what caused you? - your parents, what caused your parents, what caused their parents, their parents, their parents & so on... This is just not the case with people. Can someone count to 100, 1000, 10000, a million – given enough time? But can one count to infinity? No – an actual infinity cannot be counted or traversed... you cannot move through infinity. Thus the number of causal events before today must be a finite number of events; because if there were an infinite number of causal events before today, could we ever move through that infinite number of causal events to get to today – absolutely not. Which demonstrates the number of causal events (& frankly the number of hours, days & years) before today must be a finite number of moments because we cannot traverse through the infinity of anything.

Now here’s something interesting... there must be something at the beginning of this chain of causation which in itself is a cause that was not itself caused. This is why when people ask such questions such as: Who Created God or who made God? There is no answer – God does not need a Creator, a cause, a beginning. The teaching of scripture accounts that God is eternal (eternally existed). If He never began to exist, does He then need a cause? No. There must be a cause which is the cause of all subsequent causes but is not itself caused by some other cause... otherwise the chain keeps going back. At the beginning there must be a cause that is not itself caused by something else but which becomes the cause of all subsequent causes & effects... as there cannot be an infinite regress of causation. Just to prove I’m not making this up, one of the greatest scientific minds on the planet – Professor Stephen J. Hawking (wrote the number 1 scientific book of all time – "A Brief History Of Time") said that almost everyone believes that the universe, in fact time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang. Here is something interesting... if you have a beginning, by definition you must have a beginner (which troubled Einstein). This is known as the Principle of Causation. A principle that the writer of Genesis would not be privy to long ago (pending on your view) & its subsequent impact on the whole scheme of this issue... if the writer was not inspired. I like to ponder the question... Why is there something, rather than nothing?

Now let’s look back at our 2 universes: The Creation based universe can have 4 words associated with it. The first 4 words of scripture are probably the most philosophically profound words in literature... "In the beginning God". Here we have a cause, which in itself is uncaused that becomes the cause of all subsequent causes & effects. Here we have a causal agent to begin the universe. Over in the Evolution universe we have... nothing! We have a universe which came out of nothing... for nothing... by nothing... because of nothing.

Now based on the Principle of causation, every event that has ever happened in your whole life was either caused by you, or you are experiencing the cause of it. So in the Creation universe we have a cause of the universe, over in the Evolution universe we have... faith. I have to affirm causation in everything I do... in my training as a runner & my assessment of a patient as a Podiatrist (what caused this injury to occur?). However, when it comes to the profound issues of the beginning of the universe & life, are we then suppose to ignore this principle?? I just don’t have enough faith to be an evolutionist. So when it comes to the issue of time & its beginning & its finitude (that is the non-infinite nature of time) the best explanation involves the act of God.

Ask an evolutionist (Dr Dawkins) – Where did the universe come from? There answer will be "we don’t know"... which is an article of faith. We believe the universe is here – right? So what caused it? You are accepting there was a cause by faith (also, where did the first cell come from... protein molecule etc... & the associated information required for their function?).

Does it take faith for me to believe that God created the universe? Sure it does... but, it is a faith in keeping with the Principle of Causation & the principles/laws of science. Does the evolutionist have to exercise faith that the universe came from something? Of cause they do... but, they have to exercise a kind of blind faith because they have to maintain (at least in the present) that the universe came out of nothing that we know, by nothing that we know, because of nothing that we know. So here we have the greater leap of faith done by the exponents of the Evolution universe.

Design leads scientists to expect:
1) universal laws;
2) elegant mathematical forms;
3) coherent mechanisms.

Conclusion:
1) Materialism is not a rational presumption for science.
2) Consciousness and the power of mind over matter refute materialism i.e. is consciousness localizable? ... What is the Placebo effect?
3) Materialist “explanations” of religion are poorly motivated and implausible.
4) The real issue should be objective truth.

You have stated correctly, however, there is no contradiction... quite the contrary. I believe natural selection was a design feature of the Creation model & thus fits quite nicely in the Creation paradigm. Natural selection point to diversity within the genome of the species thus enabling to adapt within the kind (specie) but not develop into a new specie.

Yes I am aware of this study; however, I didn’t know it received a Nobel Prize. Could you confirm this for me please?

Anyway, here is an alternative view on the evidence found...
Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski’s cultured bacteria which developed the capacity for metabolizing citrate as an energy source under aerobic conditions does not support evolution’s claim of changes from one specie to another.

Even after hundreds of thousands of generations (during this 20 year experiment), the bacteria are still the same kind of bacteria, despite Lenski’s hype about allegedly new abilities. The culture medium used had a little glucose but lots more citrate, so once the microbes consumed the glucose, they would continue to grow only if they could evolve some way of using citrate. Lenski expected to see evolution in action. This was an appropriate expectation for one who believes in evolution (here is his website), because bacteria reproduce quickly & can have huge populations, as in this case. They can also sustain higher mutation rates than organisms with much larger genomes, like vertebrates such as us. All of this adds up (according to neo-Darwinism) to the almost certainty of seeing lots of evolution happen in real time (instead of imagining it all happening in the unobservable past). With the short generation times, in 20 years this has amounted to some 44,000 generations, equivalent to some million years of generations of a human population. However, the evolutionary opportunities for humans would be far, far less, due to the small population numbers limiting the number of mutational possibilities; & the much larger genome, which cannot sustain a similar mutation rate without error catastrophe (i.e. extinction & sexual reproduction means that there is 50% chance of failing to pass on a beneficial mutation ). The type of change involved is in the opposite direction to that required - actually, Lenski’s research, contrary to your alluding claim, underlines once again how impossible the grand scheme of microbes-to-man evolution is.

E. coli is normally capable of utilizing citrate as an energy source under anaerobic conditions, with a whole suite of genes involved in its fermentation. This includes a citrate transporter gene that codes for a transporter protein embedded in the cell wall that takes citrate into the cell (Pos, K.M., Dimroth, P. and Bott, M., The Escherichia coli Citrate Carrier CitT: a Member of a Novel Eubacterial Transporter Family Related to the 2-Oxoglutarate/Malate Translocator from Spinach Chloroplasts, J. Bacteriol. 180(16):4160–4165, 1998: link here). This suite of genes (operon) is normally only activated under anaerobic conditions. Thus, this almost certainly involved the breaking of a switch that stops citrate uptake from the environment under aerobic conditions or the deformation of a transporter protein channel that normally takes up something else under aerobic conditions, such that it now transports citrate into the cell. Such changes clearly do not constitute an increase in information (specified complexity).

So what happened? It is not yet clear from the published information, but a likely scenario is that mutations jammed the regulation of this operon so that the bacteria produce citrate transporter regardless of the oxidative state of the bacterium’s environment (that is, it is permanently switched on). This can be likened to having a light that switches on when the sun goes down—a sensor detects the lack of light and turns the light on. A fault in the sensor could result in the light being on all the time. That is the sort of change we are talking about.

Another possibility is that an existing transporter gene which does not normally transport citrate, mutated such that it lost specificity & could then transport citrate into the cell. Such a loss of specificity is also an expected outcome of random mutations. A loss of specificity equals a loss of information, but evolution is supposed to account for the creation of new information; information that specifies the enzymes & cofactors in new biochemical pathways, how to make feathers & bone, nerves etc...

However, mutations are good at destroying things, not creating them. Sometimes destroying things can be helpful (adaptive), but that does not account for the creation of the staggering amount of information in the DNA of all living things.

If competing hypotheses (i.e. Creation) are eliminated before they are closely evaluated, remaining theories may acquire an undeserved dominance (as has evolution). No scientist should be barred from or ridiculed for using a Biblical or Creation perspective that can spur subjects of scientific study as a platform to launch research &/or come to alternative interpretations of the evidence found.

 

The coevolution of human hands and feet.
Rolian C, Lieberman DE, Hallgrímsson B.
Evolution. 2010 Jun;64(6):1558-68.

