Key points of Evolution

I would go more for the fact that the people are confused. To me it seems that a large percent of the American population does not know what either Evolution nor creation entails.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other

A definition I found for patronizing is:condescending: treating somebody as if he or she is less intelligent or knowledgeable than yourself.This is how I defined friendly in number 5 and 6.

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5. Behaving as though allied in a struggle or cause.
6. Acting as one who sympathizes with a group, cause or movement.
  —wumpini

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I know you probably could not read my mind but the idea I was trying to propose was that we are all part of the human race, the same cause. It would be friendly to behave as though we were all in this stgruggle together, and sympathize with one another because we all have difficulties in life.I know that is a little too much to expect from humanity. I think I still have a lot of idealism left in me for some reason. I agree!

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

Science or reality cannot be friendly or unfriendly. People are the only ones who understand what it means to be friendly. Even animals cannot be friends (although many would like to thinks so). We have a choice of how we present reality to others. If you are a doctor and you know a patient is going to die, you present that information to a relative in a loving manner (I hope) even though it is reality. You can tell by the posts on this forum. Some of the posts are friendly, and some are not even though they may be presenting the same information. I see these two compared a lot on this forum. It was inevitable that man figure out the shape of the earth. He is presently living on the earth, and it has a shape. If man evolved then why did it take him millions of years to figure this out? I don’t know. I guess that is a question for another thread. The point I am trying to make now is the age of the earth is different. Yes, the age of the earth is the age of the earth. It is a fact. However, we will never be able to determine the age of the earth through observation as we determined the shape of the earth. There is the necessity of too many unobservable assumptions.My computer connection is very, very slow. That precludes me from searching a lot of things on the internet. Therefore, I have not been able to search your forum for a many of the items that interest me. The age of the earth is one of those. Sooner or later I will throw out one of your PRATT’s, and all those that have been waiting for that opportunity will be ready to pounce. I assure you that when I do that it will be to attempt to stimulate my understanding through the exchange of ideas. Maybe we can both gain something.I did have an idea. I will run it by you. Do you remember that movie “Back to the Future?” If scientists could get on the ball and build one of those time machines then they could sell tickets to the creationists and take them back to the time when there were no people. Problem solved.I don’t think I would get overambitious and take them back to T=0. You might get squashed.Have a good day.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

So we should sugar-coat the evidence and speak in half-truths? Sometime the kindest thing is to tell the truth. If a friend is engaged in self-destructive behavior and denial you don't ignore the problem, but help them confront it. It took a while to figure our what was superstition? Science is only some 200 years old, before that people didn't really test concepts for validity. Knowledge compounds.The reason that these are compared a lot is because they are similar: beliefs based on superstition that are contradicted by the facts. Have you ever honestly confronted the age of the earth? Really? We have a number of ways to remove the effect of unknowns, of making correlations, and measuring things. The age of the earth is one of these. If you are truly interested in some of the simple ways to see that that the earth is older than several thousand years, then see Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III).How do you explain all the evidence of an old earth? That the evidence is lying? Ah yes, just turn fantasy into reality, <> fingers, click your ruby slippers, twitch your nose. Sorry. didn't work.

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Can we measure the past? yes. We can do it in relative ways and we can do it in some more exacting ways in places where we can then test other methods. And we don't need to play with fantasy to do it.

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Give Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III) a try and see what I mean.

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Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

No, think about this.Imagine the first scientist getting up at a scientific conference and saying: "Good news, chaps! I have discovered the age of the Earth!"And they reply, with polite skepticism: "And how did you determine it?"And he says: "I made many unobservable assumptions."Really, how do you see that going over?So now imagine the second scientist who says that ...How do you see that going?It's very easy to say that geologists base their knowledge of the age of the earth on "too many unobservable assumptions", but when you think about it for a bit, can you actually picture it happening? That's not really how scientists do stuff, is it?---If I understand your posts rightly, you have only just started looking at the geological questions raised in the EvC debate, and yet curiously enough you've already decided that geologists, the people who actually look at the earth and study it, are resting their case on "too many unobservable assumptions".Alternatively, maybe they know something about geology that you don't know.---By the way, here's a statement of faith required by the Affiliation of Christian Geologists:

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We accept the divine inspiration, trustworthiness and authority of the Bible in matters of faith and conduct. We confess the Triune God as affirmed in the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds which we accept as brief, faithful statements of Christian Doctrine based upon Scripture. We believe that in creating and preserving the universe God has endowed it with contingent order and intelligibility, the basis of scientific investigation. We recognize our responsibility as stewards of God's creation to use science and technology for the good of humanity and the whole world.

