DDG, you rock! All of your postings in this thread have been great! 
420 posts later, you have yet to provide a single verifiable explanation as to how this is consistent with the observed evidence of biology, geology, ecology, astronomy, etc.
I don’t care how many holes you *think *you can poke in evolution, until you can provide that answer, you have not proved that creationism is supported by science.
If you truly insist that it was “just created” as it is, with all of the reduntant evidence of evolution and deep time and without any other explanation of how all the evidence came to be, then all you are doing is calling God a liar. That doesn’t do much for either of your arguments.
You seem to have fallen back to “repeat until true” …
Do you read and consider, or do you already have an ideology into which you try to ram everything that comes your way? If they’re so well adapted, why can’t they do well in crusty snow?
Surely the deer with its legs stuck in the snow who has a coyote rip open his belly doesn’t consider that to be a perfect situation, n’est pas?
Obviously not all survive, and all must devote time to sunning themselves, and thus become easier targets for predators. The fact that the species has not gone exinct is not proof that it’s perfectly adapted.
I suppose it may be too much to ask you to be honest, but what strawman have I ascribed to your position?
I quit listening because it is ridiculous for you to expect adults to devote half an hour to a program whose scholarship is, at best, totally lacking. The foolishness of stating that the church was the wellspring of the modern scientific method is simply beyond the pale, but it did give me some insight into one fundie mind.
Again, care to summarize/cite some points from the rambling half hour fest of lies and revisionist history?
And while I’m at it, are you going to use your standard operating pattern and escape when confronted, or are you going to respond to the facts about protenoid microspheres and/or the link between brain and mind?
And as long as I’m talking about arguments which contradict your position and you ignore, please explain the red shift using any model not related to an expanding Universe.
Concur!
And thanks for digesting Fred’s tripe for us; I couldn’t have tolerated it.
Interesting how he seems to think that there should be only a single effective survival strategy for every species to follow. Talk about an utter failure to even understand what he’s talkling about!
There is no reason to believe this. As your post mentioned earlier, a number of people who like the “religion vs science” model of the world enjoy claiming Bruno for a martyr, but he was turned in to the Inquisition by a guy who was upset that he was not practicing magic and his trial contains no condemnations of any scientific work he published.
The claim that it was an adherence to the Copernican theory that got Giordano in trouble falls apart on multiple points:
He was executed over 15 years prior to Galileo’s first trial, (the one that only occurred because after the Inquisition dismissed two charges of heresy against Galileo, he came to Rome and demanded a fight).
The Copernican model was freely discussed within the Jesuit community in Rome prior to Galileo’s first trial. (It was generally dismissed, prior to the evidence presented by the new and improving telescopes, but it was discussed without taint of heresy.)
And no condemnations of Giordano allude to the model.
Giordano was an abusive crank (brilliant, but a crank), who got himself thrown out of every country and university to which he moved throughout his life. He eventually fell afoul of the Inquisition on religious grounds and was (unjustly) executed for his beliefs. The attempt to make his execution a war between religion and science is an after-the-fact invention of people with their own axes to grind.
A third, thanks, DDG.
Actually something else is going on here, which is very common. No explanation for abiogenesis has yet reached the status of theory, so the hypotheses multiply wonderfully. As we understand the chemistry of replicators better, and find more evidence about the state of the young Earth, we will home in on a few explanations and the others will go extinct. This is the part where creativity has a big role. The very best thing that can happen to a researcher is when others stop saying “you’re crazy” about a hypothesis and start saying “that’s obvious.” It will happen with abiogenesis also, but who knows when.
It is too bad that nolies doesn’t understand this area enough to say something himself instead of googling for anyone with the feeblest anti-evolution argument.
Tom: Thanks… I am beginning to become quite wary of wikipedia. This is the second article of theirs now in which I’ve had a mistake pointed out to me.
Ummm…no, they weren’t. That is, they may have had the brains, but according to Genesis, while they were still living in the Garden, they didn’t use them for that.
Go back and look at Genesis 2 again: God creates Adam, He creates Eve, and then, Genesis 2:25:
God created them naked. They’re naked at the beginning.
They were living in Iraq. The weather in Iraq is cold half the year. They would have suffered from the cold.
They didn’t invent “clothing” until Genesis 3:7, after the Fall:
However, fig leaves are not good insulators. They don’t get decent, warm clothing until verse 21 and they are in the process of being kicked out of Eden–and they do NOT “clothe themselves”": God Himself invents clothing for them.
