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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Noah
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
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Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
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Originally posted by Glenn Oldham:
I'd love to have a look at the site Sine mentions but am I alone in finding that the link leads to http://download.startsurfing.com/ and not to the site shown?
No but for me it led to a dodgy portal site that I sometimes get redirected to. I think I've got some Spyware or something on the PC that sometimes takes over the browser when it is pointed at certain sites.
Thanks, Gracious Rebel, I'm not a computer whizz and these things are puzzling. i tried going through Google, tried typing in the address myself, all to no avail.
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This entire doctrine is worthless except as a subject of dispute. (G. C. Lichtenberg 1742-1799 Aphorism 60 in notebook J of The Waste Books)
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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Glenn Oldham
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# 47
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by
As an evidence of the earth’s age, you are wholly dependent on the dating of rocks being correct (unverifiable) and the assumption (unverifiable) that the drift has been constant at around 4cm a year.
So it is just a coincidence that the estimated time and the measured speed match pretty well is it?
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Why does some fossilised coral appear to have grown 400 layers in year whereas these days they only grow 365? I don’t know. Is it proof that they are 38,000,000 yrs old? I don’t think so.(380 million in fact. G. O.)
So it is just a coincidence then is it that, on the one hand, the physics of the tidal retardation of the earth’s rotation predicts a 400 day year 380 million years ago and that, on the other hand, corals of that date show that pattern?
afish,
Your seem to miss the point of these examples, so perhaps I had better make it as clear as I can and add to Alan Creswell’s earlier point about these kids of examples too.
The point is that the case for modern geology (and for evolution too) does not consist in one short argument; it consists of many different and independent strands of evidence pointing in the same direction. Now it may seem credible to you to take one of these strands and chalk it up to coincidence but that strategy gets less and less credible the more strands you apply it to. It is just too much to expect that these strands should independently support each other so well merely by coincidence. It is, therefore, eminently sane, sensible and reasonable to regard modern geology and evolution as extremely well corroborated and supported. It is unreasonable to dismiss it.
Now lets take a look at your claim that the dating of rocks is unverifiable. I can’t be certain what you mean by that claim, but I imagine that you mean something like this: “radiometric dating gives us an age for the earth, but if we don’t have any other way of telling how old the earth is then we can’t know that the date it tells us is correct so it is unverifiable.” Or you might mean “radiometric dating rests on assumptions about the radioactive decay that we cannot verify as having applied in the past.”
Both of these responses are too glib. There are a whole host of ways that we can test and examine the validity of radiometric dating. If it stands up to scrutiny and fits with other well established science then then we have good grounds for accepting its results.
Those involved with radiometric dating have done an enormous amount of work to test and refine it as a method. Their motivation being that they really want to find out how old the earth is and to do it in the best possible way. A bit of competitiveness is involved here too – lets critique others to see if we can show that they have got it wrong and that we can do it better. (I add that bit about motivation because to listen to some young earthers you might get the impression that scientists aren’t interested in the details of the method as long as they get an old date for the earth.)
As you know radioactive dating is based on the fact that some isotopes of elements are radioactive, that is they decay into another isotope (called the daughter isotope) over time. The time it takes for half of a number of atoms of the isotope to decay to the ‘daughter’ isotope is called the half-life. If we take a piece of rock and measure the number of parent atoms of the isotope and the number of atoms of the daughter isotope then if we can work out how many of the daughter atoms arose from the radioactive decay of the parent isotope we can work out how many parent atoms there were when the rock was formed, how many there are now, and hence using the decay rate (the half life) we can work out how old the rock is.
What can be done to see if this procedure is practical and stands up to criticism?
Can we be sure we know how many daughter atoms were present at the formation of the rock?
- We can examine the chemistry of the elements involved to identify possible problems so as to exclude those cases where contamination is possible. Lots of work has gone into this. The decay of Potassium 40 to Argon 40 is a good example here because the daughter isotope here is Argon, which is an inert gas and does not chemically react with its surrounding atoms, escapes from molten rock, and gets trapped within crystallised rock. We can thus figure out the rock types where there is almost certainly no argon present when the rock formed.
