Young Earth Creationism Vs. Science (Statler Waldorf Contd)

[Darwinian]

One thing that has always puzzled me about the idea that the Earth is only about 6000 years old is the dinosaurs. If indeed the Earth is as young as these people say it is then it follows that 99.999% of the Earth's history has been populated by humans. And if Genesis is anything to go by, civilisations in one form or another have been around for that long also.

Why is it then that none of these different societies that must stretch back to the dawn of creation make any mention at all of these fabulous creatures that roamed practically every square mile of the Earth's surface. Even if they didn't call them dinosaurs, which of course they wouldn't have, they must still have run into them. I mean, they where everywhere and many of them were the size of houses. I mean, how could you miss them?

But no, the only animals that seem to get a mention are the likes of cattle, sheep, goats, fish, lions etc. etc.

No mentions of the likes of T-Rex, Stegosaurus, the Sauropods (you really have to have your head buried in the desert sand to miss those), Triceratops and all the others. Nothing about them in the bible, no mention of them in other ancient texts, no cave paintings, no tools or weapons found fashioned from T-Rex teeth or Stegasaur spines. Nothing.

If the Earth really is 6000 years old and people and dinosaurs lived together how is it that none of these people seem to have noticed them?

[downbeatplumb]

Are you forgetting the tales of dragons in mythology and the mention of behemoth (or whatever) in the bible?

Of course there were also tales of dog headed men and people whose heads were in their chests and actually an awful lot of made up shit. So these references to things that vaguely resemble dinosaurs can be easily discounted as myths.

Just thought I'd jump in before 'you know who' did

[Darwinian]

These are just vague references to odd things that are straight out of the imagination. If it's true then dinosaur like creatures would be as common in ancient stories and everyday life as all the other animals that we know and love today.

[downbeatplumb]

I agree, they used to make up a lot of stuff in the old days. Which brings us nicely back to the bible.

By the way hows your cold?

[Darwinian]

Almost gone I think

[downbeatplumb]

Almost gone I think

good.

[Ashendant]

The thing that scares is that dragons appear in almost every religion in on incarnation or other

Probably it's just people fusing dinosaurs bones together trough

[Captain Scarlet]

Ugh, not argument from incredibility, it’s pointing to observed evidence that does not fit your theory. A coelacanth is a fish, it’s very similar to other fish we see today, to suggest that there would be millions of years worth of selective pressures that somehow destroyed or altered all the other fish around the Coelacanth is absurd. You are just believing in a theory that is not falsifiable, bad science. Then you say Evolution is a fact, which of course is a canard. Facts are observations, unless you or someone else observed the evolution of all life on earth from a common ancestor then you can’t say it’s a fact.

Its not my theory Statler, it doesn’t have an ownership. Just lots of hard working scientists validating on it a daily basis. You claim you are not arguing from incredulity and respond with “ugh”, "fairly tales" and “is absurd” and give no further evidence nor argumentation. You are condemned by your own words.

Again, un-falsifiable theory, bad science.

I have given you falsifiability tests, to which I’ll address again in another of your rejoinders below. Every piece of evidence presented never appears to be enough, because when predictions can be made and the evidnce does not concur with YEC; you ignore them. For instance c14 dates in coal (taken at the face value you seem to want to take them at) would date the coal seams to 40k years ago. Are you now going to accept YEC is wrong at 6k years (an error of nearly a factor of 7).

Untested hypothesis are just that, untested. Accept them all you want but it’s just a matter of blind faith for you, and not science. Shows a lot though that you would rather accept untested ideas than even admit you might be wrong about the age of the earth.

Twisting my words again Statler. Check my posts I didn’t say I accepted the hypothesis; just that I was willing to wait for the research. You on the other hand latch on and claim it is evidence and that diamonds are impermeable making contamination impossible (when the hypothesis being tested is that its contamination from within the mineral not extant to it). Again you have ignored that point.

Actually the fossils that contain soft tissue completely indicate that the animal died very recently since soft tissue cannot survive for millions of years. To say otherwise goes against all of the empirical evidence to the contrary. Rather than addressing this issue, you make jokes about a cartoon. Sad, but not surprising in the least.

