Evolution: theory for the weak-minded?

The initial post of this thread cuts across a number of topic areas, so I've moved it to the Miscellaneous Topics forum.--Percy

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Joe Meert writes:
but I am willing if Mr. DeBlonde can explain lucidly as to why he thinks C-14 dating is relevant to the age of the earth.

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Mr BLonDe replies:
Well, if an animal is proven to be x million years old, then

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age of the earth > x million years old

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since the animal must of lived on the earth.

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C-14 dating only works for organic remains no more than about 50,000 years old. It is useless for dating anything millions or billions of years old.

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I didn't deny the existance of benefitial mutations, only the ones in which new complexities arise....I'm confused, what made you come to this conclusion? I know it is possible [for information to be added]...

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I confess your statements struck me the same way they struck Mister Pamboli, particularly since it's a common Creationist position. Now that you've clarified I'd say that your particular variation seems a bit contradictory since you allow that information can increase but not complexity. How do you reconcile this seeming contradiction?

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Mr BLonDe quotes AIG:
This suggests that the information [for nylon digestion] probably already existed, and was just passed between different types of bacteria.
All that would be needed to enable an enzyme to digest nylon is a mutation causing loss of specificity in a proteolytic (protein-degrading) enzyme.

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The AIG quote doesn't appear to support your position. It proposes two methods by which bacteria may have gained the ability to digest nylon. One of these methods is gene transfer, a form of mutation. The bacterial recipient of the transfer has gained information, ie, complexity.

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Actually, I was refering to the confusions of those who don't know any better.

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From all the replies it looks like you confused everyone - I, too, thought you were stating your own misunderstandings. And of what possible relevance here is the fact that some people you once debated with were confused about natural selection?

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By degenerating..I guess you could call it evolving for the worse. We aren't getting better, bigger, stronger, etc. as the theory of evolution suggests, we are degenerating. Why? Because of sin of man mentioned numerous times in the bible.

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Is this a scientific or a religious position? If scientific, why do you cite the holy book of a particular religious sect, and what is your evidence that only degeneration is possible?

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What evidence do you have to show that those layers in fact do represent millions of years?

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Even before the advent of radiometric dating, geologists were already convinced that the layers represented millions and hundreds of millions of accumulated years. Even the geologists were surprised when radiometric dating pushed the age of the earth back beyond a billion years and eventually to 4.56 billion years old. Dating of moon rocks and meteorites gives the same answer.

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On the subject of Argon dating...

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Argon is an inert gas (doesn't form compounds either with itself or other elements) that is swept away from molten lava. Fresh lava contains very little argon, and so most of the argon present in ancient lava flows will be due to the decay of potassium to argon.You expressed some concern about the migration of argon. As an inert gas, it's net migration will be out of rock, not into it, and so any migration would cause younger dates, not older ones.Potassium/argon dating has increased in sophistication over the past 20 years, and there are now techniques that effectively either remove the possibility of significant error or indicate the rock isn't datable with that technique.

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I just want to point out that the odds of a cell assemblying itself by chance from a jumble of amino acids in an ocean from a lightning spark are so low, mathmaticians would consider the proability '0'.

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I think there's general agreement that such an event is very unlikely. It isn't postulated that the first life arose by sudden accident. Just as evolution today is the accumulation over time of tiny changes, by some similarly gradual process must the first life have formed.About the link Page not found – Evolution-Facts, it's probably a bit too long to expect someone to dig out the specific set of stats you're referring to.--Percy

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Mr BLonDe writes:
Yes, but you must remember I am a young earth creationist, so 50,000 years is way beyond 6 - 10 thousand years .

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If your claim of familiarity with the debate is true, then you're aware that the age of the earth has been dated to around 4.56 billion years old, and that no one on the evolution side believes the earth is so young that it can be dated with C-14 techniques.

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Percy writes:
Now that you've clarified I'd say that your particular variation seems a bit contradictory since you allow that information can increase but not complexity. How do you reconcile this seeming contradiction?

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Mr BLonDe replies:
What contradiction? I am perfectly aware that it is possible to happen, but I just don't think you're ever going to see a case in nature, in which a mutation adds complexity to the mutant

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You don't think increasing information and increasing complexity go hand-in-hand? How do you add a book to a library without making it more complex? It requires more shelf space, more room in the card catalog, it's one more book to be checked out and checked in, it contains, possibly, information not previously present in the library.

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Percy writes:
It proposes two methods by which bacteria may have gained the ability to digest nylon. One of these methods is gene transfer, a form of mutation. The bacterial recipient of the transfer has gained information, ie, complexity.

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Mr BLonDe replies:
But, the information was already present for the recipient to gain.

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I think you're confusing the creation of new information with the transfer of information. AIG was citing an example of the transfer of information by moving a gene from one cell to another. The cell receiving the gene has gained information and complexity.Think of it this way. Say you read a book and learn something. The information already existed, but now it exists not only within the book but also within your own mind. Now you know it, too. You have gained information. You know more than you did before. You're now a more complex individual.

