More on UK Creationism

Turns out there are Creationist organizations in the UK, such as the Biblical Creation Society which is described by Wikipedia as ===

... a United Kingdom-based creationist organisation founded in 1977 by Scottish minister Nigel M. de S. Cameron and a group of evangelical students, who were concerned about the popularity of theistic evolution among conservative Christians, but were repelled by the "wholly negative" attitude of the Evolution Protest Movement. Although inspired by the scientific creationism of John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris (authors of The Genesis Flood), it refused to limit its membership to only Young Earth creationists, and in its name rejected American attempts to separate scientific creationism from its Biblical roots (a separation rendered unnecessary by the lack of constitutional barriers to teaching creationism in the United Kingdom).[1] The organisation is based in Rugby, Warwickshire.

I'm not entirely sure what this paragraph is saying (in whose name rejected what?) but I gather at least that their beliefs are disputed by other creationist organizations.

Here's another UK-based organization called Biblical Creation Ministries which the site explains is an offshoot of the organization above. This one is headed up by Paul Garner, whose talk on the Grand Canyon I've embedded in the post below.

British creationist Paul Garner's analysis of the Grand Canyon as Evidence for the Flood

OK, I think I'm going to post some creationist stuff that I like for a change. My main use of my blog is for thinking things through for myself because that's FUN and I think I've come up with some good stuff in spite of my obvious handicaps and amateur status. Most of it ends up being in accord with creationist thinking out there and that's certainly a good sign but I also have the chutzpah to think I have some original ideas of my own. Well, that's a lot of what makes it fun.

I've been watching this film at You Tube of a talk by creationist Paul Garner about the formation of the Grand Canyon. GREAT talk. You'll never find this sort of information at EvC.

The talk is all about the evidence in the Grand Canyon for catastrophic deposition of the layers as opposed to deposition over hundreds of millions of years.

He presents a creationist division of the layers into pre-Flood, which is the Precambrian or basement rocks of the Canyon, Flood-deposited, which is the main body of the strata above that to the rim at the Kaibab Plateau, and post-Flood, which is those strata which can be seen in the Grand Staircase but no longer exist over the Grand Canyon. (I was very happy to see him affirm that the layers that constitute the Grand Staircase to the north are understood to have originally covered the Grand Canyon area as well.) 

This dividing of the layers into time units is the sort of system I've always found hard to accept because I see no difference in the presentation of the layers themselves to the naked eye that would suggest any reason to attribute different mechanisms of deposition to them. But the "PreCambrian" basement rocks do present a different appearance so I can see how they can be thought of as a separate kind of deposition that pre-existed the Flood.  .

He organizes his talk to address five kinds of evidence demonstrated in the canyon for its formation by the Flood of Noah:

1. Fossils of marine organizsms high above sea level
2. Rapid burial of fossil organisms
3. Extraordinary extent of the sedimentary rock layers
4. Rapid or no erosion between the layers
5. Many strata deposited in rapid succession

On the subject of rapid burial of fossil organisms, item No. 2, he spends quite a bit of time on the nautiloid layer in the Redwall Limestone, spelling out the research by Steve Austin on that layer that demonstrates that the nautiloids had to have been rapidly buried. 

On No. 3 He gives the evidence of the enormous horizontal extent of the different layers, the lowest Tapeats sandstone that rests on the basement unconformity, for instance, extending across the entire continent of the US and up through Canada, also being found on other continents although he doesn't give an illustration of that. Same with the Redwall Limestone, which has an enormous range across the North American continent, and he mentions that the same basic formation can be found in England as well. The Coconino sandstone covers the Southwest into Colorado and Texas, as deep as 800 feet in some places. Such a huge extent of the layers is evidence that they were not laid down by any processes known to be occurring today, which is the usual claim.

Addressing No. 4 he points out the knife-edge contact between some layers conventionally explained as unconformities which assumes there to be layers missing between them.  He also discusses the erosion between the Great Unconformity and the lowest horizontal layer that rests on it, the Tapeats sandstone, as having to have been PHYSICAL erosion. He says there is no evidence of the chemical erosion of weathering that would have occurred if the lower layer had been exposed as land surface for millions of years, which is the usual theory, and he shows an embedded boulder that suggests the erosion was caused by a rapid catastrophic debris flow that "simultaneously broke up and transported blocks of the underlying precambrian rocks in a matrix of sandstone."

