Darwin,Atheism and Religion

[BienvenuJDC]

You see Bien, its quite simple. Scientists have uncovered thousands of fossil remains going back millions of years. Remains of anatomically modern humans only go back around 250 000 years or so. You go back farther and you find humanoid remains, not quite the same as us but similar. Go back even farther and the skeletons look less and less like ours.

As the dates of the skeletons get closer to the present age they begin to appear more and more human. Its like this with all the species we have good fossil records of. I can't have the remains fed-exed to you, but you wanted evidence and here it is.

Again...this is merely your claim that there is evidence. Some of these fossils are nothing but one tooth. There's Lucy that is supposedly a pre-sapien human, but later study shows that it was nothing more than an ape. You can manipulate the fossils to be what you want them to be, that doesn't prove anything. Without something to discuss, your evidence is nothing more than hearsay. Let's discuss an actual piece of evidence.

[Darcy88]

No, science is merely knowledge. What you are referring to is not science, but interpretation of evidence. I don't agree with the interpretation of the scientists that you are presenting. And the argument that they are recognized as well educated, and that they are in the majority doesn't stand. The recognized scholars of one time believed that the earth was flat, and that you could heal someone by bleeding them. There are more than just "fringe" and "hacks" that question the accuracy of these dating methods. Maybe you out to broaden your research.

Yes, people once thought the earth was flat. Back before the scientific revolution, before the rapid rise of technology, back when science was making its first baby steps if it can even be said to have yet been born.

The evidence for the flatness of the earth is nothing like the evidence for carbon dating. Its a false analogy.

You get evidence and then you proceed to question it by questioning the very principle of evidence itself. "Science is wrong. They once told us the earth was flat!"

[Darcy88]

Again...this is merely your claim that there is evidence. Some of these fossils are nothing but one tooth. There's Lucy that is supposedly a pre-sapien human, but later study shows that it was nothing more than an ape. You can manipulate the fossils to be what you want them to be, that doesn't prove anything. Without something to discuss, your evidence is nothing more than hearsay. Let's discuss an actual piece of evidence.

Its not hearsay. Its solid, concrete, physical evidence. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean there's nothing to it.

[BienvenuJDC]

Yes, people once thought the earth was flat. Back before the scientific revolution, before the rapid rise of technology, back when science was making its first baby steps if it can even said to have yet been born.

The evidence for the flatness of the earth is nothing like the evidence for carbon dating. Its a false analogy.

You get evidence and then you proceed to question it by questioning the very principle of evidence itself. "Science is wrong. They once told us the earth was flat!"

If you want to appear to quote me, then actually quote me. If you can't quote me correctly, why should I believe anything that you claim to quote.

"...science is merely knowledge..." I never said that Science was wrong, I said that the interpretation of the evidence was inaccurate.

Let's discuss one of the pieces of evidence that you have. I'm tired to going over you claims of the evidence. Let's look at something real.

[Darcy88]

Have you ever talked to an actual scientist? I took a few first year science courses and remember how knowledgable some of my professors were. My physics prof would go off on these 1000 mile an hour tangents, shooting off theories rapid-fire and scrawling equations across the board. They're not stupid. Maybe it would take me hours, but if I went carefully step by step I could add the pieces until the truth of some principle was revealed, soild as pyamid. Science is complicated, bafflingly so. But its well-founded. For something like carbon-dating to become as accepted as it is its had to pass through countless trials, a veritable gauntlet of obsessively nit-picking experts each ready to pounce on the slightest flaw.

We've come a long way since the flat earth days. Back then there was little to seperate fact from fantasy. Today we have methods and technologies that seem not centuries but rather light-years ahead of what they had then.

[Darcy88]

I don't see the point in discussing individual items of evidence. You don't trust the dating method anyway.

[Paulclem]

And when the Buddha attempted to starve himself? That was not a form of nihilism?
I know, don't tell me. It was a way to accompany and have compassion for all the people that were being starved by their government. He probably wanted to train them like the donkey that learned how not to eat and then die. Ha!
Enough. Have fun.

