The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

wolfsbane

samb said:

So if you did not believe in God you would carry out immoral acts? Why?

Because they would benefit you and there is no reason not to. Let me put it in a practical context:
What reason would you give to the unemployed youth to stop him making a very profitable living controlling prostitutes or dealing drugs? He has assessed the risks: imprisonment (little chance, but a good profit even if he is caught); killed by rivals (significant chance, but worth the risk to him).

I think you are immoral if the only reason you are 'Good' is because you are afraid of God. You have no morality, you just obey Gods.

That is not my only reason: I also love Him because of Who He is and for what He has done for me; and I love my fellowman because God made him in His image.

I happy with God's morality being mine: I couldn't invent one nearly so good.:)

wolfsbane

Scofflaw said:

So, do you follow Christianity because you find it moral, or follow Christian morality because you are Christian?

The latter. When God revealed himself to me, I gladly accepted His assessment of reality.

In addition, Christian morality seems to me to be something of an a la carte from the Old and New Testaments. There are few Christians who condone slavery (per OT), but there are plenty who condemn homosexuality (per OT). The Bible is equally clear on both (as indeed it is on wearing garments of two kinds), but it seems there's an opt-out for one, but not for the other - I'm sure you've seen this. How do you reconcile these, or otherwise explain it?

The New Testament explains this: many of the laws given to the nation of Israel were civil, for the regulation of the State (e.g. eye for eye, ban on usury, restrictions on slavery, divorce). Some were ceremonial, to teach spiritual truths by type and shadow (e.g. clean and unclean, mixed garments). Others were and are eternal moral laws, e.g. murder, theft, homosexuality, adultery.

Not all of these laws implied God's approval of the practices they regulated. Divorce, for instance, was tolerated by the Law but contrary to God's standards:
Matthew 19:7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”
8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

With respect to your comments on the decline of public morality, specifically in terms of criminal acts - by and large, this comes back to my question about communities: I think criminality is higher in larger, more anonymous areas, and that increasing urbanisation (or suburbanisation) generally correlates with increases in crime. In addition, I would point out that a lot more domestic crime (particularly spousal and child abuse) was hushed up, and that social rules were far harsher on criminals than they now are. As to the locking of doors - to be honest, I think this is largely about perception. I lived in Aberdeen for a couple of years, and one particular year we all came back to Ireland for Christmas, leaving the house unlocked for two weeks. In most small communities you can still happily leave the car unlocked, although I wouldn't try it on O'Connell Street. A lot of this is about selling newsapers.

Those are certainly part of the reason for the decline. But moving a morally motivated person into town doesn't mean he must become immoral. It means his traditional outlook that gave rise to his morals will be exposed to the outlook/worldview of the new community. Towns are usually more 'modern' in outlook than countryside, so the moral standards increasing reflect the Western vision: materialism, hedonism, atheism/agnosticism.

As to the "evolutionary" worldview allowing criminals to kid themselves that what they're doing is OK - no, I don't agree. I think there is, or was (I'm hoping it's in decline) a soft focus on crime that encouraged the perpetrator to think of themself as a "social victim", and alongside that there is an unwillingness by the majority to get involved, which tends to correlate with increased affluence (and, I would add, television, although that's a personal hobbyhorse) - you might call it a moral laziness of the kind shown up in the story of the Good Samaritan. None of these are related to evolution in any way, and I don't think that you can deny they are strong factors in any perceived decline of public morality - as is increasing age, alas!

Again, these are factors in the problem. It is not just atheism that prescribes faulty remedies; the religious thinking that holds we are naturally good has thrown up the soft on crime mentality. Atheistic regimes take a more sensible view.

But atheism can offer no reason why we should not oppress one another, other than a big stick if we do. If we can be reasonably certain we can get away with it, there remains nothing to restrain the unbeliever's wickedness. That is why the hoodies and other criminals so afflict our society: we behave according to how we think, if we can get away with it. They have been nurtured on an evolutionary world-view: that we have evolved from star-dust, without the need of any god; that the supernatural world which our ancestors believed in was just an infantile fairy-tale. Any morality suggested by society is man-made, for the good of most perhaps, or only a ruse to protect the interests of the powerful. But nothing to stand in the way of me making life good for myself, even at the expense of others.

I posed the question to samb and would like to hear your response too:
What reason would you give to the unemployed youth to stop him making a very profitable living controlling prostitutes or dealing drugs? He has assessed the risks: imprisonment (little chance, but a good profit even if he is caught); killed by rivals (significant chance, but worth the risk to him).

What's your own answer to that question wolfsbane? God said so and will be angry if he does it?
No offence intended, I'm honestly curious

wolfsbane

Assyrian said:

When did death become the enemy of God?

When it touched His people.

The only answer that make sense to me is that death was part of the natural world God created and only became an enemy when man sinned and death became the final barrier between sinful man and God.

That would make it no punishment to the wicked, since it was everyone's lot to begin with, in your system. But its penal nature was spelled out to Adam. Or do you hold that this creature who had evolved from non-human ape-like beings had so evolved as to be immortal, not subject to suffering and death?

I think Adam and Eve are an allegorical picture of people, the human race, though I know many TEs who take them literally. I suspect the long lifespans are not literal, or we misunderstand them, but I don't think my understanding of Genesis would change that much if archaeologists unearthed Methuselah's bus pass. Yes the bus bit would be a problem, not his age. I see no reason why there can't be gaps in genealogies too. I don't think you can simply add up the ages and get the date of the flood or creation.

I see why you as a TE can believe in a non-literal Adam and Eve: since the rest of the Creation account is not literal, why should Adam and Eve be so? I take it you hold to some form of ensoulment of a species? We would therefore be descended from many first parents. How would you see Man's Fall then? It can hardly be that all of them sinned like in the biblical account? Is the notion of sin itself metaphoric, just a way of describing how man has always behaved, a device just to enourage certain moral standards?

Or is everyone on this list heading for an eternity in Hell, unless they repent and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour?

As to a literal Adam and Eve, the genealogies insist on a literal understanding of them as our first parents. The credibility of one hangs with the other. If the Genesis end is mythical, we need not give any weight to the Gospel records. Christ's descent from Adam, Abraham, Israel, David stands open to the same treatment as Adam and Eve get.

I think the flood is one we know about from geology or archaeology, you don't get a serious flood like that without leaving traces. The most likely candidates are the flooding of the Mesopotamian valley, the Black Sea, or the Mediterranean Basin which was much earlier. But there is no evidence of a global flood.

That is where Creationists disagree: see for example http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/global10.asp

Except that the Genesis account does not describe a very diverse gene pool come off the ark, but rather an extremely limited breeding stock of only a single pair of each of the unclean kinds.

You confuse the genetic pool possessed by those birds with what one would find now.

Of course you must think taking up our cross and following him is just ridiculous. Jesus would never ask us to do something so uncomfortable and inconvenient...

No, just faithfulness to Him in the face of suffering and oppression. That doesn't make them 'very good'. Survival of the fittest may sound good to TEs, and be the vehicle for creation's success: but it is sin and its consequences to the rest of Christianity.

Assyrian

bmoferrall wrote:

It's seems to me that mysteries about the origins of consciousness or 'life force' remain. Can their essence really be distilled down to the level of atoms/molecules? As for souls/spirits, I guess any understanding of these (for those that believe we have them) is outside the remit of science and belongs in the realm of the supernatural. I presume I'm right in thinking that the atheist believes any differences between us and other creatures can be explained purely in naturalistic terms (higher intelligence, being top of the evolutionary tree, etc.)?

Science does not understand consciousness but does seek to understand it in terms of natural processes. It is not just a question of bigger, more intelligent. When system get bigger the change is not always linear. You also get new phenomena emerging that you cannot always predict from scaling up the smaller version. In other word, the whole is not just greater than the sum of the parts, it can also be very different. A very simple example is that 7 poodles is not just 7xPoodle. 7 poodles is a Pack, and boy do they know it.

For the atheist, the naturalistic explanation of consciousness will be all there is to it. I think for the Christian, regardless of what the our consciousness is, or how it originated or was formed, whether it is built into the chemistry of our genetic code or added supernaturally, it is a gift from God. It was God's plan for us from the beginning and its purpose is that we can have fellowship with one another and with him.

Not having any background in the life sciences, I have to rely on others to illuminate the various issues for me, an unavoidable (for now) position I'd rather not be in. I know from my own chosen discipline that superficial knowledge of a subject will only take you so far. Therefore, any presuppositions I may have about the validity of evolution are probably useless; the argument that's it seems impossibly complex doesn't hold water - I still marvel at the ingenuity involved in designing and producing something like a silicon chip. The conviction of so many here (and elsewhere) that there is bad science on the Creationist side cannot be lightly dismissed by the layman; if this is true, I hope it is weeded out in due course.
I've dismissed the theistic evolution perspective up to now as coming from the casual/liberal 'sunday worshipper' who either has little knowledge of the bible, or doesn't regard it as a reliable record of God's word. It's clear to me that Assyrian has a substantial knowledge of both the science and the theology involved. Whether gradual evolution can be somehow reconciled with the Genesis creation account seems to at least depend on whether death/violence could have been allowed (by God) to exist amongst living creatures (and be seen as 'good') in the period before God 'created' Adam, and before Adam 'fell/died' (spiritually/physically). There are other objections (literal 6 days, etc.) from the creationist perspective but that seems to be a key one anyway. I still hold the belief that God could have, and may have, created everything in a week had he so wished. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't in any great hurry and preferred to establish the necessary laws at the outset, knowing in advance that they would eventually lead to what we see today ('one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day').

If you want a good liberal free perspective have a look at the book Reason Science and Faith by Roger Forster and Dr Paul Marston. Roger Forster is the founder of Ichthus Christian Fellowships in the UK, Graham Kendrick's church. At 480 pages, it is probably easier to read if you buy a copy, but it is available as a free download from
http://www.ivycottage.org/group/group.aspx?id=6826

Take care,
Assyrian

J C

Wicknight
you don't need to know the date of the rock, you just need to know its position relative to the other rocks layer. And low and behold the same species consistantly appear in the same position of rock layer even over large distances apart. That makes absolutely no sense if they all died at the same time

It does make sense if the rock layers represent the order of ‘Flood burial’.

“The same species consistently appearing in the same position of rock layer over large distances apart” is actually proof of a WORLDWIDE CONTEMPORANEOUS process, like Noah’s Flood – and not diverse localised fossilisation events ongoing over billions of years - as postulated by Gradual Evolution.


Wicknight
As I said, geologists do not rely solely on the species of fossil found in rock to date it. If they did your argument might makes sense, but they don't so the dates of the fossils are independently verified.

HOW are the ages of the rock independently verified?

I hope that you don’t think that radiometric dating can do this.
When it singularly fails** with rocks of known recent age – can it be expected to do any better with older rocks of unknown vintage?

**For example, rock samples taken from submarine lava flows from Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, which are known to have occurred in the 1950’s, have been radiometrically ‘dated’ at 4 million years old.

One of the reasons why nuclear decay rates in rocks can be ‘apparently altered’ dramatically is because the radioactive component being measured in the rock is differentially water soluble. For example, the leaching of water soluble Potassium salts within a rock can confound the Potassium/Argon test.


Wicknight
Also you still haven't answered my question, how do you explain the ordered layering of fossil in side rock layers if they all died at the same time?
Order of Flood Burial due to their three-dimensional ‘position’ in the ‘ecological column’ so to speak.
Equally, their hydrological characteristics such as shape, size, etc also explains some of the finds where movement and water sorting is a feature of the deposit.


