This is not a religious debate. Besides, about the bible being a journal of historical events.... it is. Every historian on this world will confirm that. However, they do look at it like on any written document of past times with care and interpreting the content.
There is a difference to the bible, that whose content has been transfered by word of mouth over several generation by numberous different people, has been translated into different languages and been put together from multiple sources before it was finally written and brought together ceturies after the events it contains have occured. There is a difference between such sources and accurate sources like the report of the gaulic wars, the "bellum gallicum" written by Gaius Julius Cesar himself for the members of the senate.
No historian worth the name questiones the existance of Jesus. Nobody questions that he has been a great man and a charismatic leader and prophet. But did he walk over water? did he change water to whine? If you wish to believe this, you are free to do. If you wish to interpret the bible word by word, you are welcome. But if you do, you might miss much of the poetic content that it displays and some of the more subtle nuiances of wisdom you can read between the lines of that book.
Besides, much of the bible content has been changed due to political reasons and by the church, as well as the initial context was influenced by the personal view of the early christians. For instance, christianity is based on the ideal of self sacrifice. Jesus sacrificed himself to save us from our sin. Thus is the overal message of the new testament. The old testament did sound much different ....
So if jesus had been a ancient german of maybe a celt, then the bible would possily tell us that God was heavily **** when seeing his son on the cross and had stuck it with lightning to free im. Jesus then would have beaten the romans to death with it before he killed Ponzius Pilatus with his bare hands and impregnating his wife. He would later repeat the procedure with the priests that wanted him cruzified, before he celebrated his victory in a big feast that lasted for 3 days, where 12 oxen were sloughtered and 100 barrels of beer drunk...
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 04:57 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 04:57 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> and that graph is so Horrible not drawn to scale you should really fix that. I mean if you care about the subject you should at least have the respect to prepare a proper graph <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> The graph conveys my point well enough. I don't want to spend the time to make a prettier graph when my graph works perfectly well. Since there are no number markings other than 900 and 90 years, it's pretty obvious that it isn't drawn to scale.
<!--QuoteBegin-theclam+Mar 13 2005, 05:03 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (theclam @ Mar 13 2005, 05:03 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Also, there is no evolutionary advantage to living long. It's almost impossible to breed after 50, regardless of how well you've kept your body. Once people can't breed anymore, they aren't contributing anything genetically and are a drain on a community's resoruces. They may offer a slight advantage in terms of experience, knowledge, and manpower, but the knowledge can be passed on to another generation and a younger person would offer more manpower per amount of food he or she would eat. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Noah was like 600 when he built the ark....so it sounds to me like he was still pretty active in his latter years.
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:12 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:12 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-theclam+Mar 13 2005, 05:03 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (theclam @ Mar 13 2005, 05:03 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Also, there is no evolutionary advantage to living long. It's almost impossible to breed after 50, regardless of how well you've kept your body. Once people can't breed anymore, they aren't contributing anything genetically and are a drain on a community's resoruces. They may offer a slight advantage in terms of experience, knowledge, and manpower, but the knowledge can be passed on to another generation and a younger person would offer more manpower per amount of food he or she would eat. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Noah was like 600 when he built the ark....so it sounds to me like he was still pretty active in his latter years. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Debates welcome, but only on facts</b><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> You can't honestly expcet us to take Noah's life span as fact, when the whole concept of the Ark story itself isn't believed as fact by... well, hardly anyone really.
I don't think Carbon dating can be taken by fact. its a good guess I suppose. even with all the treerings and what have you theres way too many outside vairables that aren't even remotely counted for.
so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating.
@ TheClam and skulkbait: Just do not answer. I fell for it myself. He is trolling. Personally I think he is purposely trying to pet this thread locked, so just stop answering.
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:12 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:12 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-theclam+Mar 13 2005, 05:03 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (theclam @ Mar 13 2005, 05:03 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Also, there is no evolutionary advantage to living long. It's almost impossible to breed after 50, regardless of how well you've kept your body. Once people can't breed anymore, they aren't contributing anything genetically and are a drain on a community's resoruces. They may offer a slight advantage in terms of experience, knowledge, and manpower, but the knowledge can be passed on to another generation and a younger person would offer more manpower per amount of food he or she would eat. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Noah was like 600 when he built the ark....so it sounds to me like he was still pretty active in his latter years. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> To answer your point in a germane way, let me just say that it doesn't matter how active individually a person is. A younger person would be stronger and more dexterous than an older person, so a younger person would provide a greater evolutionary advantage through altruism (if you want me to explain how altruism works through evolution, then I'll do that). A younger person would also be able to breed, while an older person would not. Thus, someone with a shorter lifespan would be less of a drain on the community in his old age, so his children would be more evolutionarily fit.
<!--QuoteBegin-Legat+Mar 13 2005, 05:17 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Legat @ Mar 13 2005, 05:17 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> @ TheClam and skulkbait: Just do not answer. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Yeah may as well, especially if hes going to say stupid **** like that last post...
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I fell for it myself. He is trolling. Personally I think he is purposely trying to pet this thread locked, so just stop answering.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> I don't think hes smart enough to come up with such a devious plan myself.
<!--QuoteBegin-Legat+Mar 13 2005, 05:17 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Legat @ Mar 13 2005, 05:17 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> @ TheClam and skulkbait: Just do not answer. I fell for it myself. He is trolling. Personally I think he is purposely trying to pet this thread locked, so just stop answering. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I'm not trolling.
look just because someone has a separate opinion then you do does not mean they are a troll. i'm not trying to get any thread locked. and I'm just trying to discuss the issue at hand
And about the old person..... what causes infertility? well for men usually its something not natural instead of age, testes create sperm forever. they don't stop unless you get testicular cancer or something. women on the other hand have a set number of eggs. and once there out there out... so how do we know Eve the mother of all didn't have more eggs that lasted her longer then women today?
and if we use to be 900 years old and evolved to die sooner. why do people claim you can be "born ****" when clearly evolution wouldn't let you do something as foolish as that
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:16 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:16 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I don't think Carbon dating can be taken by fact. its a good guess I suppose. even with all the treerings and what have you theres way too many outside vairables that aren't even remotely counted for.
so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> To stay on topic, I'll answer this in a way to help us understand evolution. We can date evolutionary processes by measuring Carbon-14 (or another element for a different time period) in a fossil. Carbon dating works because the amount of carbon-14 in something will halve every ~6000 years. Thus, if something has half the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have (IIRC organisms absorb carbon-14 while they are living, but stop when they are dead, so that they will die with a certain amount of carbon-14 in them, which will slowly degrade), then it would be around 6000 years old. If it had 1/4 the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have, then it would be around 1200 years old (1/2 of 1/2 = 1/4).
We use carbon dating to date things up to an age of 50000 years. We can measure human civilization using this technique. Other elements allow us to date up to much later dates, like the beginning of life.
Carbon dating isn't exactly accurate and there is a margin of error, but it is most definately not a junk science.
<!--QuoteBegin-theclam+Mar 13 2005, 05:24 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (theclam @ Mar 13 2005, 05:24 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:16 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:16 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I don't think Carbon dating can be taken by fact. its a good guess I suppose. even with all the treerings and what have you theres way too many outside vairables that aren't even remotely counted for.
so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> To stay on topic, I'll answer this in a way to help us understand evolution. We can date evolutionary processes by measuring Carbon-14 (or another element for a different time period) in a fossil. Carbon dating works because the amount of carbon-14 in something will halve every ~6000 years. Thus, if something has half the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have (IIRC organisms absorb carbon-14 while they are living, but stop when they are dead, so that they will die with a certain amount of carbon-14 in them, which will slowly degrade), then it would be around 6000 years old. If it had 1/4 the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have, then it would be around 1200 years old (1/2 of 1/2 = 1/4).