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However, it is a common argument among creationists (including myself), that we have no clear-cut evidence of uphill evolution among life on earth. In fact, we argue, things are quite opposite.

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The direction of evolution is toward improved fitness, not "uphill", whatever that is. Improved fitness could mean being faster, slower, bigger, smaller, smarter, dumber. It could mean gaining eyesight, or losing it (cave fish). It could mean gaining legs, or losing them (whales and some snake-like lizards). Whatever contributes to survival and the passing on of genes to the next generation, that's what evolution chooses. There is no "uphill".That being said, one very important reason why evolution gives the appearance of uphill progress is because of what is often referred to as the arms race. The cheetah evolves greater speed to chase down the gazelle, so the gazelle evolves greater speed and maneuverability to evade the faster cheetah, so the cheetah evolves even greater speed, and so on and so on over the generations. The eagle evolves better eyesight to discern prey on the ground, so they prey evolves better camouflage and evasive techniques (speed, maneuverability, burrows), so the eagle evolves even better eyesight and faster attack capability, and so on and so on.

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A scientific or religious response was not specified at the time of my reply.

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I was only asking if you thought you were doing science or religion. This debate is only of interest if you think your religious beliefs should be taught in science class.

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Again, can you please give me some information as to why you think it is, without doubt, true that those layers represent millions of accumulated years?

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Nothing in science is "without doubt." That's the principle of tentativity. But the evidence extremely strongly supports an age of the earth of 4.56 billion years.

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Argon dating link: ANDESITE FLOWS AT MT NGAURUHOE, NEW ZEALAND, AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR POTASSIUM-ARGON | The Institute for Creation Research

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I think you might want to take the plunge and try to understand K/Ar dating for yourself, instead of just posting links. Snelling's work supports an old earth, by the way. He dates young lava flows, less than a thousand years or so, using K/Ar dating, which only applies for lava flows older than millions of years. All he's doing is finding that when the argon is swept from hot lava before it solidifies that some small percentage is always left behind. If you look at his table you'll see that the residual amount of argon can yield a date of a few million years on a lava flow that is only decades old.So if a lava flow from 100 million years ago had residual argon in the amount of, say, 2 million years, that means the lava flow is still 98 million years old, which kind of shoots down the YEC position. Plus modern techniques know how to exclude the original argon, so we'd measure it as 98 million years old anyway. Plus K/Ar dating is only one of many techniques. The Rb/Sr was one of the first isochron techniques which made it possible to determine whether a rock was undatable due to contamination after original formation, and now there are a variety of improved techniques.Here's a table from Brent Dalrymple's book The Age of the Earth on the ages of ancient rocks in Greenland. Notice the variety of dating techniques that have all arrived at similar dates, and are all much older than 10,000 years:http://www.evcforum.net/DataDropsite/greenland_dates.jpgHere's another table for the ages of lunar rocks:http://www.evcforum.net/DataDropsite/lunar_dating_1.jpg http://www.evcforum.net/DataDropsite/lunar_dating_2.jpgNotice the consistency among the dates, the number of samples, the number of different dating techniques, and that the ages are all in billions of years.

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Do you think it was inevetable? For a cell to pop into existance?

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You were replying to Dr_Tazimus_maximus, but if I could step in since I addressed the same topic, no one thinks the first cell just "popped" into existence. It had to come about naturally and gradually following the laws of physics and chemistry, which is what I think Dr_Tazimus_maximus was saying.

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no2creation writes:
Also, where can I find evidence of this human degeneration?

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Mr BLonDe replies:
First, show me some evidence of uphill evolution.

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As already explained, there is no such thing as "uphill evolution". The question remains, what leads you to believe only in evolution through genetic degeneration?--Percy

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Mr BLonDe writes:
Speaking of problems, consider the following (directly from the link I gave in my first post):

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I don’t see how one can possibly know that there are no tiny cracks in rocks that would permit water and gas to circulate [etc, goes on for a couple paragraphs...]

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This is a logically reasoned argument that in the absence of any hard data might make a lot of sense. However, we have plenty of hard data. Your link is correct that there's an ambient amount of argon in the earth's crust, but as an inert gas it is swept out of molten lava. Once the lava solidifies the argon deriving from decaying potassium is locked into the rock matrix. As your earlier citation of Snelling indicated, the amount of argon left in young lava deposits only affects measurements by at most a few million years, and as a few people have now stated, even if K/Ar dating weren't to be trusted, there are other techniques that give the same or very similar dates, such as Rb/Sr, Ar/Ar, U/Pb, Sm/Nd, Pb/Pb, Lu/Hf and more. Argon leaking from within the earth's crust into ancient lava flows sounds reasonable, but it can't possibly be a significant factor because a) K/Ar dating produces results consistent with all the other dating methods; and b) as others have already told you, modern improvements to the techniques are able to determine whether there has been any disturbance to the amount of daughter element.Did you look at the table of dates of ancient rocks in Greenland that I provided earlier? Here it is again:http://www.evcforum.net/DataDropsite/greenland_dates.jpgNotice that K/Ar dating is only used once. Notice that a total of 4 different techniques are used. Notice that the rock samples come from 11 different locations in western Greenland. Notice that all the dates from a given area of western Greenland agree with one another within a very small margin, certainly never larger than 10%. Notice that all the ages are greater than 2 billion years.You can offer reasons out of ignorance all you like for why one dating method or another must be wrong, but you'd be spitting in the wind.There's another reason why we know the earth is an ancient place. There are a number of naturally occurring radiogenic elements with half-lives shorter than 50 million years. If the earth were young these materials would still be present. But over the course of the earth's 4.56 billion year history these elements have decayed to the point of undetectability.How about radiogenic elements with half-lives longer than 50 million years? All have been found on the earth.--Percy

