Peter Kropotkin:
In 150 years the evidence still goes to show that evolution still
carries the day as a theory, just like gravity. There have been changes
in the theory, and plenty of people have attacked the theory
over the 150 years, but still evolution is king."
S: By this measure the theory of Intelligent Design (of some form or other) has been around and accepted for over 2,000 years and hence is superior…"
K: Ah, they key word is theory. Intelligent design was not
a theory in the biblical times because they were
not interested in science per se. They were interested in god and
religion. There was no science as we know it until the 18 century.
Evolution is a scientific theory. Intelligent design is religion posing
as science. big difference. I am talking about scientific theory.
Not religion.
S: “That’s the whole point, a theory being taken as valid now by an institution known for changing it’s mind on things is not proof anymore than accepting the word of the guy in the pulpit is proof. It’s simply deferring the question onto another authority which has proven itself to be changeable. No doubt if you were born 750 years ago you’d believe that the world was flat and deny any claims to the contrary…”
K: And again I return to the idea of the theory of gravity.
Do you accept the theory of gravity? It is a theory which
has change dramatically in the last 100 years and is always
in the midst of change. Because it changes, do you dismiss the
theory of gravity? Nothing is solid in the universe. There is not
one single fact, 8 million people living in New York for example,
that is will stay the same. Do you dismiss every thing that changes
because it changes. That means you have dismiss every single thing
in the universe because every single thing in the universe changes.
What we have are theories and theories are subject to changes.
And everything is a theory, not proof, but theories.
So if changeability is that important to
you, expect to be disappointed by everything in the universe,
because everything, everything in the universe changes.
Peter Kropotkin:
Ok, I can help you. If you want to do the research yourself, I can
direct you to a website that will answer all your questions.
First of all, they don’t depend on carbon dating for all the answers.
They use other means to verify carbon dating. guy687 is right about
carbon dating, it has limitations. Now they carbon date carbon 14
which has a half life of 5,700 years. Now, carbon 14 enter the body
and exits a body at the same rate while living, but once a living
body dies, no more carbon 14 enters the body. Then all you have to
do, is measure how much carbon 14 has left the body and you get the
years since the living material died. this method works for other
material such as potassium 40 which has a half life of 1.3 billion
years and Thorium 232 which has an half life of 14 billion years."
MEJ : Yes I know what carbon dating is, If i didn’t, would I be posting a thread questioning its validity? My problems aren’t with knowing what carbon dating is, it’s knowing what was in our atmosphere, what was in the water and what was in the earth that can effect how much C leaves the living thing. We can’t presume to know what was in our atmosphere. We can’t say dinosaurs died this long ago… because we don’t know how carbon dating works. We weren’t alive in dinosaur age, we didn’t count the suns to this day from when a dinosaur died to know that we are accurate. Who’s to say that trillions of dioxides were in our atmosphere, there was some sort of polar distortion and it sucked the carbon out of everything.
K: Ah, questioning it validity. You are then question the basic
framework of science. We can know how carbon dating works
because it (carbon dating) depends on things such as
the decay rate of atoms, the basic building block of the
universe. We can tell about the composition of the atmosphere,
from such things as the glaciers from Greenland (air gets deposited
in the ice and then frozen for millions of year under thousands of feet
of ice and the formation of rocks in volcanoes, where as the air
gets trapped within the rocks and stays there until scientist breaks
open the rocks millions of years later. We can tell what was in the
water from chemical test done on sand and objects that have died in
the water. We don’t have to have lived in the dinosaur age to know
about them, because they were kind enough to die in rock and
mud and be preserved for millions of years. We know what they
ate, we know what diseases killed them and in some
cases we can even figure out what color was their skin.
And if something happened to suck all the carbon in the atmosphere
it would leave marks somewhere, sea, earth, glaciers, mud, somewhere.
oh, and if all the carbon got suck out everything on earth would have died, but details."
Peter Kropotkin"yes we can ponder the creation of then universe in the language of science. And if we tried, we can ponder the creation of the universe in the language of philosophy. What we can’t do in the language of science is ponder what the universe means. for that we need
the language of philosophy or religion."
