FutureShock said:

"Your judgements and vitriol are not appreciated-who the **** are you to tell people what to believe, and then condemn them to hell like you were God yourself?"

Jesus clearly states in John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: NO man cometh unto the Father, BUT BY ME.

"GOd's love is UNCONDITIONAL-got that?"

Yes it is. ALL sinners can have forgiveness AFTER accepting Jesus as their personal savior.

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

"Everyone wins-When you realize hitler is in "heaven" then you understand tha nature of God."

ONLY *IF* he accepted Jesus as his personal savior and asked forgiveness for his sins.

Given the circumstances of his death, I seriously doubt Hitler did this, so unbelievers will find him in Hell when they arrive there.

Don't any of you idiots read the history of pre-christian cultures? Don't you know that the flood myth and the myth of paradise pre-date your world view by thousands of years?

The 'flood' happened at about 2000 BC. You will find mention of the 'flood' in virtually all cultures. There is strong evidence for a flood. Evidence

"That christianity is basically a knock-off of many other religions??" There is only one savior....

John 3:16 16For God so loved the world, that he gave his ONLY begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

"SAVEMESAVEMESAVEMESAVEMESAVEME" John 3:17

17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be SAVED.

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000

Answers

I believe:

I have already apologized on the other thread for the manner in which I addressed this subject. My wife has been in a great deal of pain and I was stressed out when I wrote that post. I should never have spoken that way to anybody.

I do not wish to engage in a debate with you or any other christian- You believe what you want to believe-I choose to believe the only one who will judge me is God-And that judgement is every day from the God within me-How am I treating myself and others-No other human has the right to judge me-I judged that I was wrong in cursing, so I have made the appropriate amends. You tried to respond to me regarding UNCONDITIONAL-and, ironically, you show just how your religion has a condition on God's favor-some nebulous capitulation to accept Jesus- If you do not accept this CONDITION, you are condemned to hell. How is this unconditional?

God's love for me is without strings. And as far as you response regarding the Floods, there are myths dating back before 2000 B.C. regarding floods, sometimes in completely landlocked areas. Have you read anything about the gnostic groups? Have you read any mythology at all?? The idea of Adam and Eve and the fall from paradise again predates your religion by thousands of years, back to sumerian culture.

I suggest you all would find it intersting, if you really looked at and read mythology, that there are no original ideas in christianity- Even the crucifixtion is not original. But then again, as I said, I should not argue with you-You are saved and that is the end of it-you will not ready anything which may call into question the veracity of your dogma. I am sorry for that.

All in all, Like I said on another thread, If your religion is what works for you in treating yourself and others with love and respect, then I think that is wonderful. Just let us all have our methodologies in peace without proselytizing.

Thanks.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 17, 2000.

Say there I Believe, forget about floods for a minute. As long as you are tapped in to info central, whats up with the market?

-- Sifting (through@the.rubble), April 17, 2000.

FutureShock:

"If you do not accept this CONDITION, you are condemned to hell. How is this unconditional?"

He does love you unconditionally. He loves you at all times....even when you and I sin.

I will always love my children no matter what! This does not mean I will allow them to do as they please in my home and allow them to get away with it. I have rules, as does God.

He doesn't take pleasure in sending unbelievers to Hell.

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

FutureShock:

" And as far as you response regarding the Floods, there are myths dating back before 2000 B.C. regarding floods,.."

How do you explain this reality (not myth): The top 3,000 feet of Mt. Everest (from 26,000-29,000 feet) is made up of sedimentary rock packed with SEASHELLS and other ocean-dwelling animals.

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

"packed with SEASHELLS and other ocean-dwelling animals"

Because it was UNDERWATER at one time.

Sheesh.

-- (Burt @nd .Ernie), April 17, 2000.

Burt @nd .Ernie

"Because it was UNDERWATER at one time.

Sheesh."

Give that man a clam on the half shell! :-)

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

I believe,

Just because there are seashells at the top of Everest, that doesn't mean there was a flood. As I understand it mountains rise and fall depending on the movements of the tectonic plates. Everst, while tall now may have been at the bottom of the sea before (I'm not a geologist, so don't want to relate this as other than an unfounded generality). Also, the California Rockies are supposedly still growing @ a couple millimeters a year.

If there is no "evidence" of a flood, or a good explanation for Everest, would that shake your faith?

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 17, 2000.

Frank said:

"Just because there are seashells at the top of Everest, that doesn't mean there was a flood."

Petrified clams in the closed position (found all over the world) testify to their rapid burial while they were still alive, even on top of Mount Everest.

Hiya Frank! Nice to chat with you again.

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

Frank said:

"If there is no "evidence" of a flood, or a good explanation for Everest,..."

Ahh! But there is evidence.

"...would that shake your faith?"

Nope! But I think you already knew that tho. ;-)

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

I believe,

Hello!

You said, "Nope! But I think you already knew that tho. ;-) "

Yep, I did, or thought that would be the case. I have been suprised in the past though.

Frank

P.S. One thing, How long were the flood waters up? Long enough to POPULATE the top of everest with clams way into the rock? (Remembering that the clams have to get from the ocean TO where Everest is). That sounds like it would take *a long time*, and I didn't know the ark was floating around that long.

Gotta get to work, will check back later. -F

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 17, 2000.

Frank said:

"P.S. One thing, How long were the flood waters up? Long enough to POPULATE the top of everest with clams way into the rock?"

The large mountains, as we have them today, did not exist until after the Flood when "the mountains arose and the valleys sank down" (Ps. 104:5-9, Gen. 8:3-8).

Work safe Frank. Chat with ya tomorrow.

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

I believe:

Some compassion! Your God feels bad about sending people to hell? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Come on, now. Again, I want nothing to do with a God who does not show final forgiveness, who has an EGO SO BIG that if we do not do things exactly as HE says, we are banished forever from paradise. Why oh why must there be a final punishment? What does this accomplish? I wish, I wish I could really understand how ya'all feel, but you know what? I was baptized again and accepted Jesus in 1992, and supposedly no matter what I say or do I am SAVED! At least that is what I was told. So should I just sin away??

Oh-my apologies again-I said I would not debate with you. I am done. Really, and I mean it, have a nice day. And I hope your children follow your rules; I would hate for you to banish them to hell.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 17, 2000.

FutureShock said:

"...and supposedly no matter what I say or do I am SAVED!"

Another very common assumption I continue to hear. The Baptists believe this if memory serves me.

There is no "once saved always saved *clause*" anywhere in the Bible.

The Bible does state in Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through FAITH; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Since you currently have no faith, you are not SAVED.

I was a 'back slider' for 22 years. WOW! I understand where you come from. That is the wonderful thing about God. He forgives us for our sin just as simple as asking for it and recommitting your life to Christ.

Blessings to you. Here's hoping YOUR future isn't a FutureShock.

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

I Believe: Can you give some evidence for statement that the top of Mt. Everest contains fossils? According to Roger Bilham, the geologist on the IMAX 1996 Expedition says, "The rock on the summit is a weakly metamorphosed limestone (a marble) of Ordovician age. No fossils remain although the rocks are largely organic in origin." http://www.newton.mec.edu/angier/Ferguson/everest/mountains.html)

The geology of Everest shows that the area was under water about 50 million years ago. This seabed rose to become the present Mt. Everest during about the past 8 millions years due to plate tectonics. How any of this adds or detracts from the idea of a great flood is beyond me.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 17, 2000.

Jim Cooke

"The geology of Everest shows that the area was under water about *50 million years ago.*"

How did you or anyone come up with a date like that?

Proof please!

BTW: Circular reasoning is NOT proof!

Circular Reasoning is: Geologists dating the layers by the fossils, Archieologists dating the fossils by the layers. ;-)

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

I Believe:

No, we're not going to play that game. You said that the top of Mt. Everest contained fossils. I've provided evidence from a geologist who was there that it doesn't. You back up the statement that you've made first and then we'll discuss other statements.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 17, 2000.

Most of us find it very easy to hurl an epithet or fashion a label. We like to smooth out wrinkles, sand down rough edges, simplify the mysteries that are threatening precisely because they defy categorization. There is certainly enough confusion in our lives, we reason.

Shouldn't it facilitate our day to day living if we are clear on what is good or bad, who is left or right, what is profound or drivel? The fact is that those who have attempted to nail down or write off mystery end up 'undone' by the very pride which led them to play God in the first place... the Pharisees did not rest until they had nailed an upstart dissenter to a tree.

-- Donald J. Foran, Living with Ambiguity

-- Debbie (dbspence@usa.net), April 17, 2000.

Come on, people. As I said on another thread, "I Believe" has opinions which will not be shaken by any arguments you can make. So, why bother?

In my opinion, of course, "I believe" is a flaming nut case. But, to quote what I've quoted before "you believe what you've gotta believe."

-- E.H. Porter (Just Wondering@About.it), April 17, 2000.

Jim Cooke said:

"I've provided evidence from a geologist..."

The link you provide is to a site linking me to a site that does not work when cliking on it.

One of my source's for Mt. Everist fossils is an Earth Science textbook. The other is here. I will try to provide an additional link to the Earth Science book tomorrow.

Now back to circular reasoning...... :-)

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

That link worked fine for me, and took me to a 3rd grade text. Which may be a bit beyond "I believe's" current comprehension level.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 17, 2000.

E.H. you're right, arguments on religion and politics will never come to closure.

It's just that I will never understand what some people get out of a religion which makes other people wrong, especially to the point of burning in hell.

As Spock would say, "That is not logical." :-(

Usually all I get back is that if there were no such belief, it would be necessary to invent it because without it, people would be left without morals, run wild, and bring the entire fabric of civilization down. If you don't see things in black and white then you are living life by "situational ethics," a new buzzword which covers this vision of the crumbling of society from moral decay, evidence of which is supposedly building to an inevitable climax everywhere as we speak..... as it is written, etc.