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[This message has been edited by Percipient, 04-12-2002]

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Mr BLonDe writes:
Evidence? I see much evidence for a global flood, for one. However, much of it is totally flipped around and intrepeted in a different manner by the Old Earth Evolutionists.

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I'm afraid you can't blame the age of the earth on evolutionists. The identification of scientific evidence for an ancient earth predates the theory of evolution. Georges Buffon, William Buckland and James Hutton, three groundbreaking geologists whose accomplishments predate even the coining of the term geologist, all died before Darwin even published the Origin of Species.Like most men of their era they were religious men who accepted the Biblical account of the flood, but their investigations uncovered evidence for an earth far too ancient for Genesis to be an accurate account and caused them to change their views.Independent of whether or not the earth is actually ancient, you should at least have an acquaintance with the history of geology before making statements like this.

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Give me an example where information is added by mutation. Then we'll talk.

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Give us evidence that you can look up information that is readily available in any library and at many websites on-line, then we'll talk.

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Yet...as I said...the information was already present to hand down.

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You've lost the original point somewhere.You originally said that though adding information through mutation was possible, you didn't believe it ever actually happened in nature, and that certainly complexity was never added. The AIG quote that you yourself cited contradicts you when it provides the example of gene transfer, which adds information to an organism. And gene transfer is just one of the means by which information and complexity is added to organisms.

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Example of increase: still waiting to this day for an example. I suppose I could make one up though...

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You're referring to an increase in information in an organism. Once again I refer you to your AIG cite, which provides the example of gene transfer adding information to an organism.

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I do NOT consider copying of other information a new complexity. For instance a frog being born with three legs.

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That's nice, but your position makes no sense because adding a copy of anything is an additional complexity. I wonder how many extra legs would it take before you'd concede this poor frog is more complex than the normal variety?But we don't have to discuss the problem in abstract terms of information and complexity. The fact of the matter is, no one would deny that your three legged frog is very different from the normal variety, and you can deny all you like that there's no information added and no complexity added, but the frog is still different, and the difference has to be due to something. Why don't you join the rest of us and start using standard English?

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I see evidence for change, a general trend towards bad change, but change nevertheless.

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You not only have no evidence for a general trend toward bad change, you have no proposed mechanism for how this change comes about. Natural selection will filter out bad change. Organisms less fit are less likely to pass on their genes, and their "bad change" will be removed from the population.

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Have we really witnessed any change at all that suggests new species could come out of other ones?

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Yes, of course. See this list of observed speciation events:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

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I'm simply suggesting that there are problems present.

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You're talking about radiometric dating in the above quote, and yes, we know you're suggesting there are problems, but when it comes to being specific about those problems you're silent.

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I could easily flip this around, what evidence do you have to assume that the decay rates must have always been the same?

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We have tons of such evidence. When we look off into space we're seeing the universe as it existed thousands, millions and billions of years ago. The nuclear processes we observe in all distant stars and galaxies indicate that the natural processes operating now, including decay rates, were the same in all past eras.To verify the constancy of decay rates you could also look for evidence of greater decay rates in the past. For example, increased decay rates would result in increased heat. In order to cram billions of years of decay into just the few thousand years of YEC the decay rates would have been so high as to vaporize the earth. Since we're still here, the decay rates could not possibly have been consistent with YEC chronologies.If decay rates had been higher in the past it would have meant higher rates of nuclear particle emission, and nuclear particles colliding with genes is one of the causes of mutation. For YEC to be true, mutation rates after the flood would have been astronomical (assuming the earth somehow avoiding being vaporized). There is no indication this was the case, either historically or paleontologically.

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Basically what I meant by "evidence of uphill evolution", is any "uphill information". Specifically, change that suggests new species could evolve over time.

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The fossils in the geologic column represent a detailed though sporadic record of the change in species populating the world over time.

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Percy writes:
As already explained, there is no such thing as "uphill evolution". The question remains, what leads you to believe only in evolution through genetic degeneration?

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Mr BLonDe writes:
The evidence suggests so.

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In case it wasn't clear, I was inviting you to present your evidence.--Percy