The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

J C · 13-11-2008 12:02am

Marco Polo
(my replies in RED)

List of 100 Categories of Evidence Against Noah’s Flood

http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.c...f=17&t=198&m=1

Geoscience – I have some familiarity with this area of study. In fact, I would say that virtually every geologic formation, virtually every rock, is evidence against Noah’s flood. However, I am far from expert due to both time and content so I’m sure this list can be improved....virtually all surface rocks ARE evidence of the enormous catastrophic processes that accompanied Noah's Flood!!!

1. Angular unconformities – Angular unconformities are where sediments are laid down in layers, then tilted and eroded, then new sediments are deposited on top. How does a global flood simultaneously deposit, tilt, and erode in the same exact place?....the Flood processes extended over several years...so plenty of time for angular unconformities to develop as new sediment was laid down against 'older' rocks that had been uplifted/downthrusted ....and eroded by massive movements of water and debris!!!

2. Radiometric dating – All common forms of radiometric dating, including C14, K-Ar, Ar-Ar, Rb-Sr, Th-Pb, U-Pb, and fission track. The dates derived from these diverse methods, when properly interpreted rather than intentionally misapplied, show that all but the very most recent deposits in the geologic column is vastly older than any postulated flood....rocks of known recent vintage have been 'dated' at millions of years by these systems...and unless you know the starting amounts of parent and daughter material and that nothing was subsequently added or taken away from the rock....you can conclude absolutely nothing in relation to it's 'age'!!!

3. Fossil Sorting – The sorting of fossils in the geologic record is consistent with evolution and geology across all formations worldwide. There are basically no fossils of dinosaurs found with modern mammals, even when such dinosaurs could fly. There are no flowering plants in the Cambrian, no grasses, no mammals, and no birds. The overall sorting does not show any evidence consistent with a flood or settling in water.....a Dinosaur fossil has been found where the Dinosur was EATING a LARGE MAMMAL....and the reason that there areno flowering plants, grasses, mammals, and no birds in the Cambrian...is that any rock with such fossils WOULDN'T be classified as 'Cambrian'!!!!

4. Varves – How does one create 20 million annual layers, each layer which would have taken at least a month to settle due to hydrodynamics as is observed in the Green River Formation? How does one explain seasonal of pollen grains found in the layers? .....the same way 20,000 layers of sediment was deposited in 3 HOURS during the Mount St Helen's eruption in 1980!!!

5. Sedimentation rates – Why would there be Precambrian rocks below ones feet in the Canadian Shield area, yet the entire geologic column in the Williston Basin in North Dakota? Why would a global flood scour down to the Precambrian in one place yet at the same time deposit tens of thousands of feet of sediment in another when it is exactly the same process? Giant post-pyramid ice ages are not an explanation as there is no written record or other evidence of increased historical glaciation to the extent needed to scour the Canadian Shield down in the last 4500 years, not to mention such Precambrian rocks elsewhere on Earth like South Africa ....the so called 'pre-cambrian' rocks ...are actually the 'pre-flood' rocks....and it didn't need to scour down to them....these are just localised areas where flood deposition was minimal/non-existent!!

6. Lava layers with ancient soils between flows – How could lava forms which only exist with a land surface interface create interbedded deposits with paleosoils? ...lava flows are occurring intermittently right up to the present day...and there are equally intermittent deposition and formation of (highly fertile) soils between flows...where the intervals are only a few years.

7. Ice sheets – Ice caps can’t reform in the time allotted since any global flood of 4500 years ago. .....the ice age directly followed the Flood because of 'nuclear winter' type conditions due to massive levels of dust and water vapour in the atmosphere and it lasted several hundred years....when vast quantities of snow were dumped in the higher latitudes. The snow became compacted into ice...and this eventually melted when the skies eventually cleared!!!

8. Ice core data with correlated known volcanic events – Ice cores can be dated back by multiple methods nearly a million years, yet show no evidence of a global flood. ....ice cores only go back a few thousand years

9. Ocean core data – Ocean cores would show unsorted piles of terrestrial life and different distributions in grain sizes than observed. They would also show little difference in thickness between the mid Atlantic ridge and near subduction zones, which is not what is observed. .....don't see this being conclusive one way or the other!!!

10. Paleomagnetism – Because the Earth’s magnetic field has reversed polarity and has wandered over the globe in the past, certain igneous rocks show such preferred magnetic orientations when sufficiently cooled. By mapping these directions and reversals, which correlate with radioisotope dating and stratigraphy, it is easily shown that the vast majority of seafloor sediments, along with most volcanic rock, are way too old to have been deposited by any flood. In fact such measurements are one of the great evidences for plate tectonics, which alone invalidate a global flood. ...rapid magnetic inversions accompanied the flood processes as the Earth's mantle convulsed and spewed forth huge quantities of molten magma and superheated water all over the earth!!!

11. Volcanism – According to ‘flood geology’ every igneous rock layer that overlays sedimentary rock would have to be less than 4500 years old. Yet, historical records indicate this tremendous amount of simultaneous volcanic activity could not have occurred in recent times because someone would have noticed, becoming extinct and all when the atmosphere becomes unbreathable. Such a position directly contradicts the existence of the Deccan Traps which are up to 2 km thick and 500,000 square km in extent, yet supposedly erupted in India despite any historic evidence, after such a flood. .....you forget that everyone in India at the time were DEAD....the only survivors were Noah and his family.....thousands of miles away!!!!

12. Ore deposit formation rates – Most ore deposits require a longer period of time to separate their constituent elements and then cool to create an economically viable source of minerals. ...oh no they don't!!!

13. Evaporites – The existence of evaporate deposits thousands of feet thick are incompatible with any global flood as they are formed through evaporation rather than through the addition of fresh water. ......it is amazing how evporation can be speeded up with super-heated land underneath and driving the water off as steam!!!

14. Carbonates – The huge amount of CO2 in the atmosphere prior to being locked into carbonate rock would have made the planet resemble Venus. There would have been no life to drown. ....there was a greenhouse effect all over te Earth before the Flood ...but MOST of the carbon in mineral oils, for example, was innate within the earth..and never was in the atmosphere.

15. Microfossil deposits - Thick deposits of microfossils in limestone, diatomaceous chert, and chalk that could not settle to such a degree of thickness in the time allotted for any global flood. .....microfossils represent a vanishingly small percentage of all limestone....which is mostly made up of raw CaCO3!!!!!