I've had my own theory about this boundary as the level at which the force of the underground volcano along with the tectonic force which triggered it, met the resisting weight of the more-than-two-mile depth of wet layers that were at that time all laid out above. I see this collision of forces as having formed the basement rock, including the metamorphic rock or schist and of course the granite, and the Great Unconformity itself, all confined beneath the stack above under great heat and pressure, the force being enough to uplift the stack above into its current position, cracking the uppermost layers which permitted the rushing in of the water which scoured out the canyon.

EVIDENCE that the strata were all in place when the uplift occurred is the fact that the strata conform to the curved sides of the uplift instead of butting into them, which is what would have happened if they'd been laid down at any time afterward.  THEREFORE the tectonic-volcanic action that caused the uplift came after all the strata had been deposited, or at or after the end of the Flood.

The abrasion at the boundary between the basement rocks and the Tapeats layer would have been violent in the extreme, easily accounting for the kind of erosion he's talking about.

His analysis is great just as it stands, but I still like my explanation for how the canyon got cut in the first place as a result of the tectonic-volcanic uplift from beneath, which also explains how the uppermost layers got broken up and washed away, their also being the major agent of the scouring of the canyon as they went, and it's also another way of explaining the erosion between the Tapeats and the Precambrian rocks that he explains in terms of a catastrophic debris flow. His explanation has a different cause and different timing but is the same kind of violent physical action I pictured.

He observes that the bend in the whole stack of strata over the East Kaibab Monocline is evidence for their simultaneous deposition, which I've also observed in north-south diagrams of the conformation of the whole stack over the uplift. The conformation of the strata as a whole stack to any such curve is evidence for rapid deposition. So I'm showcasing this as both a great well documented thoroughly scientific presentation of the evidence for the Flood that is so nicely exhibited in the Grand Canyon, and a confirmation of some of my own ponderings on the subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aNlb3lFhFM

Evolution theory as God's judgment? Hutton and Darwin as God's judgment?

Why isn't evolution yielding at all to the arguments against it?  I got to pondering this recently.  On the one hand I think Why should it?  The arguments against it aren't really very good when you look at the whole range of creationism out there, especially when you look at the creationist arguments at a site like EvC.  But on the other hand I do think there are some very good arguments that should be compelling, should cause some stopping and thinking even among people committed to evolution, instead of the predictable wall of objections. 

After some thoughts about how the nation is under judgment, that I wrote about last night, the idea that evolutionary science itself is judgment started forming more clearly in my mind.  Our current political situation is God's judgment, and it's judgment first of all on the Church for our compromises, as Chris Pinto was talking about the last couple of days, compromises with the apostate churches, the false churches that teach a distorted gospel, with pseudoChristianity such as Mormonism, with Catholicism, compromises that come down to a failure to separate ourselves from the world and from false teachers, a failure, in a word, to maintain holiness.  So if evolution is judgment it too is judgment on the Church.

And some things I've written here before pretty much say that.  The creationist explanations in geology and biology in Hutton's day and later in Darwin's day were not biblical, explanations for the fossils and the Flood for instance, and later particularly the idea that God went on creating new species long after the Bible says He rested from His creative work.  Such denials of His word would in themselves be enough explanation for why He allowed Hutton to come along with an idea about an old earth that completely eclipsed the Biblical timetable of a young earth, and why He later allowed Darwin to come along and answer the unbiblical notions about species formation with his denial of the Biblical account of God's creation of the separate Kinds, and his supposed evidence that man was made in the image of animals rather than God.

I think we should think of these developments as God's judgment on the Church along with the subsequent developments that have only entrenched these ideas all the more firmly in the scientific and public mind.  And if that's what they are then creationists need not so much to keep producing arguments that challenge the scientific establishment but repentance from our abandonment of God's truth.

The creationism I've seen at EvC is a serious breach of God's revelation.  How many of the people there who argue on the side of creationism are really Christians is a question to begin with but most of them present themselves as Christian even if they believe some awfully distorted ideas of what the Bible teaches.  Their arguments deny the timing that's given in the Bible and some of them get into some really bizarre ideas that have to relation whatever to anything biblical OR scientific.  But I don't keep up with them for that reason, so I can't really characterize them except to say that a departure from a biblical perspective is the norm among creationsts at EvC, and there's where repentance should start.

