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Author | Topic: Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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Yes it is not hard evidence as I've been saying. It is fossilized creatures embedded in sedimentary layers, that is all it is.
So now you reject the facts that Ned provided earlier. Faith, you're going to have to make up your mind here.
It is the apparent sequence which is interpreted as ancient to modern living things that is imposed on it that turns it into evidence.
Why is it just 'apparent'? You have not made your case here. Please dispense with the arguments by assertion.
This is not hard evidence, this is interpretation.
It is, nevertheless, evidence. Please provide us with your explanation, which you allege to be superior.
The only hard facts are the fossils in the rocks.
And all the other stuff that you deem unimportant, such as the sequential appearance of life forms.
The sequence is an interpretive overlay.
Then refute it. Then explain to us how interpretations are intrinsically erroneous.
And then when the relation between fossils in different layers is described as evolving from the one to the other this is assumed, it isn't proved and it can't be proved.
Then give us a better explanation. This pattern is universal in the fossil record in instance after instance since the earliest forms of life. Explain why it is always there.
The different bone structures are given and the evolutionary patheways that WOULD need to have been taken are described - meaning they are imagined, purely imagined. There is nothing else that can be done with them. There is no way to know whether they ever happened, it is purely an imaginary pathway.
Well, if you want absolute proof, of course we don't have that. It happened in the past. We can only collect supporting evidence. But, if that's your case, then you may as well accept Last Thursdayism. Give me a reason why not.
And yet it is put in the language of fact.
It is the best explanation and there are actually no alternatives. It is a scientific fact. A well-supported fact based on known biological mechanisms and testing.
Because the ToE is believed, though it too is only imagined, imposed on the buried fossils.
Actually, the fossil impose constraints on the theory of evolution. On the other hand we have YEC, which observes no constraints.
The order of the fossils is not an open and shut case for evolution at all, they are just buried dead things.
Okay, give us an example. For instance, you could find for us a mammal fossil preserved in Cambrian rocks.
The order is SUGGESTIVE, but it's a far cry from hard evidence.
No, the order is a conclusion based on the fossil record. As such it can be treated as a hard fact until it is disproven. That hasn't happened.
This is why the ToE remains a theory.
And the problem is?
You can do experiments to prove the theory of gravity or electricity or germ theory; evolution has only interpretation, the IMAGINED evolution up the fossil ladder.
And we can do experiments like predict that a certain fossil would be found in Devonian aged rocks and then go look for it. But, of course, that would never happen, would it? And if it did it would be just a coincidence, eh?
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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Second, any scientist who does begin to raise questions about the theory is on very shaky ground and knows it. The last thing anyone would desire in that position is being suspected of thinking like a creationist. And there is little in the way of hard evidence to be found on either side of this dispute; you're not going to risk your professional standing on even the very best reasoned argument.
I've thought about this lately and perhaps it would be better discussed in another thread. However, just to comment, I think that what makes a creationist so disgraceful is not their belief in creation, but their repeated use of discredited creationist arguments such as the ones we see here every day.
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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The order is very suggestive as I keep saying, but it can't be treated as proof of evolution.
(Sigh...) Just another strawman argument. Again. Please show us where anyone (particularly here) says that the fossil record is absolute proof of evolution. The point is that the fossil record is evidence supporting evolution and nothing else that's out there as an explanation.
I don't know why the pattern is so consistent, ...
Let me make a suggestion:
Because the theory of evolution is a robust theory. ... but when there are other reasons to question the standard interpretation it can't just be taken as fact.
Please provide such a reason.
Ned's list of facts is in Message 216. I just read it and have no problem with any of those facts. They are the hard facts; the theory is something else that is imposed on those facts. He did a good job of sticking to the facts themselves.
Then why do you say this:
As for alternatives it's a bunch of buried and fossilized life forms, that IS a fact.
It seems at odds with Ned's post that there's a lot more to it than just a bunch of fossils.
It's just not right to turn a conjecture into a fact, no matter how convinced you are of it. And it's only with the evolution-related claims that this is ever done too; the other sciences do not do that.
