How do you know God isn't dead?

[Statler Waldorf]

I mean, if you only accept measurements of age that reveal short ages for the Earth's rocks and fossils, how are they measured?

There really isn’t a way to date sedimentary rock real accurately; you could date the fossils using known rates of soft tissue and DNA decay I suppose. You could still get ranges for their ages though based on how old we know the Earth is and when the flood took place.

And that is why creationists expect to find fossils which aren't there...

I do not think they expect to find any fossils that are not there, fossilization is a very rare process.

common creator... yeah, we can't also exclude the possibility that we were created overnight, with all our memories already inbuilt, so as to make it indiscernible from having been born and raised the way we have.

Descartes' malicious demon? Sure that’s a possibility but I think the nature of evidence and a lot of evidence itself points to Yahweh.

Why do you discard the answer that is right in front of you, and replace it with the super assumption of a creator thing?

I didn’t discard anything. We both agree animals share similar genetic coding and morphologic structures, I believe that’s because they have a common creator, you believe it’s because they have a common ancestor; both explanations could explain the evidence in question.

aye... have you heard of a storytelling book which some proponents claim to have science in it... what was it called?... arrgggg...

The Bible is a book that makes some scientific claims, it’s not a science book though, not unlike the Origin of Species

The ability to solve practical problems, develop tools, develop a social structure is probably the same ability which allows us to solve mathematical problems, develop theories, develop new tools...
Wouldn't you agree?

If you are suggesting Humans have always been as intelligent as they are today, then I agree. However, I do not believe that is something Darwinists believe to be the case.

I don't... it's not my field of study.
I leave that to those who do study it.
Here's two simple explanations of how they do it:
How do scientists determine the age of dinosaur bones?
Radiometric Dating

I knew they couldn’t date sedimentary rock with radiometric dating. It appears the entire system is built upon a dating method that has no empirically verifiable control; that just seems incredibly sloppy. How do you explain the fact that they dated moon rocks to be 4.5 billion years old but the moon would have been touching the Earth 1.37 billion years ago? That right there seems to disprove the method’s validity.

Why do you reject the methods that yield old ages?

For the same reasons you reject the ones that yield young ages I suppose.

You know, there are humans who are born with an extra chromosome.

Yes, and they’d never survive on their own.

Seeing as humans are among the species with the most DNA information, it seems quite easy to add new information.

That’s begging the question though, you’re using your assumption that Humans appeared later than most other animals to justify the belief that natural selection can create new genetic information. I am saying we never observe natural selection producing new genetic information (I can think of one possible exception), so it’s unreasonable to think that it did it trillions of times in the Earth’s past. However, if it didn’t do it trillions of times in the Earths’ past all life could not have originated from a single common ancestor.

Now imagine you take an organism that has only 2 or 3 chromosomes.... What would change if it was born with an extra one?

But how was it born with an extra one? You’ll have to be more specific.

What is this thing you call "genetic entropy"?
And why would it yield "catastrophic effects"?

Well without going into too much detail; the Human genome has been observed to degenerate 3-5% per generation due to harmful mutations within the code. That rate seems to be fairly consistent amongst the higher ordered animals. If the genome degenerates too much, it will eventually experience gene catastrophe, where the species will simply die off. So how can a species such as the crocodile survive for 200 million years (over 50 million generations) all the while experiencing 3-5% genetic degeneration per generation and remain unchanged and unharmed? It seems impossible.

You need to warn people when you do that!

Haha

AH, so... dating rock layers where fossils are found, cataloging these fossils, trying to piece them together and producing an educated guess at what they looked like when alive is not empirical?... then what is it?

It’s a historical science. I am enjoying our discussion as usual.

There's plenty of difference between the two populations (aborigines and europeans)- so far as difference goes between human beings anyway.

…so Sociologists that claim race is nothing more than a social construct are wrong? There are documented cases of Europeans being the best tissue matches with Aboriginals for organ transplants, the differences are trivial; so no divergent evolution, sorry.

As to what drove the adaptation (in truth the thing that drives adaptation is living long enough to have sex - nothing more or less)

No, it is living long enough to have sex and have kids that live long enough to have sex and have kids. Anything that prevents someone from living long enough to have sex and have healthy children is known as a selective pressure. You seem to be unable to postulate a selective pressure or group of selective pressures that would develop modern day human cognitive abilities in primitive man.

we pin all of this on, depends on who you ask. One camp says standing upright, another figures that language and communication would have done the trick.

Yup, more storytelling. They do not know how evolution did it but they have faith that it did it.

We seem to be learning more and more, that our primitive ancestors weren;t quite as primitive as we once thought in any case.

Which is what creationists have been claiming for decades.

The driving mechanism of these changes is mutation. Well attested, frequently occurring - and still ongoing...even in you.

Ah, the ever elusive but apparently rather frequent in the past but just not today beneficial mutation that increases genetic information. You’ve got a lot of faith in that which is unseen.

We -are- talking about the unifying theory of biology Stat, so yeah, we're talking physical sciences. We're talking about geology and physics, so yeah - we're talking about physical science. Case in point....we're talking about the single-most well evidenced, well established, and thoroughly tested theory in -all- of the physical sciences.

