Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

So how did the Torah originate and become (religious AND civil) Law for the Jewish people if none of the events in the OT happened?

You infer from dinosaur fossils that they MUST be millions of years old.

I disagree with the timeline.

Many of the dating methods used are highly assumptive IMHO. Also methods which might falsify the findings are ignored.

Gungasnake,

That's quite a list.

It seems to me that the sticking point for most evolutionists is the age of the earth/universe.

Do you have a favorite book or resource on that subject? ( I saw a few on the list, but maybe your favorite is not online.)

Science:
Observe phenomonon .......

Even though my life-long avocation has been amateur astronomy, my formal background is in engineering ? not astronomy or cosmology.

You've got "string theory" which appears to be motivated in part by a desire to give evolutinites enough universes to have some mathematical shot at abiogenesis since our observable universe by itself doesn't:

Gravity lens reveals dark matter
25 August 2006

US astronomers claim to have observed dark matter - the elusive substance that is believed to be five times as common as normal matter, accounting for nearly a quarter of the universe.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the Magellan optical telescopes were used to observe the violent collision between two large galaxy clusters 3 billion light years away. The force of the collision separated the dark and luminous matter, allowing a clear identification. Although scientists are yet to determine what form this mysterious dark matter may take, the observations are strong evidence that most of the matter in the universe is dark (Astrophysical J. and Astrophysical J. Letters to be published).

Dark matter was originally hypothesized to explain the abnormally high rotation speeds of galaxies, which would otherwise be torn apart if they did not contain hidden mass. It is fundamentally different from normal "luminous" matter such as stars as it is invisible to modern telescopes, giving off no light or heat, and seems to interact only through gravity.

However, some scientists do not believe that dark matter exists and have proposed alternative theories -- where gravity is stronger on intergalactic scales - to explain galactic dynamics. The new results are a blow to such theories. "Regardless of how one modifies gravity, it should still generally point to where most of the mass is," says Maxim Markevitch at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was involved in the research. "If the only matter in this cluster was visible matter, the mass map would approximately follow the interstellar gas map. Instead, we found most of the mass elsewhere, exactly where if it were dominated by collisionless dark matter."

Behind these observations lies a remarkable bullet-shaped cloud of hot gas produced by the collision of two clusters. As they cross at 10 million miles per hour, the luminous matter in each interacts with the other and slows down. But the dark matter does not interact at all, passing right through without disruption. This causes the dark matter to sail ahead, separating each cluster into two components: dark matter in the lead and luminous matter lagging behind.

To detect this separation, researchers compared x-ray images of the luminous matter with measurements of the cluster's total mass through gravitational lensing. This involves the observation of the distortion of light from background galaxies by the cluster's gravity -- the greater the distortion, the more massive the cluster. The team discovered four separate clumps of matter: two large clumps of dark matter speeding away from the collision, and two smaller clumps of luminous matter trailing behind, proving two types of matter exist.

The results have captured the imagination of the cosmology community. "This is an exciting discovery -- dark matter is not merely a trick of the light," says Robert Caldwell, who is a cosmologist at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire. "This result helps confirm we're on the right track in trying to solve the mystery of dark matter."

Hubble Finds Evidence for Dark Energy in the Young Universe
News Release Number: STScI-2006-52
November 16, 2006 01:00 PM (EST)

Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that dark energy is not a new constituent of space, but rather has been present for most of the universe's history. Dark energy is a mysterious repulsive force that causes the universe to expand at an increasing rate.

Investigators used Hubble to find that dark energy was already boosting the expansion rate of the universe as long as nine billion years ago. This picture of dark energy is consistent with Albert Einstein's prediction of nearly a century ago that a repulsive form of gravity emanates from empty space.

Data from Hubble provides supporting evidence that help astrophysicists to understand the nature of dark energy. This will allow scientists to begin ruling out some competing explanations that predict that the strength of dark energy changes over time.

Researchers also have found that the class of ancient exploding stars, or supernovae, used to measure the expansion of space today look remarkably similar to those that exploded nine billion years ago and are just now being seen by Hubble. This important finding gives additional credibility to the use of these supernovae for tracking the cosmic expansion over most of the universe's lifetime.

"Although dark energy accounts for more than 70 percent of the energy of the universe, we know very little about it, so each clue is precious," said Adam Riess, of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Riess led one of the first studies to reveal the presence of dark energy in 1998 and is the leader of the current Hubble study. "Our latest clue is that the stuff we call dark energy was relatively weak, but starting to make its presence felt nine billion years ago."

