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Author Topic:   Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists
jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 3 of 1053 (750306)
02-13-2015 9:56 AM


a great place to actually learn
You're lucky to be living in an area that is so filled with evidence that there was no Biblical Flood and that the earth is billions of years old and an area with so many folk to be taught.
Road trips (and Google Earth) will be a great aid. Google Earth is a marvelous way to show what old and young mountains look like. On the Virginia Shore stands Calvert Cliffs, great sand dunes filled with only ancient fossils, teeth from mega sharks and fossil clam shells the size of your head while at the base you can find modern shark teeth and sea shells. There is Stone Mountain. The various early pathways through the mountains let the kids see examples of bedding and layering and various non-conformities. Cumberland Gap is where I got such experiences. In South Carolina there is an ongoing dig , the the Topper site that goes back a fairly long way, to around 30,000 BCE so far IIRC.
And don't forget to look up. Show them galaxies. Ask them how far away they might be? How far away from our solar system would you need to be for it to look small enough to cover with one finger?
Also one of my favorite examples of the difference between Science and Creationism is Mendeleev's Periodic Table. In a post from almost ten years ago (Message 143) I said:
quote:
In the thread Message 1 the subject of the Periodic Table came up and I responded in Message 143 but realized that was really offtopic for the thread.
I think that it is an important issue though and one that highlights the difference between Science, specifically the TOE, and either ID or Biblical Creationism.
The importance of Mendeleev's Periodic Table (it was not the first and actually others were working on the same concepts he presented at the time, similar to what happened with Darwin) but it was unique because it not only explained what we did see but also made concrete predictions about what would be discovered including revisions to the then current body of scientific knowledge.
I believe this is a hallmark example of the difference between science and pseudo sciences like ID or Biblical Creationism.
As I said in the other post:
I found it interesting that you brought up the Periodic Table, because it is a classic example of how science does work and why the Scientific Method (TOE) is far more likely to be right than ID or Biblical Creationism.
The important thing about Mendeleev's Table was that it had gaps and reordered many of the placements of elements in earlier attempts at creating a table. He took another series of steps based on the reasoning behind his arrangement and predicted two things; that when the elements he reordered were examined with greater precision the then accepted atomic weights for those elements would be found to be wrong; and that elements would be found to fill in his blanks and even what the properties of each of those elements would be.
I cannot overstate the importance of those actions. He presented a model that explained what was already known, and was also useful for making predictions about what would be learned in the future. In addition, as more was learned we found that the new elements discovered were exactly as he predicted and that the atomic weights of those he rearranged were as he predicted.
His model explained what was seen as well as what would be discovered. It went even further and provided the basis for us to create NEW elements, ones not found on earth, with a high degree of confidence of what their properties would be even before we created them.
The Periodic Table is a great example of why the TOE is valuable and ID and Biblical Creationism are worthless.
The value of the TOE has been in helping us understand what is seen, but in also providing the basis for future discoveries. What we have learned from the TOE has let us make predictions, and so far those predictions have been born out by each new discovery.
ID and Biblical Creationism have no predictive potential. There is nothing there to form our basis. A good example is in ID. When based on the evidence seen in living things it is pointed out that the I in ID should stand for Inept or Incompetent or Inelegant or Inscrutable or Ignorant we are told that we cannot know the Intent of the Designer. Well sorry, if we cannot know the Intent of the Designer then we cannot predict what the Designer will do. If that is the case then the ID concept is worthless.
The same argument is applicable to Biblical Creationism. The two (actually they are really just one) schools of thought are simply worthless.
To understand just how important this was, remember that this was presented before we had any understanding of what atoms were made of. We knew nothing about electrons or protons or neutrons. In addition, he made several important predictions. His table had gaps and he predicted that when elements were discovered that those elements would have specific properties that would be similar to the others listed adjacent to them. For example, at the time elements were arranged based on atomic masses. Using Atomic mass Iodine came before Tellurium but he changed the order and placed Iodine later because its characteristics more closely resembled those of fluorine, chlorine and bromine while Tellurium was more closely related to oxygen, sulfur and selenium. He predicted that once we learned more of how elements were made we would find that that would be correct.
Once we learned about the composition of atoms we found that Atomic Weight, not Atomic Mass was the key and that using Atomic Weight the elements lined up just as predicted by Mendeleev.
The same can be said about the TOE. When it was first proposed by Darwin (and others), we had no knowledge of genetics or exactly what the "unit of transmission" would be. However, from the TOE it was possible to predict that there would be a direct correlation between NEW evidence (genetics) and the original theory presented by Darwin.
Guess what.
New evidence has continued to support and confirm the predictions.
The question is, what predictive qualities of either ID or Biblical Creationism stand out as examples of prediction in the same manner as Mendeleev's Periodic Table allowed predictions of the characteristics of both known and yet to be discovered elements?
This difference of approach is both simple to understand and also very important.
Just as Mendeleev said "We should find elements that are currently unknown but will have these properties and fit in the overall picture right here.", the work of Wallace and Darwin said here is what we will see. And so far every single new discovery has fit within and support that basic framework.
If someone claims to shoot an arrow and hit a target, then we must see an arrow or an arrow hole in the target. If the arrow hole is not there then they did not hit the target.
Begin with the assumption something is true. If the flood happened what must we see? Take a look at No genetic bottleneck proves no global flood.
If the Universe is only 6000 years old, what must we see?
Take a look at the thread Exploring the Grand Canyon, from the bottom up. and see if it helps.
Look at simple questions like How to make sand..
One of my favorite learning experiences came from RAZD and his thread Are Uranium Halos the best evidence of (a) an old earth AND (b) constant physics?.
Another simple concept involve the fact that change leaves evidence and was touched on in Message 5 of Physical Laws ....What if they were different before?.
Anyway, maybe these might help jumpstart a pathway.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 21 of 1053 (750350)
02-13-2015 10:09 PM


