Thanks for your reply.  I appreciate your respectful tone.

bob allen wrote:
Tim Brodie wrote:
I'm always interested that people use the *Theory* of Evolution as
an example of Science.  At best you could call it an hypothesis,
since to be science a theory must be observable and repeatable.

things like phyolgenetic relationships, as indicated via the similarity of the dna of the genome are certainly observable and repeatable

This tells us that living things in general are organized using
similar building blocks, and that plants are organized in similar
ways to other plants, etc.  It doesn't necessarily demand conclusions
about origins.

actually, all like is assembled alike, use the same genetic code. Applying Occam's razor, the best solution is that there is a evolutionary relationship

The best solution would be your first statement that "all like is assembled alike, use the same genetic code." There is nothing
causal past this statement that can be gleaned from scientific
inquiry.  Past this point are just guesses (educated or otherwise).

As I've looked into this idea of evolution, what I've found is alot
of conjecture and interdisciplinary circular reasoning.  Stories
that constantly change.  Comets this year, asteriods last year,
volcanoes the year before.

If you are talking about the mass extinctions which have occured from time to time over a hundreds of millions of years, then different extinctions have been discussed in the context of different events. Nothing here contradicts the simple notion that the diversity of life we see is due to random mutations selected for by various forces.

Perhaps the comment wasn't helpful; I'm trying to challenge the
notion that explanations more often than not have nothing to do
with historical events, or historical processes.

     I still don't understand what you are getting at here

Lot's of articles have been written as to how and why President Kennedy
got shot.  Without a real observer all they are is conjecture.  However,
the President was shot during a specific sequence of events that are
historical.  They happened.  We can argue all we want that things
must have happened in a certain sequence, but we will only be correct
if and when we actually guess the real historical sequence of events.

The question of origins really comes down to whether or not we have
a reliable observer of the events.  If we say we don't, then really
all we are left with is conjecture.

What is, is that pile of fossilized bones.  What we don't have, is
an understanding of the real historical events that 'generated'
them.  So we invent what we consider to be plausible stories to
explain it; like the tiger story Keith referred to earlier.

"These fossils are x-millions of years old" say the *biologists*
"because they're found in rock x-millions of years old."  "These rocks
are x-millions of years old" say the *archiologists* "because these
fossils are in them, and we know that these animals lived x-millions of
years ago."

Actually, there are a whole bunch of methods for dating. In addition to stragraphy, there are numerous radioactive decay series, with overlapping half-lives, archeomagnetic dating which utilizes the meandreings of the magnetic poles, obsidian hydration, fission track, amino acid racemization, and on and on. There is no circular reasoning here. the methods are essentially indipendently verifiabe, and a ages determined from first principles.

Help me out here.  Produce one sample of rock that has been dated
by any three of these methods that come within an order of magnitude
of each other.  I'll be really glad to see it; I've looked. Perhaps
I just haven't connected with the right information.

ok, from Dalrymple, G. Brent (1991) The Age of the Earth. Stanford University Press, 474 pp. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some of the oldest rocks on earth are found in Western Greenland. Because of their great age, they have been especially well studied. The table below gives the ages, in billions of years, from twelve different studies using five different techniques on one particular rock formation in Western Greenland, the Amitsoq gneisses.
Technique     Age Range (billion years)
uranium-lead     3.60±0.05
lead-lead     3.56±0.10
lead-lead     3.74±0.12
lead-lead     3.62±0.13
rubidium-strontium     3.64±0.06
rubidium-strontium     3.62±0.14
rubidium-strontium     3.67±0.09
rubidium-strontium     3.66±0.10
rubidium-strontium     3.61±0.22
rubidium-strontium     3.56±0.14
lutetium-hafnium     3.55±0.22
samarium-neodymium     3.56±0.20
(compiled from Dalrymple, 1991)
Note that scientists give their results with a stated uncertainty. They take into account all the possible errors and give a range within which they are 95% sure that the actual value lies. The top number, 3.60±0.05, refers to the range 3.60+0.05 to 3.60-0.05. The size of this range is every bit as important as the actual number. A number with a small uncertainty range is more accurate than a number with a larger range. For the numbers given above, one can see that all of the ranges overlap and agree between 3.62 and 3.65 billion years as the age of the rock. Several studies also showed that, because of the great ages of these rocks, they have been through several mild metamorphic heating events that disturbed the ages given by potassium-bearing minerals (not listed here). As pointed out earlier, different radiometric dating methods agree with each other most of the time, over many thousands of measurements. Other examples of agreement between a number of different measurements of the same rocks are given in the references below..

Excellent, thank you.  My understanding is that when dating rock we like
to have a number of different methods to try to 'get at' any errors
inherent in the process.  Here is a link to a technical paper that
demonstrates very real problems of using U-Th-Pb to age rock:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v9/i1/dating.asp?vPrint=1

Humor me for a minute, and have a read.  I'd be very interested in
your critique of the article.  Remember, I'm interested in truth and
if the article has flaws or errors or whatever I'd like to know
about it.  There are other articles that address the problems
in the other processes cited above.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now tim, you have claimed that measurements are off by orders of magnitude. could you provide me with such evidence? Who has reproducibly got such variance? And I don't mean due to incompetence.