It should be expressed in identification with the corporate church as a whole, all of us praying as one body no matter who in particular is guilty of what aspect of the problem, but as if we all are guilty as the corporate church.   I think we all need to stop arguing for anything at all, which certainly applies to me, stop saying anything at all, just stop and seek the Lord and pray for His will to be revealed and we all be brought into conformity with it.

Amen.

BBC Video Part 2: a whale on the ark, a chimp, skulls, dinosaurs, bacteria etc.

I'm just going to tick off the rest of my objections to the ridiculous excuse for a "scientific" presentation in that video, Creationism Road Trip,.

They got evolution writer Jerry Coyne to answer the claims about Noah's ark as being able to contain all the animals.  The usual stupid misrepresentation is the assumption that all the creatures called "species" TODAY would have been on the ark, which is ridiculous.   All the supposedly new "species" since the ark are really just what used to be called varieties, or breeds.  Yes, even when they can no longer breed with the parent population.  So there have been 4300 years during which the various creatures on the ark have split into many new populations of varieties or breeds, hundreds in some cases from the few represented there.

So I have no idea where Coyne got his claim that it would have had to accommodate "16,000 animals"  but since that number has to be made up of breeds that developed since the ark, in the dozens to hundreds to possibly thousands in some cases, and probably even including sea creatures (which were not taken on the ark), or even plants, since I've seen them listed as species in other debates on this subject, the number is bogus.

But the stupidest thing said in this connection was his "challenge" about how a WHALE could have been accommodated on the ark.  

Creatures that live in the water were NOT accommodated on the ark.   Why would they need to be?  And why didn't any of the creationists know that?  They all looked a bit stunned it seemed to me.  Maybe the idea was just too absurd.  Or maybe they were just intimidated, as in "This guy is a hotshot scientist, so maybe he knows something we don't."

A main problem with this film is that they got "creationists" who don't know much, apparently either about science or about the Bible.  So they should have confronted them with science students rather than professors if they had any interest in being fair and balanced. 

So no whales on the ark.  Duh.

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Then there was the idiotic presentation of a chimp as human ancestor and the focus was on how everybody FEELS about being related to a chimp.  When I believed in evolution I had no objections whatever.  Why would I?  I believed it so I accepted it, hardly gave it a thought.  Who CARES how anybody FEELS about such a thing?  This is supposed to be SCIENCE, so the questions should be about claims that we ARE related.

We aren't.
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Bacteria at some sort of fountain in the desert was supposed to prove WHAT?    Scratch that one, it made no sense whatever.

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The interpretation of evolution through those supposedly pre-human to human skulls, that were found in the fossil order from least to most human from the bottom up, depends on the assumption that the fossil order represents TIME.    But if it only represents the fossil contents of layering as a result of the Flood then the position of all the skulls is accidental.

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I was recently reminded that according to the Bible people ate no meat until after the Flood.  While I've never seen any problem with humans occupying the planet with dinosaurs since we share it with other predators, but still it would be easier to live together if they also ate no meat.  They were originally created to eat plants, and it's not clear when they became meat-eaters, at the Fall which was the first drastic change in the world, or after the Flood when people also started to eat meat. 

===================

If such an excursion is to make any sense at all it should involve people who are both STRONG Bible believers and know a fair amount about science as well.  Getting together a bunch of average Christians who have been taught a smattering of creationism, not a lot of Bible, no science, and have no experience with the debate about these things, proves nothing at all.

JoJo is no Bible believer, she's for gay rights and easily caved in the face of the so-called "evidence" because she really doesn't know the Bible.  She has a sentimental form of "Christianity" which isn't Christianity at all. 

Bronwyn seems to have a strong faith but not necessarily a lot of Bible knowledge.  NOBODY carried a Bible that I noticed, I thought that telling.  She has the right attitude, however, that when you know the Bible is God's word you know the evidence against it is false.

Phil seems like a strong believer but he didn't seem to know any science or even have much of a grip on the usual creationist arguments.  He's right that it's not fair to pit an evolutionist geologist against a bunch of nonscientists.