Carbon dating isn't exactly accurate and there is a margin of error, but it is most definately not a junk science. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I'll agree to that. but how do we know that it degrades at a constent rate? has anyone sat down for 6000's years with and tracked one amount in X circumstances and another amount in Y circumstances to see if it degrades at the same time?
I'll give it that its based on sound logic but I think theres too many things unacounted for to call it a complete and total FACT
Avenger - read the other thread I linked. Apos explains how we know in there, IIRC. I think I may have put the relevant section in my first post, actually. ---- Thanks for replying, Nineteen.
<!--QuoteBegin-Nineteen+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Nineteen)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I don't know all the facts but racial memory is common in most animals including us. For instance if you were to paint a newborns room in a earthy green instead of pink or blue it will be much more relaxed and spend less time keeping you awake because when our anscestors were hiding in trees for survival it was associated with comfort and saftey. Dark blues are supposed to be very effective for people in positions of power to wear because it is associated with dominance.
This was all explained to me by a teacher who didn't have time to finish with the dark blue explanation but it makes sense to me.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> The idea of "racial memory" is fascinating. Anyone have any idea how racial memory works? How is it passed down?
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:27 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:27 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I'll agree to that. but how do we know that it degrades at a constent rate? has anyone sat down for 6000's years with and tracked one amount in X circumstances and another amount in Y circumstances to see if it degrades at the same time?
I'll give it that its based on sound logic but I think theres too many things unacounted for to call it a complete and total FACT <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteBegin-apos+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (apos)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->...And, as I said: fine, doubt that carbon dating works at a constant rate (actually, this is another tip-off: carbon dating isn't used for anything other than very very recent things because it has a very short half-life: different isotopes or different atoms are used for longer range dates). Why then does it happen to match up with other sorts of dating phenomenon, like tree rings or seafloor spreading or magnetic polarity reversals? How do you explain how all these methods, which each represent independant lines of figuring out the dates of things, all give the same answers? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-apos in this very thread!+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (apos in this very thread!)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> No: we can establish that it is. There are lots and lots of ways to do it.
One easy way is to use tree rings. Tree rings form one each year, and some trees are so old that they have year by year records going back hundreds of years. Even better, we can match up these rings with the rings of even older trees that might have died longer ago (but, say, were in the same fire towards the end of their life that the more recent tree was in at the start of its life, allowing us to link the two records). And when we date the carbon found wedged in between the rings, or from events that match up with what we know from the tree rings, what do we find? That the carbon method gives us the dating that is correct for what the tree rings tell us it should be!
....
First of all, because if it didn't have a relatively constant rate, then we'd be able to measure it in things like lake silt samples that record such things over time. C-14 actually _hasn't_ gone away at an exactly constant rate, which is why the method is calibrated by all sorts of natural checks like the one I described above. And you should know that C-14 isn't really used for anything much older than 45,000 years or so. We have other, much more powerful radioactive dating methods for older ages.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How do you expect us to take you seriously when you KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTIONS AFTER THEY'VE BEEN ASNWERED!
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->look just because someone has a separate opinion then you do does not mean they are a troll. i'm not trying to get any thread locked. and I'm just trying to discuss the issue at hand<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is why you are purposely violating at least 3 of the forum rules?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->1.: Always consider the possibilty that you are wrong and the other side is right. Stay open minded to other peoples points: Ignoring the other side and insisting on a few own arguments won't get you - or anybody else - anywhere. It's very much to ask, but try to consider other peoples argumentations, as opposed to ways of beating them.
2.: Never, ever, be judgemental towards the other side. Blanket labelling of another opinion as "stupid", "naive", "short sighted", "racist", "communist", "socialist", "liberal", "conservative", or what have you is often so close to flaming that it takes experts to find a difference. If you wish to express your personal opinion about another persons notion, try to stay away from valuing terms, and try to be as rational as humanly possible - you're treading on thin ice, and insulting the other side by calling it what it is not can't be in your interest.
3.: Try to stay rational. Nobody wishes to forbid you your personal opinion, but unless it is grounded on rational thought, as opposed to emotional reactions, it can't be seriously discussed. You can tell people that you "dislike the Republicans/Democrats because I hate Bushs/Clintons accent.", but it's not exactely possible to form argumentations around such a claim. Stating that you "dislike the Republicans/Democrats because I can't agree with their tax policy." would be a little better. Many religious arguments are a thin borderline away from being utterly emotional. This makes their use in many cases very problematic. Always assume that you try to convince - for convincing the other side has to be your prime goal - someone with differing faiths. If your argument still seems to hold water, it's probably OK.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Since you started posting in here, the thread has deteriorated into a flamewar provoked by statements of yours which are speculative at best but not backed by anything remotely close to proof. Stop posting in discussions if you are not able to behave accordingly. Also, the other parties should stop falling for the bait. We plastered this thread with 2 pages of utter rubbish. I am going to report this and hope the mods clean it up instead of closing it tomorrow.
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:23 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:23 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> And about the old person..... what causes infertility? well for men usually its something not natural instead of age, testes create sperm forever. they don't stop unless you get testicular cancer or something. women on the other hand have a set number of eggs. and once there out there out... so how do we know Eve the mother of all didn't have more eggs that lasted her longer then women today?
and if we use to be 900 years old and evolved to die sooner. why do people claim you can be "born ****" when clearly evolution wouldn't let you do something as foolish as that <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I assume you meant sterile, but it showed up as ****.
I don't know specifically what causes infertility due to old age in men. In women however, I would assume that someone who lived only a few thousand years ago would be born with a similiar number of eggs as someone living today (maybe even less), but I don't know for sure.
Infertility due to genetics can be caused by a random mutation. Evolution would still ferret out infertile people, but they would still occaisonally be born. Infertility might also be due to a recessive allele, so only people who have 2 copies of it would be infertile. In this way, someone could pass down an allele for infertility. If it was associated with a positive effect (much like sickle cells reduces the likelihood of malaria) then it would be passed down through DNA.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> As soon as a living organism dies, it stops taking in new carbon. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 at the moment of death is the same as every other living thing, but the carbon-14 decays and is not replaced. The carbon-14 decays with its half-life of 5,700 years, while the amount of carbon-12 remains constant in the sample. By looking at the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the sample and comparing it to the ratio in a living organism, it is possible to determine the age of a formerly living thing fairly precisely. A formula to calculate how old a sample is by carbon-14 dating is:
t = [ ln (Nf/No) / (-0.693) ] x t1/2 where ln is the natural logarithm, Nf/No is the percent of carbon-14 in the sample compared to the amount in living tissue, and t1/2 is the half-life of carbon-14 (5,700 years).
So, if you had a fossil that had 10 percent carbon-14 compared to a living sample, then that fossil would be:
t = [ ln (0.10) / (-0.693) ] x 5,700 years t = [ (-2.303) / (-0.693) ] x 5,700 years
t = [ 3.323 ] x 5,700 years
t = 18,940 years old
Because the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, it is only reliable for dating objects up to about 60,000 years old. However, the principle of carbon-14 dating applies to other isotopes as well. Potassium-40 is another radioactive element naturally found in your body and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other useful radioisotopes for radioactive dating include Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years). <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <a href='http://tm.wc.ask.com/r?t=c&s=j1&id=30787&sv=za5cb0dc2&uid=0FE844DFA3F640E14&sid=18C9BEC1E600C4324&p=%2ftop&o=0&u=http://www.howstuffworks.com/carbon-142.htm' target='_blank'>How stuff works</a> If you say howstuffworks.com is wrong, you really don't know how to research things.
