Is a Deluge really claptrap?
I had seen on BBCTV last year evidence in the Andean mountains of sea shells.
This suggests a deluge, or a meteor strike which might have resulted in a deluge.
No, it suggests that the mountain tops were at one time underwater. The problem is that you assume that at one time the sea was higher, when in reality the mountains were lower. When tectonic plates collide with each other, low-lying areas (such as seafloor) are pushed up to form mountains.
Have you read the must-read FAQs at http://www.talkorigins.org?
-Ben
No, it suggests that the mountain tops were at one time underwater. The problem is that you assume that at one time the sea was higher, when in reality the mountains were lower. When tectonic plates collide with each other, low-lying areas (such as seafloor) are pushed up to form mountains.
Have you read the must-read FAQs at http://www.talkorigins.org?
-Ben
A worldwide deluge is claptrap. (What I originally said: “But creationism–and its related ideas, like a young Earth and Universe, or a worldwide Deluge–aren’t science any more; they’re just claptrap”–emphasis added.) That is, a worldwide deluge (and not just “a big flood someplace”) within historic times is claptrap–maybe some humongous something-or-other impacting this planet might have splashed water from the world ocean all over the then-supercontinent 2.7 billion years ago, I dunno. But, knowing what we know now about the archaelogical and geological history of this planet, we can definitively rule out any such event from having taken place in that time frame, just like we can rule out the possibility that there was a major volcanic eruption in the City of London in the 13th Century.
You know, it told me that the posting hadn’t gotten through the first time…
-Ben
If the story has its origins in the opening of the Bosporus (and it would be nice to pin that date down), it’s not hard to understand how the oral history would have become what it is. For people who rarely got more than a few miles from the place of their birth, that small region would be “the world”. If it got flooded suddenly, “the world” would have been lost. There would be a large number of refugees over precisely the geographic area the Deluge stories come from, each telling the locals what had happened. Having the evidence of the panicked refugees themselves, the story would have been more impressive than most other stories. Generations of storytellers repeating it would have added their own flourishes.
I understand there’s a principle of anthropology that oral histories in nonliterate societies are hopelessly altered or lost in about 200 years (link, anyone?). A flood story, with its simple and powerful imagery, might have survived longer.
All of which is an argument for figurative, not literal, interpretation of Genesis.
O ye of little faith!
Since none of the creationists here can answer the questions, and since Helen Fryman hasn’t given me any reply, I’ve written to the folks at http://www.answersingenesis.org.
I really must ask the creationists what they think of the questions. Do you feel they constitute evidence for evolution and against creationism? And have any of the creationists tried asking creationist experts to come to this thread?
-Ben
Incidentally, I’ve also written the folks at http://www.rae.org.
-Ben
I’ve posted a notice about the stumper questions at talk.origins, too. Bear in mind, we won’t get any creationists who can answer these questions. After all, creationism is pseudoscience. But I want to dispel any notions that the creationists might have that just because they can’t answer the questions doesn’t mean that a professional creationist molecular biologist might not be able to.
-Ben
edwino,
Believe it or not, I agree with you. I posted the link to Aish.com and Schroeder’s book because someone (I’m too lazy to check whom) asked for it, or something like it. In any case, I agree that attempting to reconcile science and faith is, at best, a frustrating and futile undertaking.
:deep breath:
Much has been made in this thread about what Creationists think. I believe that Ben and others have been careful, to some extent, to use the term carefully - I believe they are really talking about believers of Creation Science, not Creationists - and I see a great big difference between the two.
There are some people who believe something that flies in the face of scientific evidence. Scientists and rationalists call these people names; they say they are hiding their heads in the sand, ignoring truth, foolishly pursuing falshood, etc. But, many, many people are able to compartmentalize their lives: Science goes here, faith goes there and that’s that.
I see no merit or purpose in trying to convince this kind of person to believe differently. Anyone trying to do so is doing it for selfish reasons, not selfless ones. If the purpose of this thread is to defraud Creation Science, then I say, Onward Science Soldiers.
If the purpose of this thread is anything but that, then I find it dubious, at best.
Hi, Ben.
IMHO, as a non-creationist, the questions aren’t important. Oh, they’re interesting, and someone should probably look into them, but to a creationist the truth is known. Any evidence or theory that appears to contradict the known, revealed truth is known to be wrong.
Well, I’ve received a response from Answers In Genesis, via email. Unfortunately, when I indicated that I wanted to post their reply to the SDMB and give my rebuttal, they vehemently forbade me to divulge the contents of the email.
-Ben
Link don’t work.
There’s an extra period in the link.
Ta.
FWIW, a quick check of the AiG site shows that only one of their essays even remotely comes close to addressing any of the questions:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/tjv14n3pseudogene_pj.asp
Even so, this essay leaves a great deal to be desired. I’ll read the attached paper when I get a chance, and give a more detailed critique.