- we can find a way around the problem by using isochronicity. Take Rubidium 87’s decay to Strontium 87 as an example. Where a rock forms that contains a number of different minerals then these sometimes differ in the proportions of Rubidium and Strontium that each of the minerals contains. If so we are in luck. The Strontium in the minerals when they are formed will be a mixture of Strontium 87 and Strontium 86. Because Sr 87 and Sr 86 react in exactly the same way, each of the minerals will have the same proportion of Sr 87 to Sr 86. But over time those minerals that have more Rubidium in them will end up with more Sr 87 from decay than will those minerals which have less Rubidium in them. As a result when we measure the amounts of Sr 87, Sr 86 and Rb 87 in each of the minerals we can work out what the original proportion of Sr 87 to Sr 86 must have been for each of the minerals to have ended up with the proportions it has now. So we can be certain that we know the right starting amounts.
Can we be sure that the decay rates have been constant
- lots of experiments have been done subjecting decay rates to tests and checks to see if they can be affected. Nothing significant has been found (for more info see How to Change decay rates
- quantum theory does not predict significant problems with the decay rate;
Are there other checks we can make?
- Try different isotope systems such as (1) Uranium 238 / Lead 206 with Uranium 238 / Lead 206; (2) Potassium 40 / Argon 40; (3) Rubidium 87 / Strontium 87 And try them on rocks from different stratas
Results: remarkable agreement. Coincidence? Surely not for so many different cases. Is there then some circular reasoning involved in the theory being used? Like what exactly? These are different elements with different chemistries and yet they give results that agree. Where is the circularity? - cross check with other measurements and predictions such as:
- As said before, physics predicts that 380 million years ago the earth rotated about 400 days a year. Corals in strata dated to that age show a layering pattern that shows a repeating pattern of 400 layers per longer repeating pattern.
- As said before, fossil and rock evidence suggests that Africa and South America were once joined and split up 100 million years ago. Satellite measurements of the rate of spread of the South Atlantic show a 4 cm per year divergence, which, over 100 million years, would give a spread of 4,000 kilometres, which is about right.
- Many elements have isotopes that are radioactive and which decay over time. Some isotopes are formed here and now by cosmic rays or when other isotopes decay, but if we disregard them and look for those that are left over from when the earth was formed we are faced with an odd situation. This is that all such naturally occurring isotopes we can find have half-lives of over 80 million years. We know from work in atomic energy that there are many isotopes with shorter half lives that can exist (we can make them). Why can’t we find them if the earth is less than 10,000 years old? Where are, for example the eleven isotopes that have half-lives between a million and 70 million years? Surely this is a startlingly big clue to the fact that either the earth is very old, or else that God has a twisted sense of humour?
- The relative ages of the rock strata found using stratigraphy fits with the absolute ages assigned to them.
- The ages of the rock strata fit well with the timescale that evolution is likely to need.
Given all these points and all that extensive work having been done the claim that the results are ‘unverifiable’ begs the question how can you discount so much evidence? (for further info see A radiometric dating resource list )
And given all this: with the earth so old and the flood so recent then the idea that there were no maountains and enough water to have a global flood becomes even more ridiculous. We have excellent evidence for continental drift and plate tectonics causing mountain building billions of years ago.
Glenn
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This entire doctrine is worthless except as a subject of dispute. (G. C. Lichtenberg 1742-1799 Aphorism 60 in notebook J of The Waste Books)
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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afish
Shipmate
# 1135
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Posted
Glen O.
An impressive post, interesting to read but raising far more questions than it settles. Let’s focus on this radiometric dating then as it seems to be a main strand by which hangs and holds together the whole, “billions of years of incremental but constant evolution” model.
First of all, to make sure that I’ve got it right, let me express my understanding of radiometric dating as the following formula, where Ua=parent isotope and Ub=daughter isotope:
Then 15Ua {{{========time taken for5Ua to change to5Ub=========={{{Now 10Ua+5Ub.
So the questions that your post has stirred up:
1.Does one element really change to another (potassium to argon etc)? I was taught that the transmution of one element into another was the stuff of alchemy.
