[_ Old Earth _] An interesting thought

[brother Paul]

No offense, but I disagree with your characterization of a hypothesis. Being testable is important because if it can't be falsified it's pseudo science.
In another thread you said you were against destructive materialist philosophies? Yet, their origin story appears to be the most accurate description? True, their story does have merit, it just could be the way it happened. But it's not 100%.
The article is controversial not because it is merely replacing one hypothesis with another. The controversy is because the tracks falsify a prediction:
"What evolution enables us to do is to make specific predictions about what we should find in the fossil record. The prediction in this case is clear-cut. That is, if we go to rocks of the right age, and the rocks of the right type, we should find transitions between two great forms of life, between fish and amphibian. ...What we see when we look at the fossil record, at rocks of just the right age, is a creature like Tiktaalik"
-Neil Shubin (co-discoverer Tiktaalik)
If it were merely adjusting a hypothesis there wouldn't be any controversy. The controversy is because their claim "will not be accepted by all".

Yet, if one looks up Tikta in Wiki, carefully reading, we note some interesting points. First off this summation indicates it did in fact NOT walk up on land, and also lived in water. Secondly, carefully (be honest here for your sake) notice the wording in WIki…(in the subjunctive mood…no real established fact only “best guess” from the point of view of their greater theoretical position -opinion, conjecture)…without the assumed theory already accepted as if it were a fact (in other words if looked at objectively) it can be INTERPRETED differently to PROBABLY be something other, and thus SURMISED to indicate a different conclusion…

… paleontologists surmise that it probably lived in shallow, weed-choked swamps, the legs having evolved for some other purpose than walking on land (legs being assumption #1, and that they “evolved” being assumption #2. Jennifer A. Clack interprets this as showing that

A) This was primarily an aquatic creature descended from fish that had never left the sea, and that

B) tetrapods had evolved features which later proved useful for terrestrial life, rather than crawling onto land and then gaining legs and feet as had previously been surmised.

Plus nothing found actually indicates they ever did. The judgment on the alleged “features” is based on similarity yet both birds and bats have wings and no one can show they “evolved from one another!

The most complete acanthostega fossils for example show an early amphibian and nothing more. Amphibians go from one place to the other naturally, but the assumption is then made by alleged authorities (to enhance the illusion of the hypothesis) that this represents a stage in between those that could not live or walk on land and those that did or could, but this is an assumption.

Barbarian's point about observation is noted and there has been none in this case....

 

[brother Paul]

That is a tautology. All science is based on materialist assumptions. Science has to do with the materials of the universe and their interactions. Science does not deal with a creator-deity Who cannot be seen, examined, tested, etc.

Scientists, researchers, inventors do that all the time. They form a hypothesis and test it. If it proves to be wrong, they discard it and form a new hypothesis based on the data they have gained. That is how science is done.
Thomas Edison tried over 1000 different filament materials before he discovered that tungsten worked. He described the experiments as 1000 successful experiments which identified materials which would not work.

Yes his African American assistant insisted he try tungsten over and over and for sound scientific reasons but who listened to them and by no means could he receive proper accreditation in those days (since that alone might cause doubt in the hypothesis).

 

[Barbarian]

they can only date back 20,000 years

No. Even carbon-14, which paleontologists don't normally use, because of its short half-life can be used for material out to about 50,000 years. And that increases from time to time as technology gets better.

how do they get a date of 400,000 ???????

Depends on the rock and what's there to test. Usually Potassium, Argon, or Thorium. All of those have half-lives in the millions of years, I think. (Barbarian checks)

Yep:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_isotopes_by_half-life

it must be speculation or estimate or guessing??????????

The age of the rock being tested is well-determined. The age of the fossil, which has to be between igneous layers, can be estimated by finding the two ages. So we get a range, but never a precise date.

anyone know about this??????????

Here's a place to learn more about it:
http://gondwanaresearch.com/radiomet.htm

Joe is a very knowledgeable guy in this area. If you don't see what you're looking for, I can ask him for you.

