tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60308855806131354322024-03-04T23:51:46.074-08:00The Fantasy of EvolutionThose who find evolution convincing need to rethink it a lot more carefully because the evidence is really not there to the extent you think it is. I suspect you are accepting as evidence all sorts of assumptions, speculations and hypotheses that are not evidence, and are taking most of it on faith in spite of yourself.Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.comBlogger233125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-67016208582840275502022-11-07T10:51:00.002-08:002022-11-07T10:51:58.168-08:00sTILL wISHING sOMEONE wOUJLD aDDRESS tHESE pROBLEMS i kEEP hAVING wITH THE pRE tRIB rAPTURE sCENARIO<p>sOMEHOW THIS POST ENDED UP ON THE CREATIONISM BLOG. i HOPE IT'S IN THE RIGHT PLACE NOW.</p><p>--------------------------------------------------- </p><p><br /></p><p>Just heard MacArthur lay out the pre-tribulation rapture scenario and as usual I'm left with the same questions after all of it, qhich lever get answered or even addressed. I get the logic of the basic scenario and it's very compelling, very persuasive, but nevertheless I have a problem with elements that seem to be left out,k or taken for granted.</p><p>How can there be two bodies of believers who have all the characteristics of the Church but only one of the greoups IS the Church and the other is the Tribulation Saints? While "the Church" is in heaven, having been raptures before the start of the Tribulation period, others are being saved during the tribulation, some martyred, some managing to escape death to the end, all sharing exactly the same characteristics as the Church possesses and yet they are not the CHurch. All I ever hear from the supporters of this scenario is that, well, that's just the way it is. Those people are not th Church because the Church has been raptured and is in heaven. Yet there is nothing about them that makes them different from the Church believers and I see nothing anywhere in scripture that suggests that there are to be these two separate groups of believers atg the end, all believers according to the same standards, all saved by fatih in Christ's death and so on, all the same and yet one group is the Church and the other is something else. I don't get it and I don't see how nobody else sees this as a problem.</p><p>Specifically I have a problem with the different groups of martyrs. The martyhres under the altar in Revelation Six after the opening of the fifth seal are waiting for another group of martyrs to join them so that they will aoll receive their rewards at the same time. Presumably these are martyhrs made during the events of Revelation Six since the martyrs that were made during the church Age of the last two millennia have been raptured and are in heaven with the CDhurch. Yet they are martyrs just likie those under the altar and like those yet expected to be martyred during the tribulation. If Martyrs are being treated as a group unto themselves, how is it that those with the raptured Church are just blended in with the church and not separated out as are the other two tgroups? Those in the raptured group would include all those martyred under the Caesars, especially Nero, in the early centuries, and all those mayrtyured under the Rom an Catholid Church of the Middle ages, millionsof them as memorialized in foxes' Book of Martyres. It makes no sense to me that this group of martyrs would be treated as just part of the raptured church while other martyrs that come during the tribulation ate treated as a separate group, or two separate groups. </p><p>I've said this many times beofre and here it is again. I continue to see it as a question that needs an answeer, and I continue to susepct that it called the whole pre trib scenario into queisotn. Not that I have an alternative in mind. </p>Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-34710113440383979422022-11-07T10:19:00.002-08:002022-11-07T10:19:33.114-08:00I Wish Someone Could Answer These Questions About thew Problems I See in the Pre Trib Rapture ScwnaEIO<p>Just heard MacArthur lay out the pre-tribulation rapture scenario and as usual I'm left with the same questions after all of it, qhich lever get answered or even addressed. I get the logic of the basic scenario and it's very compelling, very persuasive, but nevertheless I have a problem with elements that seem to be left out,k or taken for granted.</p><p>How can there be two bodies of believers who have all the characteristics of the Church but only one of the greoups IS the Church and the other is the Tribulation Saints? While "the Church" is in heaven, having been raptures before the start of the Tribulation period, others are being saved during the tribulation, some martyred, some managing to escape death to the end, all sharing exactly the same characteristics as the Church possesses and yet they are not the CHurch. All I ever hear from the supporters of this scenario is that, well, that's just the way it is. Those people are not th Church because the Church has been raptured and is in heaven. Yet there is nothing about them that makes them different from the Church believers and I see nothing anywhere in scripture that suggests that there are to be these two separate groups of believers atg the end, all believers according to the same standards, all saved by fatih in Christ's death and so on, all the same and yet one group is the Church and the other is something else. I don't get it and I don't see how nobody else sees this as a problem.</p><p>Specifically I have a problem with the different groups of martyrs. The martyhres under the altar in Revelation Six after the opening of the fifth seal are waiting for another group of martyrs to join them so that they will aoll receive their rewards at the same time. Presumably these are martyhrs made during the events of Revelation Six since the martyrs that were made during the church Age of the last two millennia have been raptured and are in heaven with the CDhurch. Yet they are martyrs just likie those under the altar and like those yet expected to be martyred during the tribulation. If Martyrs are being treated as a group unto themselves, how is it that those with the raptured Church are just blended in with the church and not separated out as are the other two tgroups? Those in the raptured group would include all those martyred under the Caesars, especially Nero, in the early centuries, and all those mayrtyured under the Rom an Catholid Church of the Middle ages, millionsof them as memorialized in foxes' Book of Martyres. It makes no sense to me that this group of martyrs would be treated as just part of the raptured church while other martyrs that come during the tribulation ate treated as a separate group, or two separate groups. </p><p>I've said this many times beofre and here it is again. I continue to see it as a question that needs an answeer, and I continue to susepct that it called the whole pre trib scenario into queisotn. Not that I have an alternative in mind. </p>Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-75324623070133797022022-10-23T08:01:00.002-07:002022-10-23T08:01:53.283-07:00Righjtig a Couple of Wrongs as usuusual<p> Keep hearing how "our blessed hope" refers to the Rapture as understood in the Pre-Trib end timnes framework. So distressing. Our blessed hope is the hope of being with Christ forever and that has nothing to do with any partiular system of end times theiology, it's all Christians blessed hope. Those millions who died in Christ before the raputre have the same blessed hope as those who will be raptured without dying. </p><p>The Pre Trib people have this habit of being so certain of their ssyuystem of thought they seem to have no way of answering any objections to it that hap;ppen to arise. And objections will always arise, there are always going to be questions. All they seem to do with them is pronounce them wrong, I haven't heard anything I'd call a real answer. Scripture for instance does here and there use the phrase "the wrath to come" as a description of what Christ died to save us all from. While there is reason to ubnderstand that some will be saved from the speicfi wrath of the Great Tribulation of the Day of the Lord, as in Revelation 3:10, the idea of 3escaping the wrath to come is not always presented in those terms, it is soemetimes a definition of what Christ died for us. But they don't seem to know this or they dobn't seem to want to address it from that point of vi3ew..</p><p> Since I'm on one of my lissues or peeves, I might as well add another. Another reference by a good teacher to that passage about the demon possessed boy the disciples weren't able to set free, which Jesus exp;lained as its being the sort of demon that required prayer and fasting to get it to leave. That is, that's what the King James says. the modern versions say only that it takes prayer and leave out the fasting. Martyn Lloyd Jones commented on it that the Fasting does not osccur inte earliest manuscripts. Mac Arethur doesn't mention the fasting at all, he just usess thje modern version that leaves it out. </p><p>A case of the destrubctive work of Westcott and Hort's preferred manuscripts that Burgon identified as corrupt but which are now enshrined as the legitimate line of Greek manuscripts over the line on which the King James was based. These older and supposedly better manuscripts are a trijan Horse in the Church, destroying foundations bit by bit because they are accepted as legitimate and superior to the Received Text on which the King James was based.</p><p>These bogus manuscripts which may be forgeries but are at least the wsork of early church heretics as Burgon understood it, destroy biblical inerrancy first and foremost although this isn't acknolweledged by many of the best exegetes. It should be but they come up with ways of rationalizing it away. </p><p>Who knjows why fasting was left out of the bogus line, but since it is left out we are to take it that it was added later and is therefore not what Jesus actually said. this is a pernicious destructive way of thinking but it prevails because Westcott and Hort are taken to be legitimate scholars instead of the maniuplating corruptors they really were. </p><p>So if youi want to get rid of a certain kind of demon you need to fast as well as pray but all we are allowed to think is that prayer is the onbly thing required.</p>Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-60400244941868853442022-10-21T20:23:00.001-07:002022-10-21T20:23:20.236-07:00What is Our Blessed Hope?<p>I keep hearing that "our blessed hope" is the Rapture, and specifically the rapture as understood in the Pre-Tribulation format. This makes no sense. Our blessed hope is shared by all Christians, not just those of the last generation who will be taken to heaven in the Rapture, but by all those who have died in Christ up until that time. Most people who are the Lord's will not be raptured, but will die in the Lord and yet they too are heirs of the promise of the Blessed Hope, which is the blessed hope of being with the Lord forever. Not the Rapture, not any particular understanding of the Ratpure. All who are the Lord's have the Blessed Hopew.</p><p><br /></p><p>Just had to say it again.</p>Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-79548701862771746922020-09-09T23:58:00.000-07:002020-09-09T23:58:28.577-07:00So supposedly we evolved this huge brain in order to employ it in such mind-shriveling inanities as evolutionism?<p> (copied this from Faith's Corner)</p><p>Debate/discussion between evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins and Bret Weinstein I found on You Tube. A political question came up among other things. Dawkins called the election of 2016 a "disaster" and the audience applauded. Weinstein had applied his evolutionary biological interpretation to the event as an expression of tribalism and implied dire consequences. Huh? Making America great again is just tribalism? Too often people on the left confuse this objective with nationalism in the Nazi sense, which is insane to begin with, and then the evo biologists explain THAT in terms of the "selfish gene" that wants to populate the world with itself. I feel all the cells in my brain cringeing in consternation. Can brain cells cringe? I think maybe they can shrivel up from sheer sorrow. But I digress. To make America great again is to restore the liberty and prosperity that underlies America's benevolence. America is benevolent, as benevolent as is possible in a fallen world and it's done pretty well. America is the opposite of a conquering empire, it is the antidote to Nazism and all other forms of fascism but there is nevertheless this concerted effort to paint her with the same brush. And if you're restricted to the biological explanations for everthing you'll pack it all down into a tiny little box and soon be able only to grunt inanities with a severely restricted vocabulary. Darwinism, Marxism both. Killers of meaningful thought.</p><p>It was Dawkins who said more than once that he doesn't think it helpful to try to explain everything in terms of biology, and Weinstein who kept finding ways to do it anyway. I'm certainly no fan of Dawkins but he's the one with the sane position in this case.</p><p>I don't understand how evolutionary explanations hold the attention of an intelligent person. It's such a cramped way of thinking, reductionistic, procrustean -- hard to find a word apt enough to convey its claustrophobic effect. Survival: what a mindnumbing straitjacket of a concept to make the explanation of all life. No wonder if its aficionados must flee to art and poetry to escape the crawlspace from time to time. Some of them have that much good sense. But then they have to explain the art and poetry from within the same airless little box.</p><p>Sometimes they ask questions that really should collapse it in on itself, but don't because of the tenacity of the theory and its basic unfalsifiability. Why do the females of some species require beautiful and dramatic displays from the males to qualify them as mates? Why does all life grow senescent and ultimately die?. All these questions must be answered in terms of biological survival advantage. That's the mental exercise demanded of each. Suffocating.</p><p>So they put their imagination to work to answer such questions. Funny how they think this is science. Well it is a part of science for sure but with evolutionary biology it never gets past this stage and yet whatever conclusions become popular get reified into "fact." Answering any question is just a matter of imagining it in terms of survival value. Same sort of thinking describes the Marxist "analysis" of everything as class conflict, but the class conflict is a total mental fabrication used as a battering ram to destroy everything good in civilization. Marxism never comes down to earth, never touches actual reality. Neither does evolutionary biology. The theory is an unprovable imaginative construct and every issue is answered with an imaginative construct. The actual realities of biology are better explained by creationism.</p><p> The tribalism shrinking mechanism got pursued through a few examples. Hutus and Tutsis. Must be something primordial built into the genes that caused that genocide. Nope, it was a Catholic priest who got on the radio and called one of the tribes cockroaches and stirred up hatred toward them in the other tribe. Before that they'd got along together just fine. Both tribes were Catholic too. And then Catholic celibacy was discussed in the same procrustean terminology. Gosh, it must somehow promote the survival of the "lineage," not that I have any idea what the lineage is. But that's what evo biology decrees is the explanation of everything in existence. But priestly celibacy is nothing but an incubator of all kinds of sexual sins and it's completely contrary to biblical teaching, in fact "forbidding to marry" is specifically denounced in the Bible as a fruit of the false teachers prophesied to infiltrate the Church and undermine the truth. But such real historical facts must give way to the shriveling idea that it *really* serves Survival somehow.</p><p>How liberating is the revelation of Creation, Fall and the Flood, death and disease as the consequence of violations of the Moral Law of God, biological systems retaining much beauty though crippled by the Fall. Too much to say about all that. Mostly the deathly death brought about by evolutionism is what this post had to be about. </p>Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-76795733623314247082016-11-06T14:46:00.002-08:002016-11-11T19:02:49.290-08:00Amazing insect with meshing gears, and other evidence of I.D.A thread has been started at EvC forum on <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=793820#m793820"><b>a remarkable insect</b></a> that has actual meshing gears as part of its body design, used to synchronize the movements of its hind legs as it makes a high leap. Of course this will be treated as a remarkable instance of what evolution can do, although of course it is really much better evidence for design than for evolution, design in this case by God, a really good instance of Intelligent Design.<br />