I couldn't make much out of Sam.  Except the sense that he like Bronwyn was depending more on a determined grip on a blind faith than on a real grasp of either Christian principles or science.

Ahmed made some good points.  He was right to say the skull argument was nothing but conjecture even in the face of the claim that it's "evidence."  Because the assumption that the fossil record reflects millions of years of time is conjecture.

BBC video attempt to undermine creationist faith, Part 1, HOW THE FLOOD CREATED THE GRAND CANYON

There's a thread up at EvC to discuss a BBC-produced video, Creationism Road Trip, about an attempt to present five British creationists with scientific evidence for evolution, by taking them on a bus trip to various locations in western America where scientists present their case for evolution and against creationism.  The creationists are five "fundamentalists," made up of four Christians and one Muslim. 

The poster found the video to be "both entertaining and enlightening."  I watched it and found it to be a maddeningly misbegotten project. 

The first leg of the trip is from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon and is titled
Theory One:  The Grand Canyon Was Made By Noah's Flood, in which creationist Phil is to be confronted about his belief that the canyon was formed by the Flood of Noah something over 4000 years ago.  Phil has made it clear that he believes the Bible is THE authority on all things.

At the rim of the Canyon the five creationists and the producer are met by geologist Don Prothero who starts out by rather defensively informing them that he's a scientist and that scientists "deal only with natural forces and things that we can observe and test in nature."

He goes on to say

You can see the layers of the Earth piled up one on top of another in a place like this better than just about anywhere else.  Immense amounts of time are required to deposit that, cement it into hard sandstone and shale, tilt it, erode it.  Your miniman estimate is hundreds of millions of years.

What's wrong with this is something I've covered many times and I'm still astonished that people think it makes sense that thousands of square miles of flat horizontal sediments could have been built up over long periods of time and not show any sign of disturbance of their relatively neat straight horizontality.  Oh except the teeny bit of "erosion" between the layers that almost requires a microscope to see it, which is really laughable when you think about what REAL erosion does to land in even only one year.  One rain will make gullies in a flat field.  There are no gullies in these slabs of rock.  They'd be visible to the naked eye.  The sediment above would have settled into them.  No, the joints between the layers are straight and flat.  So they say well they were deposited under water.  Well, yes they were, all at once, one on top of another over at the maximum a few months during the Flood.  Not over hundreds of millions of years.

Phil the creationist then remarks that the scientist holds the assumptions of naturalism and uniformitarianism and Prothero answers that all scientists share those assumptions and that creationists aren't scientists, so Phil doesn't pursue that line further.

The producer then says that as he understands it, creationists believe the Canyon was created by the Flood of Noah.  They all agree and Maxwell paraphrases Prothero's answer:

If the Biblical Flood really did create the Grand Canyon, it would need to have carved out curved valleys, like here at Horseshoe Bend.  Don thinks this is impossible because flood water cuts along straight lines.

Horseshoe Bend is a typical "meander," a sharp curve in a river that I read about some time ago, that is created by differing pressures in the running water due to small obtacles and whatever debris it is carrying, such that it cuts into the shore on one side and deposits the debris on the other, and this action forms the curve.  There is nothing about draining flood water that would prevent this typical formation from occurring. 

But Prothero thinks he's being very scientific when he says:

If your flood waters drain off they're going to drain off and form a sharp straight canyon, that's simple physics.

Doesn't it depend on the surface it's draining off, how much water there is and how much time it takes to drain off, what sort of obstacles the water meets along its path and what sorts of debris it picks up as it moves? 

He gets Phil to pour a bucket of water on a downsloping piece of ground and claims that is sufficient to demonstrate what a worldwide flood would do in the draining phase. 

This is a scientist?

Here's a satellite picture from Wikipedia showing that water running on a FLAT SURFACE doesn't just flow flat and straight:

For any kind of test, what is needed at the very least, and this would hardly be sufficient to represent the draining of a worldwide flood, is a continuous stream of water over a fairly long period of time, LOTS of water, not a mere bucket full that is rapidly exhausted.  If you don't have a way to produce a sheet of water, at least get a hose and let it run down that little slope for a while.  Even a sheet of water would encounter some obstacles that affect how it flows, and as soon as it carves any kind of shape in the surface the water will begin to follow that shape and that will change its speed and pressure at various places that will further shape the surface.  But use a hose at least and see if possibly it creates some meanders, which, according to what I've read on this subject, it could well do even on a flat surface.  Here's a You Tube video about how Meandering Rivers are created.   