No we’re not; we’re talking about Neo-Darwinism, which is not even an empirical science.

Plenty of criteria to meet to be classified as an ape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape There you go bud. Educate thyself.

A user-generated site? Why is the number of chromosomes not relevant to the classification? Who determined this classification?

You'll have to forgive me, but a man who doesn't understand, or doesn't care to know what makes an ape an ape - or that biology and geology are physical sciences - isn't going to get much of a rise out of me with some intellectual laziness quip.

You only provided some arbitrary classification that places people in the order of Primates, as I pointed out earlier, simply calling Humans primates does not prove they are indeed primates. You need some actual evidence demonstrating they are related to the primates. Additionally, you never used the term Physical Science, you used the term Physics. Are you really so ignorant you do not know the difference between those two terms?

Natural selection is winnower, a reducer of things. Without natural selection you still have evolution.

Prove it, don’t just assert it. Give me a case of something evolving without the mechanism of Natural Selection being involved.

What's inconsistent (with the theory you clearly have -never- taken the time to look into) about human beings developing those big brains of ours before they needed to do algebra?

Simple, according to the theory animals do not develop traits they do not use in survival. Any organism that did so would be out competed by other organisms that were putting their energy to actually surviving. Chance and necessity; you have no necessity.

An organism lives in a glass box. We suck all of the air out of the box. What do you think is going to happen to the population if they have to develop anaerobic respiration as a response to this stimulus? If you guessed "they're likely going to die" you'd be right. This is the situation you're imaging with regards to our ability to count. You find it absurd because it is, you just don't understand -why- it's absurd.

That’s a faulty analogy, anaerobic respiration serves a purpose in animals, but having the ability to do mathematical analysis that was not developed until thousands of years later does not serve a purpose. Why did Humans develop that ability and yet no other animals did?

While we understand the power of selective forces - those selective forces do not exert any influence over selectively neutral mutations (the vast majority of mutations expressed in living organisms). If you have a mutation that confers no advantage - and is not deleterious (you have a few-unique between you and I, btw) - then all you have to do is survive long enough to reproduce. If you're out competed - then it isn't based upon the metrics of that mutation but another - which amusingly, doesn't always work to our benefit. A shitty mutation, selectively neutral and non-deleterious, can be expressed in a population very widely for reasons entirely unrelated to that mutation.

Unless you can give me a very specific explanation of how the neurological pathways necessary for the mental cognitive abilities to do calculus and advanced levels of thinking could arise as a simple neutral mutation this is nothing more than wishful thinking and “just-so” storytelling. You’re really becoming the “Evolution-did-it” guy aren’t you?

It's not like this stuff is hidden away and out of view. It's middle school biology. If you wanted examples you have easy access to them. Constantly moaning about how I do not provide them does what? See that bit above about intellectual laziness?

You’re the one defending the theory (rather poorly so), the onus is on you to defend it, not on the skeptic. If you want to tell stories about how all of this stuff happened then fine, but that does not demonstrate that any of it actually happened, and I have every right to reject such stories as just that, fantastic stories.

Well, we could certainly entertain the notion that even though we're pretty good at this whole biology bit, and understand how all of those things come to pass - and even though the explanation we have fits our observations and makes successful predictions........we could be wrong. Perhaps that against all odds and reason - common descent is inaccurate in some way. Perhaps you'd like to suggest an explanation that's at least commensurate with the one we currently have?

First I’ll challenge the absolute garbage you tossed out above your question. What successful prediction has been made that could only have been made if someone believed in Common Descent? What observations have been made that demonstrate Common Descent?

You seem to think that I'm out to prove biology to you.

Nope, Darwinism, the two are very different.

You're mistaken. I'm trying to help you though your inaccurate concept of modern synthesis - a concept utterly divorced from the reality of modern synthesis in every conceivable way. Whether or not you would put your chips behind it is irrelevant, at the very least you'd have the opportunity to competently argue against it...if you understood what you were arguing against in the first place. This is often the trouble with cretinists. They argue -for- their own fantasies, by way of arguing -against- their own fantasies. You don't have an excuse, we've been here before.

Yes, this discussion has definitely illuminated ignorance on the subject matter, but it certainly has not been mine. My favorite was your assertion that biologic evolution occurs devoid of natural selection, priceless. I’ll have to give you my old Advanced Evolutionary Biology professor’s email address (don’t worry he’s an atheist), I am sure he’d love to hear you try and defend that fantastic claim.

Cretinists do no such thing. Puntcuated equilibrium is the realm of empirical observation and biology. Cretinism is the realm of spirits. I understand why one might want to associate their fairy tales with science, why they might worship at another's altar - so to speak- but it doesn't apply in this case. The very moment one invokes ghosts as a mechanism - they've left science right about the speed of light. There's no sense in pretending otherwise. If you're going to defer to magic, at least fucking own it. Is that too much to ask?

In fact, Creationists support rapid speciation by Darwinistic means. How can you argue against a position you are so embarrassingly ignorant of? There’s also nothing in science that presupposes naturalism, it only requires trial uniformity. You’re amusing; I’ll grant you that Rhythm.