Posted on 01/14/2002 3:02:24 PM PST by Karl_Lembke
This article would be like a judge or jury ruling that the defendant is guilty before examining the evidence and checking it's reliability. The prosecution is deemed to be right regardless of the facts or rules of evidence. Talk about a kangaroo court!!!
Instead of laughing, why don't you just prove ONE SINGLE inconsistency in the Bible. Just one.
Next you'll be claiming that astronomy and planetary exploration are just religion.
No, now you're putting words in my mouth. Those are sciences. Not perfect sciences, but sciences nonetheless. No science is perfect. However, using evolution to explain our existence is not based on fact. It's based on interpretation and conjecture. It comes down to how you BELIEVE we got here. This makes it a religion. No one was there, and we can't prove it beyond all doubt, so it is religion.
Actually, GEOLOGY tells us that, NOT evolution.
No, geology tells us that these layers exist. Geologists (who are mostly evolutionists also) infer that they were deposited over millions of years, despite their findings of perfectly intact fossils spanning several layers. Look at what we saw when Mt. St. Helens erupted. We saw rapid sedimentation of distinct layers with fossils spanning several layers. If we had come across this formation without knowing it's history, we would have assumed that it happened very slowly because it doesn't look much different than the layers we see in the Grand Canyon.
Evolutionists use the fictitious geologic column as a crutch to support their theory (this is why I say that evolution would have it that the layers formed over millions of years, because if they didn't, evo's would be in a bind).
Again, the tactic of the cornered liberal. Given a difficulty, you lash out at those with differing views as being "haters."
Ok, so because I use the word "hater" I am now a liberal??? How old are you, 13? 14? I am simply making an observation. There are many people who hate God. They are the folks who spend their time coming up with bone-headed questions like this because they A) have nothing better to do, B)can't confront the real issues, and C) they hate it when they can't answer a question, so they have to come up with an unanswerable, senseless question of their own.
Which God? Zarquon?
Ask whatever god you want to. Ask several. Be sure you ask the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, because He is the only one who will answer you. But you must seek Him with a contrite heart and an open mind, because if you try to find Him when you're full of yourself, He won't answer you.
This from someone who doesn't know that there'sa difference between biological evolution and geological forces?
Trust me, I could rant on and on for longer than you'd care to read about the differences and the similarities between the two. I use them somewhat interchangeably because each one is a crutch for the other. Without one, the other would have some serious reconsideration to do.
Yes, I agree it could never happen, but I'm curious to see how strong your "faith" is in your belief that God does not exist. What do you mean you'd lie? What would you say? I take your statement to mean that a lie would be you saying that God exists (because you don't believe that, so in order to lie you would have to say that he does exist, right?).
When you say that a live you is better than a dead you, that means that you believe that it is possible that you are wrong and that you could be killed for saying that you didn't believe in God, which means that you acknowledge the possibility that He exists and you are very weak in your faith. You are flaky.
I would die for my God should it come to that. I believe it that strongly. If the only way for me to live would be to say that God doesn't exist, I couldn't do it. I KNOW He does.
It is a waste of my time to argue with someone who can't take a firm stance one way or the other.
In 1 Sam. the pillars refer to the laws of physics and matter. The earth is said to set upon them because without them it would fall.
The earth's rotation, orbit, and trajectory are stable. It will not be moved from its course.
As for the value of pi, did you even calculate the measurements? When they measured that pit, they did not have rulers or yardsticks. They used their own bodies (elbow to tip of middle finger). A diameter of 10 cubits (r=5) and a circumference of 30 cubits gives a result of 3 for pi. That's pretty darn close considering the measuring tools they had. They were well within their margin of error.
ditinct fossils are found in distinct layers
Again, you are referring to the geologic column, which is based on circular reasoning. Tell me, what are "index fossils"? Nevermind, I won't wait for an answer. They are fossils that are characteristic of a certain time period, right? So if a certain index fossil is found in a rock layer, the rock can be dated as being from the time period that the organism came from.
How do they know how old the organism is? They can tell how old an organism is by the rock layer it came from. Circular? Yes.
You are soon to bring up carbon dating or K-Ar dating as the "proof" of age. Before you do, read my post from an earlier thread on the subject (I will repost the pertinent part of it here):
Let's take one example: carbon dating. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept and the practice, so I'll cut to the chase. Please read this with an open mind. It is hard to set biases aside, but please try.C14 is created in the upper atmosphere. It also decays on earth. Scientists have measured the half-life of C14, and if we assume the earth to be billions of years old, we can assume that the levels of C14 in the earth have reached equilibrium (forming as fast as it decays). Assuming that, we know the rate of C14 formation in the upper atmosphere. Scientists have theoretically calculated how long it would take to reach C14 equilibrium assuming that there is none to start with in the atmosphere. This would take about 30,000 years or so.