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Here's the <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/functioning-mechanical-gears-seen-in-nature-for-the-first-time"><b>source information</b></a><br />
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But they are so convinced of evolution all that thread is going to get is one rationalization after another for how evolution coulda brought it about: the time-honored Coulda Argument. They've convinced themselves that the complex human eye evolved simply because they can point to eye designs all over the range of living things that they are able to mentally arrange into a sequence of steps or stages of complexity, although most of them don't even occur in the same Linnaean lineage. No matter, if you can mentally assemble utterly separate designs into some semblance of a sequence that's all they need to justify belief that the eye evolved and convince them no Designer is implied. <br />
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There is another instance of a remarkable creature, the one used by Michael Behe in his argument for Intelligent Design, the bacterium with a rotating flagellum. The way they argued that one was to find other creatures that could plausibly be said to have one or another of the parts of the complex rotating apparatus as part of their design, so that they could say that if any of those parts exist as a functioning unit in any other bacteria, then all of them could have been part of an evolutionary sequence to the final rotating mechanism. But of course there isn't an iota of evidence that this occurred, again it's just a mental arranging of features of completely unrelated creatures into a sequence, a purely mental sequence: the Coulda argument again, though in fact it really couldn't. <br />
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So we can expect that for this amazing jumping bug with its amazing gear mechanism they'll try to put together some kind of sequence out of just as much fluff as in the other cases and declare it evidence for evolution. If they can't find anything that resembles a stage on the way to the gear mechanism, they won't have any problem declaring it evolved anyway.<br />
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Sigh. <br />
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While I'm at it, since I do not want to be tempted to post at EvC any more (and thankfully there have been very few temptations since I left), I'll answer something here: <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=793769#m793769"><b>Coyote</b></a> who always says he misses me, which is nice except we never agree on anything, claimed that I place the Flood at the time of the "KT boundary," which is absolutely false. I've so many times said that I place it where the Bible genealogies place it, about 4300 years ago, that I'm amazed anyone could misquote me. Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-67099785993418715352016-10-13T08:18:00.000-07:002016-10-13T09:08:34.655-07:00Some Ruminations on Natural Selection and Genetics off the film "Evolution's Achilles' Heels."Watching the film again, <i>Evolution's Achilles' Heels</i>, have a couple of comments I might as well get said. I've seen just the first two segments, the one on Natural Selection and the next one on Genetics.<br />
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Taking down Natural Selection is really pretty easy, although of course it's strongly resisted by believers in evolution. Remember that Darwin's big discovery was Natural Selection as the supposed engine of evolution, the title of his book being <i>The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection</i>. The obvious simple fact is that Natural Selection works by subtracting or eliminating, not by adding anything, while of course evolution to be true beyond variation within a Kind requires the addition of novel features. In fact the way natural selection produces new variations is by eliminating other variations. Natural Selection is one of the ways new variations occur, which are sometimes called "species" if they seem quite different from the parent organism, but the point is that the processes involved are subtractive, and my own observation is that you can only subtract to a certain point when there is no more change possible -- which is my own argument in a nutshell, Evolution Defeats Evolution. But the film simply makes the point that selection subtracts and that in itself is contrary to what evolution needs in order to be true.<br />
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The film doesn't make a distinction between the phenotype or outward form of a creature and its genotype or genetic information, but the changes that are seen in the outward form that is brought about by natural selection occur by the elimination of other forms or phenotypes, and the corresponding elimination of the genetic information that codes for the different forms. You can have part of the genome being eliminated in one population of a species to produce one new variation, while in a separate population another part of the genome may be eliminated to produce a completely different new variation. Either way you've got your new variation as a result of subtracting genetic information, and that can never ever produce anything truly new, it can only bring out a new combination of traits already existing in the genome, which makes the whole idea of evolution of species from species impossible.<br />
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The next subject is genetics and they cover the amazingly complex workings of DNA replication within a single cell. They point out that the different parts of the cell couldn't have evolved separately because of their interdependence, one part needing to exist in order to produce another part, that in turn needs to exist for the first part to operate. They also point out the essential roles of information, communication and language, also interdependent and inseparable, another proof that evolution could not possibly have designed the cell.<br />
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Mutation is of course discussed as evolution's only hope of producing anything truly novel, but of course it usually does nothing but destroy things, destroy DNA itself, destroy genes, remove parts of an organism which under certain circumstances can be adaptive, such as wingless beetles on a windy island, sickle cell anemia as the cost of protection from malaria, the loss of the ability to ingest some things protecting against poisons and so on. All subtractions and eliminations that are sometimes adaptive but not in any sense the Theory of Evolution requires.<br />
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They don't discuss the argument I've so frequently encountered, about mutation increasing genetic diversity, which would take too much discussion for this post. The main answer is that the increase in diversity is usually an increase in disease of one sort or another, that is, ultimately a loss to the organism rather than anything beneficial, let alone of any value toward species evolution.<br />
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They present the idea that the term Junk DNA for or the 98% of the genome that does not code for protein, was based on the ideological commitment to the theory of evolution, the interpretation being that it represents former functions in the history of the organism back to the primordial soup, that are no longer of use as the creature has evolved. Now it is claimed that these noncoding regions of the genome actually do have functions, and many were listed though none of them discussed, so I don't know what science supports them or why there are so many different functions involved. <br />
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I still think that Junk DNA probably IS junk, though not for the evolutionist reasons. My creationist interpretation is that it represents the result of the Fall, or in other words the operation of death on living things since that event, death not having been part of the original Creation. Since the Flood wiped out all but eight human beings, and an even higher percentage of animals, a lot of genetic material would eventually have died out in each species as it went on reproducing after the Flood. So many alleles for a great number of genes would have perished that eventually those genes would themselves die out in the population wherever they were already reduced among the survivors on the ark. Of course the increase in the destructive effects of mutations in the genome, which the film pointed out are cumulative down the generations, would facilitate the death of genes by destroying alleles to the point that a given gene locus would have no functional alleles left. What would that be but a "junk" or unfunctional or dead gene? Thus whatever the junk DNA used to code for is lost to all living things, former functions that would once have supported the enormous longevity that existed before the Flood. <br />
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I like this interpretation because it fits with the Biblical understanding of the Fall. But again, the idea that noncoding DNA has other functions has to be considered.Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-23384222466728939222016-10-12T23:10:00.001-07:002016-10-13T01:01:54.392-07:00Some Good Creationist Arguments Undermined by the Failure to Recognize the True Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, The Roman Catholic PapacyJust saw a creationist film at Amazon that was made in 2014, <i>Evolution's Achilles' Heels</i>. It's also in book form and DVD. It's made by Creation Ministries International, based in Australia, and features interviews of fifteen scientists on aspects of the Creation-Evolution debate: <br />
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Natural Selection, <br />
Genetics and DNA, <br />
The Origin of Life, <br />
The Fossil Record, <br />
The Geologic Column, <br />
Radiometric Dating,<br />
Cosmology and <br />
Ethics, <br />
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showing how the scientific facts in each category support Creation and not Evolution. In my opinion any one of the arguments should bring the theory of evolution crashing down, but since most of the support for evolution isn't science it remains a belief system that can keep justifying itself.<br />
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I'll have to watch it again to have anything more specific to say about the arguments.<br />
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Meanwhile I have to comment on something that is not about the debate as such. In the segment on Ethics, in which it is shown that the idea of evolution promotes every kind of immorality including the Holocaust, I had to object to the imputation of the mass murders of the twentieth century to "atheists," in particular one remark by Jonathan Sarfati that answers accusations that "Christians" committed as many murders, by saying they were nothing compared to the atheist evolutionists. What I object to is the idea that "Christians" committed the atrocities of the Inquisition, which of course is the ONLY murderous campaign that could ever be imputed to Christians. But there is also reason to object to the idea that the mass murders of the last century were simply due to atheist evolutionists.<br />
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The Inquisitions was NOT THE WORK OF CHRISTIANS. It was Christians who SUFFERED FROM the Inquisition, estimated to something like 50 million victims, separate from the Jews, Muslims and other victims who added another 17 million over its 600-year reign. How the murderous papacy manages to keep its status as "Christian" after the Reformation leaders showed it over and over again to be the Antichrist is a sad testimony to the lack of a historical perspective by "Protestants." WAKE UP, CHURCH. Good grief this is sickening. We're in a historical period right now when the Inquisition is still going on in secret in some parts of the world, and very likely brewing behind the scenes of the One World Order that's shaping up, to be reinstated in all its horrific ugliness when the European Union finally gets its act together, while real Christians are a bunch of silly sheep who are ripe for the slaughter because they don't know history and keep calling the Roman Church "Christianity." <br />
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And not only is the Inquisition not to be imputed to Christianity as against the murderous regimes of the twentieth century, in many cases it was the Roman Church that was behind those murderous regimes. Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot all had Catholic upbringing or education; the Rwanda massacre was fomented by a Catholic priest. Hitler had the support of the Pope of his day, who was also responsible for the "Ratlines" after the war that relocated Nazi criminals to South American Catholic countries. Hitler even said he modeled his Holocaust on the Inquisition. <br />
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There was no evolutionary theory during the time of the Inquisition, but the Roman Church has been embracing it in stages over the last century, adding to their blasphemies against God and their arsenal of justifications for murder. And the Communist philosophy that outwardly fueled so much of the mass murders of recent times, is a development of the idea of "Social Justice" which was invented by a Jesuit.<br />
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While of course Evolution needs to be brought down as a satanic stronghold that is only contributing to the demoralization of the whole human race, I couldn't help but find the idea that "Christianity" was the cause of the Inquisition to undo all the good the arguments on that video might have done.Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-81640268634259267652016-10-08T12:02:00.000-07:002016-10-08T18:09:21.163-07:00Yes, the only reality is the stacks of rocks.Apropos the previous post, the "stacks of rocks" mentioned came from the title of a thread I started at EvC: <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&t=19211"><i>The Geological Timescale is Fiction, Whose Only Reality is Stacks of Rocks</i>.</a><br />
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The direction I took with that argument was to try to show the implications of the fact that the actual and only evidence we have on which the Geological Timescale is constructed, is the rock strata, usually called the Geologic Column, that the whole idea of time periods is based on that stack of rocks and on nothing else, but that in reality there is no physical way for the scenes imputed to the time periods to have become reduced to the actual layers of rock that represent them.<br />
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The scenes or landscapes I'm referring to are those fictional illustrations you may have seen here or there, depictions of whatever environment is supposed by standard Geology to have characterized a particular time period, a particular kind of landscape with particular plants and animals, as determined by the fossils found in the rock layer of formation of layers that represents that time period. <br />
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Here's a typical example, this one of the Permian Period:<br />
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<img class="magminus" height="200" src="https://museumvictoria.com.au/pages/17121/ImageGallery/1permian-pic-42509.jpg" width="196" /><br />
