Hoodoos

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.

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. 

erosion

To demonstrate what happens to land on the surface of the earth to counter the argument that the strata in the Grand Canyon demonstrate surface erosion. They don't. This kind of erosion would be visible across the canyon, not something you'd have to get up close to see, which is the case with the Old Earth assumption.

Grand Canyon East-West Mounded Uplift

 

Sorry about klutzy drawing.  Hope it's clear.  The idea is that the water that carved the Grand Canyon had to cut into the uplift from east to west, but since the uplift slopes north to south it's hard to see how a small river would have done anything but run off the south slope, OR cut something, but north to south rather than east to west.

 

Old Earthers argue that the uplift occurred very very slowly over millions of years, as if that would somehow guide the water in the right direction.  Looks to me like my own theory that the uplift cracked the upper strata which allowed still-standing Flood waters to rush into the cracks and scour out the canyon in a lot less than millions of years is a far more likely story.

Would I really want to win this argument?

I think I just had a small epiphany in relation to the Evolution debate.  Someone at the EvC forum said what is so often said there:

It is not necessary to abandon your faith in order to accept the facts regarding the history of the earth.

People who think you don't have to abandon your faith to embrace the Old Earth and the ToE have no idea what Christian faith is all about. It's about a very specific revelation, given by God Himself, that contradicts those "sciences" that purport to reconstruct the history of the earth. (The "sciences" of the past, that is, since the past can't be tested and all you have is speculations. There's no problem with the sciences that study anything that can be replicated in the present). 

God gives us enough of the history of the earth in His revelation to contradict both the Old Earth and evolution, and those "sciences" reject it. They don't have to. True science should affirm the Biblical revelation, that's why there is such a thing as Creation Science. You definitely have to choose. God or fallible "science." That's your choice as a Biblical Christian. You don't have to argue the issues of course, you can ignore it all, but some of us find them interesting enough to try.

These thoughts led me to something I tend to forget when I'm arguing these things, which is that Christianity really is about a radical choice one makes between Christ and the world. I keep wanting to be able to persuade evolutionists to the Biblical perspective, but what happens instead is that I am met with a solid wall of rejection. Meaning God is forcing me all the time to that radical choice and isn't going to let up.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Come to Christ and die." As Jesus said in many ways, "You must take up your cross (that is, embrace your own death) to follow Me," you must "die to yourself," you must "hate" everyone who would draw you away from Him.
 
Well, that seems to be played out even on the "scientific" front.  God isn't going to let evolution be defeated because it's a very effective "cross" for us to die on. This debate is a daily "ego death" for a Christian.  Not that we submit nicely to it, we usually fight it, but this is what I mean about how I forget what the Christian life is all about. It's not about winning the argument, it's about dying to self. I hate it, I fight it, but every time I get involved in the debate I'm staring it in the face and it's staring back at me: Die, die die. Maybe I'm finally getting it. There is no way to win this argument, and I would lose something precious if I did.
 
So I should be thankful for the rejection, for the ridicule, for the misrepresentation, for the jeers, for the ego crunching, for being called a liar. The ego rises up all the time and sometimes I can squelch it but sometimes I retaliate, ridicule back and so on. I shouldn't, I should quietly die instead. I kind of sort of know this but apparently I have a tough pride that is hard to break. Well, the evolution debate provides a lot of instruments for breaking it, I guess that's what it's really all about at least on a personal level.

But wouldn't winning the argument lead some people to Christ? That IS the idea behind it all, at least it's the rationalization. Evolution is basically hatred of God too, and the culture is deteriorating daily under the effects of all the ways God is hated these days. Don't we want to be able to be salt and light that keeps such corruption from getting worse?

I think the way to understand this is that we can't defeat any of this with "carnal" weapons, weapons of the flesh ("The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God..."), and the effectiveness of spiritual weapons does require that we personally die.

Come to Christ and DIE. That's how we ALL come to Christ. God engineered Bonhoeffer's many deaths through the Nazis, but He has many ways of doing it for each of us. But our death is imperfect at first and sometimes we resist it to the end and can't really be used as a result.

It's very sad when a Christian capitulates to evolution or any worldly doctrine. It's a refusal to die, it's a refusal to accept the radical division between Christ and the World. You win the world and lose your soul. "He who saves his life will lose it but he who loses his life for My sake will save it for eternity." You get the approval of the worldly wise but you've lost the approval of God.

