Pericles,

I agree it is getting repetitive, but you just don't get it - or don't want to...

If you bothered to read the articles I cited, you would see that AIG merely highlighted the expert opinions and criticisms of experts in the field, and the humbling apology which National Geographic had to make when the "discovery" was shown to be fraudulent. Your dismissal of AiG's work is just plain arrogance.

Oliver,

Re Newton's paper, I actually meant to cite Humphreys' paper on time dilation and Euclidean zones. My apologies. I agree Newton's hypothesis is a little contrived. I only meant to cite Newton for his explanation of the Horizon Problem (BB's light travel problem) See instead:
http://www.trueorigin.org/ca_rh_03.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v17n2_cosmology.pdf

BTW, General Relativity predicts that gravity affects time. Indeed, this phenomenon has actually been observed. The atomic clock at Greenwich ticks 5 microseconds slower that an identical clock at National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado (high altitude).

Re Ockhams Razor - it is a general principle not a necessary test. Einstein's theories and Heisenberg's work fails the Ockham's Razor test. Do you reject their ideas?

Re Popper and you categorisation of myself as "dogmatic" and yourself as "critical". This is laughable Oliver!

The reality is that everyone has a set of presuppositions on which they build a framework from which they view the world. You "dogmatically" (not to mention irrationally) hold to relativism. You "dogmatically" hold to naturalism. Indeed, you appear to be far for more dogmatic than many Christians.

Oliver,

You like Popper? Here's some quotes for you:

"I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme—a possible framework for testable scientific theories...This is of course the reason why Darwinism has been almost universally accpeted. Its theory of adaptation was the first nontheistic one that was convincing; and theism was worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation has been reached." Popper, Unended Quest, 151.

Another well-known philosopher of science, Michael Ruse, said:
"Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality...Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity." Ruse, National Post, May 13, 2000, pp. B1,B3,B7.

"What makes the origin of life and of the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the genetic code is without any biological function unless it is translated; [but] the code can not be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a baffling circle; a really vicious circle, it seems, for any attempt to form a model or theory of the genesis of the genetic code.
Thus we may be faced with the possibility that the origin of life (like the origin of physics) becomes an impenetrable barrier to science, and a residue to all attempts to reduce biology to chemistry and physics." Popper, in Ayala and Dobzhansky, Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, 1974, 270.

If organic evolution is science, in the Popperian sense, and therefore subject to potential falsification, evolutionists must eventually acknowledge the fact that the overall profusion of divergent and contradictory phylogenies, pertaining to all forms of life, falsify macroevolution itself.

Aslan,

I agree with you Occam's Razor should not be universally applied.

My fairly frequently reference is to Popper is in context with holding beliefs tentatively and preferably testable. However, I am not a strict Popperian. Its just that his writings are well known.

My own position - unlike Popper, I think - is that one can hold contradictory propositions at the same time. However, probability could be applied to that situation. Herein, will I as a freethiker might generally hold with physical creation and should also in a degraded form hold that divine creation is also a possibilty - very remote in my reasoning. Were a Creationist to hold my philosophical position the positions would be reversed.

Very business at present. Thanks for your response. Back later

Still at it Aslan, I see, and as devious as ever.

Tell me, is your sentence...

"If organic evolution is science, in the Popperian sense, and therefore subject to potential falsification, evolutionists must eventually acknowledge the fact that the overall profusion of divergent and contradictory phylogenies, pertaining to all forms of life, falsify macroevolution itself"

...intended to be an assertion, an argument, a proof, or a fact?

Or simply "Aslan's opinion"?

If it is an assertion, please provide a modicum at least of evidence - relying upon an absence of argument in others is not in itself evidence of anything.

But it does illiminate the way you have been playing this game. "I don't believe your evidence therefore I must be right" is the claim of a petulant but precocious schoolboy. Do grow up.

Aslan and Pericles,

Evolution

Without the resources at hand to confirm, I would take it that Popper is saying the Theory of Evolution is a meta-proposition not a scientific theory because tests are not proposed at the metalevel. Nonetheless, scientists can break the main idea down into genetics, paleo-anthology, ecology and biochemistry, where experimental conditions could be established according to sciencific method. Hereafter, several disciplines could be trigulated to assert an axiom, with strong external validity. Relatedly, Darwin looked at the survival of species, whereas, Dawkins would see species (macro-organisms) perhaps just as a shell for the forward propogation of DNA and Leakey would measure species physical adaptation to the environment.

Aslan,

CREATION

I read the proposition God created a preferential timeframe for the Earth or the Solar System. Several factors troubled me with this idea:

1. The Existence of heavy metals. The Sun is a mature, "third" generation star. the author said maybe God created a special mature star in order sustain Earct life. This would be insufficient there would need to have been earlier generations of stars in the vicinity of the sun, to create heavy metals. Relatedly, indications are that our Solar System did evolve in a typical manner because of the existence of large gaseous planets far from the sun and the main solid plants close to the sun, as would be the case if the reminants of a nove coalesced around a centre of gravity.

2. Contra-propagation effects. Think not of a (slowed) light entering the Solar System's time zone but light leaving it at incredible speed say before Day Four. That would collide with an else-progagated waveform, wherein the effect would be like dropping to two large rock and a pebble in a pound. When the wave met a local region of space would be overwhelmed at the point where the two maximum luminal velocities (as say photons met). THis would leave a signature that we could measure today.

3. The Galaxy. The Milk Way exist is moving through space-time. How would the solar system maintain its position while in a difference space-time frame?

4. The edge of the solar system is measured by the helioshere of the sun not the position of Pluto. Light would take 13 hours not 8 hours to reach Earth. This a significant margin give Genesis' one day unit of measure.

5. Matter exists inside the universe and light travels through the universe. However, the universe is expanding faster than light. Localised conditions inside the universe would compromise expansion of the universe, I suspect. Perhaps, a bit like sticking a pin into an expanding balloon.

6. The sudden existence of a new star system might (gravitationally) disturb nearby stars - this would be seen. It is how Pluto was discovered.