The ToE has been Falsified many times over but residents of Wonderland need not notice; and a note about forensics

I keep thinking I'm going to run out of interest in the evolution debate again soon or just run out of topics to keep me going, but EvC is a goldmine of such topics at the moment. Somehow I'd overlooked this thread inviting Potential Falsifications of the Theory of Evolution .

As I've been saying so frequently lately, all Evolution has is Hypotheses, it has no other credentials from the Scientific Method, it's nothing but a subjectively elaborated mental exercise in the end. THEREFORE it cannot be falsified. But by asking for falsification they give the illusion that it is science and that it's those who can't come up with an ironclad falsification who are at fault, not the theory.

Again, this is a competition of hypotheses, it's a matter of judgment calls not science, not any of the methods of science. Creationists have the better hypotheses and the better judgment calls but since it's all a matter of who believes which system this can forever go unnoticed. It's all a matter of who has the power and Old Earth and Evolution have the power.

The geologic timetable is laughable and without it the foundations of evolutionary theory are destroyed but they don't need to notice because there is no way to scientifically prove or disprove any of this. The Flood beautifully and elegantly accounts for all the phenomena that are so awkwardly and ridiculously interpreted by evolutionists as time periods, the disparate layers undisturbed until all were in place, for instance, but this need not be noticed because there is no way to scientifically prove or disprove it one way or the other, It remains observation and hypothesis. It SHOULD falsify evolution just because it's a better explanation, the observation is rational as evolution's is not, and the hypothesis makes sense while evolution's is a weird concoction, but since they are deluded that any of this has anything to do with the Scientific Method they've protected themselves from ever having to recognize it.

The fossil record is beautifully explained by the worldwide Flood, as there is no other way so many living things could have been buried so as to meet the conditions for fossilization, and the immense variety of fossilized life forms, many of which no longer exist, is completely in keeping with the Biblical record of the Flood, but again, since there is no way to scientifically prove this no matter how much more reasonable an explanation it is than the geo timetable /evolution explanation, they can go on blindly in their delusion. Again, this SHOULD falsify evolution just because it's a better explanation, but since they require creationists to meet impossible criteria that they themselves can't even meet, though they think they do, alas, they can sustain their fantasy by aggressive ridicule and flat-out assertion forever.

And then there is the genetic delusion as well, that mutations just keep on a-building the genetic code although the evidence in hand is clearly against this assumption -- and it is, as usual, nothing BUT an assumption, again at best a hypothesis, upheld by belief in it, not evidence. The evidence shows that in small populations genetic deterioration is the norm, but they still believe that in bigger populations mutation saves the day although there is NO evidence for this and simply studying the DNA in ring species would show their assumption to be wrong.

All these things falsify the Theory of Evolution but since the Theory of Evolution is constructed out of pure fantasy like the Emperor's New Clothes, they simply can't see the falsification because their fantasy is so beautiful and so real -- really, so NECESSARY -- to them.

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Interesting, a contributor to that same thread, named Michael McBride, has said pretty much what I've said above but unfortunately instead of keeping to the particulars of evolution he went way back to the origin of the universe to make his point. It's the same point, which is that the past is not subject to the Scientific Method, so that all evolution can be is a theory / hypothesis (so is Creationism but it's the better hypothesis and we have a written document on our side too). Alas, the poor lock-step pedantic evolutionists aren't going to give him the slightest benefit of the doubt. I suppose, to be fair, that they can't, simply because they ARE locked into their assumptions and their false belief that SCIENCE has anything to do with any of this.

Sorry, Michael McBride. Good try. Start a blog. It's wonderful for exploring the truths that the world rejects.

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Oh but then a bunch of them jumped on him with all their smug pedantic irrelevant pronouncements about how it's not just that the ToE can't be proven, it's that science itself can't be proven, falsely implying that the ToE is science. Some science IS proven, if not to the unrealizable perfection these pedants keep insisting on, at least proven in a way the ToE can never be proven, because real science is subject to the Scientific Method while the ToE is not, and Newton's law IS an example of real science. The ToE simply IS NOT SCIENCE and IS "just a theory" in a sense Newton's Law is not, but they'll NEVER EVER stop to see how that is true, they'll just go on with their prissy definitional / credal chants on the word "theory" and miss the whole reality.

Anyway, here's another bit of Evo pedantry, or sophistry, that needs to be taken down, by subbie in Post #71:

There is no way to Observe the origin of the universe

There is nothing preventing us from observing the evidence left behind from the origin of the universe and develop scientific theories based on those observations. In the exact same way, there's nothing preventing us from observing the evidence left behind from the history of life on this planet and develop scientific theories based on that evidence.

Right, you can make those observations and you can develop theories / hypotheses about them, both about the origin of the universe and about the history of life on this planet, AND THAT IS THE END OF WHAT YOU CAN DO SCIENTIFICALLY.

You CANNOT TEST THEM because you cannot REPLICATE them, you cannot do EXPERIMENTS to prove or disprove them. The only conclusions and consensus you can achieve are purely a matter of subjective persuasion, politics, NOT SCIENCE. You cannot, in a word, subject them fully to the Scientific Method. You are left ONLY with your theories in the end, and with theory in a sense that Newton's Laws were not, or that Einstein's were not, or any of the rest of the "hard" sciences whose propositions are testable and replicable, because they CAN apply the Scientific Method in full and others can replicate their work.

It's irrelevant that new data might eventually change the scientific picture in those cases, because what is in hand CAN BE SUBJECTED TO THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD and valid conclusions can be drawn to the extent of current knowledge; but THAT CANNOT BE DONE WITH THE PAST, whether with the history of life on the planet or with the origin of the universe and it is sheer delusion that the scientific method applies here as applies to the laws of physics. If you apply what you know about the present to the past you are making an unwarranted leap of pure blind assumption because you have no way of knowing how different the past might have been.

If you'd just PAY ATTENTION to what Creationists have been TRYING to say forever, and really THINK about it instead of just rattling off your nitpicking objections and your canned creeds, you might NOTICE that we are saying something you need to hear.

But I won't hold my breath.

