Creationism - Why it is valid.

Paul, it seems clear the me that this discourse is not going to lead anywhere and that if I continue I will only be casting pearls before, well...I think you know the rest. You have no real reply to any of the theological, biblical problems that I have raised with macroevolution. Your interpretations of the Bible are grounded in your own reasoning and not an honest, exegetical study of the Scriptures. While it is obvious that you are quite studied up on your observations of natural phenomenon, your knowledge of God's Word is quite lacking. You said nothing about Hebrew numerical qualifiers, man being CREATED in the image of God, etc. You have allowed what you have observed and what scientists tell you to trump any clear biblical argument that I make. Your replies to those arguments have been very brief (surprise, surprise) and have come from within your own reason, and not biblical exegesis. If you are going to continue to interpret the Bible that way, please be consistent. If the Bible can't be taken literally, don't ever claim to believe that Christ was LITERALLY born of a virgin, or that He LITERALLY lived a sinless life, or that He LITERALLY died on Calvary's cross, or that He LITERALLY rose from the dead. You can't just interpret the parts you like literally while discarding the other, "less-scientific" parts as non-literal (I think that's called having your cake and eating it too). Though you have portrayed me as being one who thinks that there is no allegorical or anthropomorphological language in the Bible, nothing could be further from the truth. Obviously, those word pictures and images are there, but each one is given to depict a literal truth of Scripture (like your example of leaven and the kingdom teaching about the literal power of the church, the sheep and goats teaching about literal judgment, and on and on).

I am not against science or the findings of science. What I am against is trying to apply a scientific theory to God's Word and act as if it were true. There's a VERY good reason why macroevolution is called the THEORY of evolution. Not only are there no real evidences of the so-called "transitional species" (no matter what anthropologists tell us - by the way they talk about such species, you would think that we would have scores of transitional remains), but the Bible simply will not allow any notion of macroevolution for all the exegetical and logical reasons that I have presented. Your approach to biblical interpretation is one that is being governed by sight, but Paul clear said that sight was not our primary authority - "For we live by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:7). That doesn't mean that we are all to be some existentialists or fideists who believe in an illogical faith, but it does mean that Christians don't feel pressed to answer all the questions that science can present to the YEC position, "for now we see in a glass darkly, but then we shall know just as we are fully known" (1 Cor. 13:12). I'll admit that I don't have all the scientific answers now (as neither do you to objections to scientific arguments that support YEC), but someday I will. Until then, God says believe my Word, reject the philosophies of men, and I will disclose all knowledge to you when I glorify you in heaven.

Allow me to demonstrate - it's like the chair that I am sitting in. When I sat down in this chair, I didn't have to check and see exactly how it was put together. I didn't have to know where every hinge and screw was that holds it together. I didn't have to know exactly where the chair had been welded to make it sturdy. The only thing I had to do was to believe that the chair would hold me up when I sat down, and guess what - it did. Our understanding of creation is much like that. I don't have to explain all the fossil records of the known world. I don't even have to have an advanced degree in geology (though God has left us with many scientific evidences that refute macroevolution). God says all I have to do is to trust Him by taking Him at His Word - something I'm afraid that you have failed to do.

If you want to debate scientific arguments that strongly support the YEC position, we can talk about many of them, from the Grand Canyon alone! For instance, we could talk about the ridiculously different age results that have been gathered from a study of the diabase sill at Bass Rapids:

- Potassium-argon..........841 million years
- Rubidium-strontium.......1,055 million years
- Uranium-lead.............1,249 million years
- Samarium-neodymium.......1,375 million years

Let me do the math, there is a gap of 500 MILLION YEARS between the various methods of radioisotope research - and based upon that I am supposed to hang my hat upon those numbers as if they were reliable - give me a break! By no means can any scientist say that radioactive dating has proven the rocks of the Canyon to be millions of years old. And that is just one scientific illustration among SCORES of others that prove that the theory of macroevolution is contradictory and inconsistent.

Yet, as I have said, it is not even necessary to give much attention to the scores of arguments against macroevolution - God has already clearly told us how and when He created everything. Either accept the sound, exegetical teaching of the Bible in regard to creation or reject it all together, but please don't attempt to reinterpret the Bible's creation account to accomidate your view of creation by calling it "non-literal" or "allegorical" - that is sinful. It is my prayer that you will acknowledge the literal truthfulness of Scripture, and that such truth will "set you free" from the musings of today's secular, atheistic scientists.

 

As I read the scriptures and seek to find my own accomodation with what God said in both scripture and in nature

That pretty much sums up your entire stance Paul. seek to find my own accomodation . There is no "accomodation" with the word of God. It is as Todd put it: you either acept what it says as what it says, or you reject the whole thing.

Men will always try to "reinterpret" the Bible to fit their own wants. Man wants to be the master of all creation, and he wants it on his terms. To do so, God has to ruled out of the equation. What better way than to attempt to make "creation" merely and accident on a cosmic scale, with no "God" in the picture.

"Oh," you say, "I never said that God wasn't in the picture!"

