Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
quote: (post)
Originally posted by Transfinitum
>>Please post your proof that the age of the world is the subject of a "straight out denial of a fact which has been proven later".HINT: You won't be able to, since the Church has never defined the age of the world, and science has never proven it.
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The Church may never have given a date for the Earth's creation but science has managed to date the planet's age.
>>More accurately, science has managed to date it many times. Lord Kelvin in 1897 dated the planet's age at 20-40 million years, based upon the notion that the Earth was originally molten, and cooled through induction and radiation. In 1901 John Joly calculated an age based upon the rate of delivery of salt to the ocean. His age was 90-100 million years. Later on, geologists managed to date the planet's age again, this time by measuring the average sedimentation deposition rate (0.3 meters per 1000 years, they said). They arrived at a date of 500 million years, based on a sedimentaion thickeness of about 150,000 meters. After Becquerel's discovery of radiationin 1896, Rutherford managed to date the planet's age again. By assuming that the helium measured in rocks was the daughter product of uranium decay, Rutherford's date was 500 million years.
All of these, and subsequent radioactive methods, are exactly as accurate as the assumptions which underlie them. Anyone who wishes to look into the fascinating instances where rock samples of an independently known age have been submitted "blind" to a laboratory for radioactive dating, only to be found to be stupendously, jaw-droppingly, unbelievably W-R-O-N-G, can do no better than to start with the famous and hilariously exemplary case of the Hualalai basalt extruded in an eruption in Hawaii in 1801, which was dated at 22.8±16.5 million years of age. ( J.G. Funkhouser and J.J. Naughton, "Radiogenic Helium and Argon in Ultramafic Inclusions from Hawaii," Journal of Geophysical Research, 73 (1968): pp. 4601-4607. )
There are thousands of similar examples, including the quite interesting fact that the uranium-helium decay rate used to support an Earth age of billions of years, can also be applied to the coincident daughter product of atmospheric helium. How strange that if one measures the helium in the atmosphere, one obtains an Earth age of less than one hundred thousand years........
So it is very safe to say that science is by no means finished with the business of dating the planet's age, and certainly one can not in any case claim this as an example of the Catholic Church's "straight out denial" (she has never denied or affirmed any age of the Earth in her magisterial definitions) "of a fact which has been proven later" (no such proof exists, and the question remains very much at issue).
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
quote: (post)
Originally posted by Transfinitum
>>Please post your prood that *evolution" (definition, please) is the subject of a "straight out denial of fact which has been proven later".HINT: You won't be able to, since no one has ever proven evolution (defined as universal common descent by random mutation and natural selection), even at the simple level of induced mutations yielding new genetic information in the genome.
It has never happened.
This does not conclusively prove it could never happen, but then, the mere fact that the moon has never yet turned itself into green cheese doesn't prove it couldn't do so.
We merely state that there is no scientific evidence of the moon turning itself into green cheese, just as there is no scientific evidence of a single celled primeval "ancestor" turning itself into Ludwig van Beethove via random mutation.
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Evolution has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
>>The above is a statement of faith, not of scientific proof. To merely assert that something is "proved beyond any reasonable doubt", does not constitute any sort of proof.
It is also quite indicative of a certain, quaintly modern, profoundly anti-scientific attitude especially prevalent among a certain subset of the population (these folks are very eager to wrap about themselves the mantle of Science, without having done any detectible amount of study, beyond perhaps an enthusiastic if uncritical reading of the Times review of Dicky Dawkins' latest polemic):
"It is scientifically proven that (insert assertion here)." In all such cases, the assertion is followed by a yawning chasm of silence, where an ACTUALLY scientific mind would proceed to provide the proof, which in this case, if you will forgive me for having to say so, you have managed to serenely assume yourself not in any way bound to provide.
I must insist that you are in fact required to provide it. If you cannot, then that fact ought to be noted by the fair-minded (or, to put it more precisely, by the ACTUALLY scientifically-minded) as rather compelling evidence that your assertion is false.
In fact, as we shall now see, it is in fact false.
Since you did not quibble with my definition, I can provide an example of actual scientific proof which you do not provide. It is a scientific fact that no experiment ever conducted on animal organisms, whereby mutations were induced (whether by radiation or chemical means) under laboratory conditions, has ever resulted in the acquisition of information which was not already present in the genome of the subject.
It is further a scientific fact that every such experiment, which has induced mutations (such as the famous fruit fly experiments), all such mutations have disappeared from the population within a few generations, and the subject populations have reverted to their pre-mutated form.
This is a devastating scientific DISPROOF of the claims of "evolution" as defined in our discussion here. If you mean to assert that it is "proven beyond a reasonable doubt" that you and I are the result of random mutation and natural selection working through the years from a single celled ancestor (which, by the way, cannot have been in posession of DNA in the first place), may I say, with apologies:
BUNK.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Using your own sort of strawmen: evolution not being true is about as likely as an object simply ceasing the exist for no reason.
>>Quite to the contrary. Since you assert that it is proven that random mutations and natural selection account for the origin of species, it is now incumbent upon you to provide scientific, experimental evidence of said origins, under laboratory conditions.
Obviously, you can't.
What is much worse for your assertion, is that you cannot even provide one single scientific experiment where any induced mutation has resulted in the permanent acquisition and reproductive transmission of information not present in the genome of the subject in the first place.
Based on these facts- and they are facts, I invite you to attempt to refute them from the scientific literature- I now assert that it is I who have proven that random mutation and natural selection- that is to say, evolution as defined in our discussion- cannot possibly have accounted for the origin of species, and hence your claim above is scientifically falsified.