It's becoming a trend: Evangelical Christian institutions that try to do science inevitably demonstrate breathtaking inanity of their own. The latest victim is the Pawleys Island Christian Academy. Take a gander at the first place winner in biology.
Brian Benson, an eighth-grade student who won first place in the Life Science/Biology category for his project "Creation Wins!!!," says he disproved part of the theory of evolution. Using a rolled-up paper towel suspended between two glasses of water with Epsom Salts, the paper towel formed stalactites. He states that the theory that they take millions of years to develop is incorrect.
"Scientists say it takes millions of years to form stalactites," Benson said. "However, in only a couple of hours, I have formed stalactites just by using paper towel and Epsom Salts."
This isn't just wrong, it's appallingly wrong. He's wrong on the facts, wrong on the interpretations, wrong on the understanding of how science works. If we're charitable and grant that a 14 year old has some reasonable excuse for ignorance, we can still indict his parents, his science teacher, and the judges at this fair on gross incompetence on multiple charges.
- This experiment has nothing to do with biology.
- Epsom salts are magnesium sulfate; stalactites are made of calcium carbonate.
- Stalactite growth rates are estimated to be around 0.1-10 centimeters per thousand years. If we assume his 'stalactite' was 10 cm long and use the slowest growth rate, that's 100 thousand years, not millions.
- Even if he had demonstrated an accelerated rate of stalactite growth, stalactite length isn't the method used to date the age of the earth.
- To quote the unquestionable authority, Terry Pratchett: "And all those exclamation points? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head." Mister Benson comes perilously close to the underpants limit in his title.
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Catalina:
As usual when a creationist comments there are so many details wrong, besides the core issues. I should add to my previous comment that you are also directly disregarding details of the post.
You are mentioning "evolutionist" (with the only possible factual designator "evolutionary biologist") when the post directly notes that geology isn't part of biology.
Similarly, then the post notes that stalactites formation rate isn't used to date Earth, you are mentioning dating different cave systems as if the different and local times would have a bearing on the deep time which biology lives in.
This boy is probably gifted, most thesis by students this old lack at least one vite piece of the puzzle. I know this from my own experience as I at the same age had posted a proof that the second law of thermodynamics was wrong. I had misunderstood one vital nature of magnestism.
This boy is gifted and should be given the opportunity to further his studies in the real realm of sience. He needs to be given a scholarship to a real school that can give him the means to contribute to the total of human understanding of the world. We have a responsibility to him as a person and to all of mankind to present him withan option to go with the scientific method rather than with that of dogma before it is to late.
Remember Kurt Wise.
No way am I reading through 300+ (of mostly, I assume, creationist crank) comments to see if anyone responded to mine. A search didn't find my name outside my comments, so I think I can forget that now.
The dimension discussion seems fun. I agree with Davis, a circle is AFAIK usually (but perhaps not strictly) kept as the 1d object of a border, while the corresponding ball (or here, a disc) is the 2d object.
Similarly, the Klein bottle is intrinsically (topologically or parametrically) 2d. It is true that it can't be embedded in any space. But that is another question, which makes Mark correct as well; we must specify what we are describing.
[Sorry for comment delay - I am currently backtracking.]
No (but a möbius strip can), see Davis' comment. (Immersion means selfintersection means not connected volume.)
No, in math (as opposed to colloquial use) the ball is the interior of the sphere, and the sphere is the boundary of the ball. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_%28mathematics%29 )
It is a terminology confusion, is all.
This is confusing metric ("identical") with topology ("equivalent").
For a certain circle, you need only one coordinate to describe traveling around it. Hence it is a 1D object.
But the angle is confusing, you want travel length around the perimeter (which keeps telling you their size). You consider an already done parametrization, true (thus no radius needed), but using the angle gives a degenerated coordinate as you noted.
And you need two coordinates of the embedding space if you want to discuss different circles (which gives their placement).
None. That requires mutations.
What do you mean by "within the species itself"? Species boundaries are so foggy that some say there is no such thing as a species. Google for "ring species" to get an idea why.
Evolution can only work with what is there. Wholly new things out of nowhere don't occur, at least not easily -- though keep in mind that what "new" is is defined in terms of developmentary genetics, not in terms of easily visible features of the adult.
Time, opportunity, good luck (if the required mutations don't happen, the move to another environment won't occur), and the absence of constraints (e. g. jellyfish would have to evolve some kind of support and some potential protection against desiccation before they could live on land).
"Alleles" just means "versions of a gene that have different effects, having arisen by a few mutations from a common ancestor".
No, no intelligence. Just mutations that create a diversity, and selection which narrows the diversity down. Blind, and inevitable.
Incidentally, there is good evidence that legs evolved before our ancestors left the water. Acanthostega and Ichthyostega still had internal gills as adults, for example. Obviously they used them fairly often -- otherwise lungs would have been enough.
(Lungs are a very old feature, but I digress.)
Ah, so you don't know the meanings of "mutation", "genetic change", and "adaptation".
Mutation: a change in DNA (no matter if in a gene or outside, but those outside usually don't matter) by substitution of one base pair in the DNA for another or deletion of a base pair or addition of a base pair. That happens due to copying errors and repair errors.
Adaptation: This is not a process, it's the result of another process -- natural selection. Those individuals who have the greatest number of fertile offspring in a certain environment are best adapted to that environment. If this is inheritable, sooner or later the whole population will consist of individuals that have inherited this trait -- then we say the population has adapted.
On the DNA level there's no limit at all.
There is no evidence for christ existing appart from a few people accounts 2008 years ago.Maybe he was just a scholar or teacher, and people thought he was amazing (gifted not the son of god) I think christians cant accept that there is such a thing as 'random' or 'chance' so they don't accept evolution.
also, Christians have been cultured for 2008 years to believe in Christianity. There is no christian that has chosen purely by their own choice to believe in God.
Just as there is no evolutionist who has simply chosen to believe life evolved from some wet rocks?
Believing in God is every bit as much an individual's choice as believing in evolution. Yes, there are outside influences that provide them that choice, but the choice is still there and is their decision to make.
I continue to stick by my opinion that evolution is as much a disproven theory as creationism is. Both of them require faith to keep them afloat. If there was irrefutable proof in either direction then there would be no discussion. But, there's no proof. Just some fossils with no "missing links" and a Bible with no one alive to atest to its truth.
It's a dead issue that seems to live forever.
Matt said:
That's a new one. Wet rocks? Where do people get this nonsense from?
Matt said:
You're right, there are absolutely no transitional fossils.
Come on, you can do better than that. Just think, if you have been lied to about there being no transitional fossils, what else have you been lied to about? Hmmn.
And science doesn't deal in "irrefutable proof", but the evidence for evolution comes as close to it as you are likely to find. Do both yourself and the rest of the world a favor - look in to the evidence for evolution.
If it's all nonsense it should be easy to refute. But if it isn't, you are being profoundly disrespectful to God by not only dismissing His method of creation, but contributing to a culture that essentially sticks two fingers up at the very method that your God used to create the diversity of life on earth.
Think about it.
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