2.If this is the case, where is predictability? What about reversibility? What about as yet unknown transmutations?
3.If we stick with isotopes of one element, how has the change been measured and over what period of time? Surely it can’t have been over more than a few decades and therefore the changes involved, I would have thought, verging on the immeasurable?
4.What do we know about this process of decay/change? Why does one atom change and not another. Is the process spread evenly throughout the rock (every other atom) or is it concentrated near the surface or far from the surface? Why doesn’t Sr87 eventually change to St86 or in general why isn’t there a whole range of isotopes for any given element running from the highest number to the lowest?
5.How can we know the composition of the original material or how it was formed or what processes/events it’s been through to get to us? How do you know which isotopes are “leftover from when the earth was formed” and those that are formed by cosmic rays (some thing else to stir up questions) or from the influence of other isotopes?
6.Are you saying that no rocks have been formed since 80,000,000 yrs ago? What about the stuff that has come out of volcanoes?
7.Can we be sure that decay rates have been constant? Your answer is that a lot of experiments have been done and nothing significant has been found. My answer is no of course we can’t. It’s an unverifiable assumption.
Your definitions of what I might mean by unverifiable were accurate enough. Theories about electricity are verifiable. We can turn physical motion into electric current and electrical current into physical motion. We can do it in real time, measure, record and repeat what happens and know that the theories conforms to practice and vica versa. That is not possible with a statement like, “This rock is x million of years old.” It is a statement which is based on extrapolating backwards from what that rock is now based on a particular theory using particular techniques and measurements. It seems to me that in the best meaning of the word radiometric dating is questionable. Its conclusions about the age of the earth are certainly unverifiable.
Right it’s too warm and muggy for anymore of this. Time for something a bit more frothy.
I’ll respond to other stuff later (God willing).
><>
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"Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much"
Bob Dylan
Posts: 168 | From: France | Registered: Aug 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by afish:
Glen O.
An impressive post, interesting to read but raising far more questions than it settles. Let’s focus on this radiometric dating then as it seems to be a main strand by which hangs and holds together the whole, “billions of years of incremental but constant evolution” model.
First of all, to make sure that I’ve got it right, let me express my understanding of radiometric dating as the following formula, where Ua=parent isotope and Ub=daughter isotope:
Then 15Ua {{{========time taken for5Ua to change to5Ub=========={{{Now 10Ua+5Ub.
So the questions that your post has stirred up:
1.Does one element really change to another (potassium to argon etc)? I was taught that the transmution of one element into another was the stuff of alchemy.
It does change to another. You were taught wrong. This is also what Rutherford achieved when he split a large atom into two smaller ones.
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2.If this is the case, where is predictability?
It's predictable on a statistical level - if I have a billion C14 atoms, I can be absolutely sure that 50% of them will have decayed after 1 half life. If I have only a single atom, I can only say it's 50% likely to have decayed after 1 half life, but it could decay now, it could decay only after a billion years.
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What about reversibility? What about as yet unknown transmutations?
Reversability? You're working against the fact that the decayed form is more stable than the undecayed form. It's a bit like a book shelf with too many books on it - sooner or later it collapses. You wouldn't suggest that it can also spontaneously put itself back on complete with books. "Yet unknown trasmutations"? Well, they might exist, but they must be rather uncommon or we'd have found out about them the same way as we've found out about the existing ones. What you need to look for are nuclear reactions that aren't in conformity with existing known transformations. If you find one, there could be a Nobel Physics Prize in it for you.
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3.If we stick with isotopes of one element, how has the change been measured and over what period of time? Surely it can’t have been over more than a few decades and therefore the changes involved, I would have thought, verging on the immeasurable?
Not really. You've got billions of atoms in a sample; even something with a collosal half life in the billions of years is still decaying. A geiger counter can measure an individual decay. It's not hard to count the number of decays per second from a known quantity of a nuclear isotope.
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4.What do we know about this process of decay/change?
Quite a lot. But this really isn't the place for an advanced physics lesson. You realise a good understanding of this takes up bookshelves, don't you?
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Why does one atom change and not another.
Quantum. Another bookshelf, nay, library, sized topic.