Wicknight
There is not nearly enough "sediment" on Earth to bury all perihistoric sea creates. There isn't 1% of the sediment need to do that.

There clearly WAS enough sediment generated by the Flood processes – and the deep layers of sedimentary rock amply testify to this fact.


Wicknight
The "Geological Column" as you incorrectly call it, is not made up of sediment JC. It is made up of solid structured layers of rock.

It IS called the ‘Geological Column’ and it IS largely made up of Sedimentary Rock layers.


Wicknight
The pressures required to construct these rocks in the time period you claim would be greater than any force known to exist on Earth. You are talking nonsense.

We’re not talking about Diamonds here, Wicknight – only sedimentation and cementing processes producing rock.

Please note that modern concrete sets just as hard as sedimentary rock – without ANY pressure!!

All types of sedimentary rock are found to have outcrops. The fact that the rocks in the outcrops are identical to the same type of rock 200 metres below also indicates that ‘pressure’ has little effect on petrification processes

It’s chemistry - and not physics that largely accounts for rock formation from deposited sediment.

I’ll defer to the reader to judge where the nonsense lies on this issue!!


Wicknight
Not top of the food chain dinosars JC that is ridiculous. And certainly not millions of them. They would simply eat everything else!

Only a minority of Dinosaur species were Carnivores – most were Herbivores.

The ante-diluvian ecosystem was also much more robust than our current much-weakened environment.

It could therefore readily support millions of top Dinosaur Omnivores – just like our current ecosystem supports six billion Human top Omnivores and indeed millions of top Predators as well.


Wicknight
Yes, I got 104 results (5 of them are this thread itself). The rest are using the words "critical amino acid sequence", but this is not some kind of special term - it's what's called "part of a sentence" - in some cases it may even be the critical part of the sentence. One thing it definitely is not is some kind of "major discovery".

And 9 million hits without the commas....oooh. Are there really 9 million web pages that contain the words "amino" or "acid" or "critical", or "sequence"? That's...well, what can I say?

I have taken you to the water!!

You’ll become severely dehydrated if you keep refusing to drink (the rich waters of Creation Science)!!!


Scofflaw
Fossilisation is known to be a rare event - much as any kind of accidental preservation is known to be. Plus you're obviously unaware that there are limestones which exactly match your description (assemblages of bone held together with small quantity of sediment) chalk being a good example?

One end of your statement is apparently arguing with the other – you are saying that fossilisation is RARE but some limestones are PACKED FULL of fossilised bones.

The explanation for this apparent paradox is that fossilisation is NOW rare – but it was quite COMMON during the Flood.

Equally, most limestones actually contain surprisingly few fossils – and the predominant source of their Calcium Carbonate is NOT organic.

Even if I accept, for the sake of argument, that it WAS organic – Evolutionary Geology lacks an adequate explanation for where the vast quantities of Calcium came from, in the first place.


Scofflaw
You're not running Windows, then?

Do please take some time out to read up on some basic science, JC. Maybe some computer science while you're at it.

I am running Windows.

Does your Windows applications NEVER ‘crash’ on you?

I also have formal computer programming qualifications and I can assure you from bitter experience that even one misplaced comma in Source Code WILL cause problems.

Computer code and DNA code are both TIGHTLY SPECIFIED information storage and retrieval systems – but DNA is vastly superior.

Equally, the jargon of Computer Science reflects it’s many direct parallels with living systems – obvious examples include the use of biological terms such as bugs, worms and viruses.

J C

Wicknight
Not only is it (life) possible, it is likely.

Once you have a self replicating molecule (admitable an unlikely event, but then we did have an entire planet full of unstable molecules, and powerful energy source and 1.5 billion years), natural selection will produce very complex and structured organic systems.

You are all over the shop!!!

First you say that life arising spontaneously “is likely” – and in the next sentence you say that a self replicating molecule is “an unlikely event”.

What am I to believe?

I have already told you that even if an undirected process had every electron in the known universe working feverishly for 1,000 billion years, it couldn’t generate a sequence for a specific 100 Amino Acid Protein.
I'd call that an 'impossible event'.


Wicknight
It takes fecking ages (it took another 2.5 billion years to get from a self-replicating molecule to a single cell) but it is predictable that it will happen.

WHY is it predictable that it will happen?

If it is dead, it will remain dead.


Wicknight
JC how many times to I have to explain this to you, this has been understood and modelled for years. There are a large number of theories as to how this can happen. We don't know which one actually took place, but they all work as models.

It is all wild speculation – and unfounded wild speculation at that!!

Spontaneous Generation Theories may work as MODELS and they may even walk down a 'catwalk' in somebody’s mind – but they will NEVER produce life!!!


Wicknight
All of them could have produced organic systems naturally once the first self replicating molecules are created. There is no mystery beyond which one was actually used by nature.

And pigs WILL fly!!

And - no I don't believe that pigs were desended from or ancestral to birds or bats.

Wicknight
There is very little mystery to evolution once you have a self replicating molecule. And a self replicating molecule is not complex, so even if you believe for religous reasons that God must have produced the first self replicating molecules that is not complex design, it is very simple hand-up design. Once the molecule has been created NS will do the rest in a couple of billion years.

Natural Selection did it!!!

Somewhat less believable than "God did it" - don't you think?

Natural Selection can ONLY begin to select when you have a population of reproducing viable LIVING ORGANISMS with significant extant genetic diversity in their genome and the ability to express it. The Laws of Mathematical Probability and Big Numbers rule out ever getting to this stage in the first place, using undirected processes.

For example:-
There are 10 to the power of 21 stars in the Known Universe.
There are 10 to the power of 61 ELECTRONS in our Sun (which is an average sized star).
There are therefore ONLY 10 to the power of 82 Electrons in ALL of the STARS in the Known Universe.
The odds of RANDOMLY producing a specific useful amino acid sequence choosing from the 20 common amino acids at each point on a 100 amino acid chain is a binomial expansion of 1/20 X 1/20 X 1/20 …… 100 times. This happens to be odds of one over 10 to the power of 130.
There are 10 to the power of 26 nanoseconds (one thousand of one millionth of a second) in 5,000 million years.
If every ELECTRON in the KNOWN UNIVERSE, produced a random 100 amino acid sequence one thousand million times every second for 5,000 million years only 10 to the power of 108 permutations would be produced.
You would need 10 to the power of 23 Universes to guarantee the production of the specific sequence for a particular useful protein with a chain length of only 100 amino acids – and that is only the chance of getting the SEQUENCE right – never mind the problem of actually producing the protein. – and a protein is ‘nothing’ compared to even a so-called “simple cell”.
We also have only ONE Universe – and not 10 to the power of 23 of them!!! Also an electron isn’t capable of producing a protein sequence and ALL stars are obviously too hot for life. Even using evolutionary timescales, there is simply not enough MATTER or TIME in the Universe to randomly produce the SEQUENCE for a SIMPLE protein.

What the maths is MEASURING is something that we know intuitively – that complex, tightly specified machines are the result of Intelligent Design – and the more complex and tightly specified, the more intelligence is required to design them.
What the gigantic figures for even small 100 amino acid proteins are indicating, is that living systems are approaching infinite specificity, infinite density of information and infinite probability of design by an infinitely Intelligent Designer.


Wicknight
The theory of "Mitochondrial Eve" (the the companion theory of Y-chromosone Adam) disproves nearly everything that Young Earth Creationists like yourself claim, from the date of the earth, the biblical idea of Adam and Eve, to the Biblical Flood

The fact that science has discovered that we are all descended from one woman and one man who lived less than 10,000 years ago is devastating for Gradual Evolution and fully supportive of Direct Creation !!!!


Wicknight
there is absolutely no reason to believe that God did not design the entire universe from the Big Bang to produce life. He could have used macro-evolution to do this. He could have used the laws of chemistry to produce the first organic molecules. Or God might not exist and the whole thing happened naturally.

Or God might have Directly Created the Universe and all life - just like He said He did!!!!

All the EVIDENCE points in this direction!!!


Wicknight
Evolution doesn't disprove or prove "God". All it does is provide a plasuable process that life can develop by. That might make God unnecessary to some, but that ain't science's problem

All fine and dandy – except for one small problem. There has never been ANY plausible process OBSERVED that shows life developing from non-life or even adding additional NEW genetic information.


Wicknight
Science is concerned with the "how", not the "why"

Exactly!!
Creation Science is concerned with the “how” and Theology is concerned with the “why”.


Wicknight
Creationism is metaphysics

BOTH Creationism and Evolutionism have metaphysical dimensions – one believes in God while the other covers the entire 'faith spectrum' from denial through agnosticism to belief in His existence.

Scofflaw

J C wrote:

It does make sense if the rock layers represent the order of ‘Flood burial’.

“The same species consistently appearing in the same position of rock layer over large distances apart” is actually proof of a WORLDWIDE process, like Noah’s Flood – and not diverse localised fossilisation events.


Wicknight
As I said, geologists do not rely solely on the species of fossil found in rock to date it. If they did your argument might makes sense, but they don't so the dates of the fossils are independently verified.

HOW are the ages of the rock independently verified?

I hope that you don’t think that radiometric dating can do this.
When it singularly fails** with rocks of known recent age – can it be expected to do any better with older rocks of unknown vintage?

**For example, rock samples taken from submarine lava flows from Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, which are known to have occurred in the 1950’s, have been radiometrically ‘dated’ at 4 million years old.

Tiresome. Radiometric dating can fail in younger rocks because it has errors on the order of a couple of million years. Obviously, saying a rock has an age of 2My +/- 2My will give ages from today to 4My. Some people find this exciting, ignoring the fact that most of the time we're saying something like 100My +/- 2My - I think you'll agree that the same error range in that case doesn't seem to "prove" quite the right thing, from a YEC perspective. This is why JC quotes the young rock ages and ignores the others.

The so-called "Flood burial" order is a make-believe. Quite aside from anything else, I'd dearly love to see the Creationists' "geological column" (rather than their timeline), which presumably accounts for all the known evidence (and presumably predicts the unknown too). I haven't, of course, and never will, because there isn't any "Flood burial" order, or Creationist "geological column", because it's a fairytale.

J C wrote:

Wicknight
Also you still haven't answered my question, how do you explain the ordered layering of fossil in side rock layers if they all died at the same time?
Order of Flood Burial due to their three-dimensional ‘position’ in the ‘ecological column’ so to speak.
Equally, their hydrological characteristics such as shape, size, etc also explains some of the finds where movement and water sorting is a feature of the deposit.

Their "3-dimensional position in the ecological column"! It sounds scientific, doesn't it? What on earth do you think it means?

J C wrote:

Wicknight
There is not nearly enough "sediment" on Earth to bury all perihistoric sea creates. There isn't 1% of the sediment need to do that.

There clearly WAS enough sediment generated by the Flood processes – and the deep layers of sedimentary rock amply testify to this fact.

This is a particularly tight logical circle - there must be enough sediment, because there's enough sediment! You continue to astound! Perhaps Wicknight would prefer to know where all that sediment came from?

J C wrote:

Wicknight
The "Geological Column" as you incorrectly call it, is not made up of sediment JC. It is made up of solid structured layers of rock.

It IS called the ‘Geological Column’ and it IS largely made up of Sedimentary Rock layers.

