Don't like the implications?

PsychoSarah said:

How do you think vaccines are developed? We have to predict how the, say, flu virus is going to change over the course of a year, because vaccines take too long to make to wait and see what the virus going around is like before we make them. If evolutionary theory had no predictive power, there'd be no point to flu vaccines.

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This is the use of simple logic. You have a string of data and the comparison would naturally suggest what the next one would possibly like. Why do you want to squeeze any mysterious concept like evolution into this?

sfs said:

Invalid premise: I have no faith in evolution. The reality of evolution certainly helps.

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The reality you have seen is very very limited. To generalize it, you need a big faith.

Armoured said:

Both credible sources,

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I missed that.

Anyone who twists the definition of theory into making evolution fact, is far from a credible source.

Honestly, I was ready for the blatant change of definition, but not the "substantiated" part. They are up to worse than even I suspected.

Theory is not fact, that always has and always will be a fact.

Kenny'sID said:

Just because someone wants to pretend the term gets special treatment because it has to do with science, doesn't mean it does. Any one else making such a claim with an already defined term would get laughed at as much as I'm laughing at this.

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Historically, the scientific meaning was in use before the popular meaning. Just because you just heard of it doesn't mean it was just invented.

How arrogant, "we are scientists so we get to tell everyone Theory means what we say is substantiated, hence fact, and they will believe us, and should believe us because we are Scientists"

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They don't say that unless it is substantiated.[/QUOTE]

Speedwell said:

Historically, the scientific meaning was in use before the popular meaning. Just because you just heard of it doesn't mean it was just invented.

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Show me.

Speedwell said:

They don't say that unless it is substantiated.

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Since "scientific theory is a substantiated fact" and evolution it a scientific theory, then they and yourself are saying evolution is fact, and it is not....it's theory in the dictionaries sense of the term.

I'd say quit while you're ahead, but none of you ever reached that level.

Maybe just pretend you have something else to do?

Kenny'sID said:

Show me.



Since "scientific theory is a substantiated fact" and evolution it a scientific theory, then they and yourself are saying evolution is fact, and it is not....it's theory in the dictionaries sense of the term.

I'd say quit while you're ahead, but none of you ever reached that level.

Maybe just pretend you have something else to do?

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You're right, I quit. It's all a part of a worldwide conspiracy to deny the Bible and its promise of punishment for our hedonistic lifestyles. Anyway, I haven't the time; I'm off to the weekly meeting of my Christ-denying Bible haters club.

Kenny'sID said:

I missed that.

Anyone who twists the definition of theory into making evolution fact, is far from a credible source.

Honestly, I was ready for the blatant change of definition, but not the "substantiated" part. They are up to worse than even I suspected.

Theory is not fact, that always has and always will be a fact.

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Neither source claimed it was "fact". But "everything is either fact or opinion" is a false dichotomy.

But hey. Feel free to ring up Stanford University and tell them you know better than them.

Kenny'sID said:

As has been explained to you, the term Theory is not a scientific definition, it's a word, and we define words with dictionaries.

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Words have different meanings in different contexts. What you're doing is the equivalent of saying that the word "crane" isn't an engineering tool because it's a bird.

It's telling that some people would rather argue definitions than address the abundant evidence...

Speedwell said:

You're right, I quit. It's all a part of a worldwide conspiracy to deny the Bible and its promise of punishment for our hedonistic lifestyles. Anyway, I haven't the time; I'm off to the weekly meeting of my Christ-denying Bible haters club.

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So what you're really saying there is you can't "show me" what you just claimed as a fact?

Oh, but your are the sly one aren't you, you manged to take my advice and pretend a meeting as excuse to bow out, plus throw in some sarcasm, all in order to cover up the fact you can't prove your claim.

But thanks for helping to substantiate my point, people/scientists with a strong enough agenda will claim fact when there is none...you know, like the name calling thing earlier.

Armoured said:

Neither source claimed it was "fact". But "everything is either fact or opinion" is a false dichotomy.