The Bible, the very word of God, states that God created the world and everything in it (except man) with His words. Man He created Himself. Nowhere in the entire Bible does it state that evolution took place. Either God created it all in six days, or He didn't. If He didn't, then He is a liar, and cannot be God.

You use the "age of stars" as an example. God created the stars on the fourth day of creation, not billions of years ago. Is it theoretically possible that God, who created all of creation in six days, formed the stars as they presently are? God formed plants and animals fully grown (baby animals and immature plants cannot multiply). And God made Adam a fully grown man (nowhere does the Bible record God as nursing Adam). So if God can make all that exists, and can form the plants and animals and Adam fully grown, can He not also have made the stars as they now are? You keep hollering about logic. So use it.

In Christ,
Trotter

 

Well spoken Trotter - I think we've closed the book on this string. The biblical, theological, and logical arguments all point to a young Earth whether the macroevolutionists like it or not.

 

I took a little time this evening to look at the discussions here. Some things never change!

To the creationists here, though, I have a little for you:

1. Remember that it is not the evidence/data which supports evolution, but rather the interpretation of that evidence/data. For instance, where an evolutionist may declare a certain fossil a transitional form, an equally qualified and educated creationist may simply see an interesting variation which fits well within a basic kind.

2. Take a look at the following recent news report and watch for something:

If one does not FIRST presume evolution and long ages, what are the clear conclusions?
First that, because the remains would decay rapidly in that heat and humidity, they had not been there terribly long.
Second, because the remains are so close in identity to some found in Africa, indicating the two continents were once joined, the separation could not have happened that long ago.

In other words, the data indicate recent events. It is only when evolutionary presuppositions are put into place first that the data are interpreted in such a way that evolution can tolerate them!
3. Here is another bit to look at:

Please note here that there is NOT universal agreement among evolutionists regarding the advent or presence of mammals at the time of the dinosaurs.

4. Culling a little more from that issue:

New Scientist 19 August, 2000
What is it really like being a fish out of water? Well, you can't breathe for one thing. Your skin dries up. So does the rest of your body because your kidneys aren't designed to conserve fluid. And without legs you can't hed for home. Even if you could, how would you find your way? You can't see or hear properly, and neither can you smell. Then there's the problem of lunch. Your jaws aren't made for catching and eating terrestrial fare. Anyway, your digestive system couldn't cope with it. And if, against all the odds, you survive and find an equally stranded mate, reproduction is unthinkable. p. 28

And yet the article goes on to try to explain how some new fossil discoveries have encouraged evolutionists to think this really happened. On page 31, the following quote can be found:

"The transition between the fish-like condition in panderichthyids and the tetrapod-like condition in Acanthostega must have really been quite rapid...and it seems to have occurred at the same time as changes to the limbs"

and, I might add, at the same time the kidneys, digestive tract, circulatory system, eyes and ears and so much else must also have changed quite rapidly.

Right...

In other words, they are going to cling to evolution no matter what, even with evidence running against it genetically, biologically, and historically.

Here is how the article ends:

"The current reconstructions are wrong in almost every respect," says Clack. She and Ahlberg will first focus on the brain case. "We already know how weird that is and we've got some ideas about what it's going to tell us," says Clack. After that they will look at other areas including the neck and pelvic regions, which are hardly known. "Potentially we'll have to rethink the whole thing again with the new Ichthyostega study coming up," she says.


5. Evolution is plastic enough so that no matter what is found, or where, or what the clear implications are, it will stretch and warp enough to accommodate it and still proclaim evolution is true. Here is one example from quite recently:

6. And what about genetic matches? They are done by partially destroying very small sections of chromosomes from different organisms and then seeing what matches with others. That is a very simplified explanation, but that is the essence of what is actually done. To give a little balance to their claims, here are some honest statements about the ignorance of science where genetics is concerned:

7. How certain are we about things in outer space? Here is a blurb from this past year:

8. I don’t want to get into radiometric dating too much, because it is not nearly as sure a field as many would like to presume. I would caution against using dating involving argon as being evidence of anything, however, as argon is known to migrate rather freely. So discrepancies between argon-related dating and other dating are not unexpected. But there was a recent quick mention of a discovery which did indicate that we don’t know nearly as much as we would like to in this area. Here:

9. This is from the December 19 issue of Science, in the Scorecard 2002 section. It sounds like 2003 was not a good year for evolutionary theory, despite all the new data.

R-evolutionary genomics. Comparative analyses of newly sequenced genomes or partial sequences, including those of the rat, dog, two puffers, a bread mold, and anthrax and a close relative, have stimulated new hypotheses about evolution. But questions about how organisms are related to one another on the tree of life, or even what makes chimps and humans different, remain unanswered.

