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Re: evolution vs creation
[Re: Irish_Farmer]
#69141
05/17/06 17:07
05/17/06 17:07
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,982
Frankfurt
jcl
OP
Chief Engineer
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OP
Chief Engineer
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Posts: 27,982
Frankfurt
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- To the argument whether insertion of foreign DNA sequences is mutation or not: A mutation is defined as an inheritable modification to the DNA. Thus processes involving inserting foreign DNA are also mutations. However this is just a matter of wording. The fact is that this process, whatever called, can add new sequences to a DNA that are then inherited, and thus can add information to the gene pool.
- As to the comet question: There are short-periodic, long-periodic, and non-periodic comets. Non-periodic comets are those that only appear once and then disappear into the depths of space. Comets begin to evaporate when they are close to the sun, thus their life span can be rather accurately calculated from their size, perihel and orbit period. I do not know offhand of a comet of only 10,000 years life span, but an example for a short period comet is the Halley comet with an estimated life span of 40,000 years. Long period comets are much longer lived, like millions of years.
When calculating the paths of comets, you can trace their path back to the place of their origin. Long period comets mostly come from a spherical region about 50,000 AE from the sun, named Oort cloud. Short period comets originate from within our solar system, either from the Kuiper Belt or the Asteroid Belt.
Comets do not indicate a young age of the universe. But indeed there were a lot more comets in the early time of the solar system. The geologic record of the earth shows that it was heavily bombarded by comets and asteroids until about 4 billion years ago.
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Re: evolution vs creation
[Re: jcl]
#69142
05/17/06 22:06
05/17/06 22:06
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
PHeMoX
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Netherlands
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I know many creationists claim that there is no such thing as an Oort cloud, but just because we haven't observed it yet, doesn't mean the effects of it's existence are not visible, and like jcl pointed out, you can derive the comets route and origin, so why exclude the Oort cloud?  Astrology without (some) assumptions, then there would hardly be anything left I guess. Take for example the birth of new stars, we would never ever be able to witness a full life cycle of a star. It just takes too long to witness, so we assume other stars are in a certain phase of their life cycle and that's how we figured out how the life cycle probably goes. I think there are enough stars in different phases to be able to put the puzzle together, like a frame by frame movie. For most assumptions there are motivations and reasons for scientists believing they are right. If an assumption turns out to be invalid, well then we just have to adapt or change the theory, not every false assumption will completely falsify a theory most of the time anyways. In science there is no truth in absolutes, it's knowledge and thus time related. If you are going to attack every unproven thing or every assumption science makes, then you might as well start with the creation theory itself, where's the proof for that, that's an assumption to isn't it? It's even an assumption that requires faith, because of the lack of any indirect evidence. Just my two cents. Cheers
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Re: evolution vs creation
[Re: PHeMoX]
#69145
05/19/06 06:11
05/19/06 06:11
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Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 718
Wisconsin
Irish_Farmer
User
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User
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Posts: 718
Wisconsin
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Quote:
To the argument whether insertion of foreign DNA sequences is mutation or not: A mutation is defined as an inheritable modification to the DNA.
Ok, well let me reword that then. When I say 'reword' I'm not speaking about rephrasing it, I mean let me retype exactly what I said before.
If its being inserted from a foreign DNA source, how does that explain the way the DNA was randomly written in the first place?
Moreover, why then can't a germ just immediately evolve into a human (-like cell) by absorbing human DNA (rhetoric). Even on 'mutations' like that there is a severe restriction on exactly what kind of change can take place. One of the biggest restrictions is that the DNA has to exist in the first place, fully created in some other organism.
Fundamentally, the germ is still the same germ it was before.
Quote:
In 1950 the idea was revived and proposed[1] by Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrick Oort to explain an apparent contradiction: comets are destroyed by several passes through the inner solar system, yet if the comets we observe had really existed for billions of years (since the generally accepted origin of the solar system), all would have been destroyed by now.
Uh huh. This kind of logic is why I refuse to believe evolution just HAS to be absolute truth, along with the big bang. If you're so hung up on the natural, how are you going to let the (scientific) imagination of some guy change the natural to explain why the accepted theory doesn't make sense? (Time and time again, no less).
Your theory has holes, and my theory has holes. Doesn't make either of them more or less true, but it does mean that I have no reason to accept yours as absolute truth like you seem to do. What if I were allowed to say that the reason we see stars that are billions of lightyears away is because there's an unobservable, hollow, spherical bend in space-time that surrounds our solar system at some arbitrary distance and makes it possible to see things that are far away, despite that our universe within the reference of earth is only about 6000 years old. After all, we can observe its affect since we see stars that are billions of lightyears away in a universe thats only (relatively) 6000 years old! Problem solved, theory-hole patched. Sure, some comets may seem to be about 40,000 years old, but that's just a contradiction that my theory will find evidence against at some later time. This is me, just using science!
"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."
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Re: evolution vs creation
[Re: Irish_Farmer]
#69146
05/19/06 13:28
05/19/06 13:28
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,982
Frankfurt
jcl
OP
Chief Engineer
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OP
Chief Engineer
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,982
Frankfurt
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Quote:
If its being inserted from a foreign DNA source, how does that explain the way the DNA was randomly written in the first place?
