Can science prove the world is over 4 billion yrs. old?

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All three are indeed Irreducibly Complex. The problem for your argument is that Irreducibly Complex systems can evolve, and have been observed to evolve. Professor Behe himself has even calculated that a simple IC system can evolve in a small population of bacteria in about 20,000 years. See: Behe and Snoke (2004).

Please show your calculations and the numbers you arrive at. In particular you will need to give the probabilities of each transition in the development of the IC mechanism and incorporate the effect of natural selection in the relevant population in the environment at the time.

Almost every probability calculation I have seen from the Creationist/ID side has failed to include the effects of natural selection acting in the population. A calculation that does not include natural selection is irrelevant to the probability of something evolving. Evolution includes natural selection as one of its mechanisms so any calculation purporting to represent evolution has to include the effects of natural selection.

rossum
We now know natural selection to be conservative not creative.
 
All three are indeed Irreducibly Complex. The problem for your argument is that Irreducibly Complex systems can evolve, and have been observed to evolve. Professor Behe himself has even calculated that a simple IC system can evolve in a small population of bacteria in about 20,000 years. See: Behe and Snoke (2004).
:confused: I thought the supposed irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum was totally debunked at the Dover trial:

The existence of the TTSS [Type-III Secretory System] in a wide variety of bacteria demonstrates that a small portion of the ‘irreducibly complex’ flagellum can indeed carry out an important biological function. Since such a function is clearly favored by natural selection, the contention that the flagellum must be fully-assembled before any of its component parts can be useful is obviously incorrect. What this means is that the argument for intelligent design of the flagellum has failed. - Kenneth Miller

Anyhow, remember the ban, I suggest the experts who want to talk about evolution should decamp to Back Fence and leave us a link here to the new thread.
 
:confused: I thought the supposed irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum was totally debunked at the Dover trial:

The existence of the TTSS [Type-III Secretory System] in a wide variety of bacteria demonstrates that a small portion of the ‘irreducibly complex’ flagellum can indeed carry out an important biological function. Since such a function is clearly favored by natural selection, the contention that the flagellum must be fully-assembled before any of its component parts can be useful is obviously incorrect. What this means is that the argument for intelligent design of the flagellum has failed. - Kenneth Miller

Anyhow, remember the ban, I suggest the experts who want to talk about evolution should decamp to Back Fence and leave us a link here to the new thread.
A judge rules on whether something is true or not?

See the thread on back fence…
 
A judge rules on whether something is true or not?

See the thread on back fence…
The quote wasn’t from Judge Jones but from Kenneth Miller, a Catholic biology professor who gave testimony against ID. Here it is again:
The existence of the TTSS [Type-III Secretory System] in a wide variety of bacteria demonstrates that a small portion of the ‘irreducibly complex’ flagellum can indeed carry out an important biological function. Since such a function is clearly favored by natural selection, the contention that the flagellum must be fully-assembled before any of its component parts can be useful is obviously incorrect. What this means is that the argument for intelligent design of the flagellum has failed. - Kenneth Miller
 
Well, we are skirting the edges of the ban here.
Perhaps the moderator will move the thread.

But my case in point made his appearence.

The backing for the theory is becoming more a faith then actual science as the odds against what they claim happened approach zero.
Falsibility is lost because the mere possibility is now considered proof that it has happened.

Please note, the ‘small population’ is actually 10^9 (1,000,000,000)
And there is no reference to time in the referenced material other then 10^8 generations.

Perhaps this is tenable in a bacterium with a life span of mere moments.
But one can readily see complications once the organisms in question start living a few decades or more.

I have heard people liken the odds to those of a tornado assembling a working car from a car parts shop. Within the realm of possibility.😉
 
We now know natural selection to be conservative not creative.
Natural selection reduces genetic diversity in a population. By reducing diversity it has an impact on the probability calculations for a given population. Any probability calculation that fails to take into account the effect of natural selection is useless when talking about evolution. If you want to use a probability calculation in an argument about evolution, you have to show that it has taken into account the impact of natural selection.

rossum
 
Please note, the ‘small population’ is actually 10^9 (1,000,000,000)
That is a small population of bacteria. You have over 10^12 bacteria in your gut (that it 1000 times larger that the population Behe used in his calculations). Multiply that by 6^9 humans on the planet and you get 6^21 bacteris living in human guts. Now add in all the bacteria living elsewhere in the world.
And there is no reference to time in the referenced material other then 10^8 generations.
Behe was cross-examined about his paper at the Dover trial. He testified that 10^8 bacterial generations equated to 20,000 years.
Perhaps this is tenable in a bacterium with a life span of mere moments.
Some E. coli have a generation time as short as 20 minutes. Most bacteria take rather longer. 10^8 (100,000,000) generations in 20,000 years is about 100 minutes per generation, five times longer that the fast breeding E. coli.

rossum
 
Halton Arp, who worked with Edwin Hubble, has made important observations about the redshift which supposedly demonstrates the distance of objects from earth.

electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm
Arp has some interesting ideas about intrinsic redshift; however the data does not appear to support his hypothesis. See: Critical Examinations of QSO Redshift Periodicities and Associations with Galaxies in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data, which says, “These results support the hypothesis that QSOs are not ejected from active galaxies.”

rossum
 
What was it peter said? A thousand years is like one day to God. The intellect of our infinite God is orders of magnitude above ours. Time is likely one of the parts of His creation. To assume otherwise is to assume that something existed outside of Him and His creation. My background is in science and engineering. Galileo, Copernicus, and others believed modern science was formed under several basic principles, that we have a logical God, that He created a an orderly and logical universe, that being created in His image means that we can use logical reasoning to understand and unlock the wondrous secrets that He placed in His creation, and that being custodians of the universe it was our responsibility to learn about Gods creation. (Modern science has forgotten this)

The universe and time are a framework that was created to enable us to grow from a blank slate to someone who can look at and appreciate His creation and Him.