10. The Dec 19, 2003 issue of Science and the accompanying review
article [(Climb Every Mountain? Santiago F. Elena and Rafael Sanjuán
(Science 302 (5653): 2074) and Adaptation Limits Diversification of
Experimental Bacterial Populations Angus Buckling, Matthew A. Wills,
and Nick Colegrave (Science 302: 2107-2109)] discuss how bacteria get stuck on adaptive peaks. What this means, in terms of population genetics, is that a sub-population can diversify only so far and no further. Here is one of the statements explaining what was found:

"the population located at the
top of the adaptive peak is under stabilizing selection; thus, every
new mutation has a deleterious fitness effect and must be washed out
from the population. The result is a niche specialist that exhibits
trade-offs in fitness and a reduced ability to genetically diversify
into different niches."

What this means is that once a small population has achieved stability in a particular niche, it cannot/will not retrace its steps in order to achieve more diversity and change again; natural (or unnatural) selection has eliminated the very members of the population which carried the variations necessary for adapting to a different environment. This is exactly what we see with many of what we term ‘endangered species’. Far from natural selection helping them in the long run, it resulted in such specific adaptation that any change in environment threatens the entire population with extinction.


=====

That’s ten points with which I want to show not only how little we know in some areas which evolutionists depend on for ‘confirmation’, but how the data itself can indicate that the entire theory of evolution is in real trouble.

I would want to emphasize that the actual data in nature DO correspond with what the Bible tells us. The starlight “problem” is no problem at all, as light speed was measured as steadily decreasing during three hundred years of measurements, as documented by my husband and Trevor Norman in 1987 in an invited white paper done at the request of a senior physicist at Stanford Research Institute International for internal discussion. It is on the web here:
http://www.setterfield.org/report/report.html

Barry’s work has continued and his most recently published papers, both in December of 2003, are at the bottom of the list on the Research Papers page:
http://www.setterfield.org/scipubl.html

Material discussing these papers is on a discussions page here:
http://www.setterfield.org/discussionindex.htm

Anyone who has questions about his work is invited to email him and he will respond. Sometimes not as quickly as we would like, but he does respond! Questions (that have not been asked before) are posted anonymously on the discussion page along with Barry’s responses. What is interesting is that Paul of Eugene in particular has been arguing about Barry’s findings for some time but never once has he actually emailed Barry asking questions. In the creation/evolution archives below you will find some of the places where Barry took the time to respond to him there, but he does not seem to understand what Barry is talking about.

Nevertheless, the starlight travel problem and star formation problem are not problems at all when ALL the data is considered.

In short, the universe, earth, and life were all created less than ten thousand years ago, and the actual data is quite supportive of that, as well it should be, for God is not going to use His creation to lie about what He tells us in His Word actually happened.

 

Helen,

I love your posts.

In Christ,
Trotter

 

Thanks, Trotter. Here's another one for the fun of it:
http://www.newswise.com/p/articles/view/?id=ENZCAT.NCM

Biological reactions depend on catalysts. So we not only need to evolve the reactions themselves, but BEFORE they have evolved, the catalysts have to be in place.

Interesting problem for the evolutionists!

 

Helen, allow me to say that I am more than impressed. Your source work is outstanding! That is Ph.D. level stuff you are throwing around there - and what did you say you do for a living? It makes me proud to have sisters in Christ like yourself. Awesome, awesome work. The biblical arguments made coupled with your display of multiple inconsistencies within the scientific community are more than enough to prove that YEC is the only option. Great work.

 

I taught jr. hi and high school for almost thirty years then fell into (almost literally) freelance science editing, but that has been put way on the back burner as I have this husband whose work is keeping me on my toes -- we are trying to get a book finished and move to another state and spend two weeks in March in Australia all in the same spring!

Neither one of us is a Ph.D., however, although we DO have two framed Ph.D certificates on our wall here: they are "Doctorates of Phriendship" from a friend of ours who is a research physicist. These mean as much to us as anything from a university!

 

kendemyer

After your last post, I am not quite sure how closely you have read my posts. In your last post you said

Now, this is obvioulsy a reference to this quote ""In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." Mark Ridley, 'Who doubts evolution?', New Scientist, vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831" But just 2 posts above and 7 hours before I had posted the entire comment to give it context. I believe that the full quote shows quite clearly that the author intended to say was that the fossil record is only the fourth best evidence for evolution with the three listed evidences, in his opinion, providing a more compelling case. The question is then why did you reassert the original quote without acknowledging the different meaning when the full quote is placed in context? Also, as these quotes are found to be misleading, out of context or incorrect, will you agree to quit using them?

You also said

I am not sure I see the failure to which you allude. I do see progress. Let me use another field of science for example. Ptolemy had his initial complex way to describe the motions of the planets following the ancient belief of the earth at the center of the universe. Copernicus came along and made the great leap forward of showing that the earth and the other planets actually orbit the sun. Kepler came along, showed that the orbits were cirular and not elliptical, and gave us the laws of planetary motion to describe the orbits. As our ability to measure orbit more precisely increased, we discovered that Kepler's mathematics did not adequately predict the motions of the planets. Was this a failure on the part of Kepler? Of course not! But adding relativistic effects allows us to better describe the orbits of the planets. It is a march of progress as you learn more, your theories become better refined. It is not any failure of the previous theory. Or should we discredit Kepler?

