Crackpot Challenge Part 2 - Evolution

[Alethios]

However, evidence consonant with good scientific method has been presented by the scientists on this thread.

What evidence? What scientific method that demands experimental proof of falsifiable hypotheses?
None so far.

In post #202 experimental evidence was presented that dinos lived < 34 kiloyears RC BP
…
Table 1 Results of testing for C-14 in dinosaur femur bones
(Triceratops, Tri. Hadrosaur, Hd.) (GX-Geochron; UG-University of Georgia)

Nr…Sample ID,…Radiocarbon Date …PMC’s corrected
…Date analyzed,…in Years BP…x 10^6 years,
…Preparation stats… …C13 pdb

1…Tri. GX-32372-AMS…30,890 +/-200…2.16,-20.1 o/oo
…08/25/06 (a)
…30 mg collagen, Modified Longin Method (MLM)*

2…Tri. GX-32647-Conv…33,830 +2910/-1960…1.38,-16.6 o/oo
…09/12/06 (b)
…500 mg total organics
…pretreated acid, alkali, acid

3…Hd. GX-31950-AMS… 1,950 +/-50…xxxx,-23.5 o/oo
…01/18/06 (c)
…0.7 mg collagen from 2.3 gm

4…Hd. GX-32739-Conv…22,380 +/-800…6.33,-16.0 o/oo
…01/16/07 (d)
…500 mg total organics
…pretreated acid, alkali, acid

5…Hd. GX-32678-AMS…22,990 +/-130…xxx,-18.4 o/oo
…04/04/07 (d)
…300 mg total organics
…pretreated acid, alkali, acid

6…Hd UGAMS-01935…25,670 +/-220…4.09,-6.4 o/oo
…04/10/07 (e)
…1 mg bioapatite as graphite;
…no pretreatment

7…Hd UGAMS-01936…25,170 +/-230…4.36,-15.7 o/oo
…04/10/07 (e)
…0.47 mg charred bone as graphite;
…pretreated

8…Hd UGAMS-01937…23,170 +/-170…5.59,-22.7 o/oo
…04/10/07 (e)
…3.2 mg collagen (MLM)*
…0.59 mg as graphite

9…Hd UGAMS-01938…2,560 +/-70…72.68,-21.5 o/oo
…04/10/07 (e)
…1.9 mg humic acid, (0.35 mg as graphite)
…prec. from alk. fraction

• Modified Longin Method for extracting/purifying collagen: (Arslanov, Svezhentsev, 1993)
  (a) Sample size sent to RC lab was 8.4 grams (P-T-1) Internal bone material
  (b) Sample size sent to RC lab was 146.0 grams (P-T-2) Outer bone material
  (c) Sample size sent to RC lab was 2.3 grams (P-H1-2) Internal bone material.
  (d) Sample size sent to RC lab was 160.0 grams (P-H1-2) Outer bone material.
  (e) Sample size sent to RC lab was 56.0 grams (P-H-3a) Internal bone material.

Now, where is the 'evidence consonant with good scientific method ’ ,DATA, not claims, showing dino bone ages are outside the C14 range and can’t be tested?

AMDG

 

[Orogeny]

What has delusions of grandeur to do with evidence?
The vertical stacking of sediments in rapid water flows has been documented on the Berthault flume tapes.
Any reason we shouldn’t believe our own lyin’ eyes?

What do your lyin’ eyes tell you that you are seeing when you watch the video? Do you see strata suspended in mid stream so that a relatively younger strata can be deposited beneath it? No? Tell me, then, where do you see older strata overlying younger strata?

What does Berthault’s experiment show that is contradictory to known geologic principles? Does his experiment show something other than prograding deposition?

A correction to this straw man… All that’s needed is any electric current - like a plasma filament.

And how does this happen over very large areas underwater?

And the patterns could be produced by currents in the earth generated by the vulcanism.

Or they could be produced by magnetic pole reversals recorded in minerals as they pass the curie temperature. That would clearly explain the pattern seen in the sea floor.

The point is that electric pulses produce alternating patterns of N-S polarity around their path, as observed in various places on the Earth. Polar reversals over eons or local electric discharges provide the same effect, so either one is sufficient, but not necessary, to explain the magnetic pattern recorded in the M-A ridges. But multiple possible causes is not evidence for one actual cause. Sorry - rules of evidence.

