Posted on 06/01/2009 9:56:17 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
You Can Trust a Scientist – Can’t You?
May 31, 2009 — After the flap over the “missing link” Ida last week (05/19/2009), paleontologist Christopher Beard warned about how such stunts damage scientific credibility. “The only thing we have going for us that Hollywood and politicians don’t is objectivity,” he told Science magazine.[1] Can the public trust the objectivity of scientists as a class? Do they get more credibility points than other groups of professionals? Do the processes of scientific publication warrant a higher level of trust?
A study reported on Science Daily may shake that trust...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
So...for a Bible lesson for just little ole me, what exactly DID God tell Noah to collect and save on his Ark from the Great Flood?
Was Noah not told in Genesis 7:2 to collect 7 pairs of every clean animal “kind” and ONE pair of each unclean animal “kind”????
So where’s all the dinosaurs Noah had on the Ark, clean animals or not??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Is there a passage I missed where God says “Screw the dinosaurs!!”??
I know...I’ve entered waters you are afraid of so as to limit any response to nonsensical personal attacksand references to Darwool’s materialistic cult references...but DO try to answer.
You ran out of patience the SECOND you pinned yourself to the notion that the dinosaurs all died during the Great Flood......even though Genesis 7:2 says Noah SHOULD have at least collected 2 of every dinosaur “kind”............or at least 2 of ANY dinosaur “kind”......
...and that’s what I thought...nothing....which is the intellectual honesty you get from one that speaks of science with all the training a Radio Shack lab will give.
Don’t worry..even Bible ignorant people can...OMG...read......and I missed the part that said Noah should ignore T-Rex as even an unclean animal.
You are hopeless. You clearly didn’t listen to the message. There is no compromise in the message.
GSUMC is a *huge* church and growing rapidly. Talbot brings people to Christ in ways you can’t possibly imagine.
And, actually, your post shows that you didn’t listen to the message. Because you do the exact wrong thing that the message warns about IMMEDIATELY. You attack Talbot: “You and your obviously liberal United Methodist pastor...”
Don’t you see that in that one statement you have attempted to marginalize a pastor who brings thousands to Christ? You can’t tell me that by saying “your obviously liberal United Methodist pastor” isn’t an attempt to demean him in some way. That’s your way of saying “HE IS WRONG, LISTEN TO ME INSTEAD!”
That amazes me. That is a direct attack on another very faithful person. Someone who is very good at being a messenger of Christ. And you do this consistently on these boards. All I need to do is go back through your comment history to find example after example of someone who says “I accept Jesus but believe the universe is millions of years old” to find you informing that person he worships a false god, he is damned, etc.
You need to listen to that message and understand that what you do is not good for Christianity. Post as many YEC articles as you want, but temper your responses to skeptics. If they say they accept Jesus, maybe you should use that as a starting point for the dialogue rather than immediately informing that because they aren’t a YEC, they haven’t accepted the REAL Jesus. Seriously. Can’t you see that?
Finally, if you aren’t aware that this is how you behave on the boards - or are at least perceived as behaving by a large number of folks outside your clique - you need to work on your self-awareness.
If you knew anything about sound science you would know that the results of anything but a properly controlled experiment would be worthless so the *challenge* is meaningless.
Why? Why shouldn't someone accept nuclear power just because they think that radioactive half-lives were different at one time? What matters is what the radioactive materials are doing now. One can still use them based on their current rate of decay.
The nuclear power only relies on the current half-life, not whether they were different at some time in the past.
IIRC, even scientists are now discovering that radioactive decay is not always consistent. IIRC, there was a thread on that not too long ago.
That process is directly attributable to the theory of evolution through natural selection of genetic variation as its inspiration.
Creationism doesn't merely have less applications for Science, it has NO applications for science, as your pitiful list of non accomplishments shows so eloquently.
Baraminology! It is to laugh.
LOL. Good luck with that. ‘You are going to hell if you don’t believe the same as me’ is their favorite tactic and ‘I am a better Christian than you’ their primary motivation; you can hardly expect them to give up what they foolishly imagine to be their two strongest fallback positions! ;)
Okay, let's take look at some of the other non-peer reviewed, obviously unscientific drivel that PLoSOne has published, shall we?
Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology
Let's note that several of the authors of this particular paper have been published in other, obviously drivelous, non-peer reviewed journals like Nature, the Journal of Palaeontology, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, les Annales de Paléontologie, and die Paläontologische Zeitschrift. Obviously these guys are just pikers who are totally unrespected in their fields of study.
But hey, this journal takes the standard line on evolution, so maybe you're right - maybe it IS unscientific. Nevertheless, other recent articles in this completely unscientific piece of electronic toilet paper include,
NKX2-5 Regulates the Expression of β-Catenin and GATA4 in Ventricular Myocytes
And one of my personal favourites,
Sorry ES, but I think the only relevant "N" here applies to you, as in "N"eeds to know what he's talking about before he types.
You do realise that creation/evolution is irrelevant to pretty much all science? Genetics does not rely upon evolution. Genetics, for example, relies upon genetics, upon principles which operate completely outside of how anyone chooses to interpret the data.
Doctors tell you to finish your antibiotic medicine because they are informed by evolutionary biology that bacteria or virus can EVOLVE resistance and are more likely to if you cut the dose while it is still alive.
Industrial enzymes are created by an evolutionary process whereby useful properties are selected for among randomly generated variation.
Evolutionary biology informs drug discovery in terms of what animal models are used, and what molecular targets are chosen.
Understanding the genome of an animal without regard to evolutionary theory is like trying to understand the geopolitical situation with absolutely no knowledge of history.
Many useful non-genetic sequences of DNA were discovered ONLY because of evolutionary comparisons that showed they were highly evolutionarily conserved between species.
I don't know what kind of science YOU do, but the science I do is informed by evolutionary theory.
Moreover, evolutionary theory has “enriched our understanding of life and being and such” to quote Pope Benedict XVI; and has DIRECT SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS as well as TESTABLE IMPLICATIONS, all of which tests confirmed the predictions of the theory.
Compared to that Creationism has not enriched anyone’s understanding in the same way, and has no scientific applications.
That's where you're wrong. "Evolution" has nothing to do with it. Antibiotic resistance has nothing to do with the entirely spurious supposition that over millions of years, fish evolved into amphibians, which evolved into reptiles, which evolved into avians and mammals.
The one (antibiotic resistance) is observable science. The other (evolution) is completely non-empirical and relies only upon unwarranted extrapolation far beyond what the data actually warrants.
Antibiotic resistance comes about by natural selection of genetic variation exactly as the theory states.
Do you have a better explanation for how antibiotic resistance develops other than through natural selection of genetic variation?
So yes, the EVOLUTION of antibiotic resistance is observable science. The common descent of species is not directly observable, but it is a theory with testable implications and scientific applications.
Creationism, once again for the thinking impaired, has no scientific applications.
And in the process TOTALLY missed the rise of anti-biotic resistant bacteria, which they should have been able to use the ToE to PREDICT.
But, nooooo, doctors handed them out like candy, even when they were not indicated, and then they got blindsided when the anti-biotic resistant bacteria popped up.
It wasn't until then that recommendations against the overuse of anti-biotics went into effect. The one time the ToE could have really proved its worth, and it didn't.
Antibiotic resistance comes about by natural selection of genetic variation exactly as the theory states.
Do you have a better explanation for how antibiotic resistance develops other than through natural selection of genetic variation?
Ah, another clueless evo who doesn't understand the difference between "empirical" and "forensic."
I have no better explanation for antibiotic resistance for the simple reason that I accept the genetic explanation.
What I DON'T accept is the completely unfounded assumption that because a bacteria mutates to develop resistance against a particular antibiotic (while remaining, you know, the same species of bacteria), that this magically validates the entirely non-empirical wishful thinking of amphibians turning into reptiles millions upon millions of years ago.
Like I said, the one is observable, the other (by definition) is not, and rests only upon the a priori philosophical assumptions of evolutionists. That isn't "science", however.
BTW, tell me, what does pahbah mean to you?