So let it be with Darwin. He got most of it right. There is no failure in "Darwinism." But the theory has been refined as we proceed. He thought all change was gradual. Now we know that things such as puncuated equilibrium also must be taken into account. Of course the theories are modified as they go forward. There would be no need to do research if you already knew everything. Now I am not sure why you bring up Lamarck. He was chiefly concerned with a means of inheritence. His ideas of organic progression are at odds with common descent. And while Goldschmidt's hopeful monsters may not have been right, we have been discovering of late how minor changes in regulatory genes can have profound effects upon an organism.

 

Hey, look. We have all kinds here. There is great diversity among the Baptists and that is good. Look at some of the discussion here. Some people are diehard KJB and some are open to many of the modern translations. There as wide debate on end times prophecy with sorts of pre-,post, a- -millenial, -tribulation views about. Calvinism. We have a very nice geocentrist running around. A guy who believes men have been to Mars. All sorts of social views. Not all of us agree on all of these and most of them are able to throw some sort of support out for themselves. Many of these others are in tiny minorites. This happens to be a subject that interests me, that I think is something that needs to be discussed among believers, that I do not think is contrary to scripture, and something that puts me in a minority of those that care. I really do not think we will ever individually settle anything, but I think it serves a purpose in getting the relevant facts out before people. I also think that despite the wide variey of minority opinions cast about here, that fundementally we are all on the same side and would agree to many more things than we would disagree. This, in particular, is a debate forum and it is hard to debate without a little disagreement.

I try to not be too obnoxious with this subject. Twice recently coworkers have made comments that would have been good openings to discuss. I do not think I have posted a new topic on evolution here since the CvE forum was closed. I have not invaded Helen's Bible Study forum look at Genesis. I try to leave things alone in the Baptist news section, though sometimes I will comment. I leave the homeschoolers alone when it comes up. But when someone else starts a topic in one of the debate forums I will generally participate. And when someone posts a laundry list with questionable material, I will pounce on the questionable material.

All of us involved are human and we all make mistakes. I certainly make my fair share. Scientists have no special suspension of mistakes. Neither do Christians. (Ours are just forgiven.) And in a debate such as this, mistakes should be pointed out. As I see it, however, there is a differing pattern between the two groups. Scientific mistakes tend to be minimized by the requirements of peer review. The mistakes that slip through are eventually corrected by other scientists. Think of the biggest mistake you can. YECers get a lot of mileage out of Piltdown Man. Very old and eventually corrected by scientist themselves.

Contrast this with what happens in YEC camps. Not only are the mistakes rarely corrected, there seems to be an effort to maintain them. Look at the quotes above as a perfect example. They are so widely misused that all it took was for me to put a few of the words into Google and out pops the full quote at sites dedicated to countering such devious quote mining. The mistakes here are difficult to pass as accidental. Someone had to initially read the book, find the quote, and make the decision that it was something they could use if the right parts were excised. These people are culpable. The people that pass it on are much less culpable. They trust the people they got it from. But they should at least check before passing it on.

YECers have a reputation of not removing such dishonest quotes even when pointed out to them. AIG has called it "the perfectly honorable strategy of using a hostile witness." They also said in response to a claim of misquoting SJ Gould that "most creationists present Gould’s ideas correctly, and those ideas are not the exclusive property of evolutionists." ( http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/scientific_american.asp ) Take this thread as an example. The inital post with all the quotes. So I set about showing how all of the quotes are false. Fine, he got the quotes from somewhere else. But then, he wants to make a better post, so he posts a new list of materials. This time, not only are those posts still in there, after being corrected, but now he adds more quotes. Again, the NEW quotes he got from somewhere else. So now I set upon the out of context quotes showing how misleading they were. What happens, his very next post he reasserts one of the most glaring out of context quotes. First time quoting them can be excused. But once the true nature of the quotes has been shown him, it is his mistake for continuing to use them. Disputable things, like whether the birdlike reptiles I posted are really just that, can be put up to debate and an excuse could be made if a defense of the quote could be made. But quoting someone to say something they did not mean is not OK.

But the YECers seem to never police themselves on this. You would expect that people who think they are doing God's work would be strongly critical of those who cross the line. Not only do they not police themselves, they continue to deliberately spread false information even after the mistake has been pointed out to them. If they would remove such quotes as soon as the problems were pointed out to them, the lists of out of context quotes would not be out there to so easily find.

 

Good to see Helen weighing in. Always interesting since she usually has a wealth of information to add.

Just going to go through you list and comment.

1. Just a different interpretation and not really a transitional, eh? What about the strange mix of avaian and reptilian characteristics in Archaeopteryx. A true transitional complete with more reptile-like creatures and more birdlike creatures found in the series. I listed a few above. What about the early amphibians, the ichthyostegids, who maintained some of their fishlike traits like a tail and a lateral line. What about the wonderful reptile to mammal transitional series ( http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=000261 ) where not only do we have a good record of most of the changes, we even have the key transitional showing the jaw transformation. In the transition, the jaw bones of the reptile became the ear bones of the mammal. We have this documented well with the fossil record including a fossil with a double jaw, both the mammalian and the reptilian jaw. We have whales with increasing adaptations for living in the water as thei legs shrink to nothing. We can go on with this. You may be able to point to a given fossil and claim that it is just another created "kind" (whatever that may be) but when you start putting the evidence together more fully, that becomes much more difficult. And if you wish to overturn the current paradigm it will take more than asserting that it is just a wrong interpretation. You will have to explain ALL the data better.