Meanders such as created Horseshoe Bend are VERY likely to have occurred as the Flood waters drained. 

But I think what's needed to explain how the draining Flood waters carved the Grand Canyon is my very own observation that first a crack -- or more probably many cracks -- was opened in the upper strata, caused by the volcanic eruption beneath that area after the strata were laid down to at least a mile higher than the current rim of the canyon.  The volcanic eruption could have been brought about by tectonic movement but in any case the land, the stack of sediments recently laid down in the Flood, was upraised by the force.  The upraised land is shown on all diagrams of the area I've seen.  There is a sort of mound over the area and the canyon slices right into it.  Also shown on diagrams is the displacement of the lowest layers as the volcanic force pushes them up under the whole stack, and the intrusion of magma into them, showing the effect of the underground volcano. 

As I put it together, the upraising of the land would have cracked the uppermost layers and the still-standing Flood waters would then have poured into the cracks, widening them and washing down huge quantities of the sediments from the upper layers that had been in place until the volcanic disruption.  The first rush of that enormous quantity of water must have carved out a very wide area, and as the water slowed to a mere cataract flowing in from all sides of the gap it would have begun shaping the formations such as Horseshoe Bend, moving rapidly around the various islands of still-standing strata and carving them to their present shape and so on.

Thread at EvC about DNA

Maybe nobody will see this, but want to report that I agreed to join in a thread at EvC that I proposed to Admin there, of questions I have about DNA, but I am unable to log in, and he hasn't yet responded to my email about that.  I assume he'll get to it eventually. 

So I'm not ignoring the thread, and I appreciate the response it's had so far.  I don't want to be there for debate, just to try to clear up some questions about DNA and Admin agreed to that.

Some ponderings on Darwin's views of domestic variation, showing again how the processes of evolution are naturally limited

In a copy of Darwin's Origin of Species that I have from 1979, a heavily abridged "coffee table" type book featuring lengthy commentary by Richard E. Leakey and lots of glossy pictures of animals, Leakey gives the following introduction to Chapter 3, Variation Under Domestication:

Darwin's idea that domestication can, in itself, cause greater variability to arise between individuals is now known to be wrong.  The greater varaibility which is seen in domesticated plants and animals is the result of their not having been subjected to natural selection which, if the environment is stable and the species well adapted, tends to eliminate those which depart from the norm.  Gene recombination and mutation are what give rise to variation, and these will occur at the same rate in the wild as under domestication.  But in the wild, variations will usually be far more ruthlessly weeded. out.

Thus goes the evolutionary explanation of 1979 and it sounds pretty familiar so I have no reason to think things have changed much if at all since then.  Of course he's right that Darwin was wrong to think domestication in itself causes greater variability than occurs in the wild, but his own explanation is just as wrong.  It's basically a recitation of The Creed, which is what an awful lot of evolutionist writing really comes down to.  "Not having been subjected to natural selection" is nothing but The Creed.  So is the inclusion of "mutation" in the explanation of what gives rise to variation.  Neither such drastic weeding by natural selection in the wild state, nor variation as the cause of such weeding, nor mutation as the basis for normal variation, is supported by actual evidence.  It's all speculative assertion.  The Creed.  Gene recombination, yes, that IS what gives rise to variation in both nature and under domestication, and yes, this WILL "occur at the same rate in the wild as under domesticatiom."  That much IS known for sure.

This topic particularly interests me because I've had my own explanation of how variation occurs for some time now, and it differs from both Darwin and Leakey's view, although it is quite compatible with some observations by evolutionists -- it just depends on which source you are reading. 

Darwin's discussions of variation, both in domestic plants and animals and in nature, are interesting because he had no knowledge whatever of genetics. Although Mendel was his contemporary, Mendel's studies of inheritance were not known until after both were dead.