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Of course it did, I broke it down for you, and made it very clear already...go into denial now if you wish, doesn't change the facts.

Armoured said:

But hey. Feel free to ring up Stanford University and tell them you know better than them.

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Spare me. That desperate old tactic no longer works...you all need some new material...please.

Strathos said:

Words have different meanings in different contexts. What you're doing is the equivalent of saying that the word "crane" isn't an engineering tool because it's a bird.

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FrumiousBandersnatch said:

It's telling that some people would rather argue definitions than address the abundant evidence...

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Words/definitions are very important here. Minimize that as you will for obvious reasons, but it's still important, you can't weasel out of that fact. Oh, and it's also telling you would make up another whopper. How many is that now?

But by all means lets address that so-called abundant evidence, the evidence that is only dubbed so out of opinion. Or, for the children among us, it is only scientists opinion that it is evidence of evolution.

Evolution is assumption... opinion of what some proven facts mean, nothing more, well except for the fact there are biases involved as well. So for those who do, please stop trying to present it as fact.

And to those who've had it slipped by them that it is fact, don't you believe it.

Kenny'sID said:

Words/definitions are very important here. Minimize that as you will for obvious reasons, but it's still important, you can't weasel out of that fact.

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OK, if you think dictionary definition is important:

But by all means lets address that so-called abundant evidence...

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OK, what part of the evidence would you like to address?

Evolution is assumption... opinion of what some proven facts mean, nothing more, well except for the fact there are biases involved as well. So for those who do, please stop trying to present it as fact.

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Evolution - like much of science - is inferential, the process of reaching a conclusion about something from known facts or evidence.

Everything we know about anything is based on assumptions, so we generally only point this out for notably weak or unsupported assumptions. As evolution is one of the most well-evidenced and well-tested theories in science, repeatedly confirmed through both observation and experiment, your usage suggests you're using it as a derogatory emotional appeal.

Kenny'sID said:

So what you're really saying there is you can't "show me" what you just claimed as a fact?

Oh, but your are the sly one aren't you, you manged to take my advice and pretend a meeting as excuse to bow out, plus throw in some sarcasm, all in order to cover up the fact you can't prove your claim.

But thanks for helping to substantiate my point, people/scientists with a strong enough agenda will claim fact when there is none...you know, like the name calling thing earlier.

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It's Sunday and it was time to go to church. That's what the kind of church I go to was called where I lived in the Bible Belt. What do you do on Sunday morning?
And no, I can't "show you." I could show you etymologies, talk about the Latin and Greek roots of the word, but to you it would all be nothing but lies made up by scientists to deny the Bible. What's the point?

Speedwell said:

, but to you it would all be nothing but lies made up by scientists to deny the Bible. What's the point?

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Any means possible to cover/minimize the facts, but some of these comments do have a certain entertainment value, so not all is lost.

Gene2memE said:

Just doing their job my hairy gluteus, he was a creationist plant, put there in the hopes of slipping rubbish past the radar.

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He was a SEM tech, and apparently a good one. I'm not sure what "creationist plant" means, but it sounds like a conspiracy theory.

Gene2memE said:

Not quite. Its not the publication of this he was fired for, it was for telling students that the world is only 6000 years old

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He wasn't a teacher. Any private conversations he had with students outside the classroom are not grounds for dismissal, it seems to me.

In the same way, I would have no problems with a telescope tech believing in aliens, and privately telling students about it.

Gene2memE said:

and misrepresenting himself as a 'biologist' working for California State University Northridge

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Well, he did work for CSUN, and he has got 3 or 4 legitimate peer-reviewed biology papers, so "biologist" seems fair.

If he gave a talk suggesting that CSUN supported his views (for example, by using the university logo) he was wrong, but that would have been grounds for a slap on the wrist, not dismissal. In any case, I have seen no evidence that he did this.

Gene2memE said:

Soft tissue has been known about for 15-20 years.

