Kansas votes to keep its children ignorant...

The "theory" of evolution is a proven theory; just as is the "theory" of relativity
and the "theory" of gravity. (Do you doubt those?)

If you're looking for current proof that the world is still "evolving" , just look
at bird flu.
 
ead79 said:
Namely, I have seen numerous studies that show that carbon dating is very unreliable. Despite its unreliability, it is very frequently used to date fossils and the dates are looked at as facts. I’m not saying that you can definitively prove that the fossils are “younger” than carbon dating reflects, but I think it is important to mention the unreliability of carbon dating in science courses. It is important to note that I don’t think they must then turn the discussion to Creationism, just that it’s valuable for students to understand that carbon dating is not accurate all of the time.

Interesting how carbon dating is reliable when it's supporting the age of religious artifacts, but fossils that predate Genesis, not so much.

I also believe that macroevolution violates the Law of Entropy (the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics). While I have read the opposing viewpoint to my argument, I have not seen compelling evidence that evolution does not violate this law. It essentially states that things will decline if left to their own devices. Such as a barn being left alone in a field will have chipped paint, then rot. Macro evolution holds that things have gradually improved over time to the point we are at today (and that we are still improving). Thus, in my opinion, macroevolution is at odds with another key scientific principle.

You're comparing living organisms, who compete with the elements and each other to survive, to inanimate objects? :confused3

However, I do believe that pointing out key criticisms of evolutionary theory is key to a well-rounded education.

Not ONCE have I ever heard of a case of anybody teaching evolution without also speaking about the faults with the theory.
 
ead79 said:
To give context to my opinion, I am a Creationist.

Essentially, I do not believe that public schools must teach Creationism since it is a faith-based belief. However, I do believe that pointing out key criticisms of evolutionary theory is key to a well-rounded education. For instance, if I was in a history course and was being taught that historians largely believe that the ancient Egyptians invented paper, but there is some evidence that questions that assertion, I see that as well-rounded education.

Amen. I applaud you. :flower:
 
cardaway said:
Interesting how carbon dating is reliable when it's supporting the age of religious artifacts, but fossils that predate Genesis, not so much.
Where did I say that I find carbon dating to be reliable when dating religious artifacts? I don't find it to be reliable no matter what it is used to date.

cardaway said:
You're comparing living organisms, who compete with the elements and each other to survive, to inanimate objects? :confused3
It was just meant as a general comparison, not as a literal one. While I believe that species can adapt to be better suited for their surroundings/living situation, I do not think that the earth has improved over time and become more orderly.

cardaway said:
Not ONCE have I ever heard of a case of anybody teaching evolution without also speaking about the faults with the theory.
I don't really have a response to this except to say that I have encountered it.

Why the hostility? I was very respectful in my post. I just don't agree with macroevolution, and I don't think it's sound science.
 

ead79 said:
I take issue with some of the key points of macro evolutionary theory. Namely, I have seen numerous studies that show that carbon dating is very unreliable. Despite its unreliability, it is very frequently used to date fossils and the dates are looked at as facts. I’m not saying that you can definitively prove that the fossils are “younger” than carbon dating reflects, but I think it is important to mention the unreliability of carbon dating in science courses. It is important to note that I don’t think they must then turn the discussion to Creationism, just that it’s valuable for students to understand that carbon dating is not accurate all of the time.


Hello everyone; I'm your friendly resident archaeologist--just wanted to clear up some things about carbon dating.

Carbon dating is extremely impractical and finicky for dating this in what we call "the historical period" (i.e. from about 10,000 BCE to the present day). This is due, mostly, to the fact that the material being dated (usually wood or another organic) vastly predates the artifact in question. For example, a wooden tool made in 300 CE (AD in religious reckoning) could have been made with wood from a tree that pre-dated the tools creation by, say, 200 years. Carbon dating would effectively date the tool 200 years older than it actually is.

This is why carbon dating religious artifacts is, mostly, useless--if an actual age can been anywhere from 500 years earlier to 500 years later than the given carbon date, it's barely helpful for proving validity.

However, when dealing with the vast amounts of time were talking about with macroevolution, carbon dating is extremely effective--especially now that we have other technologies such as core, ice cap, and magnetic excavation. 500 years in the scale of (especially) early macroevolution is nothing--the margin of error is too small to be a hindrance.