Can science PROVE that the world is 4 billion years old? Not really, but it can form theories and hypotheses, which, though rigorous testing can support conclusions, that’s what true science does.

That doesn’t disprove God or what is written in the Bible, though that is what some would say. Those same people would also say that DNA is an accident of nature and not designed, absurd.
 
🙂
to give your question the answer it deserves…

Yes.
IF Science follows its own discipline - theory, test, revise, continue, drop if unproven or discredited, then we accept it.
My problem is with the idiots who cannot read and understand the Bible, which is not a Science textbook and make a mockery of the Bible and the Church and believers including Jews when they insist that it is a textbook and “the infallible Word of God.” The Word of God is the story of Redemption and does not try to tell us “infallibility” that Genesis says plants grew before the Sun was created:), and the Moon is a Great Light that shines by night and days and nights were measured before the Sun was created!
 
🙂
IF Science follows its own discipline - theory, test, revise, continue, drop if unproven or discredited, then we accept it.
My problem is with the idiots who cannot read and understand the Bible, which is not a Science textbook and make a mockery of the Bible and the Church and believers including Jews when they insist that it is a textbook and “the infallible Word of God.” The Word of God is the story of Redemption and does not try to tell us “infallibility” that Genesis says plants grew before the Sun was created:), and the Moon is a Great Light that shines by night and days and nights were measured before the Sun was created!
Just some food for thought.

In the beginning (time)
God created heaven (space)
and earth (matter)

Science has just found out what Scripture knew for thousands of years.
 
.God never told us how old the earth was.
If God never told us how old the earth is, why would anyone question the results of research that give the age of the earth?

To be very clear: We can most definitely tell the difference between a 20 year old boat made of a two-thousand year old tree and a two-thousand year old boat made of a twenty year old tree, even if they look identical to us with the naked eye.
 
Just some food for thought.

In the beginning (time)
God created heaven (space)
and earth (matter)

Science has just found out what Scripture knew for thousands of years.
Are you suggesting that science has only recently discovered time, space, and matter? Also, we’re a bit further along than that–we know energy’s in the mix as well. I suppose you’re going to post another impertinent Bible verse and claim that it’s describing the nature of energy as we know it, too?
 
Are you suggesting that science has only recently discovered time, space, and matter? Also, we’re a bit further along than that–we know energy’s in the mix as well. I suppose you’re going to post another impertinent Bible verse and claim that it’s describing the nature of energy as we know it, too?
Perhaps you can share when science affirmed time, space and matter.

Then we can move on.
 
Perhaps you can share when science affirmed time, space and matter.

Then we can move on.
From the Wikipedia article on “Physics”:
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.
Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy. Over the last two millennia, physics was a part of natural philosophy along with chemistry, certain branches of mathematics, and biology, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 16th century, the natural sciences emerged as unique research programs in their own right.
I’m responsible for bolding the section that implies physics has been around for at least 2000 years, and the very first sentence in the quote mentions how matter, space, and time, which are the three concepts you insist were “just discovered” by science, are intrinsic to the study of physics.
 
From the Wikipedia article on “Physics”:

I’m responsible for bolding the section that implies physics has been around for at least 2000 years, and the very first sentence in the quote mentions how matter, space, and time, which are the three concepts you insist were “just discovered” by science, are intrinsic to the study of physics.
Again - what dates did science “prove” space, time and matter?
 
Again - what dates did science “prove” space, time and matter?
I don’t know exactly when, but their discovery was not a recent occurrence, and that’s my point.

At any rate, we know that people have had a notion of time ever since we’ve had the capacity of language, because every language I know of has a past tense and future tense of some sort. Matter is anything that has mass and occupies some volume. Although the concept of mass took some time to formalize, an object will only have weight if it has mass, and we have known of weight for a very long time. Likewise, ancient mathematicians formalized the notion of volume, and so we did have at least a naive understanding of what constitutes matter. Needless to say, we knew what space was based on our understanding of volume.

So yes, every one of these three concepts has been understood since ancient times. They’re nothing new.
 
I don’t know exactly when, but their discovery was not a recent occurrence, and that’s my point.

At any rate, we know that people have had a notion of time ever since we’ve had the capacity of language, because every language I know of has a past tense and future tense of some sort. Matter is anything that has mass and occupies some volume. Although the concept of mass took some time to formalize, an object will only have weight if it has mass, and we have known of weight for a very long time. Likewise, ancient mathematicians formalized the notion of volume, and so we did have at least a naive understanding of what constitutes matter. Needless to say, we knew what space was based on our understanding of volume.

So yes, every one of these three concepts has been understood since ancient times. They’re nothing new.
Thank you. That was my point - they were understood Biblically from early on. I can help here - science affirmed them in the last 150 years.
 
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