ScienceWhopper:Natural History According to Jeffrey Holland

[_jon]

Frank, I'm wondering when you think the field of science will catch up with you on erosion and also how long before science concurs that there was indeed a global erosion event involving water circa 3,000 b.c.....

[_Franktalk]

If everyone just accepted the mainstream view this place would be pretty boring. And new developments would be few.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/10/no ... ic-denier/

In my opinion there should be widespread disagreements in science. I see some but not enough.

[_Franktalk]

Population number is where this falls apart. It assumes 10 million as a population per generation, but discounts that most of this mutation occurred in simple organisms with populations orders, of orders of magnitude greater than 10^6. Also per a quick thought process fails to define time frame of a generation. Again much faster by orders of magnitude reproduction for the simple organisms.

You guys are good. And you are correct that for small organisms with high birth rates and high death rates the mechanism of change by mutation can and does lead to evolution. So yes it can be demonstrated. But for complex species with low birth rates and low death rates the numbers do not add up. But let me state that this does not mean evolution is false, it just means the math does not add up. Science needs to admit this and keep looking. All I am saying is that "as stated" the mechanism does not work in all cases. My problem is with people who arm wave and say that if it works on bacteria it works for all life. Great to say just prove it.

[_Franktalk]

Frank, I'm wondering when you think the field of science will catch up with you on erosion and also how long before science concurs that there was indeed a global erosion event involving water circa 3,000 b.c.....

I think there was a flood of Noah. But I believe it because of faith not because of any trace evidence. I did start a thread in MAD that talks about faith and world views. Not to much science. But still a good read for those who believe in miracles.

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/553 ... d-of-noah/

[_Chap]

If everyone just accepted the mainstream view this place would be pretty boring. And new developments would be few.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/10/no ... ic-denier/

In my opinion there should be widespread disagreements in science. I see some but not enough.

Developments in science come from those who have taken the trouble to initiate themselves fully into current scientific thought and practice, as did Daniel Shechtman - see his curriculum vitae here.

When people like that suggest a new direction, their colleagues can be sure that even if they are wrong, they are not wrong because they just don't understand what they are talking about. Some people, like Linus Pauling, disagreed strongly with Shechtman. But a glance at the list of awards and fellowships he has received suggests he was hardly a lonely outsider:

2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the discovery of quasicrystals".[3][16]
2008 European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) 25th Anniversary Award
2002 EMET Prize in Chemistry
2000 Muriel & David Jacknow Technion Award for Excellence in Teaching
2000 Gregori Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
1999 Wolf Prize in Physics.[17]
1998 Israel Prize, for Physics.[18]
1993 Weizmann Science Award
1990 Rothschild Prize in Engineering
1988 New England Academic Award of the Technion
1988 International Award for New Materials of the American Physical Society
1986 Physics Award of the Friedenberg Fund for the Advancement of Science and Education

This is a full member of the scientific community, with a tenured job, publishing in refereed scientific journals and (I have no doubt) arguing with colleagues at conferences to which he was invited as an eminent speaker.

To suggest that he has anything in common with a Young Earth believer trying to overturn well-established geological principles is just plain ridiculous.

[_Phillip]

We used to think that the Earth is the center of the universe. Then came, well you know.

Wasn't this one a religious notion?

It was a notion shared by basically all pre-modern societies. Common sense seemed to dictate it, and even Hellenistic science accepted it (with a couple of minor exceptions) because they had a flawed notion of concepts like inertia and because of the absence of any observable stellar parallax. It really wasn't until the 18th century and the discovery of stellar aberration that it was conclusively shown that the earth was in motion around the sun.

[_Phillip]

The great exception to pre-modern geocentrism would, of course, be the ancient Nephite civilization:

"for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun" - Helaman 12:15

[_Sethbag]

If everyone just accepted the mainstream view this place would be pretty boring. And new developments would be few.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/10/no ... ic-denier/

In my opinion there should be widespread disagreements in science. I see some but not enough.

There shouldn't be widespread disagreements in science just for the hell of it, or as a matter of ideology. There should be widespread disagreements if there's actually evidence being accounted for in multiple different and incompatible ways. In most fields today, either there simply aren't these kinds of disagreements or they are over minutiea that few outside the field even know exist.

I have the sneaking suspicion that you wish there were more major disagreements in science because it would make your "but look, the scientists don't know everything, therefore Creationism!" argument appear more plausible to the underinformed.

[_Buffalo]

Buffalo made the claim. He's wrong. His error has no relationship to the Bible.

Every measurement comes with a margin of error or it isn't meaningful. By your lights, all measurements are wrong.

If I measure myself to be 6 foot 2 inches, do I mean that I am that tall exactly? Could an absolutely exact measurement even make sense?

Confidence in measurements is based on mathematical error analysis. It is a serious subject.

FYI, we are confident that the Earth is 4.1 and 4.8 billion years old.

We are extremely confident that it is between 3 and 6 billions years old.

Our confidence that the Earth is billions of years old rather than millions is like our confidence that the moon is farther from the surface of the earth than rain clouds.
But I am sure that if the Bible hinted that the moon could be lower than clouds and hence get rained on, you would be defending that notion ( a notion no more silly than the ones you do defend).

It's nice of you to try to explain it to him, but from past experience Hoops is NOT bright enough to pick up what you're laying down.

[_Buffalo]

The earth can't be younger than its oldest components. .

Which, not too long ago, was thought to be 2.5 billion years. I'm sure they, at the time, were just as sure of this fact as you are now of this one.

I'm sure you can comprehend the effect that finding even older materials in the earth might have on our knowledge of the age of the earth.

You can do this Hoops. Think hard!