2. I do not get your point. Why would the fossil have not been there very long? It seems to me that they were saying that an exposed fossil would be weathered quite quickly by the climate. This does not really have anything to do with how long the fossil was buried before being exposed. What is the reason for repeating the observation that the fossils (the overall fauna) were similar to what was found in Africa? I believe that geologist would say that the time frame the fossil was found in was before the two continents split. And if the assumption of long ages is such a bad one, then why is the "remains of other reptiles, mollusks and fish" not similar to what you would find in the equivilent climate today?

3. You said "Please note here that there is NOT universal agreement among evolutionists regarding the advent or presence of mammals at the time of the dinosaurs." Where do you get that from this quote or at all for that matter. Most scientists believe that mammals first evolved and were present during the reign of the dinosaurs. Even the placentals had evolved well before the end of the dinosaurs. I do not know what you are getting at here nor where you are getting it from.

4. I believe that frogs and salamanders of today are able to give you a bit of information on how that happened. As pointed out above, the early amphibians maintained some fishlike characteristics for a while shwing that they spent much of their time in the water. The early amphibians also kept scales for a little while, lessening the drying out problem.

5. Again, I do not get you point. We found a very old millipede and the problem is...? That we do not have abundant plant fossils from the time? You know that a the time plants lacked such modern features as roots, stems and leaves and where therefore much less likely to leave fossils. Again, proof for evolution since the different tree and plant "kinds" we find today are not found with the millipede.

6. I believe the first quote is just that we do not yet know what much of this DNA does yet. Only a fraction codes for proteins. Once you find that fraction you have to find what protein it codes for. Then you have to know what the protein does. Then there is a lot of DNA that does not code for proteins but that still serves a function. Just because we have the genome does not mean that we have found any of that yet. I don't know what the relevence of the second quote to TOE is. I do not know what the third quote has to do with the TOE. It is commonly known, I thought, that there are quite a number of mistakes in these first attempts to sequence large parts of the human genome.

7. Again, what is the problem. We have also found a number of proto-planetary disks that look much like what we would have expected our solar system to look like early on. The sampling that we have of planetary systems is skewed by the fact that currently we can most easily detect large planets (bigger than Jupiter) that orbit close to their star (we haven't been looking long enough to find longer period orbits) and that are in highly elliptical orbits. Of course what we have found does not match what we see in our own solar system! And theories of planet formation will have to be changed to accomodate some of these oddities. But I would not hang to much on that as we get better at finding more "normal" systems.

8. This has absolutely nothing to do with radiometric dating! This is a study of how palladium works as a catalyst.

9. And the problem is...? If we knew all those things there would not be any reason to do research anymore.

10. Yes, once you have a small population well adapted and specialized for a particular environmental niche, they have a hard time surviving a major change in the that environment. We see it today and we see it in the past. Lot's of highly specialized organisms have fallen by the wayside along the way. Where is the problem?

 

Archy is preceded in the fossil record by true birds. He is not a 'transitional' anymore than the platypus is. As for the 'series' you have referenced, you are a pretty gullible guy to believe that selected fossils put in an order conducive to the argument is anything more than selected fossils put in an order conducive to the argument. You are confusing not only interpretation with the evidence, but the manipulation of the evidence with proof of the desired conclusion.

The term used was not 'weathered' but 'decay.' The decay expected was not evident. I believe the article was rather clear about their puzzlement and all I did was take the evolutionary presuppositions away and indicate what the evidence itself may have been pointing to. As far as extinct species go, no one is arguing about that.

The idea of mammals actually present in any large form or quantity during the time of the dinosaurs, evolutionarily, is rather new. It is a 'plastic' stretch needed to accomodate the evidence and still present evolution as the truth.

Are you telling me fish with scales don't dry out? UTE, I can't help that you have swallowed the evolution nonsense hook, line, and sinker, but I would ask you to think a bit more carefully about some of it. I would also ask you to take a look at what the real researchers are finding and not just what the evolutionist apologists are declaring about it.

Your idea of 'proof' is sadly lacking. You are trying to interpret selected evidence and declare it proof. The fact is that millipedes were not expected to be found in that strata and so, once again, the evolutionary timeline is forced to readjust. Any fairytale can be readjusted as the audience or teller desires. It is the truth and the fact of the matter that does not need adjusting.

Not, it is not 'commonly known.' The presentation to the public is that it is all figured out. Texts also present it that way. What was once considered 'junk' DNA is showing up as having definite purposes. Quite frankly, the amount we don't know invalidates the claims of those who say, for instance, that apes and humans are 'closely related'. We don't know enough to say that in honesty, but evolution is not known for that quality, so they have no compunctions regarding claiming this so-called 'close relationship.'