16. Thick deposits of sand - Sand is the result of weathering and working of formally solid formations, requiring long long times to form and accumulate. ....how do you know that?

17. Aeolian sand deposits – Wind deposited sandstone is found above and below water deposited limestone. One example is the Cococino formation which is both overlain and overlies limestone. ....localised dynamic deposition of sandstone and limestone!!!

18. Overthrust formations – the time and pressure required to cause overthrust formations is far greater than can occur in any post-flood historic time. ....most major geological processes in the Flood were rapid and catastrophic ..and you dont need much time...just plenty of tectonic activity to do this

19. Formation of geologic features such as mountains and valleys – How did something like the Himalaya Mountains form without anyone noticing all those earthquakes? How were valleys cut between such mountains in less than 4500 years? the Himalayas were pushed up about 5 km in comparison to the diameter of the Earth at over 12,000Km such movement is TINY at less than 0.05%!!!!

20. Heat of formation – I can’t explain this topic any better than has already been done.
From http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
quote:
________________________________________

• If the geologic record was deposited in a year, then the events it records must also have occurred within a year. Some of these events release significant amounts of heat.
• Magma. The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 10E24 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 10E27 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat.
• Limestone formation. There are roughly 5 x 10E23 grams of limestone in the earth's sediments [Poldervaart, 1955], and the formation of calcite releases about 11,290 joules/gram [Weast, 1974, p. D63]. If only 10% of the limestone were formed during the Flood, the 5.6 x 10E26 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters.
• Meteorite impacts. Erosion and crustal movements have erased an unknown number of impact craters on earth, but Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest that cratering to the extent seen on the Moon and Mercury occurred on earth during the year of Noah's Flood. The heat from just one of the largest lunar impacts released an estimated 3 x 10E26 joules; the same sized object falling to earth would release even more energy. [Fezer, pp. 45-46]
• Other. Other possibly significant heat sources are radioactive decay (some Creationists claim that radioactive decay rates were much higher during the Flood to account for consistently old radiometric dates); biological decay (think of the heat released in compost piles); and compression of sediments.
5.6 x 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 10E27 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.
Aside from losing its atmosphere, Earth can only get rid of heat by radiating it to space, and it can't radiate significantly more heat than it gets from the sun unless it is a great deal hotter than it is now. (It is very nearly at thermal equilibrium now.) If there weren't many millions of years to radiate the heat from the above processes, the earth would still be unlivably hot.
...yes it was a distinctly unpleasant and dangerous time!!!!________________________________________

21. River meanders – River meanders incised in rock can only be caused by gradual uplift, not through a year’s worth of soft sediment deposition. ....the miniscule sizes of these rivers today in comparison with the valleys they run through, shows that these valleys were formed when enormous water outpourings cut through soft sediments to form these valleys.
22. Large and extensive river potholes – As this is one of Iceage’s, I will defer the explanation to him, although I wouldn’t mind his input on others he brought up as well. .......probably formed before petrification was complete

23. Glacial weathering – glacial deposits and weathering such as U-shaped valleys require longer than 4500 years to form. ....even conventional geology places the Ice Age at less than 10,000 years ago!!!
24. Independent dating correlations – See Correlations Correlations Correlations (Message 1 of Thread Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 in Forum Proposed New Topics) enjoy! ...circular reasoning interdependent interpretations.

25. Batholith formation – Why isn’t the Sierra Nevada granitic batholith still hot as it would have taken several million years to cool? ....why should it take much time to cool....lava flows cool in a matter of WEEKS!!!!

26. Differential weathering – How could the Sierra Nevada and the Appalachians show such different weathering if each are the exact same age of only 4500 years old? ....different weathering intensities!!!

27. Banded iron formations and red beds – Banded iron formations can’t form in the presence of significant oxygen. Yet they were supposedly deposited in a flood which supposedly allowed animals to breathe both before and after. ....water cover provides largely anoxic conditions!!!!

28. Water in confined aquifers – The chemistry of water may be measured as to its constituents, as any municipal water authority already knows. Under flood conditions, the water chemistry in a confined aquifer would have changed as lower elevation aquifers would contain more salt than higher aquifers as the flood waters diluted the salt content in the recharge zone. Not only is this behavior not shown by any known confined aquifer, but the age of such water according to the laws of physics is vastly older than any flood may have deposited. ....nearly all surface water and groundwater before the flood was 'fresh'.....most of the salt in the seas was released from deep down inside the Earth when the fountains of the great deep burst open!!!

29. Worldwide iridium layer – Although any worldwide flood evidence is lacking, there is a worldwide iridium layer at the K-T boundary where it exists. How could this iridium layer have been deposited among all those swirling waters in a flood? .....the swirling waters in Spirit Lake on Mount St Helens also deposited similar apparently delicate layers!!!!!

30. Deformed structures in metamorphosed sediments – There are areas in metamorphic rock where pebbles and even fossils have been stretched and deformed in processes that would have taken several times any 4500 years since a global flood. .....modern volcanoes can deform other rocks in a matter of seconds ....ditto with volcanic activity during the Flood!!!

J C · 13-11-2008 12:06am

....and I'll tackle the remaining 70 question later in the week!!!!

Mark Hamill · 13-11-2008 11:27am

Gareth37 wrote: »

Why must you believe in the false evolution theory when it brings no happiness?

So if you where to fall over and hurt yourself would you discount gravity because it brought you no happiness? Happiness is not a prerequisite for the truth.

Gareth37 wrote: »

It is not spiritual

The mess my dog left in the back garden isn't spiritual, but it still exists (as the sole of my shoe can attest to)

Gareth37 wrote: »

, it is just an unproven mathematical concept.

Actually I'm pretty sure its biological, not mathematical. And its been well proven by know.

Gareth37 wrote: »

Have faith in God!

Its perfect possible accept evolution and have faith in God, they arent mutually exclusive.

AtomicHorror · 13-11-2008 1:03pm

Edit: More or less rehashing Mark. Oops!

Gareth37 wrote: »

Why must you believe in the false evolution theory when it brings no happiness?

Assuming for a moment it brought no happiness, then why indeed? The theory of gravity says that if I step off a cliff of great height I will die. We might say that this theory also brings little happiness. Does our acceptance of a thing despite its unpalatable nature not lend weight to our reasons for believing? Every test have done on the theory of gravity has shown that our model is correct. Every test we have done on evolution has shown that model to be correct also. Whether it brings us happiness has no impact on its truth.

