bob allen wrote:
Tim Brodie wrote:
I'm always interested that people use the *Theory* of Evolution as
an example of Science. At best you could call it an hypothesis,
since to be science a theory must be observable and repeatable.
things like phyolgenetic relationships, as indicated via the
similarity of the dna of the genome are certainly observable and
repeatable
This tells us that living things in general are organized using
similar building blocks, and that plants are organized in similar
ways to other plants, etc. It doesn't necessarily demand conclusions
about origins.
actually, all like is assembled alike, use the same genetic code.
Applying Occam's razor, the best solution is that there is a
evolutionary relationship
As I've looked into this idea of evolution, what I've found is alot
of conjecture and interdisciplinary circular reasoning. Stories
that constantly change. Comets this year, asteriods last year,
volcanoes the year before.
If you are talking about the mass extinctions which have occured from
time to time over a hundreds of millions of years, then different
extinctions have been discussed in the context of different events.
Nothing here contradicts the simple notion that the diversity of life
we see is due to random mutations selected for by various forces.
Perhaps the comment wasn't helpful; I'm trying to challenge the
notion that explanations more often than not have nothing to do
with historical events, or historical processes.
I still don't understand what you are getting at here
"These fossils are x-millions of years old" say the *biologists*
"because they're found in rock x-millions of years old." "These rocks
are x-millions of years old" say the *archiologists* "because these
fossils are in them, and we know that these animals lived x-millions of
years ago."
Actually, there are a whole bunch of methods for dating. In addition
to stragraphy, there are numerous radioactive decay series, with
overlapping half-lives, archeomagnetic dating which utilizes the
meandreings of the magnetic poles, obsidian hydration, fission track,
amino acid racemization, and on and on. There is no circular
reasoning here. the methods are essentially indipendently verifiabe,
and a ages determined from first principles.
Help me out here. Produce one sample of rock that has been dated
by any three of these methods that come within an order of magnitude
of each other. I'll be really glad to see it; I've looked. Perhaps
I just haven't connected with the right information.
ok, from Dalrymple, G. Brent (1991) The Age of the Earth. Stanford
University Press, 474 pp.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of the oldest rocks on earth are found in Western Greenland.
Because of their great age, they have been especially well studied. The
table below gives the ages, in billions of years, from twelve different
studies using five different techniques on one particular rock formation
in Western Greenland, the Amitsoq gneisses.
Technique Age Range (billion years)
uranium-lead 3.60±0.05
lead-lead 3.56±0.10
lead-lead 3.74±0.12
lead-lead 3.62±0.13
rubidium-strontium 3.64±0.06
rubidium-strontium 3.62±0.14
rubidium-strontium 3.67±0.09
rubidium-strontium 3.66±0.10
rubidium-strontium 3.61±0.22
rubidium-strontium 3.56±0.14
lutetium-hafnium 3.55±0.22
samarium-neodymium 3.56±0.20
(compiled from Dalrymple, 1991)
Note that scientists give their results with a stated uncertainty. They
take into account all the possible errors and give a range within which
they are 95% sure that the actual value lies. The top number, 3.60±0.05,
refers to the range 3.60+0.05 to 3.60-0.05. The size of this range is
every bit as important as the actual number. A number with a small
uncertainty range is more accurate than a number with a larger range.
For the numbers given above, one can see that all of the ranges overlap
and agree between 3.62 and 3.65 billion years as the age of the rock.
Several studies also showed that, because of the great ages of these
rocks, they have been through several mild metamorphic heating events
that disturbed the ages given by potassium-bearing minerals (not listed
here). As pointed out earlier, different radiometric dating methods
agree with each other most of the time, over many thousands of
measurements. Other examples of agreement between a number of different
measurements of the same rocks are given in the references below..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now tim, you have claimed that measurements are off by orders of
magnitude. could you provide me with such evidence? Who has
reproducibly got such variance? And I don't mean due to incompetence.
By the way, many of the presuppositions of these methods you've
stated have primary flaws in reasoning that invalidates their
results. Such as I've explained in a prior post about radioactive
half life.
As I recall you questioned the stability of the half-lives of
radioactive isotopes? Doesn't your computer(s) keep track of time via an
atomic clock? at least by reference ? Again I would like to see any any
evidence as to the variance in half-lives.
Look, an unobserved series of historical events happened. No
transitional species have ever been found (notwithstanding several
publications' attempts to present them from time to time) that
has stood up to scrutiny.
what? just in terms of human evolution, australopithecenes
evolutionarily precede "homo" genera. Within Homo, are a series of
species such as erectus, habilis, and on and on. And if you look at
the dna the relationships are overwellminingly obvious. There is a
gradual change in the dna as you move across the spectrum of life. My
dna is more like a chimpanzee's than the chimpanzee's is like a
gorilla's. Put another way, the dna of a sea squirt is more like mine
than it is to a salmonella bacteria. One must really try hard to not
see the relationships among life.
So you're saying that DNA has been collected from all the skeleton
fragments that were used to construct this tree of descent? I'd
be interested to see that. What is the degree of sequence match
between the australopithecenes skeleton and one of us?
dna doesn't survive more than a few ten's of thousands of years, under
the best of circumstances. Fossils don't have dna. The dna is from
extant species. the closer the dna sequences, the closer the
phylogenetic relationship.
Remember whole hominid skulls fashioned
from one pig's tooth? No? That's because it isn't of general
interest to the evolutionary *scientists*, and thus we still find
Piltdown stories being published in children's 'science' textbooks.
so frauds have occured. they don't negate the theory.
Agreed, they don't. Why are science textbooks publishers so
incredibly sloppy to keep publishing this tripe? Anyone?
Bueller?
I can't speak for others incompetence.
Evolution is not science, it's a worldview that fits a set of
religious beliefs and as such is really only a religious
precursor. Certainly not science.
criminently,
??
there is nothing religious about recognizing that the easiest way to
explain biological diversity is random mutations and selective
pressure to create what we have in the world around us.
Others on the forum suggest that religion is all about having
faith in spite of contradictory objective facts. It's also
about creating a story to satisfy deep human spiritual needs.
Myths to give greater meaning and purpose to life. (By the
way, I'm not a religious person)
Evolution is far from the easiest way to explain the diversity
of life, but it is the most convenient.
Best regards... Tim
the only other way I have seen presented requires belief in the
supernatural. Do you know of other theory for the diversity of life,
other than the supernatural.
--
Bob Allen
http://ozarker.org/bob
"Science is what we have learned about how to keep
from fooling ourselves" — Richard Feynman
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