Alate_One
Well-known member
It has been well known that not all diseases are caused by infectious agents for a very long time. That isn't part of the germ theory of disease. Some "serious scientists" might still believe the earth is flat and homeopathy works too. That AIDs causes HIV is not questioned by anyone with any scientific integrity.
You seem to be willing to believe all kinds of fringe "science". Unfortunately the average layperson is ill equipped to distinguish between good science and bad. It's even hard for scientists in other areas of science to distinguish bad science in another field. Your best bet is to go with what the experts say. We all do this in other areas of our lives, I trust my doctor's medical advice and my mechanic's advice on how to fix my car. Why has science become a do-it-yourself field where people feel comfortable picking and choosing whatever "science" they feel most comfortable with? It simply doesn't make any sense.
No. You have a misunderstanding of the scientific method. Not everything CAN be tested with a "closed reproducible experiment". That doesn't make those things untestable or unfalsifiable. The scientific method states things must be testable not that we must be able to observe every aspect in the lab. I fault poor scientific education for making so many people think this is the only way science can work.
All of that said we can certainly do experimental evolution. There are experiments done all the time. The parts of evolution that can be tested on the timescales and conditions that humans can provide have and are being tested constantly. Organisms clearly are capable of change over time and there is no reason to believe there is some magical "wall" that stops evolution at some point.
The real problem is anything that is done in a lab is never enough for committed YECs. The kind of evidence you want is only available from a time machine. If you want to talk about the actual available evidence, I'll be happy to do so.
gain, that's because your understanding of science is incomplete. We can't replicate full scale meteorological phenomena in the lab either, but that doesn't mean there is no field of meteorology. I certainly can't take a hurricane or a tornado into the lab and run tests on it. But we can make predictions about how the phenomena work and test those predictions by taking data in the field.
The point I'm making isn't that anything old is necessarily wrong or bad. There were certainly great men that did amazing things in the past. And the fact they did those things is what allows modern science to go forward. The point is as time goes on, human scientific endeavors have been correcting the mistakes of the past. The level of sophistication of our studies is much higher now, the odds of us missing something huge is relatively low. (Though particle physics may be an exception to that)
All of that said I note you couldn't come up with a THEORY that was overturned. You said they are overturned "all the time". I hear this statement a lot from creationists. It's almost as if they want to disdain the scientific method as never getting anything right.
The concept of energy moving from a warm body to a cold one wasn't wrong, they simply had no clue of the mechanism, which is fairly understandable given their level of instrumentation.
As I said before, I go by "what is the scientific consensus" and "how solid is that consensus", whereas you appear to be going by, "science that reinforces my worldview".
Evolution was contrary to my worldview. I didn't like it. I liked the creationist stories of dinosaurs living with people and all creatures living at the same time. I didn't accept evolution because it was good or easy, I accepted it because the evidence overwhelmed me, and the creationist stories ultimately made no sense in light of the evidence.
And this is the problem, you're not trusting "God's word" you're trusting your reading of it. Genesis was not written to you or I. We may apply it to ourselves but we need to be careful in doing so. It is very easy to rip parts of the Bible out of its proper context and make the scriptures say things that were not fully intended.
I too believe in an omnipotent God. God could have certainly done things differently, and it might have been easier for us if angels walked visibly among us or God had left the perfect signature of an actually 6000 year old earth. But He didn't. It's okay theologically to believe in a 6000 year old earth with animals that were all poofed into existence at once. That is not supported scientifically.
I agree that the supernatural cannot be tested. But the evidence that is in the world is such that were God to have actually miraculously created the earth 6000 years ago, He would have had to actually fabricate evidence. This is because the history of the earth is written in the rocks and in our very DNA. There is no reason for it to be the way it is OTHER than evolution. Appearance of age simply doesn't work on close examination.
God could have made each species totally unique in its DNA (this is physically possible) even accounting for possible necessary similarities. God could have made certain genes of *all* species identical. Either of those possibilities would be a death knell for evolution. But we don't have either of those possibilities. Instead we have an orderly progression of DNA similarities and differences that mirrors phylogenetic trees made from morphological similarities.
There's no reason for humans to have dozens of nonfunctional genes for the sense of smell, and to have those broken genes in the exact same place on the chromosome as other mammals in which those same genes are still functional, like mice and dogs. Or why should we still retain bits of egg yolk genes, if we never had ancestors that laid eggs? These are minor examples, there are plenty of others.
