• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

oldest stone tools found

Corb said:
Its not a theory in any sense of that word.
Click to expand...

scootergmc said:
Why not? It certainly hasn't been proven as scientific law by repeated experiments
Click to expand...

All science is theory. Even mathematical "laws" are theory. This is the uncertainty theists struggle with and reject in favor of blind faith.

Scientific laws are simply theory that has been proven over and over and over and over and over and over...And all the chains in the theory are linked together clearly and provable at the same time. But scientists, practicing good science, are always willing to test all theories.

Radio carbon dating is a theory. And it is supported by mathematical law. And all the chains in the theory of radiocarbon dating are linked and provable at the same time.

The theory of evolution is a bit trickier. While all the links are provable at the same time they aren't necessarily connected well enough to be considered theoretical law. This is mostly because we don't have a good way to model the science of evolution mathematically very well.
 
MikeL said:
While I don't doubt the scientists studying these are most likely correct, those fucking rocks look like rocks.
Click to expand...

Ahh...then we're all wrong and the scientists got it all twisted. Those aren't just any rocks. They are sex stones.
 
Last edited:
CocoLoco said:
All science is theory. Even mathematical "laws" are theory. This is the uncertainty theists struggle with and reject in favor of blind faith.
Scientific laws are simply theory that has been proven over and over and over and over and over and over...And all the chains in the theory are linked together clearly and provable at the same time. But scientists, practicing good science, are always willing to test all theories.

Radio carbon dating is a theory. And it is supported by mathematical law. And all the chains in the theory of radiocarbon dating are linked and provable at the same time.

The theory of evolution is a bit trickier. While all the links are provable at the same time they aren't necessarily connected well enough to be considered theoretical law. This is mostly because we don't have a good way to model the science of evolution mathematically very well.
Click to expand...

I think the definition and context in use of the word 'theory' is what they struggle with most.
 
Ok it is really scary to me how people are just completely willing to ignore scientific evidence to something purely because they have religious faith that is contradicted by science. These people are voting and deciding the fate of our world on faith! They don't even care if their faith is basically proven to be completely false. Nope, its my faith!
 
Kurosaki said:
I think the definition and context in use of the word 'theory' is what they struggle with most.
Click to expand...

I agree it is perplexing. I just think that people who maintain their theist ways do so because it's safer than accepting that life (and more importantly death) is filled with doubt.
 
I'm not surprised they found older species using formed rocks as tools.

my old philosophy teacher said something like: "other animals have used tools. but humans are the first species on this planet to have tools that build tools". it kind of takes the ambiguity out of the question.
 
Corb said:
Jesus! What a mess of a post...
Where do I even start!
Scientific law and scientific theory are different things. Carbon dating is neither.
It is chemistry, a tool science is using to date organic matter up to 50 000 years old [as it clearly says in the quote above that you obviously refused to read]
And the idea that you read scientific peer reviews is beyond hilarious. It really made me laugh out loud. Laughing is good for my health so thank you for that.
Carbon dating results are also verified and adjusted by contrasting with other forms of dating. Like counting tree rings of specific type of trees.
Carbon dating is considered in science as one of the most accurate forms of dating organic mater that assimilated oxygen directly from the air.
There is mountains of data to support it as valid science and the only opponents are creationists who try to discredit it for the exact same reason they try to discredit all science that proves their ideology as mythology
Click to expand...
Does radioactive decay (and dating based on it) qualify as chemistry? I thought that chemistry typically referred to chemical interactions between atoms and molecules. And yes, when used within it's limits, radiometric dating is accurate.
nakedape said:
My antro prof. Betty Goerke at COM used elephants to walk over chert and produce flakes closely resembling human worked material. Fooled her colleagues at the time IIRC.

Well drilling in the west has turned up artifacts time and time again which "weren't supposed to be there" (900,000 yr. old human figures for example in North America), so they were ignored.

Now that cultural biases are falling away from science and archeology in particular, it's a new age of discovery and the results really upset some apple carts. The Chinese circumnavigated the globe before Europeans? No way! Then how did their porcelain end up in the ME in 900 yr. old strata? Hmmm

Aren't there bristlecone pines in the Sierra older than the creationists earth? Maybe those trees God created are lying to us with fake rings. Day one of a history class a really sweet young lady politely asked that I refrain from "brainwashing" her into believing anything that contradicted her young earth theory. Right as we started the "ancient people's" unit. She was a great student who otherwise thought for herself. I see the young earth people the same way I see the anglocentric "scientists" of the 19th century, always ginning up evidence to bolster their sense of superiority.
Click to expand...
Could you provide a source for the 900,000 yr old human figures in North America?

Getting from China to the Middle East doesn't require circumnavigation of the globe. It could be done entirely on land, or on water not venturing far from shore.
Marcoose said:
We know for a fact that dogs did. Today's pooch is not the same as the Neanderthals' best friends.