Well, we know that rocks retain the magnetic orientation that is present at the time of their cooling past the curie temperature. Not only is that sufficient, it is consistent with the evidence. An electrical pulse is not. If you can show a mechanism where an electrical pulse that will create the patterns seen on the sea floor can occur, please present it.

Peace

Tim

 

[grannymh]

What evidence? What scientific method that demands experimental proof of falsifiable hypotheses?
None so far.
AMDG

Help. I need someone to straighten out my thinking regarding the meaning of " a falsifiable hypotheses". Why should one demand experimental proof which would declare his own hypotheses is false? That would throw out everything.

 

[StAnastasia]

Understood!

 

[hecd2]

Quick question.

Granted “both / and” explanations are usually the best, what would be your advice to a young university student who is caught between two explanations for the same event, one from nature and one from church, which unequivocally contradict each other. Please take into consideration that this particular event is pivotal in that the choice of explanation would determine the foundation for his approach to life.

I understand that the “cafeteria” approach would be common advice. However, I’m interested in what other advice there would be.

My advice would be to consider openly and without prejudice the reasons for each explanation and to choose the one which has, as far as one can see, the more compelling evidence and which one can live with, regardless of received wisdom or prior teaching. I don’t think that choosing an explanation for an event is very often the defining decision of our lives - you can be sure that whatever the event and the explanations are, there are sincere people on either side living full and fulfilled lives.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[buffalo]

Curious: your proposal was not discussed by any of the theologians at the Vatican conference last March.

So?

 

[hecd2]

hecd2:

Both our intention and our experience of what we call free will arise entirely from neurobiological processes in the brain.

Please refer to the following

newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm
newadvent.org/fathers/1510.htm

but only if you freely will to do so.

An encyclopaedia entry that is over a century old and the claims of a bloke from the 5th century, both of which predate modern neurobiology and neurology are irrelevant to my point which stands.

There is no such thing as “random natural selection” which you would know if you had the slightest acquaintance with evolutionary biology. Mutations are random with respect to fitness, but natural selection is not random

Natural selection is said to be the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key concept of evolution.
Random natural selection is the rational correction to this mistaken concept of natural selection .

No it is an invention of yours. There is no such thing as “random natural selection”.

We are told extinctions by catastrophe allegedly occurred 65 million years ago.
Those forms that survive or perish these disasters occur by chance (= randomly), not by heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce. Heritable traits have nothing to do with which life forms are under the fireball and are now extinct, and those not under the fireball, and now extant.

Wrong. Obviously most or all living things immediately in the path of the bolide perished, but that is not what led to extinction. Those organisms that survived the worldwide (including sub-sea) conditions that followed the bolide were those that were best adapted to those conditions and those that went extinct were those that wereunable to survive the conditions. Many lineages (including all non-avian dinosaurs) are known to have become extinct, but mammals survived and when the conditions moderated, diversified by descent with variation and natural selection to fill the ecological niches then free owing the demise of other lineages.

Do those who miss a plane flight that crashes and kills all aboard have heritable traits that make it more likely for them to survive and successfully reproduce? Do they have a genetic advantage over the deceased? Puh-leez.

Nicely developed intellectual argument there. Of course accidents occur and organisms are predated or fall into bogs or out of trees or die from drought or flood - but your hypothesis amounts to the absurd claim that individuals lack heritable traits that make them more or less likely to reproduce. I suggest you stay in after school and take a remedial course in population biology

The luck of surviving extinction catastrophes is the chief factor of survival; for those who don’t survive the cataclysms,

Wrong. The chief factor for survival of extinction catastrophes are the heritable traits that enable organisms to survive the conditions pertaining in the unusual and difficult conditions in the generations following the catastrophe.

So what determines the evolution of new life forms??

Descent with variation, and selection; and the availability of ecological niches.

The idea that alleles of beta-globin are not of mutational origin is absurd - there are over 1300 known abnormal haemoglobins of which HbC is just one

Then give evidence why the alleles are mutants and not variants.

Because all variants of genes originate as mutations. That’s how different alleles of genes arise, and the mutations that give rise to these alleles of haemoglobin are clearly understood (point mutations, frame shifts, translocations, repeats, and so on). Or do you think they are all present in Adam and Eve? Unfortunately for you, two humans can carry at most four alleles, so you have to explain where the other 1296 come from. You also have to explain how you can hold to a silly hypothesis which is, in effect, that mutations never occur in the germline or are never transmitted. My evidence is that the alleles are there and mutations occur and explain them. Your evidence?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[StAnastasia]

Help. I need someone to straighten out my thinking regarding the meaning of " a falsifiable hypotheses". Why should one demand experimental proof which would declare his own hypotheses is false? That would throw out everything.

