I've already said that the so-called "evidence for evolution" can be reinterpreted to support Creation. Facts do not, by themselves, nullify or validate any given theory. It is only in the interpretation of those facts that you can judge a theory. Your lack of belief in the existence of evidence does not mean there actually isn't any such evidence.
No, but creationists' inability to produce such evidence does.
Dacicus wrote:
So, you think it would be evidence against evolution if different organisms had dissimilar structures, instead of homologous ones? Don't you see that evolutionists would just change the theory to accomodate that, if it were the case? Instead of saying that there was one original thing from which everything is descended, they would just say that there were a bunch of them from which different types of organisms were descended, and they would say that evidence against evolution would be homologous structures.
That's quite presumptious to say what scientists would say in hypotheticals like that.
Dacicus wrote:
Actually, some of them are already saying that there was some sort of community of original things that exchanged genetic information because they've realized that the current diversity of genetic information could not have come from just one ancestor.
Not any that I'm aware of.
Dacicus wrote:
My point is that this redefinition game prevents the falsifiability of the theory of evolution. Now, if the theory isn't falsifiable, it's not scientific.
No such game exists. Science simply makes whatever theories fit the evidence. The theory of evolution is falsifiable; according to richard dawkins, "If there were a single hippo or rabbit in the Precambrian, that would completely blow evolution out of the water."
Dacicus wrote:
Now, to deal with your "inefficient design" argument. You are assuming several things when you say that. One of them is that God designed* the creatures to be most efficient in the world as it is today. That is certainly wrong. The original creation was perfect, and the modern world is not. After the Fall, mutations in creatures' genetic information caused them to lose efficiency, if they didn't cause death before the creatures were even born. This genetic decay has continued until today, so the inefficiency has increased. The Flood is also an important factor. It destroyed the original creation, so that our modern world looks nothing like it in terms of geography, climate, etc. As the creatures were designed for the pre-Flood world, it is no surprise that they are less efficient in the current one. Therefore, you cannot use modern ideas of efficiency to judge the design of creatures that were created for a different world than the one we now know.
My argument was about homologies, not inefficient design. Are you saying that the species/genera/whatever started out without apparent hologies, and then evolved them? Also, there's no evidence for a "fall" or a global flood. The idea that a flood radically change the climate and so forth contradicts everything we know about geology. If your theory is based on nothing but bronze age myths, then it's not scientific at all.
Dacicus wrote:
*Note: God did not "happen" to create creatures in some way, He purposefully designed them that way.
So god purposefully designed creatures to make us think they descended from a common ancestor? That's even worse!
Dacicus wrote:
Our lack of knowledge about an organ's function does not mean that it no longer has a function.
Vestigial does not mean functionless. You obviously don't know what you're talking about.
Dacicus wrote:
In a way, you could say that that's part of the purpose of the site, to show you how. They have a fossil section that you can read, so you don't have to look through everything. There's also a search feature. You can even contact them if you have specific questions.
Again, I can't read through the whole thing. Apparently, all they do is say things like that Archæopteryx wasn't a "dinosaur", australopithecus wasn't bipedal, and so forth. It's all pseudoscience, of course, since none of it has ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Anyway, I still don't see how you can refute the evidence from fossils, not only because of radiometric dating, but also the fact that they're all in the right order.
Dacicus wrote:
The article talks about those issues I presented, so they are relevant. The equation they give only works if you know the original ratio of parent to daughter isotope, and if you can show that no environmental factors changed it during the passage of time since the object was formed.
Yes, and geochronologists know those things. They're not stupid, and they wouldn't waste thousands of dollars on a process they know is worthless.
Dacicus wrote:
How do you know if you've messed up? If the numbers agree or disagree with what you already believe about the age of the object? That's circular reasoning.
No. Geochronologists take pains to make sure the samples aren't contaminated and so forth. Again, they're not stupid.
The fact that there's no "Evidence of Creation" article makes me doubt Wikipedia's neutrality. That's not the only reason, of course, but it's a significant one related to our current discussion.
Wikipedia has an explicit npov (neutral point of view) policy. Some wikipedians believe strongly that it should adhere to a scientific point of view, but this proposal has been rejected. Anyway, the reason there's no such article is because there is no evidence. Would you really expect there to be an article for Evidence of geocentrism? If you're really curious, you can create the article, and if it doesn't survive, you can find out exactly why.
Dacicus wrote:
I'll explain all of those "comparative <whatever>" ones quickly. You can find the rest on Answers in Genesis. The comparative <whatever> argument is that various organisms, organs, cellular components, cellular processes, etc. from different sources studied in the field of <whatever> are similar or the same, so they must have come from a common ancestor at some point. However, this can also be interpreted as a manifestation of God's omniscience. He created the characteristic in question in different creatures based on a common design. It's like theme and variations in music or standard libraries in programming or using the same materials to make different kinds of buildings, automobiles, books, <insert> or... well, you get the idea.
Except that there's no reason to expect that. Why do species a, b, c, d, e, etc., etc., all have homologous organs when they probably could have been designed much more efficiently if those organs were redesigned for each species? In effect you're saying that god happened to create the species (genera, whatever) to appear exactly as they would if they were descended from a common ancestor. Also, that doesn't solve the problem of vestigial organs.
I'm not going to read through everything on aig, but I will say that I don't see how you can refute the evidence from fossils.
Dacicus wrote:
No, it's not. The most serious issue with it is that you have to assume what amounts of the isotopes in question were originally there. You also have to assume that the amounts were left unchanged from the moment the thing died to the moment it was tested; for non-living things, this means that you assume that the amounts were not increased or decreased since the thing was formed until the testing. If these assumptions do not hold, radioisotope dating is useless.
No, you don't. Read wikipedia's article on radiometric dating. Also, if you do screw up a particular sample, that only means that that sample is useless, and not all the others. Radiometric dating gives results both internally and externally consistent, which can't be explained by systematic error or chance.
Dacicus wrote:
I could question pretty much every sentence in that post, but I'll just stick with this for now. The numbers that Truncated posted earlier show that there is by no means 100% agreement among scientists about the truthfulness of evolution. Furthermore, the numbers are affected by the phrasing of the question(s) in the poll/survey/whatever and how they are being interpreted by the analysts to decide who believes what.
He said the scientific community. Anyway, something like 99.9% of scientists in relevant fields accept evolution as fact, and that's pretty close to 100%.
If you can make that interpretation of the creation story, then I don't see why I'm not justified in saying that the bible uses the word 'god' to mean the logical structure of reality. Seriously, what did yahweh need to do to make it clear that that was literally the way the world began?
I'd say there's mountains of evidence against it, but there's absolutely no way to explain why without completely overhauling the topic once again.
If I really wanted to get into it, we're talking pages and pages that no one will really have the patience to read, and once again, it's OFF TOPIC.
Was there already a thread about this? I can't find it.
Fabian: what about metadiscussion about evolution though? It's interesting to note how many christians are abandoning creationism.
moozooh's comment: See also: human cloning