Educate your YEC: Evolutionism IS falsifiable

Originally posted by lemon lime
[b]... that particular abiogenesis hypothesis.

I'm trying to imagine an abiogenesis hypothesis that is somehow different from life spontaneously arising through strictly natural forces.

Aliens seeding the planet doesn't work, because either the aliens themselves must have evolved or a previous race of aliens seeded their planet. Go back far enough a ...[text shortened]... ontemplate on life, and ponder the question as to where they all came from, and stuff like that.

An amusing read. Thank you for the entertainment. Not being too familiar with the available abiogenesis hypotheses, I can think of four possibilites from the top of my head:

1. Life began earlier than we know (which is likely since it wouldn't be easily preserved in the fossil record), and it began in a geographical region we have yet to discover, or
2. Life began so early, that the evidence was on a tectonic plate that's long since been pushed underneath another, and melted, or
3. The amino acid remains you talk about was actually absorbed by the first forms of life and chemically altered so as not to leave massive nitrogen remains, or
4. Life began on another planet, where the evidence for early life still exists, and it spread to earth through some unknown means (which would include the possibility of an alien intellect)

As unlikely as the last one seems, it's still more likely to be true than that there's a matterless superintellect thinking life into existence out of absolutely nothing, in my opinion. Remember, the nothing we talk about here is not the Krauss form of nothing, but the philosophical form of literal nothing, which is an incredibly absurd form of nothing, where something like a god mind can exist in a literal nothing form. See the problem?

But we've digressed from the topic. The topic is not "this or that abiogenesis hypothesis is falsfiable" (which of course they may not be if the evidence is long gone - hence hypotheses), but "evolution is falsifiable" (which of course it is). You have yet to explain how this is not so.

Try to focus less on what preceeded evolution, and more on the actual theory of evolution, is what I'm saying.

Originally posted by C Hess
An amusing read. Thank you for the entertainment. Not being too familiar with the available abiogenesis hypotheses, I can think of four possibilites from the top of my head:

1. Life began earlier than we know (which is likely since it wouldn't be easily preserved in the fossil record), and it began in a geographical region we have yet to discover, or
2. L ...[text shortened]... ess on what preceeded evolution, and more on the actual theory of evolution, is what I'm saying.

"evolution is falsifiable" (which of course it is). You have yet to explain how this is not so.

Where did you get the idea that I thought evolution is not falsifiable?

Originally posted by lemon lime
Yes, but this also brings up a new problem to consider. The dinos must have been quickly covered over. Something like sediment from a world wide flood, that could quickly cover the bodies...

No, no, no, come back, don't go there. You were doing so fine. You said it could possibly survive for a few hundred years. Well, that's more than enough, if the conditions are right for the fossilisation process to kick in. Otherwise, the entire organism (skeleton and all) would have dissolved.

What you can imagine is really not that important. Evidence are. We have a fossil, so obviously the conditions were right. We have soft tissue with high iron concentration, so obviously those conditions were also right. We know that the tissue in question can survive intact as long as it's not exposed to the atmosphere, and it wasn't until we dug it up.

How long can such tissue survive? Well, obviously a very long time, so whether or not you can imagine millions of years, is really a moot point.

Originally posted by lemon lime
[b]"evolution is falsifiable" (which of course it is). You have yet to explain how this is not so.

Where did you get the idea that I thought evolution is not falsifiable?

Well, that is the whole point of this thread. If you have no problem with that, then why are we even talking about it? 🙄

Originally posted by C Hess
Well, that is the whole point of this thread. If you have no problem with that, then why are we even talking about it? 🙄

The problem is there is no way to tell the age of the dinosaurs. It is just guessing and as I said before that is not science. 😏

Originally posted by C Hess
An amusing read. Thank you for the entertainment. Not being too familiar with the available abiogenesis hypotheses, I can think of four possibilites from the top of my head:

1. Life began earlier than we know (which is likely since it wouldn't be easily preserved in the fossil record), and it began in a geographical region we have yet to discover, or
2. L ...[text shortened]... ess on what preceeded evolution, and more on the actual theory of evolution, is what I'm saying.

As unlikely as the last one seems, it's still more likely to be true than that there's a matterless superintellect thinking life into existence out of absolutely nothing, in my opinion. Remember, the nothing we talk about here is not the Krauss form of nothing, but the philosophical form of literal nothing, which is an incredibly absurd form of nothing, where something like a god mind can exist in a literal nothing form. See the problem?

The only problem I see here is you are apparently equating God with the creation. In other words, you assume he consists at least in part of the same material he caused to come into existence. The nothing everyone refers to is a complete lack of any physical matter or energy, but this doesn't preclude the existence of something that may not be comprised of that same physical reality.

We are made up of components of this physical reality, and are a part of it and interact within it, but this does not logically preclude something that may be self-existent apart from this physical reality. We are familiar with this reality and deal with it on a daily basis and are a part of it. And we are inherently limited as far as being able to perceive anything that isn't made up of or is a part of the reality we are naturally able to perceive.