 

Oh dear oh dear - what a hornets nest I seem to have stirred up by telling the truth. This point was brought home to me (no bull-**** here) when I was a school boy and, away at boarding school I had morning coffee one Sunday with Mick Ramsey. He said to me: "just because you really, really, REALLY, want it to be true, doesn't make it true. He quoted the example of a kid who came out of a geography exam and prayed to his God, saying: "please God, make Lisbourn the captial of Spain". Lisbourn is the capital of Portugal and always will be so. Just because you REALLY, REALLY want creation to be true, does not make it true. Stick to science. Oh, and the comments re: scientists in intelligent design is an oxymoron - there are no scientists in intelligent design. Ignorance, and manipulation of those that should know better, is what happens in intelligent design. Rob

 

Crikey... there was I thinking that I was the one telling the truth :wacko: ... I even provided reasoning & evidence of the possibility of truth in my point of view. Ultimately, the test for truth is not the acceptance of truth. Truth is truth, independent of whether or not it is believed or accepted by one’s peers.

What is truth?.......

Hmmm... I thought Lisbon was the capital of Portugal. Besides, the analogy isn't really adequate... after all, we can all check the capital of a country (as well as the spelling).

Just because you REALLY, REALLY want evolution to be true, does not make it true. Stick to science.

Hardly an intelligent comment. I personally know scientists who are Creationists. I can even provide a long list of scientists (from around the world) who fall under the Creation banner. However, the list would be even longer with scientists who fall within the Intelligent Design movement, which I wouldn’t include in the list based on having i.e. a "Gap Theory” i.e. ‘long-agers’ perspective (i.e. thus not a Biblical account of Creation).

Maybe I should leave the "Evolution" thread to the evolutionists.

 

You may know people in the intelligent design world that claim to be scientists, but they are not practicing scientific method - that is the harsh, and sad truth; they are spinning a web of untruth, that they hope cannot be seen through. Evolution is a measurable process. It has stood up to very rigorous scientific testing and has never been falsified. As a matter of interest, I was misquoted recently on a creation website; I wear this badge with pride! One has really arrived in science when your work has been tangled and misquoted by the creationists (which includes "intelligent design").

 

You know Rob, I'd normally be on your side in this one but 'Ben Hur' has put forward some thoughtful and well set-out arguments and you're not addressing them. Throughout the history of science, hypotheses have come into place and stood up sometimes for many decades. Then evidence comes along that means the hypotheses need to be fine tuned. This happens several times until eventually the hypotheses becomes so cumbersome that new ones come up to replace them. This is a continuous process that requires scientists to keep open minds so that they can continually test their hypotheses. That's what sets science apart from religion. Don't just hammer away at him like a zealot, address his questions!

 

God give me strength ! :bashyes I am being ironic). This is the crux of the argument - "intelligent" design can NEVER do what you have asked because it is impossible to formulate a hypothesis and test it on their ideas. Prove a creator exists - you can't - ergo it is not a scientific argument ergo scientists do not need to justify themselves or do anything to any proponent of this twaddle.I stopped replying to this cr@p because it was clearly giving a platform to such a nosensical spiel.

One day, such a proponent of "intelligent" design may begin to wonder why their creator designed their compressible urethra to pass directly through a gland such as the prostate which is prone to enlargement. :bang:Then we may pick this discussion back up. Until then in the words of Christopher Hitchins "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"

 

My previous post hasn't updated on the forum yet but I have to go to bed so I want to apologise for my previous post where I shot my mouth off about spelling before checking my facts

Apologies to all and especially Matthew.

Robin

PS it doesn't look as if the post I was shooting my mouth off in has come through

 

Hi Robert.

You have no doubt been annoyed (as have many in the evolution camp) by many of those within the Creation/I.D camps. Individuals who you probably regard as ignorant so n so’s for stating things which are downright stupid or statements you do not agree with. I too am often annoyed with some of the statements/examples given as well as the manner in which it has been done. I can see in part why this is so: Evolution tends to have its strongest proponents from the science/academia background whilst Creation/I.D tends to have its strongest proponents from the religious/theological background. Religion also tends to attract more than its fair share of fervent fundamentalist types also, who are all too willing to express their views on this topic (particularly in some parts of the United States). This has subsequently helped in deepening the rift between the two camps.

I vaguely know who you are Robert due to your involvement with the Podiatry course at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) as well as having an interest in evolution. After a quick search however I have found it to be rather a strong interest in evolution. To clear the air a little, the following is your profile from the UWS site. I have highlighted the evolution components (if you are not comfortable with this being posted, let me know & I will remove it).

I think it would be clear to anybody reading your impressive qualifications/biography that you have a strong interest in evolution. Thus it may be fair to say that you would naturally have strong feelings against an alternative (conflicting) hypothesis – particularly in light of the present social/academic climate surrounding the evolution/creation issue.

The above states that you are currently teaching “Topographic anatomy & Quantitative methods of shape analysis”; from what I understand of this, this would be an important area to substantiate for evolution. Despite what some believe, I believe the structure & engineering of the human body is remarkable (i.e. the foot) – the size, shape/contour of bones, muscle shape with its origin & insertion points etc... As you can imagine, I have come to a different conclusion to you. You have no doubt approached this topic with the preconceived assumption that it was all the result of millions of mutations (of beneficial effect) over the course of billions of years.

I should also advise on my background. I am not a religious person, dare I say it - I hate religion. I did not grow up with religion (no Bible or the sort in the house) with both parents atheists or at least agnostic. However, evolution just didn’t gel with me. It actually only played a small part in the science I studied at school & college, with virtually no part at all in my Podiatry studies. Thus in short, I went searching for evolution based science & found it wanting... subsequently an act of Creation provided more logically sound answers. This search continues today & it has been the area of science which has (& continues to) lead me to Creation which has not stemmed from a religious background (much I'm sure to the dismay of Prof. Dawkins). This has been a sincere interest for me – knowing about the origins/development of life & the potentially profound implications that entails.

I just don't believe you, I or anybody else on this forum had a distant ancestor that came from the primate (ape) family. I also believe that there is a large amount of evidence to support this as well as believe that what we believe to be our origins may well potentially have an impact in some way on how we view ourselves, family & other people. This in itself may then shape how we view the future or at least one's self esteem.

Do you truly believe this?... that these scientists have sincere intentions of “spinning a web of untruth”. For what purpose? Do you feel this is my intention as well?

The scope of science is broad & the hypothesis of evolution plays a very small role in the research & practice of science on the whole. Unless however it is the historical/forensic (i.e. speculative) type science – the type that just so happens to be the area you are involved in. I find (& I’m sure the individuals I know) would either find your above statement disrespectful or just scoff at it. I am sure you would not appreciate a similar statement directed back at you.

Science & metaphysics should not be at war with each other. We have distinguished scientists on both sides of the 'origins of life' fence saying exactly opposite things; this tells me that the conflict is not between science & a belief in God/Creator (otherwise you’ll expect all scientists to be atheists) but it is a world view conflict – it is between scientists with a differing world view/philosophy. Unfortunately some people are so deeply entrenched in their own world views that they will not countenance alternatives. Meeting our biases is the best way towards rational discussion.

This is a bold claim Robert. However, let’s not confuse the operational/experimental type science which has been mingled in with the historical/forensic type evolutionary based science for research purposes. Thus, sure some aspects can come under the scrutiny of “scientific testing” but the overall evolutionary premise has been falsified many times. However, I can see the term “falsified” as rather subjective... you would no doubt refer to “falsified” or "unexpected outcomes" of the events as temporary setbacks in the understanding of the evolutionary process... then state that this is just the nature of science (which is partly true). What I find interesting is that the majority of the unexpected/unresolved outcomes in research with an evolutionary premise have provided evidence which would fall best into an act of Creation via an intelligent source. However, if the alternatives were broadened (to beyond one), we just may be able to encounter & better understand this intelligent information source through science... if we have the freedom to go there. We need to follow the evidence... wherever it leads.

I would be very interested in seeing this. Could you please provide the link? Just based on my experience, are you sure you were “misquoted”... or did the writer interpret your findings differently? Misquoting & the applying of a different interpretation are two different issues. Anyway, I would like to see for myself.

Yes, I have no doubt you do. You state your position well. I have always suspected “pride” to be the underlying issue. I have wondered why clearly intelligent men & women continue to close the door on a potentially valid hypothesis which outlines an ultimate cause & an intelligent hand. I have also been curious as to why this particular alternative opinion has had a history of being systematically suppressed.

Hmmm, well I suppose you have at least got something to be thankful for regarding the Creation/I.D movement. It has certainly made some other evolutionist quite famous & wealthy i.e. would Prof. Dawkins be a household name if he was still a practising Zoologist?