(edit) The reason the half-lives are correct is because every unstable isotope of a molecule decays at a constant rate, so we do not have to be around for the 5,700 years to find out what some elements half-life is.
This is even further proven when you test how much has decayed from one time frame being time A, to time B, if the amount is the same each time, it is relatively easy to figure out an isotopes half-life.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I assume you meant sterile, but it showed up as ****.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Actually I'm pretty sure he meant homosexual. But seing as how thats neither here nor there, and knowing his past behavior on the topic, continuing that line of argument will most certainly end in the locking of the thread.
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:27 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:27 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-theclam+Mar 13 2005, 05:24 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (theclam @ Mar 13 2005, 05:24 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:16 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:16 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I don't think Carbon dating can be taken by fact. its a good guess I suppose. even with all the treerings and what have you theres way too many outside vairables that aren't even remotely counted for.
so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> To stay on topic, I'll answer this in a way to help us understand evolution. We can date evolutionary processes by measuring Carbon-14 (or another element for a different time period) in a fossil. Carbon dating works because the amount of carbon-14 in something will halve every ~6000 years. Thus, if something has half the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have (IIRC organisms absorb carbon-14 while they are living, but stop when they are dead, so that they will die with a certain amount of carbon-14 in them, which will slowly degrade), then it would be around 6000 years old. If it had 1/4 the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have, then it would be around 1200 years old (1/2 of 1/2 = 1/4).
Carbon dating isn't exactly accurate and there is a margin of error, but it is most definately not a junk science. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> I'll agree to that. but how do we know that it degrades at a constent rate? has anyone sat down for 6000's years with and tracked one amount in X circumstances and another amount in Y circumstances to see if it degrades at the same time?
I'll give it that its based on sound logic but I think theres too many things unacounted for to call it a complete and total FACT <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Physicists have known about radioactivity for a century. Carbon dating is just an application of radioactivity. Half-Life is a scientific fact. Carbon-14 is easier to measure the radioactivity than, say, Uranium, because it has a short half-life. I would guess they measure it by placing a small amount of pure Carbon-14 in a laboratory and measuring how much of it changes into, IIRC, Nitrogen-14 over a period of time. I don't have any doubt that we know how to find out what its half-life is.
For the love of God, why hasn't someone done something about Avengers blatant stupidity? He just trolls up most threads like this with his inane garbage and stupid statements (IE "FEAR THE JUDGEMENT HEATHANS" kind of crap). Why the hell is he allowed to continue like this?
He did and anyone familiar with him knows fully what he was trying to get at as well.
The clam:
To date fossils, very old ones anyway, you use Uranium-Lead dating or Potassium-Argon dating. C-14 dating only has a maximum range of around 30-40,000 years. So it's rather irrelevant what he thinks, because it's actually the better and more accurate forms of radiation dating available that demonstrate things like the age of many old fossils. C-14 is picked on, because that is the only one that creationists find easy to strawman or abuse to try and prove irrelevant inane arguments about the so called 'inaccuracy' of radiation dating methods.
<!--QuoteBegin-SkulkBait+Mar 13 2005, 05:39 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (SkulkBait @ Mar 13 2005, 05:39 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I assume you meant sterile, but it showed up as ****.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Actually I'm pretty sure he meant homosexual. But seing as how thats neither here nor there, and knowing his past behavior on the topic, continuing that line of argument will most certainly end in the locking of the thread. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Homosexuality is a better example, because homosexuals can breed (and do breed, quite often).
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 02:16 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 02:16 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Carbon Dating is a fact. Sorry, but unstable isotopes decay at a fairly constant rate.
And people can't live that long. It simply isn't possible with today's technology, so its even less possible that they could live that long then, which is even assuming that Adam and Noah even existed.
Seriously, you need to at least consider that you may be wrong.
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 05:27 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 05:27 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I'll agree to that. but how do we know that it degrades at a constent rate? has anyone sat down for 6000's years with and tracked one amount in X circumstances and another amount in Y circumstances to see if it degrades at the same time?
I'll give it that its based on sound logic but I think theres too many things unacounted for to call it a complete and total FACT <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> you have a serious lack of common and basic scientific knowledge AdvengerX there are basis and facts for most everything youve asked about, and most of that really isnt on topic. You may indeed be trying to enlighten yourself, but my advise is for you too atleast google whatever the basic question your asking. I mean if nothing could be proved theoretically, we wouldnt be as smart as we are now and be at a serious lack of technology. if the information we got theoretically wasnt thought to be possible or true, it wouldnt be used.
i dont know if your like an 8th grader or a junior, but my advice is when you get to the chance where you can (junior/senoir) take a chemistry course, even so basic science classes b4 that if possible, so you get a years breakdown of how this all works. Not a 2 page post on the internet.
<!--QuoteBegin-AvengerX+Mar 13 2005, 04:57 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (AvengerX @ Mar 13 2005, 04:57 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> and that graph is so Horrible not drawn to scale you should really fix that. I mean if you care about the subject you should at least have the respect to prepare a proper graph <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Oh, the irony!!!
How about you fix your atrocious spelling and general abuse of the english language before your usual pontificating orgy.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->For the love of God, why hasn't someone done something about Avengers blatant stupidity? He just trolls up most threads like this with his inane garbage and stupid statements (IE "FEAR THE JUDGEMENT HEATHANS" kind of crap). Why the hell is he allowed to continue like this? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I hate to flame, but Aegeri is 100% right.
I tried reading through Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," but ended up getting hit with exams the week before it was due back, so I couldn't get all the way though it.
I've been interested lately about the implications of meme theory, especially on ethics and government.
I was curious, if ideas evolve to best fit to their environment (as organisms do through natural selection), how is it that so many similar ideas arise at various different parts of the world, occasionally at the same time, where the two groups in question would have had no contact with each other whatsoever? (Plato and Confucius coming up with ideas about the well ordered, ideal state at the same time, even from such radically different cultural histories; the widespread development of local animistic religion circa 4000-2000 B.C, etc.) I may be drawing faulty conclusions from the evidence, but it seems to me that if two groups reach the same conclusion under radically different circumstances, that their conclusion cannot be explained by purely situational adaption.
<!--QuoteBegin-Legionnaired+Mar 13 2005, 11:03 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Legionnaired @ Mar 13 2005, 11:03 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->For the love of God, why hasn't someone done something about Avengers blatant stupidity? He just trolls up most threads like this with his inane garbage and stupid statements (IE "FEAR THE JUDGEMENT HEATHANS" kind of crap). Why the hell is he allowed to continue like this? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I hate to flame, but Aegeri is 100% right.
I tried reading through Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," but ended up getting hit with exams the week before it was due back, so I couldn't get all the way though it.
I've been interested lately about the implications of meme theory, especially on ethics and government.