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Is the process spread evenly throughout the rock (every other atom) or is it concentrated near the surface or far from the surface?
As evenly distributed as the isotope is within the sample. An atom has an equal probability of decaying regardless of where it is in the sample.
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Why doesn’t Sr87 eventually change to St86
Because this would require a decay of a single neutron. Such decays do not occur - unless they're one of your "unknown transformations". Atoms decay either by a neutron becoming a proton, emitting an electron (beta particle), or by emitting a package of two protons and two neutrons (alpha particle). The former raises the atomic number by 1, the latter drops it by two and drops the atomic weight (that's the number after the element's symbol) by four.
Actually, stray neutrons can be released by atomic fission (this is how atomic explosions are propogated) but not by decay processes.
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or in general why isn’t there a whole range of isotopes for any given element running from the highest number to the lowest?
Quantum considerations prevent certain configurations (this is another library sized topic). Some are so unstable they don't even form, some are so unstable they decay almost immediately.
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5.How can we know the composition of the original material or how it was formed or what processes/events it’s been through to get to us? How do you know which isotopes are “leftover from when the earth was formed” and those that are formed by cosmic rays (some thing else to stir up questions) or from the influence of other isotopes?
We know the decay chains of isotopes from experiment. We can observe in the lab the effect of cosmic rays in forming new isotopes. This is all well attested science, not cutting edge discoveries.
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6. you saying that no rocks have been formed since 80,000,000 yrs ago? What about the stuff that has come out of volcanoes?
No-one's saying that at all. The point about the non-existent short period isotopes is that they do not exist because they have decayed away. They are not formed when the rock is formed; they are formed in the hearts of stars where planets are born.
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7.Can we be sure that decay rates have been constant? Your answer is that a lot of experiments have been done and nothing significant has been found. My answer is no of course we can’t.
Why can't we? If something varies, why can't we measure the variation.
But there's more to it than that. Decay rates are dependent upon a whole load of physical constants - constants whose variation would not make for a universe that resembles ours in any way - or even necessarily be viable.
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It’s an unverifiable assumption.
So is the assumption we make that haemoglobin will carry oxygen tomorrow just like it does today.
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Your definitions of what I might mean by unverifiable were accurate enough. Theories about electricity are verifiable. We can turn physical motion into electric current and electrical current into physical motion. We can do it in real time, measure, record and repeat what happens and know that the theories conforms to practice and vica versa. That is not possible with a statement like, “This rock is x million of years old.” It is a statement which is based on extrapolating backwards from what that rock is now based on a particular theory using particular techniques and measurements. It seems to me that in the best meaning of the word radiometric dating is questionable. Its conclusions about the age of the earth are certainly unverifiable.
(God willing).
><>
All the processes and laws upon which the dating is based are verifiable the way you define. You realise that by writing off radiometric dating in this way you are also denying the validity of forensic science? Should we open the prisons and let out all those convicted on forensic evidence, since their convictions were based on exactly the same sort of backwards extrapolation that you say makes radiometric dating unreliable?
Not meaning this final question as an insult, or with any disrespect, but some of your questions imply you know very little about the physics behind this area of science. Why is it, therefore, that you feel qualified to attempt to discredit the work of those who understand it very well indeed?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Amelie
Shipmate
# 4138
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Posted
There've been some interesting things said in this discussion. I don't know if this will help at all, but I used to be a Young Earther, and believed in a world wide flood. The reason I changed my mind was through doing Biology and Geography at university. At first, like afish, I could rationalise away many of the 'proofs' that were presented, but in the end the sheer number of them made me give way. At first I moved to a position of 'God made the world and I don't know how he did it'. This allowed me to keep my view of an inerrent bible, but without having to try and make science fit with a seven day creation and a global flood which it doesn't do. Later, through reading things like this discussion, I discovered that there were different ways of interpreting Genesis, so that I could believe that God did use the processes science describes to create the world.
