Why does every thread of science...

[Jimmy Higgins]

Why does every single thread of science, no matter what the subject, always seem to degrade into some sort of jibbing on evolution?

I bring up a thread on the age of the earth, evolution pops up quickly. I bring up a thread on the Global Flood, evolution enters the fold.

Why is evolution part of every science in here?

[Pilgrim]

For the creationist those things are intimately related.

[RufusAtticus]

Maybe "the creationist" needs to get a better view of science.

[Yog^sothoth]

because people think they are so right the other side is full of idiots and they have to let the idiots know they are wrong by calling them idiots.

[Jimmy Higgins]

Today @ 03:00 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46275#post46275)
Pilgrim:

For the creationist those things are intimately related. But last time I checked, geology and biology are two completely different realms of science. How bedrock forms is not anywhere similar to how cells work. It'd be like discussing how good Tom Clancy is and then someone bringing up Slaughterhouse-Five to refute it.

[Socrates]

No thread of REAL (operational) science, e.g. quantum mechanics, chemistry, will ever bring up questions like the age of the earth or evolution, since these are questions about ORIGINS.

And it is a historical fact that Lyell's ideas of gradual changes in GEOLOGY accumulating over billions of years was an inspiration for Darwin's idea for gradual changes in BIOLOGY accumulating over billions of years.

[Tycho]

Yesterday @ 06:13 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46463#post46463)
Socrates:
No thread of REAL (operational) science, e.g. quantum mechanics, chemistry, will ever bring up questions like the age of the earth or evolution, since these are questions about ORIGINS.
And origins have a maaaaagical barrier that prevents the scientific method from working!

Q. What is the origin of gamma ray bursters?
A. What?! That's an ORIGINS science question, not a REAL (operational) science question! You must be one of those atheistic pagan wiccan communist Nazi capitalist socialist evolutionist God-hating misotheists that I find so often!

[Socratism]

Today @ 03:24 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46769#post46769)
Tycho:


And origins have a maaaaagical barrier that prevents the scientific method from working!

Q. What is the origin of gamma ray bursters?
A. What?! That's an ORIGINS science question, not a REAL (operational) science question! You must be one of those atheistic pagan wiccan communist Nazi capitalist socialist evolutionist God-hating misotheists that I find so often!

Actually a major portion of cosmology is similar to evolution to the extent that theories are not tested via the experimental method. Of course a few things in both areas can be tested experimentally.

[RufusAtticus]

Today @ 11:50 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47012#post47012)
Socratism:

Actually a major portion of cosmology is similar to evolution to the extent that theories are not tested via the experimental method. Of course a few things in both areas can be tested experimentally.

Care to offer an example from biology, with relevant citations from the scientific literature?

[Jimmy Higgins]

Today @ 11:50 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47012#post47012)
Socratism:
Actually a major portion of cosmology is similar to evolution to the extent that theories are not tested via the experimental method. Of course a few things in both areas can be tested experimentally.
Care to give examples of this using scientific referencing for cosmology?

[Socratism]

Today @ 12:51 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47078#post47078)
Jimmy Higgins:


Care to give examples of this using scientific referencing for cosmology?

Try here: http://www.metaresearch.org/

[Socratism]

Today @ 12:08 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47032#post47032)
RufusAtticus:



Care to offer an example from biology, with relevant citations from the scientific literature?

Are you asking for examples of what is tested experimentally or what is not tested experimentally?

[RufusAtticus]

Yesterday @ 02:51 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47188#post47188)
Socratism:



Are you asking for examples of what is tested experimentally or what is not tested experimentally?

I'm asking what theories that you think have not been tested experimentally, with references to scietific literature advocating the theory. Basically I want you to make sure that whatever theories your thinking off are actually part of the biological literature.

[Woman]

Socrates:
And it is a historical fact that Lyell's ideas of gradual changes in GEOLOGY accumulating over billions of years was an inspiration for Darwin's idea for gradual changes in BIOLOGY accumulating over billions of years.

Oh.

You mean as opposed to your idea for quick-as-lightening-evolution after the Flood where one or two cat-kinds had to morph into cougars, lynx, panther, leopards, sabre-toothed tigers, lions and kittens in just...what...3 thousand years? Less?

*edited for typo

[Socrates]

Woman

You're getting VERY boring with this equivocation that "change" equals "evolution" in the goo-to-you-via-the-zoo sense that evolutionists differ from creationists. We need a YAWM emoticon :tongue:

It's especially inexcusable when I've explained the concept of splitting up ALREADY CREATED heterozygotic diversity, so involves NO NEW GENETIC INFORMATION as the goo-to-you theory requires. If you STILL don't get it, try Beetle bloopers (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/241.asp).