I was curious, if ideas evolve to best fit to their environment (as organisms do through natural selection), how is it that so many similar ideas arise at various different parts of the world, occasionally at the same time, where the two groups in question would have had no contact with each other whatsoever? (Plato and Confucius coming up with ideas about the well ordered, ideal state at the same time, even from such radically different cultural histories; the widespread development of local animistic religion circa 4000-2000 B.C, etc.) I may be drawing faulty conclusions from the evidence, but it seems to me that if two groups reach the same conclusion under radically different circumstances, that their conclusion cannot be explained by purely situational adaption. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> It's the same thing as convergent evolution. Good ideas can be invented independantly and will work very well in many different cultures and societies.
Good grief: this is a lot of action in the two days I've been gone!
Back where I left off, I was going to respond to the article that Pepe posted by creationist Denton.
Denton's argument is a bit like Dr. Pangloss in Candide. In short, he makes an argument that at first glance looks pretty powerful: everything was designed for the best, aren't you impressed! But when you examine it more closely, you find that it turns out to be pretty absurd, and backwards from what we know historically to be the case.
Pangloss, for instance, made the argument that our noses exist so as to give us a place to rest our spectacles. Denton argues that our eyes are inverted so that they can take advantage of a range of helpful features which he outlines in his article. Denton even, like Pangloss, claims that the inversion was made in _anticipation_ of a future use that didn't even exist at the time when the basic design was laid down (glossing over the fact that the likely development of the eye ALREADY provides an explanation for why vertebrate eyes are the way they are, without any need of an anticipatory prophecy)
Note one interesting feature of the Pangloss' claim is that it is pretty amusingly and tellingly temporal: reading spectacles are necessary only in a time where reading is common (which is only a very short period of human history, all told), and then only because the human eye is pretty _poorly_ designed for reading in the first place! It thus defines the "best possible" world as the present world, without thought to the past or the future. Human technology, for instance, will eventually do away with spectacles altogether, which sort of messes up Pangloss' belief that our noses were designed to accomodate spectacles (rather than the other way around, as is the true historical order of things).
Denton's claims are similar. He sugguests that the eye was designed inverted in order to later on take advantage of various solutions that could later crop up to take advantage of this backwards orientation. But this argument almost refutes itself: look what happened, even in the history that Denton seems to admit: the various adaptations mostly came AFTER and BECAUSE the eye was inverted, taking advantage of the structure that was already there. This is just the sort of process we'd expect from evolution: gradually adding on adaptations to suit the existing structure rather than backtracking to rethink entire designs in huge leaps (the way an intelligent designer could). The result is an eye that works very well, but only by incorporating the past directions of development and building on them with some impressive features.
Of course, despite Denton's argument to the contrary, nothing about the inverted eyes suggests that it is the only design which could have added some powerful and nifty features to give it more functionality (certainly, the EXACT solutions wouldn't have been the same, as Denton misleadingly implies, and perhaps not even the same direction in functionality). As I noted in my past thread, an engineer designing an eye could have started with a non-inverted eye and added all manner of neato features to that eye as well: solving some of the same problems in different ways, no less ingeniously as with an inverted eye.
And this goes even deeper. Denton is amazed at the particular sorts of things that human eyes can do. But again, isn't this backwards? Humans and other animals evolved particular capacities and lifestyles concordant with what their eyes could do, not in anticipation of what they might one day be able to do. It is no surprise, for instance, that the human eye is capable of discerning printed text (albiet with an eventual great deal of wear and strain and in many people an advancing breakdown of ability), because the causality runs the other way around: humans invented readable printed text because it was a system that worked well enough with the sorts of eyes we have!
If Denton is so amazed by how well adapted the human eye is to its current needs, and further credits this adaptation to the forethought of an intelligent designer, one might then well ask why this designer didn't also plan out eyes better built for things like the repetative reading that require spectacles or eye correction! Or perhaps to see in some part of the electromagnetic spectrum other than what other animals see in. Or any number of other things that would demonstrate some REAL foresight into the unique applications that the human eye could potentially be put that wold speak to some innovation beyond stepwise additions to the basic directions that characterize the evolutionary process. Now, I'm not saying Denton couldn't advance some fairly crafty resposnes to these questions. He could argue, for instance, that the designer would have known that humans could invent spectacles, so why bother giving us the power to read all that well!
But look what that means: that Denton is left rather improbably arguing ad hoc that the exact state of the human eye is precisely the right level of development, pre-adapted for by some designer, despite the fact that it could be a lot worse or a lot better when unaided (for instance, forget helping us do away with the need for spectacles: if you wanted to help us be good readers, why not eyes which can take in and process no more than a very very tiny focal area at once). This is pure Pangloss, and no more convincing.
<!--QuoteBegin-Legionnaired+Mar 13 2005, 11:03 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Legionnaired @ Mar 13 2005, 11:03 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> [QUOTE]I was curious, if ideas evolve to best fit to their environment (as organisms do through natural selection), how is it that so many similar ideas arise at various different parts of the world, occasionally at the same time, where the two groups in question would have had no contact with each other whatsoever? (Plato and Confucius coming up with ideas about the well ordered, ideal state at the same time, even from such radically different cultural histories; the widespread development of local animistic religion circa 4000-2000 B.C, etc.) I may be drawing faulty conclusions from the evidence, but it seems to me that if two groups reach the same conclusion under radically different circumstances, that their conclusion cannot be explained by purely situational adaption. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Memes aren't really a solid science the way that biology and DNA are: in many ways they are just analogies to the way genes work, and perhaps not entirely apt since many of the underlying structures may be VERY different.
But then, I'm not sure your question has much of a direct problem for memes as a theory. Nothing suggests that ideas, like functionality, can't be convergent. For instance, some basic features related to digging through the dirt have evolved indepedantly in a number of mammals. But though similar these features evolved indepedantly, and their similarities are mainly do to the fact that there are only so many ways for similar body-types of mammals to get "good" at a digging lifestyle. So too with human beings with very similar underlying psychologies looking to, say, form better societies.
Of course, I'm not sure that Plato and Confucious really are all that similar in the end. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I should also note some other important things about the decay of radioactive isotopes: their decay is governed by some very basic principles of quantum mechanics that are core to the way that everything in the known universe works (core to every particle in your own body!). If they were different in the past to the degree necessary for what Avenger is saying to make sense, it would require breaking a whole range of natural laws, which would itself have some pretty serious consequences on the universe that we'd certainly be able to measure the effects of. But we don't see any evidence at all of such deviations.
And here's something pretty telling about the age of the earth. If you look around for all the radioactive isotopes that can exist in nature, you'll get a long list that you can then arrange in the order of how long their half-lives are. Now, on this list, there are a few that are continualy created by known, ongoing processes. You can strike all of these off the list, since they don't count for our purposes. What you will be left with is a list of isotopes that are only ever created from in stars/supernovas, etc. And you'll quickly notice a startling thing. Every single isotope with a half-life of less than 80 million years is missing from Earth. We know that many of these isotopes are indeed created by supernovas the same way the other heavier elements on our planet were. But they are missing entirely from Earth (or if they are here, they are here in very very very tiny quantities). Why? Well, the obvious answer is that Earth is old enough that since they were first formed with our solar system, they have decayed away into unmeasurable amounts (a couple billion years is enough to pretty much do away with them, period). This is some pretty telling stuff, because it isn't just most of the shortlived isotopes that are gone. It's every single darn one: just as you'd expect of an old earth.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->How many fossils have they found that prove missing links? because there's millions of diffrent types of animals in the world and if they've all been changing over time that'd mean countless other forms of life on this planet.... so where are all the fossils? I mean sure a few would get lost and what have you but you'd think we'd have more. I mean for reals.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The answer is simply that: a) there are plenty of fossils that tell us the links between different modern species (as well as extinct species) and b) no one claims or requires that the fossil record throw up a fossil of every animal that ever lived. Given that, however, the fossil record is amazingly complete: far moreso than Darwin could have ever expected.
