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What are the empirical data to which evolutionary religions submit?
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Thank God For Evolution, Facts Are God’s Native Tongue: “Evolutionary religion’s alternative to reliance on ancient scriptures is empirical data. In a way, the data are our scriptures— and to these we submit”.
71 Responses
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Luke’s more of a scientist than I am. Personally, once there seems to be agreement amongst 2/3 of the credentialed scientists in an area of expertise, I submit to those findings, at least until new findings come along.
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Luke, the data are our scriptures… and the fact that carbon-14 is found in coal is a clue to the earth’s age. Please read:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html
Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits, Kathleen Hunt
The Problem: Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), a sensitive radiometric dating technique, is in some cases finding trace amounts of radioactive carbon-14 in coal deposits, amounts that seem to indicate an age of around 40,000 years. Though this result is still too old to fit into any young-earth creationist chronology, it would also seem to represent a problem for the established geologic timescale, as conventional thought holds that coal deposits were largely if not entirely formed during the Carboniferous period approximately 300 million years ago. Since the halflife of carbon-14 is 5,730 years, any that was present in the coal at the time of formation should have long since decayed to stable daughter products. The presence of 14C in coal therefore is an anomaly that requires explanation. -
Loren, I find it difficult to accept a fact just because a lot of scientists agree.
Question: When did the majority of scientists reason that the earth is flat?
Fact: The writing of the book of Job was completed about 1473 B.C.E. Job 26:7 says that the earth “hangs on nothing”.
Fact: The writing of the book of Isaiah was completed about 732 B.C.E. Isaiah 40:22 says the shape of the earth is a circle, or sphere.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_hypothesis
Various cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including ancient Babylon, Egypt, pre-Classical Greece and pre-17th century China. The modern belief that especially medieval Christianity believed in a flat earth has been referred to as The Myth of the Flat Earth.1 In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history.2 Recent scholarship finds that since about the 3rd century BCE, virtually no educated person in Western civilization has believed in a flat Earth.
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Well, OK, my approach isn’t full-proof, but do you have an alternative approach to understanding reality which has a better track record?
Usually when scientists discover their errors, it’s not the case that the previous understanding was completely wrong, it just wasn’t the complete picture. For example, Newton’s laws of physics were and are good enough to live by, but they are really only low-velocity approximations of the laws of physics given by Einstein. It doesn’t mean that Newton was wrong, he just wasn’t as accurate as Einstein. That inaccuracy doesn’t make much difference until you start doing things at a very small scale or at a very high velocity.
I’m sure there are some examples of where the majority of scientists were dead wrong about something (the practice of blood-letting to cure disease comes to mind), but I bet there are fewer examples of that than there are for any other group of advisors throughout history.
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Drat! I forgot that double angle brackets don’t seem to work on this web site. At the beginning of my previous post, I was trying to quote Charles’ statement that he made before:
“I find it difficult to accept a fact just because a lot of scientists agree.”
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Loren, you said, “I’m sure there are some examples of where the majority of scientists were dead wrong”. The Tree of Life is an example.
How Many Kinds Are There?
As of April 2007, the American Kennel Club recognizes 157 breeds of dogs. I can’t prove it, but I truly believe that these breeds have evolved from one kind of animal—- canis lupus familiaris—- a domesticated subspecies of the gray wolf, a member of the canidae family of the order carnivora. But I can find no proof that the gray wolf and some other kind of animal have a common ancestor.How many kinds of animals are there? The Tree of Life was supposed to put together the puzzle of evolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(science) .
“Charles Darwin believed that phylogeny, the ascent of all species through time, was expressible as a metaphor he termed the Tree of Life. The modern development of this idea is called the Phylogenetic tree”.
As of May 21, 2009, “the view is now emerging that the tree of life gives an incomplete picture of life’s evolution. It was a useful tool in understanding the basic processes of evolution but cannot explain the full complexity of the situation”.
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Hi Charles,
I read the article you referred to about C-14. It is interesting to think that everything is so varied and subject to such different conditions however the errors they are referring to would lead to errors of specificity, not errors of long term trends. It needs to be remembered by any scientist who is using C-14 data in specific way. Personally I have never needed to know with precision of how old a fossil was, generally the right answer is enough to be useful and for me to know that for example sugar and high fructose corn syrup were not a large portion of the diet of any ancestor of ours, and consuming it in large quantities will cause problems as our the vast majority of the human genome is not adapted to it.
