"We are not in a university science class, where the prof gets to issue theory and ideology as dogma. Nor where the majority of highly educated respectable scientists only believe such and such.”

The whole point of a university education is to challenge young minds, not to indoctrinate them. When a professor states something as dogma, the correct response is to refute (or possibly support) her position using outside sources and/or direct experimentation. “See for yourself” is the battle cry, not “take my word for it”. And I’ve been to science conferences. They don’t all agree, even within one institution.

If Karl had read much actual science at all, he’d notice that all of it uses a “preponderance of words like, theory, infer, perhaps, might be, could be, hopefully, maybe, the chances, could conclude, belief, some doubt, little doubt, logic, reasoning, affirm, and support.” It is the modern popularizations of science where those words are more rare. The distinction was fuzzier 150 years ago when Darwin was persuaded to publish publicly, rather than just to his peers.

Dawkins resorted to the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” not because he has any doubts about evolution, but in answer to “did life necessarily originate on the Earth?” Whether it started, crossing space from another planet, extrasolar clouds, undersea, or from moistened crystals, it still evolved.

btw: E=MC² “bridges the gap” from material to non-material, from fermions to bosons, from object to field. And it was just a conclusion drawn by applying the principle of relative motion to mid-19th century field theory. Read it aloud: Energy is Matter (modified by a constant conversion factor).
And the biggest barrier between life and non-life is that we don’t have a universal definition of the distinction. Draw the line, and then watch as something is observed to cross it. Same goes for “species”.

And, Karl, I for one appreciate your attempt to bring the thread back to topic. I agree with your concluding several ‘graphs.

I’m sorry Dan can not see how I can chose to read both sides of these perspectives and not drop my pretentious ideas. How many books have you read and carefully examined the perspectives of the authors and those who support the author in his endeavors.

We are not in a university science class, where the prof gets to issue theory and ideology as dogma. Nor where the majority of highly educated respectable scientists only believe such and such.

If you really read Darwin close you will notice that he used a preponderance of words like, theory, infer, perhaps, might be, could be, hopefully, maybe, the chances, could conclude, belief, some doubt, little doubt, logic, reasoning, affirm, and support. Darwin stated very often that his work was scientific ideology and theory looking for actual evidence to support the rationality of his ideas.

In all of these years there have been people who are not in agreement with others concerning the status of the evidence for “macro-evolution that could bridge from species to species.

No scientist that I know of can bridge the gap from non-material to material or from non-life to life. Sure there is a constant imaginative stir that is often hailed as the latest and geatest proof yet, but they all seem to morph into another form when the matter is looked inot more closely.

Even Richard Dawkins has to go to an extraterrestrial hypothesis to get to life here because the cambrian explosion causes him fits.

As for the existence of matter itself, that is a taken fundamental aspect of reality for naturalists so they don’t need to question wence it came or wither it goes.

I’m sorry I do not pay homage to the ideology of Darwin the great buried in Westminster Cathedral (Abbey) He was placed there along side many devout men of faith. He was a man of faith, faith in naturalism to explain what he thought was a more scientifically respectable point of view and philosophical perspective on origins.

I’m sure Hutton and Huxley were glad to see Darwin buried there, and I am as well because it keeps the matter returning to its religious overtones.

Why bury a guy in a place with religious connotations if the things he hoped and believed weren’t of a religious nature?

Would it have been more appropriate to have buried him in a place where church and state were more separated? Not to worry, Darwin lives on in the hearts of those inspired to maintain his memory every year through countless observances.

Who gets the Darwin awards this year?

Jesus’ human father’s name was Joseph not Jesus. If you’re going to laugh at somebody’s similar stories and overtones get the begats right. Ha! Ha! Ha!

My father’s name was Richard, sorry to let you down.

You’ve entered this discussion after either lurking for months or after stumbling across someone who happens to have a much better trust in something that bears serious consideration one way or the other.

I’ve never said my perspective and the Bible’s is entirely scientifically impeccable. You seem to think yours is. Laugh and use ad hominem attacks that your view of rational discussion, but please try to discruss something besides your spoon fed guarded perspective on life that believes the modern world of scientific authority has it all together and so that makes your philosophy on life superior to mine or anyone else who happens to look into matters from more than your perspective.

I don’t look at the Bible through rose colored glasses like you do what the scientists of today tell us.

By the way, what did ever happen to global warming anyway?

Ideally, take some elementary quantum theory, to see the statistical models that prove how isotopes of elements appear within crystals in which they could not possibly have been incorporated through melting and freezing, nor dissolving and re-crystallizing.

….father was a carpenter….

Don’t tell me and his name was Jesus! Ha Ha Ha!

……enrolled in Central Bible College and spent three more years obtaining a B.A. in Christian Education.

You enter further study after being indoctrinated and brainwashed as a child. Seriously, if any of this was true would it be necessary to do that.

Just because you study a book (or should I say books) of fiction put together selectively by highly educated but also ignorant men (partly to establish the divine right of kings to rule and partly to keep people in their place) who lived at a time when to challenge the supremacy of the church could mean execution (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition) you think (hmm maybe you can’t think. god wants followers not thinkers) this gives you an insight.

You could study all the Harry Potter books from cover to cover and believe Harry Potter was real. You would laugh at that but for a fast growing number of people have opened their eyes and minds and have come to realise that your books of religious dogma have no more merit that a Harry Potter book. What is the worlds fastest growing belief system.? It is the one that realises that men create gods and not the other way round.

The game is up my friend and no amounts of telling people that black is white and vice versa can stop the truth from revealing itself and ignorance being banished back to the dark ages where it belongs.

People are attending places of worship less and less and lie about attending too. In the US 40% claim to attend but survey after survey show only 20% do. In the UK less than 6% of the population (mainly over 60) attend church. The better educated a person the LESS likely they are to believe.

Oh yes the true believers like yourself will promote this rubbish emphatically until the day you die. Even though as an educated man you know it is garbage but you have done it too long now to admit it and would rather continue to be a fool than to admit you were one.

I’ve been saying for quite a while that there is no way of telling exactly when, where or how an igneous rock actually formed, this is all assumptions. This even more so applies to supposed metamorphic and sedimantary rocks which obviously haven’t had any of the materials confined in the “bank vault.”

Any materials that were once molten and then solidified have to have assumptions made about where, when or how they arrived in the condition we currently find them.

I have also been saying that soluble radioisotopes have been dispersed into lower and lower concentrations throughout the lithosphere, while the insoluble ones have been dispersed to a much lower degree. Just this fact alone needs to be very seriously considered in any dating technique used by by ratio comparisons.

What are suggesting is comparable to: Bank notes decay slowly in a sealed vault (like a crystalline matrix), and therefore the time since the vault was last sealed can be measured by how badly the notes have yellowed. Now these vaults are always found sealed in petrified bank rubble (igneous rock), usually deep under yet more protective layers (other stone of any and all types). Each of these other layers also have vaults of varying types.

You are suggesting that some process might have later created massive amounts of both fresh banknotes as well as yellowed ones (I’ll grant this), and that these somehow seep through the encrusting layers, through the petrified banks, and on into the vault, and then leaving no trace of themselves in those outer layers, therefore skewing the age calculated.

Right?