To summarize what you just said, we don't know enough to make the claims of knowledge that are being presented to the public as fact. We know even less about outer space than we do about DNA!

It has to do with our lack of knowledge in this area. Amazing how little we actually know in so many areas, isn't it?

Sure, OK. But take a look at the claims of knowledge in these areas compared to what is actually known, or even agreed upon, and you might see just a tiny, weensy problem involved regarding how it is presented to others.

It is the result of natural selection. Natural selection deletes from the genome, it does not add to it. Therefore the first of any kind had the genome which could present the most variation. This is exactly the opposite of what evolution claims. Evolution claims that it was natural selection which led to the increasing variability of species. It is the exact opposite which we find to be true.

Please, please THINK for yourself. Use some logic. Look at the data. Then look at the claims evolution is making. There is a pretty wildly large gap between the evidence and the claims.

 

I have replied, I have really replied, I have real words in my reply. Unlike you, I even address the your arguments in my reply. Your "replies" simply seem to be assertions that you are right and I am wrong.

Since you state my interpretation is my own, and you assert it is not honest, please show where I have been dishonest. It is not enough to show where I have disagreed with your interpretation. You must catch me in a lie to win this one.

Since I agreed the literal meaning of Genesis chapter one is referring to single 24 hour days, what do you mean by this accusation?

Anyone can go back and see where I stated that the image of God in man is in the spiritual, not the physical. Whatever you may think of that claim, it has to count as saying something instead of nothing.

There. I have caught YOU in a false statement, because you claim I didn't address the matter, and I did.

I'm sure you didn't intend to lie, it was just a careless thing on your part to do this.

But I submit your entire opposition to the findings of science is driven by just this kind of careless incomplete understanding of the issues involved.

 

Why, thank you! Or were refering to another geocentrist?

P.S. I think you are wrong about evolution!

 

Hi Helen! I wondered how long it would be before you showed up. Thanks again for always posting interesting material.

Originally posted by Helen:

Scientists have long concluded that the creationist point of view, committed by faith to YEC and special creation of all species, does not view the transitional forms with an unprejudiced eye. Let the readers look the example transitionals over and judge for themselves.

Here's a place to begin: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

Helen has a knack for making nonsense appear so, so reasonable. It is a gift.

In this case, she earnestly appeals to us to put aside all prejudice and examine the data without first presuming that the material is old.

Then she slips in her own assumption, without stating it, that the material is young. She does not SAY this, instead it is implied in the assertion "the remains would decay rapidly . . . "

fossils are beyond decay, you know. The definition of a fossil is, bone has become rock, safe from decay.

Without making any assumptions one way or another, given only that we have a fossil, there is absolutely no way to say the fossil has existed a long or a short time!

But she absolutely depends on having ESTABLISHED that the fossil is "young" in the next sentence:

thus bringing up, in her own mind and hopefully in all the reader's minds as well, further proof of her bizarre theories of rapid continental splitting in historical times.

Friends, we do not have logic here. We have rhetoric, and persuasion, and an unspoken but clear violation of her own rule to suspend judgment.

You see what I am saying here? She inserts her own presuppositions in hidden fashion (ignoring the fact that fossils cannot decay once the fossilization is complete) and then brings out the conclusion she snuck in! And she calls it logic!

One would think that fish never walk on dry land, from all this. One would be wrong.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/07/0702_020702_snakehead.html

Do you suppose, Helen, that the kidneys, digestive tract, circulatory system, eyes and ears and much else in the walking fish have evolved up to normal terrestrial standards? What, not yet?
Well, there goes THAT arguement.

Except that the evidence is only PRESUMED to be against evolution, as I have shown above.

Here's another bit of question begging from Helen:

So, is there something wrong about that procedure? Can you say why this method does not give accurate results, if the small sections are chosen randomly for example, and the matching in fact occurs? Can you cite an experiment that gives a positive result of a match less than commonly claimed, with a manifestedly better method?

I want to thank you for explaining why dating using argon, when there are discrepancies, is not a particular problem for evolution.


Your next point really has me marveling:

What in the name of all that is fun and wonderful to debate have new discoveries about the action of Palladium Catalysts to do with evolution? Are you somehow confusing Palladium Catalysts with some kind of radioactive decay process?

Please, your thought processes here really have me agog. Clue me in. Please! Please!

Barry's light travel decay theories remain, to put it kindly, on the fringes of science. Accepting those theories requires one to accept systematic violation of conservation of energy, Einstein's theory of relativity, and astronomical observations that establish the constancy of light over the eons. Barry's theory positively predicts galactic rotation, as viewed by light that has drastically slowed in transit from a given galaxy, should become so slowed as to be undetectable. Yet galactic rotation remains easily verified out to billions and billions of light years. There are several other observational effects that are also conspicuous by their absense.

The alledged decrease in light speed over time is easily explained as improvement in the ability to measure light speed over time. CDK theory is empty of any real hope for the creationist point of view.

 

Going back through again...