Darwin, remember, never set out to prove his theory using fossils. The main facts he used fossils to establish were this:
1) the modern species we see today seem not to have always existed 2) species of the past are unlike any of the living modern species we find today, though the most recent tend to be the most similar to modern species. 3) This suggests two things: one that species seem to go extinct, and indeed more species seem to have gone extinct than to have survived! The other is that there seems to be some sort of trend in the fossil record
That's about it for what Darwin used fossils to argue, and I'm even overstating things a bit. Darwin never tried to present a fossil for every single step along the way to a modern species. Instead his arguments to establish common descent relied on the more scanty facts above, and then linked them to the data we have on geographic distribution, known morphology, and the mechanism of natural selection. Coupled with genetics, the case for common descent can actually stand on its own without even a SINGLE particular fossil linage used as evidence, much less Avenger's demands to see complete records of EVERY lineage.
Again, though, that said, we DO have an amazingly good fossil record! Take elephants: we have tons of fossils all along the pathway from the earliest probiscian mammals all the way down to modern elephants that show the slow increase in size, the growth of the trunk, the development of the tusks, and so on. Or the earliest land animals: we have fossils that even show their soft inner parts, showing them to have internal gills just like the fish they are thought to have come from!
Indeed, this "earliest" argument is a powerful one oft-overlooked by creationists.
If birds didn't evolve from lizards, then why do the earliest birds in the fossil record have lizard-like teeth: a feature that modern birds do NOT have (at least under natural conditions) If tetrapods didn't evolve from lobed fish, why are the earliest tetrapods more fishlike than any tetrapod since? Even the tetrapods that returned to the water, like whales and manatees, are very very unfishlike.
<!--QuoteBegin-Grendel+Mar 13 2005, 04:49 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Grendel @ Mar 13 2005, 04:49 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Just as a small point, viruses do not change themselves. Any survivors of a bacterial or viral colony must by nature of their survival be more tolerant of the drugs or vaccines used against them. As the only reproducing members of their generation, they ensure that the entirety of the colony they spawn must have approximately the same level of resistance (some new virii will be more resistant, some less). The mechanism is entirely unthinking.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Just in case this is misleading to some: Viruses and bacteria do change, constantly sprouting up new varieties and mutations that then allow them to adapt to new drugs or environments.
This is especially easy to show with bacteria, because you can grow an entire colony from a single individual, and they should,. if they did not change, be exact clones of each other. But in fact they do mutate to create variety among which we can find resistance, and indeed we can even see and measure exactly what mutations took place!
Now, when some of a bacteria survive a drug the first time they encounter it, it may be because there was some existing resistance to it. But it's also important to remember that most drugs aren't powerful enough to simply kill every single one of any bacteria anyway: they manage to get a lot, but not most, of the bacteria, whether there is any resistance or not. This is why you need to take long courses of antibiotics rather than just one dose: because you want to make sure you kill enough of the bacteria for your own immune system to mop up the rest. Meanwhile, the bacteria is continually adapting from what bacteria still survived, for whatever reason. And even the tiniest reason for some bacteria making it longer than others against the drug can keep the bacteria pushing in the direction that will make particular mutations suddenly very advantageous against the drug. That's why your full course of antibiotics is so important: you want to smash down the bacteria before your steady application of natural selection has a chance to "teach" the bacteria instructive directions of mutations. Even if the bacteria that make it still aren't totally resistant, they WILL be that much closer to it.
Comments
This is not a religious debate. Besides, about the bible being a journal of historical events.... it is. Every historian on this world will confirm that. However, they do look at it like on any written document of past times with care and interpreting the content.
There is a difference to the bible, that whose content has been transfered by word of mouth over several generation by numberous different people, has been translated into different languages and been put together from multiple sources before it was finally written and brought together ceturies after the events it contains have occured.
There is a difference between such sources and accurate sources like the report of the gaulic wars, the "bellum gallicum" written by Gaius Julius Cesar himself for the members of the senate.
No historian worth the name questiones the existance of Jesus. Nobody questions that he has been a great man and a charismatic leader and prophet. But did he walk over water? did he change water to whine? If you wish to believe this, you are free to do.
If you wish to interpret the bible word by word, you are welcome. But if you do, you might miss much of the poetic content that it displays and some of the more subtle nuiances of wisdom you can read between the lines of that book.
Besides, much of the bible content has been changed due to political reasons and by the church, as well as the initial context was influenced by the personal view of the early christians. For instance, christianity is based on the ideal of self sacrifice. Jesus sacrificed himself to save us from our sin. Thus is the overal message of the new testament. The old testament did sound much different ....
So if jesus had been a ancient german of maybe a celt, then the bible would possily tell us that God was heavily **** when seeing his son on the cross and had stuck it with lightning to free im. Jesus then would have beaten the romans to death with it
before he killed Ponzius Pilatus with his bare hands and impregnating his wife. He would later repeat the procedure with the priests that wanted him cruzified, before he celebrated his victory in a big feast that lasted for 3 days, where 12 oxen were sloughtered and 100 barrels of beer drunk...
Now, can we please return to topic?
The graph conveys my point well enough. I don't want to spend the time to make a prettier graph when my graph works perfectly well. Since there are no number markings other than 900 and 90 years, it's pretty obvious that it isn't drawn to scale.
Noah was like 600 when he built the ark....so it sounds to me like he was still pretty active in his latter years.
Noah was like 600 when he built the ark....so it sounds to me like he was still pretty active in his latter years. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Debates welcome, but only on facts</b><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can't honestly expcet us to take Noah's life span as fact, when the whole concept of the Ark story itself isn't believed as fact by... well, hardly anyone really.
so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating.
Noah was like 600 when he built the ark....so it sounds to me like he was still pretty active in his latter years. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
To answer your point in a germane way, let me just say that it doesn't matter how active individually a person is. A younger person would be stronger and more dexterous than an older person, so a younger person would provide a greater evolutionary advantage through altruism (if you want me to explain how altruism works through evolution, then I'll do that). A younger person would also be able to breed, while an older person would not. Thus, someone with a shorter lifespan would be less of a drain on the community in his old age, so his children would be more evolutionarily fit.
Yeah may as well, especially if hes going to say stupid **** like that last post...
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I fell for it myself. He is trolling. Personally I think he is purposely trying to pet this thread locked, so just stop answering.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think hes smart enough to come up with such a devious plan myself.
I'm not trolling.
look just because someone has a separate opinion then you do does not mean they are a troll. i'm not trying to get any thread locked. and I'm just trying to discuss the issue at hand
And about the old person..... what causes infertility? well for men usually its something not natural instead of age, testes create sperm forever. they don't stop unless you get testicular cancer or something. women on the other hand have a set number of eggs. and once there out there out... so how do we know Eve the mother of all didn't have more eggs that lasted her longer then women today?
and if we use to be 900 years old and evolved to die sooner. why do people claim you can be "born ****" when clearly evolution wouldn't let you do something as foolish as that
so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To stay on topic, I'll answer this in a way to help us understand evolution. We can date evolutionary processes by measuring Carbon-14 (or another element for a different time period) in a fossil. Carbon dating works because the amount of carbon-14 in something will halve every ~6000 years. Thus, if something has half the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have (IIRC organisms absorb carbon-14 while they are living, but stop when they are dead, so that they will die with a certain amount of carbon-14 in them, which will slowly degrade), then it would be around 6000 years old. If it had 1/4 the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have, then it would be around 1200 years old (1/2 of 1/2 = 1/4).
