According to The Science TM pterosaurs (allegedly) lived between 228 and 66 million years ago. Does the existence of pterosaur fossils prove that Science is true, and the Bible is false? After all, a literal interpretation of the Bible suggests the Earth is young, between 6,000 to 10,000 years old. This number is achieved by adding together the chronological age of every named generation beginning with Adam through Jesus, plus another 2,000 or so years. Of course, the Bible also says that 1,000 years is like a single day to God, so there might be some wiggle room. But 4 billion years versus 10,000? That’s a lot of wiggle room. However, the preferred method used to date rocks that are allegedly millions of years old is radiometric dating, which is notoriously unreliable means of dating. This fact was proved by dating rocks known to have been produced by the Mt. Saint Helen’s eruption in 1980 as being between 350,000 and 2.8 million years old. Oddly enough, the argument against using radiometric dating is that the age of the sample tested was known, which made the test invalid. Knowing the age of the rock is what made the test interesting. If the only way to get “accurate” readings from a rock is to not know the age of that rock, the results of the test are based on a guess. Then there is the problem of soft tissue being found in dinosaur bones. In 2005 paleontologist Mary Schweitzer made international headlines when she announced the discovery of collagen fibers in the fossilized bones of a young Tyrannosaurus Rex. Schweitzer nearly lost her job for … [Read more...]
Ring species
The PBS Evolution Library has an entry called Ring Species: Salamanders. The article discusses the breeding patterns of the Ensatina salamanders found on the Pacific coast and describes them as, "all descended from a common ancestral population. [of salamander]" The ring species of Ensatina salamanders is described as, "From one population to the next, in a circular pattern, these salamanders are still able to interbreed successfully. However, where the circle closes -- in the black zone on the map in Southern California -- the salamanders no longer interbreed successfully. The variation within a single species has produced differences as large as those between two separate species." To which I say, so what? There is a big difference between "don't" and "can't." One wonders if these different types of salamanders no longer interbreed by choice or if they became biologically incapable of mating. Why do they stop interbreeding? Do we know, or only think we know? Besides, whether they interbreed or not, these creatures all have the same salamander genome. We see the exact same behavior with dog breeding -- most people know that you can put together two (male and female) dogs of the same breed and you'll get purebred puppies, but if you put together two dogs of different breeds and allow them to mate, you'll get a mutt. Chihuahuas and Great Danes don't successfully mate very well due to physical limitations, and yet we still say we only have one species of canine. Yet with wild species, the slightest variation in kind can result in the declaration by … [Read more...]
Semantic arguments about the origin of life
A semantic argument means literally having an argument about the precise meaning of a word or phrase. For communication to effectively occur between any two people, there must be some common understanding about the definitions of the words being used. For example, "mostly peaceful" protestors could also be described as "occasionally violent" rioters, depending on one's own perspective. Some people like to watch grown men put on boxing gloves and beat each other into a bloody pulp, but my idea of great entertainment is to watch a verbal jousting match between two intellectuals about a subject that ought to interest all of us, the origin of life. So, as I watched the debate between organic chemist Lee Cronin and synthetic chemist James Tour on the Unbelievable podcast hosted by Justin Brierly, I naturally expected to hear technical jargon and terminology used in their discussion that would sound foreign to me. While I was worried a phrase like “self-assembly of a nanoscale transition metal cluster” would baffle me, it honestly never occurred to me that these two brilliant scientists would be using words like "life" and "information" in a context that I didn't quite understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DHvNRK452c After Dr. Tour provided the "textbook" definition of life according to Google (composed of cells, can reproduce, metabolize, etc.), and then said, “Information itself is not life. Would you agree with that? Life has information, but information itself is not life. I can have a piece of paper and write on that piece of paper. That piece of paper … [Read more...]
Falsifying evolution
The Zapata footprint According to Karl Popper, the ultimate test of whether a theory was scientific or philosophic was whether or not the theory could be falsified, meaning it could be tested according to the scientific method and theoretically proved to be untrue by solid contradictory evidence. J.B.S. Haldane once joked that the best evidence to disprove Darwinian theory would be a fossilized rabbit in Precambrian rock strata, because rabbits allegedly didn't "evolve" until several hundred million years after the Cambrian extinction event had elapsed. Haldane didn't realize it at the time, but his joke has ultimately shown that Darwinian evolution cannot be falsified. The theory of evolution has become the equivalent of religious dogma that simply cannot be challenged or questioned. Consider the Zapata footprint above. If the print was found on a sandy beach, no one would question for a moment whether it was a genuine footprint created by a human being. However, this particular print was discovered in rock allegedly 250 million years old. Scientific tests should be able to provide a reasonably accurate age for the rock, and additional experiments should be able to demonstrate how the footprint could have been faked, assuming the fossil is not genuine. Likewise, the image below allegedly shows a human footprint and a dinosaur footprint fossilized in the same layer of rock. Perhaps there is some plausible explanation for these fossils, and they only look like human and dinosaur footprints that are neither deliberate frauds, nor what they appear to be. Or … [Read more...]
An open letter to the evolutionary biologist
Dear Mr. or Ms. Evolutionary Biologist, Thank you in advance for your time, of which I hope not to waste too much. If you happen to be an ursinologist, your assistance will be especially welcome. Before I start, I think it it is only fair that you know the audience. I should properly identify myself as a Christian, so that you will be aware of the possibility my confirmation bias (which I believe everyone has) could unduly affect my interpretation of published scientific evidence. I also believe in supernatural creation, because I am well aware that life cannot evolve until it exists. However, I typically describe myself as theist-agnostic. By that, I simply mean that I believe in the Judeo-Christian supernatural creator God called Yahweh, and I also believe that Jesus was the promised, crucified, and resurrected Messiah. That's the "theist" part of the descriptor. On the other hand, I also realize that I actually don't know very much when it comes to answering the existential questions. That's the reason for the "agnostic" qualifier...I can't even claim that my beliefs constitute knowledge, because sometimes beliefs turn out to be wrong. Pleading agnosticism is admitting to ignorance. My desire to become less ignorant is the reason for writing you this letter. So without further ado, please allow me to get right to the crux of what I want to know: what special characteristics of any two species of bears makes it necessary for them to be classified as more than one species? After all, there are five billion or so humans on earth, all properly … [Read more...]