One of the things we now know about genes is that they are not destiny, they are on/off switches. So there is a difference in a genetic change in a species(an entirely new trait), and phenotopic change(a new combination of prior traits, or a switch turned on that wasn’t before). The problem with doing a phylogenetic tree is that it is based on sight, which does not see the underlying drivers and changes, it merely sees the cosmetic ones.
DNA analysis does provide direct and specific evidence of common ancestry of species and for the best accumulation of the knowledge we have I refer you to Richard Dawkins “The Ancestors Tale”. I suspect that the answer to your riddle of the grey wolf would best be answered there.
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Charles said “‘I’m sure there are some examples of where the majority of scientists were dead wrong’. The Tree of Life is an example.”
Actually, I don’t think it is. Instead, it’s a perfect example of when scientists refined a previous understanding to make it even more accurate. That’s why I try to live my life by current scientific understanding. I’m sure it’s not perfect, but it’s usually closer to the truth than anything else out there.
If God doesn’t speak through a super-majority of scientists, then through whom does God speak? Or do we just accept the fact that God can’t yet speak to us, and make decisions on our gut? Problem is, making decisions on our gut feeling is almost certainly not accurate:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/welcome.html
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Loren,
I thank you for sharing your opinions. I am quoting the facts reported. Please find for us The Tree of Life. I want to learn the emperical data about the picture of life’s evolution. Please give the URL so that I can read it for myself.I am stumped. The majority of the scientists gave up on The Tree of Life. Where do we go from here? Nowhere can I find any emperical data showing that one kind of animal evolved into another kind of animal.
If you can find the data, please share it with us. I am on your side… looking for answers. However, my faith is not strong enough to be a believer in evolution without emperical data.
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Wikipedia: “A leap of faith, in its most commonly used meaning, is the act of believing in something without, or in spite of, available empirical evidence. It is an act commonly associated with religious belief …”
Since it would be paradoxical to use the term “leap of faith” in the case of science, let’s try “leap of trust.” It may take a leap of trust that the scientific method will eventually find the answers.
TGFE page 82: “Well over 95 percent of the scientists of the world now agree on the fact of evolution.”
For many it’s no problem to make a leap of trust when that many scientists agree on something. For those who are not convinced, I like Michael’s take from page 7: “I commend them for their resistance. It compels those of us who do embrace evolution to find ever more sacred ways of communicating our conviction.”
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I had been trying to think of examples where a whole scientific community got behind something that wasn’t very credible and it didn’t take me long. If anyone remembers the famous “hockey stick” graph that Al Gore(who is not a scientist) used on his round the world journey to discuss climate change here is a discussion of its formation, authorship, and how authors used statistically questionable methods in its formation.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html#comments
It still goes on to this day and we do need to worry about whether we can trust scientists.
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Luke,
Thank you for your “hockey stick” article. This is exactly what we need in this discussion… empirical data.As you so wisely pointed out, sometimes it seems that some scientists are more interested in personal gain and less interested in the facts.
Competition seems to mean that winning an argument somehow makes that scientist superior to others… and second place means first looser.
I hope that those who read and participate in this discussion will accept the fact that there will be no winner nor loser here.
“Evolutionary religion’s alternative to reliance on ancient scriptures is empirical data. In a way, the data are our scriptures— and to these we submit”. TGFE page 77.
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Charles,
I have studied much more bad science. You said. “some scientists are more interested in personal gain and less interested in the facts.”
My favorite researcher bias came from Gary Taubes book “Good Calories, Bad Calories.”
The researchers at the University of Minnesota were testing Ancel Keys low fat, high card, low cholesterol diet in a big massive study that they were going to publish. This was in the mid 1990’s. Taubes while researching his book went to the U of M and asked them why they never published the results of the study. Their answer; “We didn’t like the results that we were getting.”
I respect your skepticism of science, although i think what you should skeptical about is theories about evolution. Evolution as a process and explanatory driver of the way we and the earth came to be are much different than ideas that people have about individual aspects of that process. I still am skeptical of the latter while no doubt in my mind exist for the first.
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Luke,
Thank you for your interest in this discussion and your valuable comments.It is difficult for me to be skeptical about theories about evolution. They are simply opinions. But TGFE has said that evolution is a FACT. Facts Are God’s Native Tongue: “Evolutionary religion’s alternative to reliance on ancient scriptures is empirical data. In a way, the data are our scriptures— and to these we submit”.
However, I cannot find ANY empirical data about evolution.
Evolution theory seems to be divided into:
1. What happened between the Big Bang and up to the formation of a lifeless earth?
2. What happened to make life appear?
3. How did some kinds of life evolve to become different from their ancestors?Can you or anyone reading this discussion find any empirical data to support any part of evolution?
