Today is the birthday of Charles Darwin. Despite those intellectuals like Sarah Palin who believe that Earth is only a few thousand years old and deny evolution as a “theory,” Darwin continue to rack up proof of his work. With perfect timing for the great man’s 205th, American and European researchers have confirmed the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction during which roughly 75% of the planet’s species were killed, including almost every dinosaur, by an asteroid impact. The result was the evolution of species best suited to deal with the aftermath of the explosion 66 million years ago. Of course, for creationists, the dating of material from 66 million years ago may be rejected as simply biblically inaccurate (if not immoral), but for the rest of us it is an important new development. While Darwin did not know of the asteroid theory or the demise of the dinosaurs, he knew a lot about adaptation and survival of the fittest. Dinosaurs went from being the dominant creatures to the least competitive in the new environment.
The asteroid that hit Chicxulub, Mexico released 420 zettajoules of energy — 100 teratonnes of TNT. The resulting dust cloud blocked out the Sun and triggered the die out — further accelerated by massive global fires. The problem is that previous attempts to date material showed that the asteroid impact occurred up to 300,000 years before the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, scientists decided to return to the site and use more modern equipment. The difference was considerable. The modern equipment reduced the gap to a period of 11,000 years or between 66.03 and 66.04 million years ago. The would make it almost simultaneous with the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.
Those that could adapt then survived. Those who could not died off. Then 205 years ago, a man named Charles Darwin came along and explained it to the rest of us.
Source: Extremetech
Bob Kauten 1, February 13, 2013 at 11:31 pm
The Theory of Evolution …
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The law, the truth, the theory … all illusion.
There is not singular theory for any of that.
A CNN anchor asked Bill Nye The Science Guy if global warming is causing tomorrow’s near miss of the Earth by an asteroid.
The lack of understanding of a lot of science may be because the attitude of a lot of pop scientists and real scientists are strange.
Perhaps ID707 is correct and all scientific papers should be written in the language of the Swedes.
Bands of iron?
Vertical cores showing bands, and what explains that except replenishment ar intervals by volcanic action, which is subsequently eaten and processed producing a non-soluble iron compound.. If memory serves me.
Or are the bands horizontal bands created when the mid-ocean subsurface mount lets new magma emerged and be drawn apart under different magnetic pole positions, and thus showing that the ocean floor is moving.
I will park my truck. Don’t have the energy just now.
The depth of religious stupidity is a bottomless pit (e.g. RightWingLoon). Morons continue making claims that no one believes – not even those who share the claimant’s ignorance and stupidity. I easily found 15-20 sites run by creationist morons (those below, and others) who refute the Lady Whore story.
http://creation.com/did-charles-darwin-recant
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/03/31/darwins-deathbed-conversion-legend
As others have stated, Charles Darwin’s daughter Henrietta Darwin was at his bedside and wrote an account refuting the lies of religious idiots (p. 12, _the christian_, February 23, 1922). How stupid does someone have to be to something instead of checking whether it’s true? Or how dishonest is that person to repeat what is known to be a lie? More often than not, religious morons “think” they are exempt from the “ninth commandment” when promoting their cultism.
This is yet another example of why the religious cannot grasp rational argument, why they cannot grasp how science works, and that it does work.
The Theory of Evolution explains speciation very well. The Theory can be used successfully to predict outcomes. That is, Evolution can be witnessed, and verified. The “Theory” part of the Theory of Evolution means that it’s a scientific body of work, which constantly changes with new evidence.
Not every detail of the distant past can be known, so those details are subject to informed speculation.
As has been pointed out in this thread, “Evolution” has nothing to do with the origin of life. It’s the theory of how life became diverse after its unknown origin. Talking about how life developed from inanimate matter, or talking about the origin of the universe, has nothing to do with Darwin’s theory. Religion, or the existence/non-existence of a deity, also has nothing to do with Darwin’s theory.
As for viruses. Viruses have no metabolism, do not eat, do not divide, and cannot reproduce without existing cellular machinery. That means that living cells had to exist before viruses, so that viruses could commandeer cellular machinery to make more viruses.
