Evolutionary Science-v- Creationism

[Kitsune]

Secondly, why do "scientists" continually advance a theory they SEE has holes in it? I thought that if a hypothesis has big glaring mistakes that scientists were supposed to trash it and start over?

Because thats how it works. Theories aren't intended to be perfect, nor will they ever be.

There are LOTS of holes in their theory but they continue to advance it LIKE ITS A FACT.

Stop that! Researchers do not advance them like facts. Every theory is open to peer review and challenges.

When ANY science programme starts talking about millions of years I cringe. They don't KNOW that. They just assume it is so, and present it like it's so, and people are buying into it like it is truth.

Ahhh... the marketing of "science" on your friendly Discovery channel. Warning: what you see and hear on television is not a true representation of the work being done by the research communities. I see the problem you are experiencing, now. To correct this, please return to school. Please read books. Do not pass "go", do not collect $200.

[Undertoad]

First, I'm not desperate for a different outcome. I am 100% certain...

100% certainty is one of the worst errors you can commit.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

You seem to fully expect that something can not be considered "science" until it is duplicated in a laboratory and that is simply not how the field works.

NOAA website glossary (bold emphasis mine)
science - a method of learning about the physical universe by applying the principles of the scientific method, which includes making empirical observations, proposing hypotheses to explain those observations, and testing those hypotheses in valid and reliable ways

Yes, that is the way it works.

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Many fields in the sciences deal with energy, matter, and systems well outside of our physical grasp because of size, time, and dangers. That does not make them any less "science".

That is wholly dependant upon what we're talking about. I'm not going to make that broad of stroke.

Generate a sun in a laboratory. Touch the sun with your own hands. You can't. All we know of the sun and the burning hydrogen mass are its after effects, a full eight minutes after they have been occured. We can measure the heat once it strikes our planet, we can measure the residual radio waves, and we can view the spectrum coming off of it.

Yes. We can. These are observable, measurable quantities.

Our universe is much like this -- we didn't see it begin, we won't see it end, but we can measure the energy, content, and how it interacts.

Absolutely right! That's science!

Based on what we know from measurements done in a lab with these particles, we can form a theory of how it all came to be and how it might all end. There is nothing wrong with that, there is nothing "un-science" about that.

Absolutely right. Forming theories from observed facts is scientific.

It is just as I can observe changes in the fossil record and hypothesize about how life changes.

Here's where we hit shaky ground. The "fossil record" does not change. It is a bunch of bones lying in layers of dirt. They don't move. They don't change. They also do NOT prove anything except they died. And maybe not even at that spot. Somehow, though, scientists want me to believe that we can prove evolution by bones in the dirt. Sorry. Not buying it.

Just because I will never see it change before my eyes because of my short life span does not make my theory any less "science".

Sure it does. If you can't OBSERVE it, if you can't MEASURE it, if you can't DUPLICATE it, it's NOT science. Let's check that definition again: science - a method of learning about the physical universe by applying the principles of the scientific method, which includes making empirical observations, proposing hypotheses to explain those observations, and testing those hypotheses in valid and reliable ways.

Pulling a guess out of a, uh, black hole isn't science -- you are correct. But formulating a theory based on research, measurements, and observations is exactly how the entire field works. You seem to imply that you think evolution and the "big bang" theory are founded on nothing more than wild imagination.

That's exactly what it's founded on.

People that have issues with theories seem to be unhappy that they cannot get hard, physical evidence that they can see with their own eyes. In truth, science doesn't have a lot of truths, but it does have a lot of theories. We've never seen the electron clouds of an atom and we cannot measure the speed and location of many particles to get an exact model. Currently science seems certain we never will, but we can develop good theories that fit our needs. Theories are not facts, theories can be changed, theories can be modified, theories can be challenged. They are all works in progress, most of them destined to never be completed or accepted as "fact". Yet, none of these aspects remove these studies from the sciences or make them any less important.

But you see, scientists believe evolution is a fact, based on this theory. Remember the post someone made about the different portions of the brain named after different animal types? People all over the world are being told that evolution happened. Period. In fact, scientists can't prove any of it happened. It is JUST as much of a "theory" as the "theory" that a God named Yahweh created the world is 6 literal days. It is equally as good of a theory that we're in the Matrix, all part of a computer program.

Neither side can conclusively prove they are right and the other wrong. Try to teach the bible or Matrix theory in school as "just a theory" alongside evolution and watch the flames. Why is that?

Why is it ok to advance one theory and call it science but advance a different theory with JUST AS MUCH EVIDENCE and call it religion?? Aren't they BOTH religion? Both are unprovable. Both are simply theories. Right?

