Debate #1: Is Evolution science or not?

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Question: Why would any Christian want to take man’s fallible dating methods and use them to impose an idea on the infallible Word of God?

Why would any Christian want to take man's fallible observations that the Earth rotates about its axis every 24 hours when the Bible clearly states that the Sun revolves about the Earth?

 

[dhiannian]

So how does man using scripture as a dating method become infallible?



No, it's saying that man's word is fallible even when he speaks about God's word.

Fortunatly you don't even need to use the bible to date correctly, There are many ways, although the dating tools of today only have a calabration to date thousands of years not million.
If you date a layer, by which fossils are in it, assume how long they would take to change, then date the fossil by the layer it was found in.....
HUH???
They just talk in circles..

 

[dhiannian]

Why would any Christian want to take man's fallible observations that the Earth rotates about its axis every 24 hours when the Bible clearly states that the Sun revolves about the Earth?

Reference please.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Did Adam have a scar of where he gashed open his knee during his non-existant childhood?

Afraid not

Then why does the Earth show scars demonstrating that it is well over 10,000 years old?

Nothing any scientist can bring to the table about the earth being millions of yrs old cannot be refuted.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/young.asp

It is more that there is no theory that can not be simplified to the point that it no longer fits the facts.

 

[dhiannian]

http://www.amonline.net.au/geoscience/earth/dating.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html#refs
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/datingmethods.htm
http://www.tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html
http://au.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761554115/Dating_Methods.html

Take your pick.

I said that CANNOT be refuted, every site I went too could be.

 

[Electric Sceptic]

www.dictionary.com
faith ** (*P*)**Pronunciation Key**(fth)
n.

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.
Number 2 is where mill yr old earth believers fall.

Firstly, the idea that an old earth is not evidenced is simply wishful thinking on the part of creationists. It is amply evidenced, to the satisfaction of the world's scientists, who know vastly more about the subject than you or I.

Secondly, even if it wasn't evidenced, having faith in a belief does not make that belief a religion - as I said before and you ignored. Instead of looking up the dictionary definition of 'faith' (which we both already knew), look up the dictionary definition of 'religion', because you apparently don't know it.

 

[Electric Sceptic]

I said that CANNOT be refuted, every site I went too could be.

EVERYTHING can be refuted - it is simply a question of how valid the refutation is. Noting that all old-earth proofs can be refuted demonstrates nothing except that people can refute anything.

 

[dhiannian]

Then why does the Earth show scars demonstrating that it is well over 10,000 years old?

It is more that there is no theory that can not be simplified to the point that it no longer fits the facts.

True you can take a theory and make it fit the facts, and move everything around so that it does seem to fit, but it doesn't and is still a theory,
Scars? You mean like the grand canyon??example please.

Oh no guys!!
I'm having a revelation!! No a THEORY!
I say, a momma martian, and a daddy martian, crashed they're ship into the planet, thousands of germs flew off of the martians when they hit!
Then they fixed their ship and left, meanwhile, the germs as inteligent as they were, started mating, They had baby germs which were different then them, Ok then...
The baby germs repeated the process and so on,
One of the germs fell into the ocean, and it's offspring evolved/adapted to fit it's new environment,
All of the other germs continued changing, then began to grow bodies!
Everyone of them became a species of their own!
one of them evolved into a human, who had intercourse with another germ and created another human..
I solved lifes question!!!
I want my theory in the textbooks of every college,
After all you can't prove my story either!

 

[dhiannian]

Firstly, the idea that an old earth is not evidenced is simply wishful thinking on the part of creationists. It is amply evidenced, to the satisfaction of the world's scientists, who know vastly more about the subject than you or I.

Secondly, even if it wasn't evidenced, having faith in a belief does not make that belief a religion - as I said before and you ignored. Instead of looking up the dictionary definition of 'faith' (which we both already knew), look up the dictionary definition of 'religion', because you apparently don't know it.

Sorry I missed your post.
I have faith in God, Is that religious?
I did in fact look up religion, and I still say it is a religion!
It's based purely on faith.
and the one observed type of evolving that I don't deny.
Secondly
The smarter you think you are the dumber you actually are,
Because only when you realize you/I know nothing in reality, only then can you actually see.
And I still say there is no evidence, I haven't seen anything that was not ACCURATLY refuted.
In otherwards, just because someone thought it happened, does not mean it did.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

And the fact is, every single dating method (outside of Scripture) is based on fallible assumptions. There are literally hundreds of dating tools. However, whatever dating method one uses, assumptions must be made about the past.