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And on a similar point, let's see if we can put to rest another bit of sophistry that keeps coming up in this regard, the idea that criminal forensics is the right scientific model:

Why can't the origin of the Universe be observed?

time travel hasn't been invented yet

Police solve crimes that have no eyewitnesses all the time. Things that have actually happened leave evidence behind.

First it needs to be pointed out when you resort to forensics for your model that you are abandoning classic Scientific Method -- you know, the observation-hypothesis-conclusion-testability-replicability-falsifiability-consensus model. I probably got some of that out of order but you get the idea. Forensics is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT investigative model. So which is it, Scientific Method or Forensics?

Well, the Scientific Method cannot be applied to questions about the UNWITNESSED past.

So let's see if the Forensics method can be.

You say the crime leaves evidence behind. And so do events in the very distant unwitnessed past. So far so similar. Maybe we're on the way to abandoning the Scientific Method conceit if nothing else.

However, there are huge clues available to criminal forensics that are not available to the study of the distant past because the crime occurred in a present in which other crimes are known. The investigator can't perform tests to be replicated, but he can count on other cases he's studied for clues, hundreds of them. He can remember and usually go back and read about all those in which similar patterns are discernible. There is no such thing for the distant past, there are no anchor points, you are in completely unknown territory.

The criminal investigator can make reasonable guesses amounting to assumptions about the habits and motivations of people who live in his own time and place. This isn't the case for the investigator of the distant past. Even the historically known past can't be approached without a lot of study of history, and then your own experience often has to be set aside in order to understand situations that are radically unfamiliar in your own contexts. Then when you are studying a past that has not been recorded in history at all (except of course in the Bible which you all discount), the origin of species for instance, you have nothing to go on. Nothing. As far as observation is concerned, Natural Selection takes you no further than microevolution, known for millennia, you have only unverifiable/unfalsifiable assumption that makes the leap to macroevolution.

The criminal investigator is most likely familiar with any objects that happen to occur in connection with the crime and if he's not he has sources of information he can go to for help. Even human artifacts from the distant historical past may take lifetimes of study to comprehend and there is no guarantee that they will ever be understood. But even the creatures found in the fossil record are different from what we are familiar with today and we have NO examples of fossilization on such a scale, or sedimentary layering on such a scale, and no matter how much we know about DNA in the present, all extrapolations to the past are pure guesswork since we don't know how different DNA may be now from what it was thousands of years ago. YOu think you have an objective measure in various atomic dating methods but how can you when you can't know anything about how THEY behave in the past either? EVERYTHING you assume about the past is ONLY an assumption and not subject to the methods of science so not falsifiable, and forensics methods can't offer any more reliable information either.

I'm sure I can come up with more differences that make the forensics model just as useless to justifying evolution as the scientific method but I'm getting tired and this should go a long way to making the point as is.

However, I do think creationists do better forensic reasoning about the distant past than evolutionists do. More later.

Once again: The natural processes that bring about "evolution" have a natural end point

Another round proposed to address the ongoing question, What prevents micro evolution from becoming macro evolution?

This is what I argued at EvC off and on from my very first post: What is called "evolution" is merely the variations that occur in species of living things from generation to generation, a phenomenon which has been known from the beginning of history and exploited by farmers and husbandmen all that time to maximize chosen qualities in their animals and plants.

Yet a century and a half ago some decided to pretend this well-known phenomenon isn't limited to each of the species but is open-ended so that species may keep on varying into other species over time. The same processes that ALWAYS brought about the variations, simple sexual reproduction for starters but also selection processes that isolate portions of a population from the rest, including what came to be called Natural Selection, were now made to justify the claim that all species come from former species.

As I've said before here many times, this is an hypothesis, fine, but it cannot be proved and has never been proved.

As for the question what prevents micro-evolution from becoming macro-evolution, it's the simple fact, a fact which is testable and falsifiable, that the processes that bring about new variations require the elimination of competing genetic potentials until a particular "evolving" line of a population may end up quite a striking variation in itself, highly specialized but with no further ability to evolve at all, even with fixed loci and no ability to breed with the mother population, no genetic options to develop in its own line.

Soon as someone gets around to making the necessary test, either in the field or in the laboratory, I have no doubt this will be demonstrated.

Meanwhile, yes, it is just an hypothesis, just as their answer is: oh but MUTATIONS enter in to prevent this kind of dead-end fixation of genetic variation. Based on what? On observation? Nope, never seen this, it's merely assumed. On testability? Nope. Just stuff with bacteria that have not been shown to have any bearing on this development in sexually reproducing animals. Nope, it's all purely hypothetical, yet as usual they assert it as if it were fact.

The fact is that IF mutations DID keep interfering with the isolating processes that are necessary to developing new variations / or species, you'd never GET new variations or species, you'd just get a continuing hodgepodge of genes that keep on blending back into the general species characteristics and never differentiating. NOT evolution.

Nope, the natural processes that bring about variation -- mistaken for open-ended evolution -- NATURALLY lead to genetic depletion. Conservationists know this only too well and it is an endless headache to them. It's the natural built-in mechanism for variation to occur within species but undesirable as well as desirable variations may be the result of random natural processes.

If death had never entered the world back in Eden, life forms would simply continue to vary and genetic depletion would not be a problem, merely a mechanism for variation, exhibiting the creative potentials of life in wondrous ways. But since death entered, all life is gradually approaching extinction -- some ways off yet I trust -- and the natural isolating processes that bring about variations only speed up its approach.

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That's my answer and I stand by it. But here's another on that same thread I link above, from another creationist, who takes them up on their mutations theory:

I'll put it in the most basic form I can think of.
Both groups observe Mutations happening. Both group realize that these muations are copying errors during the transcription of the genetic code.

Both groups will observe that some of these mutations will become fixed in a population. This is what both will call micro-evolution

Both group will observe that therefore, these copying errors will accumulate in a population, driven sometimes by factors such as natural selection, but also sometimes simply through genetic drift.

But each group has a different opinion on the eventual outcome of all this accumulation of mutations:

- Neo-Darwinian evolutionists will say that these will accumulate to the point that new features, organs, etc. will appear in the population, showing an ever evolving and changing trend in biological populations. This is what they will cal macro-evolution.