Anyway, to explain your obsession with cats, Ligers and wholphins? What next? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v22n3_liger.asp):

A male African lion (Panthera leo) and a female tiger (Panthera tigris) can mate to produce a liger. The reverse cross produces a tigon. Such crossing does not normally happen in the wild because most lions live in Africa and most tigers live in Asia. Also, lions and tigers just don’t mix; they are enemies in the wild. However, the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (USA), raised a lion and a tigress together. Arthur, the lion, and Ayla, the tigress, became good friends and bred to produce Samson and Sudan, two huge male ligers. Samson stands 3.7 m (12 feet) tall on his hind legs, weighs 500 kg (1,100 lbs) and can run at 80 km/hr (50 mph).

Lions and tigers belong to the same genus, Panthera, along with the jaguar, leopard and snow leopard, in the subfamily Felinae. This subfamily also contains the genus Felis, which includes the mountain lion and numerous species of smaller cats, including the domestic cat. The cheetah, genus Acinonyx, belongs to a different subfamily. Thus the genera Panthera, Felis and Acinonyx may represent descendants of three original created cat kinds, or maybe two: Panthera-Felis and Acinonyx, or even one cat kind. The extinct sabre-tooth tiger may have been a different created kind (see diagram below).

The Panthera cats lack a hyoid bone at the back of the tongue, compared to Felis. Acinonyx has the hyoid, but lacks the ability to retract its claws. So the differences between the cats could have arisen through loss of genetic information due to mutations (loss of the bone; loss of claw retraction). Note that this has nothing to do with molecules-to-man evolution, which requires the addition of new information, not loss of information (which is to be expected in a fallen world as things tend to ‘fall apart’).

[dizzle]

Just a quick note for Jimmy or anyone else with a similar question... we do have a rule here that the thread starter has the perogative to keep a thread narrowly on focus. So if anyone starts a thread with the intention of say, strictly speaking about geology, that thread starter can request, and the moderators will enforce, the thread stay on that topic if the request if reasonable and not intended to simply quelch opposing points of view on the relevant topic. I hope that helps!!

[RufusAtticus]

Today @ 07:10 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47667#post47667)
Socrates:

You're getting VERY boring with this equivocation that "change" equals "evolution" in the goo-to-you-via-the-zoo sense that evolutionists differ from creationists. We need a YAWM emoticon

So after the flood all kinds but the human kind experienced rapid speciation and divergence. Right. What kept the human kind in check?

It's especially inexcusable when I've explained the concept of splitting up ALREADY CREATED heterozygotic diversity, so involves NO NEW GENETIC INFORMATION as the goo-to-you theory requires.

Then explain polymorphic loci that have more than four alleles. Heterozygous diversity could only preserve at most four alleles in a bottleneck of two. Not to mention the fact that drift in such a small populaiton is likely to reduce this varation even further. Proportioning out of heterozygotic diversity is an argument that isn't supported by the data of population genetics.

[Nikolai]

03-28-2003 @ 01:13 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46463#post46463)
Socrates:

No thread of REAL (operational) science, e.g. quantum mechanics, chemistry, will ever bring up questions like the age of the earth or evolution, since these are questions about ORIGINS.

And it is a historical fact that Lyell's ideas of gradual changes in GEOLOGY accumulating over billions of years was an inspiration for Darwin's idea for gradual changes in BIOLOGY accumulating over billions of years.

SCIENCE: n 1: any domain of knowledge accumulated by systematic study and organized by general principles; "mathematics is important for science" [syn: scientific knowledge] 2: a particular branch of scientific knowledge; "the science of genetics" [syn: scientific discipline] 3: ability to produce solutions in some problem domain; "the skill of a well-trained boxer"; "the science of pugilism" [syn: skill]

How did you acquire your definition of science? As far as I know hard sciences are not considered to be the only ones that "count"

[QED]

Today @ 03:54 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=82656#post82656)
Nikolai:

How did you acquire your definition of science? As far as I know hard sciences are not considered to be the only ones that "count"

True, but we do take soft sciences less seriously. Last I checked, though, practically everything creationists object to came from hard science.

[HippoCrates]

03-28-2003 @ 01:13 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46463#post46463)
Socrates:

No thread of REAL (operational) science, e.g. quantum mechanics, chemistry, will ever bring up questions like the age of the earth or evolution, since these are questions about ORIGINS.

