yes indeed, we can't have dr. koonin running amok spilling the beans can we.
so let's get some other scientists in here to help him:
https://sites.google.com/site/scien...OC-The-Scientific-Impossibility-of-Evolution-
the above abstracts are from a conference held on the 150th anniversary of the origin and was called into being by pope Benedict XVI’s Call for Both Sides to be Heard.
Well, the quotes are in context and accurate. With that said:
"
The Second Law of Thermodynamics Excludes Evolution"
...Really?
Like, honestly, I don't know where creationists keep finding these people. It's not like we have a whole bunch of otherwise well-educated biologists running around regurgitating long-debunked arguments against the theory of gravity, or biologists claiming that all medical issues are due to demon possession. This is PRATT. There's nothing in here worth addressing. Congratulations, you've found some scientists at the lunatic fringe who are
really bad at their jobs.
Berthault is a "maverick" much in the same way that Duesburg is a "maverick" - he rejects the
massive consensus view among geologists and sedimentologists with regards to superposition on the basis of exceedingly flimsy evidence. When I googled his name, the
first three things were debunkings of his claims. I'm no expert on sedimentology, so I lack the expertise to evaluate both his work and the debunkings, but I do think we have one or two of them here:
@RickG @Subduction Zone So I'll pass this off to them. It is also the
only article to even come close to citing the scientific literature.
----
Seiler's claims about the second law of thermodynamics are pure woo. That is: "I know what these words mean, but when you use them like that, I have no clue what you're talking about". His claims of the "limits" of an open system are patently absurd; the comparison to the refrigerator is not apt and is not representative of how open systems function in any meaningful way; you can just as easily cool a space by
placing something large and cold in it (indeed, this is what people did before the advent of modern refrigeration technology - they put large blocks of ice in a well-insulated room).
He then goes on to talk about information, and clearly and
obviously has no understanding of it. As a person who wanted to take up computer science as a volition, this is the CompSci equivalent of claiming that gravity doesn't work because Australians would fall off. None of what he's saying even comes close to peer review, and none of it actually holds up to even the most basic scrutiny. The second law of thermodynamics says
nothing about information. It says
nothing about complexity. Here is the definition from ChemWiki: "The
Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the state of entropy of the entire universe, as an isolated system, will always increase over time." It explicitly refers to order in an
isolated system, and to the universe as a whole. And the earth is not an isolated system. The moment you admit that, any claim to applying the second law of thermodynamics goes out the window. I don't know how a physicist is this bad at thermodynamics. It's kind of embarrassing.
----
Jean de Pontcharra. Is the same Jean de Pontcharra who previously carbon dated dinosaur bones? With all due respect to the man (that is: absolutely none, he is due absolutely no respect), if you are going to try to carbon date dinosaur bones, you should have your degree revoked. It's like trying to measure mount everest with a ruler: any result you get is going to be complete nonsense. First because
there's no <bleep> carbon in it, and secondly because too much C14 would have decayed to make a decent measurement! You'll get
some reading out, but it ain't gonna be the age of the bone. And we can verify this in numerous independent ways.
So with that in mind, here he's making a whole bunch of claims. Just claims. He provides no citations to back them up whatsoever, and many of them are patently
false. Again, RickG knows this better than I do, but I can tell you right now that a lot of what he labels "assumptions" are
not assumptions.
----
Josef Holzschuh abuses carbon dating some more in the same stupid ways. He does not confirm it with
any alternative dating methods (which is kind of important, because when your results are towards the upper limits of what C14 dating can account for, you have to start worrying about contamination), he does not cite these results in any scientific literature (so we have no idea what methods were used or the data produced). The claim that collagen would naturally decay within 30,000 to 100,000 years is false; Schweitzer has already provided a mechanism for how it could survive longer. He regurgitates the same tired old PRATT about C14 in diamonds and coal, and I'm done listening to him, because if he is going to feed you
that kind of crap, he might as well start talking about how the fact that monkeys still exist disprove evolution.
----
Maciej Giertych's piece is funny. He offers absolutely no citations for his claim on race in european textbooks; it sure as hell isn't in Bavarian biology textbooks, I'll tell you that much, and that may have to do with the well-established, well-understood fact that race, more than anything else, is a
social construct. This has been known for
ages. Then he says this:
"Positive mutations, as a mechanism leading to new functions or organs, are an undemonstrated postulate. We can demonstrate many neutral and negative mutations, but no positive ones. "
Dear Mr. Giertych. If you have zero understanding of a field of science, zero knowledge of the research in that field,
no interest in reading peer-reviewed papers in the field, no understanding of any related subjects, and lack even the basic decency to google the most basic facts, then
maybe, just
maybe, you should not be critiquing that field! I'd say I mean the man no disrespect, but let's be honest: I do. He's a moron. If I ran the college this guy got his degrees from, I would rescind his degrees. If his degree was a child, I would want to call Child Protective Services, as he is clearly
abusing it.
Why anyone would consider this collection of bald-faced assertions by "experts" running directly counter to the massive consensus view in their fields worth reposting is beyond me.