The main evidence that swung it for me was when I did paleo-ecology and had to study the ice-ages. Like others on this thread have been saying, there are many independant strands of evidence that corroborate each other. Standing in a field looking at a core that had just been taken out of the earth showing dark soil then grey stuff then soil etc for ages, was pretty conclusive. In the first layer you could identify by changes in colour when changes in agriculture had occured, so the dating of the first layer could be corroborated through historical records. The next layer was sediment that would have been deposited during the ice age. I thought it might have been put there by a flood, but then there was another layer of organic deposits, followed by more ice age deposits, and the pattern continued. We took the core back to the lab and had to analyse it for pollen. The pollen we found in the first section corresponded with the guesses we'd made about changes in agriculture.
The pollen that can be found in the other layers corresponded with other studies about changes in temperature over millions of years. For example, other cores like ours from various place over Europe, which show it isn't a localised phenomenon. These correspond with ice cores, which show different proportions of O18 and O16 depending on the temperature. They also correspond with much of worlds geology. When Milancovitch proposed a theory to try and explain these huge shifts from cold to warm periods in the earths history, he used a method based on working out the cycles of the earth round the sun, and the tilt of the earths axis, using maths and physics which fitted these observations really well. These are totally different areas of science that back each other up really well. We had reading lists of hundreds of papers (the lecturer was over keen!) which showed many examples confiming the idea of multiple ice ages. The research wasn't perfect, and much still needs to be done, but where there were holes in the research other people pointed them out, and where there was dissent, people were trying to find the answers. Overall though, the evidence was quite impressive!
There was no space in any of this for a global flood. So I stopped believing in one. I also found out that alot of what I'd read in Creationist literature was wrong. For example, I read somewhere that people had used carbon dating to test something that had died the day before and they dated it to millions of years old. Ha! I thought, this discredits that dating method. However, when I studied carbon dating, I was taught from the start that no scientist in their right mind would use it to date anything less that 50 years old because of the huge increase in radioactivity there's been. So either they were lying, or they knew very little about science. Either way, it made me very suspicious of their claims.
There are people here who know much more about what I just described that I do, but I thought it might help to explain why I found I could no longer believe in a global flood. I can understand scepticism at certain bits of evidence because no one can be absolutely sure. In the end it was the sheer number of things I had to explain away, that made me think I was barking up the wrong tree. I hope this helps.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
Karl,
Many thanks for responding to afish's list of questions!
Amelie,
Thanks for your post which is an excellent illustrationn of the kind of cumulative case which many of us on this thread have been arguing for!
I loved the film of your name by the way.
Glenn
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
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Originally posted by Karl - Liberal Backslider:
quote:
2.If this is the case, where is predictability?
It's predictable on a statistical level - if I have a billion C14 atoms, I can be absolutely sure that 50% of them will have decayed after 1 half life.
Not absolutely sure, of course, but sure that it is very very very likely to be close to 50%. It is like tossing a billion pennies into the air. How many will come down heads? Very nearly 50% of them.
G
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
I left the "as near as damn it" out for simplicity. You are of course correct. It's no more really than the law of large numbers...
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl - Liberal Backslider:
I left the "as near as damn it" out for simplicity. You are of course correct. It's no more really than the law of large numbers...
Yes indeed, I thought I'd pick it up before afish did.
This looks like a very good and thorough article:
Radiometric Dating a Christian Perspective by Wiens
Glenn
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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afish
Shipmate
# 1135
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Posted
Karl et al
quote:
“We are going round in circles aren't we?
Is there any point? It doesn't matter what evidence is presented, Afish will say he doesn't think it proves anything. Fortunately, reality doesn't require anyone's say so to be.”
Yes we are but we’ve explored some interesting terrain in doing so. This will be my last post on this thread. Assumption that are unverifiable remain unverifiable however many strands of “evidence” are woven around them. This is reality.
I’ve been exploring some of the given links and am much more aware of the larger debate than I was. I have given more or less equal time to both sides but have, in the end, been encouraged to find that others more knowledgeable than me are pointing to the same structural flaws in Darwin’s Ark floating on its oceans of time, that seem obvious to me, a know-nothing.
The following typifies for me the soft underbelly of the, Noah is myth - Evolution is fact, brigade.
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“Question: Afish - given that you do not believe we share a common ancestry with apes, do you have an explanation for:
…
(b) the Chromosomal fusion event that links our genome with that of the apes.”