Utter garbage. Science is inductive in nature. It can only make accurate predictions about what will happen in the future if we know what has happened in the past. "ORIGINS" are scientifically no different from any other past events, ALL-CAPS aside.

[Socratism]

Today @ 01:10 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=82755#post82755)
HippoCrates:



Utter garbage. Science is inductive in nature. It can only make accurate predictions about what will happen in the future if we know what has happened in the past. "ORIGINS" are scientifically no different from any other past events, ALL-CAPS aside.

Predicting the far future is no different than inferring the far past: both involve very shaky science.

Some years ago a distinguished magazine, the Kiplinger Report, devoted an issue to predictions for the coming 25 years. They accurately foretold things like population growth and steady progress in stable fields of technology, but amazingly completely missed the computer revolution and predicted that the new atomic energy field would lead to unmetered electricity in the home as well as planes, trains and even cars powered by the atom.

This illustrates the problem of extrapolating too far (forward or backwards) from current data and trends.

[dizzle]

Hippo-Crates - You need to email me at DDW@theologyweb.com

[Socratism]

Yesterday @ 11:02 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=82661#post82661)
QED:



True, but we do take soft sciences less seriously. Last I checked, though, practically everything creationists object to came from hard science.

You should recheck your opinion.

The points at issue involve certain areas of cosmology, geology and biology,

In cosmology the ad hoc assumptions of "dark matter" and "dark energy" clearly indicate that a revolution of thinking is overdue
in this field.

In geology a global overview of sedimentary layers indicates that slow accumulation of sediment in "inland seas" is a pathetic explanation for continental sedimentary layers. Again, a revolution in thinking is overdue.

In biology as in cosmology, unlimited extrapolation leads to ridiculous conclusions. Once the tremendous data storage capacities of DNA were recognized, it should have been obvious that a pathetic idea like "copying errors plus natural selection" could not possibly be a valid explanation for what we see today.

Not to mention that a jump from a "replicating molecule" to a living cell is merely ad hoc handwaving.

[Joe_Sixpack]

"In cosmology the ad hoc assumptions of "dark matter" and "dark energy" clearly indicate that a revolution of thinking is overdue
in this field."

Hate to break it to you, but these are not ad hoc assumptions. Although we cannot see dark matter, we can certainly view its effects. The same is true of "dark energy" or quintessence - we view its effects of cosmic structures quite plainly. BTW - that is no different from how we deduce the present of "regular energy" - it's not like we can see that either (well at least in most of its forms - try observing potential energy sometime or even kinetic energy without deducing it from the moving object).

[Socrates]

Socrates:

You're getting VERY boring with this equivocation that "change" equals "evolution" in the goo-to-you-via-the-zoo sense that evolutionists differ from creationists. We need a YAWM emoticon

RA:So after the flood all kinds but the human kind experienced rapid speciation and divergence. Right. What kept the human kind in check? What about the "races" or rather, people groups?

Soc:

It's especially inexcusable when I've explained the concept of splitting up ALREADY CREATED heterozygotic diversity, so involves NO NEW GENETIC INFORMATION as the goo-to-you theory requires.

Then explain polymorphic loci that have more than four alleles. Heterozygous diversity could only preserve at most four alleles in a bottleneck of two. Not to mention the fact that drift in such a small populaiton is likely to reduce this varation even further. Proportioning out of heterozygotic diversity is an argument that isn't supported by the data of population genetics.:dufus: I've pointed out enough times that there are information-losing mutations, e.g. the one resulting in the O blood group. And the diversity among alleles is not nearly so much that would be a problem for descendants of the Ark animals (one elephant hurl deserves another). See also A pair of dogs/wolves on Noah’s Ark couldn’t have produced all dog varieties today? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative_25june2001.asp) John Woodmorappe has a whole chapter in his book Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, on this problem that RA ignorantly raises it as if it's news to creationist, and he even deals with MHC alleles. Also, the geneticist Dr Todd Wood has an idea of Altruistic Genetic Elements (AGEs).

[Socratism]

Today @ 11:06 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=83058#post83058)
Joe_Sixpack:

"In cosmology the ad hoc assumptions of "dark matter" and "dark energy" clearly indicate that a revolution of thinking is overdue
in this field."