So at least by staying in there and fighting one is not giving in to the world, but fighting is also a way of refusing to die to self. This Christian life really is a radical challenge to the world and the flesh.

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As a result of that contemplation I feel a sort of peace.  I don't know if I'll have a reason to post more here but my favorite two very simple arguments remain the same: 

1)  All you have to do is look at the strata and know they had to be formed in the Flood and couldn't have been formed over millions of years.  Just look.  Yes, I know, there is looking and there is looking. 

2)  And the second is that the genetic ability to change gets reduced with every change in observable differences in creatures, which means that eventually there is no more ability to change:  End of Evolution. 

The genetic argument is usually argued as a depletion in "information" by creationists but I don't think that's as clear as this way of putting it. 

The strata argument is argued in many different ways by many creationists;  I particularly like that video lecture on the Grand Canyon done by the British creationist Paul Garner.

More on the Evolution Requires Reduction in Genetic Diversity thread at EvC

Just a few more thoughts on the criticisms against me that showed up on my thread at EvC toward the end.

Speciation

I don't know why someone thought my whole point was how Speciation comes about, and I'm not up to going back to track down how that idea might have occurred, but I would have thought I'd made it clear that Speciation is just the possible end point of the processes I'm talking about, but that it's the processes themselves and the TREND to reduced genetic diversity that is my focus.  Speciation can be treated too much as a special case and get off on a tangent so I don't emphasize it.  The point I'm trying to make is that wherever a new phenotype is being developed in a new population you are going to get reduced genetic diversity. 

It also occurs to me that some may be confused about the word "phenotype" as I'm using it although again I've tried to be clear about that too.  I'm not talking about single traits in individuals when I use the term, although that is a correct use of the word, but about the development of a COLLECTIVE phenotype that comes to characterize a new population over time due to changed gene frequencies from the mother population, brought about by reproductive isolation from that mother population. 

I do believe Speciation is usually just the extreme end point of these processes but that could take me off my focus so I tend to avoid it, thinking it could be discussed later IF the main part of my argument ever gets fully communicated.

I know I explained the processes a number of times on that thread but when you have five or six people all misunderstanding you in their own peculiar ways, two or three of them so far out there's no way to guess where they're getting their odd notions, while at the same time acting as if they are nevertheless some kind of authority on your argument, it's easy to get scattered and fail to follow up on an important point. 

So I don't know if this makes anything clear or not about where Speciation stands in my argument, but there it is for now.

The American Curl

The other topic I want to try to clarify is the example of the American Curl cat which was apparently brought up as some kind of rebuttal to my argument.  This is a cat that has distinctive curled ears that showed up in an individual some thirty years ago and has been bred to preserve the trait ever since.   It hasn't been subjected to the selection processes that would bring about the reduced genetic diversity I'm talking about although supposedly it has been getting developed as a breed over the last thirty years.

But it hasn't.  It isn't developing as a breed.  All that has happened is that they've taken pains to preserve the trait itself, the curled ear that showed up in a single individual cat many years ago.  By continually breeding cats with that trait with other types of cats they preserve the trait while increasing the genetic diversity.  They need to do this because it would threaten the survival of the cats to allow the genetic diversity to be low, and with one individual as the founder of the breed it would be very low indeed. 

So this is NOT what I'm describing at all.  They are NOT developing a new collective phenotype in this way which is what I have been talking about.  They are merely trying to build up the genetic diversity by blending in a variety of cat breeds.  This way you do not get a new breed although you do preserve the trait.  You get a great number of cats with the curled ears, and a lot of different kinds of cats with that trait, different colors and markings, long hairs, short hairs and so on.  But you are not getting a distinctive American Curl Breed.  Yet.

That WOULD take selection and isolation which is what I'm talking about.  And from what was said I gather that is beginning now.  Perhaps they will get a number of distinctive breeds with the curled ear trait, but they won't get a true breed until it's been inbred over a number of generations, and producing that distinctive breed is what reduces the genetic diversity.

Just another way my argument was NOT getting understood.  Not that I would expect it to, but it's frustrating that people THINK they are getting it when they so clearly are not.