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Here's an article about teaching geology on their website:

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A growing number of Christian students are being educated in Christian schools or at home. I sense that earth science education in Christian and home schools is generally poor because of exposure to the available curriculum materials from a young-earth, flood geology perspective and because of the inadequacy of teacher training in earth science. More than one Christian geologist has expressed concern to me because of the dominance of young-earth creationism in curriculum materials and in workshop presentations at home school conventions. In many Christian schools, geology is almost entirely avoided because of its potentially controversial nature.

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I think you'll notice that, once again, I'm not just making a point about geology.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Sorry to take so long to respond. My internet connection is back from the dead. My wireless card died, but I figured out how to use my cell phone as a modem. We should never lie. However, you can tell the truth with tact. If you were the one to tell a small girl that her mother had died, how would you tell her? Would you say, “Your mother’s dead! Get on with your life!” I think you would tell her the truth, but with some tact. In a friendly manner, considerate of her feelings. Scientifically, no. Biblically, yes. I keep being told on this forum that God cannot be included in any of your theories. Since my theories related to the age of the earth include God, it seems that our views would not compare. I don’t see how you can remove the effects of unknowns, when they are unknown. You continually attempt to remove the effect of God, when you do not know the effect. You assume the effect to be zero. I looked at the beginning of the thread, however as I said, my internet connection was trashed, so I couldn’t get very far. As to how I explain all of the evidence for an old earth, I don’t know the evidence. I am sure that God does. He created all of those things, so he ought to know their age. When I get to heaven, I will ask him and let you know.Have you ever considered the appearance of age? If God created a man, he created him full grown. That would mean he would appear to have age that did not exist. That means that when he was one day old he would be growing whiskers. Is God lying? One day old humans do not grow whiskers. However, grown men do grow whiskers!In your thread about tree rings, you give the indication that God would be evil to do something like that. To give the appearance of age when it did not exist. Well it is my opinion that he would be evil to do anything else. If God did not give the appearance of age, then scientists would not be able to figure out anything based upon nature. For example, if God created a full grown tree, would it have rings? If a tree appeared to be one thousand years old, would it have one thousand rings? If you were a scientist at that time, would God be fair to you if your examination of all new trees had rings, however created trees did not. How would you be able to develop a sound scientific theory relating rings to annual growth periods? You look at a tree that is obviously a thousand years old, and it has no rings. How would you be able to prove scientific theories? You could not! The question is what are you doing when you ignore God? In my opinion, you are ignoring reality, and playing with fantasy!

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

It is true that I am only now beginning to seriously look into the claims of scientists regarding evolution and the age of the earth. My point about assumptions, is that scientists do not really know much about the past. They make assumptions based upon the present. Those assumptions could or could not be true.For example, I recently purchased a child's textbook on evolution that was used in the public school system in Wisconsin a few years ago. It was titled, "Evolution - Change Over Time." I do not know what grade level it was for, but probably Elementary School Level.There is one section in this book that talks about Homo erectus which supposedly lived about 500,000 to 1,600,000 years ago. The book has a long description about these folks. It tells that they lived in caves, and used fires to provide heat and light for their caves. It says they did not know how to build fires, so they waited for lightning to strike in the bush, and carefully brought the fire back to the caves. It says that over these fires they cooked the meat of animals, and nuts and seeds. The description goes on to explain other characteristics of these people (I guess you would call them people). The point is the section ends with the statement:

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This description is about all that is known of the life of the early human called Homo erectus.

