Talcara said:
Hi gluadys,
You have not proven my statement false. In fact, you side stepped the issue.
What I am saying is that the scientific method cannot be directly applied to a historical event.
That is not what you originally said. You said:
"Let's firstly realise that
history is not subjected to the scientific method;..."
The further in the past the event being studied is, the longer the chain of inferences involved, the more guesswork,
Not true. The key factor is the amount and quality of the surviving evidence. There can be better evidence of something that happened in ancient Egypt than of something that happened last week.
and the more room there is for non-scientific factors to influence th conclusions - facts such as the religious belief (or unbelief) of the scientist.
Science is a public and co-operative enterprise. Not everything a scientist does or says becomes part of the corpus of knowledge we call science. The methods used in science are specifically designed to weed out personal bias.
A scientist may let religious belief or unbelief influence her conclusions, but
a scientist's work is submitted to the scientific community as a whole for scrutiny and challenge. If the conclusions cannot be substantiated by scientists with different biases, they will not be accepted. Only what can be justified on the basis of the evidence irrespective of personal bias will become science rather than the work of a scientist.
Yes evolution makes predictions, but so does creationary theory,
The difference is that the predictions of evolution are much more specific and substantiated by the evidence, while those of creationary "theory" are vague and not substantiated.
e.g. as a cause of the Flood we should expect millions of animals to be fossilized in sedimentary rock all over the world.
Case in point. The theory of evolution does not merely predict millions of fossils. It predicts a specific relationship between types of fossils and particular sedimentary strata. (In fact, this is a "retrodiction" since the relationship of fossils to strata was discovered before the Darwinian theory of evolution was published. Check out 'William Smith' and 'faunal succession'.)
No creationary theory on fossils has yet predicted the faunal succession we actually see in the sediments. Feel free to challenge this statement by producing a prediction on faunal succession from a creationary perspective and showing that it is not violated by actual discoveries of fossils.
This is exactly what we see. We also expect a young universe - the non-existence of third stage SNRs in our galaxy and neighbouring galaxies add weight to this prediction by limiting the age of our galaxy to about 15,000 years at max.
This is not a field of study I know much about, but according to Shernren's post, apparently we do. In any case, evidence which apparently contradicts the many lines of evidence for an old earth and an old universe would need to be studied to find the reason for the anomaly. One cannot dispense with evidence for an old earth/universe on the basis of one fact which seems to contradict it. One must either find a way to integrate that fact into an old earth/universe or find a way to integrate the rest of the evidence into a young earth/universe. Until that is done, we have an unresolved anomaly, not substantiation of a young earth/universe.
A similar case occurred in the 19th century when Lord Kelvin estimated the age of the earth from the rate of heat loss from the earth. IIRC the estimate came in at around 50,000 years, much much less than the hundreds of millions of years estimated from geological observations or even the hundred million years Darwin estimated to be the minimum needed for evolution. That case was resolved, not by shortening the history of the earth, but by discovering radioactive elements which provided an additional heat source and so rendering Kelvin's estimates false.
And the list goes on. We should expect to see literally thousands if not millions of transitional forms in the fossil record if evolution is correct,
We do.
This is only a small fragment of the fossil record, but it consists entirely of fossils demonstrating the transition from early synapsid reptiles to mammals.
You have to be using a strange definition of "transitional" to wave away this evidence.
What do we mean when we say "creation"?
Used as a verb, I mean the act of bringing something into existence. In this context, specifically the act(s) of God which brought the universe and its contents into existence.
Used as a noun, I mean the natural order of material existence which is the result of the act of creation. Again this is context specific. In a more metaphysical sense, one would have to include the creation of non-material entities such as angels.
I agree with them, rather than calling them "evolution" I call them "varriation within a kind".
The problem with using a non-standard vocabulary is that it masks the fact that variation within a "kind" is evolution. Hence many creationists have come to consider that it is not evolution at all.
http://christianforums.com/t736563
This leads to distorted ideas of what evolution is, and the search for evidence that would actually contradict evolution while rejecting much of the evidence that does support evolution as referring only to "variation" or "adaptation".
You can't create a debate about origins versus present! Because both creationists and evolutionists agree with each other on what we observe in the present. What we disagree about is the origin of the scientific evidence of the present. When we talk about creation/evolution in the same context, we are referring to the evolutionary story as to the evidence of the present came to be. Both creation and evolution in this context become historical events.