You started the jokes by claiming all dinosaur remains where only a few thousand years old. It was naughty, but allow my some latitude. If you choose to ignore stratigraphy, paleontology, geochemistry (including radiometric results from a variety of isotopes - queue hysteria) which all yield a powerful explanation that is at odds with the YEC hypothesis, there is little I can do in addition to educate you.

Yes you have missed all of it, again sad but not surprising. Too bad you are not as skeptical of those untested ideas that support your worldview than you are of the actual tested ones that do not support it.

Yes I guess I missed it (and do you know what the world of science must have too, given the accusations of scientific conspiracy you claim keep this information from people) and yes I am skeptical. There are however some theories that seem a little hard not to accept provisionally and in science provisionally is as good as you get. I’m not sure why you keep banging on about my worldviews…I like facts, evidence and theories that are testable. Just a sneeking suspiscion that you may be the one with the fixed “worldview” (whatever that means) and a desparate to validate it…and I mean DESPARATE.

I am sure I can, it’s the same evidence we use to support our model. So maybe you need to be more specific about which evidence you are referring to.

Oh no! I’m not doing your work for you. The facts have already been established by these disciplines. They are ALL consistent with the ToE. You should be the one raking through the scientific papers picking out the facts and establishing why YEC is a better theory than the ToE. Requires a bit of hard work on the part of the creationists, as opposed to the typical armchair commentary and incredulity we normally hear.

Sea urchins? This is your amazing evidence that contradicts creation? Well it’s obvious that the “fossil record” is not an actual record of time, but rather a record of death and burial. So I would expect some animals to be buried after others and some to not even appear in the record at all. So your little sea urchin story is consistent with a global flood. More consistent than a Coelacanth appearing in the record “65 million” years ago, disappearing completely from the record forever and then being found alive today. If the fossil record is really a history of time, then where were all the Coelacanths for the past 65 million years?

You know when I said …Just one specific example the humble sea urchin…. That would mean it is one specific example and not the entirety of the “amazing evidence” you no doubt will ignore. The attempt to minimize the argument by using dismissive language like “little sea urchin story” is at best contemptuous and your rejoinder non-sensenical. If there was a freshwater flood off the continents into the oceans, non marine sediments would have buried bottom feeders like sea urchins in the lowest sediments. Infact they only appear in the middle upper sedimentary layers of the Triassic and in marine sediments such as oolithic limestones. If you care to visit sites in Gloucester (in the UK) you can dig them out the cliff face for yourself. Try to stick to the arguments instead of getting emotional.

As for coelocanths and there whereabouts for the last 65m years, all we can go on are the facts. They are now represented by only two known living species. As a group they were once very successful with many genera and species leaving abundant fossil record from the Devonian to the end of the Cretaceous, at which point they apparently suffered a nearly complete extinction. Before the living specimens were discovered, it was believed by some that the coelacanth was a "missing link" between the fish and the tetrapods. And although they have almost human articulation on their fins, subsequent research focused on rhypstidian crossptygerian fishes (the coelacanth being a member of the same family). It is often claimed (by creationsits) that the coelacanth has remained unchanged for millions of years, but, in fact, the living species and even genus are unknown from the fossil record. The most likely reason for the gap is the taxon having become extinct in shallow waters. Deep-water fossils are only rarely lifted to levels where paleontologists can recover them, making most deep-water taxa lacking or even missing from the fossil record. Unfortunatley this is not only true of coelocanths.

Showing how some of the biggest supporters of your position disagree with you is not an appeal to tradition or authority. I am starting to think you just throw fallacy names out without really knowing much about them. It’s a cute way of not having to address what I actually said though. Maybe you should show how Evolution and Supernatural Creation are not the only two models possible (in spite of what Darwin and Dawkins think I guess).

If I have erred please make the argument. You complain I don’t point out fallacies, then complain when I do. An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:
1. Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
2. Person A makes claim C about subject S.
3. Therefore, C is true.
This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious . Netwon and Kepler were brilliant, but not experts in evolutionary biology, biology, natural theology or anything else vaguely related to this thread. The accusation stands.