My intentions here are not to debate you, or heaven forbid, irritate you or the other members of this forum. I am sure we are both too busy for that. It is just a sincere objective to put forward an alternative point of view - reviewing the research/evidence from a different perspective. Now this usually wouldn't be an issue in most areas of science or in life general for that matter (i.e. various views on orthotic therapy, biomechanics, running training etc...), but this particular area involving the origins or the development of life has a lot of baggage attached (i.e. religious baggage, religious nuts saying stupid things, pseudo-scientific reasoning, deception, discrimination etc...). It is an important topic & I doubt the controversy surrounding issues of this nature will settle down. I can foresee that the years ahead will prove to be the most exciting/interesting for both camps.

 

Yet, there are corroborating data that support the assumptions of the original status. For example, something old, like limestone, has a very low C14 content. Whereas things (plants and animals) that incorporate atmospheric levels of C14 contain the same amount of C14 found in the atmosphere. Also, there are tree rings. The center of trees that are 9000 years old have less C14 than the outer, more newly formed, rings. There is confirmation of predicted age with known age.

Where do you get the idea that water effects decay rate of Uranium? The difference in the isotope does not effect the chemical properties of the atom.

Again we have other corroborating data. Is there any evidence that the decay rate has changed?

Well if carbon date incorrectly then you will get wrong answers. For example if snails get most of their carbon from limestone, instead of the atmosphere, they will appear much older than they should. So, you are saying that sometimes mistakes are made, so throw everything out. Haven't people explained how these mistakes occurred?

more on refuting some of these arguments.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/carbon-14/index.html

Eric

 

How come there are no old fossils of homo sapien? We are not our ancestors. My self esteem is not effected by who my distant ancestors were. Is this the reason that you question evolution? The creator made a world where there is a lot of evidence for evolution.

Eric

 

This could be the most brilliant post ever published on Podiatry Arena. Not only because of its knowledgeable content and well structured argument but because it just might make some open their eyes to the truth. It is so difficult to let go but somebody might already be loosening their grip. I'll be using some of this at Church if you don't mind Ben aka Matthew, I was asked to do a forum on 'How can God and Science fit together' (How can you believe science in terms of Gods word, aren't they mutually exclusive?)

Regards and Blessings Dave Smith

 

Firstly limestone isn’t alive thus it can’t inhale & digest C14 from either the atmosphere or from food. On the other hand, plants & animals can. It would make sense that tree material closer to the outer surface would/could have a higher C14 ratio than closer to the centre (who said that these trees are “9000 years old” – tree-ring dating is not nearly reliable enough). The point is, radiometric dating is unreliable due to so many variable factors.

Radiometric ‘dating’ labs do not measure age—they measure amounts of chemicals, then from this they infer age, based on underlying assumptions. The fact that there is some consistency to radiometric dates is explained in part by the tendency to publish only data consistent with the ‘evolutionary age’ already ‘established’ i.e. by fossils, pre-assumed philosophy. Most radioactive dating laboratories prefer you to tell them what age you expect. It is hard to see why this would be necessary if these were ‘absolute’ methods. The entire geological ‘millions of years’ system was largely in place, based on the philosophical assumptions of men like Charles Lyell & James Hutton, before radioactivity was even discovered. Where a radioactive date contradicts the ‘system’, it is invariably discarded.

The point referring to is that deep time (old age) ‘determination’ is an interpretation; the actual scientific data are isotope ratios. Uranium (common parent element), are easily dissolved in water, so could be leached out of rocks eg. Uranium leached out of rocks:
- Concentration of uranium in sediments by multiple migration-accretion.
- The chemical and isotopic record of rock-water interaction in the Sherman Granite, Wyoming and Colorado.

Uranium comes in two common isotopes with atomic weights of 235 & 238. Both are unstable & radioactive, shedding nuclear particles in a cascade that doesn't stop until they become lead (Pb).

It is true that in today’s world, radioactive decay rates seem constant, & appears to be unaffected by heat or pressure. However, we have only tested decay rates for only about 100 years, so we can’t be sure that they were constant over the alleged billions of years. One of the modes of radioactive decay is electron capture. This occurs when a proton in the nucleus of an atom spontaneously captures an electron from one of the shells & becomes a neutron. The mass of the atom remains the same but the atomic number decreases by one. Electron capture is the only radioactive decay mode that is recognised as possibly being affected by physical conditions such as pressure... the influence of which is becoming more significant with more research i.e. exploring how isotopes behave deep within the earth during partial melting, & also in magma-rock systems during crystallisation.

I used the snail example as I find it quite amusing (particularly when you picture the scenario). However there are plenty of other examples which are far better in this context i.e...

There are many examples where the dating methods give ‘dates’ that are wrong for rocks of known historical age. One example is rock from a dacite lava dome at Mount St Helens volcano. Although we know the rock was formed in 1986, the rock was ‘dated’ by the potassium-argon (K-Ar) method as 0.35 ± 0.05 million years old (Pringle, P.T., Roadside Geology of Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument and Vicinity, Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Washington Division of Geology and Earth Resources, Information Circular 88, p. 120, 1993.)

Another example is K-Ar ‘dating’ of five andesite lava flows from Mt Ngauruhoe in New Zealand. The ‘dates’ ranged from < 0.27 to 3.5 million years - but one lava flow occurred in 1949, three in 1954, and one in 1975.

What happened was that excess radiogenic argon (40Ar) from the magma (molten rock) was retained in the rock when it solidified. The secular scientific literature also lists many examples of excess 40Ar causing ‘dates’ of millions of years in rocks of known historical age. This excess appears to have come from the upper mantle, below the earth’s crust. This is consistent with a young world - the argon has had too little time to escape.

I believe there are similar scenarios in the case with the Hawaiian lava fields (i.e. newly formed rock providing extreme age).

Therefore, if excess 40Ar can cause exaggerated dates for rocks of known age, then why should we trust the method for rocks of unknown age?

Well, that depends on what you call “old”. If you are referring to literal hundreds of thousands &/or millions of years, well you are not going to find any... neither will you for primates. This question goes back to the issue of dating & the interpretation of the evidence. There is an interesting story in regard to the dating of Lucy (apparent Human ancestor...Australopithecus afarensis)...

The Trouble With Dating Older Women: In 1974 Donald Johanson found the remains (40%) of a skeleton in Ethiopia. He speculated it was a female Hominid (named Lucy - after a Beatles song) & wanted to get it age tested. This process created much confusion as he wasn't happy with the various dates he was getting back from the labs. In desperation he would send a sample from one lab to another until he was happy with the result. Another researcher heard about this & published an article in a prestigious science magazine with the title... "The Trouble With Dating Older Women". There is still controversy to this day as to the age of the remains let alone its class. Anatomist Charles Oxnard believes australopithecines were not structurally related to humans & many species were living at the same time as humans. The late Glynn Isaac of Harvard University said... "The australopithecines are rapidly sinking back to the status of particularly specialized apes". Even the famous Richard Leakey said there is no good evidence she is a missing link.

Well I believe our kind is our ancestors. You may state that your self esteem may not be affected by where your ancestors came from but it does & has affected others. What a person believes does matter i.e. Jokela High School, Columbine high school massacres. For some, the issue of where they came from has little impact (if & when they gave the issue thought) – for others it does (I’m sure it also depends on one’s personality as well). It initially never affected me (as I didn’t think about it) & thus wasn’t an issue when I started questioning evolution.

I see the Creator made a world where there is a lot of evidence for design, purpose & subsequent intelligence amidst all around us. It has been man’s interpretation of this evidence which wants to dumbify the facts via imposing a hypothesis which is solely humanistic through means of unguided random events of mutations... in fear of divine intervention.

I feel a lot of us take what we have (our body) & what is around us for granted (i.e. nature). Just last Friday I was mowing the lawn & a rock flew into my eye. It was painful & I couldn’t’ see out of it for a couple of days, with sight then affected a couple of days beyond that. I certainly appreciate that the eye has healed & that I have no more pain... & especially can see again.

I struggle to think of one single example where a belief in evolution has advanced medicine or the care of individuals. It seems to be just the opposite i.e. eugenics as an example of the tragic influence of evolutionary beliefs.

Thank you David. All the best for your forum.

