Thanks for your responses.
You can thank me by learning from them.
I’ll thank you, if there’s something to learn from you. You haven’t shown me how you personally verify and prove scientific claims on whale evo, which is what I asked for at the beginning of me writing in this forum, so I can prove it too, otherwise, I can only accept and believe by faith and trust .
Not only is the “Evolution News” site ID propaganda, not reliable information, careful reading shows that they spun this story out of the AP press report, not a formal scientific description. The specimen in question has been referred to the Basilosauridae, but it is just a jaw and not very definitive. Even the press reports say “possibly” the oldest fully aquatic whale. And the date claimed in Evolution News is incorrect; MLP 11-II-21-3 (the specimen in question) is now dated at 40-46 million (Eocene Basilosaurid Whales from the La Meseta Formation, Marambio (Seymour) Island, Antarctica).
I have dug up fossil whales, including a rather primitive one (4 limbs still fairly prominent), but that was only a scrap of a tooth from one after they were able to spread from Pakistan to the southeastern U.S. But the original information in the account of whale evolution does come from people who have done extensive work on them. Believing the Evolution News account by someone who has not done any of the work as grounds for rejecting the work of those who have carefully researched fossil whales is not being consistent. Of course, Evolution News is designed to look impressive.
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I highly doubt that. If you are claiming contamination is an issue for radiometric dating then you should easily understand what I posted.
You can learn mammal anatomy all on your own, no money required.
Most people go with the experts on things outside of their own expertise. When my car breaks down I go to a car repair guy, and trust his judgement. When I’m sick I go to a doctor. When I have a serious leak I call a plumber.
Do you think there is some science wide conspiracy that has gone on for over 200 years that would include untold numbers of Christian scientists? When over 99% of experts agree on a conclusion, that seems to be a good reason to at accept it until you can find some reason as to why it is wrong.
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Thanks for that. I have watch a debate about this between Jackson wheat [evo] and long story short[creation] about 3-4 yrs ago or there about’s. The overview for the possible dates collectively was between 40-55 mya, suggesting a possible 40-46mya date for the evo and 49mya for creation . My point wasn’t to debate claimed scientific papers for the age of the bone, but simply to inform someone who didn’t seem to know that the jaw bone existed and they can search it out themselves.
Evotion news was what I clicked on 1st as I thought that’s what it was. I didn’t want a creation website link as they may view it negatively. Anyway, my error. For the age of the post being 2011, [which I mentioned], i think the general mainstream scientific accepted age ATT was 49mya, so the report from a glance looked accurate.
My main point I am trying to get across though isn’t the age of the bone, but my options of being able to personally verify the scientific work, which from where I’m sitting I can’t do it, so I can only accept and believe whatever the say it is.
Pinning down the age of the bone and all the associated mollusks (many of which I photographed in my previous job) is challenging, but the younger date seems to be holding up. But the basic problem is that Evolution News spun the grand claims based just on the popular news story, and has not bothered to make corrections. The fact that Evolution News’ source was not a formal scientific paper should raise suspicion about how careful their research was.
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I got booted out of a small group Bible study because I objected to the phrase “What it means to me” and insisted that the meaning cannot be separated from the context, so any meaning we think we have found has to be tested against the context (not just literary but historical).
The initial physical conditions of rocks are easily determined, e.g. because crystals are not deposited already deformed. There are no “parent daughter rates” involved in physical analysis, that’s radiological.
Ah – I sit corrected. 
[trivia: the phrase “I stand corrected” has nothing to do with physical positioning of the body but refers to the stance/position a person has put forth]
And if done as the guys in the geology department where I studied did, they weren’t even told the source of the materials being dated.
They are deadly serious, but it is still a joke.
My first reaction to that was, “Why?” It doesn’t really matter to me if evolution can be verified, only that people think clearly about it.
I’m going to be picky . . . .
“He”. The Holy Spirit is a Person, and gets personal pronouns. I suppose that given the gender in Hebrew is feminine you might go with “She”, but just because Greek πνεῦμα is neuter doesn’t justify using “it” especially because in English we don’t use “it” to refer to people.
In my limited sampling it appears that Evolution News is not about reporting but about pouncing – they grab things they think support their views and hit the press without further ado.
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[[quote=“T_aquaticus, post:207, topic:43863”]
I highly doubt that. If you are claiming contamination is an issue for radiometric dating then you should easily understand what I posted.