In fact this is a question that has come up again and again over the decades in scientific circles. There are always those sticklers who want to nail down every last detail. And in the end all the evidence is that physical constants do not change and have not changed ... by any measurable amount.

And the precision of measurement we're talking about is so great that there is no hope there for changes that would result in anything like a young Earth.

That physical constants(e.g. speed of light and decay constants) have remained constant over the past several tens of thousands of years is demonstrated by the spectra of stars in the Milky Way.

I.e. we look at stars 10 light years away and 100 light years away and 10,000 light years away and ... continously out to around 80,000 light years away in our galaxy and they all show the same spectra. If there had been any changes in physical constants (particularly thost that come to play in C14 dating*) we would expect to see a difference in the spectra.

*C14 decay is beta decay which involves the weak nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force is very closely coupled to the electro-magnetic forces that produce light (they are, in fact, two facets of the same force).

The spectra of the supernova remnant sn1987a, which is 160,000 light years away, is also exactly the same. That supernova also produced radioactive elements which decayed in the expected amount of time giving evidence that other constants dealing with other types of radioactive decay have been constant over the past 160,000 years.

Studies of the natural fission reactor near oklo push the constancy of those constants to over two billion years and looking at absorption of quasar light pushes it nearly to the age of the universe.

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/pr-05-04.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/7755/ancientproof/SN1987A.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF210.html
http://super.colorado.edu/~astr1020/homework4/hwk4.html
and pretty pictures:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2000/sn1987a/more.html

Tree rings in Arizona (bristlecone pines, 9kya), Europe (oak, 11 kya; pine 13kya), lake varves in Minn. (10-12kya), Poland (13kya), Japan (40kya) all individually provide strong evidence of an older Earth, and their close agreement with each other demostrated via C14 dating is overwhelming. Overlapping those dates and going beyond to over 130kya are the ice cores from Greenland and Antartica.

http://www.cio.phys.rug.nl/HTML-docs/Verslag/97/PE-04.htm varves and rings.
http://www.life.uiuc.edu/hu/Wright_et_al._2004.pdf Steel Lake, MN.
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/age.htm Lake of the Clouds,MN.

 

[dhiannian]

Robert,
where is the reference in the bible for the verse saying the sun goes around the earth??

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

If you wish to believe, if you think it is important to believe in a Young Earth and in special creation of species or kinds, the God bless you, go and do so.

But if you wish to claim that the physical evidence backs you up then, time permitting, I will taylor an answer to your claims from my years of taking physics and chemistry and poking around in biologists' backyard.

More likely time will not permit after tonight and I will leave you in the hands of the many other capable posters who inhabit these boards.

Regardless, if you are going to insist on doing this, I would really suggest being civil and not resorting to ridicule.

Oh no guys!!
I'm having a revelation!! No a THEORY!

Matthew 5:22b [Jesus said]whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

 

[dhiannian]

Carbon Dating - What Is It And How Does It Work?
This is how carbon dating works: Carbon is a naturally abundant element found in the atmosphere, in the earth, in the oceans, and in every living creature. C-12 is by far the most common isotope, while only about one in a trillion carbon atoms is C-14. C-14 is produced in the upper atmosphere when nitrogen-14 (N-14) is altered through the effects of cosmic radiation bombardment (a proton is displaced by a neutron effectively changing the nitrogen atom into a carbon isotope). The new isotope is called "radiocarbon" because it is radioactive, though it is not dangerous. It is naturally unstable and so it will spontaneously decay back into N-14 after a period of time. It takes about 5,730 years for half of a sample of radiocarbon to decay back into nitrogen. It takes another 5,730 for half of the remainder to decay, and then another 5,730 for half of what's left then to decay and so on. The period of time that it takes for half of a sample to decay is called a "half-life."
Radiocarbon oxidizes (that is, it combines with oxygen) and enters the biosphere through natural processes like breathing and eating. Plants and animals naturally incorporate both the abundant C-12 isotope and the much rarer radiocarbon isotope into their tissues in about the same proportions as the two occur in the atmosphere during their lifetimes. When a creature dies, it ceases to consume more radiocarbon while the C-14 already in its body continues to decay back into nitrogen. So, if we find the remains of a dead creature whose C-12 to C-14 ratio is half of what it's supposed to be (that is, one C-14 atom for every two trillion C-12 atoms instead of one in every trillion) we can assume the creature has been dead for about 5,730 years (since half of the radiocarbon is missing, it takes about 5,730 years for half of it to decay back into nitrogen). If the ratio is a quarter of what it should be (one in every four trillion) we can assume the creature has been dead for 11,460 year (two half-lives). After about 10 half-lives, the amount of radiocarbon left becomes too miniscule to measure and so this technique isn't useful for dating specimens which died more than 60,000 years ago. Another limitation is that this technique can only be applied to organic material such as bone, flesh, or wood. It can't be used to date rocks directly.