 

Matthew, I am surprised at you. I thought you would know better than to produce the obstructive arguments and half truths we have talked about before. Lets got slowly.

1) Radio metric dating measures ratios. It measures ratios of istopes of whatever element one is considering. One chooses the appropriate element for the age one is considering. That is, remembering that they have an exponential decay curve, one has to use that element convenient to that timescale that you are considering. This is where you will try to trip me up: while I am a geology grad, of many years ago, I am now rusty. Classic CS or ID techniques are to pick on a tiny flawy in th opponents arguments, and use this to rubbish them. Give me time to revise on radiometric dating that I have not used for 25 years.

2) you seem to dismiss Lyell and Hutton and people that did not know about radio-dating: and you are quite right. But please do not forget that Hutton (who came form a deeply religous family), was the first to say that ":the Earth is imeasurably old". He coined the phrase "the present is the key to the past": that is, if you want to know about structures of yesterday, look at todays sedimentary processes. This is is THE opposite of any Creationist argument. And like Darwin, was fully aware of the extrement that he was stirring.

3) Radioactive decay is not constant - though may seem so on a human timescale. As I said above it is exponential; see any geochemistry text published by a university publisher (not a church), and you will see this.

Matthew, I am really happpy to talk about this any time, at least, when the church is left at home. Rob

 

Rob

I know nothing about geology or radioactive dating but one line in your explaination gives me cause for concern:

I presume this means using the curve with the best resolution for the time scale predicted. That is to say, an exponential decay curve can progress a long way in time without progressing much in magnitude, as the function of growth/decay reaches numbers that grow a lot for each multiplication then this part of the curve changes in magnitude a lot but the time changes very little.

I would guess that your statement suggests that the scientist would choose that part of a decay function curve that gives the best resolution to match the decay rate to the presupposed or estimated age to be measured so that means it falls within that latter part of the curve.

There appears to be two assumptions here that may result in large error.

1) To know for a fact that decay is uniformly exponential I would assume that you would have to do some empirical experiment to prove this. Since this is not possible, how do scientists establish the known decay rate?

2) If you estimate a decay rate and then use that to make a scale then fit that scale to an a presupposed or estimated age sample then it is bound to give the age expected - its a tautological argument.

This is like choosing the scale of a tape measure from a whole range of tape measure scales and then use it to show how long something is when you already have an idea about how long it is and so choose the scale that will confirm your initial assumption. So if I wan't to indicate something is ten inches long then choose a measure where the inch is to the scale of a centimeter then I will undoubtedly find my something does approach ten inches.
Even worse if I choose the wrong scale and it is exponential and perhaps the decay rate was estimated wrong anyway then as my something approaches ten inches the scale increments approach zero (ie exponential decay) so my something becomes between estimated between 15 and 15000 inches long due to resolution error.

Even tho I do not understand much on this subject there are many eminent scientists who have expressed deep concern over dating methods and yet many still have deep faith in them. It seems to me that does indeed require enormous strength of faith to believe the axioms of science these days.

Regards Dave

 

This is not correct. Wild E Coli can utilise citrate the laboratory bacteria could not as they did not have the genes.

Citrate metabolising is one of the criteria used to detirmine the speices of E Coli bacteria similar to the way that they are divided into aerobic and anaerobic species. Therefore the experimental bacteria were/are making changes to being a new species.

If sheep adapted to change from hebivore to carnivore with all the necessary equipment to do so would they really still be classifed as the sheep species we know?

 

A fine example of utter rubbish linking two totally unrelated subjects to denigrate one of them.
A really low one and so ignorant.
Eugenics, an attempt to selectively breed for or against characteristics, is based on GENETICS!!!! and before you blab another devious mischievious load of .... Hitler didn't believe in evolution he was a creationist!!!!!!!!!!

 

I am sorry Rob, but we have hardly talked before. I have perceived your post to be limiting on facts & haven’t addressed my queries/questions. Your chosen perception of my views to be “obstructive arguments & half truths” has not been warranted. Let’s go slowly...

Yes, we know this. I stated it in my previous post. Let’s move on...

Talking about a red herring. The presumed “exponential decay curve” is just one factor in the issue of radiometric dating which does not influence the issues associated with the basis of inadequacies involved with the dating method. These being:
- Assuming how much of a particular chemical was originally present;
- Assuming that there has been no leaching by water of the chemicals in or out of the rock;
- Assuming that radioactive decay rates have stayed the same for the assumed billions of years, & more.

Besides; on the issue of the exponential decay curve; Dr Keith Wanser (B.A., M.A., Ph.D. is Professor of Physics at California State University, Fullerton - with over 30 refereed & 18 other technical papers & seven U.S. patents in his track record) has done research revealing a fatal flaw in the assumptions behind K-Ar dating... involving radiometric decay being non-exponential - at the level of things like quantum tunnelling. It’s still in the early stages, but already one can say that over time periods that are short compared to the half life, the decay is not exponential, despite what is taught. This decay thing is actually very complex; there’ve been all sorts of assumptions made to keep it simple, some of which may not be valid. It turns out that when you get the nucleus “excited”, decay is going to be much quicker, making things look vastly “older”. People have been talking recently about magnetic stars giving off big bursts of gamma rays; there are all sorts of ways that radiometric “clocks” could have been reset via a catastrophic event (i.e. a flood)... as referred to below...

I really don’t care how “deeply religious” Hutton presumably was. It doesn’t explain the fact that he made superficial/ignorant assumptions about the perceived geology around him. Being that you state “deeply religious” it also testifies to the fact that he didn’t understand the Genesis account or didn’t have the faith to believe in it. The above account does state there was a catastrophe which dramatically changed the current geology dramatically in a relatively short period of time as opposed to small changes by small events over large periods of time. This is a big topic in itself. You & I can quite easily debate the likes of Hutton & any other so termed Theistic Evolutionist (including the minister mentioned in your email) about their belief if they assume some aspects of their belief is allegory & some parts fact. One could simply ask... so which parts do you deem allegory & which parts do believe fact?... how do you know?. Where does it end?

I am surprised you made this statement as I thought you would know more on this issue. “Sedimentary process” supports the Creationist view extremely well (in part due to my previous note) i.e.

- The continents are eroding too quickly: If the continents were billions of years old, they would have eroded by wind & water many times over. Mountain uplift & other ‘recycling’ processes are nowhere near capable of compensating for this.

- Many fossils indicate that they must have formed quickly, & could not have taken long time-spans: there are billions of fossil fish in rock layers around the world which are incredibly well-preserved. They frequently show intact fins & often scales, indicating that they were buried rapidly & the rock hardened quickly. In the real world, dead fish are scavenged within 24 hours. Particularly spectacular are the finds of a mother ichthyosaur apparently ‘freeze-framed’ in the process of giving birth. Then there are the fossil fish which are found either in the process of swallowing other fish or with undigested fish intact in their stomachs.

- Many processes, which we have been told take millions of years, do not need such time-spans at all:
a) Coal formation: Argonne National Laboratories have shown that heating wood (lignin, a significant component) & clay at 150°C (rather cool geologically) for 4 to 36 weeks, in a sealed quartz tube with no added pressure, forms high-grade black coal (Organic Geochemistry 6:463–471, 1984).
b) Stalactites and stalagmites: many examples shown that cave decorations form quickly, given the right conditions. One example is of a mining tunnel in Mt Isa, Queensland, Australia. The tunnel was only 50 years old.
c) Opals: despite the common teaching that it takes millions of years to form opal, Australian researcher Dr Len Cram has long been growing opal in his backyard laboratory. His opal is indistinguishable, under the electron microscope, from that mined in the field. He was awarded an honorary doctorate (by a secular university) for this research. All he does is mix together the right common chemicals - no heat, no pressure, & definitely no millions of years.
d) Rock and fossil formation: scientists have long known that petrifaction can happen quickly i.e. from memory I believe there has been a ‘petrified’ teddy bear as well as a roll of fencing wire which, in only 20 years, became encased in solid sandstone, containing hundreds of fossil shells. Petrified wood can also form quickly under the right conditions - one process has even been patented. The famous multiple levels of ‘fossil forests’ in America’s Yellowstone National Park have now been shown to have formed in one volcanic event. Successive mudflows transported upright trees (minus most of their roots and branches) whose tree-ring signatures confirm that they grew at the one time. Then there are other examples of polystrate fossils around the world.