Originally posted by RJHinds
The problem is there is no way to tell the age of the dinosaurs. It is just guessing and as I said before that is not science. 😏

There are several ways we can tell the age of the dinosaurs. But even if this was before radiometric dating had been discovered, we can easily see that dinosaurs lived long before humans, from looking at the chronological order of fossils, and knowledge that it takes a very long time for fossils and strata to form. What you wish were big problems for the theory of evolution is actually not even that relevant, Don Quixote.

Originally posted by C Hess
There are several ways we can tell the age of the dinosaurs. But even if this was before radiometric dating had been discovered, we can easily see that dinosaurs lived long before humans, from looking at the chronological order of fossils, and knowledge that it takes a very long time for fossils and strata to form. What you wish were big problems for the theory of evolution is actually not even that relevant, Don Quixote.

There is a lot of evidence that dinosaurs lived with humans.

Originally posted by C Hess
Well, that is the whole point of this thread. If you have no problem with that, then why are we even talking about it? 🙄

Oh, come on! So let me get this straight, you're telling me the point of this thread is to foist a straw man argument on creationists by telling them they say evolution is not falsifiable?

What a stupid waste of intellectual capital! It didn't occur to me anyone here would try pulling a cheap trick like that.

Originally posted by lemon lime
Oh, come on! So let me get this straight, you're telling me the point of this thread is to foist a straw man argument on creationists by telling them they say evolution is not falsifiable?

What a stupid waste of intellectual capital! It didn't occur to me anyone here would try pulling a cheap trick like that.

Are you upset? 😕

Anyway, the point of the thread (I suppose) is to make clear that evolutionary theory is falsifiable, in order to establish that it's not (as many YEC:ers believe) a faith-based proposition. In the larger scheme of things, Zahlanzi means to start a number of threads like this, discussing various aspects of evolution, for the purpose of educating YEC:ers out of their silly 6000 year old earth beliefs.

I think. Though I can't speak for Zahlanzi, of course.

Originally posted by RJHinds
There is a lot of evidence that dinosaurs lived with humans.

Oh, really? I'll probably regret asking, but give me one irrefutable piece of evidence that dinosaurs and man once shared the earth.

Originally posted by C Hess
No, no, no, come back, don't go there. You were doing so fine. You said it could possibly survive for a few hundred years. Well, that's more than enough, if the conditions are right for the fossilisation process to kick in. Otherwise, the entire organism (skeleton and all) would have dissolved.

What you can imagine is really not that important. Evidence ar ...[text shortened]... y a very long time, so whether or not you can imagine millions of years, is really a moot point.

The tissue wasn't fossilized. It couldn't have been because it was described as soft tissue.

The rest of your message is a classic example of circular reasoning. If we say something is millions of years old, and then we see something we shouldn't expect to see after millions of years, then what we are seeing has survived for millions of years because the object we found it in is millions of years old. So the point really is (as you said) 'moot', as long as neither one of us wanders away from the circle.

Originally posted by C Hess
Are you upset? 😕

Anyway, the point of the thread (I suppose) is to make clear that evolutionary theory is falsifiable, in order to establish that it's not (as many YEC:ers believe) a faith-based proposition. In the larger scheme of things, Zahlanzi means to start a number of threads like this, discussing various aspects of evolution, for the purpose of ed ...[text shortened]... eir silly 6000 year old earth beliefs.

I think. Though I can't speak for Zahlanzi, of course.

I didn't say it doesn't take faith to believe the claims of evolution. 'Falsifiable' and 'faith-based' are not mutually exclusive.

Originally posted by C Hess
Are you upset? 😕

Anyway, the point of the thread (I suppose) is to make clear that evolutionary theory is falsifiable, in order to establish that it's not (as many YEC:ers believe) a faith-based proposition. In the larger scheme of things, Zahlanzi means to start a number of threads like this, discussing various aspects of evolution, for the purpose of ed ...[text shortened]... eir silly 6000 year old earth beliefs.

I think. Though I can't speak for Zahlanzi, of course.

Evolution is both falsifiable and unfalsifiable by man as I have already pointed out. Man can not falsify that evolution might have happened in the distant past because we were not there. But we can infer that it did not happen by various evidence. But it is falsifible by what we can see today and it has been falsified as I have already pointed out. Evolution does not happen today as Richard Dawkins admits.

YouTube

Originally posted by lemon lime
The tissue wasn't fossilized. It couldn't have been because it was described as soft tissue.

The rest of your message is a classic example of circular reasoning. If we say something is millions of years old, and then we see something we shouldn't expect to see after millions of years, then what we are seeing has survived for millions of years because t ...[text shortened]... point really is (as you said) 'moot', as long as neither one of us wanders away from the circle.

It's not circular, because the methods used for dating are independantly verifiable as accurate. We take objects of known ages, use our dating methods on them and confirm that we get the correct results. We then use many different such methods on an object of unknown age, and find that they give the same estimates. We then find soft tissue that we know can't survive millions of years in the open. We note that the tissue was encapsulated in a fossil, which means the conditions for fossilisation were right. We find that the tissue is soaked in iron, which is an excellent preserver of tissue.

Now, what is more likely, that all those tests we've run on the dating methods happens to give correct estimates on objects of known age, yet incorrect estimates on objects of otherwise unknown age, or that the tissue can in fact survive millions of years if shielded from the atmosphere and soaked in iron?