If we assume the earth to be billions of years old, no problem. We can also assume the C14 levels to be stable and then C14 dating would work.
However, lets assume that God created the earth 6000 years ago. If it takes 30,000 years to reach C14 equilibrium, the levels of C14 in the atmosphere would still be increasing, therefore anything that is relatively old would have existed when C14 levels were lower than they are today. This would show that the object has much less C14 than is present in the atmosphere today, giving it a much older age. I will explain in simple math (not real numbers for C14). If 3000 years ago there was 1% C14 and now there is 2%, an organism that died 3000 years ago would have started with 1% C14. If we ASSUME the levels to be the same then and now, we would assume that it started with 2%, and thus we are off by one half-life already.
Knowing that C14 exists in very small amounts and it would take 30,000 years to reach equilibrium, we would not notice an increase in the levels of C14 over the time span in which we have been able to measure it. It would appear stable (although it is increasing). It would increase in a logarithmic fashion because it would be rapid at first, but then it would start decaying, causing the rate of increase to slow down. Organisms that died around 5000-6000 years ago would appear to be far older (by magnitudes of thousands) than ones that died 4000-5000 years ago.
I'm not sure when we first measured the levels of C14 in the atmosphere, but I'm sure it was within the last 100 to 200 years. Assuming we have known the levels accurately for the last 200 years, if it takes 30,000 years to reach equilibrium and the levels are very low (growth would be very slow), it would appear to be stable. 200 years is nothing compared to 30,000. Imagine a graph where the X axis is from 0 to 30,000 and the slope of the line is almost straight, but increasing. A 200 year section of that graph, even at the portion of greatest growth, would appear straight. We cannot reasonably extrapolate the levels of C14 back thousands of years unless we ASSUME that the earth is very old. Only then does C14 dating work.
These methods of dating are internally flawed because of the potentially false assumptions they are built on. IF (that's a BIG if) they are true, only then does the dating method work.
This is a non-issue. Large fossils, such as tree stumps with intact root systems, are almost invariably found to have been covered over rapidly, not over thousands or millions of years.
Why only large fossils? Why can you say that large fossils are always covered rapidly and then in the same breath assume that all the other smaller fossils were covered over slowly? Oh, yeah, because your explanation would look like hogwash if it didn't happen in such an unlikely way.
A fossil log, say, was exposed by erosion many millions of years ago. At which time it became, essentially, an interesting looking boulder, exposed to weathering. It was then covered up *again* by slow sedimenation. Viola: a fossil penetrating many layers, and problem solved.
Oh I LOVE this one! What an UNLIKELY set of events! You come up with these explanations despite the fact that it is virtually impossible for it to happen.
You know, I think Osama scr*wed a mountain goat and, VOILA: you get Richard Reid! Nevermind that...
You claim that the reason we see intact, weathered fossils is because (we'll use a tree) a tree is covered rapidly by some event, and millions of years later it is UNCOVERED BY EROSION. This would mean that the rocks are eroding faster than sedimentation is occurring, right (it would have to)? You then say it became weathered and then RECOVERED by slow sedimentation??? How can something be uncovered by erosion and then recovered by sedimentation? The two forces are opposites of each other. Also, if a tree was "uncovered" by erosion, wouldn't it erode also? You are claiming that the rocks around the tree erode away, leaving the tree standing upright and then slow sedimentation settles and it appears that the tree is spanning several layers.
There is so much that is wrong with this statement that I'm laughing out loud at you. If a tree was standing upright and covered rapidly, then the rock above it began to erode away, when it got down to the tree it would erode the tree away also. The tree would not span any layers that would subsequently form on top of it, and in order to form these layers on top of the tree, sedimentation would have to overcome erosion.
The trees appear weathered because of the events that caused it to become buried. All the rock and debris rubbing against it in the chaotic event cause the weathered look. Do you expect a tree to pass through something like that unscathed? I hope not.
I think I'll stop there. This is getting tedious.
And the Bible predicted the earth's wobble 2000 years ago.
they had God to tell them that the ratio was 3.14159... but yet they still produced the wrong answer, and printed it.
They were simply describing the size of a pit. They weren't interested in being super exact so that people like you wouldn't nitpick irrelevant details. They are describing the size of a pit, and for a pit of 10 cubits in diameter, 30 cubits in circumference is a reasonable answer. You wouldn't be satisfied unless it said that the pit was 31.41592653... cubits across.
