Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

[o_mlly]

If you think so, then how do you respond to the example I gave of doing exact that - considering the probability of an event after it has happened. Was it really that unbelievable that the ping-pong ball landed in cup number 278,001?

To answer the question, “How improbable was that!” I suggest you reflect on the difference in the notions “improbable” and “impossible”.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Only if you reflect on the difference between a raven and a writing desk.

 

[Bradskii]

Now, be fair. Artwork is evidence of imagination…

Please read the posts and don’t ask me to do what I (and you: “Nothing supports atheism.”) have already done. As long as other posters claim science supports atheism then I expect you will ask, as I do, for evidence (if you’re consistent).

So rationality wasn’t making the cut so a definition was asked for.

So we then get abstraction (which isn’t a definition but yet another criteria). Still not making the cut.

So now we now get a specific example of abstraction, which is art.

What next? ‘Oh no, I meant cubism/surrealism/impressionism etc.’ Well I’m sure you’ll get to giving us your specific idea of what is artistic and what isn’t. Which is quite important. Because the difference between a pile of bricks in your backyard and one in the Guggenheim is significant.

The one in the Guggenheim may not look like a piece of art. But it is because the artist intended it to be (whether you appreciate the intent, the meaning or the aesthetic qualities or not). So what you are asking is for an example in our history of early hominid or even pre hominid intentionality.

So how about if I showed you some scratchings on a rock. What you would need to do is tell us if it was art or not. Say what? But that’s impossible, you’d say. How do I know whether it was meant to be artistic or not! Well, you wouldn’t. If your idea of art is a pretty picture of fruit in a bowl or a nice sunset, then asking for examples from pre history is nonsensical.

But that’s your get-out-of-jail card is. ‘That’s not what I call art!’.

And this is a thread about evolution. NOT whether science can be used to ‘support atheism’. If anyone suggests that it can then we can both call them an idiot and move on. There is no need for you to pursue the matter in a manner which derails this thread.

 

[o_mlly]

And this is a thread about evolution.

Whatever are you trying to say? Whatever it may be, posting an imaginary argument is the ultimate straw-man fallacy and will be called out.

And, unfortunately, you’re still not reading the posts. As I posted long ago and continue to defend: the Church accepts the natural-evolution of animal species and faithful Catholics are free to believe claims as true or reject as false. But the Church does not accept that human beings evolved from non-human beings. That is false. Get it?

If anyone suggests that it [science supports atheism] can then we can both call them an idiot and move on.

Did you get that, … well, you know who you are.

P.S. Your efforts to mimic the literary style of your hero are usually inept and always somewhat clumsy. Why sacrifice good content for poor style?

 

[Bradskii]

Totally bemused…

 

[HarryStotle]

Either way, the point is not whether God created all but how God created all. If we make God the author of suffering then we simply cannot say that He is a “loving God”.

Take care.

Well, no, actually. You are confusing suffering with evil. God could very well have created pain or suffering for very good reasons. For example, as indicators or symptoms of potential injury, hurt or harm.

The only way your argument works is if suffering is the equivalent of harm or evil. Which it isn’t.

Therefore, your argument doesn’t show what you suppose it does.

 

[Bradskii]

Well, no, actually. You are confusing suffering with evil. God could very well have created pain or suffering for very good reasons.

Well, no, actually. That argument can be used for literally anything at all. So it becomes worthless.

 

[HarryStotle]

LeafByNiggle:

If you think so, then how do you respond to the example I gave of doing exact that - considering the probability of an event after it has happened. Was it really that unbelievable that the ping-pong ball landed in cup number 278,001?

We have to be aware that people believe, in effect, that cup number 278,001 is special. And that no other result could have been possible. So the chances of it happening at random is not feasable.

Well, now you are misrepresenting what “people believe” by substituting what some of those people might believe for what all of those people do believe.

What isn’t and could not have been “random” is that the ball was tossed and the numbers were set out to insure that some number between 1 and a million did by necessity obtain. Perhaps that is the aspect of “design” that you are missing or ignoring.