Carbon Dating - The Premise
Carbon dating is a dating technique predicated upon three things:

* The rate at which the unstable radioactive C-14 isotope decays into the stable non-radioactive N-14 isotope,
* The ratio of C-12 to C-14 found in a given specimen,
* And the ratio C-12 to C-14 found in the atmosphere at the time of the specimen's death.



Carbon Dating - The Controversy
Carbon dating is controversial for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's predicated upon a set of questionable assumptions. We have to assume, for example, that the rate of decay (that is, a 5,730 year half-life) has remained constant throughout the unobservable past. However, there is strong evidence which suggests that radioactive decay may have been greatly accelerated in the unobservable past.1 We must also assume that the ratio of C-12 to C-14 in the atmosphere has remained constant throughout the unobservable past (so we can know what the ratio was at the time of the specimen's death). And yet we know that "radiocarbon is forming 28-37% faster than it is decaying,"2 which means it hasn't yet reached equilibrium, which means the ratio is higher today than it was in the unobservable past. We also know that the ratio decreased during the industrial revolution due to the dramatic increase of CO2 produced by factories. This man-made fluctuation wasn't a natural occurrence, but it demonstrates the fact that fluctuation is possible and that a period of natural upheaval upon the earth could greatly affect the ratio. Volcanoes spew out CO2 which could just as effectively decrease the ratio. Specimens which lived and died during a period of intense volcanism would appear older than they really are if they were dated using this technique. The ratio can further be affected by C-14 production rates in the atmosphere, which in turn is affected by the amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth's atmosphere. The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth's atmosphere is itself affected by things like the earth's magnetic field which deflects cosmic rays. Precise measurements taken over the last 140 years have shown a steady decay in the strength of the earth's magnetic field. This means there's been a steady increase in radiocarbon production (which would increase the ratio).
And finally, this dating scheme is controversial because the dates derived are often wildly inconsistent. For example, "One part of Dima [a famous baby mammoth discovered in 1977] was 40,000 RCY [Radiocarbon Years], another was 26,000 RCY, and 'wood found immediately around the carcass' was 9,000-10,000 RCY." (Walt Brown, In the Beginning, 2001, p. 176)http://www.AllAboutArchaeology.org/carbon-dating.htm

 

[dhiannian]

Carbon Dating: Part 2. (Read Part 1 First!)


Carbon Dating - Dendrochronology
As we've already seen, in order for Carbon dating to work we need to know what the C-12 to C-14 ratio was at the time of a specimen's death. If the ratio has fluctuated throughout the unobservable past (and we can be sure that it has), how can we determine what the ratio was during the lifetime of a specimen that lived and died before we first began measuring the ratio?
Advocates of the Carbon dating method have turned to "Dendrochronology" (a.k.a. tree-ring dating) to calibrate their timescale (that is, to adjust it to compensate for the C-12 to C-14 ratio fluctuations). By carbon dating a piece of wood which has also been dated by counting its annual tree-rings, scientists can create a table by which they can convert the questionable Carbon-14 years into true calendar years. This is how it works: scientists begin with a living tree or dead wood specimen which can be accurately dated by some reliable means. Then they look for pieces of dead wood which are older than the specimen which they started with and whose tree-ring patterns match up with and overlap those of the first specimen (tree-rings can vary greatly in width due to environmental factors and thus produce a pattern by which we can match specimens which grew in the same environment). Scientists then look for more pieces of dead wood to match and overlap the second specimen and on and on. And finally, they count all of the tree-rings, using the matching patterns to connect all the pieces, and they determine the age of the oldest piece of wood. This is called a "long chronology." By dating the oldest piece of wood using the Carbon dating method and comparing the two dates, scientists can make the necessary adjustments to their calculations.
Unfortunately, this method of calibrating Carbon dating by using tree-ring dating is itself flawed. Dr Walt Brown explains, "…links are established based on the judgment of a tree-ring specialist. Sometimes 'missing' rings are added.1 …Standard statistical techniques could establish how well the dozen supposedly overlapping tree-ring sequences fit. However, tree ring specialists have refused to subject their judgments to these statistical tests and would not release their data so others can do these statistical tests" (Walt Brown, In the Beginning, 2001, p. 246; emphasis in the original). This refusal to submit their work to close scrutiny raises a reasonable concern, especially in light of the apparent circular reasoning employed by the researchers. "Wood specimens considered for 'long chronologies' are first radiocarbon dated. If the date is old enough (perhaps by an erroneous reading), tree-ring specialists look at ring thicknesses for a way to extend the 'long chronology'. This chronology is then used to assure the public that radiocarbon dating has been calibrated by a continuous sequence of tree rings. [This practice is also described by Henry N. Michael and Elizabeth K. Ralph, "Quickee" 14C Dates, Radiocarbon, Vol. 23 No. 1, 1981, pp. 165-166]." (Brown, ibid, p. 246; See also Gerald E. Aardsma, "Myths Regarding Radiocarbon Dating," Impact, No. 189, March 1989.)
http://www.AllAboutArchaeology.org/Carbon-dating-2.htm