- Creationists will say that these will accumulate to the point that the mutational burden will become much too high, and this will lead the population down a spiralling path to genetic meltdown. Macro-evolution will therefore never happen.

Creationist will often complain when evolutionist use examples of micro-evolution to prove that macro-evolution will happen, because it simply does not discard the possibility that accumulating mutations could lead to genetic meltdown.

Translation: To the extent that mutations ARE observed happening, they do not supply the kind of positive variations that evolutionists assume (and cannot demonstrate). The actual evidence is that mutations overall play a destructive role, either by replacing a functioning part of the genetic code with non-coding gobbledygook, or by actually coding for something harmful. Very very occasionally the harmful change may happen to have a beneficial side effect but it's always a trade-off. This is not the kind of upward-and-onward life vigor that the theory of evolution requires. In other words, one way or another mutations only contribute to the death processes that the Fall introduced.

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And along come the evolutionist answers of course:

Starting with Percy :

This isn't an accurate characterization of what evolutionary biologists say. Through natural selection, deleterious mutations are removed and advantageous mutations retained. It is advantageous mutations (and to be more complete, also mostly neutral mutations) that accumulate, not all mutations.

- Creationists will say that these will accumulate to the point that the mutational burden will become much too high, and this will lead the population down a spiralling path to genetic meltdown. Macro-evolution will therefore never happen.

Because your characterization of the position of evolutionary biologists was incomplete, this characterization of the position of creationists fails to address the fact that deleterious mutations are removed from populations by natural selection and are not included among the mutations that accumulate.

Sure sounds good in theory. In actuality it appears that genetic diseases accumulate in the population faster than they are removed. And that is just a partial list of all the genetic diseases too.

There are thousands of genetic disorders in humans. Some are common whereas quite a few are rare. Whatever be their incidence, what is most vexing about these disorders is that scientists are still trying to find cures for these disorders. While some headway has been made in the direction, a lot more research is required.

THOUSANDS. THOUSANDS. Documented thousands of deleterious mutations that DIDN'T get selected out and continue to plague their possessors. And meanwhile the notion that it's the advantageous mutations that accumulate as Percy states above, has NO evidence for it WHATEVER, it is purely an assumption based on the theory that says it must be that way. Another Hypothesis that cannot be tested, alas.

But all those genetic diseases are sure a reality. Wonder how that happened if it's advantageous mutations that accumulate but deleterious ones don't? Oh I'm sure they have a rationalization, of course, they're good at that, but the plain facts OUGHT to make the party line spelled out above a laughing stock.

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But then Wounded King comes through with some common sense and agrees with what I say above, that the reality doesn't meet the theory as Percy states it, a common sense he does occasionally show in spite of his diehard evolutionist commitment:

[Percy] Because your characterization of the position of evolutionary biologists was incomplete, this characterization of the position of creationists fails to address the fact that deleterious mutations are removed from populations by natural selection and are not included among the mutations that accumulate.

[WK] I'm not sure why you think this. There is plenty of pop. gen. and comparative genetic evidence for fixation of deleterious mutations. Certainly the trends for beneficial and deleterious mutations are as you desribe, but in the real world there is plenty of evidence of deleterious mutations accumulating.

The real question is, as Slevesque posits, whether such mutations are balanced by compensating beneficial mutations or conversely whether organismal fitness is in an irreversible decline, for which there is no evidence except in some organisms with drastically reduced population sizes.

At least there IS that evidence, and as I keep saying it would not be hard to get the evidence that it is generally the case wherever selection and isolating processes are operating, however less drastically. Collect a good number of samples from various populations of a ring species, or set up your own ring species in a laboratory, and look at their DNA, and you'll get the necessary evidence. But at least there IS that much evidence from the drastically reduced populations, and there is NO evidence WHATEVER that BENEFICIAL mutations accumulate, NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE. ALL they have is the THEORY which tells them that they MUST and they believe it to the point of declaring that it actually occurs in reality when there is NO evidence for it. They will call creationists all kinds of names for suggesting that they don't have evidence because they really have deluded themselves that they do.

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Then WK goes on to chide the creationist for not getting all his terminology accurate. Oh come on, if you want to talk to molecular biologists then stop talking to creationists, we do the best we can to get the terminology straight, and beyond that it's your obligation as the expert to translate if necessary. We'll learn that way but not by being told we have to get a degree in the relevant science first. It's clear that you DO understand what slevesque was saying and are only nitpicking about the words to pull rank. The important thing is the topic. Clarify if you really don't understand, but it's clear that you do, WK, so cut the guff.

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And a last point for this thread: Coyote chimes in mentioning a creationist, Sanford, who argues that the genome is deteriorating. I didn't know about this man, but obviously he is on the right track. If I can ever afford it I'll get his book, but that will be a while the way things are going lately.

Here's the Wikipedia article on John C. Sanford :

Sanford has written a book entitled Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome (2005)[3] in which he claims that the genome is deteriorating and therefore could not have evolved in the way specified by the Modern evolutionary synthesis. Sanford's claims have received little attention from the scientific community. Sanford has published two peer reviewed papers modeling genetic entropy.[4][5]

And here's his book at Amazon . There's a great review of it by someone who calls himself Saint and Sinner, posted in December 2006. Here's an excerpt:

Chapter 2
Here is where we start getting into the analysis of NDET [Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory]. Sanford discusses the statistical distribution of mutational effects (i.e. the magnitude of good and bad mutations affecting fitness) and their frequency. Sanford points out a number of differences between NDET and reality:

A. NDET posits that most mutations are neutral. However, Sanford argues that there is no such thing as a truly "neutral" mutation. Rather, most mutations are "near-neutral" (whether increasing fitness or decreasing fitness). Even a single point-nucleotide mutation in a minor area of the genome disrupts the genetic code to some degree (no matter how small). This is key for the rest of his book.

