Silas said:
Possession of Ph.Ds in scientific subjects does not automatically give him the credentials you seem to think. Wells does not appear to me to contribute to scientific learning, neither is he engaging in normal scientific discovery and promoting his ideas as coming from a member of the scientific community. On the contrary he is clearly coming from the religious community, and his pronouncements on science are thus much less credible to me. As is usual among the Creationist fraternity he engages in wilful distortion of fact and the deliberate misrepresentation of the truth in order to sow doubt and uncertainty about subjects which have been well-established for a century.
I don't know enough about Dr. Wells to comment, but I do know that one of his PhDs is focused on Evolutionary Embryology. That makes him much more of an expert than you. Just because he happens to disagree with you means nothing bad. It only means that you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
From my first link:From the second:I'm sorry I find those as quite conclusive indications that both of those sites consider Wells to be in error.
Listen to yourself… You accept one link over another without any proof and even though your link does not even say Wells is wrong in his actual facts! You don’t know either author, so how can you tell?
Wells is wrong to think that his questions pose any challenge to evolution. In the interest of responding to Wells's erroneous claims and setting the record straight, NCSE has prepared answers to his ten questions. Please feel free to copy and distribute this document to teachers, students,parents, and any interested parties.
Did you actually read any of their answers? They don’t point out where Dr. Wells is wrong, they only complain that he did not look at all the facts they think are relevant (aliens did it). In fact, their answers admit that Dr. Wells is RIGHT and they only try to talk around his points! Read your own link!
They are, however, quite careful in how they express themselves in this litigious day and age.Totally irrelevant. The principle of the spontaneous generation of amino acids from processes that do not involve life has been established. Since they do not have the precise composition, mass, pressure, temperature of the primordial atmosphere, nor the actual energy of the Sun, nor a billion years, the fact that they haven't exactly reproduced all the components necessary to life is hardly surprising. Neither does this supposed failure of something they weren't trying to do in the first place do anything to disprove evolution. If all experiments in attempting to synthesise organic molecules using naturalistic-derived processes had actually failed, not one scientist would then conclude, "Hey, evolution is false, it must have been God after all."
No, there is no evidence at all that the amino acids needed for life, Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, Thymine and Uracil, can be created spontaneously by any known process. Even if there were, this would only be the beginning of a long list of statistically impossible tasks. But, since you seem to think otherwise, please prove your assertion - show some reference where any of the above amino acids have been produced spontaneously.
I didn't attack his character, I attacked what he does. He attempts to subvert the teaching of good science (upon which, ultimately, the wealth and prosperity of the nation rests) to promote an inappropriate religious agenda and stifle the natural human instinct to explore and discover one's origins without relying entirely upon an unsourced book.
It appears to me that he attempts to spread truth and logic. Macroevolution/Abiogenesis is not science, it is fantasy. There is no wealth created by either of these pursuits. In fact, it could be argued that such pursuits, not all science but just these, are a waste of time and money. However, I am never opposed to scientific research so by all means continue. I am simply not willing to stand by while my children are taught lies, yes lies, in place of true science.
I’m sorry, you are right about sources. I have provided numerous sources on this thread and no one seems to bother to read them. I’m talking to about a dozen different people at the same time (and next week is finals week and I’m spending all my time tutoring). Please go back and read some of the sources I have provided to others. It doesn’t seem that you are willing to read any sources I provide anyway since anything you disagree with must be religious (and that is bad why?). I assume by an unsourced book, you mean the bible, which is not unsourced at all but rather a compilation of all the sources into one binding (actually not all the sources, but most of them).
Quite right, I'm afraid I confused the inability to provide same-century accuracy for historical items with 50,000 millenium-ballpark ages.
Now to go back to the original post I wanted to respond to.Thank you for highlighting another piece of evidence in favour of evolution. Older fossils are less developed and have fewer different species, and younger fossils are developed from the ancestral species. You implicitly acknowledge that relationship in your post. But if evolution were not so, then you wouldn't merely expect to find older fossils on top of younger fossils, you'd expect to find older fossils mixed in with younger fossils in any old order. The fact that the order is reversed (rather than higgledy-piggledly) shows that the stratum has somehow been turned upside down, but the fact that there is a clear order is what confirms the fact of evolution. As to how the stratum was turned upside down, well, it may have been a process so slow that the kind of evidence you expect to find would either not appear or would have been eradicated through erosion. But the point is, of course, that such a process would of itself prove an old-Earth theory.