These arguments all feel to me like a sideshow, as if that is ALL there is to Christianity, and of course that's not true by a long shot.

But If I say "it's not that simple" then I am buying into more situational ethics, silver words of Satan, or whatever. So you can't win or even come to common ground. It feels to me like deliberate "stonewalling." Then the players line up "for" or "against" the stonewaller and pretty soon it's a whole new game, and has nothing to do with their, or our, personal relationship with God - which I have no issue with at all.

No big news. Wars have been fought over less.

-- Debbie (dbspence@usa.net), April 17, 2000.

Flint said:

"That link worked fine for me,..."

This link works just fine: 3rd grade

So does this one Roger Bilham

This link with the *real facts* is the problemIMAX Everest

So is this one making of the IMAX Everest

-- I believe in Him (Jesus is King@Kingdom.come), April 17, 2000.

>> Come on, people. As I said on another thread, "I Believe" has opinions which will not be shaken by any arguments you can make. So, why bother? <<

He has all the magnetic quality of someone sitting in the seat of a dunk tank, scolding every passerby and shaking his finger at them. Meanwhile there's this big pile of baseballs just sitting there waiting to be thrown at the target to dunk him. And the target is BIG!

Sure, no matter how often you dunk him, I believe will get back up onto the seat and start scolding people again. But that would never persuade most passers-by not to throw the ball. At least not until they'd scored several hits and get tired of the game.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), April 17, 2000.

Brian:

Yeah, you're right. You can't penetrate to the simpletons, there's nothing there to provide any purchase. You can ignore them, or you can mock them until you get bored. We can only hope they serve some useful purpose in real life. This one seems a bit dumber than usual, but that's splitting hairs.

I did enjoy your child's guide to replication, though. Not as easy to understand as magic, of course, but getting there.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 17, 2000.

Sure, no matter how often you dunk him, I believe will get back up onto the seat and start scolding people again. But that would never persuade most passers-by not to throw the ball. At least not until they'd scored several hits and get tired of the game.

Funny how "game" and "theater" imagery are always so apt in these situations.

....YEAH! ... SCORE ANOTHER ONE !!

What Brian you're not playing? Come on don't be a party pooper.

-- Debbie (dbspence@usa.net), April 17, 2000.

I Believe's opinions are just like concrete, "thoroughly mixed and completely set." Porter is right, he's a "flaming nut case," best to let him rant and ignore the sermons.

Future Shock I thought you treated him very generously in your apology. I personally wouldn't have done it. I don't suffer fools gladly.

He can believe whatever he wants, personally I don't give a shit, just as long as he doesn't start a sermon every other thread.

Just one question, if god is so omnipotent, so powerful, can do anything, then why does he need this little planet and the peoples utter adoration--singing his praises, accepting his son as a savior, constant praying, kneeling, or prostrating with butts in the air, or crying for forgivnessand redemption? Why is this one little planet so important to his grand design? And where did He come from?

Sounds like a scam to me.

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), April 17, 2000.

gilda:

It's not a scam. It's a general, all-purpose solution for those who have a hazy feeling that curiosity requires effort, and always leads to nothing but a deeper level of unknowns anyway. It's a copout instead.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 17, 2000.

This is silly, what am I saying?

These types of religious disagreements aren't "games". They certainly don't start out as a game. They are attempts to communicate, which don't work out. At all.

Afterwards you realize there is little point in engaging in them. Which loosely translates to "Sorry, I don't want to play."

It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

-- Debbie (dbspence@usa.net), April 17, 2000.

Flint

Its a scam when capital is generated and a very large scam when its tax exempt.

-- Sifting (through@the.rubble), April 17, 2000.

I fear that E.H. and the rest of you are quite right - this is really a profitless argument. Have a look at the site that I Believe refered me to in his "answer" about Mt. Everest. Anyone that can not only believe the bizarre claims contained there but use them a source cannot actually be interested in the truth. I Believe, you're welcome to believe whatever you wish. Just like Y2K, there's a definite end point when we'll all find who had the right answers.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 18, 2000.

Flint, you said,

"You can ignore them, or you can mock them until you get bored. We can only hope they serve some useful purpose in real life. "

I can give you one other thing one can do: One can LEARN from them. But, as you say, that takes effort on your part.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 18, 2000.

go back. read the biblical account of genesis and instead of treating it as mythology, legend, figurative---try reading it literally and believing it (again, realizing that there are things we don't know about the history and context that would make it more understandable). many answers are there. personally i think it takes more faith to believe in evolution's theories (many have already been disproven as fraud or bad science) than it does to believe in an intelligent design theory (God). the world is just too perfect for chance.

also, about the flood. there are some theories that instead of taking millions of years to create the grand canyon, etc. it actually took the raging flood waters receeding in millions of tons of soft sediment a period of years to create it.

http://www.answersingenesis.org

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), April 18, 2000.

Hey,religeous Freeks,Stupidity is NOT a Virtue!!

-- Noah&Martha Steward (GR@pr.zz), April 18, 2000.

tt:

There's a new thing called "Capital Letters" that help make messages easier to read. You should give them a try.

Want to provide a link to the theory that the Grand Canyon was created in a matter of years? I'm sure that a lot of geologists might be pretty suprised.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 18, 2000.

tt:

I think you have inadvertently said something quite sensible here.

Science delves into complex issues. It proposes possible explanations. The single MOST IMPORTANT aspect of these explanations is that subsequent evidence or superior analysis can DISPROVE them. Any explanation that cannot be disproved is not science. So pointing out that there have been frauds and bad science is significant. We have demonstrated by further investigation and effort that there have been frauds and bad science, and we have rejected them. That is the ESSENCE of the scientific method.

In contrast, the "pure faith" approach, while simple, does not allow for subsequent disproof. It is perfect as it stands and can't be improved on either. You can choose to accept it or not, based solely on your personal preferences or upbringing. No amount of effort can change it.

However, there is an element of faith in science -- the belief that superior (NOT perfect) understanding can be derived through diligent and difficult effort to collect, analyze, and try to explain actual observations. You must be willing to accept that your perferred explanation might be incorrect or incomplete, and prepared to change your mind when faced by inconsistencies and contradictions.

So you're right, believing in the "magic wand" explanation is much easier. You can never be wrong, you can never be disproved, you never have to change your mind and start over, and you never need to exert the considerable effort necessary for genuine understanding.

The downside, of course, is that your "answers" are totally useless except as a personal escape mechanism. This lets you feel smug, and allows you to feel superior to those willing to grapple with the inevitable uncertainties of actual science. For those who prefer escape to reality, that's sufficient.

As for the various "flood theories" of just about anything, this is amusingly backwards. Nobody would have ever seriously proposed a 40- day rainstorm to explain the grand canyon, if they weren't starting from a nonsensical presumption and trying to *force* things to FIT that presumption. And why propose such an absurd mechanism anyway? Why not just say God created the canyon because He thought it was was esthetic, and let it go at that?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 18, 2000.

Tell me I Believe, If a flood occurred, how did 2 koalas find their way from Australia to the middle east, survived on the incredibly crowded ark for over a year and after the flood ended crawled and swam all the way back again!

Koalas can only live on fresh gum leaves, maybe they picked a bunch and brought it with them!

This is only one example of hundreds that make the flood myth so completely implausibe.

-- Mr. Sane (hhh@home.com), April 18, 2000.

Come on, everybody, you can explain ANYTHING, if you throw logic out the window!

Proof that THE FLOOD happened: there are clams on Everest (tho' I haven't seen any clam shells on Everest)

Explanation for how clams managed to swim from the ocean to over 28,000 feet, and lie down and die with their mouths shut: the mountains go up and down. Hellooooooooooo? Anybody home in their, I believe?

I climb mountains all the time, and most of them around here do NOT have clam shells on top. I guess the clams didn't like it on this side of the planet. Rats.

JoJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 18, 2000.

Oh, GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I read the story which "proves" the FLOOD! If I had nothing better to do, I'd ridicule each and every point. But I do. So I'll just mention the one point:

" 13. The pre-Flood people were probably much smarter and more advanced than people today."

They may have only APPEARED smarter, because they didn't have to go around explaining "floods" using comic book logic.

The bible is proof of the flood. Yeah. Right. And Star Trek proves extraterrestrial life. OH Kay.

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 18, 2000.

JoJ, Have you ever driven from Ashland to Weed?... If you ever do, stop at the Brake Check area at the summit and go climb around a bit...... I have gobs of Trilibites and other fossiles from that cut, and they predate Clams by a tad :-)

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), April 18, 2000.

< also, about the flood. there are some theories that instead of taking millions of years to create the grand canyon, etc. it actually took the raging flood waters receeding in millions of tons of soft sediment a period of years to create it.

http://www.answersingenesis.org

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), April 18, 2000. >

tt, which "soft sediment are you referring to? THE Grand Canyon, the one which has a fairly complete fossil history over one BILLION years old, has been eroded by the Colorado River through MANY different strata. Some fairly soft, some very hard. But, as they say, if you want to change the facts to match the conclusion...

< JoJ, Have you ever driven from Ashland to Weed?... If you ever do, stop at the Brake Check area at the summit and go climb around a bit...... I have gobs of Trilibites and other fossiles from that cut, and they predate Clams by a tad :-)

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), April 18, 2000.>

Yes, Netghost, I've driven that section of the 5 many times. I usually stop farther down the mountain, for the purpose of installing chains. Haven't ever looked closely at the rock at the summit, but I sure will next time I'm up there--thanks. I love trilobytes. They're a bit antedeluvian,though, aren't they? I HAVE been on many mountaintops around here (used to get paid to go up there, heh, heh). Never seen shells, though. Trees sometimes. Granite, often. Serpentine too. Basalt (one of those "soft sediments tt refers to, I guess)

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 24, 2000.