I invite anyone else (particularly the creationists) to provide any links they find relevant. In theory, the folks at AiG should provide us with a list of the relevant links, but they insist that we dig for them ourselves. It’s nice to know that they’re committed to education, eh? (Although personally, I think they’re refusing to provide the links because they know that none of their essays actually answer the questions.)
-Ben
One thing that bugs me about AiG is that the logo for their Creation Museum is obviously derived from Jurassic Park’s logo. I think Michael Crichton and/or Universal Studios ought to sue them for copyright infringement.
Let´s just say I´m not holding my breath that they´ll show up Ben
Ben,
While I can fully understand the frustration you feel I sometimes wonder whether the compulsion you appear to feel to call out people who are quite happilly living their lives, and the anger it seems to engender, is necessarily a good thing. Still, it’s your life.
I’ll give your questions a shot from my less then conventional creationist viewpoint.
1)Why shouldn’t they. Orthologous proteins have the percieved relationship because one organism was derived from the other. Even for the average fundamentalist Christian I can’t see this being a big problem. It’s the same reason why the wheel-bearings in a 1997 Corvette and an 1880 steam engine show similar structures. The designs for two systems can be based on one another without having spontaneously evolved from each other. The same goes for independantly evolved proteins. The lense a light microscope and the ‘lense’ of an electron microscope may serve analogous functions, but they were not directly derived from the same design. As such they aren’t the same.
2)See above. I could show you the designs for every telephone made since Bell’s first model to modern cellular phones, and the designs would show very obvious patterns of improvent and modification that unsuprisingly fit with the age of the phone. That doesn’t mean the Nokia 3310 has evolved from the Bell handset, simply that intelligent designers used a previous working design and improved upon it for new applications.
3)Why are similar functions served by the glass lense of a light microscope and the magnetic lense of an elctron microscope? Same function, different structure. Why is a glass prism used to generate a virtual image in a camera, heat in a firelighter, pretty pictures in a kaleidoscope and a spectrum in a plant lab? Same structure different functions. A fairly simple answer seems to be that an intelligent designer will use whatever works, and is capable of turning one invention to multiple uses (think of the wheel) and where necessary coming up with multiple inventions to serve similar functions.
4)Can I get that in English? Struth Ben, I’ve got a degree in Biology and I didn’t even start to understand that. That’s as silly as me asking you to explain the observed patterns of distributions of Corymbia and Symphiomyrtus on the Georgetown basalt. The question just demonstrates I know more about my field than I do about yours, it’s not something you’ve ever though about or likely have the ability or inclination to research. My ability to bamboozle you with facts concerning savanna ecology doesn’t mean that my beliefs are inherently more correct. Try giving it to me in English or graduate level sciencese and I’ll give it a shot though.
5)Well I know a little more about psuedo genes but I’m not an expert by any means. I could just explain them away by saying they are what they appear to be - nonsense genetic material. Why would this in any way conflict with even fundamentalist christian beliefs? Does the presence of the useless little bumps and seams on plastic objects left over from manufacturing in any way conflict with the object having been designed?
6)As above
7)What’s an intron?
8)What’s an exon? Anything to do with a mutinatuonal oil company?
9)And is a psuedoexon pretending to be a multinational oil complany?
10)Well I’m really flying blind here, but wouldn’t it be because mutations in functional genes are much more likely to be detrimental, and hence less likely top be passed on, while mutations in psuedogenes are largely irrelevant? To give an analogy it’s like saying any given car on the road is more likely to have a missing or faulty cigarette lighters than it is to have missing or faulty fuel injectors. Similarly the construction of a vital object like tyres varies little between ‘species’ of cars while the construction of the sound system varies far more wildly. The construction of the sound system varies roughly the same amount between species as does the paint job (all Mitsubishis are painted with paint and fitted with stereos from the same manufacturers, while all Fords use paint and sound systems from other manufacturers), while the construction of the tyres varies much less (it’s not uncommon for Mitsubishi’s and Fords to be factory fitted with the same tyres). This in no way detracts from the fact that intelligent designers are at work.
11)Well to me this seems obvious. Mutations in the less functional tails are less likely to be detrimental even if only neutral, and hence are passed on. Mutations in the core are more likely to be detrimental and hence lower an oganism’s reproductive fitness. What I’m failing to see here is how this in any way detracts from intelligent design of those proteins in the first place. I guess I could use an analogy of a completely automated car plant that has absolutely no human input. If a robot at the factory malfunctions and fails to put in the cigarette lighters it’s no biggie. Even if it can’t be repaired the car will still function. The car may not sell as well as its competitors but it will sell. If a robot malfunctions and fails to put in the spark plugs we’ve got a problem and the factory will rapidly go broke because of a lack of sales (ie the organism will die). I can’t see how any of this precludes the logical conclusion that both the car and the robots constructing it were intelligently designed.