Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Hi! This is
a great website. However, I was wondering if there's any
discussion on the evolution of emotions. I'm currently
trying to find "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals" by Charles Robert Darwin to learn more about this
specific topic. I unfortunately don't have an Internet
Account, therefore not able to subscribe to your newsgroup.
However, I am interested in this topic and would appreciate
all the help I can get!
Thanks, and keep up the good work! |
Responses | |
From: | |
Response: | You might
find the following excellent book to be both a good
introduction and a guide to the literature:
Griffiths, Paul E. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1997. As well as being a philosophical introduction, the author discusses the evolution of emotions and is very au fait with the subject. Copies of Darwin's book are available freely. I recall but do not have the details to hand, that there was a critical edition recently with notes on current thinking. |
From: | |
Response: | If you have enough Internet access to view our site, you may also be able to read Darwin's book (complete with illustrations) via the Internet. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | E. A. Moore |
Comment: | Thank you so
much for creating this website. I very much appreciate the
fact that religion isn't dismissed as nonsense by this
site's comtributors. I stumbled across talkorigins a few
months ago, and was amazed to find that there are people
who actually believe creationist drivle.
Last month, I had to reference several of your articles in a "debate" with several creationists (and I use the term debate loosely...it was more like facing an inquisition). Of course, none of the creationists were impressed, but I feel that I did my bit for science. The amount of ignorance in the world never ceases to amaze me. I just don't understand how people can shun scientific facts in favor of religious mythology rather than trying to find a balance between their religious beliefs and scientific fact, as some of this site's contributors seem to have done. Thank you again for this wonderful site. It has helped me increase my knowledge about evolution, and I am now able to show creationists the errors in their "science". Thanks again for a fantastic site. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | How do you overcome the obvious fact that fossilisation means that the original organic material has been replaced by various minerals from the surrounding soil and that it is these minerals that are used to date the age of the organism that died. The minerals are clearly much older than the fossilised organism. Same applies to artefacts - the fact that the paint on a wall of a cave (often ochre or some other earth material) may be dated to 30,000 years, this doed not etablish WHEN the painting was actually done by a human being. Same also with pottery and mud bricks. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | It is of course an obvious fact that fossilization means that the original organic material has been replaced by minerals. It is also an obvious fact, to anyone who has taken a Geology 101 course, that it is not the fossil itself that is dated, but the strata in which the fossil is found. More specifically, the igneous intrusions into the strata are typically dated. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I'd like to
give a further response to Jim Oltmans' feedback on Robert
Gentry's polonium halo research. There is a problem in
associating concentric spherical haloes in minerals
(biotite and fluorite in Gentry's examples)with specific
energy alpha particle emissions. Alpha particles will
disturb the crystal structure along the entire path of
travel until the energy is totally absorbed (kind of like
an enraged bull in a china shop). This will result in the
dark, blurred haloes seen commonly around many crystal
inclusions. There is no known mechanism by which alpha
particles will leave discrete, narrow rings. Also, Gentry
himself noted that there are ring haloes - large and small
- which cannot be correlated to specific alpha particle
energies under his model. He simply dismisses them as being
due to some as yet undiscovered alpha emission (highly
unlikely).
Clearly concentric haloes exist, and some appear to be coincident with fractures and other micro-structures in the host minerals. However, whether they are due to radioactive decay (alpha, beta, or other) or some completely unrelated phenomenon has not been demonstrated. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | Sky Adams |
Comment: | I recently visited www.Bible.ca.com and found in their "false doctrine" section a refutation of evolution. Some of these reasons were based on evidence of the coexistance of humans and dinosaurs. One example is an iron hammer found within Lower Cretacious Limestome that was dated at 140,000,000 years. Read the full article for full details as well as other examples. I could see how this could possibly be a weak argument, but I cannot think of a reasonable response. How would you explain this as well as the other examples cited? |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | The
discussion of human and dinosaur coexistance this reader
refers to is found at Evidence that
Dinosaurs and Humans co-existed.