[/quote]
I wasn’t claiming contamination, I was asking how do you know if it was contaminated.
Here is my quote.
Are able to determine the original conditions of the rock and if there was contamination during it’s time before you examine it, if the parent daughter rates are a constant.
You answered the question with
If they are due to contamination, how is it that ages based on completely independent parent/daughter isotope pairs return the same age? This would require very specific and controlled contamination which simply isn’t believable.
A fair enough response.
My response is how do I personally verity that. My expectation is to accept and believe, but I’m open to verification process that is workable for me.
Will that prove a 4 legged land animal changing into a whale?
Not a good example. I get what you’re trying to say as a comparison, but I can verity these situations.
If my brakes are now working, then I know he’s fixed them. Same with the rest of them.
Now e are starting to dig a little bit into what I’m trying to explain.
No I don’t think there is a conspiracy. I’ve never said any scientist were wrong in what they thought was true, be it secular or christian scientist. They’re all doing a job that they believe in, so I have no issue there.
My main objection is can I personally verify a claim [eg whale evo] that is regarded as a proven fact based on the evidence provided and interpreted by the scientist. 99.9% of the time it is no. That then leaves me with a accept and believe option, which squarely puts it into the belief category, which I’m totally fine with as an option, that’s what I did upto the age of 40-45, but I’m told constantly it is not a belief.
See it isn’t proving evo wrong, because we can’t do that, we can’t also prove creation as well. What we do know is life on the planet exist, but how it started and continued through to today is what we don’t know. Was it a long journey or a short one
I see it as 2 choices, maybe more fringes choices as well, but mainly the evo v creation thing and I know the creation side of things is a belief and that part is verifiable and factual to me. The other one is explained as factual but unverifiable, but falls for me into the belief category.
You made the point of 99% of experts agree on a conclusion. This is the fundamental flaw. People agreeing on something to be true,doesn’t make it true. It is the same argument for atheist who say the same thing about believing in God doesn’t make God real. I see a bit of irony there but evo has evidence for it’s support that separates the 2.
I find the two different stories and how people defend them so strongly fascinating from an outside perspective.
Do you think people[general populace] just accept scientist explanation of historical science, or accept and believe the explanation to be true.
I’ve noticed no-one likes to use the word believe in evolutionary discussions. This has become an interesting observation.
That’s fair enough. I agree with you, they should update their information if they are still active, which I can see a day old report on Neuroscience & Mind, so I couldn’t agree more.
This was one of the issues I have raised in this forum with Gingrich and Thewissen on their discoveries of Pakicetus and Ambulocetus. They added their own conclusions on what they thought the animals were to look like despite not having all the fossils to verify it. I would’ve preferred if they said this part of the fossil is missing and we don’t know for certain what it looks like, but under the evo paradigm we suspect this, this and this, but we could be wrong. Just be honest and transparent.
Unfortunately it seem there is a degree of deception that has a hold of both paradigms for their respective reasons and worldview beliefs from what I have seen.
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So has that been tested on younger rocks and the crystals are not deformed. Is that how to understand what you said.
Nice
Might be, but I’m in no position to say either way. I’ll keep the door of information, understanding, verification and beliefs open and go from there.
That’s ok if it doesn’t matter to you. You have that right to see it any way you want.
For me personally, this is the clearest I have ever seen things in r/e to things of this nature.
If evolution was classed as a belief , then I have no problem with it. I have no problem with creation as it states it as a belief, so I accept it could be wrong. Evolution doesn’t have the verification process for something that isn’t a belief, which in a roundabout way, makes it a belief.
The holy spirit is a spirit first, but more of a personal spirit that dwells within a persons physical body, so it isn’t a person as such, but a living spiritual being. That’s my thoughts on it, right or wrong. It is an interesting thought process thinking about and understanding it.
I’m happy calling “it” a voice as that is what I hear and that is how I have described it, but it is hard to get away from calling it “it”
Actually the deformation rates without breaking have been tested in laboratories. Some are fragile enough that no results have yet been obtained, or at least hadn’t when I was taking geology courses.
That’s not what the scriptures indicate; the Holy Spirit is a distinct entity Who acts, thinks, speaks, and more totally apart from dwelling within a person.