Hate to break it to you, but these are not ad hoc assumptions. Although we cannot see dark matter, we can certainly view its effects. The same is true of "dark energy" or quintessence - we view its effects of cosmic structures quite plainly. BTW - that is no different from how we deduce the present of "regular energy" - it's not like we can see that either (well at least in most of its forms - try observing potential energy sometime or even kinetic energy without deducing it from the moving object).

I hate to break it to you but they are ad hoc conceptions which were arrived at in the case of "dark matter" solely because known laws of physics coupled with certain uniformitarian assumptions about the ages and assumed formation of galaxies, etc. conflicted with observational data.

In such a case something had to give and the choice was to hold fast to current galaxy formation concepts and instead hypothesize something roughly equivalent to the "aether" of yore.

"Dark energy" is similar in that it is hypothesized solely in order to preserve other "cherished" cosmological hypotheses.

None of this type of behavior is new to science, for it has been noted that widely held theories that conflict with newly discovered data never die until their proponents do since ad hoc rationalizations can always be invented to preserve the status quo.

[Joe_Sixpack]

Socratism,

Have you really lookked into why these things were hypothesized in the first place? Have you considered the evidence that they have that supports them? We may not observe them directly (not that we can observe much directly) but we can observe their effects - that kind of takes them out of the realm of simply being "ad hoc" rationalizations.

[SLPx]

03-29-2003 @ 12:10 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=47667#post47667)
Socrates:
...especially inexcusable when I've explained the concept of splitting up ALREADY CREATED heterozygotic diversity, so involves NO NEW GENETIC INFORMATION as the goo-to-you theory requires. If you STILL don't get it, try Beetle bloopers (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/241.asp).

I asked some time ago some questions on "information" and you bailed.

What is "information" in the context of biology?

What constitutes "new" information?

Is "new information" really always required for evolution to proceed?



On a related note, regarding your, um, "explanation" about "splitting up" already existing information - what is the EVIDENCE for this?

What is the 'evidence' that some original "superkind" on the ark had all of this amazing diversity built into them?

That most of it was somehow suppressed until after the mythical flood (for which there is also no evidence)?

What mechanism was at work in making sure that house cats got the genes to make them small, and cheetahs got the genes to make it so they cannot retract their claws?

Simply asserting that it happened is not evidence. Linking to an AiG propaganda essay by someone writing well outside of their field is not evidence.


WHERE'S THE BEEF?

[edited for typos]

[djdavo]

03-27-2003 @ 10:15 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=46350#post46350)
Yog^sothoth:

because people think they are so right the other side is full of idiots and they have to let the idiots know they are wrong by calling them idiots.

LOL@ Yog !
it degenerates into that a lot, doesn't it?
:smile:

[djdavo]

RA:
So after the flood all kinds but the human kind experienced rapid speciation and divergence. Right. What kept the human kind in check?


answer: nothing. compare the different races. compare a dwarf to an 8'2" backetball player and you'll see there's plenty of variation among human kind.

[djdavo]

oh yeah: to answer the original question: it's because creationism is a world view. just at evolution is. you can't bring up the age of the cosmos without discussing creation/evolution at some point.

[RufusAtticus]

04-30-2003 @ 11:18 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=83074#post83074)
Socrates:
What about the "races" or rather, people groups?


Nope, studies have found that there is very little genetic differences among human populations. So how do you explain how all other "kinds" experienced rapid speciation but humans experienced nothing.

I've pointed out enough times that there are information-losing mutations, e.g. the one resulting in the O blood group.

You've never pointed this out, only asserted it without ever defining what "information" is.

And the diversity among alleles is not nearly so much that would be a problem for descendants of the Ark animals.

So asserts the man with a chemistry background. If all polymorphic loci evolved since a bottleneck of 2 or so in the last few thousand or so years, how do you explain highly polymorphic loci that are shared between humans and the other great apes? If their polymorphisms are post flood, how do you explain why these poplations share the so many alleles at these highly polymorphic loci.

See also A pair of dogs/wolves on Noah’s Ark couldn’t have produced all dog varieties today? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative_25june2001.asp)

I read it and it didn't address any of the issues I raised in my post. It didn't address the issue of highly polymorphic loci and the issue of genetic drift. But I guess that considering that you are not a geneticist, you would known the difference.

[RufusAtticus]

Yesterday @ 10:02 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=84715#post84715)
djdavo:
compare the different races.

Yeah compare them, what do you find? That there are little differences that distinguish human poplations and the concept of "race" is not supported biologically.

compare a dwarf to an 8'2" backetball player and you'll see there's plenty of variation among human kind.

Actually, compared to other species humans have very little genetic variation.