It's a slightly old-fashioned term, because it doesn't do justice to the complexity of global geology, and also because it produces exactly the kind of mistake JC is making here. The Geological Column is a time framework representing the ages of the earth, not a series of rock layers - in one place the Devonian might be represented by lava flows, in another by sandstone , absent somewhere else. If one wished to contend that in most places where you drilled down a few km you would find mostly sediment, you would of course be completely wrong - 95% of Earth's rock is igneous - 75% of that exposed at surface is sedimentary.

J C wrote:

Wicknight
The pressures required to construct these rocks in the time period you claim would be greater than any force known to exist on Earth. You are talking nonsense.

We’re not talking about Diamonds here, Wicknight – only sedimentation and cementing processes yielding rock.

Please note that modern concrete sets just as hard as sedimentary rock – without ANY pressure!!

Modern concrete is specifically designed to set quickly at atmospheric pressure, and is not a sedimentary rock. There's plenty of experimental evidence to show the temperatures and pressures needed to form the particular minerals that make up particular rocks - JC is, of course, conveniently ignoring all the metamorphic rocks.

J C wrote:

All types of sedimentary rock are found to have outcrops. The fact that the rocks in the outcrops are identical to the same type of rock 200 metres below also indicates that ‘pressure’ has little effect on petrification processes

It’s chemistry – and not physics that largely accounts for sedimentary rock formation.

No - it indicates that the kind of pressures we're talking about can't be produced in 200m. Trying banging India and Asia together instead, if you want to produce something interesting.

J C wrote:

I’ll defer to the reader to judge where the nonsense lies on this issue!!

You need not, JC - you could read a leaving cert textbook and stop talking nonsense.

J C wrote:

The ante-diluvian ecosystem was also much more robust than our current much-weakened environment.

It could therefore readily support millions of top Dinosaur Omnivores – just like our current ecosystem supports six billion Human top Omnivores and indeed millions of top Predators as well.

They practiced intensive mechanised farming then, presumably? That's how we keep 6 billion people mostly fed.

J C wrote:

I have taken you to the water!!

You’ll become severely dehydrated if you keep refusing to drink (the rich waters of Creation Science)!!!

Extremely rich. Some might say...sludgy. Others might say, you can lead me to the BS, but you can't make me drink it!

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
Fossilisation is known to be a rare event - much as any kind of accidental preservation is known to be. Plus you're obviously unaware that there are limestones which exactly match your description (assemblages of bone held together with small quantity of sediment) chalk being a good example?

One end of your statement is apparently arguing with the other – you are saying that fossilisation is RARE but some limestones are PACKED FULL of fossilised bones.

The explanation for this apparent paradox is that fossilisation is NOW rare – but it was quite COMMON during the Flood.

Equally, most limestones actually contain surprisingly few fossils – and the predominant source of their Calcium Carbonate is NOT organic.

Even if I accept, for the sake of argument, that it WAS organic – Evolutionary Geology lacks an adequate explanation for where the vast quantities of the Calcium came from, in the first place.

Yes, an edit went missing - an all too frequent thing when the forum hangs. That should have been "terrestrial macro-fossilisation is rare", and "assemblages of fossil material (mostly shells)". The sea is quite a good place for fossilisation, as long as it's not too turbulent.

The thing about, say, chalk, is that you can look at it down a microsocope and see it's made up of tiny shells. These are foraminifera, and a dead foraminiferan takes 10 days (biggest foraminifera) to a 100 years (tiny foraminfera) to settle to the seabed. As a result, foraminiferal ooze gets deposited at about 1–8cm per 1,000 years. The Dover Chalk Beds are up to 400m thick.

If all of the fossilised foraminifera in the world's known chalk beds lived in the Biblical timescale, they would cover the whole surface of the globe to a depth of half a metre. The amount of carbon dioxide required by the rapid production of that much calcium carbonate shell mass would have cleaned out the atmosphere and triggered a runaway negative greenhouse.

Despite this, Creationists pretend that the chalk could have formed in a couple of "algal blooms" at the end of the Flood - it has to be at the end of the Flood, because otherwise the chalk would be full of sediment from the turbulence of the Flood. Unfortunately, they have to claim as well that the blooms happened because of all the sediment from the turbulence. In addition, of course, a foraminiferal bloom of the size claimed would have wiped out all marine life. The Creationist "calculations" only make sense if you only think about the chalk problem, completely ignoring anything else - it's a dot-com profit calculation...

And then there's the little problem of deeply buried chalks, rather than the conveniently exposed ones at Dover. What on earth is the product of a late-Flood foraminiferal bloom doing 637 metres underground in Mexico? How could it have buried by other "Flood" sediments if it had to form right at the end of the Flood? Oh no!

J C wrote:

I also have formal computer programming qualifications and I can assure you from bitter experience that even one misplaced comma in Source Code WILL cause problems.

Computer code and DNA code are both TIGHTLY SPECIFIED information storage and retrieval systems – but DNA is vastly superior.

Hmm. Yes, I'm a programmer myself, and well aware of the nastiness of the misplaced comma. On the other hand, I don't expect my code to have to survive a messy replication process, so I can make my code more tightly specified than DNA is - no need for redundancy.

By the way, you never did say what field of science you're in?

Scofflaw

Scofflaw

J C wrote:

I have already told you that even if an undirected process had every electron in the known universe working feverishly for 1,000 billion years, it couldn’t generate a sequence for a specific 100 Amino Acid Protein.
I'd call that an 'impossible event'.

The odds of any particular hand in a game of bridge are about 1 in 600 billion, with randomly dealt cards. By your logic, bridge is an entirely impossible game, unless every hand is "intelligently designed". Nevertheless, someone, somewhere, even now, is probably playing bridge, against all the odds, although admittedly the reason why they bother has always eluded me.

JC wrote:

The fact that science has discovered that we are all descended from one woman and one man who lived less than 10,000 years ago is devastating for Gradual Evolution and fully supportive of Direct Creation !!!!

Sigh. Except that the woman lived about 150,000 years ago, the man 60-90,000 years ago. Even by Biblical standards, "Eve" would have been a bit old for childbearing by the time "Adam" came along.

J C wrote:

Creationism is metaphysics

BOTH Creationism and Evolutionism have metaphysical dimensions – one believes in God while the other covers the entire 'faith spectrum' from denial through agnosticism to belief in His existence.

Creationism is only metaphysics. It has no bearing on the real world.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

The New Testament explains this: many of the laws given to the nation of Israel were civil, for the regulation of the State (e.g. eye for eye, ban on usury, restrictions on slavery, divorce). Some were ceremonial, to teach spiritual truths by type and shadow (e.g. clean and unclean, mixed garments). Others were and are eternal moral laws, e.g. murder, theft, homosexuality, adultery.

Unless there's a reference for each, that looks like exactly the kind of "pick-and-mix" that I was referring to. Where in the NT does Jesus say that the wearing of mixed garments was a ceremonial symbol of a spiritual truth?

wolfsbane wrote:

Those are certainly part of the reason for the decline. But moving a morally motivated person into town doesn't mean he must become immoral. It means his traditional outlook that gave rise to his morals will be exposed to the outlook/worldview of the new community. Towns are usually more 'modern' in outlook than countryside, so the moral standards increasing reflect the Western vision: materialism, hedonism, atheism/agnosticism.

Or, to use my paradigm, moving someone whose "morality" is dictated by their rural society into town will weaken their morality simply by removing them both from example and enforcement. This was certainly the case prior to Darwin, and I see no particular reason to suddenly point in another direction.

wolfsbane wrote:

But atheism can offer no reason why we should not oppress one another, other than a big stick if we do. If we can be reasonably certain we can get away with it, there remains nothing to restrain the unbeliever's wickedness. That is why the hoodies and other criminals so afflict our society: we behave according to how we think, if we can get away with it. They have been nurtured on an evolutionary world-view: that we have evolved from star-dust, without the need of any god; that the supernatural world which our ancestors believed in was just an infantile fairy-tale. Any morality suggested by society is man-made, for the good of most perhaps, or only a ruse to protect the interests of the powerful. But nothing to stand in the way of me making life good for myself, even at the expense of others.

What does religion offer here that atheism does not? An inescapable, eternal stick, that's all.

wolfsbane wrote:

I posed the question to samb and would like to hear your response too:
What reason would you give to the unemployed youth to stop him making a very profitable living controlling prostitutes or dealing drugs? He has assessed the risks: imprisonment (little chance, but a good profit even if he is caught); killed by rivals (significant chance, but worth the risk to him).

A hard question. The only reason I can give him is that by his activities he is creating the kind of society in which his kids will take drugs, and maybe turn to prostitution to support their habits. And maybe their pimp will be nice to them, and chances are he won't - he won't be in it for the good of their health. Maybe he'll make some money dealing drugs, but the actual money a dealer makes is usually less than the minimum wage. Does he want to get married? Will he tell his wife what he does for money? Will he tell his kids? Does he like dealing drugs, or pimping? Does he feel good about it? I doubt it - the jack flash is nice, but actually it's a pretty bad life, and only for the young and single.

If he's the kind of man who can't look ahead of himself at all, I don't see what either of us could do. The best bet is persuading him that he doesn't want to be the kind of person a pimp or a dealer has to be to get along, and he almost certainly doesn't want his kids' father to be a pimp and a dealer. Plus I'd do my best to get him a job.

cordially,
Scofflaw

robindch

> I also have formal computer programming qualifications [...]

You've not alluded to these before, that I've noticed anyway. I'd certainly be intrigued to hear which educational establishment added expertise in computer science to the formal qualifications in biology that you've claimed in the past!

> The fact that science has discovered that we are all descended from
> one woman is devastating for Evolution

One evolutionist to another -- this fact is actually a bit easy to work out yourself if you bear in mind that each woman has only one mother, but possibly many offspring, meaning that the number of common ancestors must decrease at each generation. Go back far enough and the number will eventually reduce to one. Think about it -- it's easy!!!

> Natural Selection did it!!!

I've never seen you put it more briefly than that. Well done, my evolutionist friend!

Zombrex

J C wrote:

It does make sense if the rock layers represent the order of ‘Flood burial’.

What "order"? All the same animals just lined up in order of date that we see them now as the Flood took place. JC that has got to be the craziest thing you have said so far?

If you actually look at the effects of floods, it is a mess There is no order to it at all. You get cars on top of building, you get people buried in deep deep wholes.

For someone who goes on and on about odds all the time I find it hilarious you hold such a position. The odds of a Biblical Flood producing the order you talk about would be like, well a torrnado assembling a 747 by chance.

J C wrote:

“The same species consistently appearing in the same position of rock layer over large distances apart” is actually proof of a WORLDWIDE CONTEMPORANEOUS process, like Noah’s Flood – and not diverse localised fossilisation events ongoing over billions of years - as postulated by Gradual Evolution.

No its not, because if their was a global flood these species would not all die at the same time.

Say you have a rabit and a T-Rex, and a rabit and a T-Rex on another country. What are the odds that both T-Rex dinosars would be buried in the same levels of sediment, but neither are buried with modern day animals like the rabit? Millions to one. And that is 2 animals. You are talking about this happening to every single animal on Earth. Complete nonsense

J C wrote:

I hope that you don’t think that radiometric dating can do this.
When it singularly fails** with rocks of known recent age – can it be expected to do any better with older rocks of unknown vintage?

*Groan*

Every scientific instrument can fail JC once and a while. As I said for every radiometric example that fails there are a thousand that work.