1. "Archy is preceded in the fossil record by true birds..." So what? This is not the problem you make it out to be. Let's see what we actually have. If birds were to have evolved from reptiles, what would you expect to find? A series of animals in which reptiles had more and more birdlike qualities until eventually you have creatures which are undeniably birds. And that is exactly what you find. Look back at the list. You start off with creatures that are certainly reptile but which have a number of birdlike traits. Light bones, a pelvis like a bird, feathers. You move forward and find the animals getting smaller, the feathers becoming differentiated on different parts of the body. You see the front arms becoming more suited for flapping motion. You eventually see one of the fingers of the front arm lengthen into a wing while still maintaining claws for a while. The feet of the back legs become adapted for perching. Archy is perfectly what you would expect to see in a transitional. (I would also say that the platypus is a decent example of the decendant of a transitional. He is certainly a very reptilelike mammal and shows some of the mammal adaptations in a very primitive state.) Is Archy directly on the line to birds? Probably not. Finding older birds is good evidence for that. But it does not take away from the traits that make it a wonderful example of a transitional. It just makes it a side branch.

You wish to make a point of more birdlike fossils being found before Archy. But look at the actual fossil record. It is bushy. Many side branches happen. Things go extinct. Now, just because one group of creatures evolves a new set of traits does not mean that all of his cousins immediately disappear. (In the same way that though I am alive, I can find generations of my family both younger and older than I around.) You would expect that in such a transition that at any given time a variety of transitionals would be present at a given time. (Look at humans where many of the ancestor species overlap in time.) Finding this to be the case is not "manipulation" of the evidence. Because of the randomness of fossilization, exactly what you get may be a bit spotty. But what we have is a clear set of transitionals from reptiles to birds. Now there may be a few things that are not completely known. We may not have every single fossil and may not be able to document every single trait in transition. But what we do have is pretty compelling. You are free to show how these creatures are all fully bird or fully reptile if you wish. If the interpretation is the problem then re-interpret better. Does there just happen to be a series of "kinds" that happen to look like chimeras of reptiles and birds?

The final point is this. In a YEC framework, every "kind" was created at the same time. So you would expect every "kind" to be found throughout the fossil record. So while you can make a little hay about the various bird transitionals overlapping in time, that they are not found but in a narrow window of time is a glaring YEC problem. A problem not just limited to birds.

2. The problem is that this has no bearing to a young earth argument. High humidity causes oxidation of many fossils. Whether you want to call it decay or weathering or what, that is the problem. Whether the fossil is of a hundred year old creature or a hundred million year old creature, once it is exposed to a high humidity atmosphere it starts to degrade. They thought it would be difficult to get fossils out of the Amazon because once the fossils reached or neared the surface, they would start to degrade due to the humidity is the way I read it. It does not matter how long they were in the ground, it is the length of time exposed to the high humidity that counts. It happens so quickly that museums must take precautions against corrosion due to humidity. That was the source of the surprise.

3. All I know is that we have fossilized mammals from the time of the dinosaurs. I am unaware of this being a change in postion but I cannot deny it because I have no knowledge of the subject. How long ago did this change take place? It does not seem like such an unreasonable thing, though. If you had no mammal fossils from the time of the dinosaurs you may think that they were not contemporaries and that could be changed by discovering new fossils. I believe that Thrinaxodon, the transitional with the double mammal and reptile jaw, was discovered in 1947. Perhaps it took longer to realize what was had, but I do not think so. Regardless, I think that contrary to what was implied, any modern thoughts of dinosaurs and mammals not being contemporary is distinctly minority.

4. No. As far as scales go, I am saying that scales through which water does not diffuse rapidly would be helpful to a creature beginning to spend some time out of the water. The main point was to look at modern amphibians for clues. Frogs will also dry out fairly quickly but they do not have such a hard time with life. With no land predators, an animal that could spend even brief periods out of the water would have enormous selective advantages. And, as shown, the early amphibians maintained many fishlike traits indicating they spent much time in the water.

6. To the public, probably is not common knowledge, but I think it is to those in the field. I even knew about it somehow. How things get communicated through the news media is a problem in everything, especially technical stuff. Having said that, I have heard recent news stories that point out that the work is just beginning with the genome. Comparing the overall genomes of humans and other apes is just beginning. I do not know how widely known this is. But, the individual things that have been looked at still apply. We have looked at plenty of individual proteins, genes, pseudogenes, morphology, shared mutations, LTRs from HERVs, fossils and such to make a strong, "honest" case. And while the public does not grasp that not all the "junk" is junk, I think people in the field understand that some of the non-coding DNA still serves an important function. Again, just because we do not know everything yet is not a problem. It just gives us more reasons to do research. I do not understand how some of the "junk" having a function supports YEC.

7. No. The summary of what I said would be that when you only have the technology to detect things much different than what is expected, why should you be surprised to detect a lot of things that seem strange? What the general population knows about planet formation I imagine is very little. I think that people in the field understand that the state of the knowledge is undergoing change as we finally get large enough telescopes in the right frequencies to see things forming in detail and as we get more samples of actual planetary configurations from the planet searches. How accurate could the models be expected to be when you only had one planetary system to go on? But while those details are being worked out, it still remains that we can lookout and see planetary systems in every stage. Molecular clouds, Bok globules, proto- disks, disks around young stars, planets around stars young and old, and even planets around stars that have "died." The models may need work, but we have observed the process in all its stages.