Why Joe, you old fossil, a billion years is a really long time. :-) Have you been around that long? Could you explain how you measured that timespan? No one seems to want to touch this question.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 24, 2000.

< Why Joe, you old fossil, a billion years is a really long time. :-) Have you been around that long? Could you explain how you measured that timespan? No one seems to want to touch this question.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 24, 2000.>

El Bow, a billion years is a long time. And I've been around long enough to not be offended by being called "an old fossil". Long enough to have done LOTS of reading. Taken LOTS of classes in various universities, e.g. Southern Methodist, Dallas Univ. Colorado State, U.T. Lubbock, Humboldt State, and, lately, Rogue Community College.

"The literature" is unequivocal. Sorry I can't explain how the one billion year timespan was measured; you'll have to read a geology textbook, with some paleo thrown in for good measure. Don't forget climatology, sedimentology, biology, botany, oceanography, mineralogy, and physics. There may be other courses which could help edify you; ask me after you've studied these subjects. It really is not something that can be written in "twenty-five words or less".

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 24, 2000.

JOJ:

Sure it can. "An invisible wizard did it all with a magic wand 10,000 years ago." See, wasn't that easy?

What you mean is, a *sensible* explanation requires considerable knowledge and background.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 24, 2000.

Joe,

No offense was intended, I assure you. I consider myself and Flint to be old fossils too.

So you did not personally measure the billion years. Then have you actually studied the canyon's strata?

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 24, 2000.

Where's Immanuel Velikovsky when we need him?

-- Flash (flash@flash.hq), April 24, 2000.

LBO,

I'm as Christian as tne next guy, more than some, less than others. But saying,

Then have you actually studied the canyon's strata?

Is pretty irksome to me. We can't study everything personally, but if geologists print that something is there, and it's confirmed by others, then it probably is there. It's not as if no other fossils or rock strata exist for comparison. As *I* sees it, there are only two choices to the age of the Earth dilemna:

1. Evolution over billions of years happened. (I'd believe this was caused by God, some wouldn't)

2. The world really did start 6-10k years ago as per creationism, but for some reason God made the universe LOOK like it was around for billions of years to test our faith. (While this may have indeed happened, I personally doubt it did ((no reasons for this, just a personal belief like belief in God)))

Which really happened, who knows? But I'd bet on the former.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 25, 2000.

>>But saying, Then have you actually studied the canyon's strata? Is pretty irksome to me. <<

Well, Brother Frank, I'm sorry if it sounds irksome, but the question was not directed at you. I don't know what your specialty is, but Joe seems to have some knowledge on the issue that I'd like to hear about.

For your benefit, I will add that this "test of faith" you mentioned is a fallacy; an assumption based on an assumption. Think about it.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 25, 2000.

LBO,

A "test of faith" is a fallacy? What about the insects found in amber, dinasaur bones, mammoths dragged out of the L.A. tar pits, etc?

I personally don't think all these were walking around for 6k years or less. Seriously, for 2k years we've had New Testament history, and many more years of OT history before that, and no stories of Abraham hunting Dinos. I just can't reconcile a strict creationist's view of the world with what evidence I see around me. That's why I said if the world DID really start 6K years ago, God would have had to make it look older, hence the test of faith.

Oops, almost forgot: starlight. Either the stars are much closer than we think, their light is travelling slower, or God would have had to set their light in motion as if to look like the Stars were farther away.

Or, one could say that a day before the time of man is not the same as a day now.

Or not,

Frank

P.S. Do you believe in a strict view of creation? If so, any good links for info? -F

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 25, 2000.

Frank,

>>A "test of faith" is a fallacy? What about the insects found in amber, dinasaur bones, mammoths dragged out of the L.A. tar pits, etc? <<

The fallacy is that your examples would constitute any test of faith. I don't deny the existence of these things, but I disagree with the time scale being used.

>>That's why I said if the world DID really start 6K years ago, God would have had to make it look older, hence the test of faith.<<

I'm not following your logic. My mother-in-law (sweet lady that she is) looks older than 120 to me, but you can't always tell by looks, can you?

>>Either the stars are much closer than we think, their light is travelling slower, or God would have had to set their light in motion as if to look like the Stars were farther away. <<

And you're saying that if the last option is true, then the *apparent* age of the universe would be greater than its real age? Ok. The classic answer is that when God created Adam and Eve, their apparent ages *were* greater than their chronological ages. This would be true for all the first generation plants and animals. If a Biblical answer is not compelling, I suggest this: Evidence is beginning to mount that the Universe is not homogeneous. That is, the laws of physics may not apply equally to all points of the universe. Matter is not scattered evenly. Ninety percent of the universe's matter cannot be accounted for. There is evidence that the speed of light is slowing down. There is evidence that the so-called red-shift is quantized. The superficial implications are that maybe we don't know quite as much as we think we do about the nature of the universe.

Getting a little closer to home, there is substantial scientific data supporting the concept of a young earth. For instance, the earth is slowly receding from the sun, the moon is slowly receding from the earth, and the earth's rotation is slowing. Projecting these rates into the past, you cannot go back millions (to say nothing of billions) of years, before you find the earth's climate destroyed by the sun, the moon grazing the mountaintops, etc.

Still closer to home, there are the extreme gradients of salinity, CO2, C14 and O2 levels in the oceans. Old earth theories imply that these differentials should not exist after millions of years, but they do.

Now none of this is incontrovertible proof, but it's provocative. What I find interesting is that you don't hear about this kind of data from the evolutionary community.

Finally, No, I don't have any good links; most of my stuff is paper. And, Yes, I am a (relatively) strict creationist. By that I mean that, if there is a God (and there is), He is powerful enough, and smart enough to build the universe in six days, and if it happens that we discover "things" like radioactive decay, which appear to indicate that creation took much longer, it's only because we don't have all the facts and haven't been given access to the architectural plans.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 25, 2000.

Without question there is a great deal we don't know. And very little we are sure of, since investigations continue and proposed theories of most everything must undergo fairly constant refinement, and sometimes be discarded entirely.

Nonetheless, faced with what we've observed and challenged to explain it consistently, the "young earth" theory would probably never have been even dreamed of were it not for religious fables. Efforts to force observations to fit preposterous requirements for religious reasons, are a game played by only a few misfits. Most Christians (including the pope) have long since conceded that the Bible is not a geology text, and that a very recent Creation simply doesn't hold water.

This doesn't rule out *every* creation theory, of course, only the silly ones. One may as well argue that God created the universe last Tuesday, our very memories right along with it. I don't have any problem with the notion that a Creator set the whole shebang into motion 12-18 billion years ago. We currently have no better theory of the origin of time and space; all are basically arbitrary at present.

Incidentally, retrocalculations do NOT place the Earth dangerously close to the sun or the moon on the mountaintops within millions of years, even assuming linearity of physical forces over time (and it's amusing that Elbow uses linear arguments when they suit him, yet rejects them when they don't. How very convenient). Indeed, one of the early proposals for the origin of the moon was that it spun off from a larger body early on, and the two bodies (earth and moon) have been growing more distant ever since. Calculations have shown this could not have happened. If I recall correctly, the currently favored theory is catastrophic -- an early collision between the two bodies, followed by gravitational capture, satisfies occam's razor best.

So while it's true our current theories can and will be improved upon as we learn more, it's not logical to claim that *because* we need to learn more and certain things are difficult to explain, *therefore* something really dumb must be true instead. I expect our theories to change in whatever direction observation and experiment leads. So far, the "invisible wizard with a magic wand" theory remains out of the running, for lack of a single relevant observation.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 25, 2000.

LBO,

Thx. Question for you, and I mean this in a very *FRIENLY* way. If you think that with a young Earth theory that the laws of physics could have been different in the early days, would you agree that creation could have taken place in 6 days, but that those days were much longer than our current days?

My question here is because while I understand where you're going with this, most creationists I've met have said, "No, the Earth was created in a *literal* 6 days (meaning days measured in our current frame-of-referrence time)."

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 25, 2000.

Elbow, I think Flint has explained away your question quite nicely, along with Frank. Some people would say that someone who plays "ya- but" in order to make everything fit into a silly preconceived dogma is practicing mental masturbation. I won't say that I entirely disagree.

As far as, "Still closer to home, there are the extreme gradients of salinity, CO2, C14 and O2 levels in the oceans. Old earth theories imply that these differentials should not exist after millions of years, but they do."

What old earth theory implies such foolishness? Of course there are extreme gradients in CO2 and O2; I don't know much about any gradients in C14, though I'm sure there are logical explanations. As far as CO2 and O2, the only reason anyone would expect these gradients to disappear would be if the ocean were dead, and there were no imputs from the sun, including wind, tides, rain, ets. Basically, Elbow, the sun "drives" the ocean. It heats the water more in the tropics than at more temperate latitudes. The hotter water is less dense, and it expands when it is heated. When it expands, it naturally creates one of those confusing differentials. The water tends to run away from the hot towards the cold, all else being equal, because the expanded water is higher than the cold water, and the water naturally runs downhill. Furthermore, the higher insolation in the tropics creates more evaporation than in more temperate latitudes. I won't go into all the other details. Wind has similar results. Depth of the oceans play a part, as does a body of water's degree of freedom to circulate with the rest of the oceans. It's a very complicated situation, Elbow, which is probably why all the forecasts of extreme cold caused by the extreme "la nina" didn't make the grade. We still don't have a complete understanding, because there are too many variables.