And the smart people will pitch in and correct me, but the theory is that not all known Homo-somethings are descendants from the previous gene. Actually, isn't it somewhat confirmed that Crom Mags, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are each its own species, albeit gene-compatible?
Click to expand...
Different people use different species names. Some people call Neanderthals homo sapiens neanderthalensis while other people call them homo neanderthalensis. Cro Magnon man is early modern humans... although of course no population is genetically static. Neanderthals were not an immediate ancestor of modern humans, they branched off of the same tree though. There is DNA evidence of some interbreeding between them and early modern humans, although what I have seen points to Neanderthal men and early modern human women. If it wasn't voluntary that would make sense, as children of early modern humans were in a population that continued, while children of Neanderthals were in a group that died out.
 
Junkie said:
Getting from China to the Middle East doesn't require circumnavigation of the globe. It could be done entirely on land, or on water not venturing far from shore.
Click to expand...

Once in a TV documentary, there was speculation the seas were much lower during cold/ice periods, and that floating/hiking along the Bearing Strait could be possible. Dunno.

We know for a fact that England wasn't always an island.
 
Marcoose said:
Once in a TV documentary, there was speculation the seas were much lower during cold/ice periods, and that floating/hiking along the Bearing Strait could be possible. Dunno.

We know for a fact that England wasn't always an island.
Click to expand...
Yes, there is significant evidence of a Bering Straight land bridge, that's how Native Americans are thought to have gotten here. Sea levels were lower everywhere so England wasn't an island either.
 
Interesting chart on the subject of religious faith based science denial.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...aith-and-science-dont-have-to-be-in-conflict/
imrs.php
 
CocoLoco said:
Radio carbon dating is a theory.
Click to expand...

I understood carbon dating to be a tool used to prove or disprove theories.
Maybe I was wrong, but I still understand that it is not a theory the way it was presented in the post I replied too.
As we all know creationists usually use the word theory [in science discussions] when in fact what they actually mean is hypotheses.
 
Interesting chart. Wonder what environmental regulations have to do with church, though?
 
CocoLoco said:
All science is theory. Even mathematical "laws" are theory. This is the uncertainty theists struggle with and reject in favor of blind faith.

Scientific laws are simply theory that has been proven over and over and over and over and over and over...And all the chains in the theory are linked together clearly and provable at the same time. But scientists, practicing good science, are always willing to test all theories.

Radio carbon dating is a theory. And it is supported by mathematical law. And all the chains in the theory of radiocarbon dating are linked and provable at the same time.

The theory of evolution is a bit trickier. While all the links are provable at the same time they aren't necessarily connected well enough to be considered theoretical law. This is mostly because we don't have a good way to model the science of evolution mathematically very well.
Click to expand...

Well, carbon dating is not a theory, a law, or anything like that. It is a technique based on the predictable decay of carbon 14. The predictability of the decay rate is based on the laws of quantum chemical physics.

It should be noted that there are large error bars in carbon dating, mostly due to the non-constant abundance of 14C in the atmosphere at different times in Earth's history. Much work over several decades has been put into "calibrating" carbon dating results to tighten up the error. The fact that there is error, however, does not demote the laws governing 14C decay to "theory," nor does it redefine a technique as "theory." Techniques by definition are not theories, and will only be defined as such by those who do not care to understand science or its methodologies.

The dating error in this study would have to be around half a million years or more to substantially change the authors' conclusions. These researchers were working on the ragged edge of what the technique can deliver, so their error was likely much higher than typical 14C dating, but not 0.5M years higher. Additionally, the conclusions of the study did not rely solely on 14C dating of biological debris in the sediment, but in the age of the sediments themselves based on geological techniques.
 
The sources I'm reading indicate radiocarbon dating is good for up to 50,000 years or so... that's nowhere near the 3.3M the stones are claimed to be. A different article claims they were dated based on the volcanic ash that surrounds them, but doesn't give the dating method. It may be due to some other radioisotope, but it doesn't appear to be 14C.
 
The Bible does not preclude a 14B y/o universe. People have to remember, much of it was written by tribal people for tribal people who did not have a Greek-logic based education. Actually, much of it wasn't put down on paper until well after the stories were told and retold orally over probably many, many generations.

When it says heaven is so many cubits long or whatever, it doesn't mean it is exactly that, down to the 5th decimal place. The writer was trying to convey a large magnitude. Just one example, there are many others.

I don't get where the 6000 years was extrapolated. Well, I do, kinda, but doing so is entirely missing the point and is viewing a text written over 3000 years ago (at least the portions that give the geneologies and such, and was likely passed down orally for centuries or millenia prior to that) from a modern, Western, logic-based, absolute, black and white view point. Gotta remember, the Bible also says a thousand years is like a day, a day like a thousand years. In other words, time is irrelevant.

Anyways, interesting find, as has been said, they'd just be rocks to me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top