8. "It has to do with our lack of knowledge in this area. Amazing how little we actually know in so many areas, isn't it?" Yes it is. Still does not make it relevant to CvE. It is still learning more about how a particular catalyst works in a particular application having nothing at all to do with radiometric dating. I am personally glad there are so many areas in which we are lacking knowledge. It makes life interesting and gives many of us a place to work.

9. There is always a problem in how technical stuff is presented to lay audiences. Look at all the hype that surrounds every new medical story the press chooses to report on. Look how easily fooled lay audiences are. But I think you are taking unknowns in the details and trying to translate it into unknowns in general. Every detail is not yet known. We do not always know exactly what is related to what. To adress the original quote, we do not yet know which differences in the genomes of humans and other apes give rise to the differences we have. But, we are finally getting the tools to begin to answer those questions. As pointed out above, we have a wealth of data to show us related. Now the search is to find what makes us different. And the twin nested heirarchy remains as a problem for individually created "kinds."

10. "Natural selection deletes from the genome. No. Natural selection both removes undesired traits and preserves desired traits. Big difference. Again, this is an example of what happens when NS leads to a very specialized organism. When the niche to which it was specialized changes, especially with a small population, it tends to go extinct. Look around the world for examples. I would think that small populations and a specialized niche has a lot to do with the problems faced by endangered species. The less specialized, more general, higher population organisms are better able to cope. Both are products of natural selection. But you have taken one result of NS and extrapolated it to be the only result. Not so.

"Therefore the first of any kind had the genome which could present the most variation." Then where did the variation in allele frequency come from with only two examples of each "kind?" What tests can we do to determine if two organisms are of the same "kind?" How rapidly can "kinds" speciate? By what mechanism? What is the evidence for "kinds?"

The best of your 10 points seem to be areas where scientists do not yet have all the facts and doubting the interpretation of the evidence. And at that, I do not see much really that useful to a YEC argument. Where is the evidence that shows a young earth? If the interpretations are so bad, where are the better interpretations? Asserting that the earth is young and that all the "kinds" were created separately has consequences. What are the predictions of YEC and where can we see the evidence that support these predictions? So much of it just seems like trolling around at the edges and suggesting that the things that we do not know or understand undermines everything else.

 

Well, I wasn't going to mention any names... I think we have some differing ideas to say the least, but you always seem like a really nice guy.

 

I ask this question because it seems that mosr YECers spend their whole time running around the edges of science trying to poke a hole here and there. I am looking for that actual evidence of a young earth. Saying the earth is young has consequences. Let me demonstrate.

I asked the above question knowing the basics of what Helen believes about "kinds." She believes that the proper definition of "kind" is something like family in biology. So the dog "kind" would include dogs plus all species of wolves, foxes, coyotes, etc. She allows new genera and new species. She has constantly asserted that mutations and natural selection can only remove information and cannot create new traits. So when asked where the variability within a "kind" comes from, she answers that the original kind initially contained all the variability of the group. As time passed, different members of the group lost different traits giving us the different species and the accompanying variation that we have today. I am not sure where exactly the variations in a given gene are supposed to have originated. It is a very common YEC point of view so I am not trying to pick on Helen.

As a consequence, as the "kind" speciated, the mechanism would be that mutation removed certain traits from certain groups. The prediction would be that you should be able to compare the genes of various members of a "kind" and what gene codes for a useful protein in one species should be found in the other species in a corrupted form. And there should be scores of examples in every kind. And this should not be shared by members of another "kind." Showing that members of a "kind" have a set of mutations that indicate loss of functional genes that were present in an ancestor and that are still present in some members of the "kind" and showing that these genes were not found in members of another "kind" would be evidence for created "kinds" rather than common descent. Does anyone have any such data?

Same idea with her husband's work. His idea of slowing light has certain consequences. One prediction would be that the slowdown would cause objects in space to appear to be in slow motion. The formulas should be able to predict exactly how much slowdown a particular object at a given distance should exhibit and the rate at which the slowing is changing. So showing a progression of objects at increasing distance that show evidence of a slowdown matching the prediction would be considered a start towards evidence confirming the idea. The lack of such evidence would be useful in pointing towards a different direction.

 

Well, from all this it's plain to see that the only acceptable position on creation is that of an ex nihlio 6 24-hour day creation. All other macroevolutionary arguments are forced and experience numerous exegetical and hermeneutical problems. Thanks for the debate everyone.

 

Except that there is no evidence for a "ex nihlio 6 24-hour day creation."

In my last post I gave you a few examples of the type of evidence you could present to build your case. It has gathered dust for days. It is your prerogative to simply declare victory and move on if you chose. But I think that your claims that yours is the only way to interpret scripture have at least been aswered even if not satisfactorily to you. But the fact is that a young earth and created "kinds" have consequences that should be seen in nature and that are not.