As it happens, it does not bring me any particular sadness. I do find the concept intellectually satisfying due to its simplicity.

Gareth37 wrote: »

It is not spiritual, it is just an unproven mathematical concept.

It is not spiritual, but it is very much "proven" beyond reasonable doubt.

Gareth37 wrote: »

Have faith in God!

Why?

AtomicHorror · 13-11-2008 1:09pm

rockbeer wrote: »

What a nightmare, debating with people who insist on putting words in your mouth all the time.

Or simply reposting them out of all context. I imagine that must hurt a lot. Don't worry too much about the scientific terminology, if you have logic on your side and access to Wikipedia, it'll all come together. Besides, neither Wolfsbane nor J C has any real grasp of science not desire to learn, so if you make the effort as you're doing you'll be miles ahead!

Galvasean · 13-11-2008 1:12pm

J C wrote: »

29. Worldwide iridium layer – Although any worldwide flood evidence is lacking, there is a worldwide iridium layer at the K-T boundary where it exists. How could this iridium layer have been deposited among all those swirling waters in a flood? .....the swirling waters in Spirit Lake on Mount St Helens also deposited similar apparently delicate layers!!!!!

Found an article about the St. Helemns incident. Nowhere near enough iridium to spread across the entire Earth.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/222/4628/1118
Iridium is still too rare on Earth to have left a layer across the entire planet.
Now if it came from a meteor (where iridium is very common) taht might do the trick.

AtomicHorror · 13-11-2008 1:28pm

J C wrote: »

....and I'll tackle the remaining 70 question later in the week!!!!

You could. Or you could try just answering the 5 questions you've been neglecting the longest. Here's an updated list, it is much shorter than Marco's list (which I suspect he did not intend for you to address in point by point style).

1. Provide a genetic test for Created Kinds. According to you, the taxa is both real and fundemental, so it should be innately more testable than any element of Linnean taxonomy, which is merely a labelling system.

2. Define "Created Pair" in biological and genetic terms. As with 1, this should be easy.

3. Explain whether you intentionally or unintentionally misquoted Dr. Gee in a context suggesting that he was talking about a topic that he was not actually addressing. Justify whichever choice you made in terms of your morals.

4. Please name some scientists currently engaged in creation research. Preferably provide examples of research papers (not reviews or essays) published in the last two years.

5. Please provide an example of the "downward mixing" that should be visible in the fossil record if it is actually evidence of a turbulent flood. We will accept any organism that should only have emerged in the last 100 million years being found at any dated layer below 400 million years. This would be rather modest mixing in the top 10% of layers, but one irrefutable example will suffice.

6. Please clearly confirm that you have now accepted that either a) Your Designer is inept b) your Designer is disinterested in individual human survival c) irreducible complexity is not evidence of design but of mutation or d) redundancy (and thus new function) can arise by mutation. This is not an arbitrary four-way choice, the logic is explained here.

wolfsbane · 14-11-2008 10:02pm

AtomicHorror said:

We've digressed now though. We're not even talking about the quote that J C posted. Whether Dr. Gee is actually correct is not the point. He was talking about anthropocentrism, but J C claimed that he was talking about evolution.

My question to you is whether you consider that dishonest and if so whether you think that that tactic is acceptable?

I've reviewed the exchanges between JC and yourself and basically this is what I see:

Atomic Horror:
Below you strongly imply that the quote that follows refers to the theory of evolution when it does not.

Quote:
Originally Posted by J C
.....you could start by addressing Dr Henry Gee's concerns about the very poor evidence for Spontaneous Evolution :-
"New fossil discoveries are fitted into this preexisting story. We call these new discoveries 'missing links', as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices. In reality, the physical record of human evolution is more modest. Each fossil represents an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gaps. " In Search of Deep Time (2001) p. 32

JC:
....the quote that I provided IS addressing a major deficiency in the so-called fossil record of Human Evolution....the inability to draw any meaningful conclusions about any link between so-called Hominid fossils....which he describes as floating "around in an overwhelming sea of gaps.”

Atomic Horror:
He's pointing out that the fossil record is limited. That's not a criticism of the theory of evolution, it's a simple statement of opinion regarding one of the means we use to test the theory and one that we understand well. Finding a fossil that doesn't fit the model would be be a challenge or criticism. So I ask you again, where is the fossil evidence that breaks the model?

It seems to me you think JC was claiming Gee was consciously questioning evolution. JC says he was pointing out that Gee was acknowledging the fossil record is not the strong witness to evolution that it is generally understood to be. No evidence of descent - just individual items floating "around in an overwhelming sea of gaps." That is, Gee was removing the fossils from the key supporting arguments of evolution, even though Gee still is a commited evolutionist.

Seems to me JC made a reasonable point. If a creationist acknowledged the virtual non-existence of particular evidence generally used to support creationism, you could rightly indicate we were aware of a problem.

So I conclude: JC is not guilty of any dishonesty. You have mistakenly read too much into what he was saying, or are trivializing the import of Gee's acknowledgement. From the fossil evidence being a strong supporter of evolution, it has been publically acknowledged by a leading evolutionist as being virtually mute.

rockbeer · 14-11-2008 10:13pm

wolfsbane wrote: »

It seems to me you think JC was claiming Gee was consciously questioning evolution. JC says he was pointing out that Gee was acknowledging the fossil record is not the strong witness to evolution that it is generally understood to be. No evidence of descent - just individual items floating "around in an overwhelming sea of gaps." That is, Gee was removing the fossils from the key supporting arguments of evolution, even though Gee still is a commited evolutionist.

Seems to me JC made a reasonable point. If a creationist acknowledged the virtual non-existence of particular evidence generally used to support creationism, you could rightly indicate we were aware of a problem.

So I conclude: JC is not guilty of any dishonesty. You have mistakenly read too much into what he was saying, or are trivializing the import of Gee's acknowledgement. From the fossil evidence being a strong supporter of evolution, it has been publically acknowledged by a leading evolutionist as being virtually mute.

You and J C are both quite wrong if that's your conclusion. Gee was absolutely not "removing the fossils from the key supporting arguments of evolution". He was questioning a particular evolutionary perspective - a human-centric view in which we are the pinnacle of a hierarchical view of nature. The perspective that suggests humans are somehow the crowning glory of evolution.

