Quote:
Originally Posted by MelchyBeau
Meg some comments
1. Define Darwinism. This seems to be a term only use by creationists.
2. the age of the universe has nothing to do with evolution.
3. the age of the earth has nothing to do with evolution.
1. Here are some of your evolutionist colleagues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinism
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/darwinism.html
2 (+3). The theories can be separated in a sense. For instance the belief in an old (relative to Creationists) earth was around before Darwin. However evolution absolutely needs millions of years+ for its theory to be plausible. Furthermore, if you study the history of the dating of the age of the universe/earth, it is certainly linked to evolutionary theory.
Darwin's theory was published in 1859. Edwin Hubble came along in the early 1900's once the theory had caught serious steam in the scientific community, and built upon that foundation (not to neglect a whole host of other scientists who had been working on these same ideas since the early 1900's) to establish the Big Bang theory--where Darwin started with his theory on the origin of species (beginning with the assumption of the first cell), Hubble continued with a theory on the origin of the ordered universe, a natural progression of thought in explaining where we and all we observe originate. In order to establish the plausibility of the Big Bang theory, Hubble and other proponents had to extrapolate how to go from the Big Bang to the events making the way for evolution to the necessarily slow process of evolution to where we are now. The estimation of the age of the universe largely depended on his observations and theories, for instance his belief that the universe is finite was critical in formulating an equation that would in part help date the universe. You can read more about it here:
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm
And the belief in Naturalism (all of the universe has naturalistic explanations), Uniformitarianism (the same natural laws that are in effect now have always been the same)-critical in assuming constants for measuring distances to stars, planets, etc.-and other philosophies and presuppositions were paramount to dating the age of the universe (and earth).
The connection of the dating of the age of the universe to the Big Bang theory is clearer from the NASA website:
Quote:
Astronomers estimate the age of the universe in two ways: 1) by looking for the oldest stars; and 2) by measuring the rate of expansion of the universe and extrapolating back to the Big Bang;
(emphasis mine)
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html
A lot of extrapolation in there--but extrapolating "back" to the Big Bang means starting from the present day expansion of the universe --> extrapolating to the evolution of species --> extrapolating to the Big Bang. The dating of the universe (and by implication the earth, as it is part of the universe) involves an overwhelming amount of extrapolation based on-depending on-modern scientific theory (Evolution and the Big Bang).
Some other time I'd like to go into how the dating methods beg the question, but I'm too tired right now. I hope this sufficiently answers your questions, although I wish I had more time to supply you with a fuller explanation and more links to evolutionist resources.
Edited to add: After re-reading my post to which you were replying, I should be clear that when I spoke of "evolutionary theory", I was not speaking of it in the strictest sense, but I was referring to the evolutionary theory's very typical corresponding worldview (it would have been more precise to say, "evolutionary theory and all that tends to go with it"), which if you read the writings of evolutionists, the worldview seeps in very tangibly. It has a high tendency to include atheism and naturalism.
M
Last edited by Megenoita; 04-28-2010 at 02:18 PM.