I know how science is done. Evolutionary science is not done in the same way. In evolutionary science, since the very beginning of it, speculation has often, many times, taken the place of actual observation and experimentation. This is true for interpretation of hominid fossils, Haeckel’s drawings of embryos, archeopteryx, to name only three obvious cases. That’s how evolutionary science is done. Real science tests every hypothesis rigorously before making public conclusions. Evolutionary science speculates in such a way to turn fantasy into a faux-reality. Evolutionary science perpetually deludes the non-scientific public, and confuses and obscures the demarcation between fantasy and reality.
Again, a non-scientific way of reasoning. Tactics have nothing to do with the verity of conclusions.
Uh huh. And some evolutionists believe that aliens brought life to the planet. So what. Creation scientists do observe a globe, fly around it, understand the solar system.
"Wilmore (Flat Earth Society vice president Michael Wilmore, an Irishman), counts himself among the true believers. (of a flat earth). "My own convictions are a result of philosophical introspection and a considerable body of data that I have personally observed, and which I am still compiling,” he said.
Strangely, Wilmore and the society’s president, a 35-year-old Virginia-born Londoner named Daniel Shenton, both think the evidence for global warming is strong, despite much of this evidence coming from satellite data gathered by NASA, the kingpin of the “round Earth conspiracy.” They also accept evolution and most other mainstream tenets of science."
So if flat earthers believe in evolution, then obviously, evolution is absurd as well.
Well I can’t say much about “evolutionists” since I’m not a biologist but I can tell you that as far as I can make out, geochronologists generally DO follow the rules of science – and certainly, the rules of mathematics and measurement.
As for YEC, you just have to look at the RATE project to see that they don’t even come close. Presenting tiny samples with huge error bars as “overwhelming” evidence for fantasies about accelerated nuclear decay on a scale that, by their own admission, would have raised the temperature of the Earth to 22,000°C, is not science by any stretch of the imagination.
How many papers have you published on the topic? I’m not talking about even reading secondhand accounts of what such papers say but I mean actual published papers in the field of evolutionary biology or genetics.
Or we can go broader and ask how many papers have you read on genetics? Or on hominid fossils? Again, second hand reports do not count. I mean actual published papers.
So you are denying the speculation and errors made in Haeckel’s drawings? which were and maybe still are found after many years, in high school science textbooks? You are saying the highschool science textbooks are not good science? You agree that when it comes to evolution, they are tools of indoctrination? Which would not apply to the physics, chemistry, or organic chemistry in the same highschool books?
You are denying that the speculation about a particular tooth, or one or two bones, has led to the drawings of hominid succession in the science teaching textbooks? Are you implying that all these poor science teachers have mistakenly misunderstood the evidence within the evolutionary paradigm? And no “real” scientist has corrected this faux science? (or maybe not until decades later). You call this science? Really?
You are denying that the speculation about archeopteryx was so exciting because it would substantiate the claim of reptile to bird descent? You are denying that wanting so bad to see it, is what caused a misinterpretation of the evidence? These are the things that we know about. The things that are obvious. So it becomes reasonable to suspect the evolutionary faith assumptions, and the lack of open-mindedness when it comes to evolutionary “science”.
Oh come on John. Do you seriously expect us to believe that school textbooks are still relying on Haeckel’s nineteenth century drawings in 2019 when high resolution digital photographs of embryos have been available as an ACCURATE alternative for DECADES?
Are you talking about Nebraska Man here? I don’t know if you’ve heard the news yet, but Nebraska Man was retracted. In 1927. Ninety-two years ago. Even before then it was regarded with scepticism by the scientific community. The speculative drawing of it was made by an artist, not a scientist, in a popular magazine, not an academic journal. And it has never been cited in school textbooks as evidence for anything, evolution or otherwise.
In any case, paleontologists and anthropologists do not go on just “one or two bones.” They go on thousands of them. And they don’t just “speculate about” them either. On the contrary, they measure them.
We would be perfectly fine without Archaeopteryx. A nice sequence for you:
Note: these changes occur temporally. Birds have remnants of many genes like genes for making teeth, etc. This is not some imaginary game but one backed with lots of evidence.