I submit that there is nothing wrong with using a well-supported theory as a fact. T In fact, that's what we do. If we treat it as a fact, and it is wrong we find out when it gives us bad results. That hasn't happened yet... Edited by edge, : No reason given.
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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But when you say the evolutionary interpretation is a fact aren't you essentially calling it proof?
Faith, you are not discussing 'proof', you are asking for absolute proof. We deal in evidence and where it leads us. Our 'proof' is in the preponderance of evidence. Your denial of evidence is not supported by any of your assertions.
Saying it's a fact that it's a bunch of fossilized life forms doesn't exclude other facts about it.
Then stop avoiding those facts when you make a statement.
It doesn't look all that "well supported" from here, since it lacks hard evidence.
Well, it should be understood that this all refers to reasonable people.
And it's hard to find out it's wrong when it's mostly conjectures.
Nonsense. It would be like leaving out a structural element of airliner that confronts the reality of actually flying. The theory of evolution has been flying for a couple of centuries now...
There's something self-validating about the ToE that isn't scientifically kosher.
Or it could be a robust theory.
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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These thoughts from my previous post are being ignored in the answers to it so far so I'd like to bring them to your attention again:
Well, there you go. And I do often wonder just HOW universal it really is. Once you're convinced it's this ironclad proof of evolution you aren't going to be very open to raising questions about it. Apparently insignificant deviations from the pattern could be overlooked, rationalized away etc. You have just invalidated the rest of your point by committing the fallacy of a strawman argument. No reason to read any further...
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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I thought that was just psychologically true for anyone, I wasn't casting aspersions on you.
In that case, you are projecting. You deal in absolute, revealed truth and that trumps everything. Few actually scientists are like that, when doing science.
We're all subject to blindness to other ways of looking at something we've been convinced of.
Yes, until the evidence forces change. And since the evidence points toward evolution, we will use it as a scientific fact until the evidence points elsewhere.
I would still like your attention to the questions I thought might be overlooked for such a reason.
Not sure what you mean here, but I'll look at this statement:
ABE: I'm sure the contents of a particular layer aren't considered to be the entire range of life on the planet during that period of time, but that IS the way the information is often presented, ...
Not as far as I know.
... and there does seem to be a paucity of varied life forms in most of the layers.
Do we have to explain that again? Look, I know you would like us to provide complete, perfect and consistent knowledge about everything, because that's what you think you already have. But that's not realistic in the this world. However, even without such complete knowledge, we can draw some pretty compelling conclusions. On the other hand, what have you got?
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
I've said I can see why it's seductive.
So then, why is it seductive, in your opinion?
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, regardless of any religious beliefs, the theory that all ilfe on earth evolved from microbes is useless to science.
And you have shown this somehow? Please tell us what you think a theory is supposed to do.
So since that's what the argument is about, ...
According to you...
... winning it is an irrelevance to the real world.
Well, who ever said that a debate is the real world. Why should we take your word that the theory of evolution is useless?
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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Science picks up a lot of information that's "nice to know", just like you see a lot of things that are "nice to see" on your way to wherever you're going. Who knows when some of that information might be important?
Heh, heh ... Obviously, YECs are good at judging things.
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
The 43% more habitable land mass pre-Flood is based on the estimate of 57% UNinhabitable land mass estimated for today's planet due to our deserts and high mountains, an estimate given in Message 662. I didn't make it up, it's apparently a reasonable sound estimate so you have to question that, not me. Then I added the fertility factor to that additional 43% of habitable space and conclude that there was more than enough abundance of life to account for all the fossils. Really all the calculations aren't necessary, the sketch of the differences alone should be enough to make the point.
So, all of these organisms lived at the same time. In that case why do we not see one hippo fossil mixed in with dinosaur fossils, or one tree preserved in Cambrian rocks. How about a blue whale in the Precambrian seas? I'm sorry but the aftermath of a flood does not look like nicely ordered sediments, clean, finely layered preserving the details of life. And what about subaerial volcanic rocks of all ages? You really need to think about your story before defending it among knowledgeable people.
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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OK. Now do you have an explanation for how the buried landscape that becomes a rock becomes a very flat slab of rock that in many examples in the stratigraphic column are quite horizontal and of a fairly uniform thickness?