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That is what they said. You described it yourself earlier:
What they did not do was tell you the nostrils were at the tip of the snout and show you a picture of the fossil with a mug of tea strategically placed so that you couldn’t see that the tip of the snout was missing.
Once again, verify or believe. I feel like I’m repeating myself, but I consider that to be a false contrast. It’s confusing different categories. Suppose I asked you if you were married or unmarried. That would make sense. But if I asked you whether you were married or a wheelbarrow, that would be nonsense.
To verify X is to look at facts or information or reasons or evidence or testimony, all the material that might contribute to determining the truth of X.
To believe X is to commit personally to its truthfulness.
Suppose I’m in the market for a new car. I see one I like. I take it for a test drive. I check for signs of rust. More realistically, I get my local garage to do a pre-purchase inspection and report, because I know absolutely nothing about car engines. I put the petrol in, and hopefully it goes. Other than that, I’m dead in the water. And the report comes back that the car is in excellent condition.
So here’s the thing. At this point I have verified the condition of the car. And note that the verification is valid despite my knowing nothing about cars. I have verified it in this case precisely by trusting the testimony of someone who does know. But I haven’t believed yet. That only happens when I decide to pay over the money and buy the car.
And it’s rational to do this. Every day of our life we make decisions about truthfulness. And in many of them, we have to rely on the knowledge of others with more wisdom on the relevant subjects.
Regarding Thomas, no I don’t think he would have accepted the declaration that Jesus was risen without verifying it for himself. So my question to you is: Given that you can’t touch Jesus’ wounds, how have you verified that he is alive?
Regarding evolution, yes I believe that it is true. And I have chosen to believe it is true because I have verified it. And a large part of my verification is trusting the collected wisdom of many scientists, both Christian and secular, from a wide range of scientific disciplines. It’s not a belief because I lack verification; it’s belief based on verification.
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And that’s what I was answering. One of the ways is cross correlation with other parent/daughter systems. In fact, U/Pb dating in zircons has a built in check because there are two U/Pb pairs:
You can find a half life calculator here: Half-Life Calculator
So let’s say a zircon is dating to 65 million years before present. Let’s plug in those values in the half life calculator to see what the ratios of the parent and daughter isotopes should be for both U/Pb pairs.
238U to 206Pb: 1:0.01003
235U to 207Pb: 1:0.06149
Let’s look at 40K/40Ar:
So a half life of 1.2 billion years and a conversion rate of 10.7%. We can plug this into the calculator and then multiply by 0.107.
40K to 40Ar in 65 million years: 1:0.0037939
Rb/Sr is an isochron, so it isn’t as simple as plugging in the values into the calculator, but don’t forget it. Rb/Sr isochrons ages are also based on specific ratios of isotopes.
So how is contamination going to do this so that all of these different isotopes with different half lives and different needed ratios are all going to arrive at the same date? It can’t. If contamination is an issue then the dates should be all over the place when comparing different isotope pairs. What we see with multiple isotope pairs giving the same date for the same geologic layer is a confirmation of how reliable these methods are.
It’s the data reported in papers. If young Earth creationism depends on scientists reporting false data for the last 200 years then I don’t think young Earth creationism is worth taking seriously.
It will allow you to find a mixture of cetacean and terrestrial mammal features that the theory of evolution predicted we should see.
And your answer to that is “Well, I don’t understand how brakes work, so I can’t verify it”.
The answer is no because you stop yourself from verifying it.
We can prove the theory of evolution wrong. Here are 29 possible falsifications of the theory:
Each of those 29 sections describes evidence that if observed would potentially falsify the theory.
No, it doesn’t make anything true, but it should indicate how strongly the evidence favors one side.
In many cases, yes. The general public doesn’t think there is some grand conspiracy in science, so when 99% of the experts agree the general public tends to think the evidence is solid, and it is.
That’s because science reaches conclusions, not beliefs. Germs aren’t a belief. Gravity isn’t a belief. Atoms aren’t a belief.
Also, scientists are careful to differentiate between beliefs and conclusions. For example, if a scientist states something like “I believe TNF-alpha may play a role in viral pneumonia” they are usually speculating based on limited evidence and their experience in the field. If a scientist states “We conclude that TNF-alpha plays a role in viral pneumonia” they are saying they have strong evidence and a solid conclusion. Science uses more formal language in these areas than may be used in the general population.