I have not gone to a church to find my material – nor do I know of any church that has published this type of material (But you knew that, didn’t you). I have already stated that radioactive decay is not constant, & the “exponential” aspect has now been covered above.

Sigh... well the above view is part of the problem. Prof Kidd (can you be called this), I am really happy to discuss this topic also, at least when you leave your context of “church” out of the conversation. My posts on this topic are here for all to see & I have specifically refrained from using any “church” related references or theology. However, it stands to reason that reference to an eternal/immortal Creator will pop up from time to time... as I am a Creationist... & I haven’t resorted to Professor Francis Crick’s Directed Panspermia hypothesis for good reason.

Yes we know this. However, it is not the case of not having “the genes” (i.e. or acquiring the genes); it’s a case of not having the mutation (or acquiring the mutation). Big difference... the type of change involved is in the opposite direction to that required for evolution to be a possible. Let’s continue...

That’s what I stated. Let’s continue...

Were they really. I feel it is an extremely weak assumption one which is biased towards wishful thinking that the evolutionary paradigm is seen to be observed. If this is the best example after 150 odd years of earnest research on the issue then I would be quite discouraged.

I gave perfectly logical reasons as to what was happening, that being simply a mutation occurred...

The bacteria are still bacteria... move on.

Interesting question – but not a good analogy. You see this has already happened to some extent due to the alarming practices of the livestock industry. Rendering plants which are now associated with the feeding of our livestock have essentially turned the herbivore cow, sheep & chicken into carnivores & cannibals. I have a strong interest in this area. I am a vegan (please no generalised assumptions) partly due to this reason. This is a real health concern for humanity, one of which I could write much about. In short, I believe this is the way Mad Cow Disease - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) (also refer to Prions) originated or at least spread as much as it did (the U.K should be familiar with this). What most people don't realize is that there is a human form of Mad Cow Disease (BSE) - known as Creutzfeldt - Jakob Disease (CJD) or variant CJD or human BSE which can be picked up from eating contaminated meat. Like I said... big topic... & one we should all investigate into as the authorities concerned are not going to tell you! After all, there is a reason why those who lived in the U.K during a set period of time are not allowed to donate blood in Australia.

Anyway, to get back to your question... the sheep would still be classified as sheep. From another angle, I also believe there was a lion that wouldn't eat meat... yet, it was still a lion!

Well Mark, you could have at least put your statement across a bit more civil. The last time I looked, genetics was a branch of medicine thus the example is legitimate – whether one likes it or not. The fact is evolution has done nothing for us of a positive nature. To say the least, it has caused more harm than good.

No, you have just done that. I really couldn't care less what the above character believed in - his actions speak for themselves. Besides...

Sir Arthur Keith, a British anthropologist, an atheistic evolutionist & an anti-Nazi, drew this chilling conclusion:

‘The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.’

Then there was social Darwinism or eugenics in action...

Between 1935 & 1945, there were born some 10,000 children in Germany & an estimated 9,000 in Norway as part of a Nazi genetic engineering plan to build up an Aryan ‘master-race’ or super-breed of humanity. This scheme was known as the Lebensborn or ‘Fountain of Life’ program. Special clinics were set up where SS men were encouraged to mate with blue-eyed, blonde Nordic girls who had no Jewish ancestry, in order to produce ‘racially pure’ German offspring. The resultant babies were then brought up in the foster care of dedicated Nazi couples or reared in special orphanages.

There were at least ten Lebensborn homes in Germany, & nine in Nazi-occupied Norway, where the unmarried pregnant women could give birth in secret away from their homes. The babies were christened in a ritual in which an SS dagger was held over them as the mother swore allegiance to Nazi ideology. If any of the children born into the program were disabled, they were killed or sent to concentration camps.

Now let's leave this issue alone, please.

One again, I don’t believe anything is this post contains anything related to “church” or the doctrines thereof... only brief reference relating to the underlying premise of a Creator (which should stand to reason).

 

Before moving on, let me first point out that the above form of argument is a well known fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

 

So, you agree that older limestone should not have as much C14 as later formed animals and plants. I believe that supports my point.

So, if you took a tree core and counted 9000 rings, what would be the range of dates. Even if you were off by 200 years, you could still get close enough for carbon dating. How reliable do you think tree rings have to be to support carbon dating?

Some of the examples of the unreliability are not very convincing. See below.

It is often discarded for good reason.

So, the two articles both say that water can leach uranium out of rocks. So, you shouldn't use uranium dating methods when water has leached the uranium out. It would be perfectly acceptable to discard data where leaching could have altered the total amount of uranium. However, in a quick look, there is a dating method where ratio of U238 to U234 is used to determine a date. Since they are both uranium water would leach them equally and the ratio could still be used even if leaching had occurred.

So, we have 100 years of data on decay rates. With what certainty can we say that we know that half lives of various isotopes are pretty consistent. We can look at isotopes with a short half life and extrapolate those to those with a longer half life. The argument that we shouldn't accept radioisotope dating because we have only studied for a hundred years is a really a reach.

Here is another example of where there is a good explanation for a "failure" of radio isotope dating. Yes, the "rocks" are only 50 years old, because that is when the lava came out of the volcano. However, the material that makes up the "rocks" could be a lot older. If the molten rock under the earth was just sitting there and its radio isotopes were decaying as expected then when it erupted you would have newly formed rock made out of really old material.

I'm trying to understand your point here. Are you saying we shouldn't teach people religious beliefs because when they here about evolution they get confused and shoot people? Or the same statement switching evolution and religion?

The development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a perfect example of evolution. (The bacteria that have resistance survive and reproduce.) Understanding how resistance develops through evolution has led to the "saving" of some antibiotics from over use.

Evolution is a theory that explains a lot of phenomena. It is a lot to expect to make evolution into a tool to be used to treat people.

Eric

 

Thanks for some excellent points Eric; and for introducing an important aspect to the debate... that of treating people. I am not entirely convinced that evolutionary processes are entirely divorced from clinical practice.

Evolutionary Medicine provides an interesting perspective on genetically correlated conditions on the basis that evolution is genetics plus time. It focuses on our collective similarities and why we can all be susceptible to common ailments rather than an individual patients pathophysiology. Perhaps there are clues here as to why so many of us develop back pain and foot problems?

 

No you did not state that. You said E Coli can normally utilise citrate. This is not true wild E Coli can, the experimental E Coli could not.

They did develop the ability through mutation of their genome, crucially it was not one mutation but at least 3. They did not have all mutations at once but they occurred in different generations. Each mutation conferred a benefit to the generation it occurred in and was passed on. As each subsequent mutation occurred it added to the previous and conferred a greater or new benefit. This is Darwinian adaptation and clear evidence it occurs without a guiding hand. It is exactly how the eye has developed from simple light sensitive cells over 40 separate times in animal evolution.

Moreover, because citrate processing is one of the criteria for detirmining species developing this ability suggests the mutations are leading to species change. So Darwinian adaptions can lead to species change.

Regarding the sheep, we will probably never know but given that carnivorous sheep would tend to eat herbivorous sheep then they would be unlikely to live side by side and thus unlikely to mate. They would be biologically exclusive to one another and therefore different species.

 

Matthew, I really cannot be bothered to counter your obstructive arguments. To support the unsuppportable eventually leads to a catastrophic collapse. Just look at Root theory for an analogy. My advise is that you have to start thinking, which you are clearly not doing at the moment. In order to move forward, you must get outside your square. One of my closest friends is a young, gorgous podiatrist from Femantle in Western Australia. She once said to me (after a long conversation about Catholicism etc etc ): "you once said to me that it takes more than one generation to get over religous bigotry - I now see that to be true". I think she was right. Look to science, and in doing so, understand science.

 

When I wrote that it was a lot to expect that evolution could be a tool in medicine, I could not think of any examples. Your examples have potential. What I really meant to say was that it makes no sense to be critical of evolution theory because it hasn't produced any medical advances.

Eric

 

exasperation

a branch of science, medicine does utilise genetics in the diagnosis and management of hereditary disorders.....what example?????..........[

..it has resulted in the rise of homo sapiens, so i suppose you're right

..doesn't go down well does it!