If you want an easy answer that you aren't permitted to question, change, or update, please look to your bible.

Obviously you haven't studied this issue very deeply. The churches around the world take different stances regarding the creation/evolution debate. This debate has more ramifications within the church than it does in the secular world. This has everything to do with the fallibility of God and the bible itself.

But do not suggest that just because you can't see it with your own eyes it isn't science.

I don't suggest it, the definition of science itself does.

If you remove the theories that cannot be directly observed, you're removing a massive amount of important information that is crucial to our current understanding of how our world and how the universe works.

You mean how some people THINK it MAY work. Theories are NOT facts, Kitsune. That statement alone shows how much people (including yourself)simply accept some (if not all) of these theories as FACT, and THAT is what I have a problem with.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

OC, what about carbon-dating? The decay rate of carbon is scientifically known and observable, and all tests ever performed on things with known ages have matched up exactly. So if carbon-dating says something is millions of years old, why is that not scientific fact?

The main page regarding Radiometric Dating is http://answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dating.asp

and here is a series of quotes:

People who ask about carbon-14 (14C) dating usually want to know about the radiometric1 dating methods that are claimed to give millions and billions of years—carbon dating can only give thousands of years.

[snip of religious stuff to get to the science stuff]

Carbon has unique properties that are essential for life on earth. Familiar to us as the black substance in charred wood, as diamonds, and the graphite in ‘lead’ pencils, carbon comes in several forms, or isotopes. One rare form has atoms that are 14 times as heavy as hydrogen atoms: carbon-14, or 14C, or radiocarbon.

Carbon-14 is made when cosmic rays knock neutrons out of atomic nuclei in the upper atmosphere. These displaced neutrons, now moving fast, hit ordinary nitrogen (14N) at lower altitudes, converting it into 14C. Unlike common carbon (12C), 14C is unstable and slowly decays, changing it back to nitrogen and releasing energy. This instability makes it radioactive.

Ordinary carbon (12C) is found in the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air, which is taken up by plants, which in turn are eaten by animals. So a bone, or a leaf or a tree, or even a piece of wooden furniture, contains carbon. When the 14C has been formed, like ordinary carbon (12C), it combines with oxygen to give carbon dioxide (14CO2), and so it also gets cycled through the cells of plants and animals.

We can take a sample of air, count how many 12C atoms there are for every 14C atom, and calculate the 14C/12C ratio. Because 14C is so well mixed up with 12C, we expect to find that this ratio is the same if we sample a leaf from a tree, or a part of your body.

In living things, although 14C atoms are constantly changing back to 14N, they are still exchanging carbon with their surroundings, so the mixture remains about the same as in the atmosphere. However, as soon as a plant or animal dies, the 14C atoms which decay are no longer replaced, so the amount of 14C in that once-living thing decreases as time goes on. In other words, the 14C/12C ratio gets smaller. So, we have a ‘clock’ which starts ticking the moment something dies.

Obviously, this works only for things which were once living. It cannot be used to date volcanic rocks, for example.

The rate of decay of 14C is such that half of an amount will convert back to 14N in 5,730 years (plus or minus 40 years). This is the ‘half-life.’ So, in two half-lives, or 11,460 years, only one-quarter will be left. Thus, if the amount of 14C relative to 12C in a sample is one-quarter of that in living organisms at present, then it has a theoretical age of 11,460 years. Anything over about 50,000 years old, should theoretically have no detectable 14C left. That is why radiocarbon dating cannot give millions of years. In fact, if a sample contains 14C, it is good evidence that it is not millions of years old.

However, things are not quite so simple. First, plants discriminate against carbon dioxide containing 14C. That is, they take up less than would be expected and so they test older than they really are. Furthermore, different types of plants discriminate differently. This also has to be corrected for.2

Second, the ratio of 14C/12C in the atmosphere has not been constant—for example, it was higher before the industrial era when the massive burning of fossil fuels released a lot of carbon dioxide that was depleted in 14C. This would make things which died at that time appear older in terms of carbon dating. Then there was a rise in 14CO2 with the advent of atmospheric testing of atomic bombs in the 1950s.3 This would make things carbon-dated from that time appear younger than their true age.

Measurement of 14C in historically dated objects (e.g., seeds in the graves of historically dated tombs) enables the level of 14C in the atmosphere at that time to be estimated, and so partial calibration of the ‘clock’ is possible. Accordingly, carbon dating carefully applied to items from historical times can be useful. However, even with such historical calibration, archaeologists do not regard 14C dates as absolute because of frequent anomalies. They rely more on dating methods that link into historical records.

Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the 14C clock is not possible.4

Go to the link, there is TONS of stuff there.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Ahhh... the marketing of "science" on your friendly Discovery channel. Warning: what you see and hear on television is not a true representation of the work being done by the research communities. I see the problem you are experiencing, now. To correct this, please return to school. Please read books. Do not pass "go", do not collect $200.

I don't particularly care for your tone, so I'll let it ride for now.

I happen to read alot of books, and go to school. Unfortunetly, I cannot send my children to private school, so am forced to send them to public school, where they are being taught the theory of evolution is a FACT.

If you haven't seen a public school textbook, go look. It is presented as fact. It's not just the way the discovery channel presents it, it's how every single person who believes it presents it. LOOK AROUND YOU. LISTEN to how information is presented. You'll hear "millions of years ago" and "descended from" thrown around AS FACT.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

100% certainty is one of the worst errors you can commit.

I'm not a scientist. I'm an average schmo and from my reading and my research into both sides of the arguement, that's my personal belief. I never asked anyone to agree with me, I'm just stating my opinion. I'm not saying I'm close minded, I'm not. But everything I have seen leads me to be 100% certain that the "Theory of Evolution" is a bunch of crap.

[Kitsune]

Fair enough, OC -- I'll agree with most of what you say. I still take issue with this:

scientists believe evolution is a fact, based on this theory

I think they only give the impression of that when you hear them speak or when they use it to generate other theories. The evolutionary theory is still a theory, it is still challenged to this day, it is still revised and updated to this day, and [hopefully] that is something all scientists understand. What a theory is, how they are generated, how they are published, how they are changed, and how they are reviewed is taught in the most basic of classes. Evolutionary theory still isn't fact, just as the theory of gravity isn't a fact just at relativity isn't a fact.

Remember the post someone made about the different portions of the brain named after different animal types? People all over the world are being told that evolution happened. Period.

This is just terminology that people are misreading. If people are accidentally getting that much out of these basic terms for functional parts of the brain, thats their problem. Just as there is no funny "bone", simple reading about it would clear up the issue very quickly.

[OnyxCougar]

I'll round up some quotes for you, Kitsune. This is way more pervasive than I think you (and alot of other people) realize.

[Undertoad]

OC, have you ever - in your life - been "100% certain" about something, only to learn that you were wrong?

[Kitsune]

I don't particularly care for your tone, so I'll let it ride for now.

Yeah -- please ignore that. I'm being cranky at work, today, and the holidays are crushing me. I appreciate you not holding me to that remark, because you certainly didn't deserve it.

You'll hear "millions of years ago" and "descended from" thrown around AS FACT.

I've always seen things headed under a textbook with "Evolutionary Theory". To me, it never needed to be stated after that -- the word "theory", as in "its only a theory", was enough. I never understood the need for the new warning stickers they've had to add to public school textbooks.

But you do not subscribe to the theory that the Earth is millions of years old? This, I understand, is certainly something that is pretty much accepted these days.

If you haven't seen a public school textbook, go look.

No, thats okay. I was quite unhappy with the state of textbooks when I attended public school. I'm sure I don't want to see them, today.

[OnyxCougar]

This is snipped from talkorigins.org, one of the major evolutionist websites. My commentary is in italics.

"Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved."

First, we should clarify what "evolution" means. Like so many other words, it has more than one meaning. Its strict biological definition is "a change in allele frequencies over time." By that definition, evolution is an indisputable fact.

Most people seem to associate the word "evolution" mainly with common descent, the theory that all life arose from one common ancestor. Many people believe that there is enough evidence to call this a fact, too.

I'd love to see this "evidence". Too bad they can't provide it.

However, common descent is still not the theory of evolution, but just a fraction of it (and a part of several quite different theories as well). The theory of evolution not only says that life evolved, it also includes mechanisms, like mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift, which go a long way towards explaining how life evolved.

Note the lack of words like "we think" or "how it could have".

Calling the theory of evolution "only a theory" is, strictly speaking, true, but the idea it tries to convey is completely wrong. The argument rests on a confusion between what "theory" means in informal usage and in a scientific context.

A theory, in the scientific sense, is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" [Random House American College Dictionary]. The term does not imply tentativeness or lack of certainty.

However, the phrase "general propositions" doesn't imply absolute knowledge.

Generally speaking, scientific theories differ from scientific laws only in that laws can be expressed more tersely. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness.

Observations is science. I agree with that.

(Creationism fails to be a theory mainly because of the last point; it makes few or no specific claims about what we would expect to find, so it can't be used for anything. When it does make falsifiable predictions, they prove to be false.)