So here's Darwin from this chapter:

When we compare the individuals of the same variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature.  And if we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated during all ages under the most different climates, we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from those to which the parent-species had been exposed under nature.  It seems clear that organic beings must be exposed during several generations to new conditions to cause any great amount of variation;  and that, when the organization has once begun to vary, it continues varying for many generations.  Our oldest cultivated plants, such as wheat, still yield new varieties;  our oldest domesticated animals are still capable of modification.

I'm sure breeders today could answer Darwin on this point if they were not brainwashed with the evolutionist notion of mutation as a major agent of change.  Genetic recombination explains it all quite nicely and all mutation does is interfere.  It may occasionally produce an unanticipated but benign anomaly (I'm not really convinced this happens though), and that could be exploited if one wanted it to be passed on, but it is hardly THE method that gives rise to variation, or even A method.

What brings about variation or change in the phenotype, change, that is, in the appearance or function of the creature itself, is REPRODUCTIVE ISOLATION.  Period.  Reproductive isolation simply means that a specific number of individuals of any species are separated from others of the same species and gathered together in an exclusive population of themselves alone, so that they only breed among themselves, and so that therefore their offspring carry only the genes and traits of the members of their relatively smallish circle, which over generations of such inbreeding can intermix all the genes/traits of all the original individuals so as to produce a very specific and unique appearance or set of traits that becomes characteristic of that overall population.  This is recognized in the field called Population Genetics but it gets confused with too many irrelevancies it seems to me and therefore isn't given the emphasis it deserves.  Natural Selection, which probably occurs to some extent but nowhere near the extent attributed to it, is just a form of reproductive isolation. 

Reproductive isolation is what happens under domestication, and it's THE reason for the development of a characteristic new breed.  Originally I'd suppose a portion of a wild species was brought under domestication, say of herd animals, cattle, sheep, goats or whatnot, some smallish number I would assume, or at least small compared to the original population, and the new domesticated population would then inbreed for generations until a new phenotype or particular set of traits would come to characterize the domesticated herd. 

This would occur over and over in different places as different portions of the wild herd were brought under domestication by different owners, or split between them so that they got isolated and inbred over time.  Their different gene pools eventually develop into separate herds each with its own characteristics that differentiate it from both the original wild herd and those of the other domesticated herds taken from that same wild herd.  This occurs over some number of generations of inbreeding.

THIS is why there are so many varieties of domesticated animals even when special breeding programs are not pursued, not Darwin's notion that somehow domestication itself produces variation, but simple reproductive isolation of a part of the original wild gene pool, which naturally occurs as part of that gene pool gets selected out for the purpose of domestication.  It's interesting to look up various animals on Wikipedia to get a list of the domestic breeds of each species.  Cows, pigs, sheep, goats -- there is an enormous number of varieties of each species.  Variation of course also happens in the wild but not nearly to such a dramatic extent as there is so much more intermingling of the individuals in larger populations, known as "gene flow" which is what DOESN'T happen with reproductive isolation.  Nothing to do with Leakey's affirmation of the Creed of Natural Selection as "weeding out" variations that arise.  The variation in nature is of course also due to reproductive isolation, which probably most often occurs through migration that leads to geographic separation of portions of a population from others, such as for instance the successive populations of ring species demonstrates.

It's nothing but reproductive isolation of the newer part from the older main population that brings about the many interesting differences between the different populations.  The smaller the new population and the more complete the isolation the more dramatic will be the differences. 

What's going on here GENETICALLY is that reproductive isolation of a small portion of the original gene pool brings about a CHANGE IN THE GENE FREQUENCIES in the new smaller gene pool (sometimes also the "parent" gene pool as well if it's not extremely large) so that new traits or phenotypes emerge in the new population as it inbreeds over some number of generations, mixing the new frequencies.  That's another well known principle of evolution. 