Layers and Layers
When it comes to layers here are some other threads that might help.
Salt of the Earth (on salt domes and beds)
Conclusion vs Presupposition
Lake Varve Sediments and the Great Flood

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

  
jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 23 of 1053 (750352)
02-13-2015 10:22 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by ThinAirDesigns
02-13-2015 10:18 PM


It's all Percy's fault.
Percy is the sole support for this board and actually even wrote all the software that runs it. Right now you have to type the codes but there are quite a few codes not often found on other boards.
We are all very adept though at delegating guilt (what's the point of even having guilt if you can't delegate it) so feel free to blame Percy.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 36 of 1053 (750376)
02-14-2015 5:37 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by ThinAirDesigns
02-14-2015 4:50 PM


the Mason Jar
Once you do the experiment with the kids and they record how long it takes for the fine material to settle you can talk about the Green River Varves, over six million repetitions of coarse and the fine material, iteration upon iteration.
How do it happen over and over again?

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 46 of 1053 (750391)
02-15-2015 8:29 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by christianguy15
02-15-2015 1:40 AM


I believe in God and I am a Christian
and also understand evolution is a fact and that the Theory of Evolution is the only current explanation of life we see and that the Universe is at least 14 billion years old and the earth over 4 billion years old and that mankind has been round for orders of magnitude more than 6000 years and the there has never been a worldwide flood while humans existed.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(1)
Message 49 of 1053 (750400)
02-15-2015 12:01 PM


Chauvet Cave
One of the great places you can visit online is Chauvet Cave in France where you can find fabulous and sophisticated paintings from 20,000 to over 30,000 years ago.
How did they determine things were that old?

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Replies to this message:
 Message 50 by NosyNed, posted 02-15-2015 12:32 PM jar has replied
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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 52 of 1053 (750404)
02-15-2015 1:01 PM
Reply to: Message 50 by NosyNed
02-15-2015 12:32 PM


Re: Chauvet Cave
You can visit them only online. Even research access is severly limited since just the matter of folk's breaths can start mold growing and change humidity levels.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(1)
Message 53 of 1053 (750405)
02-15-2015 1:11 PM
Reply to: Message 51 by ThinAirDesigns
02-15-2015 12:50 PM


Re: Chauvet Cave
One of the really great things about Chauvet Cave (and many other sites) is that you find a consilience of method involved.
There is of course radio carbon dating but also other indicators like overlaying of carbonate and silicate materials, nested drawings, the presence of extinct animal bones, the stalactites and stalagmites that could only form after the landslide that sealed the cave off.
It is consilience like found here that forms the basis of so much science; that different tools and methods and technology all return similar answers.
And it has never been flooded.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 77 of 1053 (750505)
02-16-2015 10:39 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by ThinAirDesigns
02-16-2015 8:56 PM


Re: A astronomy related thought
The response (and we see it here fairly often) is that conditions in the past were different. The speed of light might have been different.
The answer is that Change Leaves Evidence.
What would this universe look like if basic constants like the speed of light were different?
What happens to E=mc2 if c doubles?
The Large Magellanic Cloud (a close by galaxy) is about 160.000 light years away.
If the speed of light changed so that light 160,000 light years away got here so that it could be seen in 964 AD, how fast would the light have to travel?
Other galaxies are even further away.
For us to see them today, how fast would the light have to travel?
What would that do to E=mc2?