 

[dhiannian]

Evidence for Evolution - The Icons of Evolution
The following "evidence for evolution" can be found in any biology textbook in any public school in the United States of America. Accompanying each supposed evidence for evolution is a brief explanation (ex) and the standard criticism (crit).

Evidence for Evolution - Homology:
(ex) Many animals have similar bone structures, giving the superficial appearance of relationship. (crit) Thought to have been evidence for common ancestry until significant advancements were made in biochemistry. Simply put, "Similarity does not imply a genetic relationship." (Dr. Walt Brown, "In the Beginning," 2001, p. 290.)

Evidence for Evolution - Embryology:
(ex) Embryos of different vertebrates look alike in their early stages, giving the superficial appearance of relationship. (crit) Embryos of different vertebrates DO NOT look alike in their early stages. "This idea was fathered by Ernest Haeckel, a German biologist who was so convinced that he had solved the riddle of life's unfolding that he doctored and faked his drawings of embryonic stages to prove his point." (William R. Fix, "The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution," 1984, p. 285.) Haeckel was exposed as a fraud in 1874 by Professor Wilhelm His. Nevertheless, Haeckel's fraudulent drawings (or similar representations) remain in high school and college biology textbooks to this day as evidence for evolution.

Evidence for Evolution - Observed Natural Selection
(Survival of the fittest): (ex) Darwin's proposed mechanism for evolutionary change is observed in nature. (crit) Natural selection serves as a means of conservation, not one of creation. It explains survival of a species, not arrival of a species. Here's an illustration: You work in a car factory. Your job is quality control - make sure the cars work like they are supposed to. You kick the tires and slam the doors, drive the cars around, etc. You identify and remove defects (an arbitrary selection with the same final result as natural selection). How long would it take for this selection process to turn one of those cars into an airplane naturally over time? It won't happen. "Natural selection may have a stabilizing effect, but it does not promote speciation [the arrival of a new species]. It is not a creative force as many people have suggested." (Daniel Brooks "A downward Slope to Greater Diversity," Science, Vol. 217, 24 September 1982, p. 1240.)
Besides, while survival of the fittest is observed in nature, it is not absolute. We also observe survival of the weakest and survival of the luckiest. Every infant is the weakest of a species, and yet obviously, some of them survive or there would be no species at all. Similarly, when a whale swims through a school of fish swallowing 80%, the 20% that survived were not the fittest - they were the luckiest. Somehow "survival of the fittest" has become tautology. Only the fittest survive. How do we determine they were the fittest? Because they survived!
http://www.AllAboutCreation.org/evidence-for-evolution.htm

 

[dhiannian]

If you wish to believe, if you think it is important to believe in a Young Earth and in special creation of species or kinds, the God bless you, go and do so.

But if you wish to claim that the physical evidence backs you up then, time permitting, I will taylor an answer to your claims from my years of taking physics and chemistry and poking around in biologists' backyard.

More likely time will not permit after tonight and I will leave you in the hands of the many other capable posters who inhabit these boards.

Regardless, if you are going to insist on doing this, I would really suggest being civil and not resorting to ridicule.

Matthew 5:22b [Jesus said]whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

I'm sorry I was not aware I was being otherwise,
I thought this was a debate forum, my bad I must have stumbled into the nursery instead.
And it's "Thou fool"

 

[dhiannian]

So the bible doesn't say the sun goes around the earth?????
HELLO....
Where???

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Robert,
where is the reference in the bible for the verse saying the sun goes around the earth??

dhiannian, may I suggest that if you don't know the verse that you know neither the Bible nor this debate nearly well enough to participate in any but the most humble manner.

If you poke around long enough you can probably find a copy of the study that was made for Galileo's trial (or at least the summary that was presented at the trial, I'm not sure I ever found the actual study). For those of us who like to poke their noses into dusty books (would you believe cyber-dust?) it was interesting reading.

