Grand Canyon Made By Noah's Flood, Book Says (Geologists Skewer Park For Selling Creationism)

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | January 8, 2004 | Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times

[Scenic Sounds]

How old is the Grand Canyon? Most scientists agree with the version that rangers at Grand Canyon National Park tell visitors: that the 217-mile-long chasm in northern Arizona was carved by the Colorado River 5 million to 6 million years ago.

[dangus]

Ummm.. the water levels would be HIGHER during the flood than they are now...

[r9etb]

That's actually the almost the entire problem. Likewise, one mustn't confuse intelligence with learning. I would guess (based on pretty good evidence) that the ancient Egyptians were every bit as intelligent as we are today, but they just didn't know as much (not counting what we have forgotten.)

OTOH, we do know that there are heritable and selectable "intelligence traits," as any dog breeder can tell you, as evidenced by the suitability of certain breeds for certain tasks. So it's not at all implausible to assume that the differences between, say, the Egyptians and the folks in equatorial Africa were due to something more than learning.

[dangus]

... or simply show how all that erosion took place in the short time it took for the flood waters to recede.

[dangus]

>> When Apollo failed to sink into 30 feet of moondust >>

Scientists expected Apollo to be swallowed up by moon dust? Gosh, golly, dem sure was toopid to send it dere, wun't they?

Puhlleeeeaz. Not sure what happened to the accumulation of moon dust, but there is such a thing as solar wind.

[Ichneumon]

I-non has no moral authority to demand others modify manners while wallowing in indecorous snobbishness such as Try again when your manners, your maturity, and your reading comprehension all improve.

Let me get this straight -- you're saying I had no "moral authority" to point out BibChr's lack of manners because I was so "snobbish" as to point out his lack of manners?

Amusing, to say the least. Hilariously circular and Catch-22.

I commend you on your farcical satire. I almost fell for it, until I realized that no one could possibly be that ludicrously illogical and still manage figure out what the "Post" button does.

[GluteusMax]

What is your definition of species?

You are obviously driving at the commonly understood notion of sexual reproduction being the standard. If two creatures are capable of producing fertile offspring they are of the same species. Even if they look wildly different but can produce fertile offspring. Yes?

So if ring thing 'A' can not reproduce with ring thing 'Z' they are different species according to this definition.

The fact that ring thing 'A' can reproduce with, say, 'D' through 'S' or something along those lines, whereas 'Z' also can do the same thing, indicates that 'A' and 'D' through 'S' are the same 'species' whereas 'Z' and 'D' through 'S' are.....in any case it would appear that 'A' AND 'Z' can reproduce with at least ONE common link in the ring orgy. Are they then different species, or is something else going on here?

[dangus]

Speciation is a process of numerous non-essential mutations occurring, renderring the two species' chromosomes incompatible for reproduction. Since it requires so very many chromosomes, it must occur over tens of thousands of years after the event which caused the populations to seperate.

We do, however, observe:
1. Emergence of a seperate population due to a mutation.
2. Chromosomal drift, so regular you can almost use it to measure time.
3. The emerging dominance of one subspecies over another.
4. The extinction of a subspecies.

In other words, we've observed every step in the process of speciation. We just haven't been watching long enough to witness the entire process at once.

[dangus]

>> The fact they don't do the wild thing with those farther away doesn't change the fact they are still members of the same species.>>

Actually, biologists DO refer to "geographic speciation."

[Ichneumon]

Evidence and testing?

Yes. Surely you've heard of it.

You mean carbon dating or guessing age based upon layers of material..

That and far, far more.

Carbon dating is a technical way of guessing age because the assumed constant is not constant

Carbon dating does not "assume a constant". Make sure you understand it before you try to critique it.

nor is the variable proveable over time as to what it has been at any given time.

Ooookay. Can I have that again with a specific noun?

Nor does it consider saturation or contamination properly,

It does, actually. Check nearly any issue of the journal _Radiocarbon_.

it is impossible to know these things, thus rendering it a couple of guesses plugged into an equation rendering the outcome a processed guess.

No. Try again.

Layer dating isn't much more complicated nor is it any more accurate. Doesn't hurt my worldview; but, it really peaves some of you zealots.

The only thing that "peeves" some of us non-zealots is when people of unspecified zealotry demonstrate that they know little about a subject, and much of what they do know is incorrect, but they still feel qualified to declare the subject nonsense and all the people who *do* know much about it must be idiots or liars.

And you've failed to explain what is allegedly "wrong" with the 100+ other independent lines of evidence. Carbon-dating and stratification are minor players in the vast mountain of evidence for the age of Earth and various things in it, and the biological evolution of the life thereon.

[r9etb]

Natural Selection is not random.

The genetic mutations that govern it are, though. If they were not random mutations, then we would have to theorize that something was guiding those mutations, right? In other words, we would have to theorize that evolution is proceeding according to a design of some sort.

[GluteusMax]

Nice list dude. It proves absolutely nothing, but nice list.

Basically you just restated that things "appeared" fully formed and functional. This "proves" EVOLUTIONARY processes how?

The link you provided is the same one that PatrickHenry gave me, and like I said, I'm reading through the voluminous thing now.