Notice the phrases that Dr Gee uses:

"...as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices."

"a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices"

"the physical record of human evolution is more modest"

He is discussing the way that in our attempts to understand evolution humans have elevated ourselves to occupy the central role in the theory, which is of course quite wrong, but not dissimilar to what most christians do when they identiy us as god's chosen species who he made in his own image.

It is Dr Gee's claim that is more modest that you make out - that we are in fact equal in value to all other species. He is emphatically not questioning the value of the fossil record as evidence for evolution.

But it doesn't surprise me that you sided with J C: I'd have expected nothing less.

wolfsbane · 14-11-2008 10:18pm

rockbeer wrote: »

You and J C are both quite wrong if that's your conclusion. Gee was absolutely not "removing the fossils from the key supporting arguments of evolution". He was questioning a particular evolutionary perspective - a human-centric view in which we are the pinnacle of a hierarchical view of nature. The perspective that suggests humans are somehow the crowning glory of evolution.

Notice the phrases that Dr Gee uses:

"...as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices."

"a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices"

"the physical record of human evolution is more modest"

He is discussing the way that in our attempts to understand evolution humans have elevated ourselves to occupy the central role in the theory, which is of course quite wrong, but not dissimilar to what most christians do when they identiy us as god's chosen species who he made in his own image.

It is Dr Gee's claim that is more modest that you make out - that we are in fact equal in value to all other species. He is emphatically not questioning the value of the fossil record as evidence for evolution.

But it doesn't surprise me that you sided with J C: I'd have expected nothing less.

I haven't read his book for the full context, so he might well have been making the human-humbling point too, but surely JC's point is clear enough when Gee says Each fossil represents an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gaps.

rockbeer · 15-11-2008 12:35am

wolfsbane wrote: »

I haven't read his book for the full context, so he might well have been making the human-humbling point too, but surely JC's point is clear enough when Gee says Each fossil represents an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gaps.

Ask yourself this: "an isolated point" in what, exactly?

Human evolution, of course.

He is saying that (in his opinion) there can be no certainty that one species of hominid followed another in an orderly chain with us at the top, as we like to imagine. Not that hominids are not related to each other or descended from a common ancestor.

marco_polo · 15-11-2008 2:06am

rockbeer wrote: »

Ask yourself this: "an isolated point" in what, exactly?

Human evolution, of course.

He is saying that (in his opinion) there can be no certainty that one species of hominid followed another in an orderly chain with us at the top, as we like to imagine. Not that hominids are not related to each other or descended from a common ancestor.

Indeed.

One point I believe he is making that some paleoanthropologists make too great an effort arguing over the exact order of the known homind fossils, more often than not under the assumption that it is must be a DIRECT decendent of modern humans, when it is more than possible that it could in fact be a member if alternative evolutionary side branch that ultimately died out.

AtomicHorror · 15-11-2008 2:09am

wolfsbane wrote: »

It seems to me you think JC was claiming Gee was consciously questioning evolution.

He was making that claim. He implied that the subject of the quote was "spontaneous evolution", which from him means the theory of evolution. He then shifted his focus when questioned further.

wolfsbane wrote: »

JC says he was pointing out that Gee was acknowledging the fossil record is not the strong witness to evolution that it is generally understood to be. No evidence of descent - just individual items floating "around in an overwhelming sea of gaps." That is, Gee was removing the fossils from the key supporting arguments of evolution, even though Gee still is a commited evolutionist.

Not quite. Gee's point was that the fossil record was being cherry-picked by some people who, rather lacking in imagination, would like to tell the story of how evolution gave birth to it's greatest achievement; man. They apply their assumptions to that. When we try to select the evidence in such a manner we do indeed get a disjointed and meagre data set. We get Neanderthals inserted before humans as some manner of linear ancestor. But evolution is not about humans, or rather, it is not only about humans. It's only when we take the fossil record as a whole that we begin to see the connections. By focusing on the accumulation of what we think of as "human traits" we build a skewed picture.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Seems to me JC made a reasonable point. If a creationist acknowledged the virtual non-existence of particular evidence generally used to support creationism, you could rightly indicate we were aware of a problem.

But the gaps in the fossil record do not represent a "virtual non-existence" of evidence at all. No more so than the spaces between dots in a join-the-dots picture could be considered to make the dots non-existent. How can thousands and thousands of fossils represent a lack of evidence?

We've made a prediction; that if all life shares common descent, we should see certain species within the fossil record at certain times. That's been confirmed thousands of times by new discoveries. Now, if we find a primate 200 million years ago or a dinosaur when there should be no vertebrates, then that prediction is out the window and you can pooh-pooh the fossil record all you like. But it hasn't happened and we've been looking for 150 years.

Gee is not talking about any of this. He's talking about presumption as to the exact path that evolution should take (ie to us) and how that makes no sense.

wolfsbane wrote: »

So I conclude: JC is not guilty of any dishonesty.

It's much more likely that he is guilty of lazy copying from a website. Those Gee quotes, those specific quotes and no others, are featured on at least two creationist websites with the same incorrect implication as to their subject. He was dishonest, but probably only due to his failure to check his source.

wolfsbane wrote: »

You have mistakenly read too much into what he was saying, or are trivializing the import of Gee's acknowledgement.

No. He claimed the subject of the quote was evolution. It was not. Simple as that.

wolfsbane wrote: »

From the fossil evidence being a strong supporter of evolution, it has been publically acknowledged by a leading evolutionist as being virtually mute.

Untrue. Once again, Gee was highlighting the danger of making assumptions about the path of a theory that has a complex output. Of trying to fit the fossil record to our assumptions rather than letting the fossil record, the other evidence and the theory speak for themselves.

If the true subject of J C's argument upon first quoting of that piece were the "inadequacy" of the fossil record, if we can call it such, then why not cut the quote further to isolate that point? Why mention the "pre-existing story" which was not in fact evolution, but the anthropocentric misinterpretation of it? Why imply that referred to evolution as a whole when it did not. I'm sorry but this was just another lame misquote.

So, summation. J C claimed the quote was a criticism of evolution. It was not. J C may have tried to shift the focus after that but ultimately he posted that quote and many others (such as the classic Darwin quote about the eye) out of correct context along with a nice little lead-in of his own, thus entirely changing their meaning. That is a dishonest tactic.