Oh one more point.  It was emphasized over and over that this trait must be a mutation because it is autosomal dominant but it wasn't explained why this has to be the case because the person making the point isn't interested in truth but only in trying to trip me up.  So eventually I'll have to study up on this and see if it's really true that it must be a mutation for this reason.

Later Update: 

Wow, the way they discuss me over there why on earth would I want to come back and subject myself to that level of abuse?  I put up with it far too long as it was.

Now one more thing.  I'm supposed to have misused the Speciation chart because I used it to prove my point when according to them it obviously proves me wrong.  Really can anybody read over there?  What did I use that chart for?  To illustrate the formation of species through the isolation of a small population from a larger population which is my main example,.  The claim about mutations is IRRELEVANT to that point.  Sheesh.

O O O That Evo-ha-looshinist Mizrabul-buh-loozyist Cantwinferlosinist Ra-ag

{3/5 update at bottom}
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Just another ridiculous experience at the evolution forum. Yes I finally left, after the usual series of frustrations. Wasn't intending to post on the "evolution defeats evolution" argument again but it came up on another thread and needed to be moved so that's how that happened. No point in trying to recapitulate the usual nonsense but a couple of things should be mentioned.

Of course I may misuse terms from time to time and contribute to the confusion but I thought I got it said fairly well for the most part.  It's a simple argument so everybody thinks they understand it but as a matter of fact this was the first time anybody ever grasped the basics at all, and only a few at that. It's simple but it's not easy to keep it in mind.

Two things came up toward the end: The first was somebody claiming that the processes of selection I'm describing don't bring about speciation, and I didn't have the presence of mind to refer back to this pretty much classic representation of Speciation from Wikipedia that says otherwise:



What are all these supposed modes of Speciation but illustrations of how small populations form from larger populations, which is what my argument is all about:  genetic diversity is always reduced when this happens, when new gene frequencies are created for the new population by the reduction in number of members. 

And the other ridiculous nonsense that came up toward the end of that thread was the claim that if reduced genetic diversity could bring about all the breeds of dogs then of course it must also be capable of bringing about the entire animal kingdom.  I must admit I hadn't anticipated that anyone could say something so utterly ridiculous, but since evolution is completely an exercise in fantasy anything's possible.

What is it they fail to understand about RUNNING OUT OF GENETIC DIVERSITY?  The fact that you have enough genetic diversity to produce all the dog breeds and all the varieties of other animal kinds in the wild is amazing enough.  There is also the fact that to get all those dog breeds involves the reduction of the alleles FOR THOSE DOG BREEDS.  There are no other alleles in the dog genome BUT alleles for dog characteristics.  To get a dog breed the alleles for other breeds are left behind as only the desired traits for the breed are allowed to be reproduced.  AND it is in breeding programs that in fact the effects of reduced diversity are most often seen, which all by itself demonstrates that the basic genetic diversity for the entire Species runs out while still producing varieties of the same Species.  But that's when they appeal to the god Mutation for aid.

Mutation doesn't improve the situation because even if it did add genetic diversity it too only gets cut down by the selection processes, so you'd get a short reprieve, a new trait, and the reduced diversity in producing a new variety if that trait is selected.  And you'd need a lot more than mere mutation, which only changes the existing alleles anyway, alleles for traits of that particular Species, dog noses in gthe dog Species, rather than anteater noses or elephant noses.  Evolution needs to change the structure of the genome itself to get from one Kind or Species to another. 

Oh well.  It's obvious but they're blind.

I may not be presenting this very well this morning I'm afraid, just wanted to sketch it out.  There's no hope of proving anything to evolutionists BECAUSE evolution is pure fantasy and they can just make it mean whatever they want it to mean.  There's no winning an argument based on pure mental gymnastics.

Bright Spot Nevertheless:

That was frustrating.  But I did enjoy getting to hear an interview with Tom Vail on the radio recently.  He is retiring from hosting creationist river-rafting tours through the Grand Canyon.  It was just nice to hear a sensible point made:  the fact that the layers in the Grand Canyon walls are all "tabletop" flat PROVES that they were never at the surface of the earth as the establishment view insists.  It's a standard creationist argument and I argued it at the evolution forum too, but Old Earth believers are blind, they cannot see it, simple fact though it is. 