The claims on the www.bible.ca website about human and dinosaur tracks found near the Paluxy River in Texas are hardly new, and hardly convincing. In fact, they have been so thoroughly debunked that even well known young-earth creationist groups such as Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research state that those tracks should not be used as evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived together. More information about The Texas Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy can be found on the archive. The author of those pages, Glen Kuban, has also examined the claim about the hammer in more detail on his own website than he does here. For his analysis, visit The London Hammer: An Alleged Out-of-Place Artifact. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I would like to comment on the phylogeny (Appendix Part one) in the Introduction to Evolutionary Biology /faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html According to a paper published by Baldauf et al. in Science (2000, vol.290, 972-977), based on combined protein sequences they believe that the cellular slime molds are closer related to animals than plants. They also found that the microsporidia in fact group with the fungi, rather than form a separate group. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Thanks for your feedback. We'll forward this on to Chris Colby. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I am using
your article on Social Darwinism in my online English 124
class. Specifically, I provide a link to it in my text,
ARGUMENT ONLINE! I assume since you are offering your
articles on the Net that is permission for me to link to
your site in my book. I am selling this book from my site.
It is an excellent cross-curriculum text for teachers who want students to learn how to research and write effective arguments. Thanks! |
Response | |
From: | |
Author of: | Evolution and Philosophy |
Response: | Thank you.
As author of that section you are more than welcome to put
a link to this page, or to print it for teaching purposes.
While all authors on this site retain their copyright, we
all assume that this site is to be used for teaching and
public education purposes.
However, your students may not copy any or all of it and put their name to it, as a student at my own university did in presenting some of my own work to my own thesis supervisor :-) |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I feel your site is biased. It does make some great points about defining the meanings of disputed terms, and is accurate on some points. I am also not claiming that creationists are not biased because they are. But I do think that calling the "origin of species" a fact is biased for the following reasons. 1. No fossil proof of "missing link" or inter species creatures 2. No accurate "ape man" fossils 3. Contradiction of empirical science 4. Contradiction of scientific probability Thank you |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | I think by
"origin of species" you mean the origin of species by
biological evolution. Yes, we do call that a fact. See Evolution is a Fact and a
Theory.
You can also find your four points addressed within the archive.
|
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I was
wondering if there has ever been a book published with all
those creation stories? I think this web site is great and
very informative. Can you tell me which flood story is the
oldest? I would think it has to be the Sumerian, Chaldean,
Babylon etc.
Thank You |
Response | |
From: | |
Author of: | What is Creationism? |
Response: | The best
book of creation stories that I know of is Primal
Myths by Barbara Sproul (HarperCollins, San Francisco,
1991). It gives myths from all over the world, translated
to English but otherwise in as close to their primary form
as possible. Another good book is A Dictionary of
Creation Myths by David and Margaret Leeming (Oxford,
1994).
To the best of my knowledge, the oldest flood story is the Assyrian myth of Utnapishtim. At least, that is the oldest written myth. Other myths may have more ancient oral histories. |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | If you were diagnosed with incurable cancer what would you do? If you were somehow in an accident that caused you to lose your sight,or you lost all of your limbs, how would your outlook on life be? If you were somehow unable to participate in the simplest of daily activites or recreation or never be able to see again, would you not be hopeless as to what to do with the one life you had with no "starting over". If it were me, I would know that Christ is always with me and can be called on at any time. I know that I always have the option of divine healing and if not, the hope that my life will not end in miserable crippled death. I would have an eternal hope of everlasting life free from pain or sorrow. I myself am not physically hindered, but it is something to think about. You never know if one day your world will crumble in all areas, and you will have to spend the rest of your earthly life with no hope. Try looking positively at Christianity for once (or again). Things aren't as irreconcilable as they may seem between the two views. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: |
One of the people most instrumental in the formation of this archive was Tero Sand. He died in 1996 having spent most of his life as a quadriplegic. He did not seem to allow his condition to lower his standards of evidence and argument. Tero had a fine set of web pages of his own, which he titled his "Anti-Crap Pages". Wesley |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | The sites attempting, and I stress ATTEMPTING, to give evidence for evolution are pathetic. The 'evidence' is watery, insipid and so ambigious that it answers NOTHING and presents NO tangible or solid or concrete evidence whatsoever. Tell the 'scientists' who scraped the barrel for their 'evidence' to try and come up with somthing better - if they can. E-mail back if you wish - or get them to, I'd be only too happy to have a gentlemanly debate. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Debates are
welcome in the newsgroup talk.origins. You will find
some useful guidelines for participation in the FAQ Welcome to talk.origins.