You miss the point. There is no process. There is no supposed movement of billions of tons of rocks (in some cases, several whole mountains). If there are supposedly older fossils on top of younger fossils anywhere then either the whole idea of superposition is wrong or the supposed ages of the fossils MUST BE WRONG. Older fossils on top of younger fossils is a death knell for superposition theory. Yet, this happens on every continent of the world over thousands of square miles. Do the Darwinist's recant and come up with some new theory which fits the available facts? No, they go on in blind FAITH despite all the contrary evidence (just as you are doing now).
Are you kidding me with that link reference? That's a page pointing to a religious tract with a recommendation page to a whole bookshelf of other religious tracts. I have not once argued religion with you, David - your religious beliefs are your business - I have argued science. Please provide scientific sources, not apologetics.
This is not a religions tract. This link points to an Amazon page where they are selling a book. I'm having a little trouble with your requirements. Anything which agrees with me and does not agree with you is apologetic? This book is written by an Atheist Journalist who changed his mind while interviewing prominent scientists on the subjects we are discussing. You seem to be saying that I must prove my point by NOT referring to anything which agrees with my point? Exactly how can that happen. Anything I point to which you disagree with you will simply label as religious. Not very open minded are we?
I cited examples of where the evidence is being found - in general terms. But you don't cite anything at all - you merely state that "Evidence is coming out all the time". Please cite a reliable non-religious source for actual evidence in the latest developments in genetics which disprove evolution.
Please provide some citation, preferably not by Behe or anyone else who follows the "argument from personal incredulity". Behe can't imagine how certain processes evolved below a certain level - his inability proves nothing, just as your inability to imagine how rock strata may have ended up upside down proves nothing.
Once again, you reject a learned scientist simply because he doesn't agree with you. Get over yourself and smell the coffee. Your theory is getting pummeled and you just don't want to admit the tide is turning away from you.
I actually like Behe because he is not religious and presents only scientific arguments. Obviously you have not read his book or you would also find the complexity of microbiological life to be incredible and without logical or Darwinian explaination.
The initial amount of C14 is inferred from the amounts of the other isotopes.
I think you must just be making this up. You are again way off here. What other isotopes are you proposing?
There is nothing any less scientific about the determination of the initial conditions than there is about the rate of decay. If there were no way of determining how much C14 existed in order to determine how much has decayed, then there would be no C14 dating at all.
Finally, you are getting the point. There is NO WAY to determine the initial conditions so when they came up with this in the 1950s they just used the current percentage and assume it has always been so. However, we now know that the percentage changes all the time due to a whole host of factors, so they tried correcting the errors by measuring the C14 trapped in tree rings. The problem there of course is that trees are not dead so the amount of C14 is not constant from the time the ring is laid down and of course we now know that one ring pair does not necessarily represent a year anyway. You are starting to see the paradox. Keep thinking. Just because the scientist/priests of your Evolution religion tell you something, does not mean it is true nor does it mean you have to accept it without thinking the problem through - use your mind and don't just believe everything you are taught.
Why are you so certain that the creation of the Earth is less than 4.5 billion years? Just because you don't believe the strong evidence for that age for the Earth from the existing methods does not mean that the Earth is certainly younger than that. For all you know the Earth could be much older - assuming the dating methods are incorrect. The dating methods all assume that a minimum amount of time has taken place for the various processes to take place.
Here I will actually not argue much since I simply don't know how old the Earth is. However, there are things which point to a younger Earth. One evidence is Moon dust, which can be explained in other ways such as a non-uniform cosmic dust rate. Another is the erosion rate of the Earth - all the continents of the entire planet should erode away in 200,000-300,000 years at the current rate, yet there is only enough silt on the bottom of the oceans to account for even a fraction of that time. The magnetic field of the Earth is decaying - at the current rate it will be gone before too long allowing cosmic radiation to destroy life on Earth - but if the current rate is followed into the past then life should not be able to exist much further back then 100,000 years or so (again explainable by non-uniformity). Magnetic halos in rocks point to a sudden cooling of the Earth's crust and not, as has been supposed, a long (billion year) period of slow cooling. These are just a few pointers which point to a younger Earth. How young? I don't know, but certainly older than 6000 years.
Your last line proves the point I was trying to make, thank you. I do not have a science degree, it is true, but please don't assume that that means I don't have some kind of scientific background. I personally would be fascinated to discover how successful you are in getting your Physics Ph. D. after you tell your professors that you don't believe in peer review.
I don't buck the system and I abide by peer review just like everyone else - I have no choice.
I find it amazing that you insist I cannot quote "Religious" sources on a religion forum. This almost sounds like you are saying that anyone religious is stupid? Are you telling everyone here that you have to be an idiot to be religious?