Evolution has been proven wrong in so many ways if they weren't blind they'd have been convinced by now.  No point in continuing such a futile effort. 

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Later: Just got a new comment on an earlier post here by a college student who isn't even ashamed to give his name, so comfortable is he with calling a woman who is old enough to be his grandmother an "idiot" in print. I suspect he must be a poster at EvC forums where such rudeness is not only common but even tolerated by administration depending on who is doing it and who and what it is directed against.

He is objecting to my remark that you have only to look at the layers in the Grand Canyon with the naked eye to see that the standard geological explanation is ridiculous, which is what Tom Vail is also saying as mentioned above.  [Correction:  I'd said that the evidence for the Flood is all over the earth and obvious to the naked eye.  But the tabletop flatness of the Grand Canyon layers and the knife-edge close connections between the layers is part of that evidence].  The amazing foolishness of the claims of Geology that such tabletop flatness was once a landscape should be clear to anyone, but false Belief IS powerful.  The student doesn't feel any need to ask what I mean by what can be seen with the naked eye, and he certainly doesn't feel any need to be at all polite to a total stranger. 

If anybody needs evidence that this world is coming apart at the seams morally this sort of thing ought to be sufficient.

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UPDATE 3/5

Got to remind myself never to give in to curiosity enough to go back to EvC and see what idiocies they've been engaged in since I left, but stupidly I did.

The stupid extension of the idea of reduced genetic diversity on out to include all species is now being attributed to ME as part of MY theory though I'd have thought I've been pretty clear that BREEDERS run out of genetic diversity and that being the case there's NO MORE evolution that could possibly occur at all.  That's the first offense.  If any proof is needed that they can't think honestly and reasonably through a simple argument that ought to do it.

The second is the claim that I don't "know" that the various forms of Speciation depicted in the chart I took from Wikipedia "require mutation."  Do they really need me to point out that I'm giving a DIFFERENT explanation for all these things, that I REJECT the usual explanation and that my argument includes the reason mutations can't make a difference to the end result?

And the usual overall craziness that of course expects ME to be there to learn something rather than any of them.  I'm the one who "misunderstands" the situation according to them, when the reverse is true.  That degree of granite-headed bias can't be penetrated.  But one does usually hope that SOMEONE there might be able to grasp the truth.  And maybe that does happen, but slowly.  It takes time.  Meanwhile sticking around for the stupidity and the abuse is not good for one's health.

Well, people who can't see the implications of the knife-edge table-top flatness of the layers in the Grand Canyon can't be expected to understand anything else either. 

I take back anything I've ever said about how scientists aren't really stupid. Or anybody who believes in Evolution with some knowledge of its claims  They really really are really really stupid, blind as bats about the theory, whatever else they may do right.

Answer to a comment about the intrinsic evils of the theory of evolution

Update Feb 9:  Comment in from "Bob" at the post on the K-T Boundary, which I just answered.  http://evofantasy.blogspot.com/2011/05/k-t-boundary-fairy-tale.html

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Hey Michael Jeude:
Thanks for all your comments on my various posts, you seem to be a serious thoughtful guy and you aren't insulting to us creationists as so many with your basic mindset are, so I really appreciate it and have been trying to give you some thoughtful answers in return.  If you didn't keep the URLs to the various posts you may not find them and I don't think I could find them myself at this point either, unfortunately, but they're out there somewhere.

I still have a few to get to, but I thought I'd bring this one up front, just because it gives me an opportunity to say something in what I hope is a clearer way than usual, so if you see it you'll know I answered at least this one, which you posted on my entry titled Evolution, Racism, Conscience-Free Murder etc.

Since I'm bringing it up front I'm going to give a new answer to it here, hopefully a better one. 

Here is M. Jeude's comment:

Christianity: Crusades, witch burnings, corrupted religious figures, and I'm sure a fair about of random killers. All who adopt the name and methods of your religion for evil purposes. It is the same for every religion or philosophical belief, the vast majority abide by social norms. Granted back in Medieval Europe witch burnings where considered acceptable, crusades against any "non-believe" and other "holy" wars are acceptable by the group carrying them out, and some how killers allows rationalize why they kill, even saying "It was gods will"

I find the argument to lack depth, how is atheist less moral than a christian? On an individual bases I've met "Christians" who acted less compassionate, open, and calm than myself. I've also met other Atheist who I wanted to knock the chip on their shoulder off and contemplated worst.