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So I put together a cartoon to show the basic idea that there were never scenes or landscapes represented by the rocks, but only the rocks themselves, which would be huge flat featureless expanses of sediment. <br />
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<img class="magminus" height="110" src="https://i1311.photobucket.com/albums/s680/wallsong2013/Time%20periods_zpsolajd4gi.png" width="400" /><br />
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Even if there had been a landscape for a particular time period, since it all has to reduce down to the flat rock that is its only evidence, by the end of any "time period" there would be nothing left of the landscape but the flat sediment that will eventually become the rock.<br />
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Since the strata do not occur everywhere on earth, presumably there would also be areas of chaotic deposition as well, if the cause was the Flood, but there is no evidence of a normal landscape apart from the strata, although it must be assumed in the standard interpretive scheme, assumed but nothing more, because all the evidence of the time periods is contained in the layered rocks. It is the strata that contain the fossils, it is the strata that are dated, all schematic representations of the Geological Timescale identify it in terms of the stratified rocks.<br />
<br />
But again, the rocks are the ONLY evidence. And what that means in terms of the historical situation is that if there was once upon a time a landscape in which creatures lived, in a particular slice of time, called Cambrian, or Devonian, or Permian, or Jurassic etc., at the very end of that period there had to be nothing but this expanse of sediment and no remains whatever of the supposed landscape, And that must be the case because all there is<i> now</i> is an expanse of flat rock. Before it was rock it had to be an expanse of flat sediment, no doubt wet sediment, and if we are to imagine a landscape that got reduced down to that flat wet sediment we have to imagine that everything that had lived in that landscape left no trace whatever, assuming anything specific lived in that hypothetical window of time. <br />
<br />
But we will be reminded that the surface of some of those rocks is marked by animal tracks, animal burrows and other signs of life, and raindrop impressions and ripple impressions, which are interpreted by the standard theory to be evidence that there did exist a landscape that represents the time period. <br />
<br />
Which led me to another part of the argument: the observation that those tracks and burrows and raindrops and ripples were clearly formed on a huge flat featureless surface and not in any kind of normal landscape with plants and hills and valleys and so on. This is apparent, after all, from the simple fact that they are embedded in the surface of a huge flat rock, or burrow into a huge flat rock. All of such tracks that are found in the strata, all the burrows, all the raindrop impressions, all the ripples: they all occur on these flat featureless expanses of sediment that are now rock in which they are preserved. So these very phenomena that are taken for evidence of a time period with its own kinds of plants and animals, are really evidence against the idea. At the moment they were impressed into the sediment there was no such landscape, only the vast expanse of sediment itself that became the vast flat featureless rock. So either somehow the assumed landscape was transformed into the rock, or there never was a landscape at all, just the vast expanse of sediment. Which is of course consistent with the Flood explanation and not the time period explanation. The time periods are pure interpretation, pure theory, based entirely on qualities of the rock itself plus its fossil contents. If it's limestone it must have been formed a shallow sea for instance, if it's sandstone with a certain angle of crossbedding it had to have been sanddunes on that very site, that somehow got compressed into rock with flat top and flat bottom. And so it goes..<br />
<br />
The arguments on that thread revolved around efforts to show me how the expected landscape that represents a time period could have been reduced to an expanse of rock, in fact a whole stack of such rocks that was once a whole stack of such landscapes. <br />
<br />
To be continued.Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-30353935927641880682016-10-08T06:04:00.001-07:002016-10-08T09:09:51.126-07:00Evidence in the strata against the Geologic Timescale and for the FloodHaving quit posting at EvC again, I've so far resisted all temptations to return, really having no desire whatever to put myself through the inevitable frustrations and utter futility of it. That's a topic in itself since I used to encounter temptations I couldn't resist and now I can resist them, finally being able to see ahead enough to realize that no matter how good I think my argument is, or a given post, nobody else is going to find anything good in it. I used to be taken by surprise all the time by the incredibly ingenious ways they all have of managing to mangle a simple reasonable statement. Well, somehow I did come to be able to anticipate that anything I say will be so mangled and once I could do that all desire to try again just evaporated. <br />
<br />
But nothing's perfect and this morning I found myself tempted to answer something. I do know better now, I know I can't just get away with simply answering it, I'll be drawn into a round of escalating misrepresentsations that I feel obliged to deal with, having already given in to the initial temptation. So the only solution seems to be to answer it here:<br />
<br />
It's a very simple misrepresentation <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=792310#m792310">concerning the use of evidence</a> that I should be able to answer very briefly:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
About Earth's history Faith likes to call geological strata "stacks of rocks" as if they contain no evidence of time and process, ... "Evidence? What evidence? </blockquote>
Not exactly. I find evidence in the rocks and have described it many times, even evidence of "time and process": it is evidence of rapid deposition, seen in the tight straight lines between layers, lack of the sort of erosion that would be expected from millions of years of exposure, either marine or aerial; also seen in the different sediments that frequently characterize separate layers; just to name a few. It is also evidence of process: rapid deposition by water: that's the only process that could account for those tight straight lines and the clear demarcation between layers and different sediments. I also find evidence in the many cross sections constructed of various stacks of rocks, that give away such things as that whole blocks of layers are all bent together in a particular direction which demonstrates that they were all malleable, still soft, which contradicts any idea that they were laid down and lithified into rock millions of years apart. This is shown in places where the rocks curve as a unit, also in places where faults have displaced sections of strata. Also the utter lack of the sort of erosion consistent with exposure as mentioned above.<br />
<br />
There's plenty more and I may come back to add to the above.<br />
<br />
So it's simply not so that I ignore evidence. I'm sure that every thread I've started on the subject of the strata is aimed to demonstrate the interpretation of a particular bit of evidence in favor of rapid deposition and against the idea of millions of years of time per formation. <br />
<br />Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-43060761563769620832016-09-23T06:44:00.001-07:002016-09-23T06:46:56.940-07:00The genetic limit to evolution plus the rapid deposition of strata reasserted for what it's worthThe two arguments I started out with remain the two I think are the best after some years of debating them: the argument for the built-in limit to evolutionary processes, and the argument based on cross sections showing rapid deposition of the strata of the Geologic Column, against the interpretation of time periods and great ages. The arguments have acquired some changes but not much, a lot of it terminological. They are both observational and subject to testing, so if they could be established the claims that are conjectural and can't be tested would have to yield. There are lots of solid creationist arguments, all I did was pick two I felt I could argue effectively, two that would definitively undo evolution if established.<br />
<br />
All the dating methods used to support evolution and the Old Earth are conjectural and untestable despite being treated as if they were as solid as fact; and so is the fossil order that is interpreted to support evolution. It certainly exists, the fossils do occur in a predictable order, but the interpretation is pure conjecture, and showing that evolution has a natural limit, that it can't continue beyond the boundary of a "Kind," would prove the evolutionary interpretation of the fossil order to have been an illusion. Showing that the actual evidence proves rapid deposition of the strata would likewise overthrow the Geological Timescale with its imaginary time periods.<br />
<br />
To say this here and now is a bit of bluster I know, because I'm not up to making the arguments again right now, but then I've made them dozens, hundreds of times, over the last few years, here but also at EvC forum. <br />
<br />
I've pretty much abandoned my blogs and don't know if I'll get back to them. Bluster or not I believe the two arguments to be true, I even believe they have been proved, and I just want to say it again. I'm tired, I've been tired of debating for some time so I hope I can quit now. That may or may not mean I'm quitting blogging as well. If my blogging days are over at least this restatement can be a sort of finale. And if I get a second wind I'll be back to make the case again.<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-61437447909805738492014-09-13T22:14:00.003-07:002014-09-14T03:30:34.843-07:00Let's Bring "Proof" Back to RealityIt's true that I lost track of the subject of the meaning of the words "prove" and "proof" in my last post as I went from Update to Update, which got noted at EvC in the <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=736696">most recent posts on the subject</a>. They keep insisting on formal definitions, stating it all in the abstract, which loses track of what I meant in the first place which is really pretty simple. It's just another way of saying that when you are dealing with the prehistoric past you can never be sure of your hypotheses because they aren't testable, as you can be with those that are testable. This standard objection by creationists is strenuously opposed by evolutionists of course, and it has come up again at EvC <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=736813">here</a> too. <br />
<br />
This second link exhibits the tendency of anti-creationists to reduce Christian creationist arguments to Christian belief even when the creationists are sticking to the scientific questions. This is an annoying distraction at best. The argument about the difference between observational and historical/interpretive science is completely valid. You can nitpick about terminology, about the terms "observational" and "historical" and all the rest of it, just as you can about the terms "prove" and "evidence," but there is a legitimate argument here that is being evaded by all this abstract nitpicking. <br />
<br />
In all the dithering about the meaning of "prove" the argument itself got lost so let me try to restate it. The main argument I've made along these lines is that both Old Earth Geology and Evolutionist Biology make assertions about what they believe occurred in the distant past that they couldn't possibly PROVE, by which I mean all they have is their conjectures and hypotheses which they have no way of confirming, although they treat their conjectures about these things as if they were solidly proven facts. I've given the explanation for this in terms of the lack of "witnesses" to that past, which I say are necessary to confirming such conjectures and are always present in the tests of the "hard" or laboratory sciences. The structure of DNA for instance has been "proved" in a way you could never prove the scenarios concocted about the distant past that are palmed off on the public as fact.<br />
<br />
And I'm using the term "scenarios" here because I think that's where the problem lies. We can reconstruct a Stegosaurus from its bones, but when you go on to describe the supposed habitat of that animal, based on the other contents of the rock in which its bones were found, you are giving your hypothesis about those things. If you go on from there to talk about it as if it were known fact you are asserting theory as fact though it can't be verified; in a word you are committing fraud.<br />
<br />
I did <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=734892">make a list</a>
of the kind of thing that is presented about the past that is often asserted dogmatically that is nothing but this sort of unverifiable or unprovable conjecture.<br />
<br />
Looking for other kinds of examples of unprovables described in dogmatic terms I found the Wikipedia article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stegosaurus">Stegosaurus</a> where such unknowable/unprovables are asserted, such as
when the creature lived:
<br />
<blockquote>
They lived during the Late Jurassic period (Kimmeridgian to early Tithonian), some 155 to 150 million year
s ago...<br />
</blockquote> This is interpreted simply from the fact that it is found in a particular layer of sedimentary rock. That is the entirety of the evidence for the scenario. This rock with its contents becomes a time period because that's what the theory says it is.<br />
<br />
The usual scenario based on fossil contents of the same strata is discussed in the section on Paleoecology:
<blockquote>The Morrison Formation is interpreted as a semiarid environment with distinct wet and dry seasons, and flat floodplains. Vegetation varied from river-lining forests of conifers, tree ferns, and ferns (gallery forests), to fern savannas with occasional trees such as the Araucaria-like conifer Brachyphyllum.The flora of the period has been revealed by fossils of green algae, fungi, mosses, horsetails, ferns, cycads, ginkgoes, and several families of conifers. Animal fossils discovered include bivalves, snails, ray-finned fishes, frogs, salamanders, turtles, sphenodonts, lizards, terrestrial and aquatic crocodylomorphans, several species of pterosaur, numerous dinosaur species, and early mammals such as docodonts, multituberculates, symmetrodonts, and triconodonts.[54] <br />
<br />
Dinosaurs that lived alongside Stegosaurus included theropods Allosaurus, Saurophaganax, Torvosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Marshosaurus, Stokesosaurus and Ornitholestes. Sauropods dominated the region, and included Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, and Barosaurus. Other ornithischians included Camptosaurus, Gargoyleosaurus,Dryosaurus, and Othnielosaurus.[55] Stegosaurus is commonly found at the same sites as Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, and Diplodocus.[56]</blockquote>
The Morrison Formation is a layer of rock. Here it is called an "environment." This is of course because the theory says each of the layers represents a time period. The whole rock "formation" represents a time period, its very own time period. The formations above and below represent different time periods. Slabs of rock interpreted as time periods. Time periods start and stop where the rock ends and another kind of rock begins.<br />
<br />
Whatever has been found within that layer along with the bones of the Stegosaurus, goes to make up the interpretation of its "environment," the climate and the kind of vegetation that grew in that "time period."<br />
<br />
I am of course emphasizing the rock=time period equation because it is so absurd, but that is a different subject here. I do have to admit that they are less assertive these days in such descriptions. The assertiveness will still be found on signs posted at various natural wonders, however, that inform you that such and such a marvelous phenomenon is so many millions of years old etc.<br />
<br />
======================<br />
I will probably come back and expand on this post.
Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-14597822888384321212014-09-04T22:52:00.002-07:002014-09-11T22:42:13.817-07:00Finishing up the "Proof" and Untestable Past discussionJust a few brief answers to the latest posts on that thread at EvC about Observational vs. Interpretive Science, which I hope will be the last of it at my end: <br />
<br />
Here's <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=736103"> Percy in Message 499:</a>
<br />
<blockquote>
You say you're not using the word prove in any mathematical sense, but you're still using a definition that is tangled up with the concept of "truth" or "correctness". I think the definition of prove that you're using goes something along these lines: To establish the truth of, as by evidence or argument. Do I have that right? If so then you can't really use that definition with science, because science doesn't establish anything with finality. Science is tentative. Truth, once established, doesn't change, but scientific conclusions, once established, can change.</blockquote>
No, it's a lot simpler than that. All it really means to say you can't prove something is that you don't have the evidence you claim to have. In this case, the evidence claimed for events in the distant past is all heavily biased, that is, it's bound to interpretations already determined by your theory. The contents of the rock strata are used as evidence for what past eras were like, what creatures lived then, what the climate was like, and so on, but the very idea that the contents of the strata define a time period is already an interpretation based on the theory that the strata represent time periods that succeed one another over hundreds of millions of years. But of course if all the strata represent is a layer of sediment filled with dead creatures deposited during the Flood event, all that is nothing but fairy tale. But I've already said this. <br />
<br />
And again it seems important to point out that the very idea that a succession of slabs of rock could represent time periods on the planet is so absurd it takes a massive delusion to maintain the idea. Is time continuing to be represented by such layers? Layers that extend across whole continents? Which built up miles deep over those supposed hundreds of millions of years. But now, for some reason, NOW and only now, that process has stopped and the surface of the earth is not flat like those rocks as one might expect from the Old Earth theory that eras of time are represented in such rocks. For some reason NOW the surface is all mountainous and tectonically disturbed, only now, not during those hundreds of millions of years. Not just in the Grand Canyon but across entire continents. But that can be rationalized away too, at great cost to reason and sanity but who's noticing? <br />
<br />
Rationalization is always possible with the unwitnessed past where mere conjecture passes for fact. Which is of course what is meant by the untestability of the unwitnessed past, but fear not, all you have to do is deny that too and assert that it's false. No need for that evidence you keep saying you have, which you can't produce because it doesn't exist.<br />
<br />
There's no reason for me to try to answer the next few posts which are the usual accusations I've answered over and over again already. I'll just note that Dr. A in Message 504 is repeating the typical notion that criminal forensics is the scientific method used with the ancient past, but as I've anaswered many times before, it's not the same thing because it deals entirely within the historical past, effectively the present, where there are many witnesses in the sense I've been using the term, such as access to all kinds of documented information from previous events in the historical past. Whereas in the ancient, prehistoric or unwitnessed past there is no such information forthcoming from those time periods. No witnesses from the prehistoric past, but witnesses galore -- in the sense I've been using the term, which is conveniently forgotten -- in the historic past, which is as good as the Present.<br />
<br />
And Percy again in Message 510:<br />
<blockquote>
Good points, though I do think I'll try to keep things more simple in the discussion with Faith where she's claiming we can't prove anything about the distant past. Hopefully she'll eventually come to understand that we're not trying to prove things about the ancient past, we're only trying to examine and analyze evidence from the ancient past to see what it can tell us. It turns out it can tell us quite a bit.</blockquote>
Except that it's all based on conjecture and interpretation as I keep trying to get across. And this reminds me of one more point I forgot to make above, which is that as I've pointed out below, and many times before at EvC as well, the science of the ancient past is frequently expressed in terms of dogmatic fact, far far from the tentativity you keep claiming for it. <br />
<br />
And do note, please, that you continue to make assertions, recite the creeds of sciencedom as it were, rather than actually summoning any of the supposed evidence you claim is the important thing. That's all the quoted paragraph above is, a statement of what you believe science does, or wish science did, with the ancient past, without any proof that it does it.<br />
<br />
Oh, just one more very brief comment, on dwise's post 512:
<br />
<blockquote>
Actually, Faith's beliefs are not based on the Bible itself, but rather on her theology. </blockquote>
He's said this before and I have no idea where he gets his own convictions about the Bible and theology -- his entire post is nothing but assertions, apparently completely of his own invention -- but since I have no interest in continuing such debates there all I can say as usual is that he's wrong, and my beliefs are about as standard and traditional Protestant Reformed Bible-based as you can get. <br />
<br />
As for the creationist arguments I make, I've never claimed the kind of certainty for them I claim for the Biblical revelation itself, since the Bible gives very scant information about the character of the original Creation and the physical effects of the Flood. Creationists try to stay within both the Biblical descriptions and the known scientific information, but I don't claim any more certainty for my own conjectures than that they seem inherently more plausible than what official science has to say about the ancient past.<br />
<br />
But as usual we are just repeating ourselves and I hope this is my last.<br />
<br />
<h3>
UPDATE: </h3>
Do have to say a word in answer to RAZD's later post about the age of the earth. Yes, there is lots of evidence of a sort for an ancient earth, but as I've said before, that too is untestable evidence since it purports to reveal information about events in a completely opaque unwitnessed past. The methods themselves cannot be confirmed is the point, so what they seem to say remains hypothesis and not fact. As long as there is no other way to confirm a particular age estimate it remains theory or hypothesis. Also, other explanations for some of those numbers have been suggested, also unconfirmable explanations, but that's the way it usually is with the untestable past. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile I'm not focused on the question of age as such, my arguments are all about the reasonableness of explanations for phenomena such as the strata and the fossils. Scenarios really, fictional stuff that's all too frequently treated as fact, BECAUSE there's no way to confirm or disconfirm it, without a shred of that highly touted tentativity so often imputed to science. The Old Earth explanations for these things remain absurd apart from the age of the earth. <br />
<br />
========<br />
<h3>
UPDATE 9/8 </h3>
<br />
I don't think there's much point in continuing this discussion but I'll respond to this last one from Percy at least:<br />
<br />
Percy responds to the above in <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=736378">Message 519:</a>
<br />
<blockquote>
I said "No, it's a lot simpler than that. All it really means to say you can't prove something is that you don't have the evidence you claim to have."
<br />
<blockquote>
and Percy replies: "I think you must have meant to say something else, because this makes no sense. Of course we have the evidence we say we have, so I think you must have meant to say that the evidence we have doesn't lead to the conclusions we claim, especially since your subsequent discussion goes on as if you had said exactly that."</blockquote>
</blockquote>
But of course, have it your way if you must but you know what I mean. It isn't evidence if it doesn't lead to the conclusions you claim for it.
<br />
<blockquote>
[I said] The contents of the rock strata are used as evidence for what past eras were like, what creatures lived then, what the climate was like, and so on, but the very idea that the contents of the strata define a time period is already an interpretation based on the theory that the strata represent time periods that succeed one another over hundreds of millions of years.
<br />
<blockquote>
[Percy]This is self-evidently false. Sedimentary layers will always contain evidence from where and when they formed. This is true of both flood geology and actual geology (e.g., a limestone layer could only have formed where and when there was calcium carbonate in the environment) and was established well before we knew how much time each layer actually represents.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
Limestones do not normally build up as layers among layers, they had to have formed elsewhere and been transported and deposited as a layer. Water, of course, makes sedimentary layers; this is demonstrated in deltas and along the coastal margins.<br />
<br />
The content of a limestone layer shows that it had a marine origin but not that it formed where it is found. The Dover cliffs didn't form where they are either, but just as the entire British Isles are layered like so much of the rest of the planet, that chalk was layered there along with all the rest of them, it didn't form in place, as none of the layers did, which were all laid down one on top of another and then after they were all in place (which took hundreds of millions of years according to standard theory, but only a year or so on Flood theory) the whole stack was upended by tectonic force, as indicated on those diagrams I posted over there. The order is obvious: Layers laid down, one after another, horizontally, then tilted or twisted or otherwise deformed. That is the order of things just about wherever we look, and it supports the Flood explanation and NOT the Old Earth explanations.
<br />
<blockquote>
But of course if all the strata represent is a layer of sediment filled with dead creatures deposited during the Flood event, all that is nothing but fairy tale.<br />
<blockquote>
The evidence doesn't support a single flood as responsible for all the sedimentary layers of the Earth for a number of reasons that you invariably ignore or dismiss, so I shan't waste my time listing them yet again, but will gladly do so upon any indication from you of a willingness to discuss them.
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
Discussed it to death at EvC. Your term "a single flood" as usual totally distorts the Flood arguments, trying to imply that it was like any old flood which of course has been argued down time and time again. Obviously there is no point in continuing the discussion.
<br />
<blockquote>
[Me] And again it seems important to point out that the very idea that a succession of slabs of rock could represent time periods on the planet is so absurd it takes a massive delusion to maintain the idea. Is time continuing to be represented by such layers? <br />
<blockquote>
[Percy]You participated in an entire thread about this ([tid=17517]) and cannot pretend to be unaware of all the evidence that sedimentary layers are accumulating today just like they did in the past.
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
So it was said but it isn't true. They are "continuing" elsewhere, while the fact is that the strata that define the former time periods span entire continents but sediments are no longer accumulating on that scale in those same locations, which they should if there's anything to the idea that they represent the time periods of the Geologic Time Scale.
<br />
<blockquote>
Rationalization is always possible with the unwitnessed past where mere conjecture passes for fact. Which is of course what is meant by the untestability of the unwitnessed past...
<br />
<blockquote>
[Percy] You have yet to offer any valid arguments for why prehistoric evidence is untestable. You continue on to repeat your argument that makes no sense:</blockquote>
</blockquote>
I've made the case many times. Actually, it's intuitively obvious.
<br />
<blockquote>
[Me] I'll just note that Dr. A in Message 504 is repeating the typical notion that criminal forensics is the scientific method used with the ancient past, but as I've anaswered many times before, it's not the same thing because it deals entirely within the historical past, effectively the present, where there are many witnesses in the sense I've been using the term, such as access to all kinds of documented information from previous events in the historical past. Whereas in the ancient, prehistoric or unwitnessed past there is no such information forthcoming from those time periods. No witnesses from the prehistoric past, but witnesses galore -- in the sense I've been using the term, which is conveniently forgotten -- in the historic past, which is as good as the Present.
<br />
<blockquote>
[Percy] To make clear why this objection makes no sense just take the example of the Laetoli footprints. At a minimum they are evidence that something walked there in the distant past. You've never been able to explain how the absence of any human witnesses changes that. </blockquote>
</blockquote>
They ARE witnesses in the sense I've used that term -- there are some, but they can't tell you anything about WHEN they occurred, just that they DID occur -- and they are evidence that something walked there in the past, as you say, such as, for instance, between waves or risings of the tide during the Flood, which I've explained many times, contrary to your assertion.
<br />
<blockquote>
[Me] And do note, please, that you continue to make assertions, recite the creeds of sciencedom as it were, rather than actually summoning any of the supposed evidence you claim is the important thing.</blockquote>
And Percy pointed to some other threads which he claims give lots of evidence and prove me wrong. I suppose he believes that. <br />
<br />
I think I might try to assemble all the information I can find about the fossil contents of the various layers that are used for evidence of evolutionary progression, whereas all they really show is the accidental collection of living things along with sediments in the Flood waters. This can probably be shown pretty well but it would take quite a bit of work. <br />
<br />
========<br />
<h3>
9/11 UPDATE</h3>
<br />
Now I'm hearing that back at my blog I revert to my old ways which they think get cured or at least modified while I'm at EvC. It's true that when they keep insisting on a particular idea I accommodate at least to their language, but if there's more to it than that I'd have to go review those other threads which isn't on my schedule at the moment. <br />
<br />
What comes to mind is the lengthy discussion about whether the Geologic Time Scale has come to an end as I was saying it obviously has, or the Geologic Column. They kept insisting that as long as sedimentary deposition is continuing anywhere that's the continuation of the Geologic Time Scale, even if the deposition is not on anywhere near the same geographic scale -- covering whole continents -- and not anywhere near the same locations -- now at the bottom of the sea or willy-nilly here and there and so on. So basically they've defined away my argument. Which of course is still convincing to me so I'll continue to state it from time to time. <br />
<br />
They also argue that there is evidence of volcanic activity lower in the column than I'd seen before, and that may be the case, but the only actual evidence of that is a typed sheet that indicates "tuff" in two locations in the Grand Canyon, in the Muav formation, no photos, no other references. Still it may be true. Other evidence they supplied of volcanic activity during the laying down of the column occurs at the very top, indicating, on the Flood model, that it occurred in the last stages of the Flood. Someone produced a picture that at first looked like an actual layer of magma between layers but it turned out that the whole formation was volcanic so it wasn't a volcanic layer between sedimentary layers, which is the same situation with the evidence they produced from Ascension Island. And there is still the Cardenas layer at the base of the Grand Canyon which they insist is an actual layer and not a sill because of the way the edges interact with the sediment on either side. But I still have questions about that since a layer that formed at the surface and then hardened before the next sedimentary layer was laid down just wouldn't be straight and flat like that is. Lava is pretty lumpy stuff at the surface of the earth. But it's a question, not a definite opinion yet.<br />
<br />
They also insist that just because faults don't penetrate through all the layers of a given geologic column / stack of strata, that is evidence that the layers were not already in place when the faults occurred, and I'm definitely skeptical of that. It's a lack of evidence, not positive evidence. And other cross sections are similarly subject to interpretation, so all that remains inconclusive.<br />
<br />
Still looks to me like the strata are good evidence for the Flood.
Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-88618210886549992242014-08-29T18:53:00.002-07:002014-09-01T21:09:44.730-07:00That annoying complaint about the terms "prove" and "proof"UPDATE 9/1 #2: So for the time being it's keeping on keeping on. <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=736085">Percy continues:</a>
<blockquote>
I'm sorry, Faith, but I was only trying to explain how you're using the word "prove" incorrectly.</blockquote>
You know what, Percy, I am not using it incorrectly. I'm using it the way it is used in ordinary English, and for conveying what I want to convey it is correct. Instead of insisting on your strict scientific definitions, which are only used to mystify and talk down to people, it's time you all bent a bit to ordinary English, which is what most of us speak. You all don't even agree with each other about terminology but you don't mind using it to put down creationists. In this case it is only serving to obscure the point I've made clearly enough.
<blockquote>
As I said, scientists use the word "prove" all the time, but they don't mean it in any mathematical sense. Nothing in science is ever proven in any mathematical sense. </blockquote>
I have reached the point where "what scientists think" is becoming obnoxious. I am not using the concept of proof in any mathematical sense either so your remark is pure mystification. I am using it the way it is used in ordinary everyday English. I suspect that if you made an effort to break out of your Science shackles even you would know what I am talking about instead of having to circumvent it with your tiresome and irrelevant definitions.
<blockquote>
Science is tentative. </blockquote>
I'm sure you can't imagine just how sick to death I am of this kind of recitation of the Science Creed, the usual abstraction we're all supposed to salute, while in reality it is not true. I've given examples of those horrific flat-out declarations one finds everywhere that such and such animal evolved from this that or the other in such and such a time frame, which is pure fiction being stated as if it were fact. No, when it comes to the ToE and the Old Earth there is nothing tentative about it, which is odd because of all scientific work these pieces of lore are the most tentative, the least confirmable, which is what this argument6 is all about. Some bits of flotsam found in a layer of rock is your evidence for all this stuff, which is all far better interpreted in terms of the Flood. You don't have the kind of evidence for these things you have for the hard sciences, yet you all keep denying this flat out.
<blockquote>
When scientists use the word "prove" all they mean is that they can provide persuasive evidence.</blockquote>
Get real. Deal with the issues on the table instead of reciting your articles of faith. You do not have the kind of evidence you seem to think you have, what you have is what I just described, not hard evidence at all but stuff that is better interpreted by the Flood. <br />
<br />
The issue on the table is that you can never have the kind of certainty about speculations about events in the past that you have about scientific questions you can test in the laboratory. This is really quite obvious and should be conceded. <br />
<br />
But I see that now you are trying to grant my request by suggesting how I might rephrase my point. Thanks for that, but now I'm beyond caring.
<blockquote>
Avoid the word "prove" altogether. I think it would work much better to say that interpretations of evidence are tentative, and that some interpretations are better supported by evidence than others.</blockquote>
First you need to concede that most of the time statements about events that supposedly occurred millions of years ago according to the Old Earth theory, and supposed evolutionary history of various creatures, are not presented tentatively but as fact, which of course the public swallows whole because golly gee, Scientists said it. And again, there is no evidence for any of it but the flotsam found in the strata. That's it. Concede that for starters.<br />
<br />
==============<br />
<br />
UPDATE 9/1:
Percy has <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=736066">"answered" </a> this post, and of course NOT by doing what I requested at the end of it, that is, by providing the terminology to make the point I'm making. In other words, I have a point I'm making with perfectly reasonable ordinary usage of the word "prove," and if it can be made in more accurate terminology, fine. But helping me make my point is not on Percy's agenda, obscuring it is the agenda. The M.O. at EvC is sophistry and semantics, and in this case the very refusal to read in context I say below is the problem. So much for that, and so much for EvC. <br />
<br />
P.S. I'm coming to the conclusion that EvC with its science jargonizing and mystification has made itself utterly irrelevant not only to creationists but to ordinary nonscientists of all beliefs. <br />
<br />
Oh and one more thing. The evidence you keep touting can only be interpreted, not proved. Creationists have a different interpretation (talking about the unwitnessed/prehistoric past here) and since you can't prove yours, so much for your evidence. And (answering Coyote in this case) this is what is meant when we say all you have is theory too. It's unprovable interpretation. This has been explained many times but you continue to recite the party line and claim your theory is more substantial than that. It gets tiresome repeating these simple obvious points. <br />
<br />
=========================<br />
<br />
ORIGINAL POST:<br />
<br />
And HBD in Message 457 touches on another common theme that is used against creationists, which is that we do often use the words "prove" and "proof" in our discussions, which is verboten according to strict scientific standards.
<br />
<blockquote>
...in science we don't deal with proof, we deal with evidence.</blockquote>
But this is really just their refusal to read in context, how we are using the terms. There is really no way to discuss the difference between the conclusions that are possible from testable science versus from science that studies the prehistoric past, without pointing out that you CAN prove testable hypotheses in a sense that is simply not possible in the other case. <br />
<br />
That is, you CAN "prove" that blood circulates in the body, that material objects always fall to the ground, that the DNA is a spiral double helix, in a sense that you can NEVER prove that the Great Unconformity was once the root of a mountain range, that the stegosaurus lived during a particular time period when the climate was thus and so and it shared the planet with thus and so range of other living things. THERE you only have hypotheticals. <br />
<br />
Now, if anyone would like to rephrase the distinction I'm trying to make to *prove* that other terminology would serve the point better, have at it.
Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-32462648725916786002014-08-29T18:20:00.000-07:002014-08-31T12:12:13.930-07:00Selection always reduces genetic diversityUPDATE 2, 8/30: I figured out what PaulK meant and I do have to admit that it's odd I didn't know what he meant right away. Of course he simply meant that it is conceded that selection reduces genetic diversity but that this is corrected by mutations. Yes the greater part of the arguments about this issue were about whether mutations could actually do this. I guess it's odd this isn't the first thing that came to mind and the only explanation I have is that I could never take that argument seriously.<br />
<br />
It's purely hypothetical for one thing, whereas the reduction in genetic diversity brought about by a population formed from a reduced number of individuals, by selection or any other cause that isolates such a daughter population, isn't in question at all. In the end it's an empirical question that can only be answered by some kind of empirical test, such as the laboratory test I've often suggested.<br />
<br />
I've made a number of objections to the idea that mutations could make a difference, one being that if they did they would only interfere with the phenotype formed by the selection or isolating processes, another being that useful mutations don't occur frequently enough to make a difference anyway. And so on. The idea that mutations do anything useful, that mutations are the cause of all the functioning alleles in all species for instance, is pure theory, and utterly ridiculous theory too, because it's impossible.<br />
<br />
================<br />
<br />
UPDATE 1, 8/30: Occurred to me that maybe PaulK was saying I was wrong to say that they fail to take the loss of genetic diversity into account. If so he'd have to show where anyone did take it into account as all I recall is endless arguments about this. If one or two did concede the point it must have been after all that argument AND I'd guess it was a highly compromised concession. But since he doesn't explain what he meant, who knows? <br />
<br />
====================<br />
<br />
ORIGINAL POST:<br />
<br />
And since I've been accused of lying, I'll just take a moment to answer this one too, Paul K in <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=735980"> Message 452</a> :
<br />
<blockquote>
[I said} (Over and over they fail to take into account that you lose genetic potentials or information with every selection event, which is OBVIOUS, PEOPLE!) <br />
<blockquote>
[And PK answered] No Faith you know perfectly well that that's not the case. But that's typical creationist behaviour, Unable to support their argument they just grossly misrepresent the opposition.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
Well, farther up thread Moose gave an example of natural selection in which the catching of large fish in fishermen's nets eventually led to the population of fish being characterized by smaller fish. At the time I noticed that he didn't take into account that of course the genetic diversity was reduced, meaning now there are fewer genetic possibilities of larger fish being produced in the population. Perhaps it hasn't been reduced to NO possibility, as whatever combination of genetic material is necessary for the larger version may still be possible in the population and could even be selected under future conditions. But the point remains that the current selection event of removing the larger fish has also removed or severely reduced the genetic basis for the larger size fish from the population as a whole. This HAS to happen. <br />
<br />
Paul K loves to accuse me of knowing something I'm denying but as usual I have no idea what he thinks I'm denying. There have been many attempts to answer this claim but I haven't found any of them convincing. The answer usually given to my argument that genetic diversity has to be reduced by selection is that it is not actually observed. But the only actual example anyone gave for that was the rapid spread of a small number of rabbits introduced into Australia, whose genetic diversity is supposed to have increased along with their numbers. By observation. But this cannot happen. If you start with a small number of individuals you are starting with a gene pool that is severely reduced in diversity. And by the end of that discussion somebody had even raised a doubt that the actual facts about the original small population were true at all.<br />
<br />
There is no way that you are going to increase the genetic diversity of a population that starts out with severely reduced genetic diversity which is always the case when you start with a small number of individuals. The cheetah and the elephant seal are cases in point. Both have apparently thrived in spite of their depleted genetic diversity but nothing has occurred to increase that diversity. By all known genetic standards it cannot happen. The usual idea is that mutation is the way new genetic material arises, but everyone concedes that beneficial mutations are extremely rare. The cheetah could wait a very long time to get a mutation tnat would improve its severely depleted genetic diversity. <br />
<br />
=======================<br />
<br />
And to Percy: When I use the word Plausibilities I'm talking about the plausibility of a theory or hypothesis or interpretation. Perhaps Probability should be left out of it as it relates to another subject.<br />
<br />Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-41081991382988254592014-08-29T17:25:00.003-07:002014-08-30T12:47:57.159-07:00What I mean by the Unwitnessed PastOh well, so I'm giving in and answering one of them. Too hard to resist. Maybe I'll get smart later.