Through accumulation of advantageous mutations. Random DNA modifications and insertion of foreign DNA sequences are both mutations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation
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Comets: The Wikipedia quote is misleading - one of the few examples for bad presented information in Wikipedia. The Oort cloud does not "explain a contradiction". As I've already said in my post above, only long periodic comets have their orbits in the Oort cloud. The short periodic comets that are allegedly a contradiction originate in the Kuiper and Asteroid belts. Aside from that, the Oort cloud is not a real "cloud", it's just a region.
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Holes in theories: There is a big difference between "holes" in scientific theories and in creationism. In science, the holes are open questions that are not yet answered. The holes in creationism however are inconsistencies with logic, nature's laws and observations.
Science is motivated by the search for truth, while creationism is motivated by propagating literal bible belief. In creationism you begin with a fixed "theory" and then need to interpret the observations until they fit the theory. In science it's vice versa, you begin with observations and then develop a theory that fits the observations. Thus your unobservable hollow space time bend is unscientific because it is not based on observations.
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Re: evolution vs creation
[Re: jcl]
#69147
05/19/06 14:17
05/19/06 14:17
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 11,321
Virginia, USA
Dan Silverman
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
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Posts: 11,321
Virginia, USA
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Quote:
In creationism you begin with a fixed "theory" and then need to interpret the observations until they fit the theory. In science it's vice versa, you begin with observations and then develop a theory that fits the observations.
You mean, like when a fossil is found and dated? What I mean here is this: they find a fossil and date it based on the strata it is found in. The scientist then places an approximate date on the fossil based on this information. Then the fossil is sent to a lab to be more "accurately" dated. Many tests are done to determine the date. If the fossil was stated to have been 20,000 years old and carbon dating says it is only 1,000 then another method is tried. If that dating method states it is some other date than the one the original scientist placed on the fossil (based on the strata it was found in) then the next test is done and the next until, finally, one of the tests comes within the ballpark of the original scientit's date.
This is done "scientifically" because of a "fixed theory" and observations (as shown above) are interpreted until they fit the theory. In fact, the dating of fossils is very strange. As indicated, the initial date of a fossil is based on the geologica layer (strata) in which they are found. Yet the dating of these strata is based on the fossil record. This is circular reasoning. You date a fossil based on the strata which, itself, is dated based on the fossil record.
Creationism is not trying to force observations to fit a theory. Like any other since, "creationism" is an idea. The science is to test the idea and see if the observations bear the idea witness ... the same thing the evolutionist are to be doing.
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Re: evolution vs creation
[Re: jcl]
#69149
05/19/06 16:40
05/19/06 16:40
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 11,321
Virginia, USA
Dan Silverman
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 11,321
Virginia, USA
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From Wikipedia on Geologic Time Scale: Quote:
The identification of strata by the fossils they contained, pioneered by William Smith, Georges Cuvier, and Alexandre Brogniart in the early 19th century, enabled geologists to divide Earth history more finely and precisely. It also enabled them to correlate strata across national (or even continental) boundaries. If two strata (however distant in space or different in composition) contained the same fossils, chances were good that they had been laid down at the same time. Detailed studies of the strata and fossils of Europe produced, between 1820 and 1850, the sequence of geological periods still used today.
Quote:
Advances in the latter part of the 20th century allowed radioactive dating to provide relatively firm dates to geological horizons. In the intervening century and a half, geologists and paleontologists constructed time scales based solely on the relative positions of different strata and fossils.
My contention is that while radiometric dating methods are used that there are so many various ways of tesing and, in many cases, a variety of results are obtained. When strata are tested they are tested with a theory already in place. That theory is that the strata must be within a certain age. Tests that do not give a date within that age are disregarded (for a variety of reasons) and tests that get within the ballpark are often accepted. There may be valid reasons for ignoring some of the tests, but the "fixed theory" of the age of the strata was set long ago. The idea of dating the strata by the fossils they contain is "set in stone" and thus the dating methods rely on this as a means to get a general idea of the age of the strata.
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Re: evolution vs creation
[Re: Dan Silverman]
#69150
05/19/06 16:51
05/19/06 16:51
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 11,321
Virginia, USA
Dan Silverman
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 11,321
Virginia, USA
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BTW - I should never have mentioned carbon dating. You are absolutely correct in what you said about it and dating geological layers: Quote:
It should be understood that estimating the ages of rocks using radiometric dating is an entirely separate technique from the radiocarbon (C-14) method for dating organic remains. Radiometric dating of rocks is based on the decay of long lived isotopes of Potassium, Thorium, and Uranium. Radiocarbon dating is based on the decay of the short lived C-14 isotope and is irrelevant to determining the age of the Earth.
But I think there may be problems with these dating methods as well. For example, the above quote states that they measure the decay of isotopes such as Potassium, Thorium and Uranium. But there could be problems. The dating methods ASSUME that there is X amount of these isotopes to begin with in order to judge the age of these rocks. While these isotopes do decay and their decay rates are known, there are other ways of introducing materials into rock, to remove materials and to even increase/decrease decay rates. As a result, these dating methods are guesswork at best.
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