Combine that with:

-his tendency to proudly exclaim "So you are saying <insert something I'm not saying>" in response to partial posts or any keywords that catch his notice.
-his tendency to derail the thread down the "morals of the theory" route whenever he's asked a troubling question or,
-use a lewd comment for the same purpose or,
-start a semantic argument for the same purpose.

It always comes down to this crap. I'm here for a scientific debate. I've yet to get a scientific debate from a creationist here or anywhere.

marco_polo · 15-11-2008 3:43am

J C wrote: »

1. Angular unconformities – Angular unconformities are where sediments are laid down in layers, then tilted and eroded, then new sediments are deposited on top. How does a global flood simultaneously deposit, tilt, and erode in the same exact place?....the Flood processes extended over several years...so plenty of time for angular unconformities to develop as new sediment was laid down against 'older' rocks that had been uplifted/downthrusted ....and eroded by massive movements of water and debris!!!

What you need for this to occur is the following to occur:
-Sediment is deposited.
-Sediment turns to rock.
-Sediment is tilted and/or folded, sometimes so that bands are near vertical.
-Sediment is uplifted or sea level falls and erosion takes place.
-More sediment is deposited on top of the erosional surface.
-This new sediment turns to rock.
-In the case of the unconformities we see on the surface, erosion must take place again to expose it for us to see.

I would be interested to see the scientific models wherby a few hundred feet of water can achieve all this in a few years. What is the switch that turns the waters from deposit mode, to tilt mode, to erosion mode and back to depositmode? You can SAY it happened that way all you like JC, but such extraordinary and implausible geological behavior requires extraordinary evidence JC or at least a vaguely convincing theory.

2. Radiometric dating – All common forms of radiometric dating, including C14, K-Ar, Ar-Ar, Rb-Sr, Th-Pb, U-Pb, and fission track. The dates derived from these diverse methods, when properly interpreted rather than intentionally misapplied, show that all but the very most recent deposits in the geologic column is vastly older than any postulated flood....rocks of known recent vintage have been 'dated' at millions of years by these systems...and unless you know the starting amounts of parent and daughter material and that nothing was subsequently added or taken away from the rock....you can conclude absolutely nothing in relation to it's 'age'!!!

All the major dating methods agree to a high rate of accuracy about the age of the earth. Bit of a coincidence they are all agree on the "wrong" answer to such a tiny margin of error.

You show far too much faith in those who try to carbon date coal and diamonds. :rolleyes:

3. Fossil Sorting – The sorting of fossils in the geologic record is consistent with evolution and geology across all formations worldwide. There are basically no fossils of dinosaurs found with modern mammals, even when such dinosaurs could fly. There are no flowering plants in the Cambrian, no grasses, no mammals, and no birds. The overall sorting does not show any evidence consistent with a flood or settling in water.....a Dinosaur fossil has been found where the Dinosur was EATING a LARGE MAMMAL....and the reason that there areno flowering plants, grasses, mammals, and no birds in the Cambrian...is that any rock with such fossils WOULDN'T be classified as 'Cambrian'!!!!

For one thing the make up if the gelogical column was known long before the theory of evolution. If mammals were larger earlier than previously though and recent research seems to suggest that this iis the case it is meerly a refinement of scientific knowledge.

4. Varves – How does one create 20 million annual layers, each layer which would have taken at least a month to settle due to hydrodynamics as is observed in the Green River Formation? How does one explain seasonal of pollen grains found in the layers? .....the same way 20,000 layers of sediment was deposited in 3 HOURS during the Mount St Helen's eruption in 1980!!!

But I thought there were no large mountains before the Flood?

Also I believe that Mt St Hellens was on DRY LAND. In swirling flood waters how did this happed, unless the flood was in "deposit mode" for a couple of million years? (Note more than 6000)

5. Sedimentation rates – Why would there be Precambrian rocks below ones feet in the Canadian Shield area, yet the entire geologic column in the Williston Basin in North Dakota? Why would a global flood scour down to the Precambrian in one place yet at the same time deposit tens of thousands of feet of sediment in another when it is exactly the same process? Giant post-pyramid ice ages are not an explanation as there is no written record or other evidence of increased historical glaciation to the extent needed to scour the Canadian Shield down in the last 4500 years, not to mention such Precambrian rocks elsewhere on Earth like South Africa ....the so called 'pre-cambrian' rocks ...are actually the 'pre-flood' rocks....and it didn't need to scour down to them....these are just localised areas where flood deposition was minimal/non-existent!!

Again what are the mechanism by which the flood decides to be in deposit of erosion mode? Also if precambrian rock are pre flood rocks, then Cambrian rocks must be formed during the flood? How do you explain the CAMBRIAN rocks that contain no fossils of grass, flowers etc. Surely there were tons of this stuff swirling around at the time?

6. Lava layers with ancient soils between flows – How could lava forms which only exist with a land surface interface create interbedded deposits with paleosoils? ...lava flows are occurring intermittently right up to the present day...and there are equally intermittent deposition and formation of (highly fertile) soils between flows...where the intervals are only a few years.

In this case I think the onus on creation science to prove that this can happen in a meer few years. Perhaps you could elabourate on this point, or show me some research?

7. Ice sheets – Ice caps can’t reform in the time allotted since any global flood of 4500 years ago. .....the ice age directly followed the Flood because of 'nuclear winter' type conditions due to massive levels of dust and water vapour in the atmosphere and it lasted several hundred years....when vast quantities of snow were dumped in the higher latitudes. The snow became compacted into ice...and this eventually melted when the skies eventually cleared!!!
8. Ice core data with correlated known volcanic events – Ice cores can be dated back by multiple methods nearly a million years, yet show no evidence of a global flood. ....ice cores only go back a few thousand years

9. Ocean core data – Ocean cores would show unsorted piles of terrestrial life and different distributions in grain sizes than observed. They would also show little difference in thickness between the mid Atlantic ridge and near subduction zones, which is not what is observed. .....don't see this being conclusive one way or the other!!!

