Teaching evolution at a catholic school

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No. We have about 1.5 million years at Lake Baikal and about 6 million years in the Green River formation. That is enough to destroy any young earth dates I have seen.
Remember, I am a middle earther. (you named me).
 
Natural selection and random mutations cannot produce the complexity we now observe.
Evolution can increase complexity either by Shannon’s measure or Kolmogorov’s measure. What measure are you using?

Without a measure you cannot tell whether complexity is increasing, decreasing or staying the same.
 
Without a measure you cannot tell whether complexity is increasing, decreasing or staying the same.
Huh? Compare a molecule and a man.

Once again, possible does not mean probable.

Genetic entropy would say it is decreasing.
 
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Compare a molecule and a man.
So, you do not have a valid way to measure complexity, at least not that you are prepared to share with us.

In the absence of a measure you have no basis for your claim that evolution cannot increase complexity. Evolution has evidence of its ability to increase complexity. You lose this point.

At its simplest a back mutation is evidence for evolution increasing complexity.
 
Well, Captain, you’re demoted to Private for not not doing your research and putting up a straw man.
That’s it, I’m done talking to you. I have absolutely no words and I’m not going to waste energy pursuing what is obviously a waste of my time and energy.
What experiments do science classes do to reaffirm the taught age of the earth?
They teach carbon dating and how it’s performed. Although the exact experiments cannot be performed on a school budget, there’s enough information presented and exposition of the research process done that if a student has some holes to poke, they can. We’re shown that carbon dating of rocks in Earth’s crust along with rocks from the Moon and asteroids gives an age of about 4.5 billion years. If carbon dating is an accurate method, then there’s no question about how old Earth is.
An experiment that shows the repeatable steps from molecules to man?
Well they can’t show this because it’s impossible, but at least in the ones I’ve seen they don’t even try. They acknowledge it as an area of science that is purely speculation and move directly to the evolution of species themselves.
Consider this rubber band illustration. A relaxed rubber band is the organism. The rubber band can stretch to accomadate environmental changes. It has limits or the rubber band snaps. Over time the deleterious mutations degrade the rubber band and it can no longer stretch as it once could. This is the brittleness I have posted about. Even if a mutation confers a temporary benefit, the rubber is degrading long term.
Yes, yes, you continue to assert that a species cannot change too much or it will die out. I have yet to see any proof of this, but I’ve seen much proof of, say, fruit flies evolving into a different species and being able to reproduce with their counterparts in the new species, which is more competitive in areas with apple trees due to an abundance of food.
The Limits of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations
See, I looked into the author and his organization…find a better source.

But just to humor you, I read it. It isn’t that great. The model relies on the idea that a mutation will only occur in a duplicate gene, and that only point substitutions change the result of reproduction. Neither of these foundations are true. As such, it’s not worth treating as truly strong evidence.
 
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but I’ve seen much proof of, say, fruit flies evolving into a different species and being able to reproduce with their counterparts in the new species, which is more competitive in areas with apple trees due to an abundance of food.
Huh? Speciation (lineage splitting) does not show what you think it does. BTW, the fruitflies have useless additional wings and other features and die out. They ae severely damaged by these experiments. This is like a human growing another nose on their forehead.
 
See, I looked into the author and his organization…find a better source.

But just to humor you, I read it. It isn’t that great. The model relies on the idea that a mutation will only occur in a duplicate gene, and that only point substitutions change the result of reproduction. Neither of these foundations are true. As such, it’s not worth treating as truly strong evidence.
Well now, the ol’ ad-hominem attack. Rule #1 when out of arguments always attack the poster, in this case the author.

This is a peer-reviewed paper. I can show a few others but your mind is made up. Do not accept any evidence contrary to the reigning paradigm. Nice.
 
Your understanding of Buddhism is faulty. Truth exists. Ultimate truth does nor; the problem is with the “ultimate” part, not the “truth” part.
Hmm, you may want to rethink this. Claiming there is no 'ultimate" truth is merely restating: there is no truth, period. Answers may indeed work out again and again but without absolute truth they may not work out the millionth time you try them. Not that it matters, since a universe without truth is also without answers, or meaning, or good and evil.

So why are you arguing as if there is a truth?
 
Science is provisional. Revelation is not. Interpretations of Revelation are provisional.