“That is why I say Darwinism is a religion to a lot of people” thus proving you don’t truly understand natural selection. It’s not a religion and by your own admission (“They are not attacking Darwin, nor are they saying his ideas about adaptation are invalid to explain what has happened, they are simple saying it is not adequate to explain origins.”) natural selection is a fact. If you doubt a fact? You’re a fool. Darwin’s work isn’t on the origin of life and it never was. It’s about the mechanics of speciation that drive adaptive evolution. It is an observable demonstrable quantifiable and testable fact of nature.A fact, especially one that withstands the scientific method’s interrogation, is a fact, not a belief.
religion /rɪˈlɪdʒ(ə)n/, n.,
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods:
Facts are not beliefs as they are provable by evidence produced by experimentation and observable, ergo they are rooted in the material world, requiring no divine or supernatural agency to explain them thus they are not a religion or a proper foundation for a religion. They can be, however, misunderstood.
As for “It is the search for a valid hypothesis for origins that The Virus First folks, and the Earthwide Genetic Soup (my words, not theirs) folks are after.”? The only correct answer is “Earthwide Genetic Soup”. You can’t make viruses without a minimum of RNA. And where did that RNA come from? The “Earthwide Genetic Soup”. That’s how the timeline works. No RNA (or DNA), no viruses. And how did RNA come about? A complexity threshold was reached (unless you by into the wild and unprovable idea of directed panspermia). Cause always precedes effect unless entropy breaks down and the arrow of time reverses itself.
“And the same goes for the Big Bang theory which begins with an already existing energy source that “exploded.” – Argument by non-sequitur. Also, singularities are by definition incomprehensible because the laws of physics as we know them in this particular universe don’t apply in/at a singularity.
Microbes have been found under about a half mile thick sheet of ice in Antarctica:
(Life Under the Lake Ice).
Gene H. 1, February 13, 2013 at 3:56 pm
“No competent evolutionist will say that this is the way millions of species appeared very quickly at the Cambrian … because it is not a valid hypothesis for that, as Darwin pointed out.”
Except that’s not what Darwin said nor is that the view of competent evolutionary biologists.
On the matter of the Cambrian, Darwin said the rapid speciation was a criticism but not that the theory was invalid because of it primarily because there is a limited supply of evidence for any of the contending theories on causation. Possible causations for the Cambrian explosion include changes in environmental levels of both oxygen and calcium, the evolution of vision, a genetic bottleneck and a resulting robust population and repopulation of previously empty ecological niches and/or a concurrent evolutionary arms race between predator and prey species, a massive increase in the diversity of planktonic life, or simply reaching a complexity threshold. But all of this is based mainly on an incomplete fossil record and chemical signatures remaining in Cambrian rocks. A complexity threshold has strong mathematics in its favor. The only theory thoroughly discredited is a change in orbital dynamics.
And none of that changes that natural selection is the model that best describes the mechanics of adaptive evolution. The precise causation of the Cambrian explosion is unknown due a lack of evidence for any one theory and most likely is a result of a combination of factors. Natural selection, however, is an observable demonstrable quantifiable and testable fact of nature.
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Yes of course there has been discussion of the Cambrian Explosion for decades, some honest, some not.
And it is not yet solved, so neither the honest Darwin nor the honest scientists today would say it has been solved.
In fact, some scientists at Washington University I quoted in a comment just before your comment here, says “Of course, this story has holes you could drive a truck through“, when quoting a typical textbook on the narrative we are discussing.
That is why I say Darwinism is a religion to a lot of people, because like religionists, they force their faith on others, and get into full on bully mode when Darwin is doubted.
“Natural selection” (an incredibly loosey goosey term) is not valid for origins once we get into the Wayback Machine and take a close look at the evidence we have.
It is the search for a valid hypothesis for origins that The Virus First folks, and the Earthwide Genetic Soup (my words, not theirs) folks are after.
They are not attacking Darwin, nor are they saying his ideas about adaptation are invalid to explain what has happened, they are simple saying it is not adequate to explain origins.
