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Believe it or not, they actually have. Steve Austin and company dated a Mt. Saint Helens rock using K-Ar and outdated equipment and got an answer in the hundreds of thousands of years ....and, then, of course, all went home happy

I don't know, LP; this is starting to look a tad like trolling on your part. You can throw up a thousand quotes; it doesn't matter, buddy. You're not going to convince anyone here (accept those of you ilk) that radiometric dating is questionable science until you actually provide real data...

My understanding is that geologists highly value those situations in which multiple dating methods are available and are consistent.

Hi LP, Not really. BD and I had a pretty good discussion about it. He picked one particular skull whose reconstruction has been debated (I forget the exact fossil descriptor). And, he's right that that particular fossil is ambiguous in its reconstruction and different scientists have come...

Or convicting people of murder based on forensic evidence; if the evidence were different and incriminated an entirely different person, then law enforcement and prosecution would have to formulate a different theory and, instead, pursue the latter suspect.

Here is a graphic showing hominid cranial capacities vs. the measured age of the fossil. What are the odds that your isolated human population theory would produce such a graphic? And, of course, we see far more variation in dogs; it's called artificial selection.

Hey sfs, Let me see if I follow your math. You are assuming that there are n people in a population .... and one (and only one) person has a given ERV at some location in their genome. Since we each have pairs of chromosomes, that means there are 2xn possible sets of genes in that same...

Thanks, sfs. I'm a mathematician by training .... and I find population genetics very interesting. Based on your posts, it sounds like one would model it as a Markov Chain. But, the only genetics I've ever had was back in high school. And, it sounds like what you and LM are saying, with 6...

Hmmm .... I'm struggling with the terminology. When you say genetic locus, are you referring to someone like a Mitochondrial Eve? Also, if person X has a given ERV, but person Y does not ... then will their offspring have the ERV in the same location as person X?

That makes sense, e.g., the larger the population the less likely a neutral mutation will become fixed within the entire population. I don't mean to derail your thread as I'd like to know more about this stuff. So, is the thinking that the majority of the ERVs common to all humans are the...

Thanks. In other words, population genetics has not had enough time to fix them in one location throughout the population. For the HERV-K ERVs, will each eventually disappear from the human genome or eventually fix itself to one location for all humans?

Question: Are these 200,000 ERVs in the exact same location within the genome for all humans?

I usually just go to the sources that Wikipedia uses for a given article.

Darwin came up with a scientific theory, grady .... that's all it is. And either it is true or it's not true. It is not a statement about morals and how we should treat each other. The idea that it can be blamed for nazism is completely asinine .... just as asinine as blaming the Bible for all...

Agreed. I can't speak for juvie, but I think he was referring to orbiting the Rosetta around the comet, e.g., needing to know the mass/density of the comet, etc.

Actually, I think juvenissun may have a point here. The mass (and even possibly the shape) of the comet will dictate the shape, height, and speed of the orbit. I wonder if that is at least part of the reason for the initial triangular-shaped obrits around the comet ... so, as to ascertain the...

Not really. The gist of my point which is when one is and isn't able to perform science objectively has nothing to do with the definition of Christian or any other faith for that matter.

No, because it is incorrect; there are plenty of good scientists that are also Christians. But, depending on what one believes as absolute, infallible truths as a part of their faith, it could compromise their objectivity when it comes to certain scientific questions that might contradict those...

You told me that the Bible was the inspired word of God and that it is literally true or something along those lines. Now, Grady, there is nothing wrong with that ... it's a free country the last time I checked. But, and no offense, that eliminates you as objective when it comes to certain...

I don't know what the first one has to with me; the second one is semantics, IMHO. If you wish, I'll rephrase: There are no absolute truths in the realm of science.