To study the behavior of dark energy of long ago, Hubble had to peer far across the universe and back into time to detect supernovae. Supernovae can be used to trace the universe's expansion. This is analogous to seeing fireflies on a summer night. Fireflies glow with about the same brightness, so you can judge how they are distributed in the backyard by their comparative faintness or brightness, depending on their distance from you. Only Hubble can measure these ancient supernovae because they are too distant, and therefore too faint, to be studied by the largest ground-based telescopes.

Einstein first conceived of the notion of a repulsive force in space in his attempt to balance the universe against the inward pull of its own gravity, which he thought would ultimately cause the universe to implode.

His "cosmological constant" remained a curious hypothesis until 1998, when Riess and the members of the High-z Supernova Team and the Supernova Cosmology Project used ground-based telescopes and Hubble to detect the acceleration of the expansion of space from observations of distant supernovae. Astrophysicists came to the realization that Einstein may have been right after all: there really was a repulsive form of gravity in space that was soon after dubbed "dark energy."

Over the past eight years astrophysicists have been trying to uncover two of dark energy's most fundamental properties: its strength and its permanence. These new observations reveal that dark energy was present and obstructing the gravitational pull of the matter in the universe even before it began to win this cosmic "tug of war."

Previous Hubble observations of the most distant supernovae known revealed that the early universe was dominated by matter whose gravity was slowing down the universe's expansion rate, like a ball rolling up a slight incline. The observations also confirmed that the expansion rate of the cosmos began speeding up about five to six billion years ago. That is when astronomers believe that dark energy's repulsive force overtook gravity's attractive grip.

The latest results are based on an analysis of the 24 most distant supernovae known, most found within the last two years.

By measuring the universe's relative size over time, astrophysicists have tracked the universe's growth spurts, much as a parent may witness the growth spurts of a child by tracking changes in height on a doorframe. Distant supernovae provide the doorframe markings read by Hubble. "After we subtract the gravity from the known matter in the universe, we can see the dark energy pushing to get out," said Lou Strolger, astronomer and Hubble science team member at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky. Further observations are presently underway with Hubble by Riess and his team which should continue to offer new clues to the nature of dark energy.

US astronomers claim to have observed dark matter

real life,
You are the biggest f**ker I've ever met. I put my time and effort and time into replying to your posts and all you can be bothered writing is a line and a half, in which you, on purpose, avoid my questions and queries. You only reply to what you think you can make a good comment on, and don't even try to comprehend what I am saying. You, my friend, have put me off religion for life. Goodbye.

rl

Quote:

So how did the Torah originate and become (religious AND civil) Law for the Jewish people if none of the events in the OT happened?

Are you shitting me?
Most serious Biblical archeologists sever the Bible into the fist five books and the later "Historical" accounts. So by wishing that the charming stories that cover the formation of the tribes and their laws, is real, doesnt cast any light on my status as an interested student of history. You, who will believe anything , as long as its between the covers of the Bible, are the one whose credibility is sorely in question.
SCholars and archeologists have been searching for hundreds of years and they are not even certain that the Jews were ever in Egypt. Im not going to dignify the stories of Creation or "The Flood" as history any more than Id set up a belief system that worshipped the revealed word of J K Rowling or T H White.

You seem to have a non-functioning "credibility checker"

rl

Quote:

You infer from dinosaur fossils that they MUST be millions of years old.

I disagree with the timeline.

Many of the dating methods used are highly assumptive IMHO. Also methods which might falsify the findings are ignored.

Namesuch an assumption that is a scientific problem. No methods are ignored because its not in the interest of science to spit incorrect data about. If any "outliers" exist, they are carefully screened to see where the result originated.

Geochronology always (The word is ALWAYS-which connotes , like ALWAYS)
Seeks to verify all lab data with at least 3 "reports out" on the same data and it ALWAYS uses three independent means of corroborating data. When a isotope date is reported , it has , at least been +/- at 3 sigma with a minimum of 3 (more often 5 or more) deviation. ALso its compared to more mundane geochron data such as correlated stratigraphy, field remnant magnetism, and stable isotope data from the fossils themselves.
The lab sheets from a single fossil usually looks like the phone directory of a small town.
What you dont know about the subject does not permit you to spout crapolla about dating methods. ESpecially since most of this crapolla youve colle cted merely comes from like-minded ignorant pseudo scientists who have a Biblical ax to grind. WHen your sourcesfess up to the fact that theyve been "making it up" for many years, maybe then you can start correlating your Biblical reasoning with facts from the real world.

We've discussed the soft tissue found in the dinosaur bones, haven't we?

What were the C14 readings on those bones?