[GU]elmur_fud;2603308 said:
You may be right on some of that but you are pretty far off on a lot of it.
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So your notion that all creationists are crazies is a bit bigoted. However those want to be in public eye for it most likely are.
Carbon 14 dating is rubbish in the terms of a definitive benchmark because there are multiple anomalies that can influence the amount of carbon 14 that could be present in the specimen being dated. (carbon14 levels can very due to natural gas, volcanic activity, geothermal gasses, and other localized phenomena that can skew results.) However, as you vaguely alluded to, carbon 14 providing a dubious timeline does not evolution disprove.
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There really isn't any evidence that proves evolution. There is correlating evidence that supports it, but correlation doesn't imply causality. The same data that 1 group identifies as indicating a progressive linear micro evolution can be interpreted as having a common designer. Though beyond that data to indicate that the creation spoke of in Genesis or any other variation of the story happening is almost nonexistent and there is almost an entire lack of evidence that would factually dispute evolution. Other biblical events certainly... Conversely there are certainly plenty of issues that plague the theory of evolution but you will never see an evolutionist happily embrace it as evidence to the contrary.
History is full of examples of science dragging it's feet when it comes to change. So the comment "Scientists will be excited if you can prove them wrong on very basic things" and its mirror in the debate is BS. Rogue waves are a good example there. Not that you can expect Ken Ham to EVER change his tune, so by contrast though an extreme exaggeration IMO I wouldn't call what you said fundamentally incorrect.
Ugh. I want to point out the level of ignorance in this piece of steaming pile. I was trying to be good and keep out of it, but ugh.
First, your completely ignorant Carbon 14 strawman. First of all, while it is certainly true that environmental factors can mess with the amount of carbon, and potentially mess with dating, it ISN'T a real factor for Carbon dating that is confirmed, as the factors that can mess with it are known, and very easily controlled for (or else, if they can't be, there is an admission of uncertainty on the part of those dating things). Which would be a decent argument if it weren't so completely and utterly based on CSI Miami level knowledge. Carbon 14 is ONE of around 20 or so radiometric ways of measuring time, each with their own particular strengths and weaknesses (ie: carbon 14 is only good for around 50,000 years, but can provide guesses as to the individual year or decade, but Uranium-lead dating gives us a reach of a few billion years, and there are plenty in between, as well as things that have even shorter useful halflifes than C14). What we have done, SO MANY TIMES, is crosscheck multiple types of dating that not only eliminates potential confounding factors, but it ALSO provide corroboration (as well as various other kinds of geological sciences to boot).
This means that there is no "dubious timeline" because it IS NOT being constructed off of a C14 analysis, but rather from multiple sources that work together for independent confirmation. No one even mentioned Carbon 14, and it certainly wouldn't be any use at all in confirming the age of the earth (except as to how accurate it is in hundreds of thousands of instances, and how that can be correlated with other types of dating for confirmation), yet you've decided to start saying how it's rubbish? Thanks? This is like responding to an argument about how it should be easy to fix an engine with the right tool and you telling us how rubber mallets do a terrible job at getting screws in place.
Now onto your evolution malarky: Evolution has been proven again and again and again and again. I know how much people love to throw up the quote that correlation doesn't imply causation, but it's fucking stupid. Correlation does not NECESSARILY imply causation. This is what was obviously meant (it is an enthymeme), and yet people treat it like it's the gospel when they want to ignore plain facts. The theory of gravity is a series of observations that have been made that can be used to make accurate predictions that can be tested in the lab and in the real world. It is, in fact, a bunch of correlations that DO imply causation (if I loaded the hand gun, pointed it at the person's head and pulled the trigger, that DOES imply that their is a causative relationship to that person's brains being removed through kinetic force from the loving enclosure of their skull). Likewise, the theory of evolution (same terms, same grounds as gravity) has been tested and tested and tested and found to be definitively sound.