It is also recommended you look through some other FAQs on
this site, and it can also help to read the group for a day
or two before your first posting.
For suitably civilized debate, it is better to have actual arguments, and not rely over much on capitals, or putting 'scare quotes' around words like scientists. You would need to demonstrate that you are actually aware of what evidence has been marshalled, and which the scientific world finds so convincing, in any credible critique of that evidence. Good luck! Perhaps we will see you in the news group. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | Amber Thompson |
Comment: | I am a student who is studying evolution and the earth's origins. I really appreciated your essay about what evolution is by Laurence Moran. It was very interesting and informing. However I found some very stereotypical statements. Such as ... "The real problem is that the public, and creationists do not understand what evolution is all about." Yes, I do think that we (the public) are misinformed and somewhat ignorant, however that is not 100% true. I am a creationist, and we are a lot smarter than you give us credit for in this article. The person whom you refered to was incorrect in his statement about evolution and religion not both being possible according to the definition given in this essay. But saying that all creationists are just as ignorant is not at all true! You must understand that when people, in general, refer to or think of evolution the first thought is usually monkey-to-man over millions of years and THAT does not agree with the Bible's teachings. Thank you for taking the time to read this and please allow me to point out one more thing. According to the definition of evolution given by Douglas J. Futuyma evolution is merely change in a population that takes place over many generations. In my mind God brings about these changes according to his will. I'm glad he knows what's going on and has the present as well as the future under control! |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | The essay by
Professor Moran to which you refer is What is
Evolution. You have not stated Professor Futuyma's
definition correctly. The essential feature of change that
is properly called evolutionary change is that it is change
in heritable characteristics; not that it is change over
many generations. For example, humans have learned more
over many generations, but this is not evolutionary change,
according to Futuyma's definition. Quoting Futuyma's
definition from Moran's essay:
I have emphasied the main definition phrase. Note that evolutionary change includes so-called monkey to man over millions of years, and even greater changes as well. It can be hard for the general public to appreciate the distinctions which are used in science, and indeed you have missed the distinction yourself. This is not about being smart; it is a matter of education on the details of scientific models and terminology — even for those who cannot accept the actual validity of models in use. Evolution and evolutionary biology is inconsistent with a strict literal interpretation of the Genesis creation accounts, but it is debatable that such a strict historical reading is reasonably called a teaching of the bible. Thus evolution does not exclude religious belief; but it does exclude the beliefs of some people, and it certainly rules out taking early Genesis as a plain account of events as they occured historically. There is another essay by Professor Moran in the archive which is worth a look: Evolution is a Fact and a Theory. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Until 10
years ago, I was a Bible-believing "born again" Christian.
I was an assistant pastor in a small church in Scotland,
knew my Bible from cover to cover and sincerely followed my
faith and served my God.
10 years ago, however, I began to ask questions for which my narrow fundamentalist faith had unacceptable answers - these were mainly in the realms of theology but have recently spilled over into science. The more I read and understand, the more amazed I am that intelligent people can ignore the major scientific developments of the last couple of centuries, chief of these perhaps being in the realm of evolutionary biology. As a fundamentalist Christian, I was blind and unwilling to hear anything which contradicted my faith. I have now opened my mind to the truth in so many areas and find this new enlightenment absolutely thrilling. I am a great admirer of Stephen Jay Gould and have just read his book "Rocks of Ages" which argues that science and religion should not overlap. It is ridiculous to hold up mythical stories to be true in a literal sense, regardless of how much they may be brimming with moral lessons ("truth" in a completely different sense). I would urge your readers to follow my long search for enlightenment after being cocooned in my pretend world for so long. Have your faith, but do not close your mind to the wonders of science. Don't hold to untenable literal beliefs out of fear or ignorance. Get out there and explore other opinions, different ideas. You will find the experience like a "new birth" of freedom in your thinking. Andy Cowan 8th April 2002 |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | Half of the
education you learn is crap, determining which is which is
knowledge.