Ah the Coup de Grace. Unfortunately that is only part of the story. He rejected that path and then adopted The Middle Way between the extremes of indulgence and self inflicted pain.

Buddhism as it was then grew within a Hindu society, and so had no connection to the rulers, although it was supported by patrons later. In that sense it was a subversive religion.

I'm afraid your sarcasm is misplaced.

[JuniperWoolf]

What you are referring to is not science, but interpretation of evidence. I don't agree with the interpretation of the scientists that you are presenting.

So that would be about 99.99% of scientists you disagree with. You're saying that they all worked together and managed to execute a huge, impossible lie (and trust me, for scientists, especially ones from different fields, "working together" is impossible enough even if the lie in question WASN'T way too huge for even a small group to maintain, which in this case it is). For what purpose?

Carbon dating can't really be refuted, it's a relatively simple mathematical equation. Carbon-14 decomposes at a fixed rate, and this has been observed millions of times by millions of people, anyone who has ever studied carbon-14 in chemistry, or biology, or anthropology, or archaeology, &c. If you measure how much carbon-14 is left in a thing verses how much it had to start with, you can take that fixed rate into account and determine how long that thing has existed. It's like an hour glass, except instead of sand leaving the top part and falling into the bottom, carbon-14 is leaving the thing that you're carbon dating. It's an easy concept, and can be used to date things up until about 60,000 years. That is 52,000 years older than you claim the earth to be.

I could easily ramble on about dozens of topics and dozens of examples for why the earth is older than 8000 years and why evolution exists. I could mention how there has never been a single fossil of a modern organism buried in a lower (older) strata level than it's ancestor (and each strata has a different, obviously observable composition depending upon the age in which it was produced - you've seen them, they look like lines in cliff faces). I could bring up the fact that we have literally watched evolution happen, we have CAUSED it to happen by breeding new species which no longer have the ability to mate with it's previous incarnation (and a new species created from an old one as in artificial selection is evolution, except that on a large scale there would be no humans around to employ artificial selection so they would change via the much slower natural selection which is also observable). It literally takes almost no effort at all to refute your claim that the earth is 8000 years old. Almost every person on the face of the earth (coincidentally everyone except for the people in your tiny religious niche) is of the opinion that your idea of a young earth is impossible.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Darcy, while it is true that many fossils have been unearthed, the dating of those fossils is not accurate. Therefore you haven't provided one shred of evidence, you just made a claim.

But you didn't offer any evidence. You claimed that there was evidence.

Oh, I believe that there are fossils, but I also believe that the methods used for dating required certain variable data and assumptions for the calculations to be made. However, you still haven't offered any evidence. You have only stated that there are fossils, and that there are some scientists who have dated them to certain eras. However, you ignore that there are other scientists that disagree with them. You haven't shown me what the fossils are of, who said that they are dated to what period, or what method that they used to date the fossils.

Yes, it's like shouting across a street, but I can clearly hear you. But you still haven't offered any evidence. Please show me at least one of the fossils, and then explain how that one fossil proves your claim. How does a fossil prove that which you claim, and what exactly is it that you are claiming (based on that fossil)?

No, science is merely knowledge. What you are referring to is not science, but interpretation of evidence. I don't agree with the interpretation of the scientists that you are presenting. And the argument that they are recognized as well educated, and that they are in the majority doesn't stand. The recognized scholars of one time believed that the earth was flat, and that you could heal someone by bleeding them. There are more than just "fringe" and "hacks" that question the accuracy of these dating methods. Maybe you out to broaden your research.

Again...this is merely your claim that there is evidence. Some of these fossils are nothing but one tooth. There's Lucy that is supposedly a pre-sapien human, but later study shows that it was nothing more than an ape. You can manipulate the fossils to be what you want them to be, that doesn't prove anything. Without something to discuss, your evidence is nothing more than hearsay. Let's discuss an actual piece of evidence.

Pot, meet kettle!

Don't bother posting anything, Darcy, because if you do post something damning to his ideas, he just ignores it.