There is a 95% consensus among scientists. With WHAT do they agree?
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Charles,
You said:“Evolutionary religion’s alternative to reliance on ancient scriptures is empirical data. In a way, the data are our scriptures— and to these we submit”.
However, I cannot find ANY empirical data about evolution.”
There is much data about evolution although it comes in different forms. The most pertinent one is the fossil record.
We find fossils preserved in various types of rocks and sediment. Scientists use what we know about geology and carbon dating, as well as a few other methods to date these fossils. As you pointed out before carbon-14 in coal needs to be explained, but this doesn’t change the fact that the fossils are there. These preserved forms are a type of evolutionary memory. Using theories about evolution we speculate about what they were like and where they fit in the timeline. Scientists like Darwin made predictions of transitionary forms. Neil Shubin in his excellent book “Your Inner Fish” found such a fossil called Tiktallik. He also describes how by understanding that we evolved from a common ancestor, we can learn about our own anatomy by studying that of a shark.
In addition we find animal that posess what are called vestigial structures. These are structures that are not fully functional or have no current use at all. The human appendix is one example, as well as the teeth grown in baleen whale embyos. A human embryo initially grows webbing in between its fingers, much like a duck. These cells then undergo programmed cell death before a human baby is born. These examples all contribute to evidence of an evolved creature vs. a created one.
We also have molecular evidence. We can now sequence our own genomes as Craig Venter did. We can compare the codes to those of other species and see they are all similar, and there is a trend of more similar forms having similar DNA sequences. Humans and chimpanzees share 98% of their DNA.
“There is a 95% consensus among scientists. With WHAT do they agree?”
There are much disputed aspects about theories of evolution, although 95% of the world’s scientists would not dispute that Tiktallik evolved from something else and that forms change via DNA. This is what Michael was referring to in his book as the facts of evolution. There might be some disagreement as to where it falls in the timeline or what it did and ate, which are the theories about evolution. I highly recommend the book “What Evolution Is” by Ernst Mayr. It covers much of the same territory that I wrote about in a more detail. -
Luke,
Thank you for your very well written explanations. Ernst Mayr was a great story teller and when his story seemed better than that of J.B.S. Haldane, in 1959 he called the ideas of Haldane “beanbag genetics”. When empirical data are missing, the story teller sometimes will ridicule the opponent. Thank you for not using that strategy here. Story tellers who have only a “few dots on the page” must somehow connect those dots to make a picture.Please allow me to use your words to paint a picture. You said, “There is much data about evolution although it comes in different forms. The most pertinent one is the fossil record. We find fossils preserved in various types of rocks and sediment. Scientists use what we know about geology and carbon dating, as well as a few other methods to date these fossils.
Please allow me to paint another picture. We find a fossil that is 50 million years old. How do we know the age of the fossil?
1.We use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_dating to calculate the age of the rock formation.
2.Where can I find the empirical data for each fossil find?
3.This all makes a great story: we know the age of the fossil because it is found surrounded by 50 million year old rocks.
4.And we know the age of the rocks because they have a 50 million year old fossil buried among them.Your picture, “As you pointed out before carbon-14 in coal needs to be explained, but this doesn’t change the fact that the fossils are there”.
Another picture… Whenever the 95% consensus scientists find a contradiction in the empirical data, they disregard the empirical data. Is that why we are not finding the empirical data?
Your picture, “These preserved forms are a type of evolutionary memory. Using theories about evolution we speculate about what they were like and where they fit in the time line”.
Another picture… If we could see the empirical data, we would not have to speculate so much.
Your picture, “Scientists like Darwin made predictions of transitionary forms. Neil Shubin in his excellent book “Your Inner Fish” found such a fossil called Tiktallik. He also describes how by understanding that we evolved from a common ancestor, we can learn about our own anatomy by studying that of a shark.
Another picture, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik .
1.How do we know that Tiktaalik lived approximately 375 million years ago?
2.How do we know that Panderichthys lived 380 million years ago?
3.How do we know that tetrapods Acanthostega and Ichthyostega lived 365 million years ago?
4.Is it possible that each of these kinds gave birth only to its own kind?
5.Is it possible that each had similar DNA and RNA, but were not related in any way?Your picture, “In addition we find animals that posses what are called vestigial structures. These are structures that are not fully functional or have no current use at all. The human appendix is one example, as well as the teeth grown in baleen whale embyos. A human embryo initially grows webbing in between its fingers, much like a duck. These cells then undergo programmed cell death before a human baby is born. These examples all contribute to evidence of an evolved creature vs. a created one.