Why are you asking me to do your work for you again. You are making the claim that there is only YEC or Evolution, so you must demonstrate that via argumentation. All you are doing is saying these people said it is, therefore thats good enough for me. Firstly I don't know that they did, if it is true then you should be easily able to demonstrate it. YEC has less credibility than OEC, but you haven't disproven the view of the Raelians either. So come on lets hear you debunk them and any other argument via deduction or induction.

I read your article, and they don’t define information properly. Changing one letter in a book is not an increase in information (unless it happens to change the meaning of the word, or sentence). Copying a book does not increase information either, all the examples in the article were examples of these. The example with the people who have the mutation is an example of a reduction in information happening to benefit a group of people. This does not show how you could gain in over three billion bits of information in humans by mutation in only 4.5 billion years. To the contrary, observed entropy rates in the human genome show that it would completely fall apart in about ten thousand years.

What are you talking about? So you asked for evidence I presented plenty from just the very narrowest of spectrums of evolutionary biology, genetics and paleontology and you have no response again. You set the test, I met it and I do not hear you accepting the ToE as the best theory for explaining the facts.

Either you have moved your goalposts or you have not stated the goalposts clearly enough. So state them. The key word is, guess what the poster child of creationist nonsense; so called "information", so lets hear you hammer some detail out:

-What EXACTLY do you mean by “information”?
-How do YOU quantify “information”?
-Why is the amount of information “important” rather than the sequence of nucleotides in the genome?
-Are there any "informational" differences between coding and non-coding sequences in the structure of the genome?
-How much “information” is contained in just 3 animals of your choice?
-How much “information” is there in a human, compared to a chimpanzee?

I get the impression you are throwing around this term “information”, without defining it nor knowing what it means to obviscate the point. This isn’t surprising because the folks you are regurgitating this from don’t know either. However, you of course deserve the chance to respond, so you say it isn’t defined correctly; so you define it and answer the questions above.

Abiogenesis and chemical evolution belong to the General Theory of Evolution, so you will have to defend them as well if you are going to accept the theory as a whole.

You throw the term canard around a lot. This really is one, I do not need to defend abiogenesis to defend the ToE.

Uhh sorry. You already said that finding animals that were thought to be extinct alive today does not falsify your theory (the Coelacanth), and finding animals that are alive today (Maples and Oaks) in “ancient” strata obviously doesn’t falsify your theory, so why should finding people in ancient strata? A few years ago when we thought we may have found human tracks alongside dinosaur tracks in Texas one evolutionist was on record saying, “This is evidence for time travel not that the earth is young.” The fact of the matter is you have a theory that is not falsifiable.

Again, what are you talking about, you're arguments are becomming very ragged? The common ancestor to modern day coelocanths was first seen in the Devonian. The instance of a present day coelacanth is testament to its adaptability, survivability etc. Evolution predicts the animals change over time in response to their environment and random mutations, it says nothing about whether animals thought previously extinct (through no modern day representatives) will suddenly be found in environmental niches. The same is true with the crocodilians, they have speciated for sure since the creatceous but come down from those very ancient times almost unchanged morphologically. Except becuase they live in near shore environments, rivers lakes etc; there is better fossil evidence. Find a living dinosaur tomorrow, it does not falsify the ToE; find archaopteryx nesting in your tree, it does not falsify the ToE; find sabre tooth tigers in the tundra, it does not falsify the ToE; find tiktalik in the local swamp, it does not falsify the ToE...got it yet?...just in case....

....the ToE has never stated that animals that we think are extinct wont be found again.... and if you believe it has; find just one published scientific paper stating it.

However because of the fossil record is as good as it is we are able to trace whole lineages through large tracts of time (inc. coelocnaths when they are preserved and located in strata). There has never been a present day or near present day hominind let alone a human found in the Cambrian, our ancestral lineage as far back as the first proper mammals only goes back only to the Cretaceous, where our truly mammalian branch took hold. Therefore finding a human in the Cambrian would falsify Human evolution (at least), and probably most of mammalian evolution.

And again it is not my theory, but I really wish I'd have been bright enough to uncover it!

Methodological naturalism is only used in the operational sciences. Creationists use it too in the operational sciences. We are talking about origins sciences here. A supernatural explanation in origins sciences is completely legitimate.