I believe that evolution by definition is a threat to society. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Actually, evolution by definition is "change in the genetic makeup of a population of organisms over time." This isn't necessarily a threat to the population of organisms; the change could make the population more robust. |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | Dear Maker of this Website, I was quite interested by some of the information on your website regarding the age of the earth. But, I my-self am a Christian and believe in the young earth theory. I was just courious on several aspects of your website. First, why you did not include the thousands of mistakes that are made by what is called the almost flawless method, carbon dating. There have been living mollusks and recently killed seals that have been dated millions of years old. Second, why does the age of the earth keep changing according to scientists when they say that these new methods are almost flawless. Third, why was the instance of Mt. St. Helens not discussed. According to thousands of old earth modern geologists the sediment and area surrounding Mt. St. Helens should have taken millions of years to develop. When in reality this event/reaction only took one day. Please respond to my e-mail, and do not just disregard it because of my opposing view points. This e-mail is just a small amount of the info that I have and I would be delighted to discuss it with you. Yours truely, Adam Joyce |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Dear Adam,
You present three questions, and so I have numbered my responses.
I am sure you have a lot of other information; but that is why this archive exists. There is a lot of misinformation put out, and we keep seeing the same errors repeated again and again. You will find our search facility a useful tool to discover our responses to many of the arguments you have been given from creationist sources. |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | all of the refutes of michael behe's book i'll bet do not come from those who believe in Jesus Christ being God incarnate.Man in his pride outwardly rebels against His creator,but the moment he closes his eyes must answer to a higher power than himself. What a foolish person is he that gambles his life's soul and eternal welfare solely to what he believes gives him the upperhand hand for his short stay on earth.Much of a non-believer's so-called education stands in his way of his relationship with his only savoir Jesus Christ. The Bible stands alone as the strongest piece of historical literature mankind knows-bar none. May God thru His Son Jesus Bless some who read this and chose to believe . John 14:6 |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Actually one
of Michael Behe’s most outspoken critics is Kenneth
Miller (Prof. of biology at Brown U.), who like Behe, is a
Roman Catholic. So, when can we expect to receive our
winnings on your (lost) bet?
Go to KR Miller’s Review of Darwin's Black Box for his review of Behes book (1996). See also Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God (1999). I’m sure it may make some people feel better to believe that acceptance of evolution is equivalent to atheism but this is simply not the case. Nor is it the case that all (or even most) atheists justify their atheism by appealing to the fact of evolution. Evolution may be consistent with atheism but it absolutely does not mandate it. So all this bluster about “gambling with one’s soul” and the inadequacy of the “non-believer’s education” is nothing more than a straw-man argument used to avoid actually dealing with the empirical evidence. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Who is more "narrow-minded" the evolutionist, or the creationist? Evolutionists constantly refer to creationists as "narrow-minded". Well, we are narrow minded in religious thought, but when it comes to scientific thought you will find the contrary. My point to evolutionists is this, if our brain, and hence our thought process follows a logical physical structure then, theoretically, isn't it possible that there are entities that could exist that we cannot observe or understand? Of course!!! If we do not have the "logical" connection to establish premise, argument and conclusion, then it is impossible for us to conclude a true result. Even though we conclude false, it is entirely possible that it is true from an omniscient perspective. Computers and software programs follow logic, but if I (as the creator) don't give it the logical structure to understand the base-10 numbering system then the computer will not return 51 as the expected conclusion of 50+1! Anyone who can refute the existence of God with great confidence is also arguing in a sea of great ignorance. If evolutionists are able to think of this elaborate theory that explains the origin of life and adopt it because it follows perfect logic, then why can't the idea that I mention above be adopted also? Because you need someone to argue with??? So I ask you again, who is more narrow minded, the evolutionist or the creationist??? |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | You are
missing several key points.