No, it only disconfirms a particular hypothesis, not everything

 

[hecd2]

Relativity is a contradiction from the get-go: the twin age contradiction is just one case.

The so-called twin age paradox is not a contradiction and the relevant predictions of relativity are entirely consistent (and have been demonstrated experimentally with atomic clocks) - perhaps you will describe what your problem is, and someone who actually knows what they are talking about will explain.

Forget GR, brother …Even Newtonian theory can’t derive the inertial forces of mechanics in classical terms - by a variational principle applied to the Lagrangian for a free particle in a rotating gravity field.

Rubbish. Someone is obviously feeding you words that you don’t understand in order to fool you and/or to help you fool the ignorant. But I am not ignorant. As I have pointed out before, any competent physicist can derive the centrifugal and Coriolis forces using Newtonian mechanics by considering the forces on a test particle on the surface of a rotating body arising from the acceleration caused by the departure of the motion of the particle from a straight line. The same forces can be derived by Lagrangian mechanics for the same situation of a particle on the surface of a rotating body.

We are still waiting for you to derive these forces on the surface of a static earth.

Yes, on this modest little thread, there are rules of evidence, posted and enforced from the start.

Nope. You don’t get to choose the rules of evidence. Each reader will decide whose position is better supported by the evidence, regardless of any arbitrary rules you posted at the beginning - and you are not faring very well.

If there are objections to use of the Magisterium, scholastic philosophy and Potter’s scientific method- then, let’s hear them.

The magisterium - a set of beliefs and tenets created and promulgated by a human institution based largely on myth and superstition - hardly the basis for evidence for anything. Scholastic philosophy - a branch of philosophy based on Aristotlean and Thomistic ideas, influential and useful in its day, but largely undermined and negated by modern philosophy and science. Potter’s scientific method? Is that Harry Potter?

Otherwise, follow the rules of dialogue here or begone and start your own thread and rules of order.

No - I will continue to point out the nonsense that you are promulagating. If you don’t like it, begone yourself.

While not denying that there is a species problem may I point you to textbooks on evolutionary biology where you will find all the evidence that you require. …

No, brother, this isn’t a thesis research project.

Fine. Refusal to consider the evidence noted.

If evolution is about species change, then give us all a brief definition of how to classify any life form into a “species” category.

Evolution is about change in organisms over time and the fact that happened and that it can be demonstrated does not depend on a species definition (unless you make the silly claim that Acanthostega and Homo sapiens are the same species).

Evolutionary biologists can demonstrate the key points of evolutionary theory (descent with modification, selection and common descent) even if no agreed concept of species existed.

No, they can’t, for with no definition of species, there is no meaning to evolution of species! We might as well discuss the evolution of frammistans.

You are wrong. They can and they do, in spite of the species definition problem, because the discussion is about evolution of organisms not about the evolution of a single taxon. We have shown that lobe finned fish have evolved into land-based tetrapods - that does not require a species definition. However, you have stated that you are not prepared to look at the evidence.

Exactly so. Neither creationists nor evols can provide experimental evidence required by the scientific method. Scientifically there is nothing provable about the past without testing… in the past.

Wrong - you have ideological reasons for denying the validity of huge swathes of science - but scientists and philosophers of science disagree with your biased agenda. Scientists will continue to do forensic chemistry and pathology, archaeology, palaeontology, comparative genomics, systematics and phylogenetics, galactic and stellar science, geology, cosmology - and ignore atempts from the fringe to undermine their work.

We suggest you learn more about the basis of creation beliefs, and abstain from painting creationists with a broad brush.

The basis for creation (YEC and six-day) beliefs is an unreasoning faith in the literal exegesis of an origins myth handed down from an ancient nomadic people and long demonstrated to be literally false.

The vertical stacking of sediments in rapid water flows has been documented on the Berthault flume tapes.
Any reason we shouldn’t believe our own lyin’ eyes?

Dealt with by Orogeny. Also see my article here: evolutionpages.com/berthault_critique.htm

A correction to this straw man… All that’s needed is any electric current - like a plasma filament.