Yes Haeckel sinned. Scientists knew he took some liberty but do you know what they found instead? Embryos develop not through adult stages of prior evolution but through embryonic stages of prior evolution. Do you know what the evidence from embryology is for common descent? It’s far greater than Haeckel could have ever imagined. Should we discuss this here or just keep telling myths that anti-science groups propagate?
sure, they measure bones. of course they do. who said they don’t. That is not the point. How did evolutionary speculation end up in school textbooks? And why did it take so long to remove these speculations from the textbooks if they were not real science? Piltdown man, Lucy fossil, more examples of incorrect diagnosis, based on misinterpretation of the “measured” bones.
As one of my profs stated, half of what we teach you is wrong, we just don’t know what half. Such is the nature and beauty of science. It does not claim ultimate truth, just our best approximation based on the data, and subject to change and modification as data is added and refined. While there are mistakes made, they are caught and corrected by scientists as new data comes in. Frauds are exposed by scientists and while not perfect generally do a pretty good lob of self policing. Rarely does a fraudulent study make it far in the peer review process, though there is pressure to publish and no doubt some try and may succeed short term.
John, I don’t really care whether you think evolution is science or not. All I’m asking is that if you are going to try and argue against it, please make sure that your arguments are based on up to date information. Piltdown Man hasn’t been a thing in evolutionary science since 1953.
In any case, isolated examples of scientific fraud here and there do not prove that whole disciplines are fraudulent. Especially not when the fraud concerned was exposed sixty-six years ago, and when there have been hundreds of thousands of other peer reviewed studies in the subject since.
One of the more popular high school science textbooks replaced the drawings over 20 years ago. And they never taught Haeckel’s hypothesis as being true.
As a YEC. I do not have a distrust of science. In fact, I love science, but science is just a collection of information from fallible people who can gather for themselves fallible data. Everyone has a worldview, and one’s worldview can greatly affect one’s perception of the world they see around them i.e. “climate change” If you are a secularist scientist, then you will see the climate change model in a worse case scenario, because secularist scientists do not have the foundation in God’s promise in keeping the world till He is ready to end it, as Christian scientists have that foundation, and do not see “climate change” as a grave threat to the existence of mankind. I hope that helps. God bless
You have a good point, but I think you simplify the view of Christians in general and Christian scientists in particular to fit your particular worldview.
Most Christians who take science seriously in the EC camp and others beyond that group do not see climate change as a “threat to mankind” that would counter God’s will for humanity, but rather see it as being a result of poor stewardship of God’s good creation and as a failure of mankind to fulfill our role in “tending the garden” and fulfilling our role as being made in the image of God.
Regarding “keeping the world until he is ready to end it,” I am reminded of the covenant with Israel, and how while God preserved and fulfilled his part, wandering away from the will of God made the path rocky and painful for Israel.
You are right that I do have a worldview, but my worldview in this particular circumstance is governed by, (Genesis 1:28)…There I am taking Genesis literal again
"And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and SUBDUE it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Now, I guess the dividing lines falls on where exactly does subduing end and where poor stewardship begins. Most of the causes attributed to climate change i.e. overpopulation, combustible engines etc… are not out of the subduing category in my interpretation of scripture.
The garden is gone with the fall of man. The earth is now full of thorns and thistles, and such a planet must be subdued. The earth is not as fragile as many like to paint it.
Friend, I recall a time when I felt the same way as you as a biology major in college. Before the human genome was sequenced and comparative genomics possible, there remained plausible deniability about evolution based on a sketchy fossil record. I was certain that interpretations of the data were being guided by the wishful thinking of secularists. Thirty years later, the genomic evidence for common descent is so compelling that the fossil evidence is merely corroborating evidence–further confirmation of the obvious to those who are willing to take the time to understand the genetics. I commend it to you. You are not likely to find more than a handful of geneticists that interpret something other than common ancestry. And these are likely to dogmatically hold to presuppositions that preclude such a possibility based on their biblical/theological beliefs.
Worldview does not affect the results of measurement in the slightest. Mount Everest is 8,848 metres tall whether you look down at it from an aeroplane or up at it from base camp.
The rules of measurement, and how it is interpreted, are the same no matter what your worldview. Error bars are calculated exactly the same way whether you’re a Christian, a Muslim, an atheist or an Oompa Loompa. Trigonometry, partial differential equations and linear regression work exactly the same way for Brian Cox and Neil deGrasse Tyson as they do for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope.
Try replacing the word “scientist” with “measurer” or “science” with “measurement.”
Does “secular measurement” even sound like it means anything?