First, the issue for evolutionists is not rejection of God. Many evolutionists believe in God; and there is nothing in evolution which denies God's existence. The dispute is over a history of life; since the creation myths of the bible present a different history. Second, evolution is not established by logic. It is established by evidence. The reason your model cannot be adopted also is that it flies in the face of evidence. It is not a matter of different logic. It is a matter of whether or not you are willing to go where the evidence leads. Third, since creationists reject the evolutionary model, there is no basis at all in this argument for calling them less narrow-minded; unless you consider the person with the most ridiculous model to be the least narrow minded; which would be rather silly. Finally, and most importantly, this approach simply misrepresents the nature of the debate between evolution and creationism. Creationists hold that accepting global floods and young Earth and seperate creation of living species is consistent with evidence and logic and reason. They are saying that logic and reason and evidence are all consistent with the creationist model. They are wrong, of course, and this archive explains why they are wrong in exhaustive detail. It is the last gasp of a discredited and disproven position to deny that the tools of evidence and reason have a role to play in shedding light upon the past. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Dear supporters of pseudoscience, I was browsing the internet and encountered your Talkorigin site. As a molecular biologist I was completely astonished by the outdated, nearly ancient, information that sustained your arguments. A lot of them have recently been falsified, or are being falsified by contemporary molecular biology. To inform the public properly you better show real examples of evolution (If there are any). I don't know if you read scientific literature, but the theory of evolution is seriously shortcoming if it has to explain recent phenomena observed in molecular genetics on for instance genetic redundancy. If you like to have examples that violatemolecular evolution I am prepared to inform you properly. Molecular genealogy of cytochrome c - a pillar of molecular evolution - was also recently falsified, so stop propagating a theory that is not longer supported by molecular evidence! What is in it for you to propagate this nihilistic theory? Sincerely, Peter Borger, MSc, PhD University of Sydney Australia |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | We at
Talk.Origins are always interested in learning about new
science related to evolution, especially if it shows that
we have presented erroneous arguments that need correction.
We are volunteers with various areas of expertise but don't
claim to be aware of every development in the scientific
literature, so we appreciate help from readers in keeping
the site accurate. Your letter refers (without supplying
evidence) to
(1) recent phenomena concerning genetic redundancy that reveal shortcomings in evolution (2) examples of evidence that violate evolution (3) "falsification" of molecular genealogy of cytochrome c evolution If you can specify exactly what you have in mind, including references to the scientific literature so we can access the details, we would be happy to comment, and will try to correct relevant Web postings as appropriate. As to "what is in it" for us who support Talk.Origins, we have many volunteers with differing motivations, but none of us (I think) are out to promote nihilism or to challenge religious faith. Many of us are deeply religious. My personal motivations rest first on a conviction that citizens of our country (indeed of the world) need to make many decisions that can be informed by science, so our students need to be taught how to apply the best standards of scholarship in evaluating conflicting scientific claims. Second, creationist claims of evidence that contradicts evolution have, in my experience, almost always been founded on data or logic that offend good standards of scientific scholarship. I consider it a kind of civic responsibility to offer any expertise I have to prevent the spread of such poor "science." That's why I support Talk.Origins. |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | It has been calculated that 300 to 1,000 years is required to build one inch of topsoil. Yet the average depth of top soil is about eight inches |
Response | |
From: | Tim Ikeda |
Response: | It has been
determined that humans ingest about 1-2 pounds of food and
liquid per day, yet there is no record of any human
weighing more than 2000 pounds. Thus all living humans must
be less than 1000-2000 days (~3-6 years) old.
Stunning logic and irrefutable proof for a terribly young earth, eh? |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | Because of solar and lunar gravitational drag forces, the spin of the earth (now about 1,000 mph) is gradually slowing down. If our world was billions of years old, it would have stopped turning or calculating differently, a billion years ago earth would be spinning so fast that it would have become a pancake. So either way our can only be a few thousand years old. |
Response | |
From: | |
Author of: | The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth-Moon System |
Response: | Mr.
Anonymous has it wrong, as a study of my FAQ file will
show. The current rate at which the earth's spin is slowing
is about 0.0015 seconds per day per century. If one makes
the simple approximation that this rate has remained
constant, then 4.5 billion years (45 million centuries)
ago, the "day" (now 24 hours long) would have been about
5.25 hours long. While that is indeed very short, it is not
short enough to make the earth look like a "pancake".