Take an oceanography course, Elbow; you'll find it fascinating. Learn how coral reefs are the result of one of these gradients--CO2 is shaken out of solution by wave action (it's already supersaturated, because it comes from depth due to the Coriolis Effect) Deep water, having higher pressure, can hold more CO2 in solution, just like your favorite cola drink. When you open it, the pressure is released, and the CO2 comes out of solution. That's why it fizzes. So when the CO2 comes out of solution in the tropical waves, the pH of the seawater rises a bit (CO2 in water forms a mild acid) The rising pH causes a certain amount of calcium carbonate to come out of solution. The corals are able to use this to build their superstructure. Interestingly, there are some spots (lots of them are in the Caribbean Sea) where there is so much CaCO3 coming out of solution that it forms little granules, which gradually grow through accretion. If you look at them with a bit of magnification, they appear similar to hail stones, with concentric rings. They grow large enough to be classified as "oolitic" sands. They are quite white; you can walk on them barefoot on a hot, sunny day, without burning your feet.

There's lots more cool stuff you could learn, Elbow, if you will allow your mind to open, listen, read, smell, taste.

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 26, 2000.

Flint, your arrogance exceeds all bounds. In essence, you say: "We certainly don't know everything, and what we think we know is in constant flux, but what we do know with absolute certainty is that there is no God, and He did not create the Universe in six days." Furthermore, you baldly declare that you speak for "Most Christians" and then denigrate opponents as misfits. Do you really believe your behavior constitutes legitimate debate? This kind of hyperbole casts a dark shadow on everything else you say. Your pipe-dreams are affecting your judgment.

As an example of what you don't know, I acknowledge that the Bible is (obviously) not a geology text. But your conclusion does *not* logically follow from that statement, being nothing more than your opinion of what you *think* are the aggregate opinions of an enormous number of people about whom you know nothing.

Please answer this, Flint. On what basis do *you* declare that the Universe is 12-18 bilyun years as opposed to say, 6-8 bilyun? Do you understand my question? How do *you* know?

As for your rebuttal of my examples, both you and Joe are shooting where the target ain't. A change in the mean orbit of the earth of less than one percent in *either* direction would be sufficient to make the planet uninhabitable. As for the moon, tidal action on the oceans and earth's crust would have had catastrophic effects. Linear arguments are a problem for you, Flint? I have news for you: you've just completely destroyed the underlying principle for *all* radioactive dating methods. Nice Job. I subscribe to Occam's Razor as well but it's true, these rates of recession could be *decreasing,* couldn't they? Oops. The only option that works for you is a cyclical mechanism. Know of any that don't seriously dull Occam's Razor?

Joe, I was not talking about gradients in surface water or shallow seas. But thanks for the info. Now that you've returned, would you care to answer my question to you? Have you actually studied the Grand Canyon's strata?

One of the ocean experiments into gradients was intended to *test and verify* the accuracy of radiocarbon levels, the theory being that C14 levels at all depths should be relatively constant. Guess what? Didn't work out that way: levels decreased markedly with depth. Big Oops. But, of course, there's *got* to be a logical explanation that doesn't invalidate radiocarbon dating. We couldn't have that, could we? Open *your* eyes, Joe.

Frank, I know you don't believe in a literal six-day creation. But your response indicates an open-minded attitude the others clearly lack. Firstly, "days" in Genesis 1 were delineated before there was a sun. OTOH, each "day" is bracketed by "the evening and the morning" and the Hebrew word for "Day" is consistant with the same word's usage later in Genesis where a 24 hour period is undeniable. So I tend to believe in a literal interpretation. But the Truth may be as difficult to understand as trying to conceive of the characteristics of non-time and non-space.

Later.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 26, 2000.

Elbow:

OK, I'll be honest enough to state right off that I frankly regard the position you are taking as a delusion so absurd I find it very difficult to believe you aren't merely engaged in some sort of in- joke or sterile intellectual exercise. I feel kinda foolish saying you're wrong, in the same sense that I'd feel foolish telling someone who just drove into a tree that he'd had an accident. Why belabor the obvious?

But I can reply to your points anyway, for what little they're worth.

[what we do know with absolute certainty is that there is no God, and He did not create the Universe in six days.]

Not what I said. I explicitly granted that if you believe in magic, you can believe *anything* is true and what can anyone say except that the "magic" explanation, not being falsifiable, is simply empty and contributes nothing of value. Hey, I can't disprove that there's an invisible snorg reading over my shoulder. But so what?

[Do you really believe your behavior constitutes legitimate debate?]

I pointed out that the Pope himself rejects your brand of creationism. This is documented. If you think inconvenient facts are therefore not legitimate, what can I say?

[being nothing more than your opinion of what you *think* are the aggregate opinions of an enormous number of people about whom you know nothing.]

Yes, you seem to be falling into this line of "reasoning" more frequently of late. But I don't see your point, exactly. Are you claiming that the combined efforts of an army of specialists over the course of centuries should be rejected solely on the grounds that I myself have not replicated all of their observations? By this same "reasoning", how can you "know" Creation happened if you didn't witness it personally? Try to be more sensible, OK?

[On what basis do *you* declare that the Universe is 12-18 bilyun years as opposed to say, 6-8 bilyun? Do you understand my question? How do *you* know?]

I don't. Nobody does. Cosmologists actively debate this issue, since estimates of the age of the universe are based on highly indirect reasoning and uncertain assumptions. Observations even today are inconclusive, and promise to remain so for a while. Indeed, the further you look back in time, the lower the certainty level. Where observations are richest and corroborated by the most different disciplines (that is, Earthly observations), we can be quite sure. Beyond your "6-8 bilyun years", they become much more speculative. This is a very interesting area of current investigation, worth following.

[A change in the mean orbit of the earth of less than one percent in *either* direction would be sufficient to make the planet uninhabitable.]

This assertion is simply false. Wherever did you get it? Hey, *Mars* is essentially habitable by humans, and could be made fully habitable (albeit very slowly and at prohibitive expense) without changing its orbit. On Earth, non-human (bacterial) life thrives in environments ranging from Antartic winter to inside boiling hot springs. This implies life as we know it can inhabit a fairly wide orbital range. I can't even guess at life as we don't know it (would we even be able to recognize it?)

[As for the moon, tidal action on the oceans and earth's crust would have had catastrophic effects.]

My understanding is that this was indeed the case a few billion years back. So?

[I have news for you: you've just completely destroyed the underlying principle for *all* radioactive dating methods.]

OK, I'll bite. How so? More on radioactive dating later. As for changes in rates of recession, these things are well explained by both Newton and Einstein. Postulating that these principles somehow mysteriously changed sometime in the past, just to force away an inconvenient observation, is hardly honest debate yourself. We have no such evidence, no reason to make any such proposal, other than to force reality to fit fables.

[Have you actually studied the Grand Canyon's strata?]

But this question has already been answered. These strata have been studied extensively by specialists. What possible difference could it make if JOJ did it himself or simply understood what the experts have found? What are you trying to say here?

[But, of course, there's *got* to be a logical explanation that doesn't invalidate radiocarbon dating. We couldn't have that, could we? Open *your* eyes, Joe.]

In fact, it's been accepted that the C14 gradient in the ocean DOES indeed invalidate C14 dating techniques for undersea creatures. One of the most common Creationist scams is to select fossils for which C14 dating is known not to work for this reason, do the C14 dating *anyway*, and use the invalid results (*knowing* they're invalid) to attack valid dating techniques as being equally flawed. Why are you exhuming a debunked disinformation technique?

[your response indicates an open-minded attitude the others clearly lack.]

Chuckle. Yes, some people here clearly do lack an open mind. Physician heal thyself!

JOJ put it best when he wrote "The literature is unequivocal...you'll have to read a geology textbook, with some paleo thrown in for good measure. Don't forget climatology, sedimentology, biology, botany, oceanography, mineralogy, and physics. There may be other courses which could help edify you."

But clearly you don't want to be edified. Your "open mind" only accepts what you can force into agreement with your delusions, requiring that you reject a vast body of knowledge and investigation for the specious reason that JOJ didn't do all this himself!

Once again, I don't deny our theories are imperfect. Many of them could well be VERY imperfect. But they are very well supported, requiring even better support to overturn. So far, the only "support" you've provided for your beliefs is a few critiques of our knowledge base, some of *those* mendacious, and a bunch of misdirection and blue sky fantasy. Do you seriously claim to be *convinced* by this? And we're not supposed to laugh? Just out of curiosity, why not play this game by defending a notion for which you can provide even a feeble defense? It's more fun for everyone involved.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 26, 2000.

Flint,

>>"...delusion....absurd..." yada yada... "Why belabor the obvious? <<

Why indeed? Why cast aspersions? Do you feel that your arguments are so weak that you must resort to personal ridicule? Actually, your continued posting is the best answer to your question.

>>[what we do know with absolute certainty is that there is no God, and He did not create the Universe in six days.]

Not what I said. I explicitly granted that if you believe in magic, you can believe *anything* is true and what can anyone say except that the "magic" explanation, not being falsifiable, is simply empty and contributes nothing of value.<<

Then in a most oblique way, you are saying you are *not* certain that God did not create the Universe in six days. I'm glad we got past that. All I'm looking for is an admission that, regardless of how fanciful you consider a hypothesis, that your and everyone's knowledge is limited.

>>[Do you really believe your behavior constitutes legitimate debate?]

I pointed out that the Pope himself rejects your brand of creationism. This is documented. If you think inconvenient facts are therefore not legitimate, what can I say?<<

Excuse me? You said "Most Christians (including the pope).." *That* is an inconvenient fact you seem to be trying to modify retroactively. The pope's opinion may be documented, but that of "most Christians" is not. I deliberately quoted your words to emphasize that. And, since you totally missed it, I must point out that the following is also in reference to your assertion about "Most Christians."

>>[being nothing more than your opinion of what you *think* are the aggregate opinions of an enormous number of people about whom you know nothing.]

Yes, you seem to be falling into this line of "reasoning" more frequently of late. But I don't see your point, exactly. Are you claiming that the combined efforts of an army of specialists over the course of centuries should be rejected solely on the grounds that I myself have not replicated all of their observations? By this same "reasoning", how can you "know" Creation happened if you didn't witness it personally? Try to be more sensible, OK?<<

Hee Hee. I'm not speaking about any army of specialists; I'm talking about all those Christians you have the arrogance to speak for.