A scientific theory is about explaining observations. Since the present is what it is because the past was what it was, it is possible to construct hypotheses about the past and test those hypotheses against what is observed in the present. When this is done we find that evolution provides a more consistent explanation of observations about both present and fossil species than creation
ism does. We can get into specifics on this if you like.
Also note the syllable I have bolded. It is important to distinguish between creation and creationism. Creation is a theological doctrine which everyone in this forum holds irrespective of their stance on evolution. Theistic evolutionists believe as fully in creation as creationists do. Some, in fact, prefer the term "evolutionary creationists" as a more accurate description of what the theistic evolution position is. We do not, at any time, dispute that the universe, the earth and all the inhabitants of the earth were created by God.
Creationism is a purported theory of the method and history of creation, based on a particular reading of the Genesis accounts. Since this method and history of creation does not accord with the facts of nature, it is a falsified theory. It follows, therefore, that the reading of Genesis it uses is a false interpretation of scripture. For the truth of scripture cannot be inconsistent with the truth of the created order of nature.
I also never said that we can't study these historical events scientifically, because we can do it indirectly. What I said is that the scientific method can't be applied to historical events, which any layman with an IQ of 10 would agree with.
See above as to what you said.
I'm not denying that evolution is an ongoing process (even though God specifically stopped creating according to the Bible). We are talking about molecules-to-man evolution (which is at the centre of the debate). If you either wont or can't grasp this simple concept, just tell me and I'll stop wasting my time playing such childish games with you.
Molecules do not evolve. They engage in chemical reactions. Only species evolve in the sense used in biology. If you cannot grasp this concept, it shows you have much to learn about evolution. You cannot destroy a scientific theory on the basis of a distorted cartoon version of what it is. First, you have to unlearn the erroneous information you have acquired about evolution. Then you need to learn what the scientific theory of evolution actually says. Then you need to look at actual evidence and see why scientists consider it to be conclusive evidence. That may not convince you the scientists are right, but at least then you can offer critiques of science instead of burning straw men.
But the changes that we observe now in the present are going in the wrong direction for them to be extrapolated back into the distant past
That is not true and the only reason you could come to this conclusion is that your understanding of evolution is seriously defective. What you think evolution is and what science says evolution is are horses of a different colour. Only when you have grasped the scientific concept of evolution can you properly critique it. And when you have grasped the scientific concept of evolution, it will be obvious to you that your statement above is false. Meanwhile you are tilting at windmills, not evolution.
So it is with the changes we observe, no mutation change has brought about any brand new previously unseen information,
Nor should it. That would falsify evolution. Evolution predicts descent with modification. It does not predict the appearance of a totally new species that owes nothing to its ancestors. Rather, it predicts that new species will be modifications of older species.
to put feathers on a reptile for example.
Feathers did exist on reptiles. Dinosaurs were a group of reptiles and several species of dinosaurs had feathers.
Natural selection also only destroys or gets rid of information for certain characteristics,
Not true. Natural selection is also responsible for spreading an adaptive characteristic through a species until it becomes fixed. Scientists have developed mathematical formulae for determining whether natural selection in a particular case is functioning primarily as a purging (eliminating) or adaptive (distributing a new feature) manner.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ul...fect_of_Natural_Selection_on_Gene_Frequencies.
http://www.tau.ac.il/~talp/publications/selecton2005.pdf
So you're calling me a liar?
Don't be hypersensitive. Unfortunately, the prevalence of
mined quotes is a factor in creationism/evolution debates. So it is natural to be on the lookout for them.
I wasn't accusing you of lying. I was simply asking for sufficient context to determine what inference we can properly draw from Mayr's statement.
...atheists to whom lying is neither "right" or "wrong" over fellow Christians who are bound by God's Word which says not to lie.
Is this intended to be a general statement about atheists or are you referring to some atheists in particular?
What may be presented as "science", may be little more than the scientist's own personal world-view.
No, it cannot be. Something does not become science on the say-so of a single scientist. It has to pass muster with the majority of scientists in the field, many of whom do not share the original researcher's personal world-view and will scrutinize her work from a different angle.