I'm trying to find the actual paper (to make sure that I can read
the context), but my reference includes the following:
"Processes of rock alteration may render a volcanic rock useless for potassium-argon dating . . We have analyzed several devitrified glasses of known age, and all have yielded ages that are too young. Some gave virtually zero ages, although the geologic evidence suggested that devitrification took place shortly after the formation of a deposit." *J.F. Evernden, et. al., "K / A Dates and Cenozoic Mannalian Chronology of North America," in American Journal of Science, February 1964, p. 154.

Granted, there have been a number of 'studies' done that have hand
selected rock samples that exhibit discordant ages.  However,
"so frauds have occured. they don't negate the theory."

We should be able to examine the processes in use, and discuss
flaws in reasoning as well as results.

By the way, many of the presuppositions of these methods you've
stated have primary flaws in reasoning that invalidates their
results.  Such as I've explained in a prior post about radioactive
half life.

As I recall you questioned the stability of the half-lives of radioactive isotopes? Doesn't your computer(s) keep track of time via an atomic clock? at least by reference ? Again I would like to see any any evidence as to the variance in half-lives.

I'm not suggesting that radio-active half-lives have changed.
What's in view is variances between the different methods
used.  For example, the isotope ratio at the time of the
formation of the sample, or  ion migrate in and out of the
sample (the assumption of a closed system).

Look, an unobserved series of historical events happened.  No
transitional species have ever been found (notwithstanding several
publications' attempts to present them from time to time) that
has stood up to scrutiny.

what? just in terms of human evolution, australopithecenes evolutionarily precede "homo" genera. Within Homo, are a series of species such as erectus, habilis, and on and on. And if you look at the dna the relationships are overwellminingly obvious. There is a gradual change in the dna as you move across the spectrum of life. My dna is more like a chimpanzee's than the chimpanzee's is like a gorilla's. Put another way, the dna of a sea squirt is more like mine than it is to a salmonella bacteria. One must really try hard to not see the relationships among life.

So you're saying that DNA has been collected from all the skeleton
fragments that were used to construct this tree of descent?  I'd
be interested to see that.  What is the degree of sequence match
between the australopithecenes skeleton and one of us?

dna doesn't survive more than a few ten's of thousands of years, under the best of circumstances. Fossils don't have dna. The dna is from extant species. the closer the dna sequences, the closer the phylogenetic relationship.

Since there are no DNA sequences in the fossils, then how do you
make the link?  Do I understand you to mean that you look at
living species today that seem to have the characteristics of
the fossils?  I mean, at one point dinosaurs were believed to be
cold-blooded, and now some belief warm-blooded. There is an incredible
difference in physiology between the two!

My understanding of trying to establish phylogenetic relationships
in the lab right now is by digesting some of test material and
the comparison material in a sequence of enzymes with the intent
of selecting sequences of DNA out of each.  They then try to
compare the 'compositions' by doing a statistical analysis by looking
at the quantities of each of the selected sequences.  Is this correct?

If this is the case, it's kind of like looking at a iguana and
a cow, concluding that they might have a phylogenetic relationship
(both have four legs, eat food, breathe air, etc) and stuffing
each of them through a meat grinder.

Well, we see white specks, red specks, lots of liquid red stuff.
They must be related! :-) I know, this is over-simplified
but isn't it essentially the truth?

I'm sure that the design of the process is supposed to select
from the end of the strand, etc but given how enzymes work
you will get selection from throughout the strand.  Hence,
you really can't conclude too strongly about relationships
(especially when trying to determine genetic descent!)

And since we really don't yet truly understand causal links
between DNA sequences and attributes of the organism, it
makes it exceeding difficult to conclude a phylogenetic
relationship.  (What is the program that 'runs' on the
strand that generates a limb?  an eye?  etc?  I would
expect that all organisms that have an eye will have a
similar sequence of DNA related to that... it's necessary
to create the eye)

  Remember whole hominid skulls fashioned

from one pig's tooth?  No?  That's because it isn't of general
interest to the evolutionary *scientists*, and thus we still find
Piltdown stories being published in children's 'science' textbooks.

so frauds have occured. they don't negate the theory.

Agreed, they don't.  Why are science textbooks publishers so
incredibly sloppy to keep publishing this tripe?  Anyone?
Bueller?

I can't speak for others incompetence.

So why your trust in peer review?

Evolution is not science, it's a worldview that fits a set of
religious beliefs and as such is really only a religious
precursor.  Certainly not science.

criminently,
??

there is nothing religious about recognizing that the easiest way to explain biological diversity is random mutations and selective pressure to create what we have in the world around us.

Others on the forum suggest that religion is all about having
faith in spite of contradictory objective facts.  It's also
about creating a story to satisfy deep human spiritual needs.
Myths to give greater meaning and purpose to life.  (By the
way, I'm not a religious person)

Evolution is far from the easiest way to explain the diversity
of life, but it is the most convenient.

the only other way I have seen presented requires belief in the supernatural. Do you know of other theory for the diversity of life, other than the supernatural.

Science (by it's own definition) is incompetent to address
the supernatural.  This does not mean that the supernatural
doesn't exist, just that science has no way to deal with
it.

The whole nature of the discussion of origins must come
to this point: What if there isn't a naturalistic explanation
for our origin?

Best regards... Tim

--
We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.

Tim Brodie, IT Manager:SysAdmin:S/W Developer, DWI California
501 S Idaho St, Suite 190, La Habra, CA 90631 USA
Phone: 310-766-2338 Fax: 562-947-8287 http://www.dwi-california.com
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