Also, notice that “fire” is not mentioned in Genesis at all. Now, you’re the one claiming a literal interpretation of the Bible, AND you’re the one who started this whole discussion by claiming, in the “Drunken Noah” thread, that since drunkenness isn’t mentioned in the Bible until the story of Drunken Noah, that that means that fermentation didn’t exist until it was mentioned in the Bible.
Now, you can’t have it both ways, Nolies: firemaking is not mentioned until Genesis 15, when God makes His covenant with Abram. Therefore, by your own standards, Adam and Eve did not have fire.
And they didn’t have warm clothes until they were on their way out of Eden and into the wide world. And they didn’t come up with the idea of “animal skins” for clothes themselves.
So, while they were in Eden, before the Fall, when they were still naked and unashamed, if Genesis is literally true, and Eden was located “between the Tigris and the Euphrates”, then they would have been (1) naked and (2) freezing.
So God created them to live in an environment for which they were unsuited.
Uh, yeah, but that Bible’s written in English. Something was lost in the translation.
Just trying to keep the conversation humming along.
heh-heh-heh
You are eeeee-vil.
Yeah, but he can always do like Adam did. Blame it on his wife.
DDG,
You constantly TRY to dismantle the Bible and at the same time you say you are Christian?
I never said that fermentation didn’t happen but that it may not have happened.
In some of the pre flood models I have seen the earth was like a big greenhouse warm in the day and night. With a layer of water vapor in the upper atmosphere which held in heat and filtered out some of the suns rays. Kept the place nice and cozy. If Adam had Eve I doubt that they were cold.
I think the best stretch is the deer one.
So by your logic if an animal doesn’t have some sort of natural shield from hail then it isn’t properly created for it’s environment. LOL
Studying and trying to understand the Bible is not “trying to dismantle” it.
You were making a case that fermentation was not to have been expected in advance of when Noah made wine, over in CCC. Of course, it’s become expected around here that a YEC will attempt to weasel when someone tries to hold him to his own words, so I doubt anyone is surprised.
Hmmm…Greenhouse theory. For once you have something passably practical to suggest. Do you have any evidence to point to where someone has worked the figures on this? I think our members with an interest in planetary climatology would love to have a chance to review them.
Uh, where do you get the words “properly created” out of “evolutionary processes”? Just to review the bidding in this bridge game, you are the one claiming special creation for species (or at least for “kinds,” whatever they may be defined as). Evolution is a process of adaptation to environment. If you know anyone who has had appendicitis, you have an example of imperfect adaptation. (BTW, is there any standard answer as to why God created the vermiform appendix?)
To try to wrap this thing up:
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Do you have any evidence for Creationism as a falsifiable scientific theory, as opposed to random Scripture quotes and the products of Creationist speculation as to how scripture verse X might conceivably have been implemented?
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On what grounds do you claim that your reading of the Bible is to be regarded as paramount over the evidence and inferences drawn therefrom of the world which was also created by the God who inspired the Bible? Especially when adherence to YEC literalism suggests that He is a liar one way or the other?
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In what way do you claim that a belief in Creationism is essential to salvation or to the living of a Christian life?
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Do you honestly believe that you are carrying out an effective witness for Christ in this thread?
I think the following is what Nolies is referring to:
From Chapter VIII, Creation According to Scripture, Scientific Creationism, Master Books, El Cajon, CA., Edited by Henry R. Morris, Institute for Creation Research.
"It must also be recognized that this primordial-created world was different from the present world in many significant ways. There were, in that world, ‘. . . waters which were above the firmament’ (Genesis 1:7), and this corresponds to nothing in the present world. The word ‘firmament’ (Hebrew raqia, eaning ‘stretched-out thinness’) is essentially synonymous with ‘heaven’ (note Genesis 1:8) and thus means simply ‘space,’ referring either to space in general or to a specific space, as the context requires. In this case, the firmament was essentially the atmosphere, where birds fly (Genesis 1:20). The waters above it must have been in the form of a vast blanket of invisible water vapor, translucent to the light from the stars but productive of a marvelous greenhouse effect which maintained mild temperatures from pole to pole, thus preventing air-mass circulations and the resultant rainfall (Genesis 2:5). It would certainly have had the further effect of efficiently filtering harmful radiations from space, markedly reducing the rate of somatic mutations in living cells, and, as a consequence drastically decreasing the rate of aging and death.