YOu seem to note realise that radiometric dating is not a single technic. There are over 40 independent methods. And low and behold these independent methods verifiy each others results 99.9% of the time.

J C wrote:

Order of Flood Burial due to their three-dimensional ‘position’ in the ‘ecological column’ so to speak.

What? So mammals were standing on top of dinosars when the Flood happened? What are you talking about?

J C wrote:

Equally, their hydrological characteristics such as shape, size, etc also explains some of the finds where movement and water sorting is a feature of the deposit.

That makes no sense. That would only work if the oldest animals were the smallest (I imagine you have it the wrong way arround, assuming the oldest would be the biggest like the dinosars). We know that a dinosar is bigger that a single cell bateria and bigger than modern day animals, so dinosars should be on top, not somewhere in the middle. They aren't, so that kinda throws that theory out the window

J C wrote:

There clearly WAS enough sediment generated by the Flood processes – and the deep layers of sedimentary rock amply testify to this fact.

Where did this "sediment" come from. There is vastly more sediment rock than current top soil at the moment. If the Flood had really stripped such a layer of top soil from the Earth 6,000 years ago humans would have been living on approx 10 to 20 miles of top soil (at the very least) to cause that much rock in that much time.

That would have put us well into the upper atmosphere JC, we would never have survived at that hight any way.

J C wrote:

We’re not talking about Diamonds here, Wicknight – only sedimentation and cementing processes producing rock.

Please note that modern concrete sets just as hard as sedimentary rock – without ANY pressure!!

Modern concrete doesn't go under Lithification.

For the lithification process to take place in seidment rock (the bit where it turns from sediment into soild rock) you need very high pressure over long periods of time. Geologies call it the "overburden pressure", the weight of other sediment on top of the lithificating sediment. Even with the pressure from above it takes hundreds of years for each layer of sediment.

For the flood theory to work the weight of the water itself would have to cause lithification within a couple of days for each sediment layer (and there are thousands). The pressure of the water itself would have to be billions of pascals. You might get that at the centre of Jupiter JC but you don't with sea water on Earth.

Your theory just simply does not work. It doesn't get close to working

J C wrote:

All types of sedimentary rock are found to have outcrops. The fact that the rocks in the outcrops are identical to the same type of rock 200 metres below also indicates that ‘pressure’ has little effect on petrification processes

Not in the slightest. I'm not even sure where you got that from.

Rock out crops are caused by errosion on rock that is surrounded by weaker rock. Errosion that take thousands of years buy the way.

I notice BTW you are quietly igoring the effects of errosion on your "new" sediment rock.

How do you explain errosion such as the Grand Canyon, that is estimated to have take 2 million years to form and the rock to have been put their 160 million years ago

A Biblical flood, even it had lasted hundreds of years could not have made the Grand Canyon, especially when it was too busy making the sediment rock that initally formed the Grand Canyon in the first place.

Again, your theory is nonsense, and is contradicted by nearly every natural structure in the world.

J C wrote:

Only a minority of Dinosaur species were Carnivores – most were Herbivores.

Quite a large minority JC. Plus you don't need that many carnivors running around the place to completely destroy and eco-system.

J C wrote:

The ante-diluvian ecosystem was also much more robust than our current much-weakened environment.

Define "robust" ... how can an ecosystem where each animals has approx 2 meters of living space around them (that is how much each dinosar and mammal would have if each species were all alive at one time, never mind the birds and fish) be particularly robust? :rolleyes:

J C wrote:

It could therefore readily support millions of top Dinosaur Omnivores – just like our current ecosystem supports six billion Human top Omnivores and indeed millions of top Predators as well.

And the millions of carnivores? We are just ignoring them because they don't fit into your theory, yes? Ok then.

Also, you seem to be slightly underestimating the size of the average dinosaur JC. Slightly bigger than the average humam. By about 30 times.

Zombrex

J C wrote:

First you say that life arising spontaneously “is likely” – and in the next sentence you say that a self replicating molecule is “an unlikely event”.

What am I to believe?

Perhaps you should read that again JC

Once you have a self replicating molecule (admitable an unlikely event, but then we did have an entire planet full of unstable molecules, and powerful energy source and 1.5 billion years), natural selection will produce very complex and structured organic systems."

The hard part is getting the self-replicating molecule. But scientists have already shown a simple self replicating molecule can develop naturally in nature. So once you have that, which has been proven to be possible, you are away. Couple of billion years you will have cells.

J C wrote:

I have already told you that even if an undirected process had every electron in the known universe working feverishly for 1,000 billion years, it couldn’t generate a sequence for a specific 100 Amino Acid Protein.
I'd call that an 'impossible event'.

And I've already told you that is nonsense. In fact I explained why it is nonsense.

You don't start off with a 100 Amino Acid Protein. For a start you can make amino acids yourself in a bucket with the right conditions. Secondly, you need one self replicating molecule to start off with, you don't need any amino acids. Amino acids are used way way down the line. The process did not start off with proteins. Proteins probably came into it 1.5 billion years later.

Jesus JC I've explained this to you already.

J C wrote:

WHY is it predictable that it will happen?

Chemistry my dear boy, chemistry

J C wrote:

It is all wild speculation – and unfounded wild speculation at that!!

Its not "wild" at all, it follows basic laws of chemistry.

J C wrote:

Spontaneous Generation Theories may work as MODELS and they may even walk down a 'catwalk' in somebody’s mind – but they will NEVER produce life!!!

Why? If they work in models there is no reason to believe they can't work in the natural world.

Your whole argument is that self replicating molecules could not form naturally. These models (and experiments based on them) prove that argument wrong.

So if self replicating molecules can form naturally, it is simple logic to assume they did form naturally, since we are here after all aren't we.

You claim there must be intelligence guiding the process. This intelligence is unnecessary, so why do you assume there must have been one. There might have been one, but there is no evidence that it is required.

J C wrote:

And pigs WILL fly!!

No, actually they won't. And you can model why they won't. Just like you can model how self replicating molecules could first form.

J C wrote:

Natural Selection did it!!!

Somewhat less believable than "God did it" - don't you think?

No, considering natural selection is an observable testable process that you can see happening all around you and that fits into everything we know about biology and eco-systems. And God, well, isn't.

J C wrote:

Natural Selection can ONLY begin to select when you have a population of reproducing viable LIVING ORGANISMS with significant extant genetic diversity in their genome and the ability to express it.

Ok, you don't seem to know what natural selection is there JC.

There is nothing in the theory of NS that says you require DNA or cells or even living organisms.

You simply need on single self-replicating molecule. Actually you need 2 or more, but you get 2 quite quickly since they are self-replicating.

NS relies on two things - harsh environment, and mistakes in the replication. That is all, you don't need DNA, you don't need a genome.

A self replicating molecule that has developed somethign slighly different than the others will either be weakened by that development or strenghten by that. If it is weakened it doesn't replicate as well and it dies off. If it is strengthen it replicates better than all the rest and becomes domonent. Eventually the lesser, no improved molecules, die off. And the process starts again.

J C wrote:

The Laws of Mathematical Probability and Big Numbers rule out ever getting to this stage in the first place, using undirected processes.

God damn it JC, how many times do you have to be told, there isn't a theory in the world that assumes a fully developed modern protien just magically appeared in the seas 4.6 billion years ago.

You have been told this already, about 20 times by not only myself but everyone else here and in the thread in the IS forum.

If the only way you think you can win the argument is to hold on to a very mistaken misrepresentation of what people are claiming, then that is very weak indeed.

How about you focus on what is actually being said here JC

J C wrote:

The fact that science has discovered that we are all descended from one woman and one man who lived less than 10,000 years ago is devastating for Gradual Evolution and fully supportive of Direct Creation !!!!

*Groan*

Please read up on the theory of Mitochondrial Eve JC before you post.

Firstly we are not all descended from one woman. We all have woman as an ancestor, but she was not the starting point.

Also she lived 150,000 years ago, in Africa, which kinda throws your whole young Earth, garden of edan biblical flood ideas out the window.

Also, and here is the kicker, we know that Y-Adam was not alive at the same time as M-Eve.

J C wrote:

All the EVIDENCE points in this direction!!!

None of the "evidence" points in that direction JC, none of it

J C wrote:

All fine and dandy – except for one small problem. There has never been ANY plausible process OBSERVED that shows life developing from non-life or even adding additional NEW genetic information.

Yes there has been JC, I already told you. Self replicating molecules have been created in labs based on natural conditions.

Your whole "NEW" genetic information cannot be created theory has been debunked about 10 times already JC so I'm not sure I could be bothered doing it again.

love4all

you took da words right out of my mouth.Praise God

Assyrian

J C wrote:

How about ‘traces’ like mile-deep canyons gouged out by WATER, billions of dead things DROWNED and fossilised in mile deep WATER-SORTED sediment ALL OVER the Earth or enough SEA-WATER on the Earth to cover the entire planet to an average depth of 2.7 Kilometres (or 1.6 miles).

It would if the continental crust hadn't formed all those billions of years ago, you know , lighter than the mantle, floats on top of it in big lumps we call land. God brought the land out of the sea back in Gen 1. How do you think the continental crust sank during the flood? What makes you think the sediment is 'water-sorted'? Do we find rocks and stones on the bottom layers, then gravel and silt and then at the very top a layer of organic material like those shake up a bottle of mud experiments in school? Your mile deep canyon, is that the one we see today being carved out by the Colorado river?

Some of our fossilised dead things were drowned. Floods happen, animals drown in local floods today. But many of our fossilised dead things show unhealed bite marks which indicate they were killed by predators rather than drowned. Other fossil were left by living animals, footprints. But these are found with layers of sediment above and below them, layers of sediment YECs claim were laid down in the of the flood. How did these dinosaurs walk around with a mile of flood water over their heads?

Yes, maybe 20,000 years – but NOT 300 million years!!

You need to identify the material involved and work out how long that lasts sealed inside dry fossilised bone. Back of your fridge estimates don't count since they involve different materials and different conditions.

If it looks like tissue, feels like tissue and smells like tissue – it IS tissue!!!!

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it'sa duck. Is that a peer reviewed scientific analysis, or a creationist canard?

The stuff nearly squirted them in the eye when the T. Rex bone broke!!!

Given that they dissolved the fossilised bone in acid, how can you say the T Rex bone 'broke'? And how do you go from "in some cases their contents could be squeezed out" to "nearly squirted them in the eye"?
Assyrian

Q. How long does the ‘racemization of the proteins’ in a dead body take?

A. One week in hot weather!!!

Racemization isused to test bones and teeth for contamination and as a dating technique for more recent remains. Half lives depend on the amino acid but are in the region 4,000 to 15,000 years. Half lives do vary with temperature, but temperatures underground are fairly constant and racemization rates match the normal temperature in the location.

After 200,000 to 500,000 year the amino acids are completely racemized, you have a 50:50 mixture of L and D forms. So racemization can by used to date remains that are younger than that, but for older remains it can show if any amino acid found in the fossil are from the fossil, or are contamination from fresh organic material. The amino acids in the T Rex bones were completely racemized, which means they were original and half a million years plus, certainly far older than the creationists 6,000 years.

The extraction of red blood cells and haemoglobin from (unfossilized) Dinosaur bone and the extraction of DNA fragments from insects trapped in supposedly multiple million year old amber indicates that these creatures were alive very recently indeed.

