Common ancestor or common Creator?

[spiritman]

Hum thanks lurker that's a good ideal, let's see if we can find anything that would occur in nature that would have an effect on Radioactive decay. Oh here you go.

. here are two links for you to read:

click here

This is just painful. Go look again on your creationwiki page, click on the "[1]" where it talks about evidence for varying decay rates, it'll take you to a blog which then lists this as their reference:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283

Here is where this same source admits that these results were probably due to equipment error since they've been unable to repeat these results by going back through the data.

"We have reexamined our previously published data to search for evidence of correlations between the rates for the alpha, beta-minus, beta-plus, and electron-capture decays of 22Na, 44Ti, 108Agm, 121Snm, 133Ba, and 241Am and the Earth-Sun distance.

We find no evidence for such correlations

and set limits on the possible amplitudes of such correlations substantially smaller than those observed in previous experiments."

http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.3265v1

Well lurker, it doesn't look to good for evolution so far we have

1. Several supposed transitional forms that I've listed, that were fakes or mistakes

Yes and? Are you under the impression that Creationism doesn't have its share of skeletons? The difference is that when scientists discover these mistakes they try not to keep rehashing them over and over again in arguments, it's a lesson I wish more Christians would learn.

2. The speed of light has been proven to no longer be constant

That would be no. Again, not even close. The speed of light may (and that's a very big "may") vary by amounts far less that 1% but nothing significant enough to account for current observations. Additionally, the speed of light has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.

3. and now the mother of them all to nail the nail in the coffin, is Radioactive decay, can be affected by naturally occurring situations. ie distance from the earth to the sun, etc etc.

It's not that you can't change the decay rates of certain isotopes, it's that you can't change them using the forces available on earth's surface without killing every living thing on the planet. There's also the matter of individualized isotope decay rates all agreeing with each other and non-radioactive decay dating methods but I suppose we've ignored this glaring correlation enough times that it simply disappears.

As an aside, there's a thread devoted specifically to Radiometric Dating on this forum, I would appreciate it if you took all future "issues" with radioactive dating techniques there. Thanks.

Lurker

Ha ha; very funny luker, I clicked on that 1 you have posted up there, good thing I have a good virus detection program.

[spiritman]

come on Lurker,

Be a good sport, we were just having a friendly little chat about Evolution vs Creation. I'm sorry that you wanted evolution to win so bad, but that's the breaks.

it was a good discussion. thanks for all your input.

[CSLewis]

These assumptions are accounted for and corrected for -

[ConScience]

come on Lurker,

Be a good sport, we were just having a friendly little chat about Evolution vs Creation. I'm sorry that you wanted evolution to win so bad, but that's the breaks.

it was a good discussion. thanks for all your input.

NOT lurker's fault, if that's what happened to you - it's quoted as a source!

[ConScience]

Learn how to cite a source, what work does this quote come from? Or do you not know because you are just cut and pasting again? Seems an odd omission seeing as it's been given to you so many times. Might want to include a date as well, yes I know it's embarrassing that it's over thirty years old but accuracy is important. Here's another Stansfield quote I thought you'd like.

I have cited my source and we have discussed your continuing dilemma on many occasion

[Hal P]

Since horizoneast only regurgitates the same mined-quotations over and over again, instead of actually making an valid argument, here are counter quotes;

"The fact is that there are a number of Bible-believing Christians who are involved in radiometric dating, and who can see its validity firsthand. A great number of other Christians are firmly convinced that radiometric dating shows evidence that God created the Earth billions, not thousands, of years ago."

"The fact that dating techniques most often agree with each other is why scientists tend to trust them in the first place. Nearly every college and university library in the country has periodicals such as Science, Nature, and specific geology journals that give the results of dating studies. The public is usually welcome to (and should!) browse in these libraries. So the results are not hidden; people can go look at the results for themselves. Over a thousand research papers are published a year on radiometric dating, essentially all in agreement. Besides the scientific periodicals that carry up-to-date research reports, specific suggestions are given below for further reading, both for textbooks, non-classroom books, and web resources."

"We have covered a lot of convincing evidence that the Earth was created a very long time ago. The agreement of many different dating methods, both radiometric and non-radiometric, over hundreds of thousands of samples, is very convincing. Yet, some Christians question whether we can believe something so far back in the past. My answer is that it is similar to believing in other things of the past. It only differs in degree. Why do you believe Abraham Lincoln ever lived? Because it would take an extremely elaborate scheme to make up his existence, including forgeries, fake photos, and many other things, and besides, there is no good reason to simply have made him up. Well, the situation is very similar for the dating of rocks, only we have rock records rather than historical records."

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/RESOURCES/WIENS.html

I also liked this essay I came across a while ago from someone who was considering running against Don Mcleroy as Chairman of the Texas Board of Education.

"The question at hand regards the teaching of "Intelligent Design" in the science classrooms of our public schools. The proponents of this idea are generally careful to avoid explicit religious language, and often cast themselves as the protectors of science, innocuously seeking to probe the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolutionary biology and big-bang cosmology in an open minded manner. Certainly science embraces skepticism, but there is a deep flaw in the vision of science which is being advocated. Skepticism in the face of a preponderance of evidence is only unreasonable doubt.