And the same goes for the Big Bang theory which begins with an already existing energy source that “exploded.”
The sequence of events following that are not explanations of origins, they are explanations of what happens in a good explosion so long as things coagulate and get together properly.
Darwin had the same idea, that is, he took an already existing realm then explained how it changes over time.
“No competent evolutionist will say that this is the way millions of species appeared very quickly at the Cambrian … because it is not a valid hypothesis for that, as Darwin pointed out.”
Except that’s not what Darwin said nor is that the view of competent evolutionary biologists.
On the matter of the Cambrian, Darwin said the rapid speciation was a criticism but not that the theory was invalid because of it primarily because there is a limited supply of evidence for any of the contending theories on causation. Possible causations for the Cambrian explosion include changes in environmental levels of both oxygen and calcium, the evolution of vision, a genetic bottleneck and a resulting robust population and repopulation of previously empty ecological niches and/or a concurrent evolutionary arms race between predator and prey species, a massive increase in the diversity of planktonic life, or simply reaching a complexity threshold. But all of this is based mainly on an incomplete fossil record and chemical signatures remaining in Cambrian rocks. A complexity threshold has strong mathematics in its favor. The only theory thoroughly discredited is a change in orbital dynamics.
And none of that changes that natural selection is the model that best describes the mechanics of adaptive evolution. The precise causation of the Cambrian explosion is unknown due a lack of evidence for any one theory and most likely is a result of a combination of factors. Natural selection, however, is an observable demonstrable quantifiable and testable fact of nature.
On the rise of oxygen:
Blind Faithiness 1, February 12, 2013 at 5:53 pm
Dredd, speciation is evolution and adaptation. His masterwork is titled “On the Origin of Species,” meaning speaking about speciation via adaptation. No one that is scientifically literate thinks any science or scientist is “infallible.”
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Bron is on the right path. DNA is proven to change by a myriad of methods.
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Origin is not adaptation.
You can’t have adaptation or anything else without first having an origin.
If your hypothesis explains adaptation but does not explain origin it is not “on the origin”, it is “on the adaptation.”
DNA is the slowest:
(My Comment Above). When Darwin mentioned the Cambrian Explosion as a challenge to his hypothesis, he did not even know that genes existed, or that asteroids could cause mass extinctions.
His adaptation hypothesis was original –> descendants –> new species in a very very slow hierarchical structure and process.
No competent evolutionist will say that this is the way millions of species appeared very quickly at the Cambrian … because it is not a valid hypothesis for that, as Darwin pointed out.
Genetically it is far worse for Darwinian adaptation as the explanation of the sudden appearances of so many divergent life forms.
Thus, the microbial hypotheses that attempt to show another mechanism for the two GOE and the Instant Life episodes that intellectually honest folk can’t ignore.
I am not concerned with the intellectually dishonest folk who ignore these indisputable historical events.
To theists I say, Are we part of God and is he united with the universe he created? Or does he stand outside exercising his alleged powers. ? If so, where or on what does he stand.
Religions are ror those who solely desire to have power in the name of their God. BS is all it is. And evil BS besides.
Dredd,
I don’t mind playing launching pad or straight man for you. As in your latest comment.
But want to say that I enjoyed this one:
“Dredd1, February 13, 2013 at 9:24 am
One interesting aspect of the recent asteroid impact science, which JT focuses on in this post, is that Darwin was unaware of it.”=====Dredd
Not understanding “symbolic bla bla” as a message between generations, instead I will add the name of a Swedish geneticist, who now as professor emeritus and for years before that, fascinated all groups at all levels of knowledge.
His name Gunnar Bjurwell. Google him for the swedish replay “som en dans”. Dig the charisma and the command of himself and the situation in the question period.
Here he addresses an elite group and has an official opponent who heckles politely in the question period.
He follows very closely what is happening in the mind research field worldwide. Google gave me nothing in terms of video in English.