How I personally have focused on this topic is what virtues create a "good" society. A society where everyone feel they can be open, calm, free, respected, and that they are the only limitation to what they can achieve. I'm sure with more thoughts we could end up with a excellent description of a Utopia, but then the question is what virtues should a person have to be "good". Both have the flaw that its from perspective what "good" is, and that varies by cultures, regions, experiences, and belief/philosophy. As a question what do you think are the virtues of a "good" person?

How evolution, a frame work of natural process of biological change, is any more dehumanizing than the bleak, dark nature that humans are capable of I do not comprehend. Neither evolution nor atheism states anything about obliterate, ignore, punish, all who are not like you. Just like your Bible never says go forth and kill in my name.

Everyone is always eager to point out the evils others do, and fain the purity and innocence of those of like mind or other sociological factors. They only focus upon the light they wish to see in themselves that we forget about the fact we are capable of dark and terrible things as well.

You've raised many issues here that I didn't get to in my comment at the blog post, but the main thing I want to say is the same thing I said there:

I'm not talking about individuals here although it's often hard to keep the distinctions clearly in mind.  I agree with you that "the vast majority abide by social norms" and not a strict understanding of the implications of their religion or atheism or evolutionism and so on.  We're not talking about your average atheist or believer in evolution here who don't necessarily base their lives on these philosophies, but about the serious philosophers and world shapers who use them very very seriously indeed to justify conclusions that most people wouldn't even dream of.  

Two Philosophical Systems
The difference between the serious implications of Biblical Christianity and evolutionism is really enormous when you do attempt to follow their precepts strictly.  Biblical Christianity teaches that all human beings are descended from one human pair, all are made in the image of God, morality is built into us by God Himself, and death is not natural to God's creation, which gives human beings a very high status, a sort of noble status.  This is a very different thing from the implications you can draw from a theory that says we're the product of mindless chemical processes which somehow accidentally made us moral creatures and not reliably so at that, of no more intrinsic value than those processes etc etc and so on. 

This makes it easy to dismiss the unborn human being as just a piece of tissue you can throw away at will, and makes eugenics on the level of doing away with "undesirable" genes through euthanasia something to seriously and scientifically consider if you want to "improve" the human "stock," and so on. 

Also although Christians have certainly been guilty of racism you can see there is no justification for it if we're all descended from one pair of parents, while evolution with its heavy emphasis on stages of development from one form to another does invite racist thinking. 

You and others may not take evolution as far as to treat human beings as expendable chemical experiments, but it's certainly implicit in the theory and Hitler and Margaret Sanger among others DID take it to these logical conclusions.  Such implications are inherent in the theory itself.

Again this isn't about individuals, it's about a system of thought that most individuals who supposedly subscribe to it don't pursue to its logical conclusion.  I often have to try to clarify this distinction when I'm talking about Roman Catholicism, which is a topic I am pursuing lately, because there I'm talking about the Vatican itself and its historical actions and its written documents which most Catholics don't have a clue about, who just go on living according to the gospel as they understand it.

The Crusades you mention were a Catholic enterprise for instance.  I used to defend it as Christian but the more I learn about this the more I understand they were strictly a Roman effort to take the "Holy Land" for the Pope, something I want to do a post on soon, and Protestants down the centuries have condemned the Pope as Antichrist himself,.  Which may not mean anything to you, but at least it ought to get across that Romanism was rejected all through history by "Bible believers" or Protestants as not Christian at all.  Not something you'll hear about if your sources have been affected by the Romanist point of view. 

So my point isn't that "an atheist is less moral than a Christian."  Some atheists have a very strong conscience (a remnant of the image of God in all of us) while some Christians who have been saved by the grace of God may have such a history of sin they take a long time to overcome it, and we're all still vulnerable to falling into new sins if we don't daily renew our faith.  

This isn't about individuals at all but about systems of thought, philosophical systems.

So my point is that, while we're all sinners who may do terrible things, only one of these two philosophical systems can be used to JUSTIFY those terrible things.

A note to those who have recently written comments here

Sorry that I've taken so long to get to the comments on this blog.  Thanks to new formatting at Blogger I didn't see them.  I'm just now going through the collection and trying to answer them.