But the approximation is not entirely appropriate. A more detailed analysis shows that the spindown rate would be very high while the earth is very young, and much smaller thereafter. Paleontological evidence agrees with this theoretical conclusion. |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | Calculations on the genetic load indicate that life forms could not continue more than a few thousand years- and still be as free from mutational defects as they now are. |
Response | |
From: | Tim Ikeda |
Response: | Let's see the calculations! Do you have a reference handy? |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | adam |
Comment: | The main reason that I cannot agree with evolutionary propaganda is for this reason alone: NO ARTICLES I AM AWARE OF OR ANY EVOLUTIONARY THEORY PROVIDE A REASONABLE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION OF MINE, " If evolution did occur than from where did the massive void (necessary for evolution to have occurred)called by most-universe-originate from. After-all the word universe means "one verse" such as "Let there be light". True, evolution has evidence to support it, but tell me this; if the universe itself was shruken into an extremely dense and hot piece of matter the size of a period("Big Bang" theory), than where did that come from, and that, and that, and that, etc. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | The simplest
answer to your question, and one which is not bad as a
rough summary of the state of knowledge in science with
respect to the times prior to the extremely hot dense
beginning, is as follows:
Of course, scientists are never satisfied, and there is a lot of theoretical comology and physics directed at these questions; but for the time being the answer I have given here is a good summary. Alternatively, if you really have to have an answer and are satisfied with answers that have no power to help develop models of the history of events and processes involved in the very early universe, you could try
Evolution deals with events long long after the origin of the universe, and makes no reference to the origin of the universe. Evolution is concerned with the development and diversification of life on Earth; something which has only occurred over the last 4 billion years or so, subsequent to formation of the planet Earth. No matter how you choose to answer the questions you have posed, the answers have no impact on evolutionary theory. Of course, your use of the pejorative term propaganda does suggest the possibility that there is more to your not accepting evolution than your questions about a totally different area of science: cosmology. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | How many of
y'all are older than radar guns?
I keep seeing references to how bad C14 readings are because of the readings they get from living clams or baseball caps or whatever. When Radar guns first came out, they were on the news a lot. And when they were taken to court, that made the news, too. I remember one lawyer having a cop test the speed of a rotary telephone in the courthouse, and it was doing 300 mph. When it rang, the number changed drastically, but i can't remember if it was up or down. Anyway, it seemed ridiculous, and they wanted it and every other speeding ticket using radar technology thrown out. Strangely enough, when the actual experts testified, they usually said they weren't surprised by the phone result (or any other such odd results), but it didn't matter. They had ample evidence that when properly used, the readings were valid. This was proven time and again in the labs before the guns were made, and proven to trooper after trooper before the guns were sold to anyone. The tech works, under the expected conditions for its use, and tickets written off of them are pretty much accepted. (Now, the trick is to know the laws concerning calibration and citizen rights to see the gun and so on. But the tech is no longer subject to trial....) Maybe if people would actually examine the evidence for C14 and other techniques, rather than just celebrate the loopholes, they would at least not look so asinine in their arguments..... |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | Are there any free newsservers carrying talk.origins? |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Yes. You can get talk.origins from Google Groups, among others. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I recently noticed an error in your Jargon File 'T'. for Tautology you said 'see truism' and gave a link to truism. For truism you said ' see tautology' and then gave a link to tautology. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Yes, it's very uninformative. [Hint: a tautology is an uninformative statement that defines one thing in terms of itself. Tautologies that are useful are called truisms :-)] |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Regarding the great deluge, I've heard about the old chinese character for 'ship' It consists of three different characters: mouth/man, the number eight and vessel. It is often used to confirm the biblical deluge story (eight man on a vessel = noah and his family in the ark). Do you have any information on this? |
Response | |
From: | |
Author of: | Problems with a Global Flood, 2nd edition |
Response: | The
following quote comes from an old (3/15/96) talk.origins
post by Mike Wright. (You can find it through a Google
search.)
Furthermore, no Chinese flood myths include an ark with eight passengers. Instead, they typically involve a brother and sister in a hollowed log or gourd. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | Wayne |
Comment: | If life began from a single organism and over the millinia has become the mozaic of species we see today, surely scientist can take an already existing spieces and make a brand new one since nature has done it by "selection" millions of times. I read in your feedback why it is impossible to convert closely related "simple" bacteria from one form to the other because of the millions of years since their separation from parent organism; so my question is why not take an organism that has renctly evolved, (say just 200,000 years ago) and convert them back? Or perhaps this has already been done. Please forgive my gramatical errors. I'm not well educated. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Speciation
is not something that, in general, can be "reversed."
