Why do people get so personal about defending evolution?

[King Flevance]

Nice link. It will probably take me a while (longer than today) to get through alot of it.

 

[brennan]

Yes, it's a wee bit wordy isn't it. Sorry.

 

[warpus]

Because I see children growing all the time with my own eyes.

Do you? Have you ever actually looked at a child and physically seen him grow right in front of your own eyes?

I'd be surprised if you have

No, what you do is this: You observe the child various intervals (ie. 3 years, 5 years, 7 years, etc.), assume it's the same child, and notice the difference.

This is the same thing we do with evolution. We observe a species at various intervals (2 million, 3 million, etc.) and observe changes.

These are very gradual and will not EVER be observed with the naked eye - much like you have never seen a child physically grow right in front of you. It happens - but it's so gradual so you don't notice.

Humans have been around for thousands of years and we haven't been able to find proof of 1 single gradual evolution of a creature.

We've observed all of the plants and animals we've domesticated evolve over thousands of years. For example, cats and bananas looked nothing like they do now before they were domesticated.

I will admit I don't research the topic much, because in the end I don't find it that important.

You admit that you haven't researched the topic much but at the same time state that the results are inconclusive? You can't have your cake and eat it too. The results appear inconclusive to you because you haven't taken the time to research them Not to mention the apparent bias.

 

[Gogf]

As Gogf put it, the fossil record is incomplete. It does appear that way through the fossil record to me. And that isn't enough proof. I may leave this life never being certain if evolution is fact or best guess. But that's fine by me. That is way down on my priority list.

One of the hallmarks of good science is its "falsifiability." As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the easier something is to prove wrong, the better science it is. This makes sense, if you think about it, because the easier a theory is to falsify, the greater a standard of rigor it stands up to. With that in mind, evolution is actually one of the easiest theories in science to falsify. All that is necessary to prove evolution wrong is to have one fossil be found in the wrong layer of sediment.

We're never going to have a complete fossil record, because only a tine fraction of animals become fossilized. We need to accept that and realize that, no matter how true evolution is, we can't look at how complete the fossil record is as evidence of how true evolution is. We're extremely lucky to have the fossils that we have. Because there are gaps in the fossil record, we need to make inferences about what fills those gaps. As time has progressed, we have found progressively more fossils of intermediate steps between humans and other primates.

Based on the fact that we have repeatedly found intermediate fossils of various stages of evolution, that we have seen modern examples of speciation and natural selection, and that evolution is the only falsifiable, scientific theory to describe the evidence that we have seen, I think it is only reasonable to accept evolution as reasonably certain.

 

[scy12]

Evolution is a scientific theory based on evidence and conclusions that several of which are proven , and is as a result the most credible source of knowledge we have regarding our struggle of explaining some phenomena.

God on the other hand is a human mythical creation.

People should be defensive regarding preserving truth and scientific progress and unfortunately for hundreds years they weren't. Today i wish all that do not believe in evolution to pay extra taxes.

 

[drachasor]

It's easy to show Evolution to be false. Show me a vertebrate fossil from before the Cambrian period. Show me a dinosaur that is dated to the Cambrian. Show me a human that is dated as having lived 40 million years ago. Show me a tiger that was around 70 million years ago.

In short, there are a whole bunch of ways the evolutionary record could be falsified. It just hasn't happened.

-Drachasor

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Sure it is. Didn't you know that one time they found a human skull and they C-14 dated it to 1 billion years ago?

(Just thought I would be the one to throw that one in there . . . )

 

[brennan]

We all know C14 dating isn't reliable past about 40-50,000 years Eran. A billion year dating is just silly.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

We all know C14 dating isn't reliable past about 40-50,000 years Eran. A billion year dating is just silly.

Then why do they use it for dates past 50K years ago?

Didn't you know that one time they found a human skull and they C-14 dated it to 1 billion years ago?

What about Potassium-Argon dating, what did that say about the skull?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

They don't, I don't think.

I actually made up the "billion", but I have heard figures of 2 million cited before as supposed errors in C-14 dating (never citing the actual study, of course) by YECs.

 

[drachasor]

Then why do they use it for dates past 50K years ago?

It can be good up to about 60k years, actually.

 

[brennan]

Then why do they use it for dates past 50K years ago?

They don't: they use other methods.

 

[brennan]

I actually made up the "billion", but I have heard figures of 2 million cited before as supposed errors in C-14 dating (never citing the actual study, of course) by YECs.

Yes, that's an example of YEC dishonesty: use a method that they know perfectly well won't give a reliable result under the circumstances to produce a ludicrous result and then claim the method is faulty. When no-one else would use it the way they did.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

They don't: they use other methods.

Is carbon-14 dating more accurate than other methods like radiometric or K-Ar dating for it's given time it can cover?

 

[brennan]

I would imagine so or no-one would use it

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

It is probably more accurate for smaller periods of time, just like calipers are more accurate than tape measures for millimeters, but useless for meters.

 

[brennan]

The accuracy would depend upon the half-life of the isotope used I imagine. Longer half life would mean you could measure older samples, but it would be correspondingly less accurate.

 

[El_Machinae]

Frob says: "The article says they don't breed "for the same reasons humans and chimpanzees don't breed"."

Wiki has this to say on Tigons:
"The comparative rarity of tigons is attributed to male tigers' finding the courtship behaviour of a lioness too subtle and thus may miss behavioural cues that signal her willingness to mate."

Who's being too subtle?
(cripes, that's funny)

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Who's being too subtle?
(cripes, that's funny)

I'm going to remember than and whip it out next time a girl gets mad at me for "not getting the hint."

 

[drachasor]

Carbon-14 has a shorter half-life. That means that it can't date things as far back. However, how close you can pin the age of something depends on the half-life. Carbon-14 dating, with a half-life around 6000 years, and can date things to within about +/- 30 years. K-Ar uses K with a half-life of around 1.2 billion years, so if the sample is too young, then it won't give good results (not enough argon present). Even then, since the half-life is so long, you can't get close to within 30 years of the actual date (even a little big of error, and there's also a bit, means much more than a 30 year difference). K-Ar dating can be used to date objects to within about a million years (typically).

-Drachasor