I think my school system did right by me... :goodvibes
 
ead79 said:
Why the hostility? I was very respectful in my post. I just don't agree with macroevolution, and I don't think it's sound science.

This is true; you were very respectful--which I appreciate. You also seem very informed, which makes for intelligent, kind, respectful debate.
:)
 
BelleMcNally said:
This is true; you were very respectful--which I appreciate. You also seem very informed, which makes for intelligent, kind, respectful debate.
:)
Thanks! The information about dating religious artifacts was very interesting. I hadn’t thought about the materials being older than the object before. And you’re right that the closer to “now” we get, the more important a 500 year gap in dates is.
 
ead79 said:
Where did I say that I find carbon dating to be reliable when dating religious artifacts? I don't find it to be reliable no matter what it is used to date.

The comment was a general one. Based on what I have read on the subject, carbon dating has been found to be very reliable, using in many cases religious artifacts with accepted date periods to prove the system.


It was just meant as a general comparison, not as a literal one. While I believe that species can adapt to be better suited for their surroundings/living situation, I do not think that the earth has improved over time and become more orderly.

Then please give us another example. Every example I have seen shows that the two theories support each other. Many species have thrived, others went completely away. All this before humans entered the mess.

Why the hostility?

Hostility? :confused3
 
ead79 said:
I take issue with some of the key points of macro evolutionary theory. Namely, I have seen numerous studies that show that carbon dating is very unreliable. Despite its unreliability, it is very frequently used to date fossils and the dates are looked at as facts. I’m not saying that you can definitively prove that the fossils are “younger” than carbon dating reflects, but I think it is important to mention the unreliability of carbon dating in science courses. It is important to note that I don’t think they must then turn the discussion to Creationism, just that it’s valuable for students to understand that carbon dating is not accurate all of the time.
It is possible to test radiocarbon dates in different ways. One way is to date things that you already know the age of. Libby did this when he first developed the method, by dating artefacts of Egyptian sites, which were already dated historically. Another way is to use tree rings. Every year a tree leaves a ring, the rings increase in number over time until a pattern of rings is formed. Sometimes the tree has many hundreds of rings. Scientists can date the age of the tree by counting and measuring the rings. Radiocarbon daters can then date the tree rings and compare the dates with the real age of the tree. This is a very good way of testing radiocarbon, and we now know that there are some differences in radiocarbon dates and real time. Most of the time radiocarbon dating is accurate, but sometimes it is different from the real age by a small amount. Using a calibration curve, which is based on radiocarbon dates of tree rings over the last 10000 years, radiocarbon daters can correct for this problem.

We can also test radiocarbon by comparing the results with the dates produced by other dating methods, and there are many of those. These methods are completely different to radiocarbon dating and use different methods to provide dates. Some of the dating methods include Uranium/Thorium dating (dating coral etc), Thermoluminescence (pottery, sediments), Obsidian Hydration (obsidian), Electron Spin Resonance (teeth), Amino Acid Racemisation dating (eggshell, bones), and many others.
http://www.c14dating.com/k12.html

Dating is not necessary to demonstrate that evolution is a fact. Chronological sequence is all that is really required.
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/datingmethods.htm





ead79 said:
I also believe that macroevolution violates the Law of Entropy (the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics). While I have read the opposing viewpoint to my argument, I have not seen compelling evidence that evolution does not violate this law. It essentially states that things will decline if left to their own devices. Such as a barn being left alone in a field will have chipped paint, then rot. Macro evolution holds that things have gradually improved over time to the point we are at today (and that we are still improving). Thus, in my opinion, macroevolution is at odds with another key scientific principle.

This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." [Atkins, 1984, The Second Law, pg. 25] Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder.

However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can't have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?

The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics, since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#thermo

Energetically, the second law of thermodynamics favors the formation of the majority of all known complex and ordered chemical compounds directly from their simpler elements. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, the second law does not dictate the decrease of ordered structure by its predictions. It only demands a "spreading out" of energy when such ordered compounds are formed spontaneously.
...
The second law concerns energy, not patterns of objects. The second law states that energy tends not to be restricted to one or a few energy levels in atoms and molecules, but to be dispersed to as many such levels as possible – rephrased in homely terms involving molecules, "Intense or concentrated energy tends to spread out and diffuse".
http://www.2ndlaw.com/evolution.html
 
BelleMcNally said:
However, when dealing with the vast amounts of time were talking about with macroevolution, carbon dating is extremely effective--especially now that we have other technologies such as core, ice cap, and magnetic excavation. 500 years in the scale of (especially) early macroevolution is nothing--the margin of error is too small to be a hindrance.