 

[Barbarian]

Yes his African American assistant insisted he try tungsten over and over and for sound scientific reasons but who listened to them and by no means could he receive proper accreditation in those days (since that alone might cause doubt in the hypothesis).

A lot of people would be surprised to know that not only did Edison not invent the light bulb, he didn't even get the first patent for a workable one.

Edison was a great businessman and promoter, but not as good an inventor as he liked to present. Many of his inventions were, as in the case you mentioned, really the work of others.

 

[Vaccine]

Intelligent design assumes a "designer" which is simply another way of saying "God the creator."
Since it assumes that God created the universe, and that assumption cannot be proven, (because you can't get God into a test tube to test him) it is deemed "pseudo-science" by those who hate the idea of the existence of a God to whom they will have to answer.

The hypothesis that there is a designer cannot be proven by scientific methods.

iakov the fool

Good point, people who hate the existence of God don't like the implications of the theory.

 

[Vaccine]

That is a tautology. All science is based on materialist assumptions. Science has to do with the materials of the universe and their interactions. Science does not deal with a creator-deity Who cannot be seen, examined, tested, etc.

Scientists, researchers, inventors do that all the time. They form a hypothesis and test it. If it proves to be wrong, they discard it and form a new hypothesis based on the data they have gained. That is how science is done.
Thomas Edison tried over 1000 different filament materials before he discovered that tungsten worked. He described the experiments as 1000 successful experiments which identified materials which would not work.

You do make some good points there but I have to say "all science is based on materialistic assumptions" is atheist propoganda. Natural history is based on material assumptions. If Natural history used the scientific method then it would be science.

 

[Vaccine]

The self-stated "Governing Goals" of ID:
Governing Goals

• To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
• To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

https://ncse.com/creationism/general/wedge-document

To be fair, I've met IDers who have said that they entirely reject the guys who started ID as well as their religious premises. But the official version, from the Discovery Institute, is basically an unorthodox religious belief.

There are dissenters to some of the doctrines, like Michael Behe, who admits the reality of evolution and has even admitted the possibility that irreducibly complex features can evolve. (he thinks it never happened though, in spite of evidence showing that it did)

And (possibly former) IDer Michael Denton takes it a step further:

It is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school." According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God's direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world--that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.


In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
Michael Denton, Natures Destiny



I've always gone with their statements. But over time, they've diverged considerably, as you see. Denton and Behe still put different kinds of god into their philosophies. Behe accepts the fact of evolution, but thinks that God steps in every now and then to keep it on track or to fix something that couldn't evolve, given the way He set things up. Denton accepts evolution, and seems to be sort of a deist who supposes that God had something in mind, but once things were set up, hasn't messed with it thereafter.

Philip Johnson remains a YE creationist for all practical purposes, and Jonathan Wells remains an follower of Rev. Myung Son Moon's Unification Church.

So a lot of really diverse theologies in this. But so far as I know, none of them have rejected the basic religious goal of the movement.

I think those are the governing goals of the Discovery institute. What's so bad about overthrowing materialism?

 

[Barbarian]

I think those are the governing goals of the Discovery institute.

Yep. The guys who invented ID and manage the campaign. I am aware of people who accept ID who do not have a religious agenda, but they aren't the decision makers in the movement.

What's so bad about overthrowing materialism?

Nothing at all. It's just not something science can do. Science, but its very nature, is limited to the physical universe. Science does not and cannot deny the existence of the supernatural, but it cannot establish that it exists, either. This is the fundamental flaw of ID; it is essentially religious, and therefore is not science.

Hence the majority of scientists who accept religious beliefs, but do not support ID.

 

[Jim Parker]

they can only date back 20,000 years

Says who????

 

[Roro1972]

Says who????

National Center for Science Education
Answer: Very simply. Radiocarbon dating doesn't work well on objects much older than twenty thousand years, because such objects have so little C-14 left that their beta radiation is swamped out by the background radiation of cosmic rays and potassium-40 (K-40) decay. Younger objects can easily be dated, because they still emit plenty of beta radiation, enough to be measured after the background radiation has been subtracted out of the total beta radiation. However, in either case, the background beta radiation has to be compensated for, and, in the older objects, the amount of C-14 they have left is less than the margin of error in measuring background radiation.

