Comparitive delusions

Let's just end this endless side trip about crimescene forensics with me pointing out that as long as the context is human and historical we have ways of crosschecking it that we just don't have when it's millions of years in the past. Even then, with the best evidence people can come up with, many crimes remain unsolved. So much more the distant NONhuman past.If you are forced to say about some murders in the last century that we simply do not know who committed them, with the forensic armamentarium now available to us, how do scientists dare to say that they KNOW about hominids millions of years ago?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-24-2006 05:57 PM

We have an almost complete set of reptile-to-mammal fossils.Very impressive.

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"Headpiece filled with straw, Alas!"--T. S. Eliot

It's funny, RR, but you are the ONLY one, you nonscientist you, who carries on about this supposed "almost complete set of reptile-to-mammal fossils." I wonder why nobody else here talks about it. It SOUNDS like a hoax, frankly.What you have is a bunch of skeletons -- in fact I don't know that you really have THAT -- what you have is some DRAWINGS of SUPPOSED skeletons -- drawn in some kind of graded morphological order that LOOKS to an evolutionist like they are related to each other. How do you even KNOW if one is a cow and one a reptile, Mr. Fossilman? Do you know where each was found? In what condition were they found? In how many bits and pieces?It is quite possible that if you laid out the skeletons of 150 of my closest relatives that you couldn't be sure we were related to each other. So what on earth does this kind of game prove anyway?Or, if you laid out the skeletons of your paternal line going back a thousand years, what about them would prove one was descended from another?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-24-2006 06:07 PM

I read about it in this book--and I thought it was impressive. The author said it was the most complete line we had.

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"Headpiece filled with straw, Alas!"--T. S. Eliot

How about starting a thread on it.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-24-2006 06:08 PM

Seconded, I think a discussion of the evolution of synapsids would be a fascinating and illuminating exercise. I think, once we made an exposition of the evidence, we will agree that the synapsids appear in the fossil record as barely indistinguishable from other reptiles, and by the end of the Mesozoic represent the basic types of modern mammals (monotreme, marsupial and placental). Obviously, those committed to creationism deny any genetic relationship, but the apparent temporal progression of specimens from the reptilian* to mammalian state should be acknowledged.* Using layman's language here, don't jump all over me cladists!

I've started too many threads. I've been looking at the records.

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"Headpiece filled with straw, Alas!"--T. S. Eliot

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OK, how do you know there is such a thing? How do you know the few bits and pieces of skulls you take so seriously aren't either of an ape or a diseased human, or even just a human? How do you really KNOWWWWWWW?????

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Education.Let me put it another way, with an example.I am much more educated and experienced than the average person about several subjects. This allows me to do effortlessly what other people, who haven't the interest and therefore haven't devoted many hours of their life studying the subject, can't even dream of doing.I can be driving through some part of the country and just briefly look at some horses out in a field and I can usually tell, from quite a distance sometimes, what breed of horse they are, and if they are a pure bred horse at all.Many people I have been with when I do this are quite amazed, but for me it is second nature and plain as day.Can't you see that this is what the scientists like roxrcool are doing when they look at geological formations?I you really want to know nd understand the answer to the above question for yourself, you have to be willing to put in some work to educate yourself.Nobody can learn it for you. YOU have to do it YOURSELF.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-24-2006 07:07 PMThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-24-2006 07:08 PM

Science has never claimed to know everything - it's not that arrogant. It doesn't just present it's conclusions either, it provides the evidence on which those conclusions are based so that anyone who can be bothered can verify it for themselves.Science has never claimed to have a monopoly on the truth, but it does claim to have theories which are well supported by evidence. If the evidence doesn't support conclusions, there are plenty of scientists out there who will point it out.Scientists don't dare to say that they know about hominids millions of years ago, they say that they have theories which are supported by available evidence. You've been informed of this many times, so why do you keep ignoring it?The bottom line is that you're not going to accept anything that doesn't fit in with your own opinion because it doesn't fit in with your own opinion and because you can't understand it without a science degree, as you claimed before. That's fine, just don't pretend that you have a reasonable and well thought out basis for not accepting it.

Consider it a service you do for EvC. If they promote your threads it means they think they are good for discussion which is good for EvC. There's no such thing as starting too many.

Or dazzling propaganda.

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Or dazzling propaganda.

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If you never do the work to educate yourself, you will never know if it is propaganda, will you?

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Real science starts when you can test your hypothesis and you cannot do that with the ancient past.

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So, do you reject all forensic investigations, then?

That's actually a very good analogy, Schraf.Joe Public looks at a particular cliffside and sees rocks of different colours. A trained geologist looks at the same cliffside and sees history, because by the time you graduate with a degree in geology you've been on so many field trips that it's virtually instinctive to look and evaluate and essentially read the formation like a book. So a trained geologist sees, say, a cross-stratified siltstone formed in a stormy coastal environment interbedded with fossil-rich mudstone, and can think about the how and why and therefores that a layman is simply ignorant about.If you consider a rock formation to be a book written in a dead language, like ancient Egyptian - geologists are trained to be able to decipher what the writing means, even though they can only make guesses as to what the language actually sounded like.

Again, as have been pointed out to you several times before in this thread, there is much more behind theese scenarios then simple imagination. You don't seam to understand that EVERY scientific theory (no exceptions) consists of a scenario (originally imagined by a human being) supported by evidence. what makes a theory a good theory is the amount of evidence supporting it. By any standards, the amount of evidence supporting the theory of evolution, the Big Bang theory, and the standard geologic interpretation of the layers of rocks on earth, is overwhelming. Indeed it's hard to find any theory better suported then the theory of evolution. In the other hand, the amount of evidence supporting the flood theory is somewhere between zip and nil. hence, anybody that believes this theory is clearly deluded (which, by the way, is the point of that thread)