>>[On what basis do *you* declare that the Universe is 12-18 bilyun years as opposed to say, 6-8 bilyun? Do you understand my question? How do *you* know?]

I don't. Nobody does. <<

Good. You are uncertain, and everyone else is uncertain. You are just beginning to understand the limits of your "knowledge."

>>[A change in the mean orbit of the earth of less than one percent in *either* direction would be sufficient to make the planet uninhabitable.]

This assertion is simply false. Wherever did you get it? Hey, *Mars* is essentially habitable by humans, and could be made fully habitable (albeit very slowly and at prohibitive expense) without changing its orbit. On Earth, non-human (bacterial) life thrives in environments ranging from Antartic winter to inside boiling hot springs. This implies life as we know it can inhabit a fairly wide orbital range. I can't even guess at life as we don't know it (would we even be able to recognize it?)<<

Even as a strawman, that is pretty sad. In an attempt to return to the context, we've been talking about the Earth's biosphere, not just bacterial life or human life sustained by technology. You may find it meaningful that bacteria can live in polar winters or boiling springs, but you would not survive those conditions yourself, nor would anything you might need to survive.

>>[As for the moon, tidal action on the oceans and earth's crust would have had catastrophic effects.]

My understanding is that this was indeed the case a few billion years back. So?<<

Then the mechanism is not at issue at all, is it? Even though your first attempt was to deny it. We disagree only on the time scale. Which is exactly the issue at hand.

>>[I have news for you: you've just completely destroyed the underlying principle for *all* radioactive dating methods.]

OK, I'll bite. How so? More on radioactive dating later.<<

Come on. The concept is to measure the ratio of existing radioactive material to its decay products, and project that measurement backward in time based on the half-life of the radioactive material itself. If you can't rely on such linear projections, you cannot rely on radioactive dating. (And yes, I know I'm taking liberties with the term linear, since a half-life curve is not a straight line. The point is directed toward your apparent objection to my use of linear arguments *selectively*.)

>>As for changes in rates of recession, these things are well explained by both Newton and Einstein. Postulating that these principles somehow mysteriously changed sometime in the past, just to force away an inconvenient observation, is hardly honest debate yourself. We have no such evidence, no reason to make any such proposal, other than to force reality to fit fables. <<

I guess I can't blame you for this misunderstanding. I wasn't postulating any hypothetical changes in rates or speeds. I was saying that if *you* don't believe my use of projections is valid, then you must have a problem with radioactive dating because it is just such a mathematical projection.

>>[Have you actually studied the Grand Canyon's strata?]

But this question has already been answered. These strata have been studied extensively by specialists. What possible difference could it make if JOJ did it himself or simply understood what the experts have found? What are you trying to say here?<<

JOJ has not answered this question. I want to know if he is one of these specialists who has studied the Grand Canyon strata specifically. If you believe that a non-expert delivering platitudes and assurances about something he knows only from reading conclusions on work written by someone else is the same quality of knowledge as speaking directly to an expert on his area of expertise, then you don't really know much about knowledge.

>>[But, of course, there's *got* to be a logical explanation that doesn't invalidate radiocarbon dating. We couldn't have that, could we? Open *your* eyes, Joe.]

In fact, it's been accepted that the C14 gradient in the ocean DOES indeed invalidate C14 dating techniques for undersea creatures. One of the most common Creationist scams is to select fossils for which C14 dating is known not to work for this reason, do the C14 dating *anyway*, and use the invalid results (*knowing* they're invalid) to attack valid dating techniques as being equally flawed. Why are you exhuming a debunked disinformation technique? <<

Another strawman. Do you get some pleasure from concocting these fallacies? I described the experiment and the results. What's the problem here? To spell it out for you: The gradients measured indicate that radiocarbon dating is not reliable because the production of atmospheric radiocarbon (in C02), which is the source of the ocean's radiocarbon, has not been constant over time. How do you tell time if the clock has been gaining speed at an unknown rate? Conversely, existing C14 measurements would therefore be in error on the *high* side.

Try to keep up, will ya. I get real tired of all this recapitulation. And it might help your position if you canned the childish technique of derision and ridicule. It may stroke your ego, but it adds nothing to your argument.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 26, 2000.

Hi Elbow,

Back at it.

[Do you feel that your arguments are so weak that you must resort to personal ridicule?]

No, I feel your position is so ridiculous that ridicule is the most reasonable response. *Your* arguments don't even qualify as feeble.

[You may find it meaningful that bacteria can live in polar winters or boiling springs, but you would not survive those conditions yourself, nor would anything you might need to survive.]

Amazingly, you address the topic here. It's extremely meaningful. Life evolved from forms capable of inhabiting their environment. Change that environment drastically, and you change the course of evolution accordingly. Not a strawman at all, this is fundamental. Change the Earth's orbit, you change the environment. Change the orbit gradually, evolution works to adapt to the changes. This is the very nature of evolution. If you could understand this, you'd be a giant step toward a cure.

Had you and I evolved in boiling water, I'm quite sure you would be claiming that ONLY boiling water is a viable habitat. Same if we'd evolved as self-aware ice crystals or whatever. The fact that we evolved to fit our environment is nothing special. You are arguing backwards, like saying "Isn't it a wonderful coincidence that New York has such a fine harbor?"

[You are uncertain, and everyone else is uncertain. You are just beginning to understand the limits of your "knowledge."]

Now YOU create the straw man. There are degrees of certainty, from highly speculative to essentially unassailable. Yet you consistently imply that incomplete knowledge is the same as NO knowledge. This implication runs through all your commentary -- that since we lack perfect knowledge, we lack ANY knowledge, and therefore even the silliest notion for which there is NO evidence, is "just as good" as knowledge supported by countless observations, whose predictions have all been accurate.

[Then the mechanism is not at issue at all, is it? Even though your first attempt was to deny it. We disagree only on the time scale. Which is exactly the issue at hand.]

I'm not sure we're on the same wavelength here. The models we have which fit all observations best don't ever have the moon grazing the mountaintops. I understood your term "catastrophic" to mean that tidal effects were once far greater than they are now. Pending a better explanation (aren't we always?), this is conditionally accepted.

[Do you get some pleasure from concocting these fallacies?]

I concocted no fallacy, I stated a documented fact. I do get some pleasure stating facts, and a bit more pleasure watching you misrepresent them.

So I'll end with my usual restatement, which you cannot seem to face. We make observations. We attempt to derive explanations consistent with all of these observations. We use these explanations to make predictions, and attempt to verify the predictions. If the predictions don't prove out, we modify our explanation accordingly and repeat the process iteratively. The result, over time, is a "best fit" explanation, and the fit is continuously improved as more observations are made.

Your position *requires* you to argue that since the "best fit" can never be perfect, therefore it's no better than NO FIT AT ALL. This is dumb.

You also seem to be claiming that if theory A is imperfect, therefore theory B is correct. This gets very tiring. I feel like I'm saying 2+2=4, and you are claiming that "Since 2+2 is not 5, therefore it MUST be 17", the same value you started with as an article of faith.

As for the derision and ridicule, you have richly earned it. Some delusions simply do not deserve to be taken seriously. At least Kent Hovind is trying to get rich off the yokels. What are you trying to do anyway?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 26, 2000.

Elbow,

I've been following your and Flint's dialog with interest. I do note in your last reply that you state:

"JOJ has not answered this question. I want to know if he is one of these specialists who has studied the Grand Canyon strata specifically. If you believe that a non-expert delivering platitudes and assurances about something he knows only from reading conclusions on work written by someone else is the same quality of knowledge as speaking directly to an expert on his area of expertise, then you don't really know much about knowledge."

At the same time you're asking this question of JOJ, you're quoting extensively about your understanding of carbon dating and C14 decay rates. Is this something that you've studied and would be intentified by others as an expert on? If not, what makes you any different than JOJ repeating the knowledge he has gained from experts?

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), April 27, 2000.

LBO,

Thx for the reply.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 27, 2000.

Flint,

>> *Your* arguments don't even qualify as feeble.<<

How interesting. And yet still you feel compelled to respond. Your actions contradict your words.

>>Amazingly, you address the topic here. It's extremely meaningful. Life evolved from forms capable of inhabiting their environment. Change that environment drastically, and you change the course of evolution accordingly. Not a strawman at all, this is fundamental. Change the Earth's orbit, you change the environment. Change the orbit gradually, evolution works to adapt to the changes. This is the very nature of evolution. If you could understand this, you'd be a giant step toward a cure.<<

No, Flint, it is not on topic at all. It may be where you are trying to turn it, but this began with Frank as a discussion of opposing evidence to the timespans demanded by popular cosmological theories. It had nothing to do with evolutionary theory. From that standpoint, your declaration that "Life evolved.." is putting the cart before the horse, unless your argument is in fact that "since" life evolved, therefore there had to be great spans of time. Ludicrous. At any rate, since you entered the conversation, you've used every tactic you could think of, legitimate and otherwise, to try to confuse the issue over some fairly innocuous evidence with your dueling data, non sequiturs, strawmen and puerile insults. Introducing evolution into it is just another red herring. Try to stay focussed.

>>[You are uncertain, and everyone else is uncertain. You are just beginning to understand the limits of your "knowledge."]