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


(1)
Message 83 of 1053 (750523)
02-17-2015 10:05 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by ThinAirDesigns
02-17-2015 9:36 AM


on reasoning
Bishop Sims (at the time the Episcopal Bishop of the Atlanta Georgia diocese ) in a Pastoral letter from 1981 explaining the churches opposition to the attempt to insert Creationism into the Atlanta public schools uses similar reasoning.
You can read the letter here.
From the Pastoral Letter. (a Pastoral Letter is read aloud in every church within the diocese)
quote:
If the world is not God's, the most eloquent or belligerent arguments will not make it so. If it is God's world, and this is the first declaration of our creed, then faith has no fear of anything the world itself reveals to the searching eye of science.
Insistence upon dated and partially contradictory statements of how as conditions for true belief in the why of creation cannot qualify either as faithful religion or as intelligent science. Neither evolution over an immensity of time nor the work done in a sixday week are articles of the creeds. It is a symptom of fearful and unsound religion to contend with one another as if they were. Historic creedal Christianity joyfully insists on God as sovereign and frees the human spirit to trust and seek that sovereignty in a world full of surprises.
Edited by jar, : fix sub-title

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 128 of 1053 (750770)
02-22-2015 10:43 AM
Reply to: Message 127 by ThinAirDesigns
02-22-2015 10:04 AM


Re: Uniformitarianism
Wiki is a good introduction but is not a high grade resource.
We can have evidence that natural laws have remained constant over extremely long periods of time but Uniformitarianism goes beyond that. It assumes also that processes remained the same, that mountains do not get higher as they erode, that rain falls down and not up, that collisions raise mountains and do not create oceans, that water sorts by particle size and does not sort by species.
It's always possible that at some time continents colliding did not cause mountains or that rain fell up not down or that as mountains eroded they got higher or that floods really did sort by species.
But if that were true then we are faced with an end to learning, the answer to everything is simply "God did it".
You need to remember that for many people that is not simply a possible answer but rather the desired answer.
When faced with that situation I generally point out that if true then there is no reason to expect brakes to slow your car, antibiotics to cure infections, wings to lift a plane, the sun to rise tomorrow or for God not to simply wipe all Christians from the face of the earth.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by ThinAirDesigns, posted 02-22-2015 10:04 AM ThinAirDesigns has replied

Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 130 of 1053 (750778)
02-22-2015 12:38 PM
Reply to: Message 129 by ThinAirDesigns
02-22-2015 12:02 PM


Re: Uniformitarianism
I guess what I'm struggling with is calling the scientific position on this "assumptions" rather than conclusions based observed evidence. It seems to me that in the physical realm where we can explore, if floods really did sort by species at some point, then what we would find is fossils in flood sediment sorted by species, etc. We don't have to assume it wouldn't happen -- we can just look at the evidence.
But you can look at the evidence and find what you want. For example in the past floods sorted in a manner that excluded grass pollen. Other floods excluded all modern species. The Biblical flood sorted so that no humans got mixed in with dinosaurs.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 129 by ThinAirDesigns, posted 02-22-2015 12:02 PM ThinAirDesigns has replied

Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 140 of 1053 (750801)
02-22-2015 5:19 PM
Reply to: Message 136 by ThinAirDesigns
02-22-2015 3:23 PM


Re: Uniformitarianism
The flood sorted things so humans and dinosaurs ended up in different layers. Ask Faith.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 136 by ThinAirDesigns, posted 02-22-2015 3:23 PM ThinAirDesigns has replied

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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 255 of 1053 (751874)
03-06-2015 4:55 PM
Reply to: Message 254 by ThinAirDesigns
03-06-2015 4:40 PM


Re: Iridium boundary layer
Perhaps you can get Faith to present the method and process in her imagined flood that laid down the iridium layer and also the white cliffs of Dover which she has also claimed as the result of the flood.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
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jar
Member (Idle past 395 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 292 of 1053 (751917)
03-06-2015 8:32 PM
Reply to: Message 288 by Faith
03-06-2015 8:19 PM


Re: Iridium boundary layer
Faith writes:
I've discussed all this stuff elsewhere. This is tiresome and your attitude is offensive.
Then it should be no problem for you to actaually provide links to anywhere that you discussed all this stuff Faith.
Any links Faith?
Any model Faith?
Any process Faith?

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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