The oldest Ice cores are over 800,000 years or more. The more recent layers match known major events exactly. There is no basis to the assertion that the other hundreds of thousands of layers occured in a mere few years

Perhaps you define the ocean cores as being not very signifigent as the order of marine life fossils found cannot be explained by creationists

10. Paleomagnetism – Because the Earth’s magnetic field has reversed polarity and has wandered over the globe in the past, certain igneous rocks show such preferred magnetic orientations when sufficiently cooled. By mapping these directions and reversals, which correlate with radioisotope dating and stratigraphy, it is easily shown that the vast majority of seafloor sediments, along with most volcanic rock, are way too old to have been deposited by any flood. In fact such measurements are one of the great evidences for plate tectonics, which alone invalidate a global flood. ...rapid magnetic inversions accompanied the flood processes as the Earth's mantle convulsed and spewed forth huge quantities of molten magma and superheated water all over the earth!!!

I was not aware that very large eruptions could cause rapid magnetic polarity flips. Any evidence for this phenomon?

11. Volcanism – According to ‘flood geology’ every igneous rock layer that overlays sedimentary rock would have to be less than 4500 years old. Yet, historical records indicate this tremendous amount of simultaneous volcanic activity could not have occurred in recent times because someone would have noticed, becoming extinct and all when the atmosphere becomes unbreathable. Such a position directly contradicts the existence of the Deccan Traps which are up to 2 km thick and 500,000 square km in extent, yet supposedly erupted in India despite any historic evidence, after such a flood. .....you forget that everyone in India at the time were DEAD....the only survivors were Noah and his family.....thousands of miles away!!!!

Perhaps it just never happened. Do not forget those pesky Chineese and Egypians who kept writing and building things even though they were dead and underwater?

12. Ore deposit formation rates – Most ore deposits require a longer period of time to separate their constituent elements and then cool to create an economically viable source of minerals. ...oh no they don't!

13. Evaporites – The existence of evaporate deposits thousands of feet thick are incompatible with any global flood as they are formed through evaporation rather than through the addition of fresh water. ......it is amazing how evporation can be speeded up with super-heated land underneath and driving the water off as steam!!!

It is amazing how all these process can magically speed up to suit the story. Again more information in particular as to how deep ore depoits can form in only a few years.

14. Carbonates – The huge amount of CO2 in the atmosphere prior to being locked into carbonate rock would have made the planet resemble Venus. There would have been no life to drown. ....there was a greenhouse effect all over te Earth before the Flood ...but MOST of the carbon in mineral oils, for example, was innate within the earth..and never was in the atmosphere.

What was keeping it all innate if not carbonates?

15. Microfossil deposits - Thick deposits of microfossils in limestone, diatomaceous chert, and chalk that could not settle to such a degree of thickness in the time allotted for any global flood. .....microfossils represent a vanishingly small percentage of all limestone....which is mostly made up of raw CaCO3!!!!!

And "raw" CaCO3 came from? Millions and millions of shells, corals etc building up over billions of years.

Thats enough for now.

In conclusion some 'creation science' please to back up your assertions. :pac:

AtomicHorror · 15-11-2008 1:33pm

It's sure be nice if J C could show us some data confirming at least the possibility of the above mentioned geological processes. The rapid sedimentation in point 1 for example. In fact, let's update our list!

1. Provide a genetic test for Created Kinds. According to you, the taxa is both real and fundemental, so it should be innately more testable than any element of Linnean taxonomy, which is merely a labelling system.

2. Define "Created Pair" in biological and genetic terms. As with 1, this should be easy.

3. Explain whether you intentionally or unintentionally misquoted Dr. Gee in a context suggesting that he was talking about a topic that he was not actually addressing. Justify whichever choice you made in terms of your morals.

4. Please name some scientists currently engaged in creation research. Preferably provide examples of research papers (not reviews or essays) published in the last two years.

5. Please provide an example of the "downward mixing" that should be visible in the fossil record if it is actually evidence of a turbulent flood. We will accept any organism that should only have emerged in the last 100 million years being found at any dated layer below 400 million years. This would be rather modest mixing in the top 10% of layers, but one irrefutable example will suffice.

6. Please clearly confirm that you have now accepted that either a) Your Designer is inept b) your Designer is disinterested in individual human survival c) irreducible complexity is not evidence of design but of mutation or d) redundancy (and thus new function) can arise by mutation. This is not an arbitrary four-way choice, the logic is explained here

7. Please provide data confirming the rapid sedimentation/rock formation processes that you describe as occurring during the The Flood. The data may be from any primary source but must be based upon wet lab or field work data, rather than a mathematical model or simulation. Since you describe the process as having taken only a few years, this should be testable.

J C · 15-11-2008 8:55pm

AtomicHorror wrote: »

It's sure be nice if J C could show us some data confirming at least the possibility of the above mentioned geological processes. The rapid sedimentation in point 1 for example. In fact, let's update our list!

1. Provide a genetic test for Created Kinds. According to you, the taxa is both real and fundemental, so it should be innately more testable than any element of Linnean taxonomy, which is merely a labelling system.

2. Define "Created Pair" in biological and genetic terms. As with 1, this should be easy.

3. Explain whether you intentionally or unintentionally misquoted Dr. Gee in a context suggesting that he was talking about a topic that he was not actually addressing. Justify whichever choice you made in terms of your morals.

4. Please name some scientists currently engaged in creation research. Preferably provide examples of research papers (not reviews or essays) published in the last two years.

5. Please provide an example of the "downward mixing" that should be visible in the fossil record if it is actually evidence of a turbulent flood. We will accept any organism that should only have emerged in the last 100 million years being found at any dated layer below 400 million years. This would be rather modest mixing in the top 10% of layers, but one irrefutable example will suffice.

6. Please clearly confirm that you have now accepted that either a) Your Designer is inept b) your Designer is disinterested in individual human survival c) irreducible complexity is not evidence of design but of mutation or d) redundancy (and thus new function) can arise by mutation. This is not an arbitrary four-way choice, the logic is explained here

7. Please provide data confirming the rapid sedimentation/rock formation processes that you describe as occurring during the The Flood. The data may be from any primary source but must be based upon wet lab or field work data, rather than a mathematical model or simulation. Since you describe the process as having taken only a few years, this should be testable.

.....more 'Groundhog Day' circular questioning....and a few gratuitous insults directed at me .... to which you have already received answers!!!!

..I refuse to waste the time the Good Lord gave me going around in circles with you.