Now YOU create the straw man. There are degrees of certainty, from highly speculative to essentially unassailable. Yet you consistently imply that incomplete knowledge is the same as NO knowledge. This implication runs through all your commentary -- that since we lack perfect knowledge, we lack ANY knowledge, and therefore even the silliest notion for which there is NO evidence, is "just as good" as knowledge supported by countless observations, whose predictions have all been accurate.<<

I imply no such thing. Your inferences are erroneous. You continue to show difficulty keeping track of your own side of the argument. I will handle mine. I am stating outright that not all knowledge is of the same quality, and that with some types of knowledge, something approaching certainty is the best that can be expected, and one of the reasons this is true is that the underlying data, observations, predictions supporting it are uncertain, incomplete, etc. You have conceded that the age of the Universe is uncertain, have you not? Does it then follow that using an uncertainty as a basis for subsequent deductions decreases that uncertainty? Inaccuracies compound, they don't cancel out.

>>[Do you get some pleasure from concocting these fallacies?]

I concocted no fallacy, I stated a documented fact. I do get some pleasure stating facts, and a bit more pleasure watching you misrepresent them. <<

I've had to correct a number of mistakes you've made in the course of this short discussion; misrepresenting my position, introducing patently false statements such as your preposterous "Most Christians" statement and the C14-in-marine life story. Even if the story were true, it was totally irrelevant to the point. Either you're confused or disingenuous. You've exhibited so much difficulty with what is in written in black and white, I don't wonder at your fanaticism on this subject.

Jim Cooke:

>>If not, what makes you any different than JOJ repeating the knowledge he has gained from experts? <<

I don't claim to be an expert. Unlike Flint who has his own set of delusions of grandeur. That is my point. On this particular subject, we all accept the data that support our world-views, without much consideration for the quality of the knowledge. I accept that. Flint apparently does not.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 27, 2000.

This is kind of fun. Otherwise, why bother?

[you feel compelled to respond. Your actions contradict your words]

No more than anyone else trying to teach kindergarten. I already explained that if I regard you as an adult I feel foolish. What stands arrayed against you is both overwhelming and unequivocal. In the face of this, I watch you weasel in fascination. Hey, that's entertainment.

[It had nothing to do with evolutionary theory.]

So sayest thou. Yet timespans and their measurement can be approached by many avenues. Everything must jibe with everything, reality being consistent. You work very hard here to compartmentalize, it seems. Or perhaps you are simply trying your own hand at argument by insult. In which case, I regret to inform you that your position lacks sufficient standing for that to stick.

[Does it then follow that using an uncertainty as a basis for subsequent deductions decreases that uncertainty? Inaccuracies compound, they don't cancel out.]

This notion is enlightening in its very wrongheadedness. Uncertainty is NOT used as the basis for deductions alone, it's used as the basis for hypothesis followed by investigation and observation. By this iterative means, uncertainty is gradually diminished. This process is called "feedback" (feel free to look it up). If conclusions and predictions do not match observation, premises are questioned and modified. Your argument does not match the reality. But what am I saying? NONE of your arguments, from first principles on, match the reality.

[we all accept the data that support our world-views, without much consideration for the quality of the knowledge.]

You are, as you say, speaking only for yourself here. This is, in my reading, an admission that you started with your conclusions, and set out to FORCE reality to fit them by whatever means necessary. NOW you are claiming that's what everyone does! Whether they admit it or not!

Believe it or not, there are people (I certainly won't say "most" people) who ask themselves, "What's really going on here?" and then set out to determine the best-supported supposition. These are investigators, not advocates. They are special people, because they can admit error and ignorance, they can recognize improvement, they can realize that their best explanations will always be in some sense tentative.

There are others (and here I WILL say "most") who start with what they WANT to be true, and do everything they can to pretend it's so. To the degree their wants vary from actuality, their efforts are absurd. As you have so ably demonstrated, this fails to deter those who are most desperate and who WANT the very hardest. But this does not describe "we all", despite your claim. You are merely seeing the world through a funhouse mirror.

Anyway, we seem to be at an impasse. Your last post consisted almost entirely of misstatements, insults, misdirection and denials. Ergo, we have reached the underpinnings of your arguments, more rapidly than I expected. I suggest you rub your prayer beads and renew your resolve at this point. Your schtick is getting stale.

Jim:

I hardly need to translate Elbow's reply. He says it's OK when he does it, but not when someone else does it. And when challenged, he vanishes like a cuttlefish in a cloud of ink. Did you expect better?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 27, 2000.

>>This is kind of fun. <<

Yes, it is actually.

>>No more than anyone else trying to teach kindergarten. I already explained that if I regard you as an adult I feel foolish. What stands arrayed against you is both overwhelming and unequivocal. In the face of this, I watch you weasel in fascination. Hey, that's entertainment.<<

What stands arrayed against me is a single man who believes he holds the keys to the kingdom, who has reached enlightenment; an armchair evolutionist who considers National Geographic to be a sacred document, who has been shown on this thread and in the above quote to be uncharacteristically (even for him) provocative and pompous. His idealistic fervor in defending the exalted Scientific Method is worthy of tax exemption. Amen, Brother!

>>[It had nothing to do with evolutionary theory.]

So sayest thou. Yet timespans and their measurement can be approached by many avenues. Everything must jibe with everything, reality being consistent. You work very hard here to compartmentalize, it seems. Or perhaps you are simply trying your own hand at argument by insult. In which case, I regret to inform you that your position lacks sufficient standing for that to stick.<<

No, Flint, so sayest *thou.* You drew that distinction back on our Evolution as Religion thread. How embarrassing for you.

Stephen J Gould, one of the high priests of evolution, has stated (I am paraphrasing) that statistically, it is impossible for life to have arisen spontaneously and independently on this earth.

And Flint, you're no Stephen J Gould.

>>Uncertainty is NOT used as the basis for deductions alone, it's used as the basis for hypothesis followed by investigation and observation. By this iterative means, uncertainty is gradually diminished. This process is called "feedback" (feel free to look it up). If conclusions and predictions do not match observation, premises are questioned and modified.<<

Flint, we are not in disagreement here, at least, not in the academic sense. I am taking it one step at a time in order to minimize your tendency to fly off on a tangent. So your conclusions are a bit presumptuous and premature.

>>[we all accept the data that support our world-views, without much consideration for the quality of the knowledge.]

You are, as you say, speaking only for yourself here. This is, in my reading, an admission that you started with your conclusions, and set out to FORCE reality to fit them by whatever means necessary. NOW you are claiming that's what everyone does! Whether they admit it or not! <<

I thought I had corrected my phrasing here. My apologies. "much" should be "the most careful" The essence remains the same, and Yes, that *is* what I am claiming. It is also what you've been so aptly confirming with your less than honorable characterizations.

>>Believe it or not, there are people (I certainly won't say "most" people) who ask themselves, "What's really going on here?" and then set out to determine the best-supported supposition. These are investigators, not advocates. They are special people, because they can admit error and ignorance, they can recognize improvement, they can realize that their best explanations will always be in some sense tentative. <<

Ah, yes, the Perfect Scientific Investigator, viewing the world not through bias-colored glasses, but objectively, dispassionately, critically. No doubt, by your use of the royal "we" in this regard, you consider yourself to be among them. Tell me, what planet do you come from? But wait, there is no perfection, is there? Everyone has his own biases, emotions, preferences. And contrary to your beliefs, they do play an essential part in a researcher's life as with anyone else, as again you have so aptly illustrated throughout.

Flint, do you know any of these investigators you have elevated to secular sainthood? Can you confirm their unwavering objectivity? Would there be any (merely coincidental) correspondence between their objectivity and their commitment to evolution? You see, even your judgment of them will not be without bias.

Another Stephen Gould paraphrase is appropriate here. He asserts that the lack of evidence for intermediate forms has been a problem to evolutionary theory. He speculates that they will never be found. But, says he, that lack of evidence is essential proof that punctuated equilibrium is the current most accurate theory.

And Flint, you're no Stephen J Gould.

>>There are others (and here I WILL say "most") who start with what they WANT to be true, and do everything they can to pretend it's so. To the degree their wants vary from actuality, their efforts are absurd. As you have so ably demonstrated, this fails to deter those who are most desperate and who WANT the very hardest. But this does not describe "we all", despite your claim. You are merely seeing the world through a funhouse mirror.<<

Welcome to the club, Flint. Join the human race. I do not deny that there are those who try very hard to keep their personal opinions and preconceptions from clouding their judgment, but it is an imperfect process. The same holds true for the scientific method in general, feedback and all. Yes, it is a good process. Yes, it has some fine self-correcting mechanisms. Yes, it has led to technological wonders and lifestyles which would seem magical a century ago. But it has its limits. It has its breakdowns. Worst of all, a number of egregious errors appear in textbooks and propogate for decades, though they've long since been debunked. The "facts" you so violently defend today may be disproved tomorrow, by the scientific method. So from your standpoint, Flint, there is no reason to be so dogmatic over any of them. Your entire edifice is conditional and provisional. At least, acknowledge that you have a bias.

>>Anyway, we seem to be at an impasse. Your last post consisted almost entirely of misstatements, insults, misdirection and denials. Ergo, we have reached the underpinnings of your arguments, more rapidly than I expected. I suggest you rub your prayer beads and renew your resolve at this point. <<

Flint, from your grand entrance when you swooped in on your chariot to cleanse the thread from all unrighteousness, until now, you have presented your own misstatements, insults, misdirection and denials. In fact, you are merely parroting my words. Chiding you about it only increased your volume. So dry your crocodile tears, bind up your wounded ego, and respond. Or not. But the supposed superiority of your position is only in your head, and I won't speculate on where your head is.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 28, 2000.

Elbow:

OK, I'll tone it down. Shouting matches take some of the fun out of things. So I'll address your points in more careful detail, and do my best to laugh at you less often [grin].

["What stands arrayed against me is a single man who believes he holds the keys to the kingdom..." and 50+ more words of similar drivel.]

Elbow, let's be a bit more honest here. What stands against you is an incredible wealth of theory, observation, history, process, constructive criticism, and the like. It is all highly, though granted not entirely, consistent. It all points in the same direction. Strongly and unequivocally.