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Now I wonder how these scientists came to know all of this about some humans that lived half a million years ago. What kind of evidence led to these conclusions? There is no indication in this textbook that what is being taught is anything other than fact. Well I would say that the entire conclusion is based upon assumptions that go beyond what was observed today. Therefore, my term, most likely unscientific, unobservable assumptions.Later I may find that these early cave men left a diary or something to tell scientists about their lifestyle. However, I doubt that to be the case. I would attribute the description to the overactive imagination of some who would like to make conclusions with inadequate evidence.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

Thanks Wumpini, I know the problem, whenever it rains here my DSL link goes down and my wireless system tries to chose a different IP for everything. I have to reboot everything from the modem up. I'm impressed. Does your phone have internet or are you using dial-up with hookup to the phone's earpiece\mike jack to carry the modem sound waves back and forth? That would let me use my laptop in the park and at my parents (eLuddites). There are a number of ways scientists (and engineers) have learned to do this. One way is to look at net effects rather than total effects, and changing one variable at a time. Look at how scientists figured out the gravitational constant with all the variables the existed around them, and the massive constant force of the earths gravity compared to the masses they were using. I don't. It's more like asking him how he did it. Look at the gravity example again.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

OK. So that's a child's textbook. Elementary school texts don't contain sophisticated analyses of the evidence, because they are for elementary school kids. You are a grown-up. Try reading a grown-up book if you want evidence. Um... archaeological evidence? Evidence of controlled fires minus evidence of fire-lighting tools I expect. Evidence like fragments of food materials and cooked bones, that sort of thing. Of course, I'm speculating, but just because I don't know exactly what evidence claims about H. erectus are based on doesn't mean that there is no evidence. Why not try finding out about the digs where H. erectus fossils have been found (not using a children's book). Children's book. It's a children's book. But you don't even know what that evidence is. You have said as much yourself in admitting that your only research has been one skinny elementary school book. So you would dismiss the opinions of thousands of palaeontologists without bothering to find out what their evidence actually? That may be why you are having difficulties with these topics. If you actually want to find out something about H. erectus, try looking at some of these links for a start;http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/homoerectus.htm
Homo erectus - Wikipedia
Anthropology | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural HistoryOr you could go out and find a proper book on the subject; not one for children.

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Mutate and Survive

I would have assumed that a textbook for a child would contain factual information. It seems that you are saying that children's textbooks do not have to properly analyze the evidence, and come up with sound conclusions. It appears as though these textbooks on evolution are not meant to be accurate. They have fanciful pictures and stories of dinosaurs and prehistoric men. It appears to be fantasy, however it is all taught as fact.You are correct! If I want to know the truth about what scientists believe about the evolution of man, then I need to look at information that is more factual then a child's textbook.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

Yes, I have internet service through my cell phone provider. I was using a PCMCIA card that I plug into my computer, but it died. My phone has GPRS and I can connect it to a USB port. I didn't think of it earlier.Actually, the cell phone coverage in Africa is pretty widespread. They are building towers all over the place. You can go to a village where they are living in mud huts, and you can still use your cell phone.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

Well they do, just at a very basic level. Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm saying. Analysing evidence and drawing conclusions are what highly educated professional scientists do, not elementary school kids. School books just contain a few of the facts, as they are understood by the professionals in the field. By necessity, they don't contain much background info because children are only capable of learning so much at one time. The whole point of education is that as one progresses, the topic is dealt with in increasing detail, with an increasingly direct engagement with the evidence itself. They are meant to be accurate, but not authoritative. Big difference. What really? Pictures of dinosaurs and man together? Depicted as being around at the same time? I'll bet they don't. Seriously, if any book has pictures of dinosaurs and humans co-existing, it's a shitty book.If the book merely contains a few artists impressions of Homo erectus or dinosaurs, what of it? These kinds of illustration are not meant to be gospel; they're illustrative. They are also usually based on fossil finds, at least they will be if they appear in a book that's any good. That is how it may appear to you, but one of the humbling things about science is that it teaches us that things are rarely as easy to assess and understand as we might wish, especially when one employs hunches and "common sense" instead of evidence. I assure you, the more you familiarise yourself with the evidence for hominids, the age of the Earth and evolution, the more sense it will make. First however, you need to really engage with the scientific knowledge regarding these subjects.