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It’s more like ‘Well, I don’t understand how brakes work, so I can’t verify whether the mechanic fixed them, or they came unstuck by themselves and the mechanic charged me $500 for doing nothing.’
Refusal to try is a more effective barrier than inability ever can be.
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Let’s review it then. You are right, the brakes may of fixed themselves.
What I can verify is the brakes are now working compared to when they weren’t. I then either choose to accept and believe that the mechanic fixed them and not some random, unguided fix of themselves, which also could be true.
I didn’t write that. Please fix your ‘quote’.
I did acknowledge that with
[quote=“Rhythmic_supercat, post:212, topic:43863”]
A fair enough response.
I am acknowledging there are means and methods for dating rocks. What I can compare that too is whale language. I acknowledge there is a whale language, but I can’t comprehend it, so keep that in mind when you send me methods or science papers to prove your point. I’m not arguing against you that they are wrong. I’m highlighting that they could be true, but I can’t verify it, so my default position is accept and believe it… Nothing more, nothing less.
I don’t hold the yec postion as such.
The bible doesn’t tell us the age of the earth. Yec get their 6k from counting the ages from Adam to Jesus. They then include “in the beginning” as part of day1 during the 6 day creation.
My position is I don’t know when “in the beginning” was That is an indeterminate time… I accept it could 6k or 4.6 Bya or older. I don’t know the age of the earth personally myself, but I do know of the different claims for it and why. If people want to thrash that out between themselves, then leave me out of it. I’m only interested in what I can verify and what requires belief. The age of the earth for me regardless of it true age is currently a belief.
I can’t verify that these predictions were made, but I’ll grant them that they did. What I see though is 2 animals that once lived and are now extinct. That part I can see. What i don’t see in the individual fossils of a species that I’ve seen on the internet are any changes within that one species that would clearly indicate it is in fact changinging to something else.
You only see changes in a different animal compared to the 1st one. By rights if we use pakicetus as an eg we should see some of those small changes starting to happen before we get to ambulocetus, but clearly still a pakicetus. Same with ambulocetus, we should find some small changes altering from pakicetus to ambulocetus. As far as I know they haven’t found anything like that, for any animal. If it is true these animals evolved, and providing of course that during these small changes happening that they got fossilised, then eventually they will be dug up. There’s a prediction.
The problem is I see this in every eg of transitioning animals. We are shown two different species that have some differences as we see in extant animals, but In the one species on it own, we don’t see any small changes pointing towards it becoming something else, not from what I have seen so far, maybe you have seen them, so I happy to have an update on this type of information.
No, I can verify that they work by using them after they are fixed, that’s the verification. . I don’t have to understand how they work to prove to myself they are fixed. That makes sense doesn’t it?
If I was stopping myself i wouldn’t be in this forum. The issue is, the methods you use to verify isn’t something I can follow. Think back to the whale language eg I gave earlier, so your process that you send me simply are out’ve my depth as it is for most people. Can you acknowledge that most people will not get a grasp of rock dating methods?
None of that proves that you can prove evolution to be wrong. Maybe there was a miscommunication here???. That was showing 29 evidences for macroevolution being true, [unless I’m reading it wrong, which wouldn’t be the 1st time] YES, you can throw out some hypotheses and theories as new information comes in, but as I stated you can’t prove the overarching concept of evo to be wrong. There is verifiable evidence in the observable micro evolution, which is the backbone for the explanations of macro being true using the “reverse it back in time method, along with what evidence [fossils] they find as support for the theory”. That’s my basic understanding of it anyway.
Yes but these are unfolding in real time and can be tested and observed and repeated. If a scientist can test and observe a conclusion in their own respective labs and get the same results ,then even creationist scientist acknowledge and agree.
YEC creationist scientist don’t argue against speciation, hybridisation, adaptation, gravity or germs. It is the historical sciences that causes a problem. We don’t see one species of animal changing to another species of animal completely different from it’s original form. It isn’t observable science and it isn’t something that has happened in the lab eg linsky experiment. Currently the bacteria are still bacteria, they have modified so I have read, but are still bacteria. If it was however observable, repeatable science. I have no doubt they would also accept historical evolution as tey do with most sciences. I’m not sure if you see why yec creationist have a problem with that. You don’t have to agree with it, but can you understand their reasoning? just out of curiosity.