We use carbon dating to date things up to an age of 50000 years. We can measure human civilization using this technique. Other elements allow us to date up to much later dates, like the beginning of life.
Carbon dating isn't exactly accurate and there is a margin of error, but it is most definately not a junk science.
so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To stay on topic, I'll answer this in a way to help us understand evolution. We can date evolutionary processes by measuring Carbon-14 (or another element for a different time period) in a fossil. Carbon dating works because the amount of carbon-14 in something will halve every ~6000 years. Thus, if something has half the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have (IIRC organisms absorb carbon-14 while they are living, but stop when they are dead, so that they will die with a certain amount of carbon-14 in them, which will slowly degrade), then it would be around 6000 years old. If it had 1/4 the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have, then it would be around 1200 years old (1/2 of 1/2 = 1/4).
Carbon dating isn't exactly accurate and there is a margin of error, but it is most definately not a junk science. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'll agree to that. but how do we know that it degrades at a constent rate? has anyone sat down for 6000's years with and tracked one amount in X circumstances and another amount in Y circumstances to see if it degrades at the same time?
I'll give it that its based on sound logic but I think theres too many things unacounted for to call it a complete and total FACT
----
Thanks for replying, Nineteen.
<!--QuoteBegin-Nineteen+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Nineteen)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I don't know all the facts but racial memory is common in most animals including us. For instance if you were to paint a newborns room in a earthy green instead of pink or blue it will be much more relaxed and spend less time keeping you awake because when our anscestors were hiding in trees for survival it was associated with comfort and saftey. Dark blues are supposed to be very effective for people in positions of power to wear because it is associated with dominance.
This was all explained to me by a teacher who didn't have time to finish with the dark blue explanation but it makes sense to me.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The idea of "racial memory" is fascinating. Anyone have any idea how racial memory works? How is it passed down?
I'll give it that its based on sound logic but I think theres too many things unacounted for to call it a complete and total FACT <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-apos+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (apos)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->...And, as I said: fine, doubt that carbon dating works at a constant rate (actually, this is another tip-off: carbon dating isn't used for anything other than very very recent things because it has a very short half-life: different isotopes or different atoms are used for longer range dates). Why then does it happen to match up with other sorts of dating phenomenon, like tree rings or seafloor spreading or magnetic polarity reversals? How do you explain how all these methods, which each represent independant lines of figuring out the dates of things, all give the same answers?
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-apos in this very thread!+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (apos in this very thread!)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
No: we can establish that it is. There are lots and lots of ways to do it.
One easy way is to use tree rings. Tree rings form one each year, and some trees are so old that they have year by year records going back hundreds of years. Even better, we can match up these rings with the rings of even older trees that might have died longer ago (but, say, were in the same fire towards the end of their life that the more recent tree was in at the start of its life, allowing us to link the two records). And when we date the carbon found wedged in between the rings, or from events that match up with what we know from the tree rings, what do we find? That the carbon method gives us the dating that is correct for what the tree rings tell us it should be!
....
First of all, because if it didn't have a relatively constant rate, then we'd be able to measure it in things like lake silt samples that record such things over time. C-14 actually _hasn't_ gone away at an exactly constant rate, which is why the method is calibrated by all sorts of natural checks like the one I described above. And you should know that C-14 isn't really used for anything much older than 45,000 years or so. We have other, much more powerful radioactive dating methods for older ages.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How do you expect us to take you seriously when you KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTIONS AFTER THEY'VE BEEN ASNWERED!
That is why you are purposely violating at least 3 of the forum rules?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->1.: Always consider the possibilty that you are wrong and the other side is right.
Stay open minded to other peoples points: Ignoring the other side and insisting on a few own arguments won't get you - or anybody else - anywhere. It's very much to ask, but try to consider other peoples argumentations, as opposed to ways of beating them.
2.: Never, ever, be judgemental towards the other side.
Blanket labelling of another opinion as "stupid", "naive", "short sighted", "racist", "communist", "socialist", "liberal", "conservative", or what have you is often so close to flaming that it takes experts to find a difference. If you wish to express your personal opinion about another persons notion, try to stay away from valuing terms, and try to be as rational as humanly possible - you're treading on thin ice, and insulting the other side by calling it what it is not can't be in your interest.
3.: Try to stay rational.
Nobody wishes to forbid you your personal opinion, but unless it is grounded on rational thought, as opposed to emotional reactions, it can't be seriously discussed. You can tell people that you "dislike the Republicans/Democrats because I hate Bushs/Clintons accent.", but it's not exactely possible to form argumentations around such a claim. Stating that you "dislike the Republicans/Democrats because I can't agree with their tax policy." would be a little better.
Many religious arguments are a thin borderline away from being utterly emotional. This makes their use in many cases very problematic. Always assume that you try to convince - for convincing the other side has to be your prime goal - someone with differing faiths. If your argument still seems to hold water, it's probably OK.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Since you started posting in here, the thread has deteriorated into a flamewar provoked by statements of yours which are speculative at best but not backed by anything remotely close to proof. Stop posting in discussions if you are not able to behave accordingly. Also, the other parties should stop falling for the bait. We plastered this thread with 2 pages of utter rubbish. I am going to report this and hope the mods clean it up instead of closing it tomorrow.
and if we use to be 900 years old and evolved to die sooner. why do people claim you can be "born ****" when clearly evolution wouldn't let you do something as foolish as that <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I assume you meant sterile, but it showed up as ****.
I don't know specifically what causes infertility due to old age in men. In women however, I would assume that someone who lived only a few thousand years ago would be born with a similiar number of eggs as someone living today (maybe even less), but I don't know for sure.
Infertility due to genetics can be caused by a random mutation. Evolution would still ferret out infertile people, but they would still occaisonally be born. Infertility might also be due to a recessive allele, so only people who have 2 copies of it would be infertile. In this way, someone could pass down an allele for infertility. If it was associated with a positive effect (much like sickle cells reduces the likelihood of malaria) then it would be passed down through DNA.
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As soon as a living organism dies, it stops taking in new carbon. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 at the moment of death is the same as every other living thing, but the carbon-14 decays and is not replaced. The carbon-14 decays with its half-life of 5,700 years, while the amount of carbon-12 remains constant in the sample. By looking at the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the sample and comparing it to the ratio in a living organism, it is possible to determine the age of a formerly living thing fairly precisely.
A formula to calculate how old a sample is by carbon-14 dating is:
t = [ ln (Nf/No) / (-0.693) ] x t1/2
where ln is the natural logarithm, Nf/No is the percent of carbon-14 in the sample compared to the amount in living tissue, and t1/2 is the half-life of carbon-14 (5,700 years).
So, if you had a fossil that had 10 percent carbon-14 compared to a living sample, then that fossil would be:
t = [ ln (0.10) / (-0.693) ] x 5,700 years
t = [ (-2.303) / (-0.693) ] x 5,700 years
t = [ 3.323 ] x 5,700 years
t = 18,940 years old
Because the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, it is only reliable for dating objects up to about 60,000 years old. However, the principle of carbon-14 dating applies to other isotopes as well. Potassium-40 is another radioactive element naturally found in your body and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other useful radioisotopes for radioactive dating include Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years). <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href='http://tm.wc.ask.com/r?t=c&s=j1&id=30787&sv=za5cb0dc2&uid=0FE844DFA3F640E14&sid=18C9BEC1E600C4324&p=%2ftop&o=0&u=http://www.howstuffworks.com/carbon-142.htm' target='_blank'>How stuff works</a>
If you say howstuffworks.com is wrong, you really don't know how to research things.