So here's <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=736006">Taq in Message 459:</a>
<br />
<blockquote>
A general observation I have made is that creationists misrepresent how the scientific method works, either purposefully or unknowingly. One of the big hangups they seem to have is the relationship between hypothesis, observation, and repeatability<br />
<br />
For those of us familiar with the scientific method, we know that repeatability refers to the data/observations. For people like Faith, they think repeatability refers to the hypothesis. They think that in order for a hypothesis to be scientific you need to be able to observe the hypothesis in action multiple times.<br />
<br />
Of course, you don't observe the hypothesis. You test the hypothesis. Nowhere in the scientific method is there an expiration date on valid observations. A 100 million year old fossil is as valid a piece of evidence as a 1 hour old ELISA plate. Both are repeatable observations, and both can be used to test hypotheses.</blockquote>
This is the usual abstract statement that sounds like it means something in answer to what I've said but it only succeeds in garbling the issues further. I can't imagine that I ever said anything to suggest I make the mistakes he's imputing to creationists. But again, the statement is so abstract it's hard to know what he's saying or if it applies to anything I said or anyone said or in fact anything that is done in science by anybody.<br />
<br />
What I'm trying to say about the unwitnessed or prehistoric past is that there is <strong><span style="font-size: large;">no witness IN the past </span></strong>to confirm the interpretation/hypothesis of the observations made in the present about a phenomenon that occurred in the past. No historical documents, no landmark with ancient writing, nothing. With material in the present, a repeatable experiment in physics or chemistry perhaps, or clues to a crime committed within historical time even, there is no such problem. You have multiple witnesses to the events being studied. This is also true in the case of ancient bones of an unknown animal, which Dr. A kept insisting falsifies my claims, but it doesn't if all you are doing is reconstructing this creature from its bones because you have enough actual material for that job and anyone who understands principles of anatomy could do it. The problems with the prehistoric past that I'm trying to keep in view enter when you speculate about events in time: nwhen it lived, what other creatures occupied the planet at the same time, what the weather was like at that time and so on. <br />
<br />
So the problems have to do with TIME and with EVENTS in the past, and all that can only be speculative. Events in the past are not repeatable in the present. All you have with respect to EVENTS in the prehistoric past is speculations and interpretations from the point of view of witnesses in the present. In the case of reconstructing time periods in the distant past from the rock layers, first you have the assumption that the layer represents a particular time period, and that's the first thing you can't confirm, that has to remain a speculation or hypothesis.<br />
<br />
Then once you've accepted this unconfirmable hypothesis you go on to compound the problem of unconfirmability / untestability by assuming the contents of the rock can reveal the planetary environment of the supposed time period in which the bones supposedly originated. You assume that whatever other fossils are found in that same rock can tell you what other creatures lived during that time period, and plant fossils in particular suggest what sort of climate prevailed, and so on. All based on the unconfirmable assumption that the rock represents a time period, and apparently a worldwide time period at that. <br />
<br />
All this was assumed even before radiometric dating came along to confirm the supposed ages of the rocks, in some cases setting them back even further in time. And here's a point I also keep trying to make. These dating methods also can't be confirmed from the past itself because there is no "witness" from that past to confirm their conclusions. The order of the fossils LOOKS convincing, and so does the apparent order derived from radiometric dating, but none of it can be confirmed for sure. It remains speculative. All the more so since the sedimentary rocks themselves can't be dated but only volcanic material that occurs in proximity to them. AND that the results obtained are not as consistent as they often like to claim either.<br />
<br />
I'd like to think this clears up a misconception but I know from experience that it isn't going to happen. <br />
<br />
*******************************<br />
<br />
UPDATE: And of course <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=736026">I was right.</a>
And all I'm going to say here on the subject is that I thought I did answer the weird complaint that I'd somehow forgotten that nobody witnessed the formation of the Grand Canyon either. But in any case so what? I didn't say you can't do science on the unwitnessed past, all I said was that you can't be sure of your results with one-time unwitnessed past events the way you can with replicable testable phenomena and that all you have in such a case is interpretations and hypotheses, more or less plausibility thereof.<br />
<br />
Oh, and I also never said that you can't know SOME things about the past. Dinosaur footprints are like Stegosaurus bones, you can show that they are indeed dinosaur footprints. But that in itself isn't what you want to know, which is how and when they got there, and for that all you have is hypotheses.
Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-41240552665896068372014-08-28T13:24:00.002-07:002014-08-29T15:18:47.207-07:00Historical and Interpretive Science Garbled at EvC as usual <b>UPDATE.</b> A gaggle of EvCers has "answered" this. Wow, speaking of galloping misconceptions. Full-blown Wonderland. All I did was try to correct some strange ways they were misconstruing what I'd said, straightforward enough stuff they could just have conceded, I would have thought, but off they go with another whole raft of accusations. I didn't get to any of the meatier issues in this post, and the earlier post wasn't finished anyway, but that doesn't stop them from accusing me of avoiding them.<br />
<br />
I'm SO glad I'm not posting there any more and I think since they are answering me at a distance the best policy would be just to let this blog cool off for a while before I post here again, since the whole point of leaving was to stop the abuse. Unbelievable.<br />
<br />
Amazing, unbelievable, funny-sad. They're even accusing me of not having the guts to continue posting over there, after I posted there this last time for well over two years. Of course they continue misrepresenting my position (Taq does a bang-up job of that), but trying to answer all that again would just prolong the nonsense that is the reason I left._<br />
<br />
============================<br />
<b>Original Post.</b> <br />
<br />
So <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=735939"><strong>over at EvC</strong></a> they are supposedly answering my post below, which tempts me to go there and try to straighten out their usual strange misconceptions. But I know from experience that will only multiply the misconceptions and get us deep into Alice's rabbit hole in short order. <br />
<br />
Some idea that I'm saying you can't do science inductively? But I'm not. That conclusions arrived at inductively can be dismissed out of hand? But I'm saying no such thing. I'm going by what everyone agrees with about inductive reasoning, including Wikipedia from which I quoted, that it can't lead to certainty but is good for hypothesis formation. Of course you do science inductively when that's all that's possible, which is the case with sciences that are trying to reconstruct the prehistoric, or as I like to refer to it, unwitnessed, past. The point is only that it can't lead to the more solid conclusions you get with the hard sciences, which have the benefit of multiple witnesses, and you end up with interpretations that can't be tested, leaving the conclusion far more open to alternative probabilities and plausibilities than ever happens with the testable sciences. <br />
<br />
Also some idea I'm saying inductive reasoning isn't a part of all sciences? Where did I say that? We're talking about testing major theory here, or at least I am. For the Theory of Evolution you have a web of interpretations, for the Old Earth, including radiometric dating, you also have a web of interpretations, a network of Plausibilities.* If that's all you've got that's all you've got. I'm not saying it's not science, I'm saying that it's so far from conclusive that it's open to question at every point. <br />
<br />
Also some idea that I exempt creationist attempts to understand the past, argue that creationists can test the past but old earthers can't? But I don't. That I think there's more certainty in the Flood explanation for the phenomena that Old Earthers explain in terms of long ages is true, of course, but not because our methods are different. In fact I thought I'd said it quite frequently over there that when it comes to trying to explain the unwitnessed past we're all in the same boat: it's a contest of plausibilities. I think theirs are ridiculous, and the Flood nicely explains what they need complicated Rube-Goldberg style risings and fallings of land and sea to explain, but it isn't because there's anything intrinsically more reliable about the methods available to creationists. It's just that since it's all a web of interpretations of the evidence and nothing can be definitively proved, my argument is that the creationist interpretations are more plausible. <br />
<br />
=====<br />
<br />
*Web of interpretations, network of plausibilities<br />
<br />
The whole point of this line of argument is to make the case that these theories about the past which are often treated as if they were established Fact, simply aren't and should never be spoken of in such definite terms, which only serves to mystify and deceive the public.<br />
<br />
Me, I laugh when I read the typical presentation of information about some natural phenomenon, when such and such a creature evolved for instance, or encounter one of those helpful signs at some natural wonder that tells me in such certain terms that it was formed such and such millions of years ago. But people who don't have a clue about this debate just swallow it whole.<br />
<br />
They don't know that the Theory of Evolution is nothing but a heap of speculations treated as Fact, about what the fossils mean particularly, but also based on the unwarranted assumption that the variation we see within Species can continue indefinitely from Species to Species. (Over and over they fail to take into account that you lose genetic potentials or information with every selection event, which is OBVIOUS, PEOPLE!) And the Old Earth rests on such things as an interpretation of how angular unconformities form -- it can only be interpretation or speculation, plausible perhaps but far far from certain, because nobody has ever seen one form -- and leads to bizarre ideas about what life forms lived on this planet in some supposed era in the distant past, from its supposed animal and plant life to its supposed climate, all concocted/interpreted from a slab of rock and the dead things contained in it. Even that the absence of some fossils that had been present in the previous layer of rock means that there was a great extinction event between those eras, when really, folks, if all those slabs of rock are nothing but the sedimentary layering brought about by the Flood, all they are doing is making up a Fairy Tale. The Emperor's New Clothes. But boy do they defend it as if it WERE actually proved.<br />
<br />
==============================<br />
Later: Feel I must add that there are specific isolated issues that can be proven, such as, for instance, that you can tell from a given cross section that all the strata were laid down before tectonic or other disturbance occurred. Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-27491388750055788392014-08-12T07:51:00.000-07:002014-08-12T08:23:11.363-07:00Historical and interpretive science versus observational testable scienceThe question of <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&t=17304">the difference between </a> a historical and interpretive science and an observational or testable science has been run through the EvC standard variety of misinterpretations -- I hope all possible misinterpretations, meaning I hope they've run out of them. As often happens with subjects that matter to me, I thought the distinction was pretty clear from the beginning but soon found out how many different ways there are to misconstrue my meaning. <br />
<br />
I thought for instance that because the concepts were described in a paper published in <a href="http://www.brynmawr.edu/geology/documents/Geologyscientificmethod.pdf"> a Geological publication </a>as a critical view of Geology held by members of the scientific community, though the author disagreed with them, that should suffice to pin down what I had in mind. Nope. <br />
<br />
Then along comes a working Geologist who is all put out at me for calling his science interpretive although that's the term used by other people too, even those who oppose me, and when he described <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=732038">what he actually does to find oil</a> I had concluded that was a good example of real observational science and not interpretive science, because everything he described had to do with the physical position of the rocks and nothing to do with Old Earth assumptions. I guess he didn't believe me?<br />
<br />
Then I was informed that Historical Geology simply IS Geology, ALL Geology, so that my making a distinction between theoretical or Old Earth Geology as historical and interpretive science, on the one hand, and on the other practical working Geology that is done in the field, which I was calling Observational Science, is unacceptable. <br />
<br />
Somebody else then makes the pedantic point that all science is both observational and interpretive in some sense, without bothering to inquire how I was using the terms or taking seriously anything I'd said to try to define them. He also argues that my classification of the discovery of the DNA double helix structure as observational science isn't correct because that scientific discovery requires interpretation, since the evidence is the x-ray diffraction pattern, a photograph not being possible. OF COURSE you have to be able to interpret the x-ray diffraction pattern, but my point is that what you are studying is IN THE PRESENT, bazillions of examples of it, and anybody who can learn to interpret that pattern is a WITNESS to it and having so many witnesses is what makes the discovery testable and provable. But I'll get to the witness idea farther down.<br />
<br />
Then he totally misinterpreted my interest in the paper about Geology as an interpretive and historical science as if I didn't know the paper was arguing against the denigration of Geology for that reason. Even if such a misunderstanding is inadvertent it's a wearing experience to have to deal with it along with all the other misunderstandings.<br />
<br />
Then another poster at least made an attempt to correct that misunderstanding but added one of his own in the process: <br />
<blockquote>
Faith's point was that the paper acknowledged that other people held biology in lower regard as a science. Of course she took the point as being supportive of her efforts to dismiss all geology that is not Genesis friendly.</blockquote>
Oh I guess you could put it that way, but of course it implies that I just made it up. I'd been trying for a long time already to get across my own view of Old Earthism as interpretive and therefore unprovable. It was fascinating then to find that there are noncreationists who also see Geology that way.<br />
<br />
But he goes on to make an interesting point nevertheless:<br />
<blockquote>
Today's sciences rely on a tremendous amount of inductive reasoning, a skill that geology has perfected Inductive reasoning is because such reasoning is the only available strategy. We have to live with both the strength and weaknesses of such reasoning, the primary weakness being that nothing generalization is ever proven and no conclusion is inescapable.</blockquote>
I don't know to what extent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning">inductive reasoning </a> may describe the phenomena I had been imputing to historical and interpretive science but perhaps at least to some extent. The Wikipedia discussion says two things I'd been saying about Old Earthism for quite some time. First, that this debate is about a war of Plausibilities. They make the point that inductive reasoning doesn't lead to a certain conclusion as deductive reasoning is supposed to, but is considered to be probable. Probabilities would work where I say plausibilities, but it also goes on to use the term "credible" which is even closer: <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">Inductive reasoning, as opposed to deductive reasoning, is reasoning in which the premises seek to supply strong evidence for (not absolute proof of) the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is supposed to be certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is supposed to be <i>probable</i>, based upon the evidence given. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;">...Inductive reasoning is inherently uncertain. It only deals in degrees to which, given the premises, the conclusion is credible according to some theory of evidence.</span> </blockquote>