..obviously a nasty creationist

Is this the Sir Arthur Keith with the controversial views on "Jewish evolution"?

nothing to do with evolution!! being naughty again
An analogy to your argument is ..... the 9/11 perpetrators took advantage of, used, the phenomenom of aerodynamic uplift to do carry out the horrendous act....this doesn't mean that aerodynamic uplift should be held responsible for same!!!

only if you stop writing nonsense


all the best, peace and love, mark from canberra

 

History tells us that Sir Arthur Keith was an arrogant prick! Apart from being the Physician to the King, he seems to famous ally for his three major mistakes.

1) Said that the Taung Child was an ape (or was it a baboon?) - it is of the course the type cast fossil of Austrolopithecus Africanus - and found by and Ozzie!

2) Said that Piltdown Man was genuine - enough said! The British Museum still hangs their head in embarrasment over this.

3) said "The Arch of the foot is held up by muscles and muscles alone". Enough said.............

Rob

 

I am seriously starting to question the comprehension level of some readers here – or maybe it’s a case for biased selective comprehension.

It was Mark who brought Hitler into this discussion - not I....

Mark obviously wanted to crystal ball (predict) the situation. Ironically, thus himself victim of this fallacy of irrelevance. I responded to it... particularly when he stated Hitler was a creationist (maybe Mark got confused with vegetarianism - ask Mark)... whilst using multiple exclamation marks. This clearly wasn’t the case; I thus gave reasoning & then asked for the issue to be dropped – for good reason. So can we now leave Hitler out of the discussion? Thanks.

Exactly what point were you trying to make? I believe we actually agree on something – what’s the relevance to the context of the discussion? I gave logical reason why the above could likely be true. Frankly, who knows when it comes to C14 dating; I wonder why some give this method the time of day (excuse the pun).

OK, I take it you are referring to the Bristlecone Pine trees of the White Mountain region in California. I don’t know why you use this example. Some say that these trees are 4723 years old, yet others say they are over 9000 years old. Quite a difference isn’t it? The ages, however, are based on the assumption that the trees grew no more than one ring per year.

One might expect then that the White Mountains host some of the best growing conditions on Earth. In fact, the opposite is true. Ironically, the alleged oldest trees grow in some of the worst imaginable conditions. Conditions are so bad that few other plants can survive: short cool summers with a growing season thought to be only several weeks long; desert-like aridity (250 mm of precipitation per year, mostly as snow. Strong winds coupled with air that in the summer is said to be the driest on earth, & the rocky ‘soil’ (where there is any ’soil’), means that what little rain does fall will evaporate or drain away quickly. These exceptionally harsh growing conditions are the key to understanding why some of these Bristlecone Pines have so many rings that they appear to live about ten times longer than Bristlecone Pines which are growing in comparatively good conditions!

Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced & extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings.

Claimed older tree ring chronologies depend on the cross-matching of tree ring patterns of pieces of dead wood found near living trees. This procedure depends on temporal placement of fragments of wood using C14 dating, assuming straight-line extrapolation backwards of the carbon dating. Having placed the fragment of wood approximately using the C14 data, a matching tree-ring pattern is sought with wood that has a part with overlapping C14 age & that also extends to a younger age. A tree ring pattern that matches is found close to where the carbon ‘dates’ are the same. Thus the tree-ring sequence is extended from the living trees backwards.

Now superficially this sounds fairly reasonable. However, it is a circular process (reasoning). It assumes that it is approximately correct to linearly extrapolate the carbon ‘clock’ backwards. There are good reasons for doubting this. From a Creationist perspective, the closer one gets back to the Flood (we are talking about 4500 years ago) the more inaccurate the linear extrapolation of the carbon ‘clock’ would become, perhaps radically so. Conventional C14 dating assumes that the system has been in equilibrium for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, & that C14 is thoroughly mixed in the atmosphere. However, the Flood buried large quantities of organic matter containing the common carbon isotope, C12, so the C14/C12 ratio would rise after the Flood, because C14 is produced from nitrogen, not carbon. These factors mean that early post-Flood wood would look older than it really is & the ‘carbon clock’ is not linear in this period. “Consequently, the calibration is a circular process & the tree ring chronology extension is also a circular process that is dependent on assumptions about the carbon dating system “ (Newgrosh, B., Living with radiocarbon dates: a response to Mike Baillie. Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum 5:59–67, 1992). Thus, extended tree ring chronology is not an independent confirmation/calibration of carbon dating earlier than historically validated dates, as has been claimed.

The number of growth rings produced by Bristlecone Pines seems to be more a function of the soil water status of the area in which the Bristlecone Pines grow: the drier the environment, the more rings are produced. Multiplicity of growth rings & the strip growth habit are possibly physiological mechanisms for conserving water in dry conditions. Once again, uniformitarian assumptions about the constancy of rates in the past are shown to be too simplistic.

Yes, & what good reason is this? The date was wrong because it didn’t fit the preconceived date assumed by the finder or researcher. Discarded because radiometric dating gives largely varied dates on the same object. Has parts of so deemed ‘science’ been reduced to this hit & miss analysis based on the world view of the one doing the testing? Picking the evidence to fit your theory is not good science.

Sometimes it is claimed that geologists know which date is valid and which is not, but there are many situations when there are conflicting dates. Even uniformitarian geologists themselves cannot agree which date to accept & which to reject. Some examples of conflicting dates are:

- Charred wood, buried by a basalt lava flow, was C14 - ‘dated’ at about 45,000 years old, but the basalt was K-Ar ‘dated’ at 37 million years old.

- The Hawkesbury Sandstone is assigned a Middle Triassic ‘age’ of around 225–230 million, yet it contained fossil wood with C14 activity, although this should be non-existent if the wood were truly more than about 100,000 years old.

Yes, & how do you or anybody else for that matter know if & when water did or did not come in contact with the rock at some time over the presumed billions of years of its life & leach some Uranium out? Subsequently how do you or anybody else know at what degree leaching of the rock occurred – it may have been a relative small, medium or large amount. We do live on a watery planet, with precipitation as well as massive amounts of underground water as well – not to mention that I believe there was once a catastrophe that involved large volumes of water.

The point is Eric; all dating methods related to the unobservable past rely on unverifiable assumptions, chief of which is the one about closed systems. Furthermore, all dating methods involve the subjective evaluation of data & results, so much so, that their veracity must seriously be questioned... 100, 200, 300 years of testing is of little relevance. All dating methods assume a closed system - that no isotopes were gained or lost by the rock since it formed. There is no way of knowing if this was the case. Moreover, whenever dates obtained from rocks are not acceptable to existing geologic theories, the assumptions are suddenly reversed, & we are told that those particular rocks must have become open systems. Obviously, uniformitarian geologists want to have it both ways.

Nuclear physicists Drs Eugene Chaffin & Russell Humphreys suggest that the nuclear decay rate was highly accelerated during Creation Week & possibly during the Flood year. They support this theoretically by applying quantum mechanics & the effect of the Universe’s expansion, & evidentially by the amount of helium still retained in minerals, & radiohalos.

What happened was that excess radiogenic argon (Ar40) from the magma (molten rock) was retained in the rock when it solidified. The secular scientific literature also lists many examples of excess Ar40 causing ‘dates’ of millions of years in rocks of known historical age. This excess appears to have come from the upper mantle, below the earth’s crust. This is consistent with a young world - the argon has had too little time to escape.

The varied & wide discrepancies from the same rock samples from a variety of labs should at the very least question the reliability of these dating methods which have their basis in unsupported assumptions.

What I am saying is that evolution essentially debases human equality & value. We are taught that we basically came from nothing, to microbes, through primates & are part of this process of survival of the fittest – every man for himself – the strong eradicate the weak. Some may (& have) decided to play this card amongst their fellow man... in fact it happens all the time in various subtle ways. However, some may play this card in more violent ways... particularly when they are disturbed. The following is the reason for the actions taken regarding one of the examples provided i.e. Jokela High in Tuusula, Finland. I do have a partial copy of the transcript form the YouTube video (which is quite disturbing & thus has long been removed). There is strong humanistic/evolutionary reasoning given to justify his actions (CNN article link). The following was taken from the CNN transcript... "In the rambling text posted on the site, Auvinen said that he is "a cynical existentialist, anti-human humanist, anti-social social-Darwinist, realistic idealist and god-like atheist."I am prepared to fight and die for my cause," he wrote. "I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection."