B. The naïve view of mutational distribution is a bell curve (though many Darwinists recognize that the actual distribution found in nature is nothing like it). The real distribution is a Kimura curve (named after the *Darwinist* population geneticist who created it) where the *vast* majority of the curve is near-neutral. Sanford notes that if the normal distribution (i.e. "bell curve") was true, then an increase in complexity would be inevitable. However, with the Kimura curve, it is hard to see any substantial increase in fitness "getting off the ground" so-to-speak. [note: "naive" means theoretical, hypothetical, pure assumption, untested; "real" means what has been observed in reality. Clearly tons of evolutionary theory is a mere assumption or reification of theory that is untested. AS I KEEP SAYING.]

C. NDET acknowledges that most mutations are harmful, but doesn't suggest that the ratio is so small as to never allow an increase in fitness that would affect a population. Contrary to that assumption, the actual ratio, as noted by the population geneticists (most of whom are Darwinists!) whom Sanford cites, is so small that population geneticists don't even place the beneficiary curve on the distribution graph! The ratio that Sanford cites (again, from the population geneticists) is between 10,000 to 1,000,000 harmful mutations for every one beneficial (though probably closer to the former figure rather than the latter). Sanford chooses to be conservative, and for the rest of the book, he assumes the 10k ratio. Keep this in mind when the next point is cited.

D. NDET assumes that natural selection will take out all of the bad mutations and leave only the good (notice that that was a near quote of Darwin himself). However, citing the population geneticist, Kimura, for support, Sanford notes that there is a "zone of near-neutrality" on both the beneficial and harmful sides of the curve in which natural selection doesn't select for or against. This is due to the fact that most mutations are point-nucleotide mutations. These only cause an ever-so-slight decrease in fitness that natural selection can't "see" them 99% of the time. It would be like a single pixel on your television screen going out. Would you really be able to tell a difference? Furthermore, since the beneficiary mutations curve is so small (see point C. above), the "zone of near-neutrality" (a.k.a. the "no-selection box") covers 99% of the beneficiary mutation side of the distribution! This ensures that natural selection will never see 99% of the good mutations while allowing the bad (which are vastly greater in number) to accumulate. Thus, the genome will suffer from "genetic entropy" (and hence the title of the book).

Now, a typical reply (which is, in fact, found below in one of the negative reviews) is that biologists have witnessed and documented such beneficiary mutations that have given great benefit to organisms in their environment. However, many biologists are becoming aware that the vast majority of these changes in phenotype are due to "pre-programmed" changes in the genome, not random ones as NDET demands. Secondly, as Sanford points out in Appendix 4, many of these "beneficial" mutations actually end up giving the organism a net decrease in fitness (as in the case of homeostasis in cold-climate creatures to warm climates or drug-resistant bacteria) making them deleterious in reality!

Sounds to me like Sanford is right on, the bias-blinded Scientific Community's prejudices notwithstanding.

Michael Behe Meets Science in Wonderland

Another delightful exercise in fantasyland science from EvC:

A number of Behe's claims have been falsified. His claim that the human blood clotting system was "irreducibly complex" was proven wrong for example, right in front of his face, at the Dover trial. His claim that the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex was likewise demolished. This doesn't seen to worry Behe or his supporters as much as one might hope it might, given that honest scientists are supposed to discard falsified notions.

It's really interesting that they will say Behe's claims to irreducible complexity were PROVEN WRONG when ALL that was brought forward to prove this is the usual collection of examples of other systems in nature that have some similarities with the system in question, that is, other discrete designs are ASSERTED to demonstrate evolution only because one can mentally arrange their operations in a hypothetical line of descent based on completely subjective judgments of their homological similarity. This SHOULD be laughed out of court and out of the scientific journals.

Funny how they'll affirm that argument by analogy is a fallacy and yet completely accept subjectively determined gradations of physical homologies as Science, which is the same thing. The delusions of Evolutionist Science are magnificent, really.

William Paley already did it for intelligent design and irreducible complexity years ago. It's completely a matter of clear-headed ability to judge such things, they do not lend themselves to Scientific Method.

What predictive power does Behe's work give us? What observation would support or falsify his claims?

ONLY evidence that a complex functioning system did in fact descend genetically from a functioning system built on only some of the same functioning parts. Homologies don't cut it, that's like taking dozens of models of cars and arranging them in a graded series according to subjectively assessed similarities and saying they developed one from another although we know they were independently intelligently designed. Oh yeah, they'll nitpick the flaws in THIS analogy to death while swallowing whole the same kind of reasoning as long as it supports evolution.

So he says the Dover trial determined that Behe was wrong. How odd that the courts have any power to define Science -- which could only happen with "science" that isn't science or it could determine it just fine on its own. Oh well. That's the way it goes in Evolutionland.

So I looked up Dover to find out just how Behe's claims were supposedly defeated and at Wikipedia I found, surprise surprise , that all they have is subjectively defined HOMOLOGIES and a whole raft of COULDAWOULDAs.

...even cases where removing a certain component in an organic system will cause the system to fail do not demonstrate that the system couldn't have been formed in a step-by-step, evolutionary process ... the possibility that seemingly irreducibly complex biological features may have been achieved with a period of increasing complexity, followed by a period of simplification.

Because they are able to IMAGINE such things they think they've arrived at PROOF? Because they are able to MENTALLY SUBJECTIVELY CONSTRUCT POSSIBILITIES they think they've arrived at PROOF? They have a HYPOTHESIS AT BEST which I argue a couple posts down is ALL they can have. It's all Behe has too. That's the best that can be done with this sort of thing. You can never have proof because you can never have experiment or replication, you cannot apply Scientific Method to these things. IT REMAINS A JUDGMENT CALL, NOT SCIENCE.

"As expert testimony revealed, the qualification on what is meant by "irreducible complexity" renders it meaningless as a criticism of evolution. (3:40 (Miller)). In fact, the theory of evolution proffers exaptation as a well-recognized, well-documented explanation for how systems with multiple parts could have evolved through natural means." (Page 74)

COULD HAVE. Yet, read on, this sort of purely conjectural reasoning is now referred to as "evidence" which they say "refutes" intelligent design and meets the criteria for "testability." What universe do these people live in anyway?