Actually, this does not always happen. In fact, the Tapeats (which you refer to below) thins out against the 'monadnocks' of Shinumo Quartzite in the the Grand Canyon, and the Bright Angle Shale directly overlies the Shinumo. That would be buried topography.
That is, I would expect a deeply buried landscape that turned to rock to be quite lumpy and irregular, about as far as you could get from a flat slab.
Which is what we see.
I have to wonder how it could acquire flat surfaces top and bottom.
When the pre-existing topograph is buried, you can then have continuous, tabular sheets. This is not rocket science.
Surely all the buried material is turning to rock above and below it as well, so how does this one particular landscape become so identifiable as we see the sediments of the stratigraphic column are. Those strata are often of very particular sediment too, say all sandstone like the Tapeats for instance.
Not really. If you look at the contact between the Kayenta and Navajo for instance you see "Navajo Sandstone frequently overlies and interfingers with the Kayenta Formation of the Glen Canyon Group." (Navajo Sandstone - Wikipedia). This is a situation where the depositional environment wavered back and forth between desert and river/swamp lowland. This is called a transitional contact.
How would such a layer become so clearly differentiated from layers above and below it, which are often of some completely different sedimentary rock, say limestone, separated by what is often a very straight flat surface between them.
Obviously this is not the case. Most of the time a contact has to be defined as something like "the first sandstone bed at the top of the shale formation", or something like that.
Burial might harden sediment into rock I suppose, but not with the peculiar shape and composition of those in the stratigraphic column.
The compositions are locked in by the depositional environments and the original bedforms are preserved during lithification.
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
Monadnocks do not change the basic flatness. There's just no point in talking to someone who brings up objections like that.
Nonsense. The thickness of the Tapeats has to go to zero feet around the 'monadnocks'. Bright Angel Shale directly overlies the Shinumo. That's pretty significant, don't you think?
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
Please remember the context: drawings of landscapes with animals in them that look like today's earth surface, not a mudflat or a single-sediment situation, just normal earth surface..
Then how do you get stratigraphic columns like this?
There is no point in continuing this discussion with you because you refuse to understand what I'm talking about.
Simple denial is not understandable.
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined:
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Okay, Faith. My understanding is that you think all of the layers in the Grand Canyon are 'straight and flat', correct?
I Interpret this to mean that they are perfectly tabular and continuous with planar contacts above and below. Would that be correct? If so then you are completely wrong. Let's look at the evidence for the Tapeats Sandstone, the Shinumo Quartzite and the 'Great Unconformity'. First, here is what the USGS says about the thickness of the Tapeats Sandstone:
The Tapeats fills in lowland areas and thins across or pinches out against young Proterozoic highlands. Variable thickness 0—400 ft (0—122 m) USGS URL Resolution Error Page
Do you understand what this means? It means that the Tapeats was not deposited on some locations and is of highly variable thickness. And here is what the Wikipedia says about the unconformity and the Shinumo Quartzite:
Though this surface is typically a plane, differential erosion of the tilted strata of the Unkar Group left resistant beds of the Cardenas Basalt and Shinumo Quartzite as ancient hills, called monadnocks, that are up to 240 m (790 ft) high. Thin drapes of Tapeats Sandstone of the Tonto Group now cover most of these ancient monadnocks. However, a few of these monadnocks protrude up into the Bright Angel Shale (Isis Temple example). These monadnocks served locally as sources of coarse-grained sediments that accumulated during the marine transgression to form the Tonto Group.(bold added for emphasis) Shinumo Quartzite - Wikipedia
Again do you understand what this means? It means that these hills preceded and were the actual source of sand for the Tapeats and that the Tapeats was deposited gradually up the slopes of these hills. They were, in effect, islands. How does this comport with your description of the setting? I also found this shot of the Great Unconformity where Tapeats overlies the Vishnu schist. Does it really look 'straight and flat' to you?
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edge Member (Idle past 1737 days) Posts: 4696 From: Colorado, USA Joined: |
Instead of complaining that people aren’t addressing what you are saying why don’t you explain what you mean ?
This is a good question. I honestly can't say that I have any idea what Faith means by some of these statements. Maybe a picture or two would be good.
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