I might give the examples of slavery and witch-hunting, where the interpretation of Revelation has changed over time. Christians were using Revelation to justify slavery as late as 1860.
Again, an answer you may want to rethink. Why bring up slavery ,given the utter lack of a movement in Buddhism to end slavery, not in 2,500 years of human beaten, raped, worked to death? Compare this to Christianity, which ended slavery not once, but twice.

Perhaps, if you want, we can go through the ways Christianity raised the dignity of men, invented human rights, improved lives, and compare these to Buddhism’s accomplishments.
 
Science started before Christianity: Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth about 240 BCE. Even after Christianity started there were non-Christian scientists. Do you want to let Vishnu and Amaterasu into science? Should the Qur’an be taught in science classes?
Sorry, this is false.

Science isn’t mere technology, or the occasional invention. It is a method. It consists of theory and research, it can include a proposition, an investigation, trials, and a result. Real science developed only in Europe under Christianity. As Rodney Stark explains “China, Islam, India, and ancient Greece and Rome had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry…and only in Europe did astrology lead to astronomy” Science arose due to the Scholastics and the Catholic university system.

Alfred North Whitehead in his Lowell Lectures at Harvard said science arose in Europe because of Medieval theology, and its insistence on the rationality of God and therefore of the world.

And your argument that after Christianity brought science into the world “there were non-Christian scientists” is confused. After science began, of course there were scientists all over the world following the proven scientific method.
 
The discovery of pervasive HGT and the overall dynamics of the genetic universe destroys not only the Tree of Life as we knew it but also another central tenet of the Modern Synthesis inherited from Darwin, gradualism. In a world dominated by HGT, gene duplication, gene loss, and such momentous events as endosymbiosis, the idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable.

Equally outdated is the (neo)Darwinian notion of the adaptive nature of evolution: clearly, genomes show very little if any signs of optimal design, and random drift constrained by purifying in all likelihood contributes (much) more to genome evolution than Darwinian selection . And, with pan-adaptationism, gone forever is the notion of evolutionary progress that undoubtedly is central to the traditional evolutionary thinking, even if this is not always made explicit.

The summary of the state of affairs on the 150th anniversary of the Origin is somewhat shocking: in the post-genomic era, all major tenets of the Modern Synthesis are, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution (Box 1). So, not to mince words, the Modern Synthesis is gone.


This alone should be taught in Catholic School but I doubt most of them don’t even know this, much less for a typical public school.
 
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Do they teach that C14 dating is only good for around 50,000 years? Epic fail.
Carbon-14 isn’t the isotope used for dating those materials.
Huh? Speciation (lineage splitting) does not show what you think it does. BTW, the fruitflies have useless additional wings and other features and die out. They ae severely damaged by these experiments. This is like a human growing another nose on their forehead.
Where exactly did it say that in any of the research? Oh, that’s right, nowhere. You’re just lying. If you continue to do so, I will simply leave this conversation. I know you’ll rave about how you “bested the brainwashed evo” and “proved me wrong so I had to back out” but I don’t care. I don’t debate liars.
This is a peer-reviewed paper.
Peer-reviewed by whom, exactly?
I can show a few others but your mind is made up. Do not accept any evidence contrary to the reigning paradigm. Nice.
I’ll accept your evidence when it’s from a real research organization and not a fake one. The group you referenced doesn’t even have labs, and at this point in time, a physical location! You also ignored the fact that I read the paper anyways and it was still garbage.
 
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The Limits of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations
This analysis allows between 2 and 6 mutations. Fine, we have 2 to 6 mutations. That is the new starting point. Follow that a few generations later with 2 to 6 mutations, perhaps after a gene duplication. At the same time a different 2 to 6 mutations are happening in a different part of the population. Then with HGT we get 4 to 12 mutations when genes are transferred between bacteria.

This paper does not say what you think it does. Yes, immediate changes are limited to 2 to 6 mutations, but there is no bar to further mutations in the same population, either simultaneously in a different sub-population, or some generations later in the same population.

Evolution is a cumulative process; it builds on what has come before. Chimpanzees did not need to evolve eyes, they inherited their eyes from their ancestors who had already evolved them.
 
Uh, yes. A paper being bad is reason enough to dismiss it. That’s the definition of “bad.”
 
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