dgszweda
Posts: 34
Joined: Dec. 2006
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Man, you guys must have nothing to do over the holidays. So many posts, it is difficult to go through them all or even stay abreast of what is going on. I think there were three questions out there for me, so I will post responses, but I am not so sure if I captured all of the questions:
1) Question #1: Don't blame the teachers. Well I wasn't blaming the teachers, they aren't the ones writing the textbooks. I was making a statement that so many of you are upset with having ID taught in schools because of the lousy science behind it, yet the evolution that you hold dear is being slopply taught because of the poor curriculum. A lot of the curriculum contradicts itself, teachers aren't trained enough to understand and teach it, and the evolutionary hypothesis' are updated so frequently that often times the information in the textbooks is out of date. So I am not sure either stance is good. Don't teach ID because of lousy science, but please continue to teach lousy evolution because of the curriculum.
2) Question 2: If the universe is so ordered why is randomness so prevalant in Quantum Mechanics . There are these randomness calculations in Quantum Mechanics, I agree. But the randomness is more of because of our inability to calculate or understand the variables than it is of true randomness. Einstein said "I at any rate, am convinced that He (God) does not throw dice." (Letter to Max Born 12-Dec-1926, quoted in Einstein: The Life and Times ISBN 0-380-44123-3). Quantum Mechanics is much more complex than to say that randomness exists and is proved by Quantum Mechanics. The goal of QM is still the unification theory and there is still much, much understanding on how randomness is associated more with the viewing of the object than with the object itself. Randomness is present in QM because of our inability to calculate the actuality. We must rest on a probability. An example I used often was with a ball on a slope and a pencil on it's head. If I place a ball on a sloping board, Newtonian physics will explain that the ball will fall to the direction of the floor. Gravity is a macro force and is well understood and we are only examining one variable. Now we look at a pencil and try to stand it on it's head. It will fall in one direction, and only one direction. But we cannot predict which direction it will fall. Our gravitational calculations will not work they are not deterministic for this action. That is because we are dealing with many more forces with less understanding and less of an ability to measure them. It could be the slight gradiations on the tip of the lead, a wind current, maybe even tidal forces. Because we cannot calculate these forces, we will do a sampling of the falls, and then use that as a probability or a "randomness" of what will occur. The current thinking is that we will either find these "hidden variable theories" which will continue to help us refine Quantum Mechanics, or that we will have to live with the randomness because of our inability to delve past it (uncertainty), which is held to more in Richard Feynman's book, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.
3) Comment #3: I don’t know if you realize this but there is NOT ONE person who has ANY CREDIBILITY WHATSOEVER that supports creationism.
I am not sure why k.e. has to resort to vulgar name calling such as "Dickhead". I thought we were all past 6th grade here. Why can't the comments and responses be based on civilized responses. The fact that someone believes something different from you shouldn't cause others to resort to ridicule. Maybe this would be a good time to learn. Even if you don't think someone understands what you are saying shouldn't force you to resort to name calling. Maybe you should continue to understand what the thinking is.
To answer your question. Isaac Newton supported creationism. I would hope that the father of calculus and obviously Newtonian Physics is credible. If you look at today's world, there are such people as Edward Bourdreaux, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of New Orleans. As far as credibility goes, Dr. Raymond Damadian, the inventor of the MRI scanner was a literal 6 day creationist. The object of my response was not to list every available scientist. I only needed to list one scientist with credibility to show your absolute statement in capitals was incorrect. I hope that in the future if one of your relatives or yourself must use an MRI, that you either have a belief in the credibility of Dr. Damadian's invention or you avoid it for the "quack science" that it is.
4) Question #4 from PuckSR: How did the light from the stars reach Earth?
That is the one of the points of perceived age. My contention as well as YEC, is that God created the stars with their light shining on the earth already. Even if the sun was shining on the earth the second He created it, it had a perceived age of at least 8 minutes. Did God violate scientific laws? Yes, but of course a creationists belief is that the laws were established by God and that God is omnipotent, and therefore can subvert His laws for His glory. His laws for this physical realm (and yes I believe it is a finite closed system and not an open system) were fully established on the 6th day of creation. Can I prove this scientifically. No. Is God a Liar as you state. No. Where did God state otherwise?
Now I asked the question, why don't we see any evolutionary jumps between species right now? A few of the responses I have heard are:
1)There is no selective advantage. Do all evolutionary changes require with absolute certainty a selective advantage? Does sexual enjoyment among humans relate to a selective advantage? Animals do not share this enjoyment, yet produce just as many if not more young than humans. Was sexual enjoyment an evolved trait. On the flipside is homosexuality a practice that will disappear since it has no selective advantage. Two partners who cannot produce offspring naturally should not be a selective advantage. Some scientist claim that "Pleasure is nature's way of rewarding good behavior". (Dr. Jonathan Balcombe, "Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good", MacMillan 2006). If the belief is that evolution is a random act with external influences that prefer selective advantages, than how does it reward good behavior? How is good behavior a selective advantage unless it relies on some intelligence to guide the behavior.
2)the ancestor is no longer around For most hominid species it is unclear why they went extinct. There are a lot of hypothesis, but very little conclusive evidences. Such certainty is derived for why certain hominids were replaced by other hominids. In total there are only about 1,400 hominid skulls that have been found, of which about 700 come from Magaliesberg region of Africa. Not a very good sampling for 6-7 million years of evolution. That isn't even a good sampling for a national election, let alone a 7 million year evolution span. Some species such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis is based on a cranium a few fragments of a lower jaw bone and a few teeth. Yet the species is created, fitted into the evolutionary chain and then used to support other arguments such as the new dating for when humans diverged from chimpanzees, which is used to base other hypothesis and on and on goes the building blocks. Most early hominid species come from very few bone fragments and most features are developed as a result of indirect evidence. Most of all of the early and mid hominids and many of the late hominids are based on just a few bones. Forget full skeletons. Yet with great certainty of a jaw bone and 3 teeth we can determine that they were a hominid and they went extinct due to X,Y,Z..... The chimpanzees still exist so why don't we see any homo sapiens neanderthalensis around. They were only around 30,000 years ago. Neanderthalensis and sapien sapien exists together for at least 150,000 years. In fact every single hominid overlapped others by as much as 100,000 years in many cases. Why is there no overlap in this generation, or even close to any kind of overlap.
I encourage you to truly examine the pictures of the entire bone collections of some of these hominid species and just logically think about whether they were even hominid or if there was enough there to even make a determination. Ramapithecus was based on a few teeth, which 20 years later is beginning to be thought of as an extinct primate. Most of the hominid species have only been developed based off a few fragments of bones discovered in the last 10-20 years. Even Homo Erectus was basically only classified to be an earlier hominid because of it's cranial capacity. Essentially three skulls are being used to create a new species, when it has been easily shown that the cranial capacity of Homo Erectus fits into the cranial capacity of some European groups. I guess I miss how we can develop a whole species based on a few bones, when modern asians and modern Europeans share different characteristics in their facial and skull features. If I found 5 asian skulls it would be unfair to characterize the entire modern human race based on those features. It isn't representative of the human race. So how can we take two partial skulls and 5 teeth and develop a species of hominids from it?
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