Wrong. They are fossils that are characteristic of a certain stratigraphic layer.
And each stratigraphic layer is indicative of a certain time period, right? I'm not wrong then. If A=B and B=C, then A=C.
C14 dating is strictly for relatively recent events. Other means are needed for deep-time measurements.
And these other means are?
C14 measurement reliably dates known archeological sites and items
C14 dating has misdated many known items, such as animals whose diet consists mainly of very old, dead vegetation (such as peat).
given more time, these fossils would eventually be freed from the rock and be "set free" where they can be again covered in sediments
Your explanation hinges on the idea that fossils can be uncovered by erosion and then recovered by slow sedimentation. It seems impossible for slow sedimentation to cover anything if erosion is continually uncovering these fossils. Can you show me anywhere that slow sedimentation can overtake the rate of erosion?
For your idea to work, all fossils would have had to become initially covered in a rapid sedimentation process in order for them to become exposed by erosion, since it is obvious that the rate of erosion exceeds the rate of sedimentation, except during catastrophic events. With the rate of erosion being faster than the rate of slow sedimentation, how could any fossil ever be covered by slow sedimentation?
The evolution we see seems to proceeed in one direction only, the loss of info. It may lead to a more specialized critter, but it is still through loss of info.
Is it fair to say that your position is that all of the changes required for Humans and apes to evolve from a common ancestor DID occur, but that the reactivation of the C vitamin gene did NOT occur?
I must say that is a rather extraordinary set of claims. All of those changes from before Austrialapithicus to man happened, yet one tiny mutation never got undone. THis despite the fact that it would be enormously useful for major groups of homo sapiens for much of our species history.
I am not talking about evolution as an intelligent agent. I am merely refering to the typical mechansims suggested by evolution. It seems unlikely to me that these agents could make all of the changes required to turn Lucy into Lucille Ball. Especially since those same forces can't seem to turn back on one tiny gene that would be enourmously useful.
I emphasize again that I am not ascribing anything but the powers of chance and selection pressure to evolution- not intellect. And I note that those powers cannot seem to make this tiny useful change. Against that backdrop, I conclude that it is unreasonable to maintain that they are responsible for the much greater change observed in the biological record.
If you think that this is a cop-out, so be it. I've got better things to do and I'm sure you do too. I hold strong to my faith and will continue to do so. You keep exploring and try to figure out what you believe. Since you admit that God might exist, why don't you explore that option? I hope you find Him, for your sake.
God bless, and happy hunting.
We cannot call something "fact" if it is based on an unprovable, possibly false assumption.
This world is full of wierd and freaky things. Some of the geology appears to support a very old earth, while some of it also appears to support a young earth, depending on who is collecting and interpreting the evidence. We can go back and forth forever discussing every nook and cranny of the landscape if we so wish.
I'd like to be done with this. Do we agree to disagree? I hope to not waste any more time on this, and I hope to find that you and I can be on respectful terms in the future on other threads.
1) I understand that WE, in our current circumstances, don't need to manufacture vitamin C. I also understand that fruit-eating apes don't need to do this.
2) However, MANY groups of humans at MANY times in history WOULD benefit from being able to do so. We seem to agree on that.
3) If random chance was able to produce all of the positive changes between Lucy the Austrolopithicine and Lucille Ball, it seems quite odd that it was/is unable to undo its previous work on that single gene.
To this you say 'so -what?' Is that it? It would be as if you introduced me to a man that you claimed wrote 10 pulitzer prize winning novels, yet is unable to write a coherent paragraph while I am looking.
When I express doubt that he can really do all that you claim he did, when I note that he has been unable to write a coherent paragraph for the last two hours, you say 'so what'?
YOu say words to the effect of "well, these mechansims just operate by chance. By chance, the gene has not been reactiviated in those situations" (the many situations when it would have been advantageous for human subpops to have that gene turned back on.)
My point is that if chance has not even been powerful enough to turn that gene back on, what are the odds it is powerful enough to make Cindy Crawford out of essentially a two-legged Chimpanzee in a mere 3 million years (~80,000 generations)?
4)except waiting for a random mutation that re-activates
So you agree that it ought to be possible to re-activate it. Otherwise, evolution subtracts info, not adds it, as I have been saying.
BTW, there was an article recently about a boy in INdia that had the tube skin of a tail. It did not have the vertebrae, muscles, or anything else that was part of a tail, just the extra skin. It seems that even when a gene gets accidentally 'turned on' it does not turn on in a way that adds functionality.
I assume God gave us minds because he is against stupidity.
