Creationists do not make sense

[rjh4 is back]

If you mean "sudden" as in one moment there wasn't life, then there was, then of course, technically that would be the case.

That is all I meant by “sudden”.

Then there really is no need to regret informing me of something I already admit.

You don't admit it.

I wish you would make up your mind.

In a post a while back you said: “I regret to inform you but we do see *organisms* changing; you even admit this.” (emphasis added)

To this I responded: "Then there really is no need to regret informing me of something I already admit. "

And now you say: "You don't admit it."

Doesn't make sense to me.

Simply not the case I'm afraid. Remember the "transitional forms" I talked about earlier? They all represent a transition between what you creationists love to label "kinds". Tiktaalik is a transition between fish and reptile, Archaeopteryx is a transition between reptile and birds.

Those examples are really rather wonderful visualizations of evolution in action. It isn't often the case that you can see the transformation so clearly, due to the nature of evolution. For example, going back to my number example, let's say 1.0 is a organism.

It reproduces and gives birth to 1.01, which is a mutated form of 1.0. 1.01 isn't very different at all to 1.0 (it's still a "1.0" kind), but it *is* different. 1.01 gives birth to 1.02, which again isn't much different to 1.01, but it *is* different. The differences between 1.02 and 1.0 aren't very different either, but there are more than 1.01 and 1.0.

Continue this down the line and you get to organism 1.50, which isn't very different to it's recent ancestors (1.49, 1.48, 1.30, etc), but it strikingly different to 1.0 due to the sheer number of mutations that have taken place in between. However, 1.0 is long since extinct and only by looking at the fossils of 1.0 could we make a comparison.

By the time we get to 2.0, the organism is a completely different kind to it's early ancestor 1.0, and yet throughout the entire line of mutations, never did an organism produce something that wasn't *like* itself in some way. It's just that every time such organisms reproduced, they got further and further away from their ancestors.

Nobody (only creationists misinterpreting evolution) says that 1.0 gives birth to 2.0, or even 1.1 or 1.5. What evolution says is that small changes over time build up so larger changes, eventually reaching speciation, and even the change of a family group.

If such gradual changes and transitional forms are so clear in the fossil record, I wonder why Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould felt the need to publish a paper developing the theory of punctuated equilibrium.

A flood doesn't leave multiple layers, it leaves one. It mixes everything up and leaves it in one layer. The only way one could argue that the geologic column was the result of a flood was if multiple floods happened over multiple times in history. However the different types of layer formed does not reflect this at all.

If you are talking about the various lamina of the fossil record, I think you are incorrect. If you are talking about something else, you will need to explain what you mean.

See Mt. St. Helens

Numerous creationists have either lied, misinterpreted, or ignored results to bolster their beliefs.

Are you suggesting that no evolutionary scientist has done this to bolster their beliefs/position?

There is nothing unprovable concerning radiometric dating.

Then please explain how they prove what the original amounts of parent and daughter isotopes are in a sample that is allegedly millions or billions of years old. Are you saying they do not need to know this to come up with a date?

I'd also like to finally point out the hypocrisy of your position, that of claiming I believe in unprovable dating methods, when you believe in an unprovable "One who was". Prove to me that God was there, that the Bible outlines exactly how he did it, and when, and then you'll stop being a hypocrite. Your view is based on far more unprovable assumptions than mine.

Seems to me you made the claim about believing in dating methods. I merely said why I do not accept them. I also told you that God and the Bible as the word of God were my presupposition (first principle) right up front. In my world view they are what everything else rests on. It is my understanding that first principles in one’s world view are taken as axiomatic. So while you say I am a hypocrite, I do not think telling you the basis for my world view and then explaining how this affects how I think about something like dating methods is at all hypocritical.