And the other point I've tried to make is that you can't ever get past theory or hypothesis with the sciences of the prehistoric past, and the Wikipedia article says essentially the same thing about inductive reasoning:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">Inductive reasoning is also known as hypothesis construction because any conclusions made are based on current knowledge and predictions. As with deductive arguments, biases can distort the proper application of inductive argument, thereby preventing the reasoner from forming the most logical conclusion based on the clues.</span>
</blockquote>
I'm not going to argue that the article is making the exact same point I'm making, but the similarity of terminology certainly suggests a general affinity.<br />
<br />
I've been arguing for ages that Old Earthism -- AND the Theory of Evolution -- can never be proved because they are about the untestable past. The best they can ever offer is hypothesis or theory, never certainty the way the "hard" sciences can.<br />
<br />
To be continued.Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-6419414668333263072014-08-07T13:38:00.002-07:002014-08-07T14:33:44.402-07:00Winding Down the Chronic Antagonism of EvC I don't want to post at EvC any more but as usual there are posts there I feel I must answer, so I've got to answer them here now. If I answered them there I would just get back responses that I'd feel I have to answer anyway, but if I answer them here that will probably be the end of it. And WHY do I feel this need? Well, maybe I should just be able to ignore them but they typically so horribly misrepresent my arguments there, or give such inadequate objections to them, I feel I have to correct the record. But that's a treadmill; that feeling has kept me posting there for over two years this time. Enough is enough. <br />
<br />
Oh, to be fair, there have been periods where I just enjoy getting to work out my thoughts, and their raising of new problems helps with that. Too bad that isn't the majority of the time. After a while of having my thoughts trashed and my motives impugned over and over I reach the point where I just can't take it any more. <br />
<br />
I know, I know, Christians aren't supposed to react to personal insults anyway, if they insult us they are really insulting the Lord, and in any case we are never to give evil for evil, and I feel terrible when I do that because the Lord never did and I don't want to bring disgrace on Him. That's a big reason to get out of there since I always eventually fall into it. Then I'm smarting in the flesh and feeling guilty toward the Lord at the same time. Seems to me I go quite a long while not reacting, responding in a neutral tone, just trying to be clear, but eventually I come unglued and start insulting them back. Maybe it's because I'm not spending enough time with the Lord but I just *can't take it any more* and blow up at them. Forgive me, Lord, I'm not able to do it right. Teach me how to rely on YOUR strength for these things, and if you want me to go back and love them all through their insults THEN send me back, but please not before, and that could be a very long time given my record. The flesh is very very weak.<br />
<br />
Anyway, again I feel I *must* answer some strange stuff they've written recently.<br />
<br />
There were three issues on the table as I left there: first the claim that there is evidence of volcanic activity during the laying down of the sedimentary strata; second, the cross sections that I put up that at least in some places show the strata were all laid down before the tectonic and volcanic disturbances; and third the question of historical versus observational science.<br />
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I was going to try to cover all that in this one post but I think I'll leave it and post only this much for now.<br />
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============<br />
<br />
There's a post at EvC today that suggests I find it so hard to leave there because I like the attention, while my blogs don't get many readers. He might be surprised how many readers I get out here, though. It depends on the subject and I can almost predict what subjects will attract readers off the search engines. But that's not the same as getting immediate responses, he's right about that. I do enjoy discussion, conversation, give and take, but the problem with EvC is that it's become nothing but a punishing experience for me, which is easily enough evidenced in this very post I'm talking about, where he describes what I post as "nonsense." I've survived it, I've done what I could with it, it got to be too much to take, it's over.<br />
<br />
I will try to say something about that when I post on the historical versus observational science question, which should be next. If I posted on it at EvC it would only attract the kind of responses that are the reason I've left. Enough is enough.Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-5183530236897563662014-08-04T07:31:00.001-07:002014-08-04T07:39:02.787-07:00Multiply the California flooding a million times for Noah's FloodJust had to embed a news report on the flooding in Southern California for all those silly people who think you can compare a worldwide Flood that covered all the land mass on earth with a local flood. "The Flood would have done such and such, they say, because that's what happens in floods, but we don't see any evidence of that." What can I do but roll my eyes? <br />
<br />
The California flooding comes from ONE day of heavy rain in the mountains, which caused flash floods and mudslides, stranding 3000 and killing one. Just ONE DAY. The Flood of Noah started with forty days and nights of rain ALL OVER THE EARTH, not just in a limited locale like Southern California. We're talking thousands, millions of local floods all running together, carrying mud down from high places for over a month until the land should have been scoured down to bedrock and the rising ocean water thick with sediments. <br />
<br />
Anyway, here's one of the many news reports out there. Some good video of the flooding and mudslides.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Redp5xuzDjc" width="430"></iframe><br />Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-51488106479413200762014-03-31T06:38:00.000-07:002014-04-01T05:29:03.620-07:00Asteroid craters and evolutionist confusion of interpretation with factThe problem with leaving EvC, which I finally did recently, is that inevitably somebody posts something I'd like to talk about. And I've been tempted a couple times recently to go back and join a thread. What keeps me from it is the very reason I left: the attitude there is hard to take, and it's a waste of time. The dragged-out frustrating struggle just to get a simple point across, which often ends in failure anyway, is not worth it any more, and the expressions of hatred against creationists and Christians seem to have escalated and I don't want to be guilty of provoking more of it, let alone my own breakdowns of patience.<br />
<br />
But I suppose there may continue to be issues raised I'll want to follow. This one about asteroid craters I think I'd be foolish to debate anyway -- the mere thought of how it would play out is exhausting -- but I have a few thoughts about it so I'll write them here and leave it at that. <br />
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<a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&t=17385">YECs and Asteroids</a>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">Greetings!</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">...A recent topic on the subject of impact craters on the Moon got me thinking about the impact craters on Earth. On another forum, I posed this question to the creationists in attendance</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Something I’ve been pondering, recently.Most people know about the meteor impact that ‘killed’ the dinosaurs. What they often don’t know is that many, many other things died out around this time, too - fish, plants, even certain mammals and birds - it was a worldwide extinction event ...</span> </blockquote>
One of the main things a YEC has to say, and keep saying, to this sort of presentation, is that this idea of a great extinction event rests purely on the evolutionist interpretation of the fossil record. As usual it is presented as fact although the evidence for it is nothing but the absence of those supposedly extinct life forms from some of the sedimentary layers. That's all. Dinosaur fossils don't appear in a certain layer where they are expected according to the theory of the strata as representing long ages of time. They aren't in that sedimentary rock, therefore they didn't live in the era of time the theory assigns to that rock, therefore they must have all died out. Now we're informed that "many, many other things died out around this time, too -- fish, plants, even certain mammals and birds -- it was a worldwide extinction event..." Which means ONLY that these other creatures ALSO aren't present in sedimentary layers where evolutionist theory expects them to be. <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">... and it left its mark in the Yucatan.</span> [<em>Here he posts a map of the Yucatan peninsula and an aerial shot of the outlines of a crater at that location</em>.]</blockquote>
So this supposed extinction event -- again, merely an interpretation of the absence of some fossils in some sedimentary layers though treated as unquestionable fact as usual -- is interpreted to have been the result of an asteroid or meteor impact on the Yucatan peninsula. Millions upon millions of years ago of course, as the theory goes.<br />
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So now we get some information about the evidence for such impacts. Yes, this is REAL evidence. There WERE such impacts on the earth, lots of craters to prove it. I wouldn't take anything they say about WHEN they occurred very seriously of course.<br />
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One bit of evidence for such impacts is the presence of a fine layer of iridium on the surface of one of the sedimentary layers, above which dinosaurs do not occur, iridium being known to result from meteoric impacts. This is probably real evidence of meteoric impact but not necessarily of any supposed extinction event as a result of it, which, again, is evidenced ONLY by the LACK of certain fossils in the layer above.
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<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">That’s about 170 km wide - quite an impressive impact, and it would have had effects all over the earth, both immediate and longer-term.</span></blockquote>
This assertion also rests on an assumption that is not necessarily true, which I'll get to.
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<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">I’m absolutely not the person to tell you about them...I suck at math. But, fortunately, Purdue University developed this really cool website that actually lets you calculate such things. So we can see what effects such an impact would have, here.</span><a href="http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/"><span style="color: blue;">Impact: Earth!</span></a><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">What can happen to you would depend on your proximity to the object - for instance, I put in 1,000 km away, and it informed me of all sorts of pleasant things, like my clothes igniting, a fiery hellstorm raining death upon from the skies, and being drowned and/or crushed by the resultant tsunami. Really, really unpleasant stuff. But the thing is, that’s not the first time this happened - most people also don’t know that the KT impact isn’t the only big impact the Earth’s taken, nor is it the biggest. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">There are two craters which are even bigger than the one in the Yucatan - the one in Sudbury is about 250 km, and the one in Vredefort is a whopping 300 km.</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth"><span style="color: blue;">List of impact craters on Earth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</span></a><span style="color: blue;">And keep in mind - these are just confirmed craters. There unconfirmed ones that we haven’t found yet, that could drawf even that, but for the sake of argument we’ll just stick to what’s been confirmed. So, you’ll notice that there’s quite a few big impacts that would have done huge damage to the earth - not all as drastic as the top five, but still quite noticeable. Forest fire, tsunamis, tremors, et cetera. This would have been quite noticeable to anyone alive at the time. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Now, with an old-earth model, I don’t see it a major problem. When the big first two hit, life on Earth wasn’t [sic] still microbial, and wouldn’t have been affected by it too much, I don’t think. These impacts are few and far between - there are a lot of them, but that’s about what you’d expect if the planet’s been around billions of years. You can only dodge the bullet so many times. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">I’m not sure how this works with a young-earth model, though, and I’m curious if any of the reside YECs could proffer an explanation. Obviously, these meteors haven’t hit since the flood - if they’d all struck within a relatively short amount of time, they would have utterly annihilated life on this planet.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Just one big one, like the one in the Yucatan, is enough to cause mass extinctions worldwides. Two, within 4,000 years, would be utterly devastating. The top five largest craters are quite close to or exceeding the Yucatan’s in size, and there are dozens of smaller, but still significant craters around the globe. Clearly, they haven’t hit in recorded history, so what does that leave us? Before the Flood? </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">If they’d happened before the flood, there wouldn’t even need to be a Flood - everything would be dead, not to mention that it’s not given note anywhere in the Bible. I think I recall someone saying that the Flood could have caused the meteor impacts in the first place, but I don’t see how that make even a little sense, not to mention that the acid rain, massive fish extinctions, and fireballs raining all over the place are something that Noah would have made notice off. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">So I’m curious what the YEC ‘interpretation’ is for these impacts. I really didn't get much of a response - one of them talked about angels holding battles inside of protective barriers, but it wasn't very serious, and none of the creationists seemed interested in providing any real feedback, which is odd since they're usually a chatty bunch on that forum. So in interest of refining the argument, I thought I might bring it here to see how well it stacks up and what possible objections there might be.</span></blockquote>
All I can do is guess from a Floodist perspective of course. If these meteors hit during the Flood they'd have hit land that was under water, and the lower the land the deeper the water above it, which could have mitigated the drastic effects predicted above. I checked all the craters referred to and they are all a few thousand miles away from where Noah would have been (even assuming the continents had not yet split). I didn't check the altitude of the areas where they hit but obviously a few of them hit in lower altitudes. So these hits might have rocked the water enough to make Noah and family seasick but most likely they wouldn't have produced flame or even as much heat as supposed here.
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If they all occurred during the Flood event, especially if some occurred during the first phase of the forty days and night of constant rain, the result might have been surprisingly minimal. Perhaps a lot of steam rose, which turned into rain in its turn. (The timing would have to take into account when the strata were laid down, and I don't know how to calculate any of that.)
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Since I think the strata were all produced by the Flood I also think the iridium layer was deposited during the Flood. What got deposited in any given layer of course is simply a matter of what the Flood happened to deposit there, and nothing to do with great aeons of time.
