Information and Evolutionary Mechanisms

In post 79, TruthMuse wrote (in part): "Nature typically moves in the opposite direction, so evolution would be an unnatural process, even supernatural, taking in the amount of specific functional complexity it is claimed to have overcome to give us the life we see today."

MindWalk replies: Are you arguing that evolution would violate the second law of thermodynamics?

It's more complex than that; reality cannot be taken piecemeal; you need to take the whole. 

I don't think so. I responded to something said; it may not have been what you were talking about, but you are not the only one writing here.

There is ancient coral whose age has been dated as around 430 million years via radioisotope dating. But maybe you don't trust radioisotope dating. (The exact figures aren't the point; I am using figures from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/fossilized-coral-calendar-changes-leap-day/471180/ )

The age of that same ancient coral has been dated as around 430 million years by physics, too. Physicists, who know a little something about rotational dynamics, know that the Earth's rotation is slowing down, and as it does, it transfers rotational energy to the Moon, which ends up reducing the number of days in a year. 430 million years ago, there were about 420 days in a year. Trees lay down rings by which their ages can be known. Coral, it turns out, lay down something similar, in bands, but daily, and in such a way that you can tell how many days there were in a year when the coral was alive. The same fossil coral that is radiometrically dated at 430 million years of age has bands showing that there were 420 days in a year when it grew, so that physics says it must be 430 million years old. 

It runs in my mind that there was a third dating method--something to do with mineral sedimentation--that yielded an age consistent with the other two methods, but a quick search isn't turning it up.

The point is that when scientists arrive at the conclusion that the Earth is old, they don't do so on the basis of a single, fragile dating method, so that a single little error would upset the whole applecart. They use multiple methods which all give the same result, namely, that the Earth is old. 

In order for scientists simply to be looking at the evidence and drawing the wrong conclusion, they'd have to be doing so in various ways. And that's implausible unless scientists are just stupid--and they're not.

Evolutionary scientists use faulty dating methods. That has been proven over and over.

Waiting for you to prove it

Yeah, and exactly how does one prove something that measures time in millions or billions of years wrong? Do we get a Doctor Who TARDIS, build our very one time machine like the one based on H.G. Wells novel? Yeah, we are better off looking at what is in front of us and seeing if what is being suggested as could have taken place in the past is remotely possible, if not all the processes where someone suggests time could give us answers is nothing but a bogus cop-out. Suggesting someone disprove what cannot be falsified wrong is a bit pathetic.

Evolution deniers make faulty claims like this (both sentences) all the time.

The answer is by extrapolating what we observe.  The assumption that the laws of physics have remained the same over geological time scales and across space is highly consistent with the body of observation. This is an example of starting with a hypothesis - physics is universal - and then testing that hypothesis with data from a wide range of sources (including observations from far away, deep in the history of the Universe).

Facts such as the rate of decay of specific isotopes are easily extrapolated to long time scales (from historical scales right up to billions of years).

Looking at what's in front of us?  You won't even do that.  You can't even acknowledge the observational fact that eukaryotic cells like plant cells contain bacterial DNA.  Cyanobacteria for chloroplasts and alpha-proteobacteria for mitochondria.  Again, I can't take you seriously.  It's a joke.  

The trouble again distance and rates don't mean that what we are viewing was always there doing what we are seeing at the moment. We do not know the conditions the universe was in when it first began, we also don't know all of the possible variables that could alter what it is we are looking at overtime.

I tell you what, you look at, study, concern yourself with the things that interest you, and I will not call you and joke. Have a nice day.

I did not call you a joke.  I said it's a joke.   It's a joke that you would try to lecture and educate an expert in their field and the inconsistency where you complain that people aren't using logic and reason but then you refuse to practice what you preach.  Perhaps "joke" is not the correct word to use.   My apologies if that was offensive.  I'm not quite sure what the correct word to use is.  I'm in disbelief over it.  Perhaps, "incredulous" is better.  I would never think of lecturing you about your area of expertise in programming and computing.  That would be presumptous of me.  I would never think of doing that.  I couldn't imagine it.  So I'm in disbelief over the fact that you would do so.

You know what happened millions/billions of years ago, this isn't a matter of belief, it is a fact, and we know this because facts don't change with new information they are confirmed, and there is no way you could be wrong about the distant past? Did the universe start with a singularity or was it some other way? Am I to assume that you are above questioning? I should just keep my mouth shut and accept everything that comes out of your mouth?

I don't know why you wouldn't question me on anything I say about programming and computing, I can be wrong about that as anyone else can be in any field.

It's one thing to disagree, it's another thing entirely to misrepresent.  We were talking about paleontology, not the origin of the universe.  And you didn't simply question, you made a pronouncement as if it were fact about my field claiming it is "pure conjecture" and "you might as well be a witch doctor" and the "methods are faulty" when you literally have no idea what you're talking about.  

You are essentially demanding that we show you all of the physics leading up to our trusting of radiometric dating before you will accept it. But there's a lot, in great detail, way too much to display here. And some of it requires mathematics--but physicists have indeed looked at the detail, over years--that's what physicists do, after all--and have indeed performed the necessary mathematics. If you're really curious about it, go look up the evidence for radiometric dating's trustworthiness.

You're allowed to cite a source.

I rather suspect that you have in mind instances in which a particular form of dating has been shown, under certain circumstances, to be unreliable--something of which scientists doing the dating are well aware, so that they simply do not use that form of dating under those circumstances. Scientists are smarter than you seem to think.

I'm more than happy to stand corrected where I'm wrong and it is shown to me that I am, I've admitted mistakes here and have had to apologize more than a few times. That said, I know no one is infallible, we all can error, even grandmasters have said "I didn't see that", if I don't agree and don't accept something as possible I'm going to question it, wouldn't you? Wouldn't the best place to be corrected is by someone be someone who is supposed to know to show you, where you're wrong? Yet, if all get when I'm pressing a point is what a joke, makes me think this more about personalities and has nothing to do with topics.

The thing is when validating a processor nothing is left to chance we have to know everything from the pressure being put on the processor as it is put in the socket for testing, how long it is heated up within 2C last time I did it, all the variables in our test programs, the order of our tests in our programs occur, the stability of the test equipment and the list goes on and on. This for something we look at and worry about pico-seconds and milli-volts, nothing is left to chance.

Using a method of dating that cannot be validated with a known good, something we can check that we know is a million/billion years old so we cannot be sure. So what are the things done using another method with the same weaknesses that cannot be validated against a known good, and another method that cannot be validated, and another method that cannot be validated isn't exactly the same thing I'm used to when I have to speak about something with certainty. Our math can be spot on, this isn't where I'm concern, when we do our measurements could always be spot on, but that says more about our ability to check and measure and far less to do with what we think it means. I have explained how it is possible we can know the rate, but it not tell us the full story, we can know rates and distances, and that not tell us the full story.