Learn Swedish, my suggestion. 🙂
He mentioned at one point that all babies are born with the innate ability to read, do arithmetic and learn a language. Self-evident many would say. But is it proven. He thinks that it is and gave studies and told about them.
Much into fRMI etc which as yet can not follow a moving brain. 🙂
Hubert Cumberdale and RWL,
There are Christians, as well as those of other religions, who consider evolution to not be of the devil:
(Wikipedia). Both religion and science are protected under our laws and I harbor no prejudice against either scientists or religionists.
It is just that those of us who study both realms notice that some scientists and some religionists become overly evangelical or zealous at times and strike out at each other needlessly.
I belong to the “let’s find out everything we can” crowd that sees good ideas and criticisms coming from both science and religion — as well as bad ideas from time to time.
I don’t think that any of us are immune from having bad ideas from time to time.
What we need to zealously avoid is the institutionalization of our bad ideas so that they may fade away and new good ideas may bloom in their place and stead.
idealist707 1, February 13, 2013 at 5:26 am
Dredd,
What did the virus pool feed on? Modern ones like to take over cells and use the factory there. But if virus preceded cells, then tell me how they fed.
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The hypothesis has the notion of a primordial — not soup — but an ocean with less organic composition than the primordial soup hypothesis.
It is a concept of a primordial source that eventually contained The Universal Genome and/or the material with which to construct it.
Microbes, in the form of viroids, prions, phages, and viruses became active enough to spread genetic or pre-genetic material everywhere throughout the environment.
Viruses are very active in that way in today’s world too, having engineered and/ or constructed and/or remodeled about 98% of the human genome.
This hypothesis is a solution to the early mass appearance of multicellular organisms with substantial genetic diversity.
It also explains the later mass appearance called the Cambrian Explosion.
Like Darwin, these biologists who are advancing The Universal Genome hypothesis and/or The Viruses First hypothesis, point out problems with their work — as well as how those problems can be tested:
(Cell Cycle 6:15, 1873-1877, 1 August 2007). These evolutionists are not yet mainstream but they are gathering wind in their sales.
Remember that establishment science has the money and they can control things through various forms of power, so scientists who bring up new ideas have to tread lightly.
One of the major discoveries that we take for granted today (“The Germ Theory of Disease”) cost one scientist his career and his life:
(What Is Pseudo Science?, emphasis in original). The orthodox scientific dogma at the time of Dr. Semmelweis was that “germs” appeared out of nowhere at will and there was nothing that could be done about it.
I don’t expect these Virus First / Universal Genome theorists to be taken out by drones anytime soon, but they do have to proceed in a manner that may require them to duck every once in awhile.
RWL you don’t know the truth. Here is a link, from a Christian site: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/darwin.html
“…they (recantations) were all denied by members of Darwin’s family. Francis Darwin wrote to Thomas Huxley on February 8, 1887, that a report that Charles had renounced evolution on his deathbed was “false and without any kind of foundation,” and in 1917 Francis affirmed that he had “no reason whatever to believe that he [his father] ever altered his agnostic point of view.” Charles’s daughter (Henrietta Litchfield) wrote on page 12 of the London evangelical weekly, The Christian, dated February 23, 1922,
“I was present at his deathbed. Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier… The whole story has no foundation whatever.” [The Darwin Legend] ”
Here’s another link:http://www.equip.org/bible_answers/did-darwin-have-a-deathbed-conversion/
There are lots of them but am only allowed to post 2
leejcaroll,
There are several reasons as to why I came to the conclusion of Charles Darwin being a Christian.
1. Most Christians believe that you cannot lose your salvation, once you profess it. See the following video (one of my favorite pastors):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5HhFqUFFxU
Using your link from christiananswers.net, ‘Charles Darwin was baptized an Anglican and stepped in his mother’s Unitarianism, and he prayed.” Darwin also spent “3 years in theological studies at Christ College, believed that the Bible was the so pure and provided a holy comfort.”