If the entire scenario appears contrived to bring about a number between 1 and a million then we might well ask the question of who designed the scenario to yield that outcome.

So if 6 million or more possible life forms have come about in a field of possibilities that isn’t even being addressed, we cannot be muttering on about how the ball landing in cup number 278 001 must be random, when the entire scenario is a contrived one to necessarily yield the outcome of one ball landing in one cup.

Perhaps this is just you misreading or misrepresenting what those who insist upon speaking of design mean by the word? After all, no one disputes that there are over 6 000 000 or so life forms that have obtained within an apparently contrived (or designed) scenario that somehow permitted them to obtain.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Well, no, actually. You are confusing suffering with evil. God could very well have created pain or suffering for very good reasons.

Well, no, actually. That argument can be used for literally anything at all. So it becomes worthless.

I see, so making a distinction between different things renders an argument “worthless.”

I’ve never heard that before.

Philosophy was once the art of making distinctions.

I suppose today it has become far more impressionistic, as an art, than realistic.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

HarryStotle:

Well, no, actually. You are confusing suffering with evil. God could very well have created pain or suffering for very good reasons.

Well, no, actually. That argument can be used for literally anything at all. So it becomes worthless.

I see, so making a distinction between different things renders an argument “worthless.”

I’ve never heard that before.

Philosophy was once the art of making distinctions.

That’s the point I was making. There are distinctions between, for example, suffering and evil. But if you suggest that God could have created suffering for a purpose (we don’t know because 'who can know the mind of God), then someone else can use the exact argument for evil.

If you don’t know the mind of God and have no idea why things happen the way they do then you don’t know if God has permitted evil for a reason.

So we have a possible conundrum. Perhaps you don’t know the mind of God in some aspects but you do in others?

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

LeafByNiggle:

If you think so, then how do you respond to the example I gave of doing exact that - considering the probability of an event after it has happened. Was it really that unbelievable that the ping-pong ball landed in cup number 278,001?

We have to be aware that people believe, in effect, that cup number 278,001 is special. And that no other result could have been possible. So the chances of it happening at random is not feasable.

Well, now you are misrepresenting what “people believe” by substituting what some of those people might believe for what all of those people do believe.

What isn’t and could not have been “random” is that the ball was tossed and the numbers were set out to insure that some number between 1 and a million did by necessity obtain. Perhaps that is the aspect of “design” that you are missing or ignoring.

If the entire scenario appears contrived to bring about a number between 1 and a million then we might well ask the question of who designed the scenario to yield that outcome.

So if 6 million or more possible life forms have come about in a field of possibilities that isn’t even being addressed, we cannot be muttering on about how the ball landing in cup number 278 001 must be random, when the entire scenario is a contrived one to necessarily yield the outcome of one ball landing in one cup.

Perhaps this is just you misreading or misrepresenting what those who insist upon speaking of design mean by the word? After all, no one disputes that there are over 6 000 000 or so life forms that have obtained within an apparently contrived (or designed) scenario that somehow permitted them to obtain.

And in this regard, a simple question will suffice: Is your existence purely random? That is, are you a result of the cosmic roll of the dice? Or not?

 

[HarryStotle]

And in this regard, a simple question will suffice: Is your existence purely random? That is, are you a result of the cosmic roll of the dice? Or not?

Are you suggesting I have the wherewithal to know the answer to that question?

Or are you merely posing it as a rhetorical one?

How would I know? How would you know?

I highly doubt a random event generator would have, itself, been generated as a random event. That would appear to lead to an absurdity very quickly, so unless you want to propose that existence just is absurd, we can safely dispense with that.

If God exists and he is omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent, I suppose the answer would still be, No, there is no reason for a three omni-God to roll cosmic dice.

Do you wish to propose a reason?

However, if God does not exist and everything is caused as a result of the “brute fact” of existence, I still suppose the answer would be: We have no reason to think brute facts are random sorts of things.

Do you have a reason for thinking they might be?

Either way, the answer appears to be: No, for all we know.

Admittedly, I am not the Uncaused Cause of all that exists, so I am in no position to make definitive statements.

Are you?