If these bones / insects were, in fact, millions of years old, all biological material in them would have completely disintegrated by now. The observed rates of biological degeneration would give maximal ages of a few thousand years for these bones / insects.

Meat that goes off in a week behind the bin can last 20,000 even 40,000 years just covered in sand or buried in permafrost. So how long could tiny scraps of tissue last mummified, sealed in amber or sealed in a cavity deep inside a bone entombed in mega tons of stone, no bacteria, no oxygen no active enzymes to break it down? And we don't even know if the T rex samples are tissue. No one has identified 'blood cells', the 'haemoglobin' and 'DNA' are just fragments of molecules.

But you haven't answered the big question. if bodies can be mummified for tens of thousands of years where are all the dried dinosaurs? Where is all that meat?

Assyrian

wolfsbane

bluewolf said:

What's your own answer to that question wolfsbane? God said so and will be angry if he does it?
No offence intended, I'm honestly curious

No offence taken, my friend: it's a sensible question. I would give him the full truth about God. That God see all that happens, even the thoughts of our heart, and will bring us to eternal judgement for it. An eternity in the outer darkness, where ‘ Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.' Mark 9:46. I would also point out that his time to turn from his sin may be very limited, for God can cut our life of at any moment, and then it is too late to repent.

But I would also tell him that God is merciful and commands all men everywhere to repent and believe in His Son, promising full forgiveness to all who do. No matter what their past.

By these two things, the goodness and severity of God, any man will be changed if anything can change him.

In that presentation of the gospel to him, I might expand on the sort of person God created us to be. Part of the reason he has become so amoral will have been the faulty concept of what it is to be human.

I would of course also offer what practical help he might need should he turn from his evil ways: a job, etc.

wolfsbane

Scofflaw said:

Unless there's a reference for each, that looks like exactly the kind of "pick-and-mix" that I was referring to. Where in the NT does Jesus say that the wearing of mixed garments was a ceremonial symbol of a spiritual truth?

For instance:
Colossians 2:16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. But see whole passage: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%202:11-23;&version=50;
That embraces all of the outward stuff.

Or, to use my paradigm, moving someone whose "morality" is dictated by their rural society into town will weaken their morality simply by removing them both from example and enforcement. This was certainly the case prior to Darwin, and I see no particular reason to suddenly point in another direction.

It will merely bring out what was in their heart to begin with. Were they really convinced God was true? When the opportunity to live wickedly presents, the unbelieving heart grabs it. Where some sort of belief in a God/gods to whom they must give account remains, then their behaviour is restrained. What was before Darwin was the same as today - many had religious beliefs that restrained their behaviour: many had not and were as depraved as any today. The debauchery and brutality, if not the squalor, of 18th Century England is with us again. The godless masses back then may not have had scientific conceptions of atheism, but they were as atheistic as their counterparts today who have respectable scientific support for their rejection of Anyone higher than themselves to Whom they must answer. Only the preaching of the gospel by the Wesleys and Whitefield and their colleagues turned the nation from destruction. The great Evangelical Revival dramatically altered the behaviour of millions.

What does religion offer here that atheism does not? An inescapable, eternal stick, that's all.

The difference is it is inescapable and eternal - something to give the boldest rebel pause. But also, Christianity offers a completely new life to the sinner, not just a change of tactics. Peace with God, a loving relationship to Him and His people. These are the strongest incentives anyone can have - the goodness and severity of God.

If he's the kind of man who can't look ahead of himself at all, I don't see what either of us could do. The best bet is persuading him that he doesn't want to be the kind of person a pimp or a dealer has to be to get along, and he almost certainly doesn't want his kids' father to be a pimp and a dealer. Plus I'd do my best to get him a job.

That is the sort of person I meant. Maybe he does have concern for his family, his property, but that would not stop him making the money/power wickedly. His advice may be for his kid to get into 'legit' business, to avoid the risks, but to get the capital the theft/exploitation is necessary - and of course there is no 'moral' reason why not. I doubt having a job is the aspiration of any of these people - too much like work.

Their thinking must be changed before their aspirations change. Survival of the fittest must be repaced with the knowledge of Man as God's creation in His image - worthy of the greatest respect and having the greatest of reponsibility towards His Creator and his fellowman. What self-image can the atheists (logically) give him?

How's that any different to the idea of the non religious "stick" then?
I mean, to someone you're explaining it to the only difference is that there is a very real police force who may catch you or a possibly non-existent entity which doesn't seem to have cared thus far catching you.
Why not explain the consequences that it can definitely be shown to have on people around him? That way he sees the reason it's wrong is because people are suffering.
I mean with your version, if god didn't have a problem with it (hypothetically, so don't protest otherwise!) then you'd be happy with that?
If people are suffering the only reason you see to want to stop it is because of your god? Not because they're actually suffering, whether needlessly or otherwise?

Surely the most effective way to get someone to understand why something is wrong is to show them why rather than a "god says so" thing? I don't think the god says so approach is included in the "why", either...

But also, Christianity offers a completely new life to the sinner, not just a change of tactics. Peace with God, a loving relationship to Him and His people.

What about peace in yourself and a loving relationship with those around you for the simple sake of it? Surely this can be achieved without need for some external commanding force.
If you didn't have any god, would you be as interested in such a thing?

Zombrex

BrianCalgary wrote:

The scientists who study such things, and this is my objection, do not take into account the possibility that God is the creator and that hHe did do it in 6 days as stated.

Thats because there is no evidence that is how it happened. It doesn't fit any known mathematical model, and doesn't fit with any laws of physics or chemistry that we know.

They are not "dismissing" it because they are anti-religion, they are dismissing it as a serious scientific idea because its not a serious scientific idea.

The Viking religions believed that the Earth and the Heavens were made from the body of a Giant named Ymir, who was slain by Odin and his 2 brothers. Odin then created the Earth from the remains of his body. Scientists don't entertain this idea either, because there is no physical evidence that the Earth was made in this way.

I could go on with nearly every other religious creation story for the history of the Earth. You seem to believe your creation story is of more scientific importance, despite the fact there is as little evidence for it as any other from western or eastern religions.

Do you not think that if Judo/Christian God really made the universe in 6 days (not sure how you count a "day" before the sun or the earth is made, but that is beside the point) that it would be clearly obvious that he did.

Biblical creationists seem unable to explain why God would go to so much trouble to fake everything around us so it looks like it didn't happen the way he claimed (in the Bible) that it did.

Also science is concerned with the "how" not the "why". It does not attempt to answer metaphysical questions like "why did the big bang take place", or "why did life evolve on Earth and no other known planet".

There is nothing in science stopping someone from believing that God made the universe the way the universe was actually made. The only problem is if you cannot settle that with the account in the Bible. But as someone else point out on this thread, who you going to believe, the Bible or the natural world around you.

As I said, why would God fake the natural world around us?

hairyheretic

Wicknight wrote:

The Viking religions believed that the Earth and the Heavens were made from the body of a Giant named Ymir, who was slain by Odin and his 2 brothers. Odin then created the Earth from the remains of his body. Scientists don't entertain this idea either, because there is no physical evidence that the Earth was made in this way.

As one of the followers of said belief, I don't entertain that idea either. I don't think I've encountered anyone with a fundamentalist attitude of believing every last thing in them is an accurate historical fact.

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

For instance:
Colossians 2:16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. But see whole passage: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%202:11-23;&version=50;
That embraces all of the outward stuff.

All of those are references to ritual impurity, which is perhaps the largest religious idea that Christianity-for-the-Gentiles dropped. I'm not sure how you can get from there to "Christian" morality without really really wanting to.

wolfsbane wrote:

It will merely bring out what was in their heart to begin with. Were they really convinced God was true? When the opportunity to live wickedly presents, the unbelieving heart grabs it. Where some sort of belief in a God/gods to whom they must give account remains, then their behaviour is restrained. What was before Darwin was the same as today - many had religious beliefs that restrained their behaviour: many had not and were as depraved as any today. The debauchery and brutality, if not the squalor, of 18th Century England is with us again. The godless masses back then may not have had scientific conceptions of atheism, but they were as atheistic as their counterparts today who have respectable scientific support for their rejection of Anyone higher than themselves to Whom they must answer. Only the preaching of the gospel by the Wesleys and Whitefield and their colleagues turned the nation from destruction. The great Evangelical Revival dramatically altered the behaviour of millions.

Unfortunately, this contains a standard opt-out clause - it's a circle (albeit a "virtuous" one!) that assumes that really being a Christian makes a man good - so if he ain't good, he ain't a Christian. All that proves is that "good people are acceptable as Christians" rather than "Christians are good people".

I don't deny for a moment that Christianity sets a potentially high standard of behaviour - but so does Roman Stoicism, and of the two, I marginally prefer the latter. On the other hand, I am rather at a loss to understand what "destruction" the Great Evangelical Revival saved 18th Century England from. It appeared, to the contrary, to be doing rather well. Unless of course you mean perdition, which again leads you into a circle. The Victorian era, which you appear to hark back to as some kind of golden age, was an era of extreme poverty and vicious crime - the reason it does not appear so generally criminal as the 18th century is that the middle classes were sufficiently numerous to ghettoise the problems, and sufficiently literate to write the histories.

wolfsbane wrote:

The difference is it is inescapable and eternal - something to give the boldest rebel pause. But also, Christianity offers a completely new life to the sinner, not just a change of tactics. Peace with God, a loving relationship to Him and His people. These are the strongest incentives anyone can have - the goodness and severity of God.

I can't see where that differs from "an inescapable, eternal stick", except perhaps by adding "an eternal carrot".

wolfsbane wrote:

That is the sort of person I meant. Maybe he does have concern for his family, his property, but that would not stop him making the money/power wickedly. His advice may be for his kid to get into 'legit' business, to avoid the risks, but to get the capital the theft/exploitation is necessary - and of course there is no 'moral' reason why not. I doubt having a job is the aspiration of any of these people - too much like work.

Their thinking must be changed before their aspirations change. Survival of the fittest must be repaced with the knowledge of Man as God's creation in His image - worthy of the greatest respect and having the greatest of reponsibility towards His Creator and his fellowman. What self-image can the atheists (logically) give him?

I accept that religious conversion is a powerful behavioural change agent. However, that applies to all religions, particularly if you happen to have an eternal inescapable stick to hand. The additional ingredient of an eternal approving parent is, of course, something that atheism rather conspicuously lacks...plus, whether the atheist is right or wrong, our afterlife offerings are pretty poor, which is one reason there are no atheist chaplains.

However, it is very much the case that whether the hoodie in question gets Islam, Christianity, or some bizarre cult, he's likely to completely turn his life around - and if he isn't ready to do that, then neither you nor I can dissuade him from crime. Otherwise, he's ready to turn around anyway.

The very fact that I could not persuade such a man to atheism, or through atheism and evolution, however, tells you everything you need to know - his actions are nothing to do with these things. They are entirely attributable to his own selfishness and lack of care for the future. Most people get over this (to at least some extent) by the time they're 30, which is one reason why most crime is committed by younger men.

Wolfsbane, you're tilting at windmills here. All that you've said here suggests that you know what you're up against in a hoodie - the same lazy self-justifications that have always let the sinner get along. For some bizarre reason you've focussed on a scientific theory as somehow responsible for sin - it won't stick, I'm afraid.