Joshua 10:12,13:

Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, «O sun, stand still at Gibeon, And O moon in the valley of Aijalon.» So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.

A simple factual statement in a historical passage. One that was interpreted by believers for thousands of years as indicating that the Sun goes around the Earth every 24 hours.

If you wish to make some comment about "relative motion" as Henry Morris has, I would offer to let you get on a merry go round with a full cup of hot coffee and no top and let me push you to test your theory that the Earth will move around while the merry go round stands still.

There is a very good reason why in physics "relativity" (of the sort that Morris was trying to invoke) only applies inertial referrence frames.

(In case the science geeks are wondering, our classical mechanics class made a trip to the playground, and since that day I have been of the opinion that all physics programs be required to have small merry go rounds available for use.)

 

[Lucretius]

Carbon Dating - The Premise
Carbon dating is a dating technique predicated upon three things:

* The rate at which the unstable radioactive C-14 isotope decays into the stable non-radioactive N-14 isotope,
* The ratio of C-12 to C-14 found in a given specimen,
* And the ratio C-12 to C-14 found in the atmosphere at the time of the specimen's death.



Carbon Dating - The Controversy
Carbon dating is controversial for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's predicated upon a set of questionable assumptions. We have to assume, for example, that the rate of decay (that is, a 5,730 year half-life) has remained constant throughout the unobservable past. However, there is strong evidence which suggests that radioactive decay may have been greatly accelerated in the unobservable past.

Really? I would like to see this strong evidence.

1 We must also assume that the ratio of C-12 to C-14 in the atmosphere has remained constant throughout the unobservable past (so we can know what the ratio was at the time of the specimen's death). And yet we know that "radiocarbon is forming 28-37% faster than it is decaying,"2 which means it hasn't yet reached equilibrium, which means the ratio is higher today than it was in the unobservable past.

Actually, my source says that it is pretty much even and has been.

We also know that the ratio decreased during the industrial revolution due to the dramatic increase of CO2 produced by factories. This man-made fluctuation wasn't a natural occurrence, but it demonstrates the fact that fluctuation is possible and that a period of natural upheaval upon the earth could greatly affect the ratio. Volcanoes spew out CO2 which could just as effectively decrease the ratio. Specimens which lived and died during a period of intense volcanism would appear older than they really are if they were dated using this technique. The ratio can further be affected by C-14 production rates in the atmosphere, which in turn is affected by the amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth's atmosphere. The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth's atmosphere is itself affected by things like the earth's magnetic field which deflects cosmic rays. Precise measurements taken over the last 140 years have shown a steady decay in the strength of the earth's magnetic field. This means there's been a steady increase in radiocarbon production (which would increase the ratio).
And finally, this dating scheme is controversial because the dates derived are often wildly inconsistent. For example, "One part of Dima [a famous baby mammoth discovered in 1977] was 40,000 RCY [Radiocarbon Years], another was 26,000 RCY, and 'wood found immediately around the carcass' was 9,000-10,000 RCY." (Walt Brown, In the Beginning, 2001, p. 176)http://www.AllAboutArchaeology.org/carbon-dating.htm

Try this source too.

I am aware that some C-14 dating can be affected by the Earth, that's why there is this thing called calibration.

 

[dhiannian]

dhiannian, may I suggest that if you don't know the verse that you know neither the Bible nor this debate nearly well enough to participate in any but the most humble manner.

If you poke around long enough you can probably find a copy of the study that was made for Galileo's trial (or at least the summary that was presented at the trial, I'm not sure I ever found the actual study). For those of us who like to poke their noses into dusty books (would you believe cyber-dust?) it was interesting reading.

Joshua 10:12,13:


A simple factual statement in a historical passage. One that was interpreted by believers for thousands of years as indicating that the Sun goes around the Earth every 24 hours.

If you wish to make some comment about "relative motion" as Henry Morris has, I would offer to let you get on a merry go round with a full cup of hot coffee and no top and let me push you to test your theory that the Earth will move around while the merry go round stands still.

There is a very good reason why in physics "relativity" (of the sort that Morris was trying to invoke) only applies inertial referrence frames.

(In case the science geeks are wondering, our classical mechanics class made a trip to the playground, and since that day I have been of the opinion that all physics programs be required to have small merry go rounds available for use.)

Thankyou
And it says "The sun stood still, and the moon STAYED"
Not stopped, it doesnt say the sun quit revolving around the earth but merely that it stayed where it was
in the sky.