The sound of an argument clutching at some very distant straws. I have no idea what you are talking about, the operational, origin science distinction is arbitrary and unfounded. You have evaded the question. I’ll ask again a try a different tack. If science is open to ‘supernatural’ interpretations, name one scientist proposing, one theory that is supernatural in origin or working on a theory which includes the possibility of supernatural agency.

And finally…..still un-retracted and bypassed in your last response. You have stated that you are more qualified than myslef, without knowing anything of my background. You have stated that I hold views only to fit in with my "worldview", and have also invented 'goalposts' moved them yourself and then claimed that I moved them.

[Sam]

Hey Sam,

I disagree with your analysis here. The folded strata are completely devoid of the expected signs of gradual folding or of folding after the rock had solidified. There is no evidence of fracturing and the sand particles are not elongated like would be expected. Rather it is quite clear that the sediment was still saturated with water when it folded. They actually very closely match the sediment that was layed down during the flood waters of the Mt. St. Helens event. A global flood paired with large scale geologic activity would accomplish a very similar task just on a global scale which is exactly what we observe. Many secular geologists will even admit that these are examples of catastrophic flooding, just on a regional level.

I can't address general issues if you don't provide specific localities, the mechanisms of folding and the processes which control the appearance of said folds are widely varied depending on tectnic setting etc...

The majority of fold structures seen across the world are examples of folding due to tectonic activity over prolonged time periods. The highly deformed beds produced by regional flooding and other catastrophic events are completely different.

I'd also be tempted to say that before you could even start to use this as evidence for a global flood you would have to demonstrate localities of similar appearance all over the world at a similar point in the geological record.

Yes, they are well known, and well ignored by many secular geologists and paleontologists alike.

Except they are both weel known and well documented by 'secular' geologists (I take it you use that term to refer to anyone who doesn't hold your viewpoint?). I even wrote a report on a site at Joggins, Nova Scotia a year or so ago. You can find many works in the mainstream literature on the topic of Fossil Forests and Polystrate Tree Fossils.

You will have layers of strata that are supposed to represent thousands and sometimes millions o f years of slow and gradual accumulation, but you’ll have this tree that spans up through dozens and dozens of layers. Some of these fossils will span through several layers of different kinds of rock, like shale to sandstone. Did the tree really stand up out of the ground for thousands of years while it was slowly buried? Of course not, so why think the layers all accumulated over thousands of years? Catastrophic depositing of these layers is a much better explanation.

Again, your hiding behind generalities, provide a site that displays this evidence.

The fact is that possibility of rapid burial during localised flooding events, and other short-term depositional episodes is in full agreement with these features and the surrounding geology while your claim of global catastrpohsim cannot even hold water here.

When we examine soil layers from the last 1000 years or so we see evidence of biotubation, however when we get into the layers that are supposedly ancient we never find evidence of it. This is a good indication that these layers were laid down so quickly that the burrowing animals never had time to use them. There are also many places where we find thousands of fossils of plant eating animals but no fossils of plant life. This would also indicate that this is not evidence of an ancient ecosystem but rather evidence of a catastrophic burial.

Statler, What on earth are you talking about?

I just got back from some fieldwork, the site included rocks of the Carboniferous (More than 1000 years ago ) Interbedded with the Limestones & Mudstone we observed highly bioturbated beds so just by coincidence I can show your claim to be bullshit.

Well when we use the same uniformitarian principles that the old earth crowd loves to use we find that it doesn’t add up.

I'm starting to think you haven't even bothered to find out how mainstream geology etc... is conducted. The principle of Uniformatarianism is used as a genral guide to processes i.e. the processes operating today are the same as those that operated in the past.

There is no assumption about constant rates for these kind of processes. Conversely, with radioactivty the rates of those processes are relatively constant. These are two seperate phonomena an you cannot expect the blanket application of a principle across them.

Again I am just using the same constant rate assumptions the old earth crowd loves to use. Obviously these assumptions don’t always conclude the earth is old as many on here assert they do.

A source on the matter would be

“Mass/age distribution and composition of sediments on the ocean floor and the global rate of subduction” in the Journal of Geophysical Research Vol. 93.