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And more recently there's been an article in Nature on it.

Gene2memE said:

Me thinks that the university did mess up, but only in hiring Mr Armitage as a lab technician and letting him espouse 6,000 year old earth nonsense to undergraduate students.

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They certainly messed up in firing him without due process; apparently CSUN settled the case for $400,000 rather than take it to court. It seems that there was an email trail.

juvenissun said:

The reality you have seen is very very limited. To generalize it, you need a big faith.

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How would you know?

What I mean by creationist plant is this -

From what I can determine, Mr Armitage received his education from two primary sources: Liberty University and the Institute for Creation Research. He also had a stint at Florida State University, but doesn't seem to have completed anything there.

Liberty University is a evangelical Christian university which requires a 'Christian Life and Though' component of almost any biology degree, which includes segments on creationism, the "origins controversy" and a literal reading of the Bible with a young earth, creationist bent. Its biology department is associated with creationist propaganda mill Answers in Genesis. It's less of a university and more of an alternative universe created for biblical literalists to inhabit.

The Institute for Creationist Research is an apologetics ministry that seeks to hid behind the facade of an educational institute. Its graduate programmes have repeatedly failed to secure accreditation. The only organisation it is accredited with was Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) - which ICR/John Henry Morris formed for the explicit purpose of getting US Department of Education accreditation for the school. ICR has been unaccredited since 2008, after it moved to Texas, and the Texas Board of Education rejected, twice, its accreditation (as TRACS isn't recognised in Texas). ICR's legal appeals about this - based around "religious discrimination" were rather curtly dismissed in court.

Mr Armitage has been a creationist for probably 30-years. He is is a lifetime member of the Creation Research Society, serving on its board since 2006. Before California State University Northridge, employment, I can find he worked at:

The Master's College - a biblical literalist university that grew out of a seminary;
Azusa Pacific University - an evangelical Christian university;
Van Andel Creation Research Center at the Creation Research Society - a creationist apologetics mill;
Creation Science Fellowship - a creationist apologetics mill.

So, you have a life-long creationist, educated at creationist ministries, working at creationist friendly universities and/or creationist ministries/apologetics institutions, who takes his apparently quite considerable skills with a microscope and goes an works for CSUN.

Plugging him in to CSUN gives a veneer of legitimacy to anything that he works-on/publishes from that point.

The university, or individuals within it, objects to the implications of having a hard-core, 6000 year-old earth, biblical literalist telling students about his unscientific conclusions and fires him as a result.

Either way, creationist win.

Either he continues to work and publish while at CSUN, giving him legitimacy by association or he gets fired for teaching young earth nonsense/using the university's name in what is seen as an inappropriate manner, and he (and the rest of the YEC community) gets to play the martyr.

Hopefully, CSUN's lesson (don't employ YEC loons in a scientific role, particularly in anything related to biology) is one that is widely shared across the educational panorama.

Wouldn't a plant have to have a certain amount to anonymity in order to qualify as a plant as we know it?

I'd guess his past was known before he was hired.

juvenissun said:

This is the use of simple logic. You have a string of data and the comparison would naturally suggest what the next one would possibly like. Why do you want to squeeze any mysterious concept like evolution into this?

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-_- evolution is not mysterious, it's actually a pretty simple theory. Organisms within populations have variation, which mutations contribute to. Those with traits that improve the chances of having viable offspring ultimately contribute more to future generations than those who don't, and this will be reflected in trends of physical traits within each successive generation.

Same applies to viruses, except it's usually easier to predict how they will change over time, as they have far shorter DNA/RNA, limiting the possibilities far more than truly living organisms. If the basic evolution ideas I presented did not reflect reality, however, it'd be extremely difficult to predict trends even in viruses, making flu vaccine creation pointless (because it'd be so rare for the vaccine produced to actually cover the variations of the virus that would appear around flu season). Your "string of data" comment is so vague, I'm not entirely sure what you are referring to. The fact that viral variations tend to repeat every so many years?