[Varenne Rodin]

No, science is merely knowledge. What you are referring to is not science, but interpretation of evidence. I don't agree with the interpretation of the scientists that you are presenting. And the argument that they are recognized as well educated, and that they are in the majority doesn't stand. The recognized scholars of one time believed that the earth was flat, and that you could heal someone by bleeding them. There are more than just "fringe" and "hacks" that question the accuracy of these dating methods. Maybe you out to broaden your research.

....but you are questioning them to better cling to your dogmas. The opinions you are presenting are biased, unsubstantiated, not objective and, therefore, should be discarded.

[Varenne Rodin]

So that would be about 99.99% of scientists you disagree with. You're saying that they all worked together and managed to execute a huge, impossible lie (and trust me, for scientists, especially ones from different fields, "working together" is impossible enough even if the lie in question WASN'T way too huge for even a small group to maintain, which in this case it is). For what purpose?

Carbon dating can't really be refuted, it's a relatively simple mathematical equation. Carbon-14 decomposes at a fixed rate, and this has been observed millions of times by millions of people, anyone who has ever studied carbon-14 in chemistry, or biology, or anthropology, or archaeology, &c. If you measure how much carbon-14 is left in a thing verses how much it had to start with, you can take that fixed rate into account and determine how long that thing has existed. It's like an hour glass, except instead of sand leaving the top part and falling into the bottom, carbon-14 is leaving the thing that you're carbon dating. It's an easy concept, and can be used to date things up until about 60,000 years. That is 52,000 years older than you claim the earth to be.

I could easily ramble on about dozens of topics and dozens of examples for why the earth is older than 8000 years and why evolution exists. I could mention how there has never been a single fossil of a modern organism buried in a lower (older) strata level than it's ancestor (and each strata has a different, obviously observable composition depending upon the age in which it was produced - you've seen them, they look like lines in cliff faces). I could bring up the fact that we have literally watched evolution happen, we have CAUSED it to happen by breeding new species which no longer have the ability to mate with it's previous incarnation (and a new species created from an old one as in artificial selection is evolution, except that on a large scale there would be no humans around to employ artificial selection so they would change via the much slower natural selection which is also observable). It literally takes almost no effort at all to refute your claim that the earth is 8000 years old. Almost every person on the face of the earth (coincidentally everyone except for the people in your tiny religious niche) is of the opinion that your idea of a young earth is impossible.

Brilliant. Thank you!

[cafolini]

So that would be about 99.99% of scientists you disagree with. You're saying that they all worked together and managed to execute a huge, impossible lie (and trust me, for scientists, especially ones from different fields, "working together" is impossible enough even if the lie in question WASN'T way too huge for even a small group to maintain, which in this case it is). For what purpose?

Carbon dating can't really be refuted, it's a relatively simple mathematical equation. Carbon-14 decomposes at a fixed rate, and this has been observed millions of times by millions of people, anyone who has ever studied carbon-14 in chemistry, or biology, or anthropology, or archaeology, &c. If you measure how much carbon-14 is left in a thing verses how much it had to start with, you can take that fixed rate into account and determine how long that thing has existed. It's like an hour glass, except instead of sand leaving the top part and falling into the bottom, carbon-14 is leaving the thing that you're carbon dating. It's an easy concept, and can be used to date things up until about 60,000 years. That is 52,000 years older than you claim the earth to be.

I could easily ramble on about dozens of topics and dozens of examples for why the earth is older than 8000 years and why evolution exists. I could mention how there has never been a single fossil of a modern organism buried in a lower (older) strata level than it's ancestor (and each strata has a different, obviously observable composition depending upon the age in which it was produced - you've seen them, they look like lines in cliff faces). I could bring up the fact that we have literally watched evolution happen, we have CAUSED it to happen by breeding new species which no longer have the ability to mate with it's previous incarnation (and a new species created from an old one as in artificial selection is evolution, except that on a large scale there would be no humans around to employ artificial selection so they would change via the much slower natural selection which is also observable). It literally takes almost no effort at all to refute your claim that the earth is 8000 years old. Almost every person on the face of the earth (coincidentally everyone except for the people in your tiny religious niche) is of the opinion that your idea of a young earth is impossible.