Now, I am not for a second stating that all who believe in evolution would do such a thing but it is an example of what this teaching has inspired this individual to do... & there are numerous similar cases.

It would seem at least one here liked your above answer; however, it is not a perfect example of evolution... far from it. How many times is it going to take to state that the process involved here is the diverse expressive ability in the gene pool which undergoes natural selection via mutations. Natural selection operates on the existing information in a population, while mutations also affect the already-present information.

For true evolution to occur, new information has to be added to the genome. Resistance to antibiotics has nothing to do with adding new genetic information. There are several ways that bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics. One way is that some bacteria already had the genes for resistance to the antibiotics. In fact, some bacteria, obtained by thawing sources that had been frozen before man developed antibiotics, have been shown to be antibiotic-resistant. When antibiotics are applied to a population of bacteria, those lacking resistance are killed, & any genetic information they carry is eliminated. The survivors carry less information, but they are all resistant. The same principle applies to insects apparently 'evolving' resistance to insecticides. The resistance/mutation was already there, & the insects without resistance are eliminated. This is also why the malaria parasite can adapt to most antimalarial drugs; but chloroquine resistance took much longer to develop because two specific mutations needed to occur together in the one gene. Even this tiny change is beyond the reach of organisms like primates or humans with much longer generation times.

No, please carefully read everything that I said. I stated E. coli can normally utilise citrate under anaerobic conditions. The study you referenced found E. coli utilised citrate under aerobic conditions via mutation... this apparently is big news for evolutionists...

Could you please clarify it was 3 mutation changes & whilst you’re at it, could you please answer my previous question related to this study i.e. the statement you made that this research received a Nobel Prize. Thanks. Anyway, as I stated...

This post is long enough to delve into your fallacy of the eye evolving... particularly by similar means as your bacterium example... maybe another time.

No, it’s that thing called natural selection... I don’t believe I’ve heard of “Darwinian adaptions” (maybe it is natural selection under evolutionary guise). We have already discussed the boundaries of natural selection. By all means please keep us updated on any new developments that these bacteria make in the future i.e. evolve into eukaryotic cells with functioning mitochondria. I can tell you now... they will always remain bacteria.

It was a stupid analogy wasn’t it Lawrence... c’mon admit it. Say, maybe the carnivorous sheep would have noticed the increased speed & endurance of the vegetarian sheep as well as their powerful kicking ability. Subsequently the carnivorous food supply was limited whilst this green stuff was all over the place. The carnivorous sheep may have also noticed that the vegetarian sheep generally lived longer & were much better looking... thus them themselves decided to become vegetarian... & all lived happily ever after. See what happens when speculation is given the potential to go wild.

 

This is a tactic regularly used by evolutionists to deflect scrutiny from the real issues, i.e. the “science” (or lack of it). To draw the sympathy vote they portray themselves as moderate, clear-thinking rationalists yet violate civil discussion via making disrespectful comments. It would seem civility & reason is only expressed one direction on from some on this discussion.

Fallacious arguments are used to discriminate against anyone who dares to stand against the prevailing worldview of evolution & millions-of-years.

Thank you. I alluded to this scenario previously. There are many conflicting views in the world of biomechanics/orthotic therapy etc... People are doing the same degree of critiquing of these views, yet they don't seem to attract the same degree of sentiments. I can see it is only because I am talking about humans... the origins thereof... & the potential of an intelligent hand in the process which is of an eternal supernatural nature. These arguments tends to raise so much emotion, & this somewhat intrigues me.

Or could it be somewhat related to what Will Durant once said... “If you make people think they are thinking, they will love you... but if you make them think, they will hate you”.

You sent me a private email last week Rob... not only have you not fulfilled on your claims but you have also violated your outlined grounds of discussion (i.e. making it personal). You are now suggesting I am now not thinking... & do not think outside the square.

All of the posts I have displayed on this thread have far more scientific data than those opposing my view. My questions have rarely been addressed & when it happens the answers are left wanting. If you claim to be an expert in an aspect of evolutionary biology you should have easily rebutted my claims (if they were apparently so ridiculous) – you have not. Instead I receive the above type statements.

I have put a lot of thought into this discussion because I am genuinely interested in it. As stated before, I didn’t grow up in a religious household & detest religion on the whole. I have thus certainly have had to come out of my “square” to go against the prevailing worldview of evolution. I have been the one that has had to question the high school/university science that was fed to me... & investigate where the evidence leads. Not just lap it all up & take it as foundational truth... I think this supports if anything that I have had to come out of my “square” & not only question & follow up, but express the alternative side on a public scientific based forum such as this.

As far as the Christian perspective is concerned... I am also in the minority... as will allude to below...

“Catholicism”... hmmm. Please refer to above point regarding my views on religion. If I expressed the views I have on theology/scriptures I would have been killed by the above group only a few hundred years ago... as have many others have. I hope your young friend is doing well.

I think my posts (more than any others) are testimony of the fact that I have looked at the science... & understand it... albeit from a different perspective. Can I suggest Rob that you put aside your biases of me & the Creation/I.D movement & view the science with wider lenses?

It is doubtful we will even get to look into the issues surrounding ‘mitochondrial Eve’.

Yep, that’s the one! (Wiki link) He’s from your (evolution) camp - remember. I used it for a reason... a claimed atheist/evolutionist disagreeing with your ignorant statement that Hitler was a Creationist. He most certainly was not... as stated in my previous post, I think you may have got your wires crossed with vegetarianism.

Can you see the hypocrisy of the above two quotes?... i.e. “nasty creationist”. Once again a ridiculous analogy out of context based on your biased understanding of the topic. Thanks all the same for your input.

Anyway Mark, I’m sure you can resonate with the following, based on that displayed in your avatar...

Charming language Rob. This was supposed to be a civil discussion... on a public forum. It would appear you don’t like the individual based on your following quotes... but there is no need to resort to that.

Thanks for that. I rest my case... another evolutionist of stated high repute with history of ignorance & deception in attemp to lift up a failing paradigm. However, you have the audacity to question & undermine my integrity on the topic of Origins.

It would have been nice if we objectively allowed the science to do the talking here... put across our deferring opinions... weigh up the evidence... & if nothing else, respectfully disagree.

I respectfully disagree with your views on the issue of Origins Rob. You (as well as others here) may be in a better position than most in the community to seriously consider the alternative. You owe it to yourselves to at least remove the bias lens & consider the alternative... I have.

It would seem that this thread has now exhausted further rational discussion & will be closed soon based on Admin's last post, thus goodbye.

All the best & take care.
Matt.

 

Mathew

I may be to late here and get locked out but as the thread closes

In reply to this

You wrote

While I have enjoyed your excellent argument in content, technique and protocol I am a little disappointed with the response here, perhaps I misunderstand:

Surely your argument just leaves the door open for similar cases to be highlighted by the evolutionist / atheist about atrocities committed by people from the theistic / religious community.

I thought the point you might have brought up as to why the teaching of evolution degrades us as humans would be this:

First off I make no apologies for bringing Gods name into the discussion after all He was the creator. This is akin (only much worse) to discussing mechanics and not mentioning Newton for fear of upsetting those who support Leibniz as the more influential scientist.

Evolution inspires success where as God inspires or rather demands relationship.
The evolutionist individual follows success as the ultimate goal to fulfilment and the person who knows God and listens to His True Word knows that fulfilment is found in relationship.

Relationship comes out of love and vice versa, Success uses whatever it takes, which might include love and relationship but by no means exclusively, which is why we have good and bad atheists since it is possible to be successful and loving.

Success only seeks to win, relationship seeks to surrender - success is vanity seeking fulfilment, relationship is fulfilment.

Science seeks fulfilment because it is an expression of the human condition. We all search, crave for fulfilment but the vanities of science can never achieve the ultimate goal. Relationship with God thru Jesus does achieve this, but no one can experience this second hand, it can't be explained in a book. The only way is through faithful surrender to God's Holiness. Its, free its for you to choose to accept it, it is truth and truth will set you free.

Creation allowed this, God so loved you that he created all this so that you could be in relationship with him. This is why creation makes sense, no science required.

Regards Dave Smith

 

An excellent article on why acceptance of "intelligent design" creationism is so widespread among physicians.

 

no, just one

correct, i used an irrelevant link to highlight your irrelevant link, of course you can't hold creation responsible for hitler's actions just like you can't link evolution to eugenics ffs

sorry Matt not with you here, what am i 'predicting?