Professor Behe has applied the concept of irreducible complexity to only a few select systems: (1) the bacterial flagellum; (2) the blood-clotting cascade; and (3) the immune system. Contrary to Professor Behe’s assertions with respect to these few biochemical systems among the myriad existing in nature, however, Dr. Miller presented evidence, based upon peer-reviewed studies, that they are not in fact irreducibly complex." (Page 76)

Using "evidence" duly sanctified by published articles put out by the community of true believers in evolution, he declares Behe's conclusions simply NOT irreducibly complex. It's because NONE OF THIS IS TESTABLE SCIENCE in the true sense that they can get away with this delusional thinking!

It's all woulda coulda shoulda analogical reasoning with not a shred of actual evidence or proof.

Oh well. As long as we are dealing with a self-validating subjective analogical authority-sanctified system we might as well give up on trying to have any kind of discussion with them, there's no point in continuing to beat our heads against this brick wall of a fantasy. I can't wait for Judgment Day sometimes to see the looks on their faces. (Of course I do wish them salvation, and then they'd see the error of their ways before it has eternal consequences.)

How hard is it to make sand fer Pete's sake?

Yeah, who's Pete?

Anyway, here's an old thread recently resurrected at EvC asking how sand was made, implying that creationists have no answer to the question.

To get sand you need more than just weathering, you need the active transport and tumbling that then reduces the flakes to sand grains.

But the directionality is always the same, higher objects get weathered and then transported to lower locations.

So the conventional model still rules, first you have to uplift stuff before you can wear it down.

Ya don't say.

Do you HAVE to "uplift" stuff to wear it down? What if it's already "uplifted?" That is, what about the rapid catastrophic pummeling that a worldwide Flood would have exerted on the land masses that were of course higher than sea level at the time anyway? Not to mention all that heavy rain that went on for forty days and nights, that had never before occurred on this planet, that beat against the land with force. All that water must have sent whole hills sliding and tumbling to lower ground as per the requirement given above.

This is the opening post to that thread:

The current model for making sand is pretty simple. Start with a mountain, a big sucker of a rock. Then the daily transition between warm day time and colder night time, and between hotter summer and colder winter will cause expansion and contraction of the rock, gradually over long periods of time opening small cracks.

Again over time, water will fill the cracks and when it freezes enlarge the cracks, eventually breaking off pieces.

Again, over time the pieces are transported from higher elevations to lower ones by wind, water and gravity. During transportation they are broken up further, becoming smaller and smaller pieces.

Nothing is needed other than processes we can see at work today and lots of time.

So what is a Flood model for making sand?

Surely it ought to be obvious that a worldwide Flood, one that could have pulverized and separated land mass into the sediments that it then deposited in layers two miles deep in some places, one that could have gouged out the Grand Canyon from those layers after laying them down, one that could have scoured the Southwest US leaving all those layered buttes and hoodoos and canyons and the Grand Staircase, and so on and so forth, could on other parts of the planet also have pounded rocks into sand to the extent of creating the Sahara Desert. Sand is created all the time in the oceans even now and washed up on shores all over the planet. Same thing as what the Flood did, only it did it a lot faster and in huge quantities all at once.

What the opening post is describing is the much slower process of breaking down rock SINCE the Flood, accounting for the "skirts" of debris at the base of the hoodoos, canyon ledges and buttes of the Southwest for instance - which could easily have been created in the time since the Flood. Sure, it would take a LONG LONG time to create the Sahara that way -- or the sand that became the sandstone of the Coconino layer in the Southwest USA -- but it didn't happen that way, slowly over time. As the post I quote at the top says,

... you need the active transport and tumbling that then reduces the flakes to sand grains.

Just what a Flood would be expected to provide.

Must also comment that along with the silly evolutionist parodies of creationist thinking on that thread, there are also some silly creationist answers as well. Too bad. It's really not hard to recognize what the Flood would have done once you break yourself of the habit of thinking in terms of huge time periods -- and a tiny little flood. Give up gradualism and recognize catastrophism on a worldwide scale.

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Consider how much damage can be done in a MINOR mudslide by comparison with what the Flood would have done:




Rocks tumbled down, no doubt parts of them broken off and pounded into smaller pieces, trees uprooted, people killed, in a very SMALL flood event by comparison with a worldwide Flood. Multiply by forty days of soaking of ALL land in the world, dissolving whatever could be dissolved into fine sediment and sending it all tumbling day after day from higher levels to lower in mudslides by the bazillion, then further soaking and underwater tumbling as the water stood over the land, then further tumbling and breaking as the water receded carrying huge quantities of rock and mud to their final resting place, such as the enormous amount of material gouged out of the Grand Canyon that washed across Southern California on into the Gulf of California, and the enormous amount scoured off the flat lands surrounding the buttes and mesas and hoodoos of the Southwest USA and so on and so forth.

Can't tell the Bible from a man-made book? Ridiculous!

Always finding something at EvC to bemuse me. This one isn't about evolution so it doesn't really belong here, but it doesn't really belong on any of my other blogs either. Just a typical EvC comment I feel like responding to:

It is hard to say what an ideal reasoner, knowing nothing else of the universe, would make of the Bible. But in contemplating this question we might also wonder what it would make of the Popol Vuh, Aesop's Fables, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Peter Pan, the "Hitler diaries" or Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. How would it tell what was meant as fiction, what was meant as fact but wasn't, what was meant as fact and was, and what was known by its author to be fiction but intended to deceive others into taking it as fact?

The inability to distinguish the Bible from the rest is simply absurd. But there is no point in rehearsing all the marks of veracity that authenticate the Bible as God's word, though there are plenty. In fact there's no point in arguing these things at all. Its supernatural credentials are obvious to one who believes it, and believing it leads to deeper believing. That's how faith works. As Pascal said, God's word gives light to the believer but darkness to the unbeliever. These things are supernatural and can't be resolved by natural means, so there is no answer that can be given.

(By the way, the fact that some huge proportion of the posts at EvC are attempts to debunk the Bible all by itself shows that Evolution is the enemy of God -- something they try to deny because some think they believe in God, although they only believe in a false God they are able to combine with Evolution.)