Sinners are the same people they always were, and the justifications are the same too - "it doesn't really do any harm", "I can give it up any time I like", "why shouldn't it be me that gets the money", etc etc. These people aren't atheistic evolutionists - they are people who are as lazy about their morals as about their faith.

cordially,
Scofflaw

J C

Robin
this fact is actually a bit easy to work out yourself if you bear in mind that each woman has only one mother, but possibly many offspring, meaning that the number of common ancestors must decrease at each generation. Go back far enough and the number will eventually reduce to one. Think about it -- it's easy!!!

Well done Robin!!!!

Your logic also applies to all men being descended from one man – who also logically had to be contemporaneous with the first woman (so that the first man and the first woman could ‘get it together’ so to speak).

I can tell you what their names were too – if you would like to know!!

Robin, please tell your Theistic Evolutionary colleagues of your discovery (they don’t seem to have worked out this particular piece of logic yet).

I believe that God has great plans for you Robin.


Scofflaw
By the way, you never did say what field of science you're in?

Many and various!!!


Scofflaw
Their "3-dimensional position in the ecological column"! It sounds scientific, doesn't it? What on earth do you think it means?

It means the physical ecological niche position that each organism typically occupied on the continuum between the ocean floor and the highest ante-diluvian terrestrial hills.


Scofflaw
This is a particularly tight logical circle - there must be enough sediment, because there's enough sediment! You continue to astound!

I was replying to the point that there was less than 1% of the sediment needed to bury all of the fossils – and I made the logical observation that there obviously WAS enough sediment to do so as proven by the amount of sedimentary rock that is ‘out there’ and the overall very high rock to fossil ratio.


Scofflaw
Perhaps Wicknight would prefer to know where all that sediment came from?

Perhaps Wicknight could provide us with an Evolutionary STORY about where all of the sediment originally came from.
I’ll tell you my STORY – if you tell me yours first!!


Scofflaw
JC is, of course, conveniently ignoring all the metamorphic rocks.

I am not ignoring them.
Noah’s Flood did indeed deposit sedimentary rocks – but the flood process also included massive tectonic movements and volcanic eruptions as well – and where volcanism met sedimentation them metamorphism obviously resulted.


Scofflaw
the kind of pressures we're talking about can't be produced in 200m. Trying banging India and Asia together instead, if you want to produce something interesting.

You don’t need to bang India into your back yard for cement to set – and equally a limestone deposit didn't need to be whacked with New Delhi for it to petrify!!


Scofflaw
They practiced intensive mechanised farming then, presumably? That's how we keep 6 billion people mostly fed.

The only reason we need mechanised farming to feed six billion people is because we wish to ‘free up’ people to do really interesting things like becoming engineers, thread moderators, etc. (rather that everyone being a hunter-gatherer).

As Dinosaurs didn’t place much value on engineers or moderators – they got along very nicely WITHOUT mechanised farming.


Scofflaw
The thing about, say, chalk, is that you can look at it down a microsocope and see it's made up of tiny shells.

Chalk is made up of Calcite crystals and Foraminifera.
The Foraminifera content of chalk varies greatly (just as the macro-fossil content also varies greatly in all sedimentary rocks).
In general calcite crystals are the predominant feature of Chalk deposits.


Scofflaw
What on earth is the product of a late-Flood foraminiferal bloom doing 637 metres underground in Mexico? How could it have buried by other "Flood" sediments if it had to form right at the end of the Flood?

Where did you get the idea that all of the Foraminifera in all of the world developed at the end of the Flood.
There were probably a few metres of the stuff at the bottom of the seas BEFORE the flood – which was gathered up and sorted into localised chalk deposits or buried under other sedimentary rock – as in the Mexican example.


Scofflaw
The odds of any particular hand in a game of bridge are about 1 in 600 billion, with randomly dealt cards. By your logic, bridge is an entirely impossible game, unless every hand is "intelligently designed".

The odds we are talking about in relation to a 100 chain protein is about 1 in a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion!!!
Equally, almost any hand can win a bridge game – but the range of sequences that produce useful proteins are quite limited indeed – and a SPECIFIC protein sequence is obviously even more limited.


Scofflaw
Except that the woman lived about 150,000 years ago, the man 60-90,000 years ago. Even by Biblical standards, "Eve" would have been a bit old for childbearing by the time "Adam" came along

So how DID the first man and woman eventually get together?

And how did these women reproduce for over 100,000 years until the first man arrived?


Wicknight
If you actually look at the effects of floods, it is a mess There is no order to it at all

Indeed many fossil deposits ARE a bit of a mess.

However, the layering of sedimentary rock is an ordered process due to the physics of silt sorting and deposition by water.


Wicknight
if their was a global flood these species would not all die at the same time.

And why not – if it was global they would have nowhere to hide.


Wicknight
For the lithification process to take place in seidment rock (the bit where it turns from sediment into soild rock) you need very high pressure over long periods of time. Geologies call it the "overburden pressure", the weight of other sediment on top of the lithificating sediment

Lithification doesn’t require pressure – it only requires a cementing agent and water.

Overburden pressure IS required for Carbon metamorphosis – less pressure for coal and more for Diamonds!!!!


Wicknight
I notice BTW you are quietly igoring the effects of errosion on your "new" sediment rock

The lack of evidence of ANY erosion between most sedimentary layers is actually proof that they were laid down very rapidly. Equally, any gradual process should have layers of organic material interspersed between almost every sedimentary layer – and this is patently not the case.


Wicknight
How do you explain erosion such as the Grand Canyon, that is estimated to have take 2 million years to form and the rock to have been put their 160 million years ago.

Large amounts of water over a short amount of time.
The canyon was eroded in a few weeks before the sediment petrified c. 5,000 years ago!!

Stage 1 was the deposition of sediment under water.

Stage 2 was the raising of the Colorado Plateau.

Stage 3 was the run off of water from the continental USA via what became a run-away cutting process that formed the Grand Canyon.

Stage 4 was the completion of the petrification process.

J C

Wicknight
Also, you seem to be slightly underestimating the size of the average dinosaur JC. Slightly bigger than the average humam. By about 30 times.

The majority of Dinosaurs were lizard-sized. The average size was probably that of a sheep – and there were a few giants like T. Rex!!


Wicknight
The hard part is getting the self-replicating molecule. But scientists have already shown a simple self replicating molecule can develop naturally in nature. So once you have that, which has been proven to be possible, you are away. Couple of billion years you will have cells.

The really hard part is getting it to come ALIVE!!


Wicknight
you can make amino acids yourself in a bucket with the right conditions.
You need a pretty sophisticated ‘bucket’ to synthesise amino acids – and you need the appliance of intelligence!!


Wicknight
Secondly, you need one self replicating molecule to start off with, you don't need any amino acids. Amino acids are used way way down the line. The process did not start off with proteins. Proteins probably came into it 1.5 billion years later.

I have mathematically proven to you that functional proteins (of any reasonable chain length) couldn’t be generated in a billion billion billion million years using all of the matter in the Universe!!!!


Wicknight
So if self replicating molecules can form naturally, it is simple logic to assume they did form naturally, since we are here after all aren't we.

You’re making an enormous leap of faith and logic here, Wicknight.

It’s like saying that because iron filings order themselves into patterns in the presence of a magnet that over millions of years they will spontaneously produce a tape deck and start ‘pumping out’ the music of Status Quo!!!!


Wicknight
There is nothing in the theory of NS that says you require DNA or cells or even living organisms.

Robin
So to repeat again -- the current theory of evolution says *nothing* about anything which doesn't produce offspring.

Sounds like Robin believes you need at least a living reproducing cell for NS (Evolution) to act on.

Wicknight go talk to Robin about what exactly Evolution IS – and when you have decided between you come back to me!!!


Wicknight
NS relies on two things - harsh environment, and mistakes in the replication
I see – the South Pole and the Sahara Desert should be teeming with life then!!

Equally, the more mistakes the better – is a novel quality control idea.


Wicknight
you don't need DNA, you don't need a genome

Ah, but all life is observed to use DNA and to have a genome.

How it got both IS the question – which Evolution fails to answer – and which Creation Science does answer.


Wicknight
there isn't a theory in the world that assumes a fully developed modern protien just magically appeared in the seas 4.6 billion years ago.

I agree, but there is no plausible theory based upon observable evidence as to how a modern protein could EVER develop via undirected processes.


Assyrian
Some of our fossilised dead things were drowned. Floods happen, animals drown in local floods today. But many of our fossilised dead things show unhealed bite marks which indicate they were killed by predators rather than drowned. Other fossil were left by living animals, footprints

Most fossils were drowned. Some were partially eaten by hungry carnivores as the flood proceeded apace and footprints of MANKIND and Dinosaurs were left in mud as they tried to flee from the deluge – and these footprints were then covered in more sediment and fossilised.


Assyrian
Given that they dissolved the fossilised bone in acid, how can you say the T Rex bone 'broke'?

I herewith quote (from the Report in post#1607)
“The package weighed more than 2,000 pounds, which turned out to be just above their helicopter’s capacity, so they split it in half. One of B. rex’s leg bones was broken into two big pieces and several fragments”

Not only did the T Rex bone ‘break’ – it sounds like a compound fracture to me!!!!!


Assyrian
Meat that goes off in a week behind the bin can last 20,000 even 40,000 years just covered in sand or buried in permafrost.

I see.

I often wondered why our cat was so fastidious about covering its poo in sand – she was obviously preserving it for posterity!!!

Assyrian – there ARE actually amazing little BACTERIA and other saprophytes out there that break down dead organic material – usually in a matter of weeks!!!


Assyrian
But you haven't answered the big question. if bodies can be mummified for tens of thousands of years where are all the dried dinosaurs? Where is all that meat?

Apples and Oranges!!

To explain, both Creationists and Evolutionists accept that Dinosaur fossils are generally much OLDER than mummified Mammoths. The Evolutionary timeline would place them at 100 million and 10,000 years respectively.
Equally the Creationist timeline would place them at about 5,000 and 2,000 years respectively.

The time difference would account for some of the ‘meat loss’. The methods of preservation (fossilisation v freezing/pickling) would explain the remainder of any ‘meat yield’ differences!!

Scofflaw

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
By the way, you never did say what field of science you're in?

Many and various!!!

Many and various, eh? And to think that people like Einstein and Hawkings can only manage one. Alas, JC, that makes a mockery of your claims to be a scientist.

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
Their "3-dimensional position in the ecological column"! It sounds scientific, doesn't it? What on earth do you think it means?

It means the physical ecological niche position that each organism typically occupied on the continuum between the ocean floor and the highest ante-diluvian terrestrial hills.

All is clear now! Now, if only animals didn't move around, particularly those pesky birds and fish...

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
Perhaps Wicknight would prefer to know where all that sediment came from?

Perhaps Wicknight could provide us with an Evolutionary STORY about where all of the sediment originally came from.
I’ll tell you my STORY – if you tell me yours first!!

Well, see, when you have hundreds of millions of years to work with, the observed sedimentation rates do rather build up, small though they are generally observed to be. That's catastrophic events aside, obviously.

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
JC is, of course, conveniently ignoring all the metamorphic rocks.

I am not ignoring them.
Noah’s Flood did indeed deposit sedimentary rocks – but the flood process also included massive tectonic movements and volcanic eruptions as well – and where volcanism met sedimentation them metamorphism obviously resulted.

OK - misunderstanding metamorphic rocks, then. Volcanism meeting wet sediment is pretty violent, and easily characterised. Even volcanism meeting dry sediment gives obvious traces - the presence of nearby lava flows is usually a bit of a giveaway. I have no idea what story of yours covers the metamorphism of entire provinces...