A plasma filament? 7,000 feet below the ocean surface? Are you serious?

The point is that electric pulses produce alternating patterns of N-S polarity around their path, as observed in various places on the Earth. Polar reversals over eons or local electric discharges provide the same effect,

No they do not, since local electrical discharges at the ocean floor do not produce extended patterns of reversal over huge strips extending hundreds of miles parallel to the ridges as is observed.

Your position is so desperate that you have to invent specious explanations for well understood phenomena and deny entire scientific disciplines.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[StAnastasia]

It is a position held by certain members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. What meaning your remark is intended to convey remains ambiguous.

It’s not ambiguous at all. Homo sapiens is in the animal kingdom; we are Eukaryotes. At the Rome conference, this fact was presupposed by cardinals, bishops, priests, theologians, historians, philosophers, and scientists. There was no discussion of it, because it is not in dispute.

StAnastasia

 

[itinerant1]

It’s not ambiguous at all. Homo sapiens is in the animal kingdom; we are Eukaryotes. At the Rome conference, this fact was presupposed by cardinals, bishops, priests, theologians, historians, philosophers, and scientists. There was no discussion of it, because it is not in dispute.

StAnastasia

Everyone, myself included, typically speak of *Homo sapiens *as card carrying members of the animal kingdom. What is at issue is whether this manner of speaking is consistent with the true nature of man. If you recall, Pope John Paul II spoke of theories (plural) of evolution. There is not just one, single theory of evolution. Certain interpretations of evolution are unacceptable to Catholics. The Vatican has always made it clear that materialist evolution must be rejected as erroneous. Cardinal Schönborn recently has been speaking about the important need to separate Darwinian ideology from Darwinian evolutionary science. Darwinian ideology reduces man to a brute animal member of the animal kingdom.

What is the significance of all of this? It is that phylogenetic continuity, which is assumed by evolutionary theory, does not apply in the case of *Homo sapiens *as it does with other organisms.

If, on the other hand, we were to assume a strict phylogenetic continuity of nature between man and the primates, then we cannot consistently maintain that man has a rational, spiritual soul.

There are basically three ways to conceive how man differs from other creatures: (1) man differs in degree, or (2) man differs in kind as well as degree, but the difference in kind is superficial. Under either “1” or “2” there remains a continuity in nature. The last option, (3), is that man, in certain respects, differs radically in kind from the anthropoid apes and higher animals. The third option does not allow for phylogenetic continuity.

Materialist evolutionary ideology accepts the first two options. Darwin held the first view, and neo-Darwinists take the second view. The third view is the only view consistent with Church teaching on the nature of man. A difference in kind that is radical, actually requires man to be in his own kingdom.

There is a deep chasm between primates that have animal souls and man who has a spiritual soul. Nature cannot bridge that chasm. It is much wider than the chasm separating non-living matter from living forms.

 

[StAnastasia]

The third view is the only view consistent with Church teaching on the nature of man. A difference in kind that is radical, actually requires man to be in his own kingdom. There is a deep chasm between primates that have animal souls and man who has a spiritual soul. Nature cannot bridge that chasm. It is much wider than the chasm separating non-living matter from living forms.

Do you have evidence to support this view? We did not discuss it in Rome last March, so I’m not sure how widely known your biological theory is.

 

[itinerant1]

Do you have evidence to support this view? We did not discuss it in Rome last March, so I’m not sure how widely known your biological theory is.

First, it should be noted that I am not referring to a biological theory, though biology is a necessary part of the question. The question of how man differs from everything else on the planet is a mixed question that involves both science and philosophy. Science alone, despite modern attitudes, cannot provide a complete answer. Neither can philosophy. There are both scientific and philosophical problems involved in understanding man’s relationship to his biological ancestors, i.e. what he has in common, and what makes him unique. And then there is the specifically theological dimension–only man is said to have been created in the image of God.

You ask what evidence do I have for my views? That is too broad of a question involving much more than can be said in any post. Perhaps things can be narrowed down. What is it in particular that you have questions about? The nature of the human soul? What does it means to differ in degree or differ in kind, whether superficially or radically? Was Darwin actually a materialist? Or, whatever specific questions you might have.

 

[StAnastasia]

What is it in particular that you have questions about? The nature of the human soul?