 

[adamhovey1988]

My mother has a biology degree, so it’s not something I’ve ever doubted. I think the problem Lies, when people try to separate Evolution from God. The two do not contradict

 

[sevenswords]

I am no expert in anything, that does not mean I am stupid.
You accuse me of avoiding questions and it is you that avoids them, if you want to talk about carbon 14 and under your own understanding of it, why do we find dinosaurs from all around the world with carbon 14?
I know when your science says this creature is the father of living land animals and is around 400 million years old and when that exact same creature shows up today and has not changed a bit not a fin where is your theory now? Am i still to believe you?
How do you know dating methods of rocks are correct? when your science has been wrong so many times wrong in all fields of science.How do you know a half life is 1 billion years old, was it observed was it tested? that article is not very scientific.
Do you understand that many many many scientists disagree with evolution? do you realise many many many scientists used to teach evolution and now don’t? I listen to them and read their findings not the distortions of liars who are funded by liars and threatened by liars to keep quiet about the truth
When I get a bit of time to sit down properly I will show you some real science by real scientists.

 

[rossum]

How do you know a half life is 1 billion years old, was it observed was it tested?

Yes it was observed. Yes it was tested. Half-lives are tested using observed decay rates in the lab. Taking your example, if a half life is 1 billion years then half the atoms decay in 1 billion years. In one year, one half of one billionth of the atoms decay in one year. One twelfth of one half of one billionth of the atoms decay in one month. Take a lump of the element with a trillion atoms in it. Calculate the fraction that are expected to decay in a month, around 40 I make it. Count the number of atoms that actually decay with a Geiger counter. Compare with the expected figure. Repeat the experiment many times in many different labs to get a more accurate result.

Do you understand that many many many scientists disagree with evolution?

The DI has a list of about 800 scientists who disagree with evolution. There is a list of scientists called Steve who agree with evolution with over 1,400 names on it. There are less than half a dozen Steves on the DI list. A tiny fraction of scientists disagree with evolution.

rossum

 

[sevenswords]

I read this article the other day
Radiometric Dating - The Assumptions

• The rate of decay remains constant.
• There has been no contamination (that is, no daughter or intermediate elements have been introduced or leeched from the specimen of rock).
• We can determine how much daughter there was to begin with (if we assume there was no daughter to begin with, yet there was daughter at the formation of the rock, the rock would have a superficial appearance of age).
  Are these foundational assumptions reasonable? Recent findings seem to indicate that though we ourselves have not been able to vary the decay rates by much in the laboratory, the decay rates may have been accelerated in the unobservable past [1]. If this were the case, the first assumption would be deemed unreasonable. This would completely upset our current standardized view of earth’s history. Dr Carl Wieland summarizes the recent findings: “When uranium decays to lead, a by-product of this process is the formation of helium, a very light, inert gas which readily escapes from rock. Certain crystals called zircons, obtained from drilling into very deep granites, contain uranium which has partly decayed into lead. By measuring the amount of uranium and ‘radiogenic lead’ in these crystals, one can calculate that, if the decay rate has been constant, about 1.5 billion years must have passed. (This is consistent with the geologic ‘age’ assigned to the granites in which these zircons are found.) There is a significant amount of helium from that ‘1.5 billion years of decay’ still inside the zircons. This is at first glance surprising, because of the ease with which one would expect helium (with its tiny, light, unreactive atoms) to escape from the spaces within the crystal structure. There should hardly be any left, because with such a slow buildup, it should be seeping out continually and not accumulating. Drawing any conclusions from the above depends, of course, on actually measuring the rate at which helium leaks out of zircons. This is what one of the recent RATE [2] papers reports on. The samples were sent… to a world-class expert to measure these rates. The consistent answer: the helium does indeed seep out quickly over a wide range of temperatures. In fact, the results show that because of all the helium still in the zircons, these crystals (and since this is Precambrian basement granite, by implication the whole earth) could not be older than between 4,000 and 14,000 years. In other words, in only a few thousand years, 1.5 billion years’ worth (at today’s rates) of radioactive decay has taken place. Interestingly, the data has since been refined and updated to give a date of 5680 (+/- 2000) years.”