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And while I'm at it I should give a little support to the other poster in this conversation as he's making a good point that nobody else there is going to recognize:

The topic is whether or not the use of the Bible and other historical literature for generating knowledge about the physical world can within the scientific method:

Jon in Message 1:

I propose that the use of the Bible and other 'historical' literature to generate knowledge about the physical world is not, as many claim, unscientific or (dare I say) 'supernatural', but instead perfectly good science differing only in results (by means of different inputs) from presently accepted knowledge in the overall scientific community. To clarify, I am not addressing specifically the knowledge itself that is so generated, but rather the methodology—that is, the generation of knowledge about the physical world based on the reading of histories.

Good point Jon. It's perfectly reasonable, obvious even. History is witness. It needn't be supernatural to be useful as witness. But obvious though this is they will go on denying it -- raising questions about how impossible it is to tell history from fiction etc etc etc.

The Scientific Method is Not Applicable to Questions of Origins and the Unwitnessed Past.

As I've reported recently, I no longer care what Science has to say about anything Biblical. Science is out of its proper sphere when it says anything along those lines. They can stand me up against a wall and shoot me dead, which seems to be their attitude toward Bible believers anyway, I've given up on Science completely when it comes to these concerns. Science does fine with technology, medicine, etc. (for which we should thank God), but it has nothing to say about the history of this planet or life on this planet. They don't even have the wit to recognize that it CAN'T pronounce on such things because there is no way to replicate the past to subject it to experimentation, therefore no way to falsify any conclusions they come to, violating all the supposed essentials of the scientific method.

A big razzberry to the pretensions of almighty Science!

They are tediously pedantically mind-numbingly self-congratulatory about their supposed standards and methods which they themselves cannot meet when it comes to questions of origins and events in the pre-historic past. Here is one such typical tedious litany of their creed, from one of the darkest places on the web:

We already have the ground rules for scientific inquiry. They are well known and easy to find.

1: Observation/Question
2: Hypothesis/Prediction
3: Experiment
4: Conclusion (tentative)
5: Publication/Peer Review
6: Repetition
and if that repetition continually provides the same conclusion,
7: Consensus (still tentative, but less so as evidence accumulates).

The topic is whether Intelligent Design meets scientific standards. I'm not a follower of Intelligent Design because Christian versions of it usually fudge the time frame of the first verses of the Book of Genesis to make room for billions of years, and some of them also make room for evolution as well. Their main concern -- which I CAN agree with -- seems to be to demonstrate that some elements of Nature exhibit qualities that could only have been designed, which implies that there must be a Designer. They refuse to identify the nature of this Designer, because they want to keep within scientific standards and not venture out into "religious" questions. (I'm not even going to give a moment's consideration to the ridiculous claim made by Scott Johnson that ID originated with some occultic theory about "aliens" seeding this planet. Although I appreciate much of what he has to say, Scott Johnson is unfortunately illiterate on many things as well, including the origin of Intelligent Design, so he lumps things together and jumps to conclusions based on the mere similarity of terminology although it supports completely different ideas. He apparently knows nothing about Michael Behe or anything else in this field. He also has the unfortunate habit of denouncing his critics so he never will learn any of it). *

As for this list of scientific ground rules ...

1: Observation/Question
2: Hypothesis/Prediction
3: Experiment
4: Conclusion (tentative)
5: Publication/Peer Review
6: Repetition
and if that repetition continually provides the same conclusion,
7: Consensus (still tentative, but less so as evidence accumulates).

...when it comes to questions of the origin of this planet and life on this planet about as far as Science can go is through Rule 2. They have gone this far. They have their hypothesis of Evolution to explain all the variety of living things as having developed one from another. Some will claim that God set it in motion, some will postulate some kind of biochemical origin, but all their theorizing rejects the simple straightforward Biblical account of the Creation.

So they have their hypothesis. They really have nothing more. They can't meet Rule 3, Experiment, as I say above, because you can't replicate unknown one-time events in the past. Whatever experiments they do in the present in an attempt to reconstruct past events still involve purely hypothetical application to the past, the mere bald assumption that they apply. In contrast, the experimental method has established all sorts of scientific facts over the centuries, facts in chemistry and physics particularly, that have become the basis of our sophisticated technologies. But it's a delusion to think they can extrapolate this method to the unknown past to make it known. At best this is an untestable hypothesis in itself, but that doesn't stop them. They go on assuming they can penetrate the past too and that they have in fact done so.

Since they can't meet Rule 3, of course Rule 4, any Conclusion they may come to, cannot be scientifically established either and remains a conjecture or a hypothesis. Rule 5, Publication and Peer Review OUGHT to illuminate the fallacy of their claim but it only validates their same errors of assumption because they all share them and don't see that the scientific method is not applicable. The assumptions can't be falsified so they can just go on building their fantastic belief system without correction.

Then I have no idea how Rule 6, Repetition, could be meaningfully applied here since the only repetition possible is a repetition of the same fallacious procedures and erroneous reasonings and bald assumptions. If they do arrive by this means at Rule 7, Consensus, it can only be because they've all been deluded along the same line of reasoning. Or perhaps if they don't all come to the same Consensus, as long as they are following out this same fallacious notion that they have a method that can penetrate the past, alternative theories are simply going to suffer the same fate and remain ONLY alternative theories. Until of course Consensus IS arrived at by the same illegitimate means and the whole Scientific Community endorses it no matter how delusionally derived.

Since Science with respect to the Origin of Species can't meet these criteria, it's high nonsense for them to hold Intelligent Design to them. They have a Faith system they delusionally believe is based on Science so it's interesting that's what they accuse IDers of. And Creationists in general of course.

In this particular case, the straw man of ID is more ridiculous than usual:

Now one could spend a lifetime finessing that definition of the scientific method (and indeed, philosophers of science do just that) but those are, more or less, the ground rules. ID fails to meet just about every one of them. Here is how ID functions;

1: Conclusion; Jesus loves you (not tentative).
2: Observation; Gee, lots of stuff is really complex!
3: Conclusion; See 1.
4: Publication; Popular press only. Peer review is such a pest!
5; Conclusion; Still the same as 1.