There's a type of geologist called an "experimental metamorphic petrologist" - someone who does experiments to find out what kind of pressure and temperature is necessary to create a particular type of mineral. And I'm afraid "volcanism" really just doesn't work - you need the kind of pressures you get by burying rocks to several kilometres depth.

J C wrote:

You don’t need to bang India into your back yard for cement to set – and equally a limestone deposit didn't need to be whacked with New Delhi for it to petrify!!

The world isn't made out of limestone, JC, despite your obsession with it. And cement, just to say it again, isn't a rock at all.

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
They practiced intensive mechanised farming then, presumably? That's how we keep 6 billion people mostly fed.

The only reason we need mechanised farming to feed six billion people is because we wish to ‘free up’ people to do really interesting things like becoming engineers, thread moderators, etc. (rather that everyone being a hunter-gatherer).

As Dinosaurs didn’t place much value on engineers or moderators – they got along very nicely WITHOUT mechanised farming.

Sounds almost reasonable until you consider that the hunter-gatherer population of the Earth was about 100 million. This is a number which is smaller than 6 billion.

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
The thing about, say, chalk, is that you can look at it down a microsocope and see it's made up of tiny shells.

Chalk is made up of Calcite crystals and Foraminifera.
The Foraminifera content of chalk varies greatly (just as the macro-fossil content also varies greatly in all sedimentary rocks).
In general calcite crystals are the predominant feature of Chalk deposits.

No. I'm afraid not. Look it up, for crying out loud.

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
What on earth is the product of a late-Flood foraminiferal bloom doing 637 metres underground in Mexico? How could it have buried by other "Flood" sediments if it had to form right at the end of the Flood?

Where did you get the idea that all of the Foraminifera in all of the world developed at the end of the Flood.
There were probably a few metres of the stuff at the bottom of the seas BEFORE the flood – which was gathered up and sorted into localised chalk deposits or buried under other sedimentary rock – as in the Mexican example.

Except that there's hundreds of metres of sediment underneath as well. What story will it be this time - gradualist depostion before the Flood? Not long enough, sadly.

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
The odds of any particular hand in a game of bridge are about 1 in 600 billion, with randomly dealt cards. By your logic, bridge is an entirely impossible game, unless every hand is "intelligently designed".

The odd we are talking about in relation to a 100 chain protein is about 1 in a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion!!!
Equally, almost any hand can win a bridge game – but the range of sequences that produce useful proteins are quite limited indeed – and a SPECIFIC protein sequence is obviously even more limited.

Except that the process isn't random, and the number of amino acid sequences that produce proteins is very large, and evolution isn't "trying" to produce a particular protein after the fact in the same way you do your calculations, and...well, we've been over this one repeatedly, to the satisfaction of everyone but yourself.

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
Except that the woman lived about 150,000 years ago, the man 60-90,000 years ago. Even by Biblical standards, "Eve" would have been a bit old for childbearing by the time "Adam" came along

So how DID the first man and woman eventually get together?

And how did the women reproduce for over 100,000 years until the first man arrived?

They didn't. You don't understand what Mitochondrial Eve means at all, or Y-Chromosome Adam. Mitochondrial Eve is not the first woman, Y-Chromosome Adam is not the first man.

Why don't you actually read an article about them, instead of just repeating the words like a parrot?

J C wrote:

Wicknight
If you actually look at the effects of floods, it is a mess There is no order to it at all

Indeed many fossil deposits ARE a bit of a mess.

However, the layering of sedimentary rock is an ordered process due to the physics of silt sorting and deposition by water.

Sometimes. When the water isn't turbulent. Have a look at a fast river - do you see well-sorted deposits? There's a lot of different types of sedimentary sequences - fining up, fining down, different sortings, aeolian sorting, etc etc, all characteristic of different environments, and observed in them in modern settings.

J C wrote:

Wicknight
For the lithification process to take place in seidment rock (the bit where it turns from sediment into soild rock) you need very high pressure over long periods of time. Geologies call it the "overburden pressure", the weight of other sediment on top of the lithificating sediment

Lithification doesn’t require pressure – it only requires a cementing agent and water.

Overburden pressure IS required for Carbon metamorphosis – less pressure for coal and more for Diamonds!!!!

FFS. Do a Google image search for "quartzite thin section" - see the way the grains have grown into each other. That's not a cementing agent, it's heat and pressure. That's why the Sugarloaf stands up like that.

J C wrote:

Wicknight
I notice BTW you are quietly igoring the effects of errosion on your "new" sediment rock

The lack of evidence of ANY erosion between most sedimentary layers is actually proof that they were laid down very rapidly. Equally, any gradual process should have layers of organic material interspersed between almost every sedimentary layer – and this is patently not the case.

Please look up "unconformity". There's one or more on virtually every geological map, and an unconformity is a widespread erosion surface. Again, JC, it's amazing you can even pretend to yourself that you know what you're talking about.

J C wrote:

Wicknight
How do you explain erosion such as the Grand Canyon, that is estimated to have take 2 million years to form and the rock to have been put their 160 million years ago.

Simple, the canyon was eroded in a few weeks before the sediment petrified c. 5,000 years ago!!

Stage 1 was the deposition of sediment under water.

Stage 2 was the raising of the Colorado Plateau.

Stage 3 was the run off of water from the continental USA via what became a run-away cutting process that formed the Grand Canyon.

Stage 4 was the completion of the petrification process.

Debunked more times than the flat earth. Sadly, there's something about the Grand Canyon that just blows the Creationist's mind. It's like Stonehenge to a New Ager.

JC, your post closely approaches 100% inaccuracy.

Scofflaw

Zombrex

J C wrote:

So how DID the first man and woman eventually get together?

And how did the women reproduce for over 100,000 years until the first man arrived?

*Groan*

As has already been explained to you JC, M-Eve and Y-Adam were not the first man and woman. They are simply the most recent common ancestors that everyone one earth shares.

J C wrote:

Indeed many fossil deposits ARE a bit of a mess.

No, actually they are not.

J C wrote:

However, the layering of sedimentary rock is an ordered process due to the physics of silt sorting and deposition by water.

Then you would get all lime stone at a certain level and following that all sand stone at a certain level above (or below) that etc etc

You don't. At all.

J C wrote:

And why not – if it was global they would have nowhere to hide.

Because 40 trillion trillion liters would not just fall from the sky in one single go JC, even by Biblical discriptions. There woudl not be world wide instant death.:rolleyes:

J C wrote:

Lithification doesn’t require pressure – it only requires a cementing agent and water.

Overburden pressure IS required for Carbon metamorphosis – less pressure for coal and more for Diamonds!!!!

Lithification in solid rock does require over burden pressure JC. Unless you are claiming that the sediment layers dried while under water :rolleyes:

J C wrote:

Simple, the canyon was eroded in a few weeks before the sediment petrified c. 5,000 years ago!!

Stage 1 was the deposition of sediment under water.

Stage 2 was the raising of the Colorado Plateau.

Stage 3 was the run off of water from the continental USA via what became a run-away cutting process that formed the Grand Canyon.

Stage 4 was the completion of the petrification process.

They why did the surrounding sediment not get washed away too? And how did the rock lithify with no pressure from above. (and please don't say it "dried", that is nonsense. Soild rock does not form when mud dries :rolleyes:)

And this ignores that fact that the majority of sediment is deposited when a flood retreats (not that Creationists have ever explained where all the water from the Flood retreated too after the flood).

Zombrex

J C wrote:

The majority of Dinosaurs were lizard-sized. The average size was probably that of a sheep – and there were a few giants like T. Rex!!

Not the average dinosaur species JC, the average dinosaur.

J C wrote:

The really hard part is getting it to come ALIVE!!

As I said, not its not. Once you have a self-replicating molecule (which is the hard bit), and external energy source and a couple of billion years "life" is inevitable

J C wrote:

You need a pretty sophisticated ‘bucket’ to synthesise amino acids – and you need the appliance of intelligence!!

No you don't, amino acids have be made using natural conditions (ie those found on Earth 4 million years ago) for years.

J C wrote:

I have mathematically proven to you that functional proteins (of any reasonable chain length) couldn’t be generated in a billion billion billion million years using all of the matter in the Universe!!!!

No you have mathematically proven that a funtioning protien could not just randomly spring together. And I've told you about 20 times already that there was nothing random about the first protien. They were a product of about a billion years of natural selection from the first very simple self-replicating molecules.

J C wrote:

You’re making an enormous leap of faith and logic here, Wicknight.

Its not "faith" at all JC. If we know life can happen like that, and we are here (proving life did happen some how) it is logical to assume that life happened like, or at least in a similar way, to what we model it did.

I'm not saying we know for certain which model actually happened. There are a large number of competting theories, and it is kinda hard to know for certain without time travel. But all the models work, and none of them require an intelligent hand to start things off.

J C wrote:

It’s like saying that because iron filings order themselves into patterns in the presence of a magnet that over millions of years they will spontaneously produce a tape deck and start ‘pumping out’ the music of Status Quo!!!!

No, its not like that at all. Its like imagining that a simple self replicating molecule, given a billion years, will eventually develop into a more complex self replicating system. Which it obviously did since we have evidence of early cells from approx 2 billion years ago.

J C wrote:

Sounds like Robin believes you need at least a living reproducing cell for NS (Evolution) to act on.

Wicknight go talk to Robin about what exactly Evolution IS – and when you have decided between you come back to me!!!

A self replicating molecule produces "off spring", it produces a copy of itself. All that evolution needs is that this process can make minor mistakes, that produce slightly different molecules based on the original. Natural selection then kicks in as the environment determines if these slight changes to the molecules structure improve its ability to replicate or hamper it. If it improves its ability to replicate this new molecule begins to replicate faster and better than the current version, eventually replacing it. And the process starts again. It is really quite simple JC. As I said, all you need is one self replicating molecule, and chemists have already produced self replicating molecules using natural conditions, so we know naturally occuring self replicating molecules are possible.

J C wrote:

I see – the South Pole and the Sahara Desert should be teeming with life then!!

Equally, the more mistakes the better – is a novel quality control idea.

They aren't teeming with life, they do support very specialised life forms that have adapted brilliantly to their environment, through natural selection and evolution.

The only system of "quality control" is if the mistakes in replication produce a better molecule or not. If they don't then the molecule does not replicate better and eventually "dies off" since it cannot compete against the current standard molecule. Therefore the only changes that manage to survive are onces that improve the molecule's chances of surviving and replicating. This also holds for evolution of individual animals, such as those found in desert regions, which is why you get very specialised adaptations in desert animals.

J C wrote:

Ah, but all life is observed to use DNA and to have a genome.

True, since all life on Earth is a produce of 4 billion years of evolution from the same self-replicating molecules that were replicating in the seas of an young Earth. So naturally they would contain the same complex systems that developed approx. 2.5 billion years ago. Any systems that developed but didn't work as well would have died off billions of years ago. Obviously the cell/protien/DNA system was better than any other that developed around the same time.

What will be very interesting to see is if we ever discover primiative life on other planets, to see how evolution has worked in a completely different enviromental set up and what is common and different between their systems and ours.

J C wrote:

How it got both IS the question – which Evolution fails to answer – and which Creation Science does answer.

JC evolution and natural selection answer the question perfectly. It is one of the beauties of evolution is that it fits in so well, it simply makes sense.