Interesting?

If science has made a mistake on dating what do you think they would do, either A admit it or B cover it up and deny it
I have seen cases for both and we see this cover up in action now with the carbon 14 blood sample and soft tissue of many prehistoric creatures This is Observable testable and repeatable yet denied by evolutionists

 

[Bradskii]

How do you know a half life is 1 billion years old, was it observed was it tested?

Is this your answer to the question as to why you don’t think fossils and the rocks in which they are found are millions of years old? That you don’t trust the means by which they were tested?

Your question as to the half life of elements has been adequately answered by Rossum. Are there other points you would like to raise?

And if you think that Carbon 14 has been discovered in any dinosaur bone, please provide the information for this so it can be discussed.

 

[sevenswords]

You’ll forgive ma as I am running late but here is what they found and also how the evolutionist science community treat real data.
http://newgeology.us/presentation48.html
I have started to watch but can’t finish today so maybe it will interest you

Compelling isn’t it?

 

[Bradskii]

Compelling? Well, not in the way you think it is.

The bones were from the Carnegie Museum and were tested by High Miller who is a member of the Creation Research, Science Education Foundation (CRSEF). Read on…

‘James King, Director of the Carnegie Museum, says Hugh Miller and his party identified themselves as chemists who wanted to do some analyses of the chemical composition of the fossils. King says that small “bits and pieces” which had spalled off the surfaces of various specimens were offered to Miller with the explicit warning that the fossil bones had been “covered heavily in shellac” and other “unknown preservatives.” Miller accepted the fragments and indicated that the coatings posed no problems for the analyses they were considering. Subsequently, several of the bone fragments were submitted to the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Isotope Geochemistry for radiocarbon dating. CRSEF “also arranged the Arizona testing by not revealing its origins” (Lafferty 1991:2B). Austin Long, professor of geochemistry at the University of Arizona, informed Miller that there was no collagen (a protein which is the source of most of the carbon in bones) in the samples and that large amounts of shellac and other contaminants were present. Miller indicated that he wanted the samples dated regardless.’

So Miller tested the bones anyway (after obtaining them by deception). He said that they handled them very carefully to avoid them being contaminated. But he had been explicitly told by the museum when he obtained the bones that they were ALREADY contaminated and any carbon 14 present was NOT from the fossils themselves.

In addition, the rocks in which the fossils were found have been dated using different methods which all agree on an age of around 140 miilion years.

In other words, the people who set up the site to which you linked, knowing the full facts, have lied to you. They assume, correctly, that if what they say aligns with what you already believe, then you will not investigate further.

That investigation has been done for you. I’d be interested in your response now that you are in posession of all the pertinent facts.

 

[rossum]

• The rate of decay remains constant.

We can check decay rates by observing radioactive decays in distant supernovae. For example, SN 1987A showed that decay rates have remained unchanged for at least 160,000 years.

• There has been no contamination (that is, no daughter or intermediate elements have been introduced or leeched from the specimen of rock).

The isochron method can detect if there was any contamination; if the isochron plot is not right, then the date is rejected as unreliable.

• We can determine how much daughter there was to begin with (if we assume there was no daughter to begin with, yet there was daughter at the formation of the rock, the rock would have a superficial appearance of age).

The isochron method works here as well. The initial presence of daughter product just moves the curve without affecting the calculated date. The distance the curve moves shows how much daughter produce was present initially.

These potential problems are know to scientists, and they have found ways round most of them. Creationist websites point out the problems, and then lie by omission in failing to point out the solutions to the problems.

Dr Carl Wieland summarizes…

Dr. Weiland is a member of Creation Ministries International. Their Statement of Faith says:

Facts are always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information. By definition, therefore, no interpretation of facts in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.

Source: CMI - What we believe

That says that they subordinate their science to their literal interpretation of Genesis. Hence, Dr. Weiland is not a reliable witness. He will ignore anything that contradicts CMI’s strict YEC position: 144 hour creation, a 6,000 year old earth and a recent worldwide flood.

rossum