I have shown you why your misunderstanding of the science here is colouring your opinions. I see no reason to repeat myself.

All those claims have been adequately addressed by the RATE group as well. If the secular community is so concerned with the group’s methodology and the professional labs that did the measurements maybe they should repeat the tests and get different results, rather than just screaming from the sidelines. They won’t though.

Thats the problem, they haven't. On the whole the RATE group just refused to accept the points against them or repeated their erroneous conclusions.

Why should we expect the critics to re-do faulty work? The RATE group were claiming to have made a breakthrough, their work was roundly criticised, they failed to adequately justify it. Therefore it was disregarded. The onus is on them to prove their work is sound, not for anyone else to do it for them.

Cheers

Sam

[Thor]

[quote='Thor' pid='111553' dateline='1293583185']

I never said or implied that scientific facts are determined by the majority. However, when 99.5% of scientists agree on something (such as the age of the Earth) and they can support their contention with solid evidence, I'm inclined to believe their conclusion. In contrast, when a very small minority wants to claim that the 99.5% are off by a factor of over 400,000, and they have no evidence to support this notion,

You keep doing the very thing you are claiming to know not to do. I will say it again, scientific fact has never been and never will be based on consensus. It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans what any percentage of the scientists believe and don’t believe.

Do you even read my posts? Because you should look at it again. Notice the words solid evidence? Nowhere have I indicated that scientific facts are based on consensus, I have said they are based on solid evidence. And your usage of the word "believe" is inappropriate. Scientists do not have beliefs. They make conclusions based on evidence. "Beliefs" are what YOU have.

You’d be the guy in the early 20th century saying, “General relativity is a load of crap because only one crank named Albert believes in it and the vast majority of scientists don’t!”

Actually, I probably would have said "What an interesting idea! Is there any evidence to support it?".

The majority of scientists have been wrong time and time again.

Any examples in the last century?

Then you go on to say that the evidence says the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Evidence doesn’t “say” anything. One interpretation of some of the evidence says the earth is that old. However, another interpretation of the evidence says it is very very young.

And the way people like you "interpret" evidence would make it impossible to ever convict anyone of anything.

This would be like scientists measuring the distance from NY to LA and concluding it's 3,000 miles. Then people like you come along and want to insist that the measuring instruments are unreliable, and the actual distance from NY to LA is only 35 FEET!

It is not like saying that. Measuring the distance from NY to LA is done by direct observation.

And radiometric dating is also done by direct observation.

You cannot directly observe the age of the earth.

No, but we can directly observe the results of radiometric dating.

Horrible analogy.

I'm sure you think it is...

Rather it would be like one group saying, “Todd grew one inch this year, he is 72 inches tall, therefore he must be 72 years old.”
While a second group says, “No no, we believe that Todd has not grown at a constant rate for his entire life, and probably was not born zero inches tall, therefore we feel Todd is way younger than 72 years.”

Comparing radiometric dating with growth rates for people? Now THAT is a horrible analogy...

Of course you’d laugh at this second group and call them a bunch of cranks,

Actually, the one I would call a crank is the person who would make such a ridiculous analogy.

but you’d be just as wrong as you are now.

Yes, I'm wrong... the planet is really only 6,000 years old and I'm too blind to see it.

Really? Dozens, huh? Since you have "dozens", give me two dozen.