What does this boil down to? The fact that humans have a chromosome that in its sequencing would matches the sequencing of two chimp chromosomes *if* there had been a bit of an overlap and fusion of the two chimp chromosomes. From this one fact plus an *if* the scientist? makes these assertions;
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“Not only is this strong evidence for a fusion event, but it is also strong evidence for common ancestry; in fact, it is hard to explain by any other mechanism.
Even more telling is the fact that on the 2q arm of the human chromosome 2 is the unmistakable remains of the original chromosome centromere of the common ancestor of human and chimp 2q chromosome, at the same position as the chimp 2q centromere (this structure in humans no longer acts as a centromere for chromosome 2.
Conclusion The evidence that human chromosome 2 is a fusion of two of the common ancestor's chromosomes is overwhelming.”
Well here sits one who is completely under whelmed. Why the need for a “mechanism” or a “fusion event”? Why does a lot of commonality in sequencing between humans and chimps need any other explanation than that physically there is a lot of similarity between the two. You know, arms, legs, head, the systems for breathing, circulation, reproduction. One fact and an if is not overwhelming and it certainly doesn’t meet my criterion of what science should be.
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“ … some of your questions imply you know very little about the physics behind this area of science. Why is it, therefore, that you feel qualified to attempt to discredit the work of those who understand it very well indeed?”
True, when it comes to the observation and measurement of atoms of matter I know nothing other than what I’m told by other. But I think I’m as qualified as the rest of the human race to spot an assertion based on nothing but an if, assumptions that cannot be verified and hypotheses being presented as factual reality. The “many strands of evidence” that “disprove” The Flood and “prove” Evolution contain, without doubt, a lot of real science but what has been woven with those strands is a veil over the face of reality.
Time is short. Go well.
><>
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"Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much"
Bob Dylan
Posts: 168 | From: France | Registered: Aug 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by afish:
The following typifies for me the soft underbelly of the, Noah is myth - Evolution is fact, brigade.
quote:
“Question: Afish - given that you do not believe we share a common ancestry with apes, do you have an explanation for:
…
(b) the Chromosomal fusion event that links our genome with that of the apes.”
What does this boil down to? The fact that humans have a chromosome that in its sequencing would matches the sequencing of two chimp chromosomes *if* there had been a bit of an overlap and fusion of the two chimp chromosomes. From this one fact plus an *if* the scientist? makes these assertions;
quote:
“Not only is this strong evidence for a fusion event, but it is also strong evidence for common ancestry; in fact, it is hard to explain by any other mechanism.
Even more telling is the fact that on the 2q arm of the human chromosome 2 is the unmistakable remains of the original chromosome centromere of the common ancestor of human and chimp 2q chromosome, at the same position as the chimp 2q centromere (this structure in humans no longer acts as a centromere for chromosome 2.
Conclusion The evidence that human chromosome 2 is a fusion of two of the common ancestor's chromosomes is overwhelming.”
Well here sits one who is completely under whelmed. Why the need for a “mechanism” or a “fusion event”? Why does a lot of commonality in sequencing between humans and chimps need any other explanation than that physically there is a lot of similarity between the two. You know, arms, legs, head, the systems for breathing, circulation, reproduction. One fact and an if is not overwhelming and it certainly doesn’t meet my criterion of what science should be.
Be whelmed.
Do you know what a centromere is?
It isn't a piece of DNA that codes for things used for breathing etc - those turn up in almost all organisms. It is a length of DNA that acts (literally) as a sort of handle. Enzymes grab hold of it to move the chromosome around during cell division and so on. It is structural.
So finding a redundant one is very striking.
It's like a house with a bricked-up window. No-one would build such a thing from scratch, so when you see one it is good evidence that there used to be a window there, and the building has been modified since it was originally designed. This redundant centromere is a sort of bricked-up window. One of very, very, many that have been found. They are very strong support for a hypothesis of descent with modification.