Creation "science" doesn't, since i've never actually heard a theory about what God actually did, only that he must have done it.

So please, tell me what God actually did and when did he do it. And not a simple "he made life" answer, I want to know what he actually did, the details and specifics.

J C wrote:

I agree, but there is no plausible theory based upon observable evidence as to how a modern protein could EVER develop via undirected processes.

Yes there is. Its called natural selection. You start off with one simple self replicating molecule. You add an engery source (the sun) and you let it replicate away for a billion years. Eventually over those billion years mistakes in the replication process with produce different molecules. If these mistakes improve the molecule's ability to replicate they survive and superceed the current molecule. After a few million years you will end up with much more complex self replicating molecules like.

In general it is a quite simple process JC.

Wibbs

J C wrote:

Scofflaw
By the way, you never did say what field of science you're in?

Many and various!!!

Could you be more specific?

Scofflaw
Perhaps Wicknight would prefer to know where all that sediment came from?

Perhaps Wicknight could provide us with an Evolutionary STORY about where all of the sediment originally came from.
I’ll tell you my STORY – if you tell me yours first!!

Do you understand simple geological processes at all?

I am not ignoring them.
Noah’s Flood did indeed deposit sedimentary rocks – but the flood process also included massive tectonic movements and volcanic eruptions as well – and where volcanism met sedimentation them metamorphism obviously resulted.

Lovely, but what about the metamorphic rocks that are found in sedimentary deposits? What about conglomerates? You can find sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks of all types, all together in the same rock. Hoe do you explain that with a single flood?

The only reason we need mechanised farming to feed six billion people is because we wish to ‘free up’ people to do really interesting things like becoming engineers, thread moderators, etc. (rather that everyone being a hunter-gatherer).

It's because we harnessed more land to provide food than hunter gatherers. More food=more humans. Different roles was merely a side effect.

So how DID the first man and woman eventually get together?

And how did these women reproduce for over 100,000 years until the first man arrived?

They're not the "first" man or woman. They're merely the genetic survivors of a larger gene pool in the male and female line. There were other women around with mitochondrial "eve".

And why not – if it was global they would have nowhere to hide.

Except for those pesky sea creatures. Why did so many of those end up dying out.

The lack of evidence of ANY erosion between most sedimentary layers is actually proof that they were laid down very rapidly. Equally, any gradual process should have layers of organic material interspersed between almost every sedimentary layer – and this is patently not the case.

No, you're entirely wrong here. No if buts or maybes.

The majority of Dinosaurs were lizard-sized. The average size was probably that of a sheep – and there were a few giants like T. Rex!!

Most dinosaurs were not lizard sized, except early in their history. Gigantism was rife, especially in the Jurassic. The sth American megafauna are good examples.

Most fossils were drowned. Some were partially eaten by hungry carnivores as the flood proceeded apace and footprints of MANKIND and Dinosaurs were left in mud as they tried to flee from the deluge – and these footprints were then covered in more sediment and fossilised.

Not quite, many died for other reasons. The other inescapable fact is that far far more marine creatures fossilised than land animals and plants. The dearth of highland fossil species is a good example. In the global flood scenario, land animals should be far more common than they are.

Assyrian – there ARE actually amazing little BACTERIA and other saprophytes out there that break down dead organic material – usually in a matter of weeks!!!

Yes, but in certain conditions no. Anerobic, acidic or dessicated conditions for example.

Scofflaw wrote:

Sounds almost reasonable until you consider that the hunter-gatherer population of the Earth was about 100 million. This is a number which is smaller than 6 billion.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the figure I've seen recently is much lower than that. More in the tens of millions. Around the time of Christ the pop was around 250 millions.

Assyrian

Assyrian: When did death become the enemy of God?
Wolfbane: When it touched His people.

So did God make an enemy that would touch his people, or did it get out of hand?

That would make it no punishment to the wicked, since it was everyone's lot to begin with, in your system. But its penal nature was spelled out to Adam. Or do you hold that this creature who had evolved from non-human ape-like beings had so evolved as to be immortal, not subject to suffering and death?

There was no barrier to the resurrection, or to 'walking with God' before we sinned, hence the figurative picture of the tree of life in the garden of Eden. Sin cut us off from God and our mortality locked us in a lost eternity.

I see why you as a TE can believe in a non-literal Adam and Eve: since the rest of the Creation account is not literal, why should Adam and Eve be so? I take it you hold to some form of ensoulment of a species? We would therefore be descended from many first parents. How would you see Man's Fall then? It can hardly be that all of them sinned like in the biblical account? Is the notion of sin itself metaphoric, just a way of describing how man has always behaved, a device just to enourage certain moral standards?

Or is everyone on this list heading for an eternity in Hell, unless they repent and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour?

As to a literal Adam and Eve, the genealogies insist on a literal understanding of them as our first parents. The credibility of one hangs with the other. If the Genesis end is mythical, we need not give any weight to the Gospel records. Christ's descent from Adam, Abraham, Israel, David stands open to the same treatment as Adam and Eve get.

There are problem for people who want to take Luke's genealogy literally. Are 'Seth the son of Adam' and 'Adam the son of God to be taken in exactly the same literal manner? But the biggest problem with the genealogy is that Luke only describe it as the 'supposed' genealogy of Christ.

As I said to bmoferral, I don't know what ensoulment is all about, how the individual gets a soul at birth. But neither does the church. If we don't really know what happens with the individual, it is pretty much guess work what God did with the species. I think Gen 2&3 describe both the rebellion of the early human race, who were unable to keep the simplest command, and the sin and fall of every one of us. I think the actual sin is irrelevant and nicking a piece of fruit, representative rather than the actual crime, the same as the snake wasn't really a snake and eating fruit can not make you live for ever, and God would not really suggest Adam check out the animals to find a life partner. It's figurative. (Though interestingly the forbidden fruit does seem to point to the most primitive of moral codes, taboo.)

On the other hand, while I see a lot of symbolism in the poetry of Gen 1, my primary approach to it is literal. It is highly simplified, with only three categories of plant (no bacteria, fungi, moss, or seaweed), three categories of astronomical object, three categories of non terrestrial creature (with bird and insects included in winged creatures) and three categories of terrestrial creature. But the account describes a periods of creation that broadly match the geological history of the planet, with each period of creation followed by a numbered day. There is no suggestion given how long the creative periods are but they describe long processes, trees growing and bearing fruit, the heavens marking out days seasons and years and at least one day and night before the beginning of 'day one'.

That is where Creationists disagree: see for example http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home...k/global10.asp

Answers in Genesis wrote:

Preservation of animal tracks, ripple marks and even raindrop marks, testifies to rapid covering of these features to enable their preservation.

How do you get raindrop marks in layers of sediment settling out under water? How do animals walk on layers of sediment forming in water deep below the ark? However it is a lot easier to preserve a mark if the mud is let dry out a bit before it is covered again.

Of course coprolites are really interesting (if you are into that sort of thing). You know the way you can tell how recently a neighbour dog has left his calling card, older turds are dried out and cracked. It is the same with fossilised dino poo, you get the ones that were covered in silt when they were still fresh and others that had a chance to get dried out and cracked first. Difficult in the middle of a flood.

Answers in Genesis wrote:

Polystrate fossils (ones which traverse many strata) speak of very quick deposition of the strata.

Creationist site don't tell you of polystrate trees where the tree has sent roots up into each layer as it was being buried... It make sense if the tree is being gradually buried by annual floods in a river delta, It does not make sense if the tree was covered in multiple layers in a single flood. You get other polystrate fossils where the tree eventually died and rotted away, and small animals have fallen into the hole before it was covered in the next layer. Time for the tree to rot and animals walk along the surface of the top layer of mud and fall into the hole... under water?

Answers in Genesis wrote:

The scarcity of erosion, soil formation, animal burrows and roots between layers also shows they must have been deposited in quick succession.

This is pretty disingenuous. You realise that any erosion, soil formation, animal burrows and roots between layers utterly disproved the claim that all the layers formed in one great flood?

You confuse the genetic pool possessed by those birds with what one would find now.

A single pair just gives you four sets of chromosomes.

No, just faithfulness to Him in the face of suffering and oppression. That doesn't make them 'very good'. Survival of the fittest may sound good to TEs, and be the vehicle for creation's success: but it is sin and its consequences to the rest of Christianity.

'Survival of the fittest' is the catchphrase of Social Darwinism, not biological evolution. In evolution success often goes to the animals that learn to cooperate, who sacrifice themselves for their young or for their sisters and cousins. It goes to the species that breed prolifically, which is after all the very first commandment in the bible. It is really Survival of the Luvingest.

Assyrian

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote:

Survival of the fittest must be repaced with the knowledge of Man as God's creation in His image - worthy of the greatest respect and having the greatest of reponsibility towards His Creator and his fellowman. What self-image can the atheists (logically) give him?

I think you might be miss-understand what "survivial of the fittest" means in relation to evolution.

It isn't a mantra or philosophy to follow (unless you are Hitler, who didn't understand it anyway). It is simply a description of a process.

If you have five deer being chased by leopard, naturally the weakest deer is going to be the slowest and get eatten. There is no morality in this action. Its just nature. No one is saying that deer getting eatten is a "good" thing.

As Dawkins explains in the introduction to "The Selfish Gene", evolution is selfish but evolution is not a person. It is a process and a process has no concept of morality, or right or wrong. Just because we find processes in nature that are selfish it doesn't mean being a selfish person is a good thing.

It does get a bit annoying that certain posters on this forum constantly assume atheists some how live by this idea of selfishness in nature is the natural state humans should follow, that selfishness and looking after yourself at the expense of others is some how the atheist philosophy.

For a start there is no atheist philosophy. Atheism isn't a belief system. Being an atheist simply means you don't believe in supernatural gods. You might be a psychopathic serial killer, or you might spend your life helping orphans in Africa.

Secondly, to an atheist such as myself, being an atheist simply means I recongise that the moral teachings of western and eastern religions come from humanity rather than gods. That doesn't mean they aren't a good idea. I think it is a very good idea to help others, to not judge others, to want to help my fellow man. But I see these ideas as not coming from a father like God, but from the nature of humans. We are by nature social creatures, and with that comes the concepts of community and morality. These don't suddenly vanish when someone rejects the idea of a supernatural god.

I could spend the rest of this post showing examples of where nature isn't selfish (mothers dying for their young, birds signallying others in the flock of danger), but I would be falling into the same trap I was giving out about, that being trying to justify human behaviour based on examples in nature. We shouldn't look to the non-moral processes in nature for some kind of moral guidence about what we as humans should or should not do.

Nature has no system of morality. It has no concept of right or wrong, moral or immoral. It just is

robindch

> Your logic also applies to all men being descended from one man – who
> also logically had to be contemporaneous with the first woman (so that
> the first man and the first woman could ‘get it together’ so to speak).

Ach, be careful, JC - you're falling back into your old creationist habits of pulling a pile of steaming manure from somewhere and saying it's a tasty piece of holy truth (all creationism must taste like that)! Remember that you're an evolutionist now and you're expected to think before you type!

It's not any more necessary for most recent common male ancestor and the most recent common female ancestor to be contemporaneous, than it is for my grandparents had to be born on the same day! In fact, if you think about it, since human males and human females tend to reproduce at different ages, the likelihood that, going back more than a few generations, the most recent common ancestors were alive at the same time is absolutely nil.

Hope this helps to light up the little bubble of creationist darkness that accidentally floated by!