Actually, no, this is not how ID functions. For one thing IDers are not all Christians. ID really does start with the Observation of design in living things, meeting Rule 1. I believe it was Behe who made the observation of the intricate mechanism of the bacterial flagellae as an example of Irreducible Complexity which implies Design. They go on from there to hypothesize that therefore there must be a Designer, meeting Rule 2. As with mainstream Evolutionist Science there are no Experiments, Rule 3, that can be done to verify or falsify this, so the scientific method comes to a halt with the Hypothesis here just as it does with the hypotheses of mainstream Evolutionist Science.

What we have are competing Hypotheses, competing Interpretations between Evolutionism and Creationism. We do NOT have the scientific method because the material does not lend itself to that method and to keep on insisting on it is simply to dig deeper into delusion. Which this person of course goes on to do:

For ID to be taken seriously, it must adhere to the scientific method. It doesn't so it isn't. It really is that simple. Anyone who disagrees should provide details of those ID experiments and peer reviewed publications that directly address design.

And as long as they continue to insist on such criteria although there's no way to apply them to unknown one-time past events, they will continue in their delusion.

ALL there is from a scientific perspective on the questions that have been answered by Evolution is Observation and Hypothesis. There is no testability, no falsifiability possible. You come to a conclusion, if you do, simply on the basis of your judgment as to which Hypothesis best accounts for the Observation. Science bends over backwards trying to prove that Irreducible Complexity isn't really irreducible but COULD HAVE evolved, by pointing to this or that other biological system that appears to have some part of the same design fully operational in itself. Then they declare this pure hypothetical to be established fact: therefore it DID evolve.

Different sorts of eyes found all over the biological world are pulled out of context and mentally arranged in a series of hypothetical stages based on a very rough assessment of their mode of function and level of complexity, and this bit of mental juggling is taken to PROVE that the human eye evolved through some version of these hypothesized stages. All they have is an hypothesis as usual but they declare it Fact and that's ALL evolutionist Science has, the pronouncement of hypotheticals as Fact. Which of course is NOT science according to the list of rules I'm addressing.

That's all Darwin had too, just a hypothesis for how evolution COULD have happened, by which it has been declared to have happened in fact, and that's all his followers continue to have, although an elaborate system of sophisticated hypothesizing has been built up around it that further obscures this simple truth by giving the illusion of scientific validation. (Lots of science DOES go on AROUND these hypotheticals without changing their status as hypotheticals). They really believe it. But it is NOT derived from the scientific method.

Since they don't have an established fact, ID can of course quite reasonably continue to answer them with their own hypothesis: Irreducible Complexity still looks irreducible to them (as it does to me) still looks like it had to be designed. This is on EXACTLY the same plane of reasoning as puffed-up Science's. It's just as good reasoning in other words. The jugglings to prove it evolved are clearly just mental gymnastics that could prove just about anything you want since there is no objective test they could be subjected to. All Science has over ID (or Creationism either) is Establishment clout, a bully system and a history of mutually self-confirming peer-validated delusion. It does not have scientific method, it does not have superior reasoning.

But I'm not an IDer. I'm a straight Biblical Creationist. I believe Genesis as written, I don't find billions of years hidden away between any of its verses, I do not find evolution implied in any of it. I still believe that as far as one CAN go scientifically on these questions, Creationism's scientific reasoning is far superior to mainstream Science's. I think for instance that Observation of many quite visible characteristics of this planet should lead inevitably to the Hypothesis that the planet was once destroyed by a worldwide Flood. Of course I originally had help to this hypothesis by the Biblical revelation, but I do believe as far as scientific Rules 1 and 2 go, these are clearly met by the simple observation of a wrecked planet and the hypothesis that the worldwide Flood did the wrecking.

But the bottom line is always this: Jesus said we are to become as little children, and that means believing the revelation of God as simply true because He gave it. The more one follows this simple belief the more vistas open up to which the unbeliever can never have access. What to arrogant Science is myth or at least prehistoric -- the Creation, the Flood and so on -- is Witnessed History to Bible believers. Having Witness Testimony gives us a source of evidence the unbeliever forfeits.

The Bible shows many marks of authentication as God's word, and believers embrace those wholeheartedly no matter what "contradictions" unbelievers dig up against it. That's the way the Bible was designed, as Blaise Pascal said: to give enough light to lead the believer, along with enough obscurity to mislead the unbeliever. God rewards simple trust based on simple recognition of His work, He does not honor entrenched skepticism.

God showed us what happened in the past. It's far far from contemporary Science's idea of it. I trust God, not Science.

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Addendum:
Here's another post at deepest darkest EvC demonstrating that they have no idea what subject matter is amenable to the scientific method and what is not:

An IDer poster there said:

If I had my druthers, science classes should have the freedom to apply all of the evidence supportive to ID, including that evidence which conventional science disallows.

And the owner of the board replied:

... but then it wouldn't be science anymore, would it.

As I have argued above -- and throughout this blog for that matter --by the strict definition of science, neither is evolution science.

The Opening Post of this thread is excellent and well worth a read. It provides three examples of theories that took time to gain acceptance within the scientific community: continental drift, dark matter, and mitochondrial origins. Acceptance was gained by doing more and more research and gathering more and more evidence and publishing that evidence in more and more scientific papers in the scientific literature.

In the case of continental drift and dark matter I believe there WAS good evidence that supported their case and eventually won the day -- because they are subjects to which scientific method can be applied (though I'm not sure about continental drift since it implies a lot about a past that can't be studied). In the case of mitochondrial origins it seems likely that it wasn't science but simply the acceptance of the hypothesis that established it, that is, it won consensus just because the interpretation began to grow on the Scientific Community, since theories about origins are about the past as I say above, which isn't amenable to the scientific method as spelled out in the seven-point list of rules above.

Approaches to gaining acceptance that were notable by their absence:They did not lobby school boards and legislatures to teach their theories in public schools.

They did not conspire and plan ways to change public perception of their theory.

They did not hold seminars and debates to promote their theory to the public.

Intelligent Design is not science. If it were science you wouldn't be forced to propose changes to the definition of science so that it could squeeze in.

Those particular scientific propositions didn't use this sort of approach but I'm not sure that's because they had such solid scientific credentials. Perhaps they did. But the same can't be said for the theory of Evolution. If Evolution were actually founded on the scientific principles that are constantly being trumpeted for it his point would apply there, but it isn't and it doesn't.