What we have here are two people, you and me. I'm willing to accept all of the above pending something better, knowing these things improve all the time, since we have an army of highly educated and intelligent specialists all trying to prove everyone else wrong in whatever detail or assumption they can find. This is an extraordinarily efficacious process, and has produced a body of literature capable of convincing anyone who isn't blindly determined to deny it.

Both of us know a tiny fraction of what's available to be known. The difference as I see it is, I'm trying to understand what's known and why, and you are desperate to find flaws to fit a belief system inconsistent with EVERY BIT of all those centuries of work by countless smart and trained people. Or failing that, at least cast a whole lot more doubt on what we do know than the wealth of available evidence justifies.

While I admit there are and always will be flaws, my orientation is toward understanding and correcting flaws one at a time, while your orientation appears to be toward finding some reason, any reason (rational or not, honest or not) to overturn the entire edifice, in the hopes that it can be replaced by arbitrary parochial nonsense.

Your motivation remains a mystery to me. Do you really NEED to convince yourself of such a silly, artificial, overwhelmingly contraindicated delusion in order to see God's handiwork in our world? Why? I was even a bit offended at your implication that in setting up orbits, God cobbled together a slapdash, temporary, error- ridden system. It's fortunate for both of us that the fairly incompetent God you describe is inconsistent with actual observation.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, since I'm mostly guessing, but the "young Earth" proposal is quite old, originally proposed at least hundreds of years ago, before the bulk of the great weight of current knowledge had been developed. And at the time of proposal, it was at least as reasonable as an Earth-centric universe. Both have been thoroughly discredited in the interim, along with a host of other reasonable-sounding speculation that didn't work out. Hell, Aristotle was brilliant, but wrong about nearly everything. I have no problem with mistaken ideas pending verification or refutation, nor with the idea that verification can never be complete, while refutation can. But it's hard to understand people clinging to thoroughly refuted ideas. And I'm not getting many clues here as to why you choose to do so.

[You drew that distinction back on our Evolution as Religion thread. How embarrassing for you.]

Interesting. I recall an evolution VS. religion thread, not an evolution AS religion thread. I even started that thread. Your error of recollection mirrors your error of thought. How embarrassing for you.

[Stephen J Gould, one of the high priests of evolution, has stated (I am paraphrasing) that statistically, it is impossible for life to have arisen spontaneously and independently on this earth.]

I wasn't aware of this. Do you have a source? Seriously, I'd be highly interested. I AM familiar with Gould's (and many others') argument that when SOME outcome of a process is guaranteed, AND there's an infinity of possible outcomes, THEREFORE the probability of each of them, INCLUDING what actually happens, is infinitely small. Gould (and others) go on to point out that it's mendacious to argue backwards from the outcome, saying that whatever outcome happened MUST be a miracle because its probability was so small! After all, the probability of SOME infinitely unlikely outcome was 100%. But I don't know if this is related to your paraphrase, because I'd need to read what Gould actually said.

[Ah, yes, the Perfect Scientific Investigator, viewing the world not through bias-colored glasses, but objectively, dispassionately, critically.]

Granted, I simplified for purposes of clarity. In actuality, I think as you do, that people of ALL professions engage in a lot of wishful thinking. Trying to get past this, to see what's there rather than what we'd prefer or what we *expect*, is a constant battle in which we never enjoy a clear victory. As a result, progress is slow, taking two steps backwards for every three forward, sometimes leading down blind alleys. Ever tried debugging your own code? Blindness indeed!

As one illustration (of many, I agree), tales of a Biblical Flood delayed the recognition of past glacial activity for generations. Eventually, glaciation was accepted because the observations on the ground fit with glaciation precisely, and just plain could NOT be made consistent with a Great Flood. But there are two lessons here: How false preconceptions fooled trained observers and theorists for a long time; and how a preponderance of evidence could overcome preconceptions anyway, among the persuadable at any rate.

So I agree. Reality isn't *trying* to fool us or hide its secrets. False notions cause us to fool ourselves, and blind us to what is. And this really slows us down, it's quite true. I simply can't understand your eagerness to discard what we *have* learned; your coming down so solidly on the side of the blindfold. Yes, we've paid a very high price for what we know, in terms of the difficulties our considerable human limitations impose on us. But why throw out the baby *because* the bathwater became dirty?

[He asserts that the lack of evidence for intermediate forms has been a problem to evolutionary theory. He speculates that they will never be found. But, says he, that lack of evidence is essential proof that punctuated equilibrium is the current most accurate theory.]

Let's disentangle this for a moment, OK? First, Gould does NOT say that lack of evidence is "essential proof", kinda like Hawk's noncompliant jackscrew. I think Gould would be appalled at this mischaracterization. Second, Gould does NOT say we have a complete lack of intermediate forms. I suspect your source material isn't the original Gould here, but rather a careful misrepresentation of Gould from some creationist "literature".

Instead, we have LOTS of intermediate forms, and we're finding more all the time. The problem seems to be a misunderstanding of what "intermediate" really means *in this context*. We find form A and form B and form C, chronologically. Each form is fairly close to the prior form, with some feature(s) different. Form B is the clear intermediate between A and C. We have countless examples of this (indeed, nearly every fossil ever found is now such an example). What we do NOT see very often (not "never" by any means) are examples illustrating gradual change from A to B, or from B to C. This issue is compounded severely by the relative paucity of examples of *everything*. Soft tissue doesn't fossilize readily at all. Hard parts (mostly teeth) only fossilize under unusual conditions, a fairly rare event. The problem with finding them is that IF the process of change is rapid, the physical possessors of such fine- grained intermediate features constitute an incredibly tiny percentage of ALL organisms. Big haystack, far fewer needles.

(However, I can see you waiting to pounce on that, to argue that because the sum total of fossil evidence isn't great, it doesn't count AT ALL, so the earth isn't very old after all! Taken all together, the fossils we have constitute incontrovertible evidence of Deep Time and the development of species. Gould is addressing the detailed dynamics of the evolutionary process over very large time scales. As an analogy, paleontology is like watching a movie with most of the frames missing. What's left is a clearly understandable story line, albeit with jerky motion. It's not reasonable to reject the story because the motion is jerky. If events of importance transpired at a rate *faster* than the *original* frame rate, we're sure to miss a lot.

I will agree that theories based on very limited evidence tend to have short lifespans (as originally proposed), and tend to undergo fairly major modification as evidence surfaces. But this is NOT to say that the theory of evolution rides on Gould's success or failure, since he's not addressing the whole of evolution, which lies far beyond the scope of his proposal. Evolution is still a fact just like it's a fact that airplanes fly, even though we barely understand the fluid mechanics of turbulence.)

Gould theorizes that such changes tend to be abrupt, geologically speaking, and very local. Perhaps they happen within a few thousand generations, among isolated populations of only thousands. Not all the evidence for this theory is negative, either. We DO have a few fossilized illustrations of fairly rapid local change where conditions were just right to preserve them. We have variations among island populations of related land forms. We can even *watch* the process happen with simple organisms like viruses and bacteria.

While Gould's theory is by no means universally accepted among evolutionists, it DOES predict that we should find more evidence of such local rapid change if we're lucky. More important, it implies that we should examine fossil deposits far more carefully than we have, to look for differences prior theories didn't tell us to pay attention to. It will be interesting to see how Gould's ideas play out.

[Worst of all, a number of egregious errors appear in textbooks and propogate for decades, though they've long since been debunked.]

Very true, and very nearly criminal! Where clear error is being replicated through laziness, time or budget limitations, I think someone should be responsible for correcting it. But on the other hand, modification of technical material for political reasons is scary. I don't have any solution for this problem. School boards are nominally responsible, but after our Kansas misfortune, I admit I get discouraged. School boards are elected, and few scientists run for office. "Public opinion" is hardly the font of scientific knowledge!

[The "facts" you so violently defend today may be disproved tomorrow, by the scientific method. So from your standpoint, Flint, there is no reason to be so dogmatic over any of them. Your entire edifice is conditional and provisional. At least, acknowledge that you have a bias.]

I so acknowledge. But that bias is in favor of the *process*, moreso than the "facts". From my perspective, a "fact" is an observation, meaningless in and of itself. The meaning lies in the theories, the proposed explanations. Didn't someone observe that facts without theory are meaningless, and theory without fact is empty? Is it so farfetched to suggest that theory IN CONTRADICTION to the facts is wrong?

When the Royal Geological Society tired of argument and decided only to collect observations, Darwin himself commented that they may as well go to a rock quarry and measure every pebble. Darwin wrote, (from porous memory here), "What purpose does any observation serve, if it is not for or against some view?"

But Darwin expected that the views would derive from the facts, and in turn direct observation most usefully. I doubt he or any serious scientist would condone the idea of starting with an unshakeable conclusion, selecting those few observation which can be misinterpreted in isolation as supporting that conclusion, and rejecting all the rest -- and all the while, the preordained conclusion remains inviolate.

And THIS is where creationism, especially very recent creation, is most reprehensible. Creationism is NOT a theory derived from a huge and growing body of consistent observation, mostly helped (but often hindered) by sincere (but sometimes mistaken) efforts to deduce "best fit" explanations. Were it not for a rather peculiar religious doctrine, I doubt Creationism would never even have been dreamed up. Even as a "forced fit" notion (to make the evidence fit the world view), it does a stunningly poor job.

Yes, I fully expect that all of our current theories will change, to some greater or lesser degree, continuously over time. And as they do so, the facts will take on new and sometimes quite different meanings when viewed in the new light. I view the facts and the theories as opposite sides of the same coin, each influencing the other inextricably. I expect to be surpised by where this process leads.