There are other even more strikingly unlikely things in the genome. For example there is a gene called Alu that is a dud copy of a gene coding for a small piece of RNA. It does nothing. Humans typically have over a million of them, each. Lying around uselessly. Other primates have similar sequences. There are hundreds of such coincidences between the genomes of closely related species. The numbers involved are huge - the unlikelihood of such sequences turning up other than by common descent is immense.
You need to use that kind of maths you use for working out how likely hands of cards are. People who study card games calculate the odds of getting various combinations. The odds against some of the errors and non-coding DNA turning up twice by accident are tiny.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
Well it looks like this thread will end with a whimper instead of a bang. It's too bad that afish concluded with a polarity of Noah is a myth vs. Evolution is a fact. He has no trouble finding something in evolution that is not concrete fact but very likely to a fully informed scientist but not him. This leaves him with what he has set up as the polar opposite: perhaps Noah is fact if evolution is not. This is the path to truth?
Noah is myth or Noah is not myth. The earth is more likely four thousand years old or four billion years old. Humans evolved from non-humans or they did not. These polarities cannot be mixed up to find truth. To say, "I see what appears to be a flaw in one of the statements about human evolution, therefore Noah is fact" is nonsensical reasoning. Truth cannot be found in this manner; preconceptions can be weakly defended with it though.
I just read Hume for the first time and noted that he found 250 years ago, ardent believers in religion who exhibit an ultra-scepticism in matters of science to the point that truth and religion both are thwarted. It is a good observation.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Ken has pointed out the significance of the chromosomal fusion evidence. We could introduce a load of other evidence -
* The twin nested hierarchy - complete with the interesting fact that the DNA of the coelocanth is more similar to that of the human than the herring - totally in accordance with evolutionary theory that sees tetrapods as evolving from the coelocanth's ancient relatives.
* Common retroviral insertions. The fact that we share many of these with chimps, fewer with gorillas, fewer still with orang-utans and so on and so forth - again confirming the twin nested hierarchy. Does it become a triplet nested hierarchy now?
* The therapsid series, clearly showing the migration of the reptilian jaw joint to the mammalian inner ear, whilst a new joint articulation forms for the mammal.
But all of it is as naught, for the mindset of the creationist is, and always is, "if I can find a way not to accept the clear implications of this evidence, regardless of how unlikely my alternative model is, I will prefer my alternative."
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl - Liberal Backslider:
...the mindset of the creationist is, and always is, "if I can find a way not to accept the clear implications of this evidence, regardless of how unlikely my alternative model is, I will prefer my alternative."
To which I would add, "and declare it as equal in validity."
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl - Liberal Backslider:
...the mindset of the creationist is, and always is, "if I can find a way not to accept the clear implications of this evidence, regardless of how unlikely my alternative model is, I will prefer my alternative."
To which I would add, "and declare it as equal in validity."
"More valid because it agrees with my interpretation of Scriptiure," surely?
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
afish,
You will appreciate then that for many of us it seems that, whilst there is a cumulative case for geology, the old earth and for evolution, where is the cumulative case for the literal truth of the Noah story? Where did the water come from? Where did it go? If mountains were raised up how fast did this happen and how? How is radioactive dating explained if it is NOT evidence for an old earth? How are the extraordinary genetic similarities and differences in DNA sequences get explained (similarity of structure won't do). Where did all the sedimentary rock come from? Why are the fossils arranged as they are? Why are there no pterodactyls in with the fossil birds? How did all the creatures fit in the ark and get managed by 8 people?
And you talk about unverifiablity!
Glenn
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by afish:
This will be my last post on this thread.
Yes, we all have lives to lead off the ship (I hope!). Thanks for your many posts and for your engagement with the issues afish!
Glenn
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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markporter
Shipmate
# 4276
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Posted
thanks for all the responses on the thread guys...its been really helpful. I have to admit that I'm beginning to think that evolution is the most likely scenario....but can I have a stab at Karl's chromosome 2 thing, just for the fun of it?
How about that we start with some sort of common design between apes and humans, and then after that we see the merging of the two chromosomes? so then a fusion event of this kind would be preserved, but you wouldn't have the descent. Not that I necessarily hold this view, I just wanted to put it forward.
Posts: 1309 | From: Oxford | Registered: Mar 2003
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