Another great difference was in the antediluvian geography. The Edenic river system (Genesis 2:10-14) obviously does not exist in the present earth. The artesian nature of the source of the four rivers, plus the later references to the breaking-up of the fountains of the great deep (Genesis 7:11) indicate there were great reservoirs of water under pressure below the earth’s crust. These waters, and the waters above the firmament, must now be in the present oceanic system and this, in turn, implies that the antediluvian oceans were much less extensive than now. Therefore, the lands wer more extensive, and the mild climates and fertile soils would have supported far greater numbers of plants and animal all over the world than is now the case.
In addition to all this, there was in the beginning no death. Death only came into the world when sin came into the world (Romans 5:12; 8:22). Man would have lived forever had he not sinned, and so, apparently, would have the animals (at least all those possessing the nephesh, the “soul”). Plant life, of course, is not consciouS life, but only very complex replicating chemicals. The eating of, fruits and herbs was not to be considered “death” of the plant material since they had no created “life” (in the sense of consciousness) anyhow."
The text cites IIPeter 3:6 as the only justification for this picture. In its entirety the cited passage reads (KJV): “Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.”
So Morris et al found a button and sewed a whole suit of clothes on it.
Those who haven’t read * Scientific Creationism* might do so. Its a perfect example of the science in young earth creationism.
Nolies, what makes you think your preferred creation myth should be given credence over any other creation myth? After all, creation myths are all basically the same: a religion and some religious text say this and that, and it must be true because a religion and a religious text say so.
The only thing supporting this boot-strap logic is faith, the desire to believe thus. You’re free to believe what you want, but the views of science you have been presenting in your arguments are highly distorted and uninformed.
Science, unlike faith, uses a myriad (literally a myriad) clues to piece together a model of time and space. The most logical and favoured model, at the moment and for the past several decades, requires the Big Bang.
The primary indication that the universe is expanding arose in the early 20th century. It was well known, theoretically and practically as well thanks to laboratory experiments, that specific atoms emit and absorb light of certain wavelengths. But when looking at distant galaxies, scientists noticed that the same light patterns they were familiar with in our solar system had been stretched towards longer wavelengths when they originated from particularly distant objects.
Because the increase in wavelength tended to shift the colour of the light towards the red end of the spectrum (red = longer wavelength, blue = shorter) the light from distant objects was said to be red-shifted. This process is similar, but not identical to, the Doppler effect, except that in the case of the universe it is space itself that is expanding (and not, as commonly thought, objects that are moving apart fast enough to red-shift light as suggested by a pure Doppler effect).
Now, if you run time backwards given the data we have, you would see space collapse instead of expand, and if you run time back far enough, the current model suggests that space - the observable universe - has expanded from a significantly smaller state. That all suggests that the Big Bang and the time scale of about 14 billion years is right on the money. In addition, the other important clues include the cosmic microwave background radiation (the remnant of the Bang), the chemical properties of the observable universe, and the grouping of matter.
A Big Bang occurring roughly 14 billion years ago is a solid scientific theory with abundant - you could say uncontested - support. Yes, there are still holes in the knowledge base – such as what caused the expansion in the first place – but the model is by far the best fit to the available data. There is, on the other hand, absolutely ZERO scientific evidence to suggest a “creation” of the universe by any deity.
It’s a similar story for the evolution of our planet too, and for the evolution (not necessarily abiogenesis) of life on it, but this has already been addressed for 9 pages.
cornea, passes across the aqueous humor (the liquid behind the cornea), passes through the pupil and through the lens
THE EYE
You recently raised the example of the eye as far too complex a structure to evolve, but that is a false claim. First of all, a closer look at the human eye will reveal some pretty serious design flaws, such as the fact that light must travel through the cornea, aqueous humor, the pupil, the lens, nerve fibres, nerve cells, and blood vessels simply in order to reach the retina, where the rods and cones finally capture the information the light carries. In addition to being inefficient, the placement of the human optic nerve also results in a blind spot, for which our brains have to compensate. Our brains also have to compensate for the fact that the image our eyes capture and send is upside down - so, in addition to controlling the eyeballs and processing visual information, our brains have the added load of removing a blind spot and flipping an upside-down image.
As another (but by no means final) example, consider that the architecture of the human eye (with the retina on top of the blood supply) makes it particularly vulnerable to interruptions in blood supply. Trauma to the head can easily detach the retina, which leads to permanent blindness unless surgery is carried out quickly to repair the supply of nutrients.
There’s many such design flaws in the human body. Another obvious one is our spinal column, which it seems has some troubles with the upright posture that we adopted only relatively recently, on an evolutionary scale (this is the reason why back problems and pain are so common everywhere).