[dangus]

Intelligence should *necessarily* diverge among races only if the races are
A. experiencing fundamentally different environmental pressures
B. insuficient mixing among the races
C. No pressures constraining the ranges of intelligence

I would argue:
A. the races face similar evolutionary pressures, given their short seperation
B. racial mixing has occurred to a large degree
C. The races face universal constraints: The stupid die more often, and the eggheads don't get laid as often as they should.

[Last Visible Dog]

Evolution theory is about the slow change of existing living organisms over time. Creationist theory demands that new organisms be spontaneously generated. When a Creationist can demonstrate the spontaneous generation of a new organism, then I will be most impressed.

FALSE!

Evolution also demands spontaneous generation of life because Evolution does not and can not explain the origin of life. Evolutionists can either ignore the question or admit it is based solely on spontaneous generation of life.

When an Evolutionist can demonstrate how evolution begin (spontaneous generation of life), then I will be impressed.

Most evolutionists deal with this question by running away and claiming evolution does not address the origin of life.

[gcruse]

"Before I found the Lord, my mind was all messed up on drugs. Now it's all messed up on the Lord."

[Ichneumon]

Nice list dude.

Thank you, dude.

It proves absolutely nothing,

Sure it does.

Basically you just restated that things "appeared" fully formed and functional.

No, I didn't. The mammals weren't "fully formed" when they first appeared. They were in fact "primitive" compared to modern forms. Ditto for all the other species/groups. (Gosh, just as evolution predicts, and creationistm doesn't.)

This "proves" EVOLUTIONARY processes how?

See above, but that wasn't my point. You asked:

No new species have appeared. [...] If you disagree, I would like you to point out, documented of course, a new species appearing.

I gave you a list of around a million "new species appearing". You asked a question, I answered it.

That alone doesn't "prove" evolution, of course (no single piece of data can "prove" anything in science, it's how well a theory fits the "big picture" of *all* the relevant evidence that matters). But then I wasn't trying to.

I was clearing up your apparent misconception that no new species have ever "appeared". On the contrary, *every* species "appears" in the fossil record at some point after a period where it previously had not existed.

Straightening out that misunderstanding of yours is only the first step in leading you through all the evidence which, taken *together* leads to the inescapable conclusion that evolution is the best explanation for the history of life on Earth.

[dangus]

i do

[Havoc]

Uh sorry, Carbon dating initially relied on levels being constant over time - an assumption that bit them in the butt. When it bit, they scrambled to sell another guess - that of a steadly rising or decreasing amount - niether of which could be proven; nonetheless, the newer more technical guess at it was sold as science and the tool continued to be used. Some of us are aware of that which we speak.

Furthermore, science cannot account for saturation or contamination as they cannot produce a direct witness to the levels of either. Nor can they be sure of either the scope or extent of saturation/contamination at any given point in time because they don't know the atmospheric levels from one year to another. This is a guess based on bad assumptions that do not hold up to scrutiny any more than carbon dating does.

The problem with playing games with theoreticals is that they largely tend to turn around and bite you. All the other dating schemes have been calibrated against Radio carbon that itself is flawed - including strata dating.
Strata dating is flawed all by itself for the most obvious reasons and these have been discussed endlessly to deaf ears who merely continue in their use and expect everyone to buy them. Some of us actually want to hold you guys to account - and that just really ticks ya off. Get used to it. Cause it's only gonna get worse.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I'm simply asking what is your definition of species.

[tortoise]

It would be helpful though to know why the term non-axiomatic model is not an oxymoron

This is actually a fairly good question.

The models, while formal and symbolic in the technical sense, do not use model-theoretic semantics because certain types of things are not really expressible in decidable axiomatic formal system. Such systems prove very poor at things like non-deductive inference. Nonetheless, formal model-theoretic systems have dominated fields like logic for the last century in large part because no alternative has been provided.

Rather than using classical model-theoretic semantics, which use a static axiomatic model, a different type of semantics is used for most reasoning systems related to current AI which assume a dynamic non-axiomatic model. The important difference is that statements using the terms of non-axiomatic reasoning systems do not absolutely evaluate to "true" or "false" in all contexts, but can actually be fuzzy values that vary. For other reasons, it should be clearly invalid to make absolute statements about anything in a finite context, yet classical formal systems require this.

While a formal language and inference rules still apply to non-axiomatic reasoning systems, there are no axioms from which absolute truth values can be derived (except for the inference rules themselves I suppose). The value of this is that non-axiomatic reasoning does not require complete knowledge, non-ambiguity, or even certainty regarding any of the terms to still come up with reasonable fuzzy truth values. Axiomatic systems evaluate everything to black-and-white, non-axiomatic systems evaluate to shades of grey.

That is my very rough 5-minute explanation, and I played a bit fast and loose with terminology (I've got a meeting to go to...). Google for "Pei Wang" and "NARS" (non-axiomatic reasoning system) for one of the most lucid and thorough descriptions on the net. His doctoral thesis very clearly and thoroughly dissects all models for intelligence and reasoning systems that have been proposed over the years. He is also one of the original people to explore non-axiomatic semantics for intelligent reasoning systems. Today, with the further expansion on the subject, it is actually blatantly obvious that this is the kind of reasoning that humans actually do, rather than classical formal logic. It also does not have many of the "brick wall" limitations that classical formal systems have run into.

[Doctor Stochastic]

The Hylax</> do seem to show speciation by polyploidy in a single generation. The offspring are cross-infertile with the parents but can breed with themselves. Such speciation is common in plants.