Another picture, the Universe created DNA and RNA and named each organism by its genome. After mankind was created, the Universe continued creating every wild beast of the field and every flying creature of the heavens, and the Universe showed them to mankind to see what he would call each one; and whatever mankind would call it, that was its name.
1.Mankind did not know that there were amino acids to be named and not a clue about DNA and RNA.
2.Mankind did not know that Adenine-Thymine and Guanine-Cytosine combinations were essential to DNA and RNA helical structure.
3.Mankind was not yet capable of assigning a letter of the alphabet to each amino acid of the DNA and the RNA molecules.
4.Instead of trying to pronounce the letters of each genome… a genetic sequence of hundreds of thousand of letters such as “AAAGTCTGAC… etc., mankind said, “Tiktaalik”.
5.A similar story is found in Genesis 2: 19-20.Your picture, “We also have molecular evidence. We can now sequence our own genomes as Craig Venter did. We can compare the codes to those of other species and see they are all similar, and there is a trend of more similar forms having similar DNA sequences. Humans and chimpanzees share 98% of their DNA.
Another picture, the Universe used DNA and RNA in all life.
1.There are only 4 amino acids used… the AT combination or the GC combination.
2.It seems reasonable that all life should be similar.
3.If a person were given an unlimited quantity of Lego blocks and asked to construct anything imaginable, I believe that any reasonable person would see similarity in the construction.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA . Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints or a recipe, or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information.Your picture, “There are much disputed aspects about theories of evolution, although 95% of the world’s scientists would not dispute that Tiktallik evolved from something else and that forms change via DNA.
Another picture, 95% of the world’s scientists would not dispute that Tiktaalik evolved, but why do they accept that picture when there is NO EMPIRICAL DATA?
The book, Thank God for Evolution is not a science textbook. The Bible is not a science textbook. Neither Michael’s book nor the 66 books of the Bible have any empirical data to make their stories more believable.
Ernst Mayr was a good story teller. Michael Dowd is a great story teller. Thank God for Evolution is a book by Michael Dowd that argues for a marriage of science and religion within an evolutionary paradigm. It is endorsed by five Nobel Laureates: Craig Mello, John C. Mather, Thomas C Schelling, Frank Wilczek and Lee Hartwell. It was published by Council Oak Books in November 2006 and acquired in spring 2007 by Viking Penguin for $750,000. In the book and in his sermons, Dowd presents evolution as a sacred epic of emerging complexity that can be seen as “14 billion years of grace.” -
Charles,
Sorry to take a while to get back. You said:
“Please allow me to paint another picture. We find a fossil that is 50 million years old. How do we know the age of the fossil?
1.We use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_dating to calculate the age of the rock formation.
2.Where can I find the empirical data for each fossil find?
3.This all makes a great story: we know the age of the fossil because it is found surrounded by 50 million year old rocks.
4.And we know the age of the rocks because they have a 50 million year old fossil buried among them.Charles,
I have seen round trip fallacy before, and this is not one of them, we date them via the independent methods of geology and carbon dating. I am not a geology expert(perhaps Michael or Connie knows one??) that can come one and tell us about geologic dating. There is a brief introduction to it in Neil Shubin’s book about Tiktaalik. For Neil Shubin’s empirical data I would read his book and go to the University of Chicago where he teaches anatomy.
1.How do we know that Tiktaalik lived approximately 375 million years ago?
2.How do we know that Panderichthys lived 380 million years ago?
3.How do we know that tetrapods Acanthostega and Ichthyostega lived 365 million years ago?All these we know by the independent methods of geology and radioactive dating. The first is not specific and if we were wrong about the geologic formations we would find for example a mammal fossil in a layer of rock that we “thought” was a much older. This has never happened yet, but if it did we would certainly have to revise our theories.
1.Mankind did not know that there were amino acids to be named and not a clue about DNA and RNA.
2.Mankind did not know that Adenine-Thymine and Guanine-Cytosine combinations were essential to DNA and RNA helical structure.
3.Mankind was not yet capable of assigning a letter of the alphabet to each amino acid of the DNA and the RNA molecules.
4.Instead of trying to pronounce the letters of each genome… a genetic sequence of hundreds of thousand of letters such as “AAAGTCTGAC… etc., mankind said, “Tiktaalik”.