But back to the eye: this is a good case to argue in favour of evolution because, although eyes don’t fossilize well, we nonetheless have access to a vast range of different eye models, from the very primitive, such as the rudimentary photosensitive cells that do little more than register changes in illumination, to the most complex and efficient, such as the eyes of cephalopods and some insects, which do not have blind spots or obstructions between the source of light and the photocells – the retinas and photocells face the light source, and the nerve cells in the rear are out of the way. So we can readily observe everything from primitive bundles of cells that do little more than register the existence of light, to wonderfully efficient and sophisticated organs such as a fly’s complex eyes, a squid’s optimal simple eyes, and the high-range, high acuity eyes of most birds.
If we have a spectrum of “eyes” that ranges all the way from rudimentary and simplistic to advanced and efficient, it is not necessary to scoff at how the human eye could evolve out of nothing, because we can actually project a development from simple bundles of photoreceptors to increasingly complex cell groupings. The eye is no mystery.
Forget it, Abe. I doubt Nolies will even read your entire post, let alone try to understand it.
What I find amazing is that Nolies expects people who’ve been Christians for decades, reading the Bible, praying, and thinking about it are expected to automatically discard those years of practical, working Christianity and bow to his authority about what the Bible really means. I believe God has led me to the understanding I have. Should I really replace what God has taught me with what Nolies wants me to believe? Wouldn’t that be placing Nolies on a par with God? Sorry. My God makes sense.
However, Nolies still feels free to insult those who disagree with his outlandish theories, even though I’m pretty sure insulting people goes against the Commandment Christ gave us. Then again, he doesn’t appear to attach much weight to that commandment.
Frankly, my Wiccan friend is a better witness for Christianity than Nolies. I’d say more, but I suspect it wouldn’t be suited to this forum.
CJ
I do believe that’s the Hydroplate Theory. Again.
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview2.html
Nope. You said that fermentation didn’t happen until the Flood.
Link.
Only if the hail is constant, and chronic, and regularly kills the animals, or otherwise causes them to die, like if it keeps shredding all the green stuff they need to live so they starve.
[explanation for bump]
Yes, I know it looks like we’re about done here, but the following point occurred to me this afternoon, and I wanted to get it down on paper, so to speak, before I forget.
If the Earth was being held at a steady 80 to 90 degrees F, then bulbs like tulips and daffodils could not have survived. Tulips and daffodils require a cold dormancy period, so cannot live in the tropics (indeed, they’re problematic even in a climate like Atlanta and Dallas–just doesn’t get cold enough for them.)
So if you’re going to postulate a literal Six-Day Creation, during which time God created every species that has ever existed on Planet Earth, and if you’re going to postulate that pre-Flood, the Earth was like a big hothouse which explains why Adam and Eve don’t have fur and didn’t die of hypothermia in the Garden, then you’re not going to be able to have tulips and daffodils in that Garden, because they could not survive in tropical heat, which means that God is going to have to pull off a second creation somewhere to account for their current presence on Planet Earth.
No, it is not a false premise at all. When school administrations forbid the use of historical documents in the classroom, because the documents contain references to God, that is liberal hostility towards religion. When robed dictators decree that the Pledge of Allegience is unconstitutional because of the phrase “one nation under God”, that is liberal hostitlity towards religion. When communities with a tradition of Christian observance are ordered to remove century-old plaques of The Ten Commandments from their local courthouses, that is liberal hostility towards religion. When liberals are overtly gleeful that such decrees are handed down, that is liberal hostility towards religion. When members of this forum make statements such as
…that is liberal hostility towards religion.
Bull-oney. Enviornment plays a significant role in the theory of evolution, and enviornment plays a significant role in the different cultures of the world, which, in turn, contribute to the differences in social behaviors and intelligence of the different groups within the human species.
First off, they ain’t “prejudices”, they’re “postjudices”. Second, although you have a habit of using the word, you don’t exhibit having knowledge of the true meaning of the word 'lie". See, Tom, a lie is a deliberate deception, not an opinion that you may disagree with. So, why would it be a “lie” to say that many evolutionists say that black sub-Saharan Africans have a mean IQ somewhere near 70, when the scientific method of IQ measurement bears that statistic out? And don’t give me that, “IQ tests are biased or flawed” nonsense. Despite the many attempts at developing “bias free” IQ tests, they always render the same racial statistics. If IQ tests can be biased, why is it that there has never been a test biased in such a manner that Blacks excel over Whites?
And speaking of lies, how 'bout this whopper.
No, not gathering empty clothes, but pointing and laughing at the emperor’s new clothes