Itinerant1, if you accept evolution at all, how do you account for humans having non-human parents? If you don’t accept evolution, how do you account for the enormous similarity between human DNA and that of our closest relatives, including identical mistakes in genetic sequence?

 

[edwest2]

Similar body plans will yield similar assembly instructions but the difference between man and ape are greater than once thought. Plus, other claims are being challenged:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19420924

Peace,
Ed

 

[itinerant1]

Itinerant1, if you accept evolution at all, how do you account for humans having non-human parents? If you don’t accept evolution, how do you account for the enormous similarity between human DNA and that of our closest relatives, including identical mistakes in genetic sequence?

Good question. Given the scientific knowledge we have about evolution, there can be no doubt, or rather, there should be no doubt that the human body has its origin in the natural biological processes of nature, i.e. biological evolution. Comparative studies of non-humans and humans reveals behaviours unique to humans that are not possessed in any lesser degree by non-humans. For example, the propositional speech, syntactical language, abstract conceptual thinking, and so on.

How do we account for this difference that is radical in kind? The differences are discontinuous with the powers possessed by non-humans, or the anthropoid apes. This matter can be discussed on both a scientific and philosophical level to ascertain a deeper understanding. However, for now I will take a shortcut in this response and defer to Revelation and theology: the Church teaches that God intervened in the natural formation of man to create the intellectual or rational soul, individually. The rational soul is the principle of life or formal principle of the human composite. Man is composed, then, of a physical body and a spiritual soul. With the conception of each human God creates the spiritual soul.

There has been much speculation by Catholic philosophers and theologians on some particulars involving the instrumentality of non-human forms in the generation of the first human being. Yet, we must maintain that the soul is created directly by God.

Whatever the particulars may have been in the formation of the first man, we can from strict philosophical analysis show that the powers possessed by man, that is, reason, free will, abstraction, and so on must be the powers of a non-material or immaterial substance, which we call the intellectual or rational soul.

Nature, of course, cannot create the spiritual soul. Matter cannot give rise to the immaterial, otherwise an effect would be infinitely greater than its cause, which is an ontological absurdity. It takes an infinite power to create ex nihilo the spiritual soul.

 

[grannymh]

Regarding: “There is a deep chasm between primates that have animal souls and man who has a spiritual soul.”

Do you have evidence to support this view? We did not discuss it in Rome last March, so I’m not sure how widely known your biological theory is.

As I view the statement in question “There is a deep chasm between primates that have animal souls and man who has a spiritual soul.” I see a chimp and a human, both according to science are matter.

Therefore it is up to the scientists to demonstrate materially the closeness between the two “animals”. For the sake of this particular discussion, I will work from the view point that “Homo sapiens is in the animal kingdom; we are Eukaryotes” from your post 569.

First there is compelling genomic evidence of the similarities between chimps and humans. Personally, I find this evidence fascinating, interesting and understandable in terms of unity in creation. It is compelling in the area of genomics. However, similar genomics is not the dominant factor in human and chimps nor the controlling principle. If it were, the hip/pelvic area would belong to both. Even if one considers the possibility of isolation and the founder effect, basic environments can support both chimps and humans. In addition, while genes, etc., may produce similar physical measurements of scull and brain area, intelligence is not under the control of these similar genes. No need to get silly about what chimps cannot do.

In other words, since the biologist’s prime interest is the material elements, it is up to them to present evidence for their biological theory of closeness.

Regarding evidence, it will not be enough to present papers showing similarities–that is already known and for the most part accepted. To establish closeness or chasm, there should be a material cause and effect approach. If anyone is keeping score, I am approaching this from a materialist view point. I, too, like “both / and”.

Blessings,
granny

The quest is worthy of the adventures of the journey.

 

[StAnastasia]

Whatever the particulars may have been in the formation of the first man, we can from strict philosophical analysis show that the powers possessed by man, that is, reason, free will, abstraction, and so on must be the powers of a non-material or immaterial substance, which we call the intellectual or rational soul.

Why should we assume that reason, free will and abstraction have not evolved? Some other primates demonstrate incipient capacities of this sort. And if they have evolved, how will that threaten religious belief?

 

[grannymh]

Why should we assume that reason, free will and abstraction have not evolved? quote]

Because there is no direct evidence that reason and free will evolved.
Out of curiosity–what would reason and free will evolve from?

 

[StAnastasia]

Because there is no direct evidence that reason and free will evolved. Out of curiosity–what would reason and free will evolve from?