The Big Bang, Abiogenesis, and Evolution

That's a clumsy metaphor. It should be more like: A biologist believes in biology (though "belief" isn't the right term), a creationist believes in creation, a Christian believes in Christ, and so on.A Christian doesn't necessarily believe in creation and a creationist doesn't necessarily believe in Christ.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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That's the beauty of science. Everything is open to improvement and correction. It isn't mired in "absolutes" or "proof". (You'd do well to forget those two words.)

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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They don't. "Absolutes" are the realm of the confused. Nobody who knows anything about science claims it's absolute.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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I suggested that you forget the words "absolute" and "proof" because you don't have any understanding of them. Neither has any value in discussions of science.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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You can't divorce reality from science.Unless you can relate it to the Big Bang, Abiogenesis and Evolution somehow, we'll have to take your misunderstanding of science to another topic. If they're seeking The Truth™, they want a cult, not EvC.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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I never said anything about "reducing" an open mind to "just" science.You demonstrated what your idea of an "open mind" is when you applauded CTD for his patently closed mind. I suspect that most evolutionists would ask you to get off our side until you learn something about what science is.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Not quite.Evolution is a fact. Period. It can be observed, just like gravity can be observed. Evolution would be a fact even if there never was a Theory of Evolution.A theory is an explanation of a fact. The Theory of Evolution explains how the fact of evolution works.As I understand it, the Big Bang is considered to be a fact by cosmologists. I'm not sure if there is a Big Bang Theory - i.e. an explanation of how the Big Bang happened.Abiogenesis is also considered to be a fact. Once there was no life, now there is life. It must have started somehow, somewhere. We have no complete explanation yet as to how it could have happened, but we have a lot of pieces of the puzzle. We likely never will have an explanation (theory) of how it did happen, since chemicals don't leave fossil evidence.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Hardly. Going from, "In some cases if a theory has been rigorously tested and supported it is considered a fact," to, "A theory is an explanation of a fact," is no nitpick. It's a fundamental misunderstanding.The facts come first. There may or may not be a theory to explain them.A theory never "becomes" a fact.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Evolution is a property of living things. It would still happen even if there was no "idea" of evolution. If there never were any intelligent beings to have ideas, there would still be evolution. That sounds like the old tree-falls-in-the-forest koan. You can semanticize all you want about what constitutes a "fact". What's important is that the phenomenon happens whether or not anybody observes it or has any ideas about it.That's why the old creationist fallacy of "you weren't there" is so wrong. The events still happened and left traces that we can observe. Yes, it's true that chemicals can leave traces of what happened in the past - e.g. banded iron formations. I just meant that we don't have the equivalent of fossil evidence for abiogenesis. It's easy enough to recognize a trilobite or T. Rex fossil. It's a little harder to trace the ancestry of an adenine molecule. I think you're still missing it. A theory can be considered robust, reliable, useful, etc. but a theory and a fact are two different things.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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First, it isn't "believe in", it's "accept". Accepting well-tested and documented methods is not "belief". It's just good thinking.Second, if you don't accept the dating methods, you have no claim to understanding anything about science because they're intertwined with every aspect of science. You can't discard the methods or the dates without throwing all of science out the window.We have a lot of dating threads here - including a particularly good one about correlations of different dating methods. By all means, take any doubts you have about dating methods over there.Your quote from jar doesn't address what I said about facts and theories at all. He was saying, I think, that a fact is a fact because it tallies with other facts. For example, the age of the earth - 4.55 billion years, give or take - is a fact because every piece of evidence we have supports it. It isn't "proven", but it's a fact.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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I did. In Message 181, you said:

quote:

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Even if we were 99.9999999999999999/100 sure that Abiogenesis occured we would still not have fact.

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to which jar responded in Message 182:

quote:

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Actually, there is a point reached where the confidence level is so high that use of the term FACT is acceptable.

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We would call abiogenesis a fact long before we reached the 99.9999999999999999/100 threshold. As jar also said:

quote:

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Certainly there is the possibility that new evidence might be found that will show that what was considered Fact is wrong. If that happens the term is no longer applicable.

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which is why we can apply the term "fact" without a 100% confidence level being necessary.And, as I have been saying, a fact and a theory are two different things. Nowhere does jar's post suggest otherwise.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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We'll see when he gets back from his adventures. I'd be surprized if he disagrees (much) with me. And judging by your consistent/persistent misunderstandings in this thread....

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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What you're saying is that a Creator/God doesn't "exist".

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place”
-- Joseph Goebbels
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