So when they talk about 100; 200; 300; 400 million years is is not fact is it?

 

[Jim Parker]

You do make some good points there but I have to say "all science is based on materialistic assumptions" is atheist propoganda.

Science has to do with the examination of creation.
Science has absolutely nothing to do with God because God is not available for observation, testing, evaluation, etc.
I would propose that words like "materialist assumptions" are creationist propaganda.

 

[Jim Parker]

National Center for Science Education

These folks?
NCSE defends the integrity of science education against ideological interference. We work with teachers, parents, scientists, and concerned citizens at the local, state, and national levels to ensure that topics including evolution and climate change are taught accurately, honestly, and confidently. ( https://ncse.com/about )

So you think that anthropomorphic climate change is "real" science?

Pardon me if I find your "experts" on what science is to be lacking in integrity for pushing a politically motivated fraud as "real science."

Radiocarbon dating doesn't work well on objects much older than twenty thousand years,

The same "National Center for Science Education" whom you referenced above also said that was an accurate appraisal. But that is not the only way very old objects are dated.
And, as the NCSE (your source for the scientific truth) said:
"C-14 dates show that the last glaciation started to subside around twenty thousand years ago. But the young-earth creationists at ICR and elsewhere insist that, if an ice age occurred, it must have come and gone far less than ten thousand years ago, sometime after Noah's flood. Therefore, the only way creationists can hang on to their chronology is to poke all the holes they can into radiocarbon dating. However, as we have seen, it has survived their most ardent attacks." https://ncse.com/cej/3/2/answers-to-creationist-attacks-carbon-14-dating

So, are you a young earth creationist?

I'm a creationist. I believe that God created everything starting about 13.7 billion years ago.

iakov the fool

 

[Barbarian]

I think it might be useful to consider what "the scientific method" actually is, and how well it fits the way science actually works. Can science contribute to knowledge otherwise?

 

[Barbarian]

National Center for Science Education
Answer: Very simply. Radiocarbon dating doesn't work well on objects much older than twenty thousand years, because such objects have so little C-14 left that their beta radiation is swamped out by the background radiation of cosmic rays and potassium-40 (K-40) decay. Younger objects can easily be dated, because they still emit plenty of beta radiation, enough to be measured after the background radiation has been subtracted out of the total beta radiation. However, in either case, the background beta radiation has to be compensated for, and, in the older objects, the amount of C-14 they have left is less than the margin of error in measuring background radiation.

So when they talk about 100; 200; 300; 400 million years is is not fact is it?

Go to post #23 and read. Paleontologists rarely use C-14 precisely because that particular isotope has a half-life too short to be of much use to them.

There are many others that are much more usable for older remains.

 

[Roro1972]

These folks?
NCSE defends the integrity of science education against ideological interference. We work with teachers, parents, scientists, and concerned citizens at the local, state, and national levels to ensure that topics including evolution and climate change are taught accurately, honestly, and confidently. ( https://ncse.com/about )

So you think that anthropomorphic climate change is "real" science?

Pardon me if I find your "experts" on what science is to be lacking in integrity for pushing a politically motivated fraud as "real science."

The same "National Center for Science Education" whom you referenced above also said that was an accurate appraisal. But that is not the only way very old objects are dated.
And, as the NCSE (your source for the scientific truth) said:
"C-14 dates show that the last glaciation started to subside around twenty thousand years ago. But the young-earth creationists at ICR and elsewhere insist that, if an ice age occurred, it must have come and gone far less than ten thousand years ago, sometime after Noah's flood. Therefore, the only way creationists can hang on to their chronology is to poke all the holes they can into radiocarbon dating. However, as we have seen, it has survived their most ardent attacks." https://ncse.com/cej/3/2/answers-to-creationist-attacks-carbon-14-dating

So, are you a young earth creationist?