But WAIT A SECOND, may you say, there are people that have argued about multiple, different sorts of evolutionary theories that don't all match! It's true. There is, for instance, Darwin's main, original theory that evolution is a (more or less) linear line of gradual evolution on one hand, and Steven Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium (in which there are long periods of stability in a population and then a very quick surge of change, followed by more stability, etc.) on the other. They're different! But the thing is, while they are certainly different, they are different in the way that Newton's Gravity and Einstein's Gravity are different: there are, in fact, different ideas, and they even have fundamentally different beliefs about the ways in which the world should be understood, but they BOTH show you an accurate trajectory of a thrown baseball, they BOTH are very useful--and in fact, in most applications, gravitational calculations are done with Newton's equation, even though it has since been proven wrong, as it's less computationally intensive and the results are essentially the same. Why is this? Because while the minutiae is still not entirely understood, 99% of what is happening IS, and we can document it to an insane degree, model it and have remarkably accurate predictions, etc. The disagreement is on the tiny percentage. So it is with evolutionary debate. There is still lots we don't know, but that lots we don't know is the tiny stuff of filling in the absolutely tiniest details, as the fundamental principles are known, documented, debated, discussed, experimented on, confirmed, reconfirmed, etc. There is evidence on the fossil level, there is evidence on the genome level, there is evidence on the observational level, and they all point to and corroborate the data. IT IS PROVEN. Yes, just like Newton's Gravity there are flaws that mean that super fine levels of information elude us (and without relativity, we wouldn't have a QUITE as accurate understanding of the movement of planetary bodies, but we would still have a fucking incredibly amazing one), but just like Newton's Gravity, the fundamental understanding is there, proven and solid.
Finally: there are TONS of evolutionary biologists that are CONSTANTLY challenging evolution. Not the facts as we know them, because they're fucking facts, they are verified a million times over and understood, but the tiny minute details that drive the systems, in how things act and interact, etc. within the main strictures of biology. People are putting forward new propositions and others are arguing with them based upon the evidence and they are trying to throw out the old system for a new one, much (again), like when Relativity came in (and there were tons and tons of people before Einstein bucking trends--they just weren't right), and should there be a better, more useful, more helpful, better held up theory (or theories) than we currently have, it will be swiftly adopted as the evidence comes in.
Anyone can choose to believe or not believe in god as they will, and they can find a section in the bible that will "prove" them right (You mention Genisis and how it seems to confirm our understanding of geology, for instance, but you fail to acknowledge that there are two accounts: one in which (gen 1:1-26) it goes 1) earth 2) light 3) water 4) land 5) plants 6) seasons + sun/moon 7) animals 8) man and woman (together), and then A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ONE (Gen 2:4-in which it goes 1) heaven and earth 2)dirt with some mist coming out of it 3) man 4) plants 5) water 6) the animals 7) woman), but the bible is written in a way that is completely, and purposefully vague and contradictory. It can neither confirm nor deny anything, even the basic order of what came first, man or animal, man and woman as a pair or woman as an afterthought, is in question in the first 1,000 words. The text is MERELY for belief and moral instruction. It has zero use as a geological record, and while, again, someone can certainly believe that all of evolution was guided by god, there is zero way, ever, to prove it. We CAN prove evolution, through the scientific method, research and confirmation, but you can ONLY EVER choose to believe or not that God was in charge.
Creationists are all complete, and utter idiots. I don't mean that they have a low IQ (though a very strong majority do), but rather that they ignore what has been proved and independently confirmed because they don't want to see it. By this I don't mean that all religious people are idiots, nor that a belief that God created everything is idiotic, but I DO mean that anyone that denies the easily (and often) proven, documented, corroborated, vigorously debated (from within, as in, scientific debate) and pushed forward (as science is) fact of the theory of evolution (by which I mean: all creationists) is undoubtedly idiotic.
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Let me rephrase what I said about dating since I apparently confused you people.