Which was my point. Things have been dated to show they came from different periods. Nothing trying to nail it down from a decade, or even a century. But certainly situations where they have proved that pieces were from different periods despite their being found in the same site.
 
cardaway said:
Which was my point. Things have been dated to show they came from different periods. Nothing trying to nail it down from a decade, or even a century. But certainly situations where they have proved that pieces were from different periods despite their being found in the same site.

Absolutely; this happens all the time.
 
cardaway said:
Then please give us another example. Every example I have seen shows that the two theories support each other. Many species have thrived, others went completely away. All this before humans entered the mess.
The first example that comes to mind is the increase in natural disasters. While I certainly believe that there is a marked cyclical pattern to natural disasters, the intensity/frequency has increased overall.
 
ead79 said:
Laura, as I said in my post, I am very familiar with the opposing viewpoint. Let’s just say I think their information is slanted to reflect their opinion, just as I would expect information appearing on a Creationist website to be slanted in that direction.

This discussion has been pretty polite for the subject matter, which I think is great!

I was wondering if, in the interests of furthering polite discussion, you would give some examples/evidence of why their information is slanted to reflect their opinion.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics is often misunderstood and applied to very large, generalized situations when the law itself is very specific and applies to energy and things on a microscopic level. It's true that a barn left in disuse will peel and decay, but that is more an analogy of the 2nd law (used to generally explain it quickly and easily) than an example of its workings.

Macroevolution takes place on a larger scale and involves many more variables than the 2nd law. We have formulae for the second law. We don't have formulae for evolution, they would be gigantic.
 
Ead... I'm glad to see you've jumped in here..Issues like the ones you brought up are exactly the stuff that should be brought up in science class..>Like I said,I think debate about the evolutionary processes and methods used belong in the classroom..
Lots of nice stuff being brought up now by people much smarter than me.
 
ead79 said:
Laura, as I said in my post, I am very familiar with the opposing viewpoint. Let’s just say I think their information is slanted to reflect their opinion, just as I would expect information appearing on a Creationist website to be slanted in that direction.

Yes, I know you said you were, but I posted the information from scientists so that others can see the opposing side instead of your, well, unscientific opinion of it. As I'm not a scientist either, I don't think I have the personal credentials to give factual evidence to refute your position. So I gather the facts from other scientists and paste them here. They're not "evolutionist" sites, they're science sites, some with a specific topic. There's no slant.

The theory of evolution isn't really open to a belief like whether God exists or not. Scientists don't have "faith" in evolution like you have faith in God. Evolution doesn't mean that there isn't a God or that God didn't create the universe (which I do believe in), but there is no evidence to disprove the theory of evolution, including the law of thermodynamics.

Your opinion of the second law of thermodynamics in regards to evolution is simply not based on sound science. No doubt you will hold to your opinion no matter what I post. But I'm not necessarily posting to change anyone's mind. I'm just stating the facts.
 
JennyMominRI said:
I think debate about the evolutionary processes and methods used belong in the classroom.

I completely agree. That's what science is all about. Observing nature, coming up with theories, testing those theories, and then seeing if they hold and are sound. :)
 
ead79 said:
The first example that comes to mind is the increase in natural disasters. While I certainly believe that there is a marked cyclical pattern to natural disasters, the intensity/frequency has increased overall.

There are many ways to prove "natural disasters" took place and the people that study those things have shown that the number has been equal or greater in every period in history.

In my state alone, the mountains were quite active, but in my lifetime only St. Helens has doen anything of note. Evidence shows that level of activity was pretty constant until just the erruption just prior to St. Helens. Of course that may change, but so far, things look to be dying down, not getting worse.
 
Free4Life11 said:
I don't know crap about science and have no desire to learn about it either so I wont choose to do anything related to science.

And you conceal it so well. :rolleyes1
 


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