The stars (by the great expanses across which their shining light has patiently traveled and also by the measurable rate of their recession) and the Earth itself (within its tediously accumulated strata and by residual proportion of radio emitting isotopes) testify in unison to the great age of our planet and universe. The older and deeper places of the Earth hold the remains of primitive creatures which increase in variety and complexity as the hand of geological time winds forward. The DNA of our very bodies tells the history (within mutations of long silenced genes and the remnants of ancient viral intrusions) of our separation by degrees from other creatures of the Earth in a common descent. Imposing a false ambiguity on these facts makes mockery of the precious drops of knowledge which mankind has slowly wrung out of the natural world. It is pure scientific retreat, not progress.

I cringe at the prospect of assigning a narrow definition of what science "is", but I do know it when I see it. Good science is always simple at its heart; no insight can be gained from an explanation which is of equal complexity to the thing it would attempt to explain. Good science unifies apparently distinct phenomena into a single larger description, and makes detailed predictions which supersede the initial observations. Good science often goes beyond the "what", satisfying the curious mind with a palpable sense of "why", even as it reveals mysteries anew, deeper and more profound.

The domain of science is surely though by definition confined to rational, testable and universal natural law. If I understand the crux of Dr. McLeroy's complaint, it is that the paradigmatic exclusion of supernatural events will by necessity lead to naturalistic explanations of observations. I don't suppose that there is any flaw with this logic, as far as it goes. Certainly, we are not free to simply define away the possibility of the supernatural. Whether the history of the universe may in fact be chronicled in succession of natural events, and is thus amenable to scientific description, is a question only for experiment and observation. The answer resounds in the affirmative. The wholesale forfeiture of mutually consistent advances in cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, anthropology, geology, biology, genetics, chemistry and physics required to accept the young-earth creationist's premise would shame the burning of the Alexandrine library in scope of intellectual loss. If the hand of a creator lies behind this design, he paints with a brush more subtle and more sublime than has been dreamt of in their philosophy."

http://www.joelwalker.net/science/statesman.html

Edited October 25, 2009 by Hal P

[ConScience]

I like that highlighted part in particular.

My question (which I keep asking and nobody wants to answer is: why is it such a big deal is Christians want to believe in evolution?

Shiloh? You're up. Tell us why it's such a big deal.

[MorningGlory]

"The fact is that there are a number of Bible-believing Christians who are involved in radiometric dating, and who can see its validity firsthand. A great number of other Christians are firmly convinced that radiometric dating shows evidence that God created the Earth billions, not thousands, of years ago."

From the article:

"The question at hand regards the teaching of "Intelligent Design" in the science classrooms of our public schools. The proponents of this idea are generally careful to avoid explicit religious language, and often cast themselves as the protectors of science, innocuously seeking to probe the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolutionary biology and big-bang cosmology in an open minded manner. Certainly science embraces skepticism, but there is a deep flaw in the vision of science which is being advocated. Skepticism in the face of a preponderance of evidence is only unreasonable doubt."

What he is actually saying is that teaching skepticism about evolutionary theory shouldn't be allowed. Once science abandons a healthy skepticism (necessary for growth and revision) it progresses to the realm of doctrine.

[ConScience]

There have been literally MILLIONS of hours of research, BILLIONS of dollars (and pounds and yen and deutschmarks and francs and euros ...) spent on scrutinizing radio-carbon dating, and nobody in their right minds is going to throw out all of that based on some results that were either legitimate errors or horrible frauds. If you want to convince me, go find an article that was peer-reviewed and where the results were consistently reproducible. That's the way it's done, scientifically. If you want to 'prove' that the earth is flat, you need more than one photo showing that it actually sits on the back of a turtle (see, I'm not picking on Christianity - Hinduism is my example, in this case).

But I don’t believe the earth is flat and sits on the back of a turtle. I accept true science and I reject mythology passed off as science (Darwinism). Regarding radiometric dating techniques – regardless of the number of deutschmarks spent the facts remain - all radioactive rock testing techniques rely on unproven and unprovable uniformitarian assumptions, i.e., rate of decay, known amount of daughter material, etc. Because of these unknowns “radiometric techniques are not the absolute dating methods they are claimed to be”. This is a fact that you will not be able to overcome unless you can demonstrate that *uniformitarian assumptions* are correct. Can you do that, mate or will you simply continue you’re hand-waving? For the record - hand waving and a couple of deutschmarks will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Mine's a large decaf mocha, please. Whipped cream.

But c'mon Shiloh ... where are you when I need you.

My question (which I keep asking and nobody wants to answer is: why is it such a big deal is Christians want to believe in evolution?

Shiloh? You're up. Tell us why it's such a big deal.

Edited October 25, 2009 by ConScience

[MorningGlory]

For the record - hand waving and a couple of deutschmarks will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.