>-----Original Message-----
>From: Walter Hicks [mailto:wallyshoes@mindspring.com]
>Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2002 7:19 PM
>Glenn,
>
> You say here that a fossil discovery "will slow down the rate of
>mutation".
>Amazing! Will it also alter the rate radioactive decay and other physical
>phenomena that have nothing to do with archaeology?
Walter, Yes, I probably mis wrote. The rate of mutation is what the rate of
mutation is. However, our perception of that rate can and does change.
Why? Because the rate must be calibrated against the fossil record. When
the fossil record changes, that would force a re-evaluation of the mutation
rate. This shouldn't be that hard to follow. We know how many mutations
(TM) there are between humans and chimps. Each lineage should have produced
half of them from the time of the common ancestor. Thus, the rate is
TM/2/t
where TM is the total number of mutations between the species, and t is the
time since the split. Change the time from the split--via a fossil
discovery--and you change the rate.
>
>I must admit to being totally mystified by comments like this from
>you --- and
>they are not infrequent. For some points you insist that you are
>dealing with a
>rigid set of scientific rules -- -- that are used to date fossils
>-- and not
>the other way around.. Then things like the "mutation rate" become
>a variable
>--- and all the past dating is tossed into the air. Yet you suggest that
>everyone who does not agree with all this is not scientifically oriented.
Part of the problem is my communication and part of the problem is that you
have not properly understood evolutionary theory.
>
>Frankly all the changes of dates and methods that you keep
>throwing around make
>me have serious doubts about the scientific rigor practised in
>your field. You
>seem to a mental rule that: if the dating makes things happen
>earlier in time
>-- so as to fit your theory --- then it must be correct.
So are we to follow what appears to be your rule? Which seems to be: New
data can
ignored if it contradicts my world view? The data is the data. It can be
changed by further observation but one should have a rule to make do with
the data as we understand it today and change when it changes tomorrow.
Why should any
>technically oriented person believe (even tentatively) these
>theories if they
>keep changing from month to month?
Do you throw out all modern physics because they have utterly failed to find
the Higgs boson and they month after month change its mass? Do you throw
out astronomical theory because there has been a change in the age of the
universe over the past 4 years? Do you throw out history when we find that
pharoah X lived 50 years earlier than we had formerly believed?
You treat science as if it is religious dogma which doesn't and can't
change. That is one of the real problems with the way young-earthers treat
science. THey act as if what Darwin wrote 140 years ago is gospel and
sacred writ of which all modern's believe each and every single word.
Walt, new discoveries are made. If they don't change our views of the past,
then they aren't new discoveries or our minds are so closed that data
doesn't matter to our belief systems.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>
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