This is indeed a very good post. Far more than an opinion.
What's interesting is that these quacking freaks would argue against this but wouldn't argue about the craziness of Jurassic, where they have actually guessed the anatomy of animals as if it were a fact. Not to speak about how they readily ate Freud's stuff of philogenetic fantasy, where the fetus in the womb goes through every stage of prehistory. Insanity finds no bounds and often becomes famous.

[BienvenuJDC]

So that would be about 99.99% of scientists you disagree with.

Did you pull that 99% figure out of thin air?

Carbon dating can't really be refuted, it's a relatively simple mathematical equation.

You're right, it is an equation, but there are too many variable, and some assumptions have to be made to plug in for some of the variables. That is where the inaccuracies begin.

I could easily ramble on about dozens of topics and dozens of examples

And you are rambling. Do you know that for sure? Do you have any evidence of that?

You see the problem with that logic is that we define the age of the strata based on what we find in it....and we define the age of that which we find in a strata based on the age of the strata. That is circular reasoning....and absolutely no evidence at all.

[hillwalker]

You see the problem with that logic is that we define the age of the strata based on what we find in it....and we define the age of that which we find in a strata based on the age of the strata. That is circular reasoning....and absolutely no evidence at all.

Ever hear the quote 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?' That statement you have just posted is living proof.

To simplify how geology works, if we focus on two simple scenarios:

1) dating strata from its fossils:

Some fossilised remains can be dated using Carbon dating (giving an accurate age - which obviously you may choose to refute because you consider science nothing more than conjecture).

But as far as scientists are concerned the facts are irrefutable, and there aren’t ‘too many variables’ to cast doubt on these facts.
Science is too self-critical and indeed too b1tchy to accept shoddy research as a basis for establishing facts.
Carbon dating is as accurate as counting the rings in a sawn-off tree stump to give the age of the tree. Unless of course you think dendrochronology is also flawed.

So it seems reasonable to conclude that any strata of rock containing fossils found to be of a certain age will belong to the same geological period as the fossils found within it. And the same will apply to any other set of strata containing fossils of that same age.
That’s how it is possible to conclude that rocks in Pennsylvania and in the UK both belong to the same geological period (Carboniferous) because they share fossils of the same age.

2) dating fossils from the strata in which they are found:

On this basis other fossils found within the same strata will be accepted as belonging to the same geological period even though they might differ in appearance and indeed be of different species from fossils that have already been accurately dated. The logical assumption being that they were buried at the same time, so co-existed.

It’s not circular reasoning - a case of one relying on the other and vice versa. It's called applying scientific knowledge logically.

H

[BienvenuJDC]

Ever hear the quote 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?' That statement you have just posted is living proof.

To simplify how geology works, if we focus on two simple scenarios:

1) dating strata from its fossils:

Some fossilised remains can be dated using Carbon dating (giving an accurate age - which obviously you may choose to refute because you consider science nothing more than conjecture).

But as far as scientists are concerned the facts are irrefutable, and there aren’t ‘too many variables’ to cast doubt on these facts.
Science is too self-critical and indeed too b1tchy to accept shoddy research as a basis for establishing facts.
Carbon dating is as accurate as counting the rings in a sawn-off tree stump to give the age of the tree. Unless of course you think dendrochronology is also flawed.

So it seems reasonable to conclude that any strata of rock containing fossils found to be of a certain age will belong to the same geological period as the fossils found within it. And the same will apply to any other set of strata containing fossils of that same age.
That’s how it is possible to conclude that rocks in Pennsylvania and in the UK both belong to the same geological period (Carboniferous) because they share fossils of the same age.

2) dating fossils from the strata in which they are found:

On this basis other fossils found within the same strata will be accepted as belonging to the same geological period even though they might differ in appearance and indeed be of different species from fossils that have already been accurately dated. The logical assumption being that they were buried at the same time, so co-existed.

It’s not circular reasoning - a case of one relying on the other and vice versa. It's called applying scientific knowledge logically.

H

I guess it's really impossible to discuss these things in generalities. We can claim whatever we want to if we don't have to look at specific examples. I understand what you are saying, but we cannot really discuss it unless we have a real example to look at.