I'm a creationist. I believe that God created everything starting about 13.7 billion years ago.

iakov the fool

Not sure how to answer you on some of the questions you are asking me. I will start with the young earth question
I am not a young earth creationist. I do believe the earth is much older than 6000 years I do not believe people were here millions of years ago. It is imo possible that God put some humans here but they were not made in his image.
There was no need to refer to the ones that were before to the ones that came later that he created out of dust and breathed the breath of life into and made them in his and the Words image.
I did not fill that I was putting the NCSE as a proof of anything other than value of radio carbon testing and the site said
it was only useful for about 20,000 years; also I had read that before some where else so I took it as correct that carbon dating does not work when one is talking about something 20 million years old that is my fault that I posted something I do not know much about and believed radio carbon dating was only good for 20,000 yrs..
you reference ICR never heard of it. I was arguing that once a scientist test something past 20,000 they are not making absolute proof they have to compensate for what their machines can not positively tell them. when they look at a rock and say it is 100 million years old I doubt they have a way of being absolute positive it is 100 million yrs old.
As for climate change I do not believe it to be as bad as Gore promotes.

 

[Jim Parker]

As for climate change I do not believe it to be as bad as Gore promotes.

OK.
After all that back and forth, we're pretty much on the same page.

iakov the fool

 

[Roro1972]

OK.
After all that back and forth, we're pretty much on the same page.

iakov the fool

ok thats a good thing I hope.

 

[Vaccine]

Yep. The guys who invented ID and manage the campaign. I am aware of people who accept ID who do not have a religious agenda, but they aren't the decision makers in the movement.



Nothing at all. It's just not something science can do. Science, but its very nature, is limited to the physical universe. Science does not and cannot deny the existence of the supernatural, but it cannot establish that it exists, either. This is the fundamental flaw of ID; it is essentially religious, and therefore is not science.

Hence the majority of scientists who accept religious beliefs, but do not support ID.

I agree Discovery Institute is one of the biggest promoters of Intelligent Design theory. I think it's because they see it complimentary to their beliefs. Not that anyone can or is trying to prove God. A multiverse isn't trying to prove Atheist, but the implication is there. Implications of a theory, Darwin's or Behe's, are outside science.
Why do you think ID theory is fundamentially religious?

 

[Barbarian]

I agree Discovery Institute is one of the biggest promoters of Intelligent Design theory.

They invented it. Being fair, they get to say what it is.

I think it's because they see it complimentary to their beliefs. Not that anyone can or is trying to prove God.

The stated governing goal is to make a belief in god a necessary part of science. I use a small "g" because for example, members of the Institute include Jonathan Wells who think Rev. Moon is an improvement on Jesus, and Michael Denton, who is sort of a deist, thinking that once God made the world, He walked away and doesn't intervene at all, even if He has an outcome in mind.

A multiverse isn't trying to prove Atheist, but the implication is there.

Not part of evolutionary theory, of course, but I don't see God as incapable of making many universes, if He so desired.

Implications of a theory, Darwin's or Behe's, are outside science.

The implications of Darwin's are mentioned in the last sentence of The Origin of Species.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Why do you think ID theory is fundamentially religious?

ID is actually a religious doctrine. It's stated purpose is to bring down materialism, and establish the idea of God. Which aren't bad things; they are good things.

They just aren't science, or even things that science can address. And in arguing that they are, the IDers do much damage to faith. And that is why they are heavily criticized by scientists and people of faith, and particularly so by scientists who are people of faith.

 

[Vaccine]

Science has to do with the examination of creation.
Science has absolutely nothing to do with God because God is not available for observation, testing, evaluation, etc.

Well said, I agree.

I would propose that words like "materialist assumptions" are creationist propaganda.

Not so. You just said science has to to with the examination of creation. Should that examination be unassuming? Or assume, prior to any examination, what can and cannot be a conclusion?
If assumptions, any assumptions are made, it isn't a search for truth. It's a search for a predetermined narrative. The scientific method is robust enough process, it doesn't need materialistic assumptions.