MEJ: “I’m talking literal language here. English for example, we cant contrive thoughts beyond our own ego. We’ve become to melded with language, we can’t see the beginning, because from our perspective… it never happened. We were just born, time began at each one of our births and time will stop at our death. No one else exists in language, just I.”
K: Now you are talking about language. For this, instead of
science books, I suggest reading about language theorist
such as Wittgenstein and Derrida and Chomsky. The doorman
can better help you here then me. I don’t accept or believe
in language theories.
i never said you had to read my post, never asked for your opinion
furthermore, it’s really dissapointing to see people asking questions that clearly indicate that they never bothered to look for the valuable contributions other members made
Since you’re a new poster, what you may not appreciate is that our Belgian friend willem here is a real honest to goodness science student (…he may even be a practicing scientist by now) and has contributed much information on these topics in other posts.
STOP POSTING. I dont care, willem might be the smartest scientist in the world, but his post makes me assume he thinks im retarded. I read through this forum, I know the other threads you refer to. I don’t care, my questions were supposed to be answered in correlation to each other.
OK, with that said. I appreciate everyone’s insight towards this subject, further comments REGARDING my original post are much appreciated. Others can go somewhere else… maybe like a thread labeled useless and mundane.
ugh… i’m sorry to have caused all this fuss, i guess i was just in a bad mood yesterday … i get that when it’s late
i’m just a little frustrated with watching these topics being debated over and over again
i’ll try to formulate an actual answer to your question later, k?
i’m going to do this question by question, i hope you don’t mind
first off: it doesn’t go fast, evolution… it’s a very slow process of some genes mutating, which in turn influences the structure of a certain enzyme, for example. Or enhances the production of a certain enzyme. It’s all very subtle, very slow.
And to make new humans, we’d need the exact same environmental conditions and starting point from which humans arose. Neiter of those are true.
that’s not entirely true… we are just like any other species on earth, only we somehow acquired the ability to greatly impact our environment and stretch it’s capabilities
let me tell you of the aboriginals:
they arrived in australia some 15 thousand years ago if i’m correct (doesn’t matter much)
when they arrived there, they found a land that contained a lot of very large reptiles, who’se coldblooded nature allowed them to grow large even in a barren landscape like australia
so the aboriginals loved that, they started eating all the large reptiles, have a ball and growing in numbers, so australia had a large population at a certain point
Then all the reptiles were finished, and the aboriginals were out of food
so their population crashed. Living in a land with very little resources, the people developed a nomad way of life, developing a very delicate balance with their environment. This balance became all-important, they even based their whole religion on this. (The mythology of the aboriginals describes their migration routes and how much they can take from a certain source of food.)
This is actually quite a common process in nature: A new species disrupts the old environment, changes it and ultimately finds a balance.
What makes us different is that our disruption is very intense and on-going, to a point where we have to ask ourselves how much damage the environment will suffer and if it will be able to recover to a level that is equally valuable.
experiments are done, obviously, because we’re discussing a scientific theory, which must be based on experimental evidence
those experiments clearly indicate evolution
but it’s impossible to speed up natural processes with such a rate, so a bit of uncertainty remains
evolution does happen all around you, in your life time and every day
it’s just a very slow process and it takes intensive studies to observe it
you also see growth of plants and animals don’t you?
luckily, it’s not all as dark and grim
the mammal order developed out of reptiles. We’re alike reptiles in some ways, but much more evolved in most ways that matter. We’re not more lizard-like than ape-like, and i’m sorry but i have to tell you that this question clearly indicates a lack of biological background from your side.
Our heart and bloodflow structure, fysiology, brain structure, behaviour etc… all indicate our closeness to the primates and our difference from the lizards or related species.
this is pure physics… as much as a nucleair bomb is violent, carbon dating is valid
yes, probably… but this is measurable, for example: you know of the ice-cores they get from glaciers? the compounds of the atmosphere from the past can be found in there
also, carbon dating only goes back so far. There’s a certain range (several tens of thousands of years i think) where carbon dating is used, while for earlier times, other isotopes are used.
… i get that when it’s late