Simplistically speaking, speciation occurs when two groups
of similar organisms grow so different that they can no
longer interbreed.
What scientists can do is to observe two populations of organisms that are subjected to different stresses and contingencies. Having done that, they have observed speciation, both in the laboratory and in the wild. See our articles entitled Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events. Those articles give references to some research detailing observed speciation events. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Question. In the 1950s my course on evolution provided a summary Darwins theory. I remember it only in part. It would help if I had the propery wording, order and etc. 1. Species reproduce. 2. More 'children' are produced than necessary for replacement. 3. Offspring show variation (later demo by Mendel). 4. Those best qualified to survive in a fixed, isolated or changing environment do. 5. Those survivors will pass on the qualities to succeeding generations. 6. Members of a population compete for food and sexual rights. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | On pages
479-480 of his book
The Growth of Biological Thought, Ernst Mayr
provides a summary of the logic of natural selection which
is very similar to what you have written above.
I hope this helps. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | At a meeting recently a speaker who is a very clever medical doctor declared that: "there is not a shred of evidence for evolution". How would you suggest that this absolute creationist position can even be begun to be refuted? |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Simply by
presenting some of the copious and overwhelming evidence
which has accumulated over the last 150 years or so, some
of which is discussed in this archive. [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ] The position which the good
doctor avocates was refuted already long ago. Of course,
the doctor himself (whose cleverness may be open to some
dispute) will not be convinced, but that is a totally
distinct matter.
(The Maid of Orleans. Act iii. Sc. 6. Friedrich von Schiller.) |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Greetings. Thank you much for maintaining the quality of these discussions. In March 2002, Wesley R. Elsberry claimed the web site lacked photographic evidence. You shortly pointed out the relevant navigation to such material. However, I started thinking about the exchange and about empirical evidence. Why is photography considered evidence while a drawing is not? Empirical evidence is only experienced first hand by sensory input. So a photo should be no more reliable than a drawing as evidence. You could argue a photo mirrors reality over a rendering, but you could also argue that a photo is easily manipulated, even fabricated like a drawing. My point: all evidence without context is meaningless. One picture, one discovery, or one fossil does not prove or disprove of a theory. Spurious relationships are built on the importance of evidence in a vacuum. And while the creationists eagerly rush to debate each piece of evidence alone, the proposal is lost. I'm sick of this pathology of the moment as evidence removed from an entire history of enlightenment. If a picture will satisfy you, then you must be looking solely for the aesthetic value. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: |
I'm the person who responded to the anonymous reader. I didn't claim that the archive had no photographs. I think that photographs have great pedagogical value. I wish it were easier to provide more of them. Wesley |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | Scientist around the world agree that the world slows down 1/1000th of a second every day. So we're going slower by a whole second every 1000 days. So, if we're slowing down, we must have been going faster in the past, right? Now, when life started to evolve, wouldn't it be hard for it to survive at all because of the larger gravitational force? |
Response | |
From: | |
Author of: | The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth-Moon System |
Response: | Your number
is slightly off. What scientists around the world actually
agree on is that the earth is slowing down in its daily
rotation, by about one and a half thousandths of a second
(0.0015 sec) per day per century. So, our "24 hour"
day does not get 1/1000th of a second longer in one day,
but rather in 100 years. If you assume that this rate of
slowing has always been the same (not a very good
assumption by the way), then you never encounter a past
time when the earth spun too fast for life to form or
exist.
Furthermore, if the earth spun much faster in the past, the effective surface gravity would have been rather less, and not more (because of the effect of "centrifugal force"). |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I have
recently rediscovered www.talkorigins.org by way of a link
in slashdot to an article about mitochondrial DNA. I say
rediscovered because I now remember coming here long ago
and henceforth ignoring the site because I have absolutely
no interest in debating creationists. It was only after
being led deeper into the site that I realized there is a
wonderful wealth of real information here! I guess I am
trying to suggest considering changing the focus from
pointless debate to emphasize the real educational content
avaiable here. In any case many thanks for providing one of
the worthwhile places on the 'net.
best regards Anthony Straight |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Do you have
a FPN (Frequent Post of Nonsense) page, or can you make
one? I hate having to search thru the feedback when someone
on a forum posts ridiculity that I've seen answered time
and again, or using math i can't quite reproduce. Stuff
like aging the Earth by magnetic decay or sun size being
compared to assuming the tide is constant, the ocean'd be
dry in 84 days, or the rockies'd be submerged in 34
(depending on the direction of the tide when measurement
taken). Or the population rates of humans backdates nicely
to the ark. Or the ancestors of beetles would blow up
before evolving into bombadiers....