(edit) The reason the half-lives are correct is because every unstable isotope of a molecule decays at a constant rate, so we do not have to be around for the 5,700 years to find out what some elements half-life is.
This is even further proven when you test how much has decayed from one time frame being time A, to time B, if the amount is the same each time, it is relatively easy to figure out an isotopes half-life.
Actually I'm pretty sure he meant homosexual. But seing as how thats neither here nor there, and knowing his past behavior on the topic, continuing that line of argument will most certainly end in the locking of the thread.
so I'll bench my Noah card if you admit that its not a "Fact" that carbon dating. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To stay on topic, I'll answer this in a way to help us understand evolution. We can date evolutionary processes by measuring Carbon-14 (or another element for a different time period) in a fossil. Carbon dating works because the amount of carbon-14 in something will halve every ~6000 years. Thus, if something has half the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have (IIRC organisms absorb carbon-14 while they are living, but stop when they are dead, so that they will die with a certain amount of carbon-14 in them, which will slowly degrade), then it would be around 6000 years old. If it had 1/4 the amount of carbon-14 that we expect it to have, then it would be around 1200 years old (1/2 of 1/2 = 1/4).
Carbon dating isn't exactly accurate and there is a margin of error, but it is most definately not a junk science. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'll agree to that. but how do we know that it degrades at a constent rate? has anyone sat down for 6000's years with and tracked one amount in X circumstances and another amount in Y circumstances to see if it degrades at the same time?
I'll give it that its based on sound logic but I think theres too many things unacounted for to call it a complete and total FACT <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Physicists have known about radioactivity for a century. Carbon dating is just an application of radioactivity. Half-Life is a scientific fact. Carbon-14 is easier to measure the radioactivity than, say, Uranium, because it has a short half-life. I would guess they measure it by placing a small amount of pure Carbon-14 in a laboratory and measuring how much of it changes into, IIRC, Nitrogen-14 over a period of time. I don't have any doubt that we know how to find out what its half-life is.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Actually I'm pretty sure he meant homosexual.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
He did and anyone familiar with him knows fully what he was trying to get at as well.
The clam:
To date fossils, very old ones anyway, you use Uranium-Lead dating or Potassium-Argon dating. C-14 dating only has a maximum range of around 30-40,000 years. So it's rather irrelevant what he thinks, because it's actually the better and more accurate forms of radiation dating available that demonstrate things like the age of many old fossils. C-14 is picked on, because that is the only one that creationists find easy to strawman or abuse to try and prove irrelevant inane arguments about the so called 'inaccuracy' of radiation dating methods.
Actually I'm pretty sure he meant homosexual. But seing as how thats neither here nor there, and knowing his past behavior on the topic, continuing that line of argument will most certainly end in the locking of the thread. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Homosexuality is a better example, because homosexuals can breed (and do breed, quite often).
Carbon Dating is a fact. Sorry, but unstable isotopes decay at a fairly constant rate.
<a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating' target='_blank'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating</a>
And people can't live that long. It simply isn't possible with today's technology, so its even less possible that they could live that long then, which is even assuming that Adam and Noah even existed.
Seriously, you need to at least consider that you may be wrong.
I'll give it that its based on sound logic but I think theres too many things unacounted for to call it a complete and total FACT <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
you have a serious lack of common and basic scientific knowledge AdvengerX there are basis and facts for most everything youve asked about, and most of that really isnt on topic. You may indeed be trying to enlighten yourself, but my advise is for you too atleast google whatever the basic question your asking. I mean if nothing could be proved theoretically, we wouldnt be as smart as we are now and be at a serious lack of technology. if the information we got theoretically wasnt thought to be possible or true, it wouldnt be used.
i dont know if your like an 8th grader or a junior, but my advice is when you get to the chance where you can (junior/senoir) take a chemistry course, even so basic science classes b4 that if possible, so you get a years breakdown of how this all works. Not a 2 page post on the internet.
Oh, the irony!!!
How about you fix your atrocious spelling and general abuse of the english language before your usual pontificating orgy.
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I hate to flame, but Aegeri is 100% right.
I tried reading through Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," but ended up getting hit with exams the week before it was due back, so I couldn't get all the way though it.
I've been interested lately about the implications of meme theory, especially on ethics and government.
I was curious, if ideas evolve to best fit to their environment (as organisms do through natural selection), how is it that so many similar ideas arise at various different parts of the world, occasionally at the same time, where the two groups in question would have had no contact with each other whatsoever? (Plato and Confucius coming up with ideas about the well ordered, ideal state at the same time, even from such radically different cultural histories; the widespread development of local animistic religion circa 4000-2000 B.C, etc.)
I may be drawing faulty conclusions from the evidence, but it seems to me that if two groups reach the same conclusion under radically different circumstances, that their conclusion cannot be explained by purely situational adaption.
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I hate to flame, but Aegeri is 100% right.
I tried reading through Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," but ended up getting hit with exams the week before it was due back, so I couldn't get all the way though it.
I've been interested lately about the implications of meme theory, especially on ethics and government.
I was curious, if ideas evolve to best fit to their environment (as organisms do through natural selection), how is it that so many similar ideas arise at various different parts of the world, occasionally at the same time, where the two groups in question would have had no contact with each other whatsoever? (Plato and Confucius coming up with ideas about the well ordered, ideal state at the same time, even from such radically different cultural histories; the widespread development of local animistic religion circa 4000-2000 B.C, etc.)
I may be drawing faulty conclusions from the evidence, but it seems to me that if two groups reach the same conclusion under radically different circumstances, that their conclusion cannot be explained by purely situational adaption. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's the same thing as convergent evolution. Good ideas can be invented independantly and will work very well in many different cultures and societies.
Back where I left off, I was going to respond to the article that Pepe posted by creationist Denton.
Denton's argument is a bit like Dr. Pangloss in Candide. In short, he makes an argument that at first glance looks pretty powerful: everything was designed for the best, aren't you impressed! But when you examine it more closely, you find that it turns out to be pretty absurd, and backwards from what we know historically to be the case.
Pangloss, for instance, made the argument that our noses exist so as to give us a place to rest our spectacles. Denton argues that our eyes are inverted so that they can take advantage of a range of helpful features which he outlines in his article. Denton even, like Pangloss, claims that the inversion was made in _anticipation_ of a future use that didn't even exist at the time when the basic design was laid down (glossing over the fact that the likely development of the eye ALREADY provides an explanation for why vertebrate eyes are the way they are, without any need of an anticipatory prophecy)
Note one interesting feature of the Pangloss' claim is that it is pretty amusingly and tellingly temporal: reading spectacles are necessary only in a time where reading is common (which is only a very short period of human history, all told), and then only because the human eye is pretty _poorly_ designed for reading in the first place! It thus defines the "best possible" world as the present world, without thought to the past or the future. Human technology, for instance, will eventually do away with spectacles altogether, which sort of messes up Pangloss' belief that our noses were designed to accomodate spectacles (rather than the other way around, as is the true historical order of things).