It shouldn't be too hard to make the case that Evolution WAS in a sense promoted by a conspiracy to change public perception, if not an organized conspiracy certainly an informal conspiracy of true believers determined to make everybody else a true believer too. Evolution isn't lobbying for inclusion in the schools now because they are now the Establishment and don't need to, but that is pretty much what they did back in Darwin's day and for some time afterward. It was polemics galore that launched it, from Thomas Huxley's polemics to the Scopes trial which was popularized by a movie, along with ridicule of religious belief. It was all propaganda, intellectual bullying, browbeating the public and especially the intelligent young -- not science, not the scientific method -- that put Evolution in the schools. Or really, kicked the Bible out of the schools, since Evolution was already being taught. So they dressed up Evolution as True Science -- Emperor's New Clothes of course -- and the argument continues to rage. You know why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T SCIENCE! If it really were science nobody could argue against it, but it's patently NOT SCIENCE.

Darwin had ONLY a hypothesis, a very simple idea for HOW evolution MIGHT have happened, and that's all Science has for Evolution even now. In the days of the Scopes trial it should have been even more obviously the case, yet Evolution won, having no science, only propaganda. But you now fault ID for using the same methods Evolution used (and truth be told, still uses, since it has no scientific foundation whatever).

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* After doing this post I went and heard Scott Johnson's talk on this subject and I report on it at End Times Monitor.

Chuck Missler on the Flood, and a reiteration of the Grand Canyon argument

I kind of like ol' Chuck Missler. He's a character, an eccentric in a way, but he's also a very thorough expositor of the Bible, and even if he often goes off on tangents that lead where I don't particularly want to follow I do appreciate his overall approach and I've learned a lot from him in these last few weeks.

I was sorry to find a whole website devoted to criticizing him for a long list of supposed errors and misbehaviors. I can't judge some of the criticisms, having to do with accusations of plagiarism and getting some facts wrong, but the bulk of the criticisms seems to be aimed at his "fringey" ideas, such as the interpretation of Genesis 6, the return of the Nephilim, UFOs and that sort of thing. They call him "crazy Chuck." I don't know why Christians find such possibilities so beyond the pale. They seem to hold a secularist mentality on such questions, that automatically denies that anything outside our usual experience could ever happen on this planet, that "all things continue as always" and so on.

Well, that's not a problem I have with him. Where he loses me at times is where he goes off on his own science-nerdy speculations, Quantum physics, hyperspace, and dozens of other preoccupations. But I have to assume there may be some who get a lot out of that even if I don't.

Anyway, I've posted links to his talks on I think three of my blogs now, since he discusses not only End Times passages of scripture, the question of the Rapture for instance, but also current political events, and the authenticity of Bible versions.

It's maybe a bit of a stretch to now also put up a link on my Evolution blog, because he doesn't set himself up as a creationist except in the most informal sense, and doesn't go into the creation-evolution controversy in any systematic way. But he does make comments on those issues where it's relevant within his Bible studies, and here I'm going to link to his study of the Flood of Noah. This is from his series on Genesis, and this is Session 12 in the series, on Genesis 7 and 8. Again, it's not specifically about the creationist arguments for the Flood but he does touch on some of them, and also in the next study in this series, on Genesis 9 and 10. So here's Chuck Missler on the Flood .

I just have one comment I'd like to add, which is that he mentions the Grand Canyon in passing, as an example of the effect of the Flood, pointing out that there's no way that little river could have cut that huge gorge, which is quite true of course. But it's interesting to me that that's about as far as many go on the Grand Canyon, whereas it seems to me that the most amazing thing about it is not so much the canyon itself but that incredible depth of layers of different kinds of rock that the canyon exposes to view, that can be seen in every vista of the canyon walls from any vantage point. This is UNDISTURBED layering, quite neatly horizontal as far as the eye can see within the canyon, which implies that it continues for hundreds of miles in all directions beyond the canyon, merely having been exposed by the cutting of the canyon. This is the case all over the Southwest USA as a matter of fact, where all kinds of strange multi-layered formations are exposed by the washing away of layered material that obviously originally surrounded them.

The cutting of the Grand Canyon obviously occurred AFTER all of the layers had been laid down. This raises what seems to me to be the OBVIOUS question, how did they manage to remain undisturbed if they supposedly took millions of years to build up, while the huge disturbance of the cutting of the canyon itself occurred only after they were all in place? Why no canyon cutting for bazillions of years, and then after the uppermost layer is in place this humongous canyon is cut through the entire stack? Same goes for all those formations in the Southwest. The layers were already in place and THEN the weird hoodoos were sculpted out of them, and THEN the buttes and towers were left after the surrounding layers were washed away and so on. The Flood laid down that almost unimaginable depth of layers -- two miles deep in some places -- over hundreds of square miles, and then it had to have been the receding Flood water that washed away so much and exposed the layers that continue standing.

Geologists and amateur geologists in the evolution-creation debate attack me rather nastily for trying to make this point, saying that the layers visible in the Grand Canyon are NOT undisturbed but exhibit erosion and so on. This is ridiculous. They get in way too close to the rocks; they need to back up and survey them from a distance, AND their argument is entirely from presuppositions they refuse to examine. The degree of disturbance they find is not consistent with slow long-term layering over millions of years but IS consistent with rapid layering in a great depth of water, the supposed "erosion" they find between layers being no more than runoff squeezed out in the narrow spaces between the layers. You can't SEE these spaces, you realize, what you SEE is just the line where two layers meet, in the Grand Canyon usually different kinds of rock layered one over the other. The idea that such "spaces" deserve the name "erosion" at all in the very presence of a canyon that's a mile deep and hundreds of miles long just makes me wonder about those geologists.

The very idea that all those different kinds of rock could have been laid down in their own specific ancient time frames is crazy in itself to begin with. It's like the scientists won't stand back from the evidence but simply ASSUME the layers represent time periods and then dig around in them finding what they think is evidence for conditions in some ancient time period they have assumed the rock represents, though it's all really just the flotsam and jetsam that got carried there in the Flood.

Oh well.

Oh well.