This is not true. There are lots of predictions about what we expect to find, because science is science. What you're trying to prove has nothing to do with it, as long as you're using science to do it, it's scientific. Nutjob.

Lack of proof isn't a weakness, either.

According to who?

On the contrary, claiming infallibility for one's conclusions is a sign of hubris.

Agreed. But not "on the contrary." I love how they try to word this stuff.

Nothing in the real world has ever been rigorously proved, or ever will be.

Uh.... huh? I have a problem with that statement.

Proof, in the mathematical sense, is possible only if you have the luxury of defining the universe you're operating in. In the real world, we must deal with levels of certainty based on observed evidence.

OK, this is getting weird. So this guy is saying nothing has ever been proven, and we're dealing with levels of certainty based on observed evidence. um...ok... And they call Fundies nutcases!

The more and better evidence we have for something, the more certainty we assign to it; when there is enough evidence, we label the something a fact, even though it still isn't 100% certain.

Who is "we"? You got a mouse in your pocket? And let me see if I got this straight...we've never proven anything in the real world, but we can say it's a fact, because we're pretty dog-gone sure. Riiiiiiiight....

What evolution has is what any good scientific claim has--evidence, and lots of it. Evolution is supported by a wide range of observations throughout the fields of genetics, anatomy, ecology, animal behavior, paleontology, and others.

Those observations in and of themselves do NOT point as evidence of evolution. Show me proof life came from non-life. Don't guess. Recreate it. I wanna see it in the lab. Until then, you can't say it happened with 100% certainty.

If you wish to challenge the theory of evolution, you must address that evidence. You must show that the evidence is either wrong or irrelevant or that it fits another theory better. Of course, to do this, you must know both the theory and the evidence.

No, what I must show is that the "evidence" proposed can be interpreted another way using the same science. This makes the "evidence" irrelevant to the theory, and thus the theory falls apart.

Conclusion

These are not the only misconceptions about evolution by any means. Other common misunderstandings include how geological dating techniques work, implications to morality and religion, the meaning of "uniformitarianism," and many more. To address all these objections here would be impossible.

But I'm sure you'll try to discredit as much as possible with your convoluted "it has never been proven but it's a fact" arguements.

But consider: About a hundred years ago, scientists, who were then mostly creationists, looked at the world to figure out how God did things. These creationists came to the conclusions of an old earth and species originating by evolution.

Actually, we know for a fact many people, like Darwin, didn't set out to explain how God did things. How God did things is in the bible, Genesis, chapter 1. What they set out to do is discredit, disprove and undermine the authority of God. Darwin admitted that numerous times.

Since then, thousands of scientists have been studying evolution with increasingly more sophisticated tools. Many of these scientists have excellent understandings of the laws of thermodynamics, how fossil finds are interpreted, etc., and finding a better alternative to evolution would win them fame and fortune.

That is a lie. There are KNOWN cases where really good (and smart) scientists poke holes in the established theory and get railroaded, grants taken away, fired and pressured. You get rewarded if you try to further evolution's hold on society. This guy obviously not a scientist or he would know that. He was talking out his ass there.

Sometimes their work has changed our understanding of significant details of how evolution operates, but the theory of evolution still has essentially unanimous agreement from the people who work on it.

So...the theory changes, sometimes radically, and yet still is supposed to be a fact? Facts don't change. Facts are facts. How can it be a fact if it's changing?

Oh yeah...it can't.....

This is just ONE article I found off the top, kitsune. Yes, people DO think it's a fact, and they are trying to convince everyone else it is a fact.

[wolf]

Is anyone else getting from this ....

That's is okay to be 100% certain about the biblical notion of creation, but totally not okay to accept with a high degree of certainty the theory of evolution?

[Undertoad]

Well, there's this way to go about it then.

Evidence of evolution: tons and tons

Evidence of humanity created by a Xtian god: a bunch of stories written a long time ago

Check.

[Kitsune]

This is snipped from talkorigins.org

Talkorigins.org appears to just be an archive of a usenet newsgroup -- it is not a scientific journal or publication and isn't really any different than The Cellar. Their FAQ entry on why they keep referring to the evolutionary theory as a fact is based on the broken logic that because something is so overwhelming with evidence that is must be 100% correct. This isn't the way theories work.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by wolf

Is anyone else getting from this ....

That's is okay to be 100% certain about the biblical notion of creation, but totally not okay to accept with a high degree of certainty the theory of evolution?

Anyone can be 100% certain of their own beliefs. Who says it's not okay?