Denton's claims are similar. He sugguests that the eye was designed inverted in order to later on take advantage of various solutions that could later crop up to take advantage of this backwards orientation. But this argument almost refutes itself: look what happened, even in the history that Denton seems to admit: the various adaptations mostly came AFTER and BECAUSE the eye was inverted, taking advantage of the structure that was already there. This is just the sort of process we'd expect from evolution: gradually adding on adaptations to suit the existing structure rather than backtracking to rethink entire designs in huge leaps (the way an intelligent designer could). The result is an eye that works very well, but only by incorporating the past directions of development and building on them with some impressive features.
Of course, despite Denton's argument to the contrary, nothing about the inverted eyes suggests that it is the only design which could have added some powerful and nifty features to give it more functionality (certainly, the EXACT solutions wouldn't have been the same, as Denton misleadingly implies, and perhaps not even the same direction in functionality). As I noted in my past thread, an engineer designing an eye could have started with a non-inverted eye and added all manner of neato features to that eye as well: solving some of the same problems in different ways, no less ingeniously as with an inverted eye.
And this goes even deeper. Denton is amazed at the particular sorts of things that human eyes can do. But again, isn't this backwards? Humans and other animals evolved particular capacities and lifestyles concordant with what their eyes could do, not in anticipation of what they might one day be able to do. It is no surprise, for instance, that the human eye is capable of discerning printed text (albiet with an eventual great deal of wear and strain and in many people an advancing breakdown of ability), because the causality runs the other way around: humans invented readable printed text because it was a system that worked well enough with the sorts of eyes we have!
If Denton is so amazed by how well adapted the human eye is to its current needs, and further credits this adaptation to the forethought of an intelligent designer, one might then well ask why this designer didn't also plan out eyes better built for things like the repetative reading that require spectacles or eye correction! Or perhaps to see in some part of the electromagnetic spectrum other than what other animals see in. Or any number of other things that would demonstrate some REAL foresight into the unique applications that the human eye could potentially be put that wold speak to some innovation beyond stepwise additions to the basic directions that characterize the evolutionary process. Now, I'm not saying Denton couldn't advance some fairly crafty resposnes to these questions. He could argue, for instance, that the designer would have known that humans could invent spectacles, so why bother giving us the power to read all that well!
But look what that means: that Denton is left rather improbably arguing ad hoc that the exact state of the human eye is precisely the right level of development, pre-adapted for by some designer, despite the fact that it could be a lot worse or a lot better when unaided (for instance, forget helping us do away with the need for spectacles: if you wanted to help us be good readers, why not eyes which can take in and process no more than a very very tiny focal area at once). This is pure Pangloss, and no more convincing.
I may be drawing faulty conclusions from the evidence, but it seems to me that if two groups reach the same conclusion under radically different circumstances, that their conclusion cannot be explained by purely situational adaption. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Memes aren't really a solid science the way that biology and DNA are: in many ways they are just analogies to the way genes work, and perhaps not entirely apt since many of the underlying structures may be VERY different.
But then, I'm not sure your question has much of a direct problem for memes as a theory. Nothing suggests that ideas, like functionality, can't be convergent. For instance, some basic features related to digging through the dirt have evolved indepedantly in a number of mammals. But though similar these features evolved indepedantly, and their similarities are mainly do to the fact that there are only so many ways for similar body-types of mammals to get "good" at a digging lifestyle. So too with human beings with very similar underlying psychologies looking to, say, form better societies.
Of course, I'm not sure that Plato and Confucious really are all that similar in the end. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
And here's something pretty telling about the age of the earth. If you look around for all the radioactive isotopes that can exist in nature, you'll get a long list that you can then arrange in the order of how long their half-lives are. Now, on this list, there are a few that are continualy created by known, ongoing processes. You can strike all of these off the list, since they don't count for our purposes. What you will be left with is a list of isotopes that are only ever created from in stars/supernovas, etc. And you'll quickly notice a startling thing. Every single isotope with a half-life of less than 80 million years is missing from Earth. We know that many of these isotopes are indeed created by supernovas the same way the other heavier elements on our planet were. But they are missing entirely from Earth (or if they are here, they are here in very very very tiny quantities). Why? Well, the obvious answer is that Earth is old enough that since they were first formed with our solar system, they have decayed away into unmeasurable amounts (a couple billion years is enough to pretty much do away with them, period). This is some pretty telling stuff, because it isn't just most of the shortlived isotopes that are gone. It's every single darn one: just as you'd expect of an old earth.
The answer is simply that: a) there are plenty of fossils that tell us the links between different modern species (as well as extinct species) and b) no one claims or requires that the fossil record throw up a fossil of every animal that ever lived. Given that, however, the fossil record is amazingly complete: far moreso than Darwin could have ever expected.
Darwin, remember, never set out to prove his theory using fossils. The main facts he used fossils to establish were this:
1) the modern species we see today seem not to have always existed
2) species of the past are unlike any of the living modern species we find today, though the most recent tend to be the most similar to modern species.
3) This suggests two things: one that species seem to go extinct, and indeed more species seem to have gone extinct than to have survived! The other is that there seems to be some sort of trend in the fossil record
That's about it for what Darwin used fossils to argue, and I'm even overstating things a bit. Darwin never tried to present a fossil for every single step along the way to a modern species. Instead his arguments to establish common descent relied on the more scanty facts above, and then linked them to the data we have on geographic distribution, known morphology, and the mechanism of natural selection. Coupled with genetics, the case for common descent can actually stand on its own without even a SINGLE particular fossil linage used as evidence, much less Avenger's demands to see complete records of EVERY lineage.
Again, though, that said, we DO have an amazingly good fossil record! Take elephants: we have tons of fossils all along the pathway from the earliest probiscian mammals all the way down to modern elephants that show the slow increase in size, the growth of the trunk, the development of the tusks, and so on. Or the earliest land animals: we have fossils that even show their soft inner parts, showing them to have internal gills just like the fish they are thought to have come from!
Indeed, this "earliest" argument is a powerful one oft-overlooked by creationists.
If birds didn't evolve from lizards, then why do the earliest birds in the fossil record have lizard-like teeth: a feature that modern birds do NOT have (at least under natural conditions)
If tetrapods didn't evolve from lobed fish, why are the earliest tetrapods more fishlike than any tetrapod since? Even the tetrapods that returned to the water, like whales and manatees, are very very unfishlike.
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Just in case this is misleading to some: Viruses and bacteria do change, constantly sprouting up new varieties and mutations that then allow them to adapt to new drugs or environments.
This is especially easy to show with bacteria, because you can grow an entire colony from a single individual, and they should,. if they did not change, be exact clones of each other. But in fact they do mutate to create variety among which we can find resistance, and indeed we can even see and measure exactly what mutations took place!
Now, when some of a bacteria survive a drug the first time they encounter it, it may be because there was some existing resistance to it. But it's also important to remember that most drugs aren't powerful enough to simply kill every single one of any bacteria anyway: they manage to get a lot, but not most, of the bacteria, whether there is any resistance or not. This is why you need to take long courses of antibiotics rather than just one dose: because you want to make sure you kill enough of the bacteria for your own immune system to mop up the rest. Meanwhile, the bacteria is continually adapting from what bacteria still survived, for whatever reason. And even the tiniest reason for some bacteria making it longer than others against the drug can keep the bacteria pushing in the direction that will make particular mutations suddenly very advantageous against the drug. That's why your full course of antibiotics is so important: you want to smash down the bacteria before your steady application of natural selection has a chance to "teach" the bacteria instructive directions of mutations. Even if the bacteria that make it still aren't totally resistant, they WILL be that much closer to it.