SIDE POINT ON INDIVIDUAL VARIATION:
{Clarification:  Rereading this post (Wed Nov 7) I realize Darwin was thinking of variation among the INDIVIDUALS and I haven't said enough about that as I've been thinking of the amazing variety of BREEDS that occur under domestication and focusing on explaining that.  But I think an explanation of greater individual variation is implicit in the discussion in that the first few (how many?) generations of genetic recombination within the new herd or population would naturally turn up new traits among the various individuals because of the new gene frequencies in the population as a whole, and this individual variation should increase until at some point the gene pool starts to get more blended through continued inbreeding, and starts tending toward the establishment in all the individuals of the traits that eventually come to characterize the breed as a whole.   It's this final blending I've been thinking of as taking some number of generations to get established, but it's in those early generations that new variations would keep appearing as the new gene frequencies get played out.  I mean there are going to be fewer of some alleles and many more of others for many different genes so there will be more pairings that don't fit the blended trait picture of the original wild population, or whatever population was the parent.  I'm sure the word "blended" isn't the best but I don't think it's far off the mark of what must really happen.}

Founder Effect or Bottleneck are the most drastic examples of what happens genetically with the inbreeding of a new gene pool of new gene frequencies, although it happens in any isolated population that starts with smaller numbers than the original, it is just much more dramatic an effect when the population starts from extremely few individuals and has a drastically reduced gene pool that gets inbred.  Founder Effect or Bottleneck is when there are only a very few individuals that are the basis for the new population.  This has often happened in domestic breeding when a particular trait is sought and the elimination of types without that trait are carefully eliminated in favor of breeding only those that have the trait.  This has proved to have genetic drawbacks over time as it multiplies the opportunities for genetic diseases to occur in a drastically inbred population, but the principle is clear enough:  new phenotypes emerge to characterize a new population when competing phenotypes are kept from breeding with the desired breed or stock.

It seems to me that Darwin's observation that this occurs over generations is true and important.  It takes the inbreeding within the new gene pool to bring about a new reliable breed or variation.  How many generations this takes I don't know, but breeders may. 

I was reading up on some of the breeds of cattle and the Hereford is an interesting read.  Apparently it took a while to develop its characteristic appearance, at least a hundred years, its white face for instance.

Until the 18th century, the cattle of the Herefordshire area were similar to other cattle of southern England, being wholly red with a white switch, similar to the modern North Devon and Sussex breeds. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, other cattle (mainly Shorthorns) were used to create a new type of draught and beef cattle which at first varied in colour, different herds ranging from yellow to grey and light brown, and with varying amounts of white. However, by the end of the 18th century the white face characteristic of the modern breed was well established, and the modern colour was stabilised during the 19th century.^[7]

Of course usually what breeders want is a breed that "breeds true," so that all the individuals born among the herd have the same characteristics.  Apparently this takes some number of generations to get established.

From other things I've read on this subject, for a breed to "breed true" means that there is a large proportion of genetic homozygosity in the gene pool for the breed's most desired characteristics.  This can happen in any population but again the most dramatic example of how it happens is the drastic bottleneck or founder effect.  A huge number of homozygous genes is characteristic of an inbred population that began with a very few individuals but again, the same condition can develop over successive population splits into new reproductively isolated populations.  It just gets there faster in the drastic cases, such as what happened with the cheetah and the elephant seal.  As long as they don't succumb to genetic disease they can be quite healthy and produce large populations but they lack the ability to vary further. 
Darwin's final line that many of the oldest domesticated varieties "are still capable ogf modification" suggests that they retain sufficient genetic variability, which really amounts to sufficient heterozygosity, to develop new varieties from further splits into new reproductively isolated populations and it suggests also that there is such a thing as reaching a point where further modification or variation ceases to be possible -- which occurs when there are a great many fixed loci or homozygous genes such as are possessed by the cheetah and the elephant seal.

A point IS reached eventually along any such line of continued "selection" of a relatively small portion of a population from a larger, and it must be reached if the process continues, where variation simply cannot occur further because of the great percentage of homozygosity, or lack of genetic variability, in the breed.

This is how EVOLUTION DEFEATS EVOLUTION, or in other words, how evolution comes to a screeching halt simply through the very processes that bring about the variations, or through evolution itself.  Variation can occur within a species, but that's all that is allowed by the laws of genetics built into the organism.  Simply due to the nature of genetics, Evolution Writ Large, or "macroevolution," or evolution/variation beyond the boundaries of the genome of a particular species CANNOT occur. 

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Later:  Still rereading this post to try to clarify and correct and felt like adding this You Tube video of a wonderful breed of horses I only recently learned about, The KFPS Royal Friesian Horse, a horse with such an amazing natural elegance it's like something not born of this planet, truly a Royal breed, a heavenly breed even.