Some Creationists I've met honestly think they're winning because so many evolutionists get tired of hitting the brick wall time after time with their forehead and stop arguing. |
Responses | |
From: | |
Response: | No. The
possibility of a "Boneheadism of the Month" award
was discussed this month in the talk.origins newsgroup, and
the general feeling appears to be that we don't want to
hold individuals up for public ridicule in that way.
What is really needed is a set of files which gives responses for the many flawed arguments which keep getting raised again and again in these debates; and this is one of the things we try to provide in this archive. |
From: | |
Response: | See, for instance, the Meritt FAQs for a fairly comprehensive listing of creationist arguments and rebuttals. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | Zaphod Beeblebrox |
Comment: | Since this is my first time posting feedback here, I'll be brief. When Apple introducted its Darwin OS program, Dr. Richard Paley wrote an article claiming that Apple was allied with Darwinism, and thus with Satanism. The website, at http://objective.jesussave.us/propaganda.html, lists his reasons for making the claim. Can you analyze it? |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | This has
been discussed on the newgroup talk.origins recently. See the
discussion on Google, under the subject heading
Real or parody? Objective: Christian Ministries.
The general feeling seems to be that the web site is another parody, like the Landover Baptists, but much more subtle and dead pan. No further analysis necessary; it is all some kind of bizarre joke. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | Robert Hubbard |
Comment: | I have found
myself caught up in a long correspondence with a
creationist; it's moderately rewarding for me because it
has forced me to re-examine many issues in science to help
me hold up my side of the discussion.
Recently he has been putting forward an argument I haven't seen before which, on the face of it, seems utterly without merit. But I ask for your interpretation to help me see if I'm missing something. He seems to be saying that "mainstream science" suppresses C14 data from pre-historic strata which would reveal its young age, and instead use somehow-suspect techniques such as U>Pb instead which give false indications of great age. I understand that C14 can't be used beyond about 70ky as does he, but he maintains that this is a red herring since there is no rock that old and that unspecified researchers have done C14 dating on 'ancient' strata in defiance of the Establishment and have gotten young ages. As usual, there are no firm citations offered, just assertions. I suggested that doing a C14 date on really old rock would tend to give you a false young age, but he's not going for this. His objections to the other radiometric techniques are still unknown to me, beyond the fact that they belie his beliefs. Do you know of an effective counter-argument for these absurd claims? I realize there's no closure on an argument that is based on faith vs science, but it seems to be a rather straight-forward issue to put to rest. Thanks RH |
Response | |
From: | Chris Stassen |
Author of: | Isochron Dating |
Response: | The
traditional method of carbon dating involves converting the
sample's carbon into a gas, and then counting the radiation
produced by the gas in order to compute the fraction of
carbon-14. Background radiation will introduce some false
counts into the assessment. A carbon age around 30,000
years -- give or take depending on the size and nature of
the sample -- is expected for a sample which contains no
carbon-14 at all. (FYI: It is possible to get greater
accuracy/range using an atomic mass spectrometer. However,
the traditional method is still often used because it is
sufficient for many cases and less expensive.)
Lacking a specific reference, the "young ages" which your correspondent refers to are most likely that sort of result -- an artifact of the carbon-14 assessment technique. Such results are not taken seriously, because it is understood what they mean: an age out of range. Anyone trying to use such values as "actual ages" is, in my opinion, trying to mislead. One more thing: the less carbon-14 remains, the more susceptible the method is to contamination. A relatively young 1,000-year-old sample contaminated by 1% ancient carbon would give an age about 50 years wrong. A 100,000-year-old sample contaminated by 1% modern carbon would give a result about 65,000 years off (an entirely meaningless young result of about 35,000 years) -- even if it were possible to assess the quantity of carbon-14 without measurement error. |