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There's my guess. SO glad I don't have to "debate" it with all the usual misreadings and angry denunciations and weird denials of the obvious. <br />
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The main point here I think is the way the interpretation of the absence of fossils in a certain layer is treated as undeniable proof that there was a huge extinction event in the distant past. Typical presentation not of FACT, not of simple PHENOMENA, but always of interpretation, of theory, masquerading as fact. Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-91934628838529306622014-03-26T00:31:00.000-07:002014-03-28T06:45:13.392-07:00Compromising the Bible to Accommodate ScienceOn a thread at EvC Forums I was presented with the information that some of the greatest Christian preachers of the 19th and early 20th centuries had accepted certain compromising ideas about the Bible in reaction to the claims of science of their day. They believed what science was saying about the Old Earth, though not about evolution, and they came up with various ways to make the Bible fit the claims. I don't know how many resisted the claims altogether, that would be interesting to know, but the fact is that there were some of the best of the best who came up with ideas that accommodate the Bible to science. Spurgeon was one for instance.<br />
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There was an exchange of posts on the subject, starting with a post by "kbertsche"
<a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=722528">HERE:</a>
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<blockquote>
From about the mid-19th to mid-20th century, most conservative Christians accepted the geologic evidence for an old earth and incorporated it into a view known as the "Gap Theory". This view was popularized by Thomas Chalmers in the early 19th century, and became the de facto view of conservative Christians after C.I. Scofield incorporated it into his reference Bible in the early 20th century. As Bernard Ramm wrote in 1954 (see the wikipedia article referenced above):
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<blockquote>
"The gap theory has become the standard interpretation throughout hyper-orthodoxy, appearing in an endless stream of books, booklets, Bible studies, and periodical articles. In fact, it has become so sacrosanct with some that to question it is equivalent to tampering with Sacred Scripture or to manifest modernistic leanings".</blockquote>
Who held to an old earth in this period (mid-19th to mid-20th century)? Most of the conservative Christian scholars and Bible teachers, including most of the scholars who opposed the Tuebingen school and modernism. Here are a few of them:
<ul>
<li>James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000). Pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia; chairman of International Council on Biblical Inerrancy.</li>
<li>William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925). Prominent anti-evolutionist; prosecutor in Scopes “monkey trial”.</li>
<li>A.A. Hodge (1823-1886). Old Princeton Theologian.</li>
<li>Charles Hodge (1797-1878). Old Princeton Theologian.</li>
<li>H. A. Ironside (1876-1951). Bible preacher, commentator, and author.</li>
<li>C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). Literature professor and Christian apologist.</li>
<li>J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937). Theologian.</li>
<li>J. Vernon McGee (1904-1988). Founder of Thru the Bible ministry.</li>
<li>C.I. Scofield (1843-1921). Known for his Scofield Reference Bible.</li>
<li>Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892). Known as “the prince of preachers”.</li>
<li>R.A. Torrey (1856-1928). Editor of "The Fundamentals"</li>
<li>Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921). Theologian; Champion of biblical inerrancy.</li>
<li>Edward J. Young (1907-1968). Theologian; Champion of biblical inerrancy.</li>
</ul></blockquote>
In a subsequent post kbertsche explains that not all of them adhered to Gap Theory, some arguing for Day-Age theory that makes the word "day" in the first chapter of Genesis refer to a very long period of time, and in one case Theistic Evolution.
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<br />
The last post in the sequence to this point was mine, <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=722565">which follows:</a><br />
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
[Ringo quoting me] All I see in this barely plausible scenario is the desperation of these men in the face of the science of the day that they were unable to criticize.<br />
<br />
[Ringo] That's a pretty good description of creationism in general. </blockquote>
[Faith} I agree in general with this. The turn of science to antibiblical assertions put Bible believers in a difficult position. Having always admired science, and thinking it a gift from God, many scrambled to accommodate their beliefs to what the scientists were saying. I believe this was a fatal error, understandable though it is. By coming up with accommodating ideas like Gap Theory they avoided the conflict and appeared to find common ground sufficient to let them continue in their faith and preach their faith to their congregations. <br />
<br />
But the conflict is inevitable and can't be avoided. Gap theory is a wild speculative solution that ends up being no solution. Same with the other ways the Bible was compromised to accommodate science. I hadn't known until kbertsche demonstrated it that so many of the greatest preachers had succumbed to this kind of solution, and it was quite startling because those men preach solidly Biblical sermons, the best of the best. I had no idea there was a rotten spot in the floorboards as it were, that could bring the whole house down. That's the problem with ALL compromising efforts. <br />
<br />
It's the same problem with the modern Bibles. Christians can go along for years trusting in those Bibles and then suddenly grasp the implications of the untrustworthiness of the Greek texts that underlie them, and their lack of knowledge of the history of these things, and the corrupted nature of those texts, then cause many to lose their faith and leave them with a bitter cynicism about Christianity. <br />
<br />
Those great preachers who gave into the Old Earth and tried to make the Bible conform to it have built a house of cards that subsequent generations can blow down with a breath, leaving them with very flimsy support for their faith.<br />
<br />
I appreciate that they didn't have the time, and it wasn't their calling either, to try to answer the claims of science, but a strong stand on the Bible against the science they couldn't understand might have served us all better in the end. Others might have been inspired to learn more science earlier, might have seen through the purely interpretive and speculative and unprovable nature of the claims that were being presented as Fact for one thing, might have stayed on top of the claims down the decades instead of being lulled to sleep by a false reconciliation at the expense of the Bible. </blockquote>
It was quite a shock to me to find out what these men believed. While most of them didn't give in to evolution it is painful to see them accommodating to the Old Earth, which the Bible really can't be made to support without strain.
Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-34049163719540731312014-03-13T01:26:00.000-07:002014-03-13T20:36:13.828-07:00Review of Grand Canyon Argument against Old Earth GeologyUPDATE: Because the argument I'm presenting here based on the Grand Canyon that I try to keep focused on in the debate, is so simple it easily gets dismissed as simply <a href="http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=721886"><b>ignoring the other pieces of this enormous puzzle</b></a>, so I feel I have to explain why that's not the case.<br />
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The idea is that I'm pointing out something so essential that nothing else can challenge it no matter how many questions people might want to raise otherwise. If this argument shows as definitively as I believe it does that the strata cannot possibly be hundreds of millions of years old, then no other considerations can undo that conclusion. If this is true, then the particulars such as the angle of repose of the grains of sand in the Coconino Sandstone, for instance, simply cannot be used to prove the Old Earth but are going to have to be understood some other way.<br />
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This is the kind of argument I'm always looking for, the pivotal argument, the one that undoes all the others, and I think I've found it in this case (also the genetic argument but that one got garbled in the last debate round at EvC so I'm going to have to work on it some more.)<br />
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The original post:
After some months of debate at EvC Forums I feel the need to restate my arguments here. Over there anything I say is subject to such a barrage of strange objections it's easy to lose track of the simple point I'm trying to make. <br />
<br />
So I want to restate the argument for the Flood which is really mostly against the Old Earth point of view that has the earth about four billion years old. <br />
<br />
I have one very simple argument about that which is based on cross sections of the Grand Canyon - Grand Staircase area that runs from Arizona to Utah.<br />
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I've been unable to load any images into my blogs for some time so all I can do is paste a link to one of these cross sections:<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Grand_Staircase-big.jpg">Grand Staircase image</a><br />
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This shows the depth of the layers of rock at the north end of the Grand Staircase to be about two miles, and the number of layers to be roughly about 26. Clearly these layers were originally continuous at that depth for more than two hundred miles to the Grand Canyon area and beyond, but the strata above the Kaibab level eroded away over the Grand Canyon and chunks of the strata above that level also eroded away in the Grand Staircase area, forming the stairs of the staircase.<br />
<br />
This shows that all those layers were in place at one time, and this fact is emphasized by the intrusion of the magma dike at the north end of the Grand Staircase which penetrates upward through the entire stack from bottom to top, showing that it did not occur before they were all laid down. It is also shown by the fault lines that split the whole stack; It is also shown by the distortion of the whole stack as a block as it follows the curve of the mound over the Grand Canyon. If that rise had occurred before they were all laid down, the upper layers that were laid down later would not have remained parallel with the lower block of layers but would have been horizontal and butted up against the upgrades and curves. That is not the case. The entire stack as a whole follows the curves across the entire landscape, the layers all remaining parallel to one another. It is also shown by the fact that the canyons and stairs were cut after they were all laid down. Clearly they were all laid down and THEN there was a violent upheaval of some sort, tectonic force no doubt with attendant earthquakes plus the volcanic activity that is shown in the magma. All this occurred TO THE ENTIRE STACK after it was all laid down.<br />
<br />
What is my point? My point begins with the observation that according to conventional Geology each of those layers represents a time period of millions of years. Here's <a href="http://dept.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~cowley/GCandMoon.html"> another diagram </a> showing the time periods assigned to the layers in the Grand Canyon. Scroll down about half way to see it. Really wish I could post just the image, sorry it's so awkward this way.<br />
<br />
Now consider that conventional Geology describes the planet Earth as a "very active" planet, and ask yourself why in that case those strata are depicted as so neatly parallel over what adds up to hundreds of millions of years, how ALL of them were obviously laid down one on top of the other before the land was tilted, before the mounded rise formed, before the canyons and stairs or cliffs were cut, before the magma rose up through the layers and before the faulting occurred.<br />
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The obvious conclusion is that those hundreds of millions of years did not happen. It's all a fiction.<br />
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When I presented this scenario at EvC of course I got all kinds of objections. "Well but surely each of those layers would show a great deal of activity if you looked into them minutely" for instance. But of course that doesn't answer why they ALL follow the same contours as a block. And "Really there's nothing odd about there being no activity on the planet for hundreds of millions of years, and then a lot of activity all at once." Really? They also suggested that this could have happened in this particular area and nowhere else. To this I can only say that you also find blocks of strata everywhere distorted by tectonic force as a block. There is nothing quite like the Grand Canyon of course which shows the Geologic Column to such a great depth. And they objected to the use of a diagram at all, as if the artist wouldn't have known not to draw the strata parallel if they weren't parallel. And of course the usual objections were raised about the Young Earth arguments as well, which became a major distraction from the main point I was making. <br />
<br />
But this one simple observation stands against the whole Old Earth argument. I think it's open and shut myself.<br />
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From there I go on to argue that the actual appearance of the strata in that area is much better explained by the Flood, and that gets into all kinds of other considerations. But rather than lay those out here I just want to keep it simple, showing that the conventional explanation does not account for the actual formation of the strata.<br />
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And yes, there is The Great Unconformity at the base of the Grand Canyon too. I believe that also occurred at the same time as all the other activity I've described, and there are some posts on this blog about it, but it's not necessary to insist on that to make the point I'm making here. Many creationists treat the Great Unconformity as already there when the Flood occurred and laid down the strata above it. I don't, but it doesn't interfere with the point I'm making here to leave it at that.Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-44584460770160958702014-02-04T13:37:00.000-08:002014-02-04T23:54:27.483-08:00DEBATE BETWEEN KEN HAM AND BILL NYE TODAY<b>UPDATE:</b><br />
I saw it and thought it was well conducted. I thought the CNN moderator did a very good job of keeping time and keeping it moving and not betraying any bias of his own.
<br /><br />
I also thought that Ken Ham did a very good job. Bill Nye seemed content to raise the usual questions and objections to creationism that one encounters all the time and that have been answered many times over, so that was frustrating. It would be nice to get past the usual misrepresentations of what a worldwide Flood would have done.
<br /><br />
But I'd like to listen to the debate again more carefully when I have the time.
<br /><br />
Here's the earlier post: <br /><br />
========================================<br /> <br />
Coming up at 7 PM Eastern time, 4 PM here in the west. <br />
<br />
It's all over the web and there are many sites that will be showing it live. <a href="http://debatelive.org/"><strong>Here's one.</strong> </a> <br />
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<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/04/271383099/creationism-vs-evolution-the-debate-is-live-tonight"><strong>NPR quotes Bill Nye, "the science guy</strong>"</a> saying:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">— Nye: "I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine. But don't make your kids do it. Because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems."</span> </blockquote>
This is infuriating misrepresentation, and if there's anything Ken Ham should do it's answer this stupidity so well that it never rears its ugly head again.
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The ONLY form of "science" that Creationists have any problem with is the sciences that deal with the prehistoric past, for which there is no observation possible and it's all just a matter of interpretation, a pure exercise in imagination. This is why the Theory of Evolution remains a "theory," because there is no way to replicate and test its theories in a laboratory the way the "hard" sciences can do with theirs. That's why they can get away with their ludicrous theory of evolution and a very ancient Earth -- because there is no way to prove or disprove it, it's all a matter of interpretation and persuasion. Engineers who can build stuff and solve problems do REAL science, not the mental cobweb science of evolution and the Old Earth <br />
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THEIR science is NOT science but apparently they don't know the difference. Creationists DO know the difference and do REAL science.Faith http://www.blogger.com/profile/00064746447414555577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6030885580613135432.post-12699994205707777302013-12-20T21:16:00.000-08:002013-12-20T21:30:18.467-08:00Hoodoos Whenever somebody says there is no evidence for the Flood of Noah, this is my answer: The Flood left a ton of evidence all over the earth. It left all the strata, it left the Grand Canyon and all the formations of the Southwest (It's really kind of amusing to think of the separate layers of which the hoodoos are built as each representing millions of years of time), it left the scablands, it left the traces of the huge lakes such as the Missoula and Lahontan and Bonneville, it left the dinosaur beds and the fossils. <br />
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The hoodoos are interesting. I'm particularly interested in their stratification. Most of them are carved out of layered sediments just like so many of the dramatic formations in the American Southwest, layers that are usually associated with long periods of time in the prevailing Old Earth understanding. There's just something funny about that idea when you find them in these tall skinny formations. But it's funny in all the formations anyway, because you have to believe that all those strata were laid down over millions and millions of years before anything cut them or carved them. <br />
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