J C · 15-11-2008 9:07pm

...and here are a few frank admissions from the late great Professor Stephen J Gould on just how objective modern science really is:-
"Facts do not "speak for themselves"; they are read in the light of theory. Creative thought, in science as much as in the arts, is the motor of changing opinion. Science is a quintessentially human activity, not a mechanized, robotlike accumulation of objective information, leading by laws of logic to inescapable interpretation." Ever Since Darwin (1979) pp.161-162 †

"Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than information processors. Changes in theory are not simply the derivative results of the new discoveries but the work of creative imagination influenced by contemporary social and political forces." Ever Since Darwin (1979) p.201 †

....and Prof Gould had the following to say about the Evolutionist 'misconceptions' that surrounds the infamous Scope's Trial in 1925:-
"The Scopes trial is surrounded by misconceptions, and their exposure provides as good a way as any for recounting the basic story. In the heroic version, Jobn Scopes was persecuted, Darrow rose to Scope's defense and smote the antediluvian Bryan, and the antievolution movement then dwindled or ground to at least a temporary halt. All three parts of this story are false." Hens Teeth and Horse's Toes (1980) p.270

Nodin · 15-11-2008 9:14pm

J C wrote: »

...and (.........1980) p.270

None of which goes towards answering any of the pertinent questions put to you by Atomic Horror.

rockbeer · 15-11-2008 9:57pm

J C wrote: »

.....more 'Groundhog Day' circular questioning....and a few gratuitous insults directed at me .... to which you have already received answers!!!!

..I refuse to waste the time the Good Lord gave me going around in circles with you.

J C, even by your standards this is extraordinarily disingenuous, not to mention craven. Don't you have the courage to look us in the (metaphorical) eye and own up to your mistakes?

What is circular about asking you to provide data? You haven't provided any data, just a lot of unsubstantiated opinions. If that's how you think scientific enquiry progresses no wonder you're having a few problems with it.

For shame.

P.S. I notice you don't quote Henry Gee again, for which he at least will be thankful.

AtomicHorror · 15-11-2008 10:57pm

J C wrote: »

.....more 'Groundhog Day' circular questioning....and a few gratuitous insults directed at me .... to which you have already received answers!!!!

..I refuse to waste the time the Good Lord gave me going around in circles with you.

That's a list of unanswered questions J C. If it feels like groundhog day that may be because you wont address these questions at all, let alone answer them.

robindch · 16-11-2008 12:50pm

J C wrote: »

I refuse to waste the time [...] going around in circles with you.

Huh? JC, m'dear, you've been going around in tiny circles for three and a half years. Why stop now?

J C · 16-11-2008 3:01pm

rockbeer wrote: »

P.S. I notice you don't quote Henry Gee again, for which he at least will be thankful.

....sorry to disappoint you....but here is another very pertinent quote from Dr Henry Gee....this time it is NOT Human Evolution that he is talking about ....but supposed Dinosaur Evolution....and guess what..... this quote has roughly the same problems that the previous quote had with Human Evolution....now please tell me WHO is being devious on this thread????

"Dinosaurs are fossils, and, like all fossils, they are isolated tableaux illuminating the measureless corridor of Deep Time. To recall what I said in chapter 1, no fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way, whether we are talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs, or chains of ancestry and descent. Everything we think we know about the causal relations of events in Deep Time has been invented by us, after the fact." In Search of Deep Time (2001) p.113
I like Dr Gee's honest admission that "no fossil is buried with its birth certificate".....and "everything we think we know about the causal relations of events in Deep Time has been invented by us, after the fact"
....would that the 'moralising moaners' on this thread were as forthright in their comments about Evolution!!!!:eek::):D

....sounds like Dr. Gee's use of the word EVERYTHING above DOES mean that ALL of Evolution and the supposed causal relations of events in Deep Time are open to question!!!!

.....and I therefore WASN'T misquoting Dr. Gee on the specifics of Human Evolution.....NOR the generalities of ALL Evolution!!!

.....so WHO really was LYING on this thread????

...and here are a few more frank admissions from the late great Professor Stephen J Gould on the forensic nature of the historical sciences.....including the 'origins' sciences ....like Evolutionary Biology and Creation Science :-
"The Nobel prizes focus on quantitive nonhistorical, deductively oriented fields with their methodology of perturbation by experiment and establishment of repeatable chains of relatively simple cause and effect. An entire set of disciplines, different through equal in scope and status, but often subjected to ridicule because they do not follow this pathway of "hard" science is thereby ignored: the historical sciences, treating immensely complex and nonrepeatable events (and therefore eschewing prediction while seeking explanation for what has happened) and using the methods of observation and comparison.

Evolutionary biology is a quintessential historical discipline. " Science January 20 1984 p.255 †:eek::):D

AtomicHorror · 16-11-2008 3:17pm

J C wrote: »

....sorry to disappoint you....but here is another very pertinent quote from Dr Henry Gee....this time it is NOT Human Evolution that he is talking about ....but supposed Dinosaur Evolution....and guess what..... this quote has roughly the same problems that the previous quote had with Human Evolution....now please tell me WHO is being devious on this thread????

"Dinosaurs are fossils, and, like all fossils, they are isolated tableaux illuminating the measureless corridor of Deep Time. To recall what I said in chapter 1, no fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way, whether we are talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs, or chains of ancestry and descent. Everything we think we know about the causal relations of events in Deep Time has been invented by us, after the fact." In Search of Deep Time (2001) p.113
I like Dr Gee's honest admission that "no fossil is buried with its birth certificate".....and "everything we think we know about the causal relations of events in Deep Time has been invented by us, after the fact"
....would that the 'moralising moaners' on this thread were as forthright in their comments about Evolution!!!!:eek::):D

....sounds like Dr. Gee's use of the word EVERYTHING above DOES mean that ALL of Evolution and the supposed causal relations of events in Deep Time are open to question!!!!

.....and I therefore WASN'T misquoting Dr. Gee on the specifics of Hiuman Evolution.....NOR the generalities of ALL Evolution!!!

.....so WHO really was LYING on this thread????

He's saying that humans invented the theory of evolution. Of course they did. It's a scientific model that links the data points together. It's the trend line on a scatter plot. Does this make it untrue? No. The outliers, if in great numbers and inexplicable by error, make it untrue. The model, if considered sufficient, is taken as a model of "fact" until shown otherwise. The data points are numerous enough to give us confidence that this is so. We haven't found any outliers. Thus the model, invented or otherwise, suffices.

So, firstly you are putting words in Dr. Gee's mouth by implying that his efforts to discern between theory, evidence and fact represent a lack of confidence in the theory or the evidence (such as it is), when there is no indication of that at all and secondly, you are once again confusing a scientific opinion for evidence.