2. Looking at the link that I provided earlier, Darwin’s family denied that a woman by the name Lady Hope ever existed or came to visit Darwin in 1881. In my link and your link, it shows that Darwin did know a Lady Hope, and that she visited him. Here is my question: if you are an evolutionist, then why would you allow Elizabeth Reid Cotton (Lady Hope), who engaged in tent evangelism, to come an meet with you in 1881 (Darwin died in 1882)?
3. There is still no evidence, from Charles Darwin, that he didn’t know a woman named Lady Hope. There is no evidence, from Charles Darwin, that he didn’t meet with and had conversation with a person name Lady Hope. His family is the ones speaking for him (and these are the same family members who say that they never heard of a person named Lady Hope).
As I stated earlier, this debate/discussion has been going on for decades. But if you believe in Christianity (as Darwin did), then you cannot lose your salvation. Therefore, I have concluded that Darwin did die as a Christian.
“Scientist without proper fashion evolution says asteroid will miss us by about a cup of coffee on the fifteenth: -Dredd
What a shame.
Scientist without proper fashion evolution says asteroid will miss us by about a cup of coffee on the fifteenth:
rafflaw/dredd: “rafflaw 1, February 12, 2013 at 12:25 pm
OMG. The bible thumpers will be gnashing their teeth on this latest scientific discovery.
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True dat, but it was quite a scientific peer-reviewed paper thumping episode as well: ”
OMG nothing new under the sun. Still no evidence for evolutionism, while the evidence for a global flood is still screaming out, on some who have deaf ears.
Every time I see someone bring up “scientific peer-reviewed paper” or journal etc… I chuckle. Peer reviewed – who are the peers? More evolutionists? So the likelihood of seeing something contrary to evolutionism or something challenging evolutionism, or the plethora of contradicting evidence for evolutionism seeing any airtime is as likely as Sarah Palin being welcomed with open arms at a Planned Parenthood pro-abortion rally. I put about as much stock in a “peer reviewed” journal, paper, or anything as I would a person that puts a thief in charge of the jewelry store. No credibility whatsoever. Evolutionism is a politically protected sacred cow and there isn’t anyone going to DARE have any evidence to the contrary see the light of day. Why, funding would be lost, and atheists would have to scramble to find another adult fairytale to try an animate.
“Heck, I’d like to see ONE solid piece of evidence for evolution.”
Okay. Here are fifteen pieces: http://www.nature.com/nature/newspdf/evolutiongems.pdf
Many, many more available.
“The rejection of the x-million or x-billion year ago number can be rejected purely on science.”
The rejection of radiometric dating can only be rejected by a distinct ignorance about science, particularly the nature of radioactive decay which is constant, predictable, and measurable by a wide variety of isotopes.
“Now there was a global event that did happen several thousand years ago. Instead of thinking it was some big asteroid, why don’t we look at the evidence. Everywhere we look, high, and low – literally, we find evidence of a global flood.”
Yes. Let’s look at the evidence. Like the huge crater off the coast of Chixalub, Mexico and the KT boundary which is evidence of a global “flood” of ash and debris depositing a large concentration of iridium. Iridium which happens to be fairly common in asteroids but rare on Earth.
The rest of what you say is not science. Closer to gibberish or a fairy tale.
Idealist “Creationists point at the pattern of the seeds in the middle of a sunflower and say God did this.
The obvious answer is that it is part of nature, our universe as we can perceive from here.
The expansion of tree growth by the Fibonacci series is not due to God, but to the connection to the ultimate form of nature, powers, etc. Strings aside!
They wish, the ones who know, to retain power by people bowing at their altars, instead of letting us go to school which instead considers what we can “see” and then contemplate it”
So what you’re doing is unwittingly exchanging God for “nature”, making nature God. Actually the patterns found in nature and even in the universe all point to a Designer. Deliberate patterns that do not happen randomly or over x-billion years. The divine proportion – golden rectangle ratio not only can be found right outside your doorstep, but even in the universe. The divine proportion ratios are recognized across several different religions. So there is obviously something to it, rather than just something that happens to show up in nature.
Thanks for bringing up these wonderful mathematical patterns. That’s something that can’t be explained away by evolutionism, exploding asteroids, or anything Darwin said.