Well, I didn't invent the terms "modern evolutionary synthesis" or "Neo-Darwinism" but I know they exist and I know they mean different things. Even Wikipedia knows it.
> But consider this:
> 1. Birds have been proven to have been descended from dinosaurs.
> 2. Dinosaurs have been proven to have been exterminated in a
> catastrophic set of events.
> 3. Birds are totally absent from the fossil record (ie., according to
> the
> > evidence they did not exist) before the demise of the dinosaurs.
> consequently
> 4. Birds evolved from dinosaurs during the very short period during
> which the dinosaurs became extinct.
> You can be sure that, asked how the birds evolved so rapidly from their
> dinosaurian ancestors, the neoDarwinian "modern evolutionary
> synthesis" will be able to offer no evidence-based explanation
> whatsoever.
If by "evidence-based" you meant "evidence-based" and not "looking into the past with a magic crystal ball" then you'd be wrong, but your purpose here is to just to heap doubt on paleontology for some religious purpose. I know not what.
Paleontology is, by its nature, a science of deduction with few data points relative to the huge, huge, huge number of specimens studied and millions and millions of years during which they lived. It may be that DNA paleontology will create a more precise estimate of the origin of modern species. It may not.
But to your assertion, it's simply nonsensically incorrect. Birds and dinosaurs co-existed for tens of millions of years. Like all paleontological questions the riddle is how far back the branching goes that separates birds and dinosaurs.
You simply have your dates wrong by half a Jurassic or so.
> >
> >
> > ..." (and surely belief in a Big Banger is at least as
> > reasonable a belief as belief in the Big Bang),"
> >
> > Not even close. Not even within the same intellectual Universe. The
> > belief in a Big Bang jibes with observed physics down to many decimal
> > places...
>
> The "Big Bang" theory has already refuted itself by its need for
> the invention of nonsensical unobservable entities like "dark matter"
> and
> "dark energy" as placeholders to avoid acknowledging experimental
> observations that, without them, would totally contradict its
> expectations
> and so totally invalidate it. The "many decimal places" produced by
> the postulation of values for such imaginary entities is thus factitious
> in the extreme.
>
> In fact, the "Big Bang" theory, like the rest of orthodox astronomical
> theory, rests on an already refuted dogma--that "red shift" indicates
> the distance of an astronomical object from the earth (see, for
> instance,
> "Seeing Red" by Halton Arp).
Halton Arp was discredited when we started using modern telescopes. Get with it.
>
> And beyond that, the "Big Bang" postulates the origin of this universe--
> governed by natural laws that have remained absolutely unchanged
> (because by definition uniform throughout spacetime) since its very
> first moment (that is how they retropredict the "inflationary" first
> moments
> of the universe)--in a "singularity."
In the sense that the existence of a super-hot, super-dense early phase of our universe wherein the light elements were formed tends to explain much that is observed and theorized, the Big Bang is largely uncontroversial. In the sense that we lack an understanding of what a "singularity" might be like and how that singularity might break down into the Standard Model, the "pre"-Big-Bang Universe is an interesting new field of study. General relativity breaks down at very small spatio-temporal scales and high energy densities. So a "quantum cosmology" is needed for those early moments. But at this level one is talking about a near-philosophical state between existence and non-existence.
Your objections to the Big Bang, however, are not germane and no better informed than your paleontology
>just ask the question: "HOW
> did the supposed singularity, in which no natural laws applied, give
> birth to a universe governed by the precise (to "many decimal places")
> laws supposed to govern it today?" I defy anyone to come up with an
> answer that makes more
> sense than the Big Banger theory
Yes, quantum cosmology is still being developed, but the implications of that need not trouble you as you have yet to understand the later, more stable Universe.
As for the "Big Banger" it is not just nonsense, but a perfectly Lamarckian nonsense. It is the consciously self-evolving, physics-evading "theory" of whatever it dares be about, ranging from absolutely nothing to something that only quasi-exists as definable and distinct.
I was unclear when I wrote: "The belief in a Creator requires you reject essentially all of science."
I should have written "The belief in a Creator is something knowable - a fact separate from other things - requires one to reject essentially all of science."
A person may believe anything she wants. There are many scientists who have a whole range of daft theories, hypotheses and hunches. Shane Mage has cited at least one just above. Science does not rob a person of imagination. But even the most daft scientist admits immediately that her hypotheses are chimeras until they are confirmed with consistent observations, peer review and - ideally - good, causal theory.
Thus one may believe in God as an instinct and still be a scientist, but to believe in God as a fact is to make the jump to superstition's hypo-space and reject science. Doesn't mean you can't do it on Wednesdays and be a good scientist the rest of the week. It just means that when you do it you are rejecting science.
And that's why all modern people have, in actuality, abandoned the Biblical theory of God long ago. Unlike the ancients, we know that the God of prophecies and miracles does not exist. We don't even bother with it any more. In its place all that is left is the "Holy Ghost" and precious little of that. Mostly, what is there is anti-fact and a notion that is perfectly antagonistic to the idea of the material world.
I say you can believe what you like, but at least have the decency to tell me what that thing you believe in IS and not simply all the things it is not. All I ever here from the God-Squaders is what God isn't.
boddi