Please provide the evidence and please address at least some of the ever-growing list of questions that you have so far been unable to answer.

AtomicHorror · 16-11-2008 3:20pm

Also, if there are any unanswered questions that you would like answered, please feel free to list them. I should say though, that'll I'll be very unimpressed with any list reproduced from another source.

J C · 16-11-2008 3:27pm

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Also, if there are any unanswered questions that you would like answered, please feel free to list them. I should say though, that'll I'll be very unimpressed with any list reproduced from another source.

.....we have BOTH been over most of the questions (and answers) on both sides of this debate.....I prefer, at this stage, to open our collective minds to the ideas of great scientists on the topic:-

....again the following very intuitive quotes from the from the late great Professor Stephen J Gould are well worth the effort required to read them:-

"We cannot understand much of the history of late 19th and early 20th century anthropology, with its plethora of taxonomic names proposed for nearly every scrap of fossil bone, unless we appreciate its obsession with the identification and ranking of races. For many schemes of classification sought to tag the various fossils as ancestors of modern races and to use their relative age and apishness as a criterion for racial superiority. " Natural History November 1984 p. 28 †

"Sediments between 4 and 10 million years in age are potential guardians of the Holy Grail of human evolution--the period when our lineage began its separate end run to later domination, and a time for which no fossil evidence exists at all." "Empire of the Apes" Natural History May 1987 p.24 "I can understand such an attitude directed toward photographs of objects -- through opportunities for subtle manipulation are legion even here. But many of our pictures are incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature. These are the most potent sources of conformity, since ideas passing as descriptions lead us to equate the tentative with the unambiguously factual. Suggestions for the organization of thought are transformed to established patterns in nature. Guesses and hunches become things." Wonderful Life (1991) p.28 †

J C · 16-11-2008 4:32pm

.....and here the late great Prof Gould weighed up the evidence for Darwin's supposed 'gradualism'....and found it to be practically NON-EXISTENT ...both in Darwin's time AND today!!!!

BTW the 'Cambrian explosion' to which Prof Gould refers, is ACTUALLY the first great fossilisation event of Noah's Flood .... when the 'fountains of the great deep' burst open, releasing massive quantities of calcium carbonate and sediment-rich waters, that entombed and fosilised vast numbers of bottom-dwelling marine creatures!!!!

"Darwin invoked his standard argument to resolve this uncomfortable problem: the fossil record is so imperfect that we do not have evidence for most events of life's history. But even Darwin acknowledged that his favorite ploy was wearing a bit thin in this case. His argument could easily account for a missing stage in a single linage, but could the agencies of imperfection really obliterate absolutely all evidence for positively every creature during most of life's history? Darwin admitted: "The case as present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." (1859, p.308)

Darwin has been vindicated by a rich Precambrian record, all discovered in the past thirty years. Yet the peculiar character of this evidence has not matched Darwin's prediction of a continuous rise in complexity toward Cambrian life, and the problem of the Cambrian explosion has remained as stubborn as ever -- if not more so, since our confusion now rests on knowledge, rather than ignorance about the nature of Precambrian life. " Wonderful Life. (1991) p.57 †

AtomicHorror · 16-11-2008 4:58pm

J C wrote: »

.....we have BOTH been over most of the questions (and answers) on both sides of this debate.....I prefer, at this stage, to open our collective minds to the ideas of great scientists on the topic:-

Untrue. You have not so much as attempted to answer my questions. Actually, scratch that. You gave a vague answer to question 6, I'll give you that.

And now you return to your tactic of spamming quotes from scientists. They're out of context and they wouldn't constitute evidence even if they were not.

Nodin · 16-11-2008 6:00pm

J C wrote: »

....sorry to disappoint you....but here is another very pertinent quote from Dr Henry Gee.

It's not pertinent, or relevant. Its also yet another example of whats referred to as "Quote Mining". Given what I've seen over your last few posts, its a phrase I'd imagine you're already familiar with.

The Good Dr is not a creationist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Gee

AtH put seven questions to you, which are quite relevant to the subject at hand. Not being able to tackle all seven is not a sign of inability to back up ones own case, but being unwilling to even make an attempt is rather telling.

J C wrote: »

...and here are a few more frank admissions from the late great Professor Stephen J Gould .

Late and great perhaps, but most certainly not a creationist....

One reason for such criticism was that Gould appeared to be presenting his ideas as a revolutionary way of understanding evolution, and he argued for the importance of mechanisms other than natural selection, mechanisms which he believed had been sidelined by other researchers. As a result, many non-specialists sometimes inferred from his early writings that Darwinian explanations had been proven to be unscientific (which Gould never tried to imply). Along with many other researchers in the field, Gould's works were sometimes deliberately taken out of context by creationists as a "proof" that scientists no longer understood how organisms evolved. [39] Gould himself corrected some of these misinterpretations and distortions of his writings in later works

(my bold and underline)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_j_gould

Theres a few more, including Darwin, that are used over and over, as are certain incidents, such as Piltdown man, a manipulated fossil that appeared in National Geographic etc. All very repetive, dull and recycled.

J C wrote: »

.....we have BOTH been over most of the questions (and answers) on both sides of this debate.....I prefer, at this stage, to open our collective minds to the ideas of great scientists on the topic:-.

So far, none of those you've mentioned actually back your position in any shape or form. Furthermore, now I've pointed out this fact, with sources, any further use of them after this post lays you open to accusations of deliberate dishonesty.

wolfsbane · 16-11-2008 6:18pm

rockbeer wrote: »

Ask yourself this: "an isolated point" in what, exactly?

Human evolution, of course.

He is saying that (in his opinion) there can be no certainty that one species of hominid followed another in an orderly chain with us at the top, as we like to imagine. Not that hominids are not related to each other or descended from a common ancestor.

Er, I think that is the point JC was making - Gee continues to hold the belief in evolution, but accepts the fossil record can't be used to support it.

marco_polo · 16-11-2008 6:30pm

wolfsbane wrote: »

Er, I think that is the point JC was making - Gee continues to hold the belief in evolution, but accepts the fossil record can't be used to support it.

Are you ignoring, or do you just not understand, all the replies that have shown that this is not what he is saying at all.

"The Discovery Institute has used unauthorized, selective quotations from my book In Search of Deep Time to support their outdated, mistaken views."

- Henry Gee

The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

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