The really big lie which is being promulgated by the evos is that the dialectic is between evolution and religion. That's BS. In order to have a meaningful dialectic between evolution and religion, you would need a religion whicih operated on an intellectual level similar to that of evolution, and the voodoo doctors down in Haiti would probably not be interested.
The real dialectic is between evolution and mathematics. Professing belief in evolution at this juncture amounts to the same thing as claiming not to believe in modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic. It's basically ignorant.
Evolution has been so thoroughly discredited at this point that you assume nobody is defending it because they believe in it anymore, and that they are defending it because they do not like the prospects of having to defend or explain some expect of their lifestyles to God, St. Peter, Muhammed...
To these people I say, you've still got a problem. The problem is that evolution, as a doctrine, is so overwhelmingly STUPID that, faced with a choice of wearing a sweatshirt with a scarlet letter A for Adulteror, F for Fornicator or some such traditional design, or or a big scarlet letter I for IDIOT, you'd actually be better off sticking with one of the traditional choices because, as Clint Eastwood noted in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:
God hates IDIOTS, too!
The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.
Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.
For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.
In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.
All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.
And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.
Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.
Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.
And, if you were starting to think that nothing could possibly be any stupider than believing in evolution despite all of the above (i.e. that the basic stupidity of evolutionism starting from 1980 or thereabouts could not possibly be improved upon), think again. Because there is zero evidence in the fossil record (despite the BS claims of talk.origins "crew" and others of their ilk) to support any sort of a theory involving macroevolution, and because the original conceptions of evolution are flatly refuted by developments in population genetics since the 1950's, the latest incarnation of this theory, Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium or punc-eek" attempts to claim that these wholesale violations of probabilistic laws all occurred so suddenly as to never leave evidence in the fossil record, and that they all occurred amongst tiny groups of animals living in "peripheral" areas. That says that some velocirapter who wanted to be a bird got together with fifty of his friends and said:
Guys, we need flight feathers, and wings, and specialized bones, hearts, lungs, and tails, and we need em NOW; not two years from now. Everybody ready, all together now: OOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....
You could devise a new religion by taking the single stupidest doctrine from each of the existing religions, and it would not be as stupid as THAT.
But it gets even stupider.
Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.
Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).
Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:
1. It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could see or hear them, they wouldn't be witches...) The best example of that sort of logic in fact that there ever was was Michael O'Donahue's parody of the Connecticut Yankee (New York Yankee in King Arthur's Court) which showed Reggie looking for a low outside fastball and then getting beaned cold by a high inside one, the people feeling Reggie's wrist for pulse, and Reggie back in Camelot, where they had him bound hand and foot. Some guy was shouting "Damned if e ain't black from ead to foot, if that ain't witchcraft I never saw it!!!", everybody was yelling "Witchcraft Trial!, Witchcraft Trial!!", and they were building a scaffold. Reggie looks at King Arthur and says "Hey man, isn't that just a tad premature, I mean we haven't even had the TRIAL yet!", and Arthur replies "You don't seem to understand, son, the hanging IS the trial; if you survive that, that means you're a witch and we gotta burn ya!!!" Again, that's precisely the sort of logic which goes into Gould's variant of evolutionism, Punk-eek.2. PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...
3. PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.
4. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.
5. For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.
The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.
And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldridge's BS:
They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:
ASSUMING that Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happens, then the rest of the business proceeds as we have described in our scholarly discourse above!
Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.
I ask you: How could anything be stupider or worse than that? What could possibly be worse than professing to believe in such a thing?
Again, there is an assumption made that ALL Pb 207 that is present came from the decay of U 235. That is to say that this method assumes that initially, only U 235 was present and no Pb 207 was present.
If you believe that all the higher elements were made by a process of fusion reactions beginning with hydrogen, it would stand to reason that some Pb 207 would initially be present, especially since it is more stable than U 235 and U 235 is only found in trace amounts naturally. The question is: how much Pb 207 was initially present? If there was 15 times as much Pb 207 as there was U 235, you start 4 half-lives behind. We don't know how much was initially present, but it doesn't make any sense to assume that there was no Pb 207 and that all of it we see today came from radioactive decay of U 235. This is especially short-sighted if we are to believe that all the higher elements came from fusion reactions of smaller ones.
So long as you agree with the following, we're cool: Hillary sucks; guns don't kill, bad laws do; taxes are way too damned high; theocracy is for nincompoops; the French are annoying.
No, Hillary blows; bad laws don't kill, criminals do; I want more taxes; theocracies are good; and I'm French!
Just joking (well, not about Hitlery or criminals)!
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