 

Hi David.

It is sometimes very difficult to convey ones intentions via a writing format such as this. This is probably why my posts are usually quite long. I stand by what I said as I believe the underlying teachings of evolution do devalue human existence & purpose. I used the example of the Jokela High School case as it had a direct relationship with one who used the underlying principles of evolution to justify feelings, actions & an outcome. I wouldn't say you misunderstood, just didn't see the context of the example in relation to the following...

Yes, you are right. This is partly why I did it. The above argument is often used against those who believe in & follow God. There have been atrocities committed by both camps - I am fully aware of them (as should we all). This is why I have openly stated my resentment of religion on the whole. Let's not forget that so called representatives of God (names withheld) have also killed millions of God believing Christians for their will to just simply read God's word (in their own tongue), spread God's word & follow the commandments of God i.e. please refer to the case of the Waldensians. Like I said previously, I also would have no doubt been on their hit list if I was living in a certain part of Europe a few hundred years ago.

The point I want to make is that it is man deceived/corrupted that kills... not God... & not evolution! Killing goes against the commandments of God. The Christian crusades that often gets cited on this issue were anything but Christian... they were the political & religious powers serving their own deeds under the guise of a 'holy' cause that caused so much bloodshed.

Everybody out there is aware of the nature of your above quote yet the issue is rarely addressed. Most people are unaware that there are two chief players in this spiritual conflict. One of which deceives & corrupts man & has used the guise of religion (perceived representative of God) as a tool to carry out the work. Thus we should be all aware of the fact that just because an organisation depicts themselves as representative of God does not mean it is the case... it could well be the opposite. This is why we should question everything & seek the answers for ourselves... not solely rely on others to tell us.

I agree with you. However, I probably would say that both God & evolution inspires success & relationship but in a different context... & with different motives.

Agreed. I also want reiterate on your point, that is to say that there are plenty of beautiful, kind, loving people who do not follow God; & who do believe in evolution because they believe that the science & reasoning heard & taught coming from sincere people to be true. I understand & respect this. However, the more one delves into the science, the more one delves into (on this issue) the structure, layout & the original Hebrew textual meaning of the Genesis account of Creation, the more one may find that there is a possible alternative. An alternative that provides a cause for the universe, a cause for the chemistry, physics & mathematics that brought forth a life supporting biosphere; a cause for life & a purpose for life. Despite Genesis written about 3500 years ago, it does not violate any scientific laws & principles (fascinating topic in itself).

However, we are all in amidst of a galactic conflict, of which is played out on this planet. A conflict which has to be dealt with very carefully because one can only love if one chooses to love... it cannot be forced... it cannot be out of fear. This is what would happen if God dealt with his enemy as soon as this entity corrupted His Creation. God could have easily destroyed the enemy at the start of the rebellion, but it would have displayed a message... a message of, go against my will & you will be destroyed. Thus then obedience would be out of fear – not love/relationship. Evil must run its full course (observed by all) & dealt with appropriately so it will never return. Once God addresses the issue of evil & all have witnessed its implications (i.e. disease, pain, suffering, sadness, death) then will evil be conquered & peace will reign forever.

This is a big topic with other associating issues that could be addressed. However, I do feel it really isn’t suitable for this thread or this forum. Others here may feel uncomfortable with it & I don’t want this to become an issue. I do not want to irritate others with issues that are foreign & require some thought & analysing in one’s own time. However, in light of your concerns, I hope it clears the air as well as inform others of the far reaching implications this topic attracts.

Kind regards,
Matt.

 

Weren't you predicting something in the first quote, by saying... "before you blab another devious mischievious load of .... Hitler didn't believe in evolution he was a creationist!!!!!!!!!!" I had no intentions of making that reference (i.e. to Hitler)... I make a point of never mentioning the guy on this issue... as Zimmy stated...

... which was unduly directed at me. I did however comment on your “Hitler” reference as it was incorrect.

 

Original quote from Zimmy

Hi Zimmy
Thanks for your short line above. It's good to see the evidence. It shows this stuff has all been worked and worked and if we can use citations, it acknowledges that which has already been done and said.
On the subject of physicians I note a higher percentage of Jewish and Roman Catholic physicians go with Evolution. Perhaps this is because both those religions tend to work from the original Hebrew in which Genesis was written. The word bara meaning to 'create from nothing' is used in Verse 1 Chapter 1, thereafter the Hebrew word asah is used which means 'to bring order out of chaos.' (Moltmann, J., God in Creation. Eng Trans, SCM, London ,1985.)
The word Evolution first appears in the early 17th century as a military term for the 'opening out of a formation' and quite quickly came to mean 'development in detail or from a rudimentary state.' (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology) There is, I think, a strong correlation between the Hebrew word asah and the English word 'evolution' and that is why Jewish and Roman Catholics do not have such a problem with the ideas of Evolution.

 

Bill

Where did you find the translation you propose here? (sorry I meant where can I find this on the wwweb I've found many references and summaries of Moltman but nothing specific to your quote, which I don't doubt but would be interested to find) searching hebrew->english translation services and entering the hebrew script for asah only returns to do or to make. Evolve or develop or form or fashion are not associated with the hebrew word asah. Web sites that discuss these two words, in the terms you talk of above, only give the literal translation of create for bara and to do or make for asah. The interpretation of 'develop slowly' attributed to the word asah has only been a possible interpretation for the purposes of allowing the possibility of evolution within a creationist axiom.

Regards Dave

 

Hi David
I took the quote and reference out of 'God is not Green' by Dr Adrian Hough. I used the reference he used rather than referencing his work directly and hence Moltmann by proxy. Adrian was an atmospheric chemist who obtained his doctorate in Chemistry from Oxford University in 1981. He became quite concerned about the effects that human activity was having on the Earth's atmosphere and decided to become a Church of England Vicar to see if he could do something about human behaviour. (A bit of a folly as it turned out, not surprisingly) Despite that he applied the rigours he learned as a scientist to his theology. He told me that there is a very small market for sound theology as the publishers are going for more popular, more evocative and less well researched work. This also means that there is little theology of this nature on the wwweb. His second book never got published but I found the manuscript fascinating. It was about entropy, the tendency of matter to become evenly distributed, and that life was doing the opposite. What was the 'syntropy' that was working entropy in reverse.

'Here is the quote from Adrian's book. He repeats this a few times in various forms throughout. Hough, A. God is not Green, Cromwell Press, England 1997. p 57.

"Moltmann commented on the conclusion from Process Thought that God creates order from chaos rather that matter from nothing, noting that such creation would be described as 'asah' rather than the biblical term of bara. (Citation I gave you) Indeed, to reject the concept of creation ex nihilo would be to deny one of the major insights of the Hebrew accounts of creation, an insight which distinguished them from the beliefs of the neighbouring nations."

Again on p 67 " Despite the differentiation between bara' and 'asah, that is, creation from nothing and creation from existing material, we can see the idea of God's continual creativity in the ongoing appearance of new forms within the cosmos. This is the view of the creation as an open system which contains future potentialities within itself."

I hope these two quotes are examples of a thinking that is true to rigorous theology which doesn't abrade with ideas of Evolution.

Bill

 

….yes that can be taken as such. I have come across these creationist tactics on other forums, to quote "Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany", that’s why I 'predicted'.

He's a wacko, do you want me to start with creationist wacko's?
You used a quote from a wacko, how about a word from the monster himself,
" I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.",- Adolf Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936
there's more!
What Hitler utilised, eugenics, was "a sickening version of selective breeding (that's using genetics), as practiced by farmers for around 10,000 years before Darwin". And as i posted earlier, creationism can't be held responsible for Hitler's atrocities.

No I wasn't thinking of vegetarianism, for one who's done sooo much study into the subject, you sure don't display it.

No Matt, the first I was coming down to your level of argument, where you fallaciously attempted to link evolution with eugenics. Matt, what is your definition of evolution?????
The second, the analogy, is soooo analogous, then you try to 'brand' evolution with an example of 'social darwinism', again wtf is your understanding of the concept of evolution, because it sure appears to be 'ridiculous'!

And you have a wonderful day too Matt.

 

yes the exasperation, exactly
and great clip, english humour (should i say british?) so far ahead of the rest!