Sure! I’ll give you the ones we have already discussed first…


1. Soft tissue in dinosaur fossils
2. C14 in coal and diamonds.
3. Observed genetic entropy rates in the human genome indicate it can only be a few thousand years old.
4. Very small variation in Y chromosome differences around the world indicates mans origin was only a few thousand years ago.
5. Racemization of amino acids not reaching 50/50 in bones that are supposedly millions of years old. 50/50 racemization occurs in only a few thousand years.
6. Large amounts of strata are tightly bent but unbroken, indicating they were laid down in short periods of time like we observed with Mt. St. Helens, rather than millions of years.
7. Polystratic fossils. Fossilized trees spanning layers of strata that are supposedly millions of years old, yet there is not more decay in the areas of the tree that would have remained unburied for all that time indicating the trees were buried quickly not slowly.
8. Labs mimicking natural conditions have shown that black coal can naturally form in months, not millions of years like previously thought. (same thing is observed with oil.)
9. Complete lack of bioturbation in layers of strata that are supposedly millions of years old.
10. Observed formation of canyons in very short periods of time suggests that canyons we didn’t observe form but believe to be very old could be very young.
11. Horizontal and vertical erosion on coast lines happens far to quickly for the continents to be very old.
12. Discordant drainage systems found worldwide do not fit the deep time model.
13. Observed erosion rates at Niagara Falls match a time scale of a few thousand years, not its assumed age of millions of years.
14. Even ignoring the affects of a biblical flood, observed saline net input rates into the oceans indicate they are 1/50 the age the old earth crowd believes they are.
15. Also, even ignoring the affects of a global flood, the accumulation rates of sediments on the ocean floors indicates they are very young.
16. Iron-manganese nodules on the sea floor form at a rate that indicates they are only a few thousand years old. Not millions like previously believed.
17. Exponential decay in the Earth’s magnetic field indicates it is far younger than even 20,000 years.
18. The amounts of helium in zircon crystals indicate only 6000 years of radioactive decay has actually occurred.
19. Evidence of recent volcanic activity on the earth’s moon indicates it is far younger than it’s assume age of over a billion years.
20. The moon receding from the earth due to tidal friction indicates that the two would have been touching long before their assumed ages. (Note, this recession rate is slowing down, not speeding up).
21. The fact that the planet mercury has a very significant magnetic field indicates it cannot be its assumed age of billions of years, but rather much younger.
22. The faint young sun paradox.
23. No observed method for comet creation, despite their observed decay rates would mean they could only last for 10,000 years max.
24. 0.5 % p.a. growth for humans (far smaller than today’s rate) from six people 4,500 years ago would yield today’s population.
25. I’ll even spot you one in the spirit of Christian charity lol… lack of nearly enough “stone age” skeletons and artifacts for the assumed ages of human history.

Okay... now show me a legitimate scientific source that agrees with your contention that these things are all evidence of a young Earth. Good luck!

Well that was easy!

Yeah, spewing unsubstantiated bullshit is very easy.

No, it's not a non-sequitor. My point is that there is just as much support for a flat Earth in the scientific community as there is for a young Earth.

Back to not understanding what establishes a scientific fact and how evidence works again I see.

And this response is a non-sequitor.

Can you provide a scientific source that reached this conclusion? Because I'll bet you can't.

Only because you define “scientific source” as one that believes the earth is 4.5 billion years old, which of course is a logical fallacy.

So you can't cite a legitimate scientific source. Didn't think you could.

Try this analogy:

An autograph of Abraham Lincoln surfaces. Experts examine it and declare that the paper it is written on wasn't manufactured until 1920.

Would you now consider the autograph to be a forgery? Or would you think this is proof that Abraham Lincoln was alive in 1920?

Not proof that Abraham lived in 1920 considering his death was observed to happen long before that. Nobody has observed the earth to be 4.5 billion years old so this analogy fails.

Why isn't it evidence that Lincoln was alive in 1920? Couldn't I interpret this evidence and reach that conclusion? And you say Lincoln's death was observed? How do you know there wasn't a conspiracy to cover up the fact Lincoln had survived the assasination attempt? I must also point out that there have been instances where someone's death was "observed" and that person later was found to still be alive.

You seem to have the misconception that we can't know something for sure unless it is observed. That is a crock. In fact, we can know things much better when they aren't observed! Which would you give more weight? The testimony of a woman who claims she was attacked by Tom Smith? Or the results of a DNA test that indicates the skin found under the woman's fingernails most certainly was NOT from Tom Smith? According to what you're trying to sell here, you would throw out the scientific results, believe the testimony and convict Tom Smith.

Wrong. My reasoning is based upon logic, not observation. No matter how you want to twist it to match your argument.

That explains a lot considering science is based on both logic and observation. Hide in a dark box where your senses cannot pick up anything and see how much knowledge about the physical world you gain in there haha.

And how does this relate to finding a boulder at the base of a cliff and concluding the boulder fell from the cliff?