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Mutate and Survive

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In your thread about tree rings, you give the indication that God would be evil to do something like that. To give the appearance of age when it did not exist. Well it is my opinion that he would be evil to do anything else. If God did not give the appearance of age, then scientists would not be able to figure out anything based upon nature. For example, if God created a full grown tree, would it have rings? If a tree appeared to be one thousand years old, would it have one thousand rings? If you were a scientist at that time, would God be fair to you if your examination of all new trees had rings, however created trees did not. How would you be able to develop a sound scientific theory relating rings to annual growth periods? You look at a tree that is obviously a thousand years old, and it has no rings. How would you be able to prove scientific theories? You could not!

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Obviously your argument is untrue. Firstly God does not need to create a tree that appears to be one thousand years old. Secondly science is a recent development, and the information that trees grow rings is quite easily determinable without needing fake tree rings to be created at the beginning (most trees are only decades to a few centuries old). So unless you assume that the creation was very recent (say only a few hundred years ago at most) your argument is definitely untrue.If, on the other hand, God created trees that did not have rings scientists could identify the date of Creation and at least know that something special had happened at that time. The only thing that they could not find is the fake history that God had created.So what your argument amounts to is that "God had to lie because otherwise nobody would hear His lies". Is that really what you mean to say ?

So what makes you think that scientists had written that textbook? Textbooks are published by textbook publishers. Who employ professional textbook writers to write those books. Not scientists, but rather non-scientist writers. Now, college and university science textbooks are written by scientists or at least PhD's in that field, but elementary and secondary level science textbooks are rarely written by scientists. And the poor quality of these textbooks with respect to the accuracy of the science being presented is a long-standing problem.One case in point was California's purchase of new high school biology textbooks in the mid-1980's. William J. Bennetta, later of the Textbook League (Text Book League -- contains reviews of many textbooks; Glencoe textbooks seem to fare especially poorly), reported on the proceedings in the NCSE's Creation/Evolution Newsletter. Bennetta succeeded in getting scientists involved in reviewing the textbooks. Absolutely none of the textbooks were found to be acceptable. Even the best of the textbooks being considered had a long list of corrections that needed to be made before it could be seriously considered. The publisher made some of the corrections, but nowhere near enough, and then the State Board of Education approved the "corrected" textbooks in a closed session behind the scientists' backs. The result was business as usual: our children were being taught with substandard textbooks filled with wrong information.Please do not confuse what such textbooks say with what scientists say.PS
Seriously, who are the authors of that book? And Google'ing about, what are their scientific credentials?Edited by dwise1, : PS

I never thought about who wrote the book. I thought if they were going to teach evolution in school that they would teach what scientists believe to be true. That puts a whole new twist into this controversy if what the schools are teaching are not even the accepted scientific theories. That was the whole point of my post. The book is very colorful and filled with pictures. I am sure that it would be very appealing for a young person to read. However, much of the information appears to be fanciful. They mix what appears to be scientific facts with a story line. How is a student to discern between what is fact, and what is made up? How are parents which read the book able to tell the difference between fantasy and what scientists believe to be their view of the past? With such a controversial topic as evolution, it seems that extra care should be taken to ensure that what is being taught in schools is actually good science! Here is the Textbook League link of their review of the book. It was obviously written for the middle school level rather than the elementary school level as I originally thought. It appears the book that I have was used in the school system for at least three years, since it has the name of three students in the front.Page not found - Text Book League - Aplikasi dan Website Buku OnlineThey seem to agree with my perception. Here is a quote from the textbook league reviw of this book.

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But the text seems schizophrenic: It gives me the impression that its various sections have been written by different people, only a few of whom know what they are talking about.

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That is the impression I got from the book also. That some of the sections had no idea what they were talking about. I am glad that someone agrees with me.You asked about the authors. There are a number of them ranging from a couple of professors at universities to science instructors. Here is a link that may help you see who they are. It lists some of the authors.http://www.amazon.com/...nce-Evolution-science/dp/0132255332Thanks

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce