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incorygible



Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,04:27   

Thanks for the legwork (and kind words) in digging up that post, Eric.  However, since that whole exercise started from an LCA estimated at 8 mya, and Dave has (for four months now) tried to weasel out of the questions posed in that post with his, "You never told me where you got 8 mya" (as if that was particularly relevant to the qualitative issue at hand), I will follow with a simple demonstration of how egregiously Dave is lying in his #2.

First, let's restate Dave's claim from September 23:

 
Quote
2) I showed you in detail how ridiculous it is to say that apes and humans have a common ancestor.  No one has ever showed me how the LCA date of 8 my was arrived at.


Eric posts a response of mine to the first part. (I'll also refer to this post, which details genetic differences between humans and other apes, and was the source of the infamous "all you've got is 1%?!" argument.) As for Dave's second claim (and when humans and other apes diverged from a common ancestor is most definitely a secondary question Dave wants to distract us with, as opposed to the primary fact that they did), I submit the following:

First, my post on May 27 probably provided sufficient documentation for my methods to at least back down on any "how did you get THAT value" claim:

 
Quote
Dave, are you engaging?  This must be some kind of trick!  I wasn't going to reply further, but this is a fair question.  Unfortunately, I can only give you a general answer at the moment.

To get my estimates from the fossil record (and I should have been more accurate and said anything "non-genetic"), I initially searched ISI Web of Science abstracts from 1976-1985.  Unfortunately, I couldn't immediately find the information I was looking for in the abstracts themselves with a few quick search strings.  Online publication access doesn't generally go back that far (so I couldn't read the full papers I wanted to read), and you'll forgive me if I wasn't about to take any more time away from my actual work to trek across campus to the stacks.  Luckily, our lab library has a dusty shelf of old texts on human evolution (everything from Louis Leaky to Desmond Morris).  I picked an old physical anthropology textbook off the shelf (looked to be for an old undergrad course).  If I recall correctly, it was a 2nd edition published in 1987, which I figured was close enough.  I know the simplified numbers I used were the midpoints of ranges (4-6 mya and 5-10 mya, IIRC).  However, for the exact bibliographic information, you'll have to wait until I'm actually back in the lab (middle of next week) and get a chance to look it up again.  Okay?

In the meantime, maybe you could start on explaining why the Creation Theory prediction was QUALITATIVELY wrong?

Thanks.

Edit: Also, Dave, please keep in mind that I know those numbers have changed (and say so in my original post).  For example, Dawkins (2004) gives 6 mya for chimps and 7 mya for gorillas, which would have made the numbers match up less well.  What actually matters isn't the mya, but the time shared vs. time separate.  For example, 3/8 shared (HC) that I used in our back-of-the-envelope calculation, vs. 1/7 shared (HC) that I would use if I started from Dawkins.  So the value of the numbers I arrived at, while remarkably close to the genetic data, is probably just a coincidence, and could easily have been different (and I am well aware of this).  So fun as it was to think that, if I had that textbook in '85 and had made my prediction, I would have been bang-on, this isn't really the point (kind of a fluke).  The point is that evolutionary theory points us in the right direction (and gets us pretty close), and creation theory points us in the wrong direction.  I'd be grateful if you could address that.  Thanks.


However, were that not sufficient, my post on May 29 answered his question fully (in more than enough detail for anyone honest to abandon claims that it had not been answered):

 
Quote
FYI (the source of my info in the little prediction exercise):

Lewin, R. 1984. Human Evolution: an illustrated introduction. Freeman, New York.

Stein, P.L. and Rowe, B.M. 1989. Physical Anthropology (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill , New York.

The Lewin text provides some good estimates of time bp (including the 5-10 and 4-6 that I ended up using), whereas Stein and Rowe further review fossil finds, comparative morphology, early protein sequence data, etc., and provide a series of (sometimes conflicting and often uncertain) dates (e.g., compare chapters 13 and 14), including those above).  Interestingly, back then, the timeline with gorillas splitting off earlier was the new kid on the block in the marketplace of ideas, though I get the feeling it had more traction in the primary literature than in undergrad texts.  Stein and Rowe still seemed to settle on placing gorillas in Panidae with chimps, but highlighted this was questionable.  Lewin's second edition (1989) is updated to less equivocally show the gorillas branching off first.

In framing my prediction, I ran with this "new" perspective (I could be accused of employing the benefit of hindsight, to be sure, but it beats wilfull blindness).  I suppose I could have gone with the old timeline (or the general uncertainty at the time), and run into the same problem as Dave's CGH (i.e., predicting more similarity between gorillas and chimps, or no definitive prediction at all).  Of course, in our little scenario, I would have revised that theory when the data came in (just as the field actually did -- hello, science!;), while the baraminology sect would continue to hide, deny and obfuscate their little "theory" right up until now.

Anyhow, as only one key participant in this discussion seems to have missed (thereby exhausting my patience), the key point relevant to this thread is NOT that evolutionary science at the time generated the right prediction (though it very well might have, and it was fun to try) -- it could have been wrong, but eventually revised to accomodate the new data.  The point, which you all know already, and which remains completely unaddressed by its proponent, is that a definitive prediction of the "CGH" is dead wrong.

I'll let others show why what is perhaps the most important prediction (i.e., a 6,000-year-old universe) is similarly out to lunch.


Dave, you have been lying about this for 4 months now.

  
incorygible



Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,05:00   

Hmm, I forgot there was more, back when Dave first started claiming he was never told how the African ape LCA was determined.

On June 7, I post a further reply:

Quote
Quote (afdave @ June 12 2006,09:21)
I will say to Incorygible that I am still waiting to hear why you think it is valid to say that gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya.  I know you read it in a textbook, but my questions was, 'Why did the textbook think this is valid?  What is the basis for saying this?'

That would be as easy as reading my answers and checking the references, wouldn't it?  Lewin (1989; Chapter 3: Historical Views) gives a detailed history of scientific thought on human-ape relationships between the 1890s and the present.  He covers fossil hominid discoveries, early protein comparisons, etc., and the dates they suggested for branching in the ape lineage.  This includes the earlier and longer-held notion that chimps were closer to gorillas, and why this was overturned.  If you want even more details on some of this evidence, I provided you with a good reference (Stein and Rowe 1989) and relevant chapters.

Now, rather than implying that I don't answer your questions because I'm not spoonfeeding you dozens of pages of text, how about answering the one big question I posed to you many times regarding why your "Creator God Hypothesis" doesn't match the data?  This has nothing to do with what evoltuionary theory says and why.  Whether you view the "1%" as important or not, it is clear that the differences between us and chimps are smaller than your proposed "microevolutionary" variation within the "ape kind" (chimps and gorillas, plus we haven't even touched orangutans, which you would group in the ape kind, but have been known to be a significantly different outgroup since the 1920s).  Why do your Creator's code and the fossils of His Flood so strongly suggest to us that humans are just another ape, contrary to His book?


And then, after he persisted, on June 21, I painstakingly typed out a key chunk of the book I was using in an effort to finally put this "how did you get the 8 my" lie to rest:

Quote
Quote (afdave @ June 21 2006,11:21)
No conspiracy.  Just a rather arrogant consensus that the Bible is a fairy tale and anything that sound 'Biblical" or 'religious' is pretty much ignored with no investigation.

You're wrong, Dave.  You're not the first to use the Bible as a source of hypotheses.  It's been used in exactly that fashion for two thousand years.  Caused no small degree of consternation when those hypotheses didn't pan out.  Where the Bible matches the evidence (e.g., history), it remains a source of information.  Where it doesn't (e.g., science), there's not much left to investigate.  And "arrogance" is an interesting characterization by somebody with such lofty opinion of his own faith and knowledge that he's willing to discount practically every biologist, physicist, and geologist on the planet.

Quote
You keep repeating this, but why?  My question is why?  Why the millions of years?  Do you have some math formula or something?  Or is it just a regression of 'this book quotes this other book which quotes this other book which quotes this other book' etc. etc. all the way back to Darwin or somebody?  Who put it in print first in modern times that apes and humans had a common ancestor several mya?  And why did they say this?  That's what I am trying to get you to tell me.


Why, Dave?  Why?  I repeat it because it illustrates the difference between your worldview and mine, and the projections you make.  You are so confident in revelation without method, assertion without evidence, and knowledge without information that you assume that's where my "belief" comes from.  You really think we can trace scientific understanding of life and the universe back to the pronouncements of some prophet on a mountain top, analogous to the source of your knowledge.  Yes, Dave, books quote other books.  They summarize them, answering the "why" on one level.  If you want more, you go to those other books.  But if you really think all of evolutionary theory (or even just the phylogeny of the great apes) reduces to "who put it in print first", you just don't get it.

But to answer your simple (and rather irrelevant) question: "Who put in print first in modern times that apes and humans had a common ancestor several mya? And why did they say this?"

Once again, I will refer you to that Lewin book you said you read, specifically Chapter 3 "Historical Views", which I referenced for you:

"During the past century, the issue of our relatedness to the apes has gone full cycle.  From the time of Darwin, Huxley and Haeckel until soon after the turn of the centruy, humans' closeses relatives were regardes as being the African apes, the chimpanzee and gorilla, with the Asian great ape, the orangutan, being considered to be somewhat separate. Then, from the 1920s until the 1960s, humans were distanced from the great apes, which were said to be an evolutionarily closely-knit group. Since the 1960s, however, conventional wisdom has returned to its Darwinian cast."

...
[skip 2 pages of description regarding the players and positions in the first half of the 20th century]
...

"During the 1950s and 1960s, fossil evidence of early apes accumulated at a significant rate, and it seemed to show that these creatures were not simply early versions of modern apes, as had been tacitly assumed. This meant that those authorities who accpeted an evolutionary link between humans and apes, but did not accept a close human/African ape link, did not now have to go way back in the history of the group to 'avoid' the specialization of the modern species. At the same time, those who insisted that the similarities between African apes and humans were the result of common heritage, not parallel evolution, were forced to argue for a very recent origin of the human line. Prominent among proponents of this latter argument was Sherwood Washburn, of the University of California, berkeley.

"One of the fossil discoveries of the 1960s -- in fact, a rediscovery -- that appeared to confirm the notion of parallel evolution to explain human/African ape similarities was made by Elwyn Simons, then of Yale University. Ramapithecus was the fossil specimen, an apelike creature that lived in Eurasia about 15 million years ago and appeared to share many anatomical features (in the teeth and jaws) with hominids.  Simons, later supported closely by David Pilbeam, proposed Ramapithecus as the beginning of the hominid line, thus excluding a human/African ape connection.

"Arguments about the relatedness between humans and African apes took place against a rethinking about the relatedness among the apes themselves. In 1927, G.E. Pilgrim had suggested that the great apes be treated as a natural group, with humans evolutionarily more distant. The idea eventually became popular, and was the accepted wisdom until molecular biological evidence undermined it in 1963, the work of Morris Goodman at Wayne State University. Goodman's molecular biology on blood proteins indicated that humans and the African apes formed a natural group, with the orangutan more distant.

"Thus, the Darwin/Huxley/Haeckel position was reinstated, with first Gregory and then Washburn its champions. Subsequent molecular biological -- and fossil -- evidence seems to confrim Washburn's original suggestion that the origin of the human line is indeed recent, lying between 5 and 10 million years ago. Ramapithecus was no longer regarded as the first hominid, but simply one of many early apes."

...
[skip a few pages discussion of more recent fossil hominids, too use, etc.,  not to mention historical phylogenetic trees showing the perceived evolutionary relationships between men and apes, including a 1927 version with "negroes" and "negroids" divering not long after Neanderthal]
...

"During the past decade, not only has there been an appreication of a spectrum of hominid adaptations -- which includes the notion simply of a bipedal ape -- but the lineage that eventually led to Homo sapiens has come to be perceived as much less human. Gone is the notion of a scaled-down version of a modern hunter-gatherer way of life. In its place has appeared a rather unusual African ape adopting some novel, un-apelike modes of subsistence.

"Hominid origins are thereforenow completely divorced from any notion of human origins. Questions about the beginning of the hominid lineage are now firmly within the territory of behavioral ecology, and do not draw upon those qualities that we might perceive as separating us from the rest of animate nature. [HINT: These are "qualities" like writing, SATs, and table manners, Dave]  Questions of human origins have now to be posed within the context of primate biology."

...
[Exit the chapter on Historical Perspectives demonstrating that there was NO pronouncement by any patriarchal authority, but that thought developed, changed, and changed back more than once as the evidence appeared.  Turn to Chapter 9 on Molecular Perspectives, which describes dated fossil finds and DNA data.]
...

"The shape of the hominoid tree according to the molecular evidence available in the early 1980s was therefore as follows: gibbons split away first, about 20 million years ago; orangutans next, about 15 million years ago; leaving humans, chimpanzees and gorillas in an unresolved three-way split, close to 5 million years ago. A three-way split of a lineage is biologically unlikely, and in this case it meant that the timing of the different divergences was so tightly bunched that none of the techniques was able to prise it apart with any confidence.

"Meanwhile, most morphologists had since the 1960s accepted the notion of a human/African ape clade, with an African ape clade existing within that. The expectation among molecular biologists, therefore, was that their data would confirm this pattern. showing that the common ancestor of humans and the African apes diverged to produce the human lineage on the one hand and an African ape lineage on the other, which then subsequently split to produce gorillas and chimpanzees.

[WOW, eh Dave? In the early 1980s, they were still expecting chimps to be closer to gorillas.  Do you think a certain amount of your "I wouldn't invite a chimp to dinner" thinking led to that expectation?  Kinda different then your idea that we have an innate, arrogant urge to convince everyone he's a monkey, eh?]

"It was therefore something of a surprise when, in 1984, Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist, then of Yale University, published data on DNA-DNA hybridization that strongly implied that chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. Gorillas evolved from the human/African ape common ancestor between 8 and 10 million years ago, they concluded, leaving humans and chimpanzees briefly sharing a common ancestory of their own, and splitting at between 6.3 and 7.7 million years ago."

Then we have a table, titled "Converging Evidence":

Time          Ape/human divergence date (millions of years)
               Fossils          Molecules
1980s         5-8                5-8
1970s         15                  5
1960s         30                  5

Then we have a tree, with Time -- Millions of years, illustrating:

Chimpanzee/Human: 5.5-7.7
Chimp/Human/Gorilla: 7.7-11.0
C/H/G/Orangutan: 12.2-17.0
C/H/G/O/Gibbon: 16.4-23

So, your question of how I arrived at my 1985 prediction, way back when?  Simple.  By 1985, molecular and fossil data had converged on a split between humans and other apes (i.e., chimps) at 5 million years ago (the number I used).  The gorilla estimate from 1989 was 7.7-11.0, but this included some of the new DNA techniques that we were supposed to be "predicting".  So I went with a ballpark around 8 mya, which was the upper end of the 5-8 mya range of the "convergence" between fossils and "molecules", nicely "between 5 and 15, but closer to 5" from early 1980s fossil discoveries, the lower end of the 8-10 mya range from the first 1984 foray into DNA technology (which I would have been rightly skeptical of, but intrigued, in 1985), and closest to the 5 mya for the "three-way-split" from established molecular studies.

That's where I got my dates for in my silly (but fun) little hypothetical exercise, Dave.  Don't you wish you could give an answer like that for your own arguments?  Something other than "it's obvious" or "imagine you went to dinner/bed/school with a chimp"?  Ever?


If this doesn't elevate Dave's lie from egregious to unequivocally sinful, I don't know what would. You are an evil liar, Dave.

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,05:57   

You know, the interesting thing about Dave's take on all this is that he makes a big deal (one might say a huge deal) out of the fact that science cannot develop an irrefutable proof that, e.g., humans are more closely related to chimps than either is to gorillas, or that the universe is 13.7 by old. He's right about that; there are no such irrefutable proofs.

But what's the standard he holds the Bible up to in terms of "irrefutable proofs" of its inerrancy? Well, that's hard to say, because Dave has in fact admitted two things: 1) that no Bible he has ever read or even heard about is actually inerrant; and 2) although he's sure there used to be a version of the Bible that was the inerrant word of God, he's never read or even heard about such a version.

So on the one hand, Dave claims he believes the Bible is inerrant because of "the overwhelming amount of evidence" supporting such a belief. But when pressed to provide such evidence, he has come up empty-handed every single time.

And on the other hand, Dave admits that no currently-existing Bible actually is inerrant! Moreover, he admits he has never read an inerrant version of the Bible, and therefore has no way of knowing (other than by reference to non-existent evidence) which parts of the Bible are correct and which are not. Improvious asked Dave yesterday how he knows which parts of the Bible are to be taken literally, and which are merely "figures of speech." It would be interesting to see how Dave would answer that question, if there was a chance he ever would.

So, on the one hand, Dave wants absolute proof of any assertion made by science, but on the other, doesn't seem to need any sort of proof, or even evidence, at all for an assertion made by the Bible. So much for his claims to be a "skeptic," or "scientific," or even honest.

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
afdave



Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,06:03   

LINK TO THE ORIGINAL "AFDAVE'S UPDATED CREATOR GOD HYPOTHESIS"

(Otherwise known as "The Greatest Thread of All Time")

http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....p=13064

I see that the original thread is slipping into oblivion, so unless there is some other way to keep it readily available, I will just repost this link in this thread periodically.  I will also be taking selected material and posting it on my blog for permanent reference.

If anyone comes up with a downloadable text only file, this would also be nice to have available.

More soon!

--------------
A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

  
JonF



Posts: 634
Joined: Feb. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,06:57   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 25 2006,12:03)
I will also be taking selected material and posting it on my blog for permanent reference.

Bet I could guess the selection criteria, and they won't be neutral.  None of those embarrasing questions that you can't answer will show up on your blog, will they, Davie-doofus?  No questions about the pattern of grass and fern pollen in the geological column, the pattern of dolphin and plesiosaur fossils in the geological column, the pattern of concordance of radiometric dates, the falsification of your claim that whole-rock isochrons that don't result from mixing must be a single point, and on and on and on and on and on ...
Quote
If anyone comes up with a downloadable text only file, this would also be nice to have available.

I have both an HTML and PDF version with no images that load pretty quickly and search fast (1:15 from the beginning for a four-word phrase found only at the end); the load and search times are comparable to Notepad on a text-only version, and I'm loading full-bore Acrobat (not the reader).  Of course, the PDF and HTML versions are preferable to text 'cause you can set up links directly to appropriate messages with the "Permalink" link. (I know Davie-doodles couldn't stand claiming he's answered a question in the other thread without providing a link to exactly where he answered the question.) I'll make 'em available soon, but right now the FTP is gebroken 'cause my domain name expired yesterday with no reminder or even transmission of the invoice they generated on 8/19.  Grrrr!!
Quote

More soon!

Looking forward to your respoinse to Mike PSS on crystallization, and your response to me on the patterns of isochron slopes, isochron intercepts, and radiometric dating concordance.

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,07:31   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 25 2006,11:03)
LINK TO THE ORIGINAL "AFDAVE'S UPDATED CREATOR GOD HYPOTHESIS"

(Otherwise known as "The Greatest Thread of All Time")

http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....p=13064

I see that the original thread is slipping into oblivion, so unless there is some other way to keep it readily available, I will just repost this link in this thread periodically.  I will also be taking selected material and posting it on my blog for permanent reference.

If anyone comes up with a downloadable text only file, this would also be nice to have available.

More soon!

Dave, I dare you to allow others to post comments to your blog. When you say you'll post "selected material," I can only imagine how dishonestly you'll quote mine others (and even yourself!) on your blog.

Also, you're going to have to find some way to download the file yourself that involves miracles of some sort, because even as a text file with no images, the AFDUCG"H" thread is several tens of megabytes. I managed to do it, but it's way too big to e-mail; otherwise I'd just send it to you.

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
incorygible



Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,07:37   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 25 2006,11:03)
I will also be taking selected material and posting it on my blog for permanent reference.

Might I suggest including my above selection of posts, Davey? After all, even my deficient atheistic morality ranks lying as a reprehensible act, and I have openly and publicly accused you of such, and documented the reason therefore. I know I would feel the need to respond to such charges.

You could title your post, "An Evolutionist Accuses Me of Lying!"

Then you would post your claim of 23 September:

Quote
No one has ever showed me how the LCA date of 8 my was arrived at.


Follow it with the four posts I quote above, in their entirety, with the permalinks to the time and date they were posted.

Then post my charge that you are lying here, including this challenge.

Now explain why my charge is false. Justify your claim that no one has ever provided you with an explanation for how the LCA date came to be. Don't waste time on why you don't believe that explanation -- that's not your claim as you've stated it for four months, and you have had plenty of time (and encouragment) to revise it accordingly into something that wasn't misleading and misrepresentative (read: a LIE).

C'mon, Dave. You believe you are being honest, right? So right on your blog, show the world how we evolutionists have laid heinous charges of dishonesty upon you without justification. Dare ya.

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,09:20   

I'm actually hoping Dave does manage to obtain a searchable version of his AFDUCG"H" thread soon, so he'll be able to post what he supposes are his responses to the very large number of questions and objections to his "hypothesis." I think it will be intriguing to see what Dave sees as "answers" to those questions and objections.

Yesterday I gave Dave an example of what actual "evidence" in support of an assertion looks like (in the context of the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico), so he should be able to compare that evidence to what he thinks is "evidence."

But I think Incorygible has pointed out a major misconception Dave has about how science works. Dave seems to be under the misapprehension that science works the same way Bible study works. He seems to think that if you trace back the foundation for an assertion such as "Humans and chimps diverged from a common ancestor ~5 million years ago, and the common ancestor of humans and chimps diverged from the common ancestor of gorillas ~8 million years ago," you'll eventually just come to an unsupported assertion made by "some scientist." He doesn't seem to get that scientists are not in the business (generally) of making unsupported assertions, and that assertions such as that about humans, chimps, and gorillas is based on actual research and investigation, a concept that is foreign not just to Dave, but to creationists of all stripes.

Thus, when someone like Incorygible presents Dave with a big long list of citations to original research papers, Dave just assumes that those research papers just make bald, unsubstantiated assertions. Which, of course, is far from the case, because otherwise those papers would never get past peer-review, and even if they did, they'd be utterly demolished by other workers in the field, in a manner not dissimilar to the way Dave's unsubstantiated assertions are demolished here.

You just don't get science, Dave. You don't understand that the science paradigm is very different from your paradigm of reference to books that are just assumed, as a matter of faith, to be accurate.

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
improvius



Posts: 807
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,09:32   

Quote (ericmurphy @ Sep. 25 2006,15:20)
Thus, when someone like Incorygible presents Dave with a big long list of citations to original research papers, Dave just assumes that those research papers just make bald, unsubstantiated assertions.

This first of which is, of course, "there is no God."

--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late.
Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.

  
Robert O'Brien



Posts: 348
Joined: Aug. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,15:34   

Quote (doering @ May 2 2006,13:23)
There is nothing more "absolute" in human knowledge than technological proof, it is more certain than mathematical proof.

Nonsense

--------------
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei

    
Arden Chatfield



Posts: 6657
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 25 2006,16:42   

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ Sep. 25 2006,20:34)
 
Quote (doering @ May 2 2006,13:23)
There is nothing more "absolute" in human knowledge than technological proof, it is more certain than mathematical proof.

Nonsense

Wrong.







(See, I can do O'Brienesque answers, too! )

--------------
"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

  
afdave



Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,03:50   

THE BOOK OF GENESIS IS LITERAL, EYEWITNESS HISTORY, A COMPILATION BY MOSES OF ANCIENT TABLET RECORDS

Now available at my blog site ...

http://airdave.blogspot.com

******************************************

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA ON "DATING"

(All quotes are from the 2006 online edition)

ROCKS ARE "DATED" PRIMARILY BY FOSSILS AND BY THE ASSUMPTION THAT EVOLUTION HAS OCCURRED
       
Quote
[DATING ...] in geology, determining a chronology or calendar of events in the history of the Earth, using to a large degree the evidence of organic evolution in the sedimentary rocks accumulated through geologic time in marine and continental environments.
I said this long ago and was laughed at of course, but it is still true and here it is confirmed again.  After the "date" is "determined" from fossils, then it is "confirmed" or "calibrated" with RM dating if possible.  This is one of the biggests shams in science today, friends.

CHERRY PICKING CONFIRMED AGAIN: ONLY "CERTAIN" ROCKS
       
Quote
Rubidium–strontium (Rb–Sr) dating was the first technique in which the whole rock isochron method was extensively employed. Certain rocks that cooled quickly at the surface were found to give precisely defined linear isochrons, but many others did not. Some studies have shown that rubidium is very mobile both in fluids that migrate through the rock as it cools and in fluids that are present as the rock undergoes chemical weathering. Similar studies have shown that the samarium–neodymium (Sm–Nd) parent–daughter pair is more resistant to secondary migration but that, in this instance, sufficient initial spread in the abundance of the parent isotope is difficult to achieve.[This is what JonF was griping at me about on the Snelling data...]
If certain rocks are not qualified for RM dating, then how can we qualify ANY rock legitimately?  We cannot claim to truly know the history of ANY rock.  The simple fact that we have to cherry pick certain rocks to get "acceptable" dates proves that the whole approach is worthless simply because it confirms that we really do not know the initial conditions and the histories of the rocks.  And we MUST know these things if RM dating is going to be valid.

RM DATING IS NOW "AS GOOD" AS FOSSIL "DATING."
Here's another quote I like ...        
Quote
Absolute dating > Major methods of isotopic dating
Isotopic dating relative to fossil dating requires a great deal of effort and depends on the integrated specialized skills of geologists, chemists, and physicists. It is, nevertheless, a valuable resource that allows correlations to be made over virtually all of Earth history with a precision once only possible with fossiliferous units that are restricted to the most recent 12 percent or so of geologic time.
... implying, of course, that "Fossils are King" ... they are standard by which other methods are judged.  See?  "with a precision once only possible with fossiliferous units restricted to the most recent 12% or so of geologic time."  IOW ... "We used to only be able to date rock layers with fossils and it only covered 12% of geologic time.  Now we can obtain the same precision on the remaining 88% of geologic time."

Notice they did NOT say, "RM dating allows to VERIFY our fossil-based guesses about millions of years."  No no no.  That's because ...

1) FOSSILS ARE KING (and Evo assumptions with them)
2) FOSSILS VERIFY RM DATES (and determine which ones are "wrong" and "right")
3) AND IT'S NOT VICE VERSA NO MATTER HOW LOUDLY THEY SAY OTHERWISE.

******************************************************

CONCORDANCE OBTAINED BY "PROCESSING" INDIVIDUAL GRAINS?"
Moving along through the "Dating" article from EB ... we see that U-Pb dating supposedly is superior to other dating methods ... then we read something rather surprising ...

       
Quote
Absolute dating > Major methods of isotopic dating > Uranium–lead method > Double uranium-lead chronometers

Figure 2: Concordia diagram.
From T.E. Krogh, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 46; © 1982 Pergamon Press
The reason why uranium–lead dating is superior to other methods is simple: there are two uranium–lead chronometers. Because there exist two radioactive uranium atoms (those of mass 235 and 238), two uranium–lead ages can be calculated for every analysis. The age results or equivalent daughter–parent ratio can then be plotted one against the other on a concordia diagram, as shown in Figure 2. If the point falls on the upper curve shown, the locus of identical ages, the result is said to be concordant, and a closed-system unequivocal age has been established. Any leakage of daughter isotopes from the system will cause the two ages calculated to differ, and data will plot below the curve. Because each of the daughters has a different half-life, early leakage will affect one system more than the other. Thus there is a built-in mechanism that can prove or disprove whether a valid age has been measured. Historically it had been observed that the uranium–lead systems in the mineral zircon from unmetamorphosed rocks were almost invariably disturbed or discordant but yielded a linear array on the concordia diagram. Given a set of variably disturbed samples, an extrapolation to zero disturbance was possible (see Figure 2). More recently, it has been found that of all the grains present in a rock a very few still retain closed isotopic systems but only in their interior parts. Thus grains with a diameter comparable to that of a human hair, selected under a microscope to be crack-free and of the highest possible quality, have been found to be more concordant than cracked grains. In addition, it has been shown that most such grains can be made much more concordant by mechanically removing their outer parts using an air-abrasion technique (upper points in Figure 2).
Now am I reading this right?  You're tellng me that we can pretty much pitch all the mineral isochrons done on individual grains because they are open systems?  We have to strip away the outer part of the grain in order for the "dating" to be concordant?

*******************************************************

STILL NO FUNDAMENTAL ANSWER ON WHY EVOS SAY CHIMPS/GORILLAS/HUMANS DIVERGED AT 8 MYA.
Incorygible ... I had not seen this table before this thread ... I guess it got lost in the many paragraphs that you posted ...        
Quote
"It was therefore something of a surprise when, in 1984, Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist, then of Yale University, published data on DNA-DNA hybridization that strongly implied that chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. Gorillas evolved from the human/African ape common ancestor between 8 and 10 million years ago, they concluded, leaving humans and chimpanzees briefly sharing a common ancestory of their own, and splitting at between 6.3 and 7.7 million years ago."

Then we have a table, titled "Converging Evidence":

Time          Ape/human divergence date (millions of years)
              Fossils          Molecules
1980s         5-8                5-8
1970s         15                  5
1960s         30                  5
This is very close to a good answer.  At least I see where you got your answer.  However, what I am looking for is HOW they arrive at these figures.  Best I can tell, they find a "homonoid" fossils, try to find some datable rock layers close to it, come up with many discordant dates, then throw out the ones that are not "correct" and keep the ones that are "correct."  This I learned from Koobi Fora.  Is that close?  It is interesting that the divergence date has changed from 30 my to 5-8.  Why? (I know that some book says so, but I really mean "why?" fundamentally).  As for the molecular evidence, how does this work?  What are the fundamental assumptions?  Is it that "neutral" mutations happen at such and such a rate and we observe 1.5% sequence differences b/t chimps and humans, for example?  Do you now understand why I have been saying that you have not answered the question?  What I am really zeroing in on is WHY you buy the textbooks theories?  Why does Incorygible find all this text that you have posted convincing?

*****************************************************

EVERYONE IS BIASED
JonF...        
Quote
Bet I could guess the selection criteria, and they won't be neutral.
What have we here?  You think my selection criteria is biased or something?  Well, guess what?  You're right!!  I am biased and guess what else?  EVERYONE is biased.  That's what I've been telling you for a long time.

--------------
A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

  
Ved



Posts: 398
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,03:59   

Dammit, quit shouting. It's too early.

Quote
3) AND IT'S NOT VICE VERSA NO MATTER HOW LOUDLY THEY SAY OTHERWISE.


Yes, it is.

  
k.e



Posts: 1948
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,04:45   

geez AFD how long did that last bit of creo-crap take you?

You have made a mistake, let me correct it for you.

   
Quote
THE BOOK OF GENESIS IS LITERAL a fable, EYEWITNESS imagined HISTORY, A COMPILATION authored  BY  MOSES by unknown people based on Gilgamesh and other ancient Myths OF ANCIENT TABLET RECORDS ancient fireside pre-literate tales, passed down through oral tradition


....get it right AFD, like every other stupid ignorant thing you write, your carefully planned, but crude, lies unveil your god to be the god of contempt for Man's revealed knowledge.

Oh by the way AFD what's the fastest growing religious group in the USA?  ....Yes AFD.....Atheism.

You can take some of the credit for that AFD.

--------------
The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane

   
improvius



Posts: 807
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,05:00   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 26 2006,09:50)
THE BOOK OF GENESIS IS LITERAL, EYEWITNESS HISTORY, A COMPILATION BY MOSES OF ANCIENT TABLET RECORDS

...except for when it's figurative.  How do you tell the difference, Dave?

--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late.
Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.

  
Robert O'Brien



Posts: 348
Joined: Aug. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,05:00   

Quote (k.e @ Sep. 26 2006,09:45)
Oh by the way AFD what's the fastest growing religious group in the USA?  ....Yes AFD.....Atheism.

You can take some of the credit for that AFD.

Weta:

According to whom? (Hint: non-religious != atheist)

--------------
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei

    
Arden Chatfield



Posts: 6657
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,05:40   

The trends as I understand them are laid out here.

Christianity in America (and Canada) is dropping by almost one percentage point a year.

The fastest growing religion (in terms of percentage) is Wicca.

Another tidbit:

Quote
A USA Today/Gallup Poll in 2002-JAN showed that almost half of American adults appear to be alienated from organized religion. If current trends continue, most adults will not call themselves religious within a few years.


I think people like AFDave are doing quite a lot to contribute to that trend. Evangelical Christians are doing a lot to drive away intelligent people.

--------------
"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

  
improvius



Posts: 807
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,05:44   

Quote
A USA Today/Gallup Poll in 2002-JAN showed that almost half of American adults appear to be alienated from organized religion. If current trends continue, most adults will not call themselves religious within a few years.

Just like Dave.

--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late.
Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.

  
Mike PSS



Posts: 428
Joined: Sep. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,05:49   

AFDave,
Your assertion that        
Quote (afdave @ Posted on Sep. 26 2006,09:50)
If certain rocks are not qualified for RM dating, then how can we qualify ANY rock legitimately?  We cannot claim to truly know the history of ANY rock.
is funny in the extreme.  I know that you tried this argument in the past and were smacked down.  Are you now changing your Rb/Sr Isochron argument to the above position instead of what you argued three days ago?      
Quote (AFDave @ Sep. 23 2006,09:16)
20) You have been shown how Isochron Dating was invented in an attempt to solve the problem of unknown initial conditions, but in the case of the whole rock isochron (used to be the most common), the diagrams can easily be interpreted as nothing more than mixing diagram--useless for assigning any real ages to rocks.
.
My verbose prose on crystallization was only the beginning of the science lesson in showing you how Rb/Sr Isochron methods are valid.  You haven't responded to my last question regarding Olivine and crystallization.  Here it is again.

Do you agree that Olivine is formed according to the science of crystal formation?

We have a basis in understanding that we can agree upon and I'm trying to build upon this basis.  
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 24 2006,07:09)
In general, I (and every creationist I know) accept all science which involves repeatable, testable events.  Crystal formation and many other phenomena fall into this category.

From this beginning I intend on showing you how electrochemical selection will vary the Rb uptake in a crystal formed in an olivine melt and how this uptake variability results in the linear relation found on the Isochron graph.

Your cherry picking argument can only be applied to the global scale, not the local scale.  You have to show that cherry picking a sample to fit the Rb/Sr testing method (remember, the rocks are chosen BEFORE they are tested so no age bias is introduced to the rock selection) somehow invalidates the results of the test.

AFDave, eventually the ony argument you will have left in this whole Isochron fiasco will be the "accellerated decay rate in the past" position.  Why not skip all the pretense and start arguing this position.  Here's the initial counter argument you will have to address in your first post about decay rates.
I look forward to another smack-down.
Mike PSS

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,05:57   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 26 2006,08:50)
THE BOOK OF GENESIS IS LITERAL, EYEWITNESS HISTORY, A COMPILATION BY MOSES OF ANCIENT TABLET RECORDS

Dave, repeating the same old crap that's been completely blown away over and over again on this very thread, EVEN WHEN IT'S BOLD AND ALL-CAPS, doesn't make it any more true, or any less of a lie.

Now, with regard to your statement that because rocks are very carefully selected for radiometric dating, that amounts to "cherry-picking," that's got to rank up there with one of the dumber comments you repeatedly make. Would one's decision not to date a chunk of granite using C14 be "cherry picking"? Of course not. So why is being very careful to make sure a crystal you're using for U-Pb dating is a closed system "cherry picking"?

You're mistaking careful experimental technique for "cheating."

So you really believe that if you can't radiometrically date every single rock out there, you can't date any of them? Would you care to favor us with the logic behind that statement?

And one more time, for the learning-impaired: fossils provide relative dating of sediments; radiometric dating provides absolute dates. Get it yet? Of course not, and I could repeat it every day for a month and you still wouldn't get it, because you don't want to get it.

And you think I'm repetitive.

Well, here's one more thing I can repeat: where's your evidence for Biblical inerrancy, after you've already admitted it's not inerrant?
 
Quote
There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation ...

But I use NKJV ... it's close ...


Do you see why making statements like that persuade everyone here you're an idiot?

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,06:19   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 26 2006,08:50)
STILL NO FUNDAMENTAL ANSWER ON WHY EVOS SAY CHIMPS/GORILLAS/HUMANS DIVERGED AT 8 MYA.

You're not going to wriggle out of this, Dave.

Your claim was that no one had ever shown you how a figure of 8 my for the divergence of humans/chimps and gorillas was derived. That was lie, because you were shown. Now, in a classic goalposts-moving maneuver, you change your claim to
Quote
Do you now understand why I have been saying that you have not answered the question?  What I am really zeroing in on is WHY you buy the textbooks theories?  Why does Incorygible find all this text that you have posted convincing?

That's not what you asked, Dave, and you know it. You asked how it was derived, not why anyone believes the evidence. (We already know why you don't believe the evidence: it's because you "resent" the notion that humans could be related to other apes.)

Incorygible already warned you not to change your claim to that you don't believe the evidence that humans/chimps and gorillas diverged 8 mya. But you went ahead and did it anyway, hoping no one would notice.

Busted, Dave. And not for the first time, nor the last.

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
Ved



Posts: 398
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,06:42   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 26 2006,08:50)
THE BOOK OF GENESIS IS LITERAL, EYEWITNESS HISTORY, A COMPILATION BY MOSES OF ANCIENT TABLET RECORDS

Who are the eyewitnesses, specifically? If an eyewitness' name and actual quotation aren't preserved, do you still have an "eyewitness account"?

  
incorygible



Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,07:40   

Quote
STILL NO FUNDAMENTAL ANSWER ON WHY EVOS SAY CHIMPS/GORILLAS/HUMANS DIVERGED AT 8 MYA.

So with the insertion of "fundamental", you acknowledge that    
Quote
"No one has ever showed me how the LCA date of 8 my was arrived at."

is a lie that you have been trumpeting for four months. I still have no "fundamental" answer for why you believe the garbage you believe, Dave, but I wouldn't claim you haven't  been able to "show me". That would be a lie, and I don't lie.
   
Quote
Incorygible ... I had not seen this table before this thread ... I guess it got lost in the many paragraphs that you posted ...

Of course. I'm sure it's a one-time mistake that won't happen again. After all, I know you wouldn't ignore the bulk of actual content on this board in favour of simply trumpeting your "victories" and making claims that no one has been able to answer your questions. Furthermore, speaking of "cherry picking", you wouldn't dare pull a table of numbers out of context from the paragraphs describing it (with citations), only to claim it was "lost" amidst that explanation and demand further explanation, right?
   
Quote
This is very close to a good answer.  At least I see where you got your answer.

Dave, if tables of data, multiple pages of explanatory text, numerous citations, and an extensive hand-typed selection (bordering on copyright infringement) from a published source are what you consider "close to a good answer" on an internet forum, then: (1) you have lazy, ridiculous standards; and (2) you should apply them to your own "answers" before lying about the quality of those provided by others.
   
Quote
However, what I am looking for is HOW they arrive at these figures.

*sigh* Read, Dave. Read. Read what I re-posted. Not satisfied? Read the many posts of mine that I didn't re-post (maybe more stuff "got lost in all those paragraphs"?). Finally, and most importantly, if you're still curious, READ THE FREAKING LITERATURE. Plenty of citations are given, and -- believe it or not -- you can use Google Scholar for more than counting "hits".
   
Quote
Best I can tell, they find a "homonoid" fossils, try to find some datable rock layers close to it, come up with many discordant dates, then throw out the ones that are not "correct" and keep the ones that are "correct."  This I learned from Koobi Fora.  Is that close?

No. Not close at all. Read, Dave. Read more. Learn. If you do that, then starting a sentence with "Best I can tell..." might actually carry a little weight. Until then, it means dick all.
   
Quote
It is interesting that the divergence date has changed from 30 my to 5-8.  Why? (I know that some book says so, but I really mean "why?" fundamentally).

New data. New methods. Excising of errors. Reduction of uncertainty. SCIENCE, Dave. The understanding it provides is known to change over decades. It's one of the main reasons that it provides a more accurate picture of the world than millennia-old texts and dogma.
   
Quote
As for the molecular evidence, how does this work?  What are the fundamental assumptions?  Is it that "neutral" mutations happen at such and such a rate and we observe 1.5% sequence differences b/t chimps and humans, for example?

Read, Dave. At least you're getting closer (I notice you've dropped "favourable" and replaced it with "neutral" in scare-quotes).  (Note that scare-quotes around "neutral" might be used to good effect by a scientist who actually understood this material, but I think you're implying something different entirely.) There are plenty of answers to this right in my posts (and those of others). Even better, there are literally dozens of citations to scientific literature and introductory texts that would give you a much better idea of how it works and what the "fundamental assumptions" are.
   
Quote
Do you now understand why I have been saying that you have not answered the question?

Yes. You have been lying. Period. You are a LIAR. Saying you have not read enough of what we have provided in way of an answer would be honest. Saying that you still do not understand that answer would be honest. Saying that we have not answered it is LYING, by any reasonable, objective assessment.
   
Quote
What I am really zeroing in on is WHY you buy the textbooks theories?  Why does Incorygible find all this text that you have posted convincing?

Incorygible has spent over a decade of his life, tens of thousands of his dollars, and a good chunk of his day EARNING his education in evolutionary biology. Over that time, Incorygible has forgotten more about what evidence "convinced" him than AFDave will learn here, even if AFDave suddenly became intellectually honest. Nevertheless, plenty of "convincing" stuff remains, which Incorygible has gone to great efforts to show AFDave. Incorygible also knows that, if one desires intellectual satisfaction beyond the level of introductory textbooks, it takes much, much more to learn exactly "how" any field of science actually works than even the most prolific internet posting, especially if one writes more than one reads. Incorygible does not "buy the textbook's theories", and would not be wholly convinced by two pages from any introductory textbook (although he might be provisionally accepting of most textbooks, because Incorygible understands the investments other researchers have made in obtaining their answers, and the vetting process by which those answers are deemed "convincing"). Incorygible can recognize would-be commenters who have not made this investment or properly vetted their convictions. In answer to AFDave's question, Incorygible pulled this specific introductory textbook for a particular pedagogical exercise in an effort to educate AFDave, who is apparently not up to the introductory level. For his own "convincing", Incorygible relies on a large selection of the even larger body of literature in evolutionary biology. Incorygible even contributes to that literature in his own field of specialty. After many years of reading, education and practice, Incorygible is, indeed, convinced. However, for Incorygible to impart this evidence-based conviction to AFDave, without lazy AFDave reading even the smallest smidgeon of the available literature (or even Incorygible's own posts) and without AFDave making the slightest honest effort toward his own education, would require direct neural manipulation beyond the present scope of medical science (not Incorygible's field). Nevertheless, here is Incorygible, and many like him, attempting to provide free, hard-earned answers to AFDave, after spending a morning providing some of those answers to dozens of students who have invested many more hours of honest learning than AFDave (and a fair chunk of change) for the opportunity. Meanwhile, AFDave, like a spoiled child, will simply claim yet again that Incorygible has provided no answers, and therefore has no answers. AFDave will claim that he is "bringing the truth" to Incorygible regarding evolutionary biology. Sad but true.

Read more, Dave. Or, at the very least, read something from a source not linked to AiG and their ilk. Read the evidence and arguments you try so hard to avoid. We've given you a good head start. Give us a reason to elevate your "Best I can tell..." assessment to a level above the perceptive ability of a deaf, dumb and blind amoeba.

  
afdave



Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,07:48   

Ved...    
Quote
Who are the eyewitnesses, specifically? If an eyewitness' name and actual quotation aren't preserved, do you still have an "eyewitness account"?
They were preserved.  They are Adam, Noah, the Sons of Noah, Shem, Terah, Ishmael & Isaac, and Esau & Jacob.  For example, Noah's account goes from Genesis 5:3 - 6:9a, concluding with the phrase "these are the generations of Noah."  Note that there is no name given in the first section which concludes with "these are the generations of the heaven and the earth" in Genesis 2:4a.  This makes sense when you realize that there was no human eyewitness alive yet to witness the acts of creation.  Note that it was probably Moses who inserted the names at the end of the proper section as he compiled these tablet records into one volume probably written on vellum.  See my blog at airdave.blogspot.com and the article referenced at the end of my blog article for more info.
Eric...  
Quote
That's not what you asked, Dave, and you know it. You asked how it was derived, not why anyone believes the evidence.
Yeah, how IS it derived?  Not "Here, Dave, here's what this textbook says."  Not "all these hundreds of experts had a bunch of meetings over the last 50 years and this is what they think."

I want to know HOW it was derived.  I want to know stuff like "Well, we have 1.5% sequence difference and we know that neutral mutation changes at the rate of 10 bazillion nucleotides per year so you multiply blah blah blah X blah blah and presto! you get 5 million years."  Or "Well, we have these fossils here and they look more like apes, but then we have these fossils here and they look a little more like humans, and when you measure the blah blah blah and subtract out the blah blah blah, then take the square root of blah blah blah, presto! you get 5 million years."

--------------
A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com

  
incorygible



Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,07:54   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 26 2006,12:48)
I want to know HOW it was derived.  I want to know stuff like "Well, we have 1.5% sequence difference and we know that neutral mutation changes at the rate of 10 bazillion nucleotides per year so you multiply blah blah blah X blah blah and presto! you get 5 million years."  Or "Well, we have these fossils here and they look more like apes, but then we have these fossils here and they look a little more like humans, and when you measure the blah blah blah and subtract out the blah blah blah, then take the square root of blah blah blah, presto! you get 5 million years."

Oh, THAT...

Here you go!

Enjoy. Come back when you're done, and we'll talk about any remaining general questions or concerns you might have.

(If you want a narrowed down version, might want to search the thread for particularly relevant titles.)

  
improvius



Posts: 807
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,08:18   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 26 2006,13:48)
I want to know HOW it was derived.

Then it makes no sense whatsoever that you were not following up and reading all of the links and source material that people were citing here.

The truth is that you don't really want to know that stuff.  All you want to do is dig up little tidbits so you can use them out of context to support your own rationalizations.  You don't really want to know the truth.  You just want to know that you're right.

So, Dave, how do you tell the difference between the figurative and literal parts fo the Bible?

And how long does a quartz crystal take to form?

--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late.
Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.

  
incorygible



Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,08:20   

As an example:

Dave, I know that one of the very first papers we (repeatedly) recommended you read was the infamous Nature chimpanzee paper that was fortuitously published online in late May, right around the time that we started this discusson. We referenced it repeatedly. Did you ever read it?

Once again, that's:

Patterson, N., D.J. Richter, S. Gnerre, E.S. Lander, and D. Reich. 2006. Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees. Nature 441: 1103-1108.

If I recall correctly, I think someone even stretched the rules of academic subscriptions and sent you a copy? I might be wrong about that, but it is certainly easy enough to find at any library.

Did you read it, Dave?

Because I just pulled it up again for another (more useful) task, and I notice it begins:

Quote
The genetic divergence time between two species varies substantially across the genome, conveying important information about the timing and process of speciation. Here we develop a framework for studying this variation and apply it to about 20 million base pairs of aligned sequence from humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and more distantly related primates. Human–chimpanzee genetic divergence varies from less than 84% to more than 147% of the average, a range of more than 4 million years. Our analysis also shows that human–chimpanzee speciation occurred less than 6.3 million years ago and probably more recently, conflicting with some interpretations of ancient fossils. Most strikingly, chromosome X shows an extremely young genetic divergence time, close to the genome minimum along nearly its entire length. These unexpected features would be explained if the human and chimpanzee lineages initially diverged, then later exchanged genes before separating permanently.

The genetic divergence between two species (the proportion of nucleotides differing between representative individuals of the two species) can be converted into a divergence time in terms of millions of years, provided that differences between genomes have accumulated at a constant rate as a result of new mutations1,2. The average genetic divergence, t genome, is sometimes used to estimate the speciation time, tspecies. However, t(x), the genetic divergence at any position x, fluctuates across the genome and is everywhere larger3 than tspecies (Fig. 1a, and Supplementary Note 1). Thus, its average tgenome necessarily exceeds tspecies.


Sounds a little like what you're looking for (and what you claim we haven't provided), eh? Read on, and it gets nice and specific about the calculations (but still written for a general scientific audience).

Did you read it, Dave?

Coincidentally (not really), you might find something similar in the publications from my post quoted by Eric, and many others.

Did you read them, Dave?

So...Dave...you were saying?

Dave?

  
Diogenes



Posts: 80
Joined: July 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,08:42   

Well I think some of you are being a bit hard on Dave.  I think he's right about taking the Bible as a record of actual events.  I would think most of us could agree that the Bible is as accurate, and should be treated as literally as we treat the Avesta, the I Ching, the Rigveda, or the Pali Canon.

--------------
:)

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,08:55   

Quote (afdave @ Sep. 26 2006,12:48)
Eric...    
Quote
That's not what you asked, Dave, and you know it. You asked how it was derived, not why anyone believes the evidence.
Yeah, how IS it derived?  Not "Here, Dave, here's what this textbook says."  Not "all these hundreds of experts had a bunch of meetings over the last 50 years and this is what they think."

Dave, the only way you're going to "know" how it was derived is to go out and get a freaking education in the relevant fields to the point where you can understand the "how." Incorygible explained to you, in exquisite detail, the "how" of the matter, and you're blaming your own inability to understand the "how" on his explanation, rather than your own ignorance.

If you would read the fucking links, and read the fucking original research papers that Incorygible has supplied you, you would know "stuff like "Well, we have 1.5% sequence difference and we know that neutral mutation changes at the rate of 10 bazillion nucleotides per year so you multiply blah blah blah X blah blah and presto! you get 5 million years."  What else do you want, Dave? Direct implantation of the information into your brain through osmosis? Those links Incorygible provided to you give you exactly the information you say you want! The problems are these: 1) you won't read the links, and you won't go out and get the actual articles where they're not available online; 2) even if you did read them, you don't have the specialized training necessary to understand them; and 3) are not willing to spend the time, money, and effort to obtain the necessary specialized training necessary to understand them! How is this anyone's fault but yours, Dave?

As Incorygible explained to you in exhaustive detail about one post above yours Dave, he does have the necessary specialized training and expertise to understand this stuff, and that's why he believes it. You don't, which is why you don't believe it. That, and the fact that you "resent" the notion that humans could be in any way related to other apes.

So what all this means is that when you said, "No one has shown me how the 8 mya date was derived," you were lying. You most emphatically were shown, in detail, how that date was derived. That you don't understand the methodology well enough to make head or tail of it doesn't change the simple fact that you were shown exactly how that date was derived.

Dave, I can't design an electronic circuit. Does that give me the right to say that it's impossible to design one? Because that's what you're claiming. You're claiming that because you don't understand how these dates were derived, that no one's shown you how they were derived.

It's like you're under the misapprehension that all of science should be instantly comprehensible by anyone with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. That may have been true 500 years ago, but today, no one person has the training necessary to understand more than a tiny, tiny fraction of the sum total of scientific knowledge. You don't have the training necessary to understand any of it.

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
Mike PSS



Posts: 428
Joined: Sep. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Sep. 26 2006,09:12   

Quote (ericmurphy @ Sep. 26 2006,14:55)
     
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 26 2006,12:48)
Eric...            
Quote
That's not what you asked, Dave, and you know it. You asked how it was derived, not why anyone believes the evidence.
Yeah, how IS it derived?  Not "Here, Dave, here's what this textbook says."  Not "all these hundreds of experts had a bunch of meetings over the last 50 years and this is what they think."

ericmurphy,
AFDave only applies this method of argument to obfuscate matters.  When I try to engage him by explaining all the relevant facts needed to understand ONE aspect of crystal formation.... he ignores the facts and the questions posed.

incorygible,
Good third-person paragraph.  How many mistakes before you clicked your brain into third-person typing? :)
 
Quote (incorygible @ Sep. 26 2006,13:40)
Incorygible has spent over a decade of his life, tens of thousands of his dollars, and a good chunk of his day EARNING his education in evolutionary biology. Over that time, Incorygible has forgotten more about what evidence "convinced" him than AFDave will learn here, even if AFDave suddenly became intellectually honest. Nevertheless, plenty of "convincing" stuff remains, which Incorygible has gone to great efforts to show AFDave. Incorygible also knows that, {snip}

  
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