It's just the extrapolation of that into speiciation that creationists don't accept.
But then, I suppose that there's no other way to slam creationists than to misrepresent their position.
And evos give the ToE way too much credit for progress in science. Mendel's work was concurrent with Darwin's theory and Mendel didn't accept Darwin's conclusions. Penicillin was discovered by accident.
amd: "Creationism, once again for the thinking impaired, has no scientific applications."
For the evo thinking impaired, check out Mendel's life and qualifications.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
"Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822[1] – January 6, 1884) was an Augustinian priest and scientist, and is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of these traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century. Its rediscovery prompted the foundation of the discipline of genetics."
At first Mendel's work was rejected, and it was not widely accepted until after he died. The common belief at the time was that Darwin's theory of pangenesis was responsible for inheritance. The modern synthesis uses Mendelian genetics.
I’ve read Mendel (what little remains of his actual notebooks - most were destroyed by the church) and he never understood C. Darwin. He even had a well worn copy of Origin of Species with his own notes written in the margin.
http://www.haverford.edu/biology/Meneely/brno.html
Also, from an author on the two men:
“As a scientist, biologist, author and amateur historian, I have often been struck by the ironies of scientific discovery. In our story I present one of these ironies; the lack of understanding of Mendel for Darwin’s work and that of Darwin for Mendel’s work. For, one of the most serious difficulties facing Darwin, and his mechanism for evolutionary change, was the lack of an adequate mechanism to explain inheritance. Without such a mechanism, how could you account for the preservation of variations through multiple generations? An inheritance mechanism was crucial as it provided the raw material on which natural selection was supposed to act.
Darwin was not unaware of his problem, and at various times subscribed to a number of different theories. One popular theory at the time was “blending inheritance” which proposed that offspring were merely an average between the two different characteristics of their parents. But, as Darwin soon realized, blending inheritance (which he called “pangenesis”) had its problems. It could not, for example, account for the way in which variations were conserved between generations. If differences between offspring were halved each generation, then the original variation would be rapidly reduced to some average of the starting characteristics. No, that would not work.
Of course, Mendel could have given him the answer. The vital missing link in Darwin’s mechanism could be filled using Mendelian genetics. As our story tells, Darwin had just published his book “Origin of Species” as Gregor Mendel was starting to publish the results series of his experiments. These experiments and the analysis of their results were, and are, masterly examples of the scientific method which should have appealed to Darwin’s rigorous mind. Mendel’s work was eventually published in 1866 in the Proceedings of the Natural Science Society of Bruno, and the clear lesson from this work (whether you understand it or not) was that characteristics do not mix or blend but segregate in the formation of the sex cells, or gametes. Darwin should have immediately grasped the significance of this finding.
Mendel’s work and his discoveries, however, remained unknown to Darwin and, indeed, did not become generally known until 1900. Here is the irony. Darwin’s library at Down House contains two books. In one is the full text of Mendel’s work with all its conclusions. Darwin never read it; the pages are uncut (books in those days came with all the pages joined at the edges, you had to “cut” them open before you could read them). The second book is a collection of abstracts. On each page a current scientific paper is summarized in a single side. Darwin has obviously read and re-read one particular page (his finger prints and annotations are all over it): on the opposite, facing page, is a summary of Mendel’s work. The solution to Darwin’s biggest problem was right there and he must have stared at it a dozen times, but he never saw it. Even the greatest minds have their blank spots.”
I’m not designing an experiment for publication or FDA approval......I’m getting GGG to put his money where his mouth is.....if he believes HIV does not cause AIDS, he should have no problem getting infected....nothing more. I don’t NEED to conduct an experiment as I know how it turns out when GGG gets HIV, he eventually gets AIDS whether he believes it or not.
....but I’m sure I’m not as uber-science-wicked-smaht as you are, only having been in it in a professional track for a mere 12 years now.
Maybe YOU can point out the Bible passage in which God tells Noah to allow to drown in the Great Flood, EVERY dinosaur “kind” in existence at the time. I know I only read it through once and skimmed it a few more times.....but somehow I missed that part.
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