5.A similar story is found in Genesis 2: 19-20.If this was true firstly we would not find vestigial structures. Also your explanation does gives no explanation of why every animal, humans included, produces more cells than are used, and then directs some undergo programmed cell death. In a designed for a specific purpose creature, and a created environment this would be a huge waste of energy.
1.There are only 4 amino acids used… the AT combination or the GC combination.
2.It seems reasonable that all life should be similar.
3.If a person were given an unlimited quantity of Lego blocks and asked to construct anything imaginable, I believe that any reasonable person would see similarity in the construction.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA . Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints or a recipe, or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information.On your final points, the fact that we descend from common ancestors is extremely important and well documented with empirical evidence. I would read Ernst Mayr’s books about the subject. He spent years working on ideas of speciation studying bird populations on the island of New Guinea.
These ideas are critical. Neil Shubin used evolutionary reasoning to find Tiktallik(along with a little luck). Loren Cordain(Paleo Diet) and Arthur DeVany(Evolutionary Fitness) are applying evolutionary reasoning to the benefit of our own health. These two men both live in data(population studies ) and even more so than data, results where people live healthier lives. You can read Loren’s book or website(www.paleodiet.com)and Art’s website(www.evolutionaryfitness.com) for their empirical data. When we understand that we evolved from a process, we begin to see some of the mistakes that we were making. If you bring yourself to so much doubt that you do not take advantage of the usefulness of evolutionary logic and reasoning, you are making an alternative error of doubting too much.
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Quick note/edit: Art’s site is www.arthurdevany.com not www.evolutinaryfitness.com
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Luke,
This is a summary from several different Internet sites:How to date a fossil (without spending a fortune for dinner and flowers)
http://snakefly.tripod.com/Date.html
Dating Sedimentary Rock
http://science.howstuffworks.com/dinosaur-bone-age1.htm
Determining Age of Rocks and Fossils.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/McKinney.htmlThere are 23 articles you can read at: http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=home&action=submitsearch&f_context_any=any&f_search_type=homepage&f_keyword_any=isotope+dating
http://www.icr.org/article/andesite-flows-mt-ngauruhoe-radioisotope-dating/1.There are four standards necessary for elements to be useful in radiometric dating.
1.1 The numbers of parent atoms and daughter atoms must be measurable.
1.2 The parent element must decay rapidly enough to produce measurable amounts of the daughter element, but measurable amounts of the parent element must also be present in the sample.
1.3 Little or no daughter element must have been present in the sample when it was formed.
1.4 The sample used must have been chemically isolated from outside chemical changes.2. Radioisotope dating cannot be used directly on fossils since they don’t contain the unstable radioactive isotopes used in the dating process. To determine a fossil’s age, igneous layers (volcanic rock) beneath the fossil (predating the fossil) and above it (representing a time after the dinosaur’s existence) are dated, resulting in a time-range for the dinosaur’s life. Thus, dinosaurs are dated with respect to volcanic eruptions.
3. These articles show that “the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental to their geochemistry, characteristic of their origin and history rather than necessarily providing valid conventional “ages.”
Please remember what is stated in TGFE:
Facts Are God’s Native Tongue: “Evolutionary religion’s alternative to reliance on ancient scriptures is empirical data. In a way, the data are our scriptures— and to these we submit”.Ancient scriptures are enough information on this subject for some… but not for me. I want to know more or at least have some reasonable idea about how things are now and how they came to be this way.
Each of us is free to believe whatever we wish. However, as of this date I am still unable to find any empirical data to support the theory of evolution.
It is a great theory. It should be studied in schools. As time goes by, maybe there will be some empirical data to support it.
I will continue my research and I will gladly report any empirical data that I find.
Hello Charles,
While I can not speak for others, personally I submit to the Fossil record, mathematical analysis(i.e. carbon dating) for evidence of the evolutionary timeline. This is a continually updating story and I continually recognize new understandings and reject old dichotomies with new evidence. For instance this http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090519-missing-link-found.html is a good example.
As an EFer(Evolutinoary Fitness, Paleo Diet), which is someone who bases what they eat and their activity patterns on the ideas of evolution I submit to the “data” of the response of my own body to what we know about where we came from. Currently I rely on the work of Loren Cordain and Arthur DeVany but there will be others, and I am certain there will be areas where they and I err.
I do not necessarily submit to every study that calls itself science. There is plenty of science that is marred by bias and whose practitioners are more religious than the people they say are religious. One main one is the confirmation bias, that is people looking to confirm their own idea, not prove it wrong. So if I see this in a scientific work, I do not submit to it, despite the fact that it may have data to back it up.