Still, I view creationism as much like y2k doomerism at its worst. When the conclusion comes first and rather independently, and facts are very carefully selected and misinterpreted to fit, the result is resounding error. Yet you'll note that some ex-doomers, while admitting they were totally wrong, are *still* justifying the process they USED to get it so wrong as being reasonable. The worst of them won't even admit they were wrong, choosing instead to interpret the normal Brownian Motion of an imperfect world as "covered up proof" they were right all along and nobody else notices! Obviously, blind faith is impervious to even unambiguous factual refutation. Much less to areas like we're discussing, where ambiguities abound.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 28, 2000.

LBO, you said,

who considers National Geographic to be a sacred document,

HEY! Lay off the Nat'l Geo. What's it done to you? Seriously, having the Geographic show up is one of the highlights of my month. :-)

Flint, you said,

OK, I'll tone it down. ... and do my best to laugh at you less often [grin].

... and 50+ more words of similar drivel.]

The "tone it down" part didn't last too long. :-(

Interested bystander,

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 29, 2000.

Frank:

On rereading, I toned it down a LOT. But I felt it was necessary to show that we both needed to do this, without quoting a whole paragraph of insults. Or did your "interest" last only long enough to read the first sentence?

Maybe you'd prefer to comment on the actual *substance*, rather than twitter over the needling in the first sentence and ignore the remainder? All thoughtful viewpoints are very welcome here, so if you have something to add, chime right in.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 29, 2000.

...seashells on top of Mt. Everest...

Actually, ever heard of continental drift, tectonics, etc... Everest was once underneath water, and then a seashore when the "island" of what is now India hit the asian continent...

Proof of a flood...

Seriously now, there is some scientific proof that a flood had occured around the time mentioned in the bible. I believe I read about it in Discovery Magazine about a year or so back, where (in the Red Sea?) they had done sedimentation tests and had found a LAEGE influx of sea water into a large inland lake area. According to the article, the amount of devastation caused should have left quite a memory imprint on the locals that survived.

I don't have a link to the article, but will see what I can dig up & post it as soon as I can.

-- Deb Mc (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), April 29, 2000.

Ok, sorry, I was wrong on the location of the flood. Here are some links that I think you'll find useful:

Link

[Fair use, for educational purposes]

Dredging up Noah's Flood New Evidence Points to a Deluge From the Black Sea

"When a gargantuan flood came ripping through the Strait of Bosporus 7,500 years ago, it arrived with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls and may have generated enough energy to spit lightning off the salty deluge. Intrigued by tales of a great flood in the Babylonian epic poem Gilgamesh, composed in southern Mesopotamia before 2000 B.C., as well as the Biblical flood story of Noah, geologists Walter Pitman and Bill Ryan of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory set off for the Black Sea to investigate the possibility of a large-scale prehistoric flood originating in the Strait of Bosporus, a narrow channel of water that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean."

"Two ingredients are needed for a flood of those proportions: a reason for the water to rise and a natural bottleneck for it to converge on. Pitman and Ryan hypothesized that melting ice from an interglacial period could have swollen the Mediterranean beyond its limits. The overloaded sea would have tried to relieve pressure on its northeastern shore by expanding into the Black Sea. But when the Mediterranean reached the Strait of Bosporus, the narrow channel would have forced its waters up into an enormous tidal wave."

"The Black Sea has fluctuated many times over millions of years from isolated freshwater lake to saltwater sea, which mark alternate periods of flow and isolation from the Mediterranean. During cooler glacial periods, seawater was locked up in ice and the Mediterranean retreated, leaving the Black Sea an isolated lake. What Ryan and Pitman were looking for was a dramatic indicator that the Mediterranean had suddenly invaded the Black Sea. The record of the flood remained submerged sediment until 1993. From sediment core samples taken from 140 meters (460 feet) to 40 meters (130 feet) below the muddy bottom of the Black Sea, they sought evidence of rapid change from a freshwater environment to a saltwater one."

"They found it. A uniform layer of saltwater mollusks on the Black Sea floor - whose hard shells were preserved in the seafloor ooze - testified to a mass exodus from the Mediterranean. There was also evidence that freshwater shellfish living in the oxygen-rich Black Sea simultaneously died out in one massive last breath as the saline Mediterranean waters deprived the seafloor of oxygen."

"While Pitman and Ryan's core samples demonstrate a massive flood around 5600 B.C., their hypothesis that it was the same flood that gave rise to the Biblical and Babylonian legends is in dispute by scientists who think that memory of the flood could not have survived intact through oral history for 2,500 years until writing was invented by the Sumerians in 3000 B.C."

"The hypothesis hinges on whether or not the area surrounding the Black Sea was heavily populated around 5600 B.C. As in all sciences, future archaeological research will confirm the hypothesis or submerge it entirely."

"At the heart of the argument," said Fredrik Hiebert of the University of Pennsylvania, "is whether there was, prior to the catastrophic infilling of the Black Sea, an inhabited plain around the Black Sea, and what was the nature of this occupation."

[SNIP]

-- Deb Mc. (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), April 29, 2000.

OK, Elbow, I'll confess. I've studied the Grand Canyon strata. Some people have studied them more than I; most people have probably studied them less than I. Am I an expert? Depends on who you ask.

Are you an expert on all the subjects you are raising?

Do you believe that no one but the most expert person on any subject is the only person to believe on any subject? Well, too bad. Many of these folks are dead. It seems perfectly acceptable to rely on the combined works, as recorded in the literature, of all experts, living and dead. To reject all this information is to set your path on the direction of continued ignorance.

I'm sure you will continue with your puerile game of "ya-but". I personally will not continue supporting you in this effort. I don't have time to play foolish games with dorks.

Flint, I totally agree with your hypothetical case of the residents who evolved to live in boiling water believing that nothing could survive in any other medium. I've long objected to our limited vision in this arena. Many of our highly respected scientists seem to limit themselves in this regard. They talk of finding "water based planets" as a prerequisite to a planet's ability to have evolved life forms. I personally would be surprised if there were no life on planets such as Jupiter or Saturn, for instance. Perhaps using the power generated by tidal forces, or even the feeble light from the sun, to convert methane, or other materials, into building blocks, in a similar, or not so similar, way to that building blocks are made here utilizing carbon and oxygen. Perhaps the methane is broken down into Carbon and Hydrogen. More likely (by far) is that I don't have a real clue how it would work, but given time, some sort of life may have evolved. Or maybe the "one god" of Jupiter (would the Jupiterians call her "Zeus"?) CREATED a life form which would thrive in this "inhospitable" environment. These residents of Jupiter may be debating whether life is possible on EARTH, as we speak!

Flint, I'd like to add my interpretation in regards to your statement, "We find form A and form B and form C, chronologically. Each form is fairly close to the prior form, with some feature(s) different. Form B is the clear intermediate between A and C. We have countless examples of this (indeed, nearly every fossil ever found is now such an example). What we do NOT see very often (not "never" by any means) are examples illustrating gradual change from A to B, or from B to C"

Seems to me, before a fossil called form B was found, we'd have only had form A and form C, but we'd have called them form A and form B. When the later, intermediate, fossil was discovered, it was then assigned the name "form B". The previous form B was then called "form C", and so forth.

My point being, the thumpers will never recognize an intermediate form, because they'll always insist on ANOTHER intermediate form, between every new intermediate form which is discovered. Does this make sense to you?

Thanks for all your input, Flint; I'm learning a lot from you, as usual. I can't believe how much patience you have. Do you think Elbow will ever open his mind enough to learn anything he doesn't already "know"?

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 29, 2000.

Flint,

It's the weekend, the sun is shining and warm, and today is "Honey Do" day. I've only had a chance to skim the latest posts and will respond later. You *have* toned it down a bit.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 29, 2000.

JOJ:

I think Elbow has a basically good point, but carries it far beyond the point of diminishing returns for irrational reasons.

He's right that there's a lot we don't know. The universe may not be trying to hide its workings, but it's nonetheless almost incomprehensibly complex. It's all too easy to get things wrong. Even the mythical perfectly objective observer can be misled by the contingent (fortuitous) order in which he makes discoveries. Think of us as "sampling" the universe much like a pollster samples opinions. A small sample can produce wildly misleading results EVEN IF the sampling methodology is unbiased.

I believe what Elbow is trying to say is that we have (at least so far) an unreliably small sample of what the universe has to offer, collected in a biased way (limited mostly to Earth) by people who are themselves far from objective. So how trustworthy are our results? We do not, and cannot, really know.

Now, this argument is not unreasonable per se, but it IS limited. Cross correlations have been consistent. Predictions have borne out with a high rate of success. As one example, the multiple methods of dating the relatively recent past (two different carbon methods, dendrichronology (tree rings), archaelogical clues, geologic clues, written histories) agree with one another to within a few percent. Nor is it true that these various methods are excessively interdependent (that is, all been used to calibrate one another). The probability that something real is being measured is very high. The same trend holds true for every scientific discipline -- significant variances between disciplines are major red flags.

Intellectually, what Elbow is doing is trying to use limited (but valid within their limitations) arguments improperly, in the hopes of toppling what has become a very secure edifice. The technique of looking for flaws, in general, is useful and necessary, don't get me wrong. Properly applied, it's fine. The scope and ambition of Elbow's efforts is MISapplied, though. He recognizes (and we should understand that he really DOES recognize) that for his pet religious delusion of a recent Creation to be true, the whole shebang must collapse (much like Gary North realized his precious theocracy could never happen incrementally).

But he needs to heed the EZboard lesson -- that intellectual darkness must be spread by political means. In the glare of open discussion, it can attract no converts and runs the risk that those already in the dark might start thinking for themselves.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 29, 2000.

I agree with you, Flint, but don't plan to hold my breath waiting for Elbow to show signs of life. But if you like playing ya-but with him, great. I'll keep following this thread until it becomes ridiculous, which may not be far off.

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 29, 2000.

>>Elbow, let's be a bit more honest here. What stands against you is an incredible wealth of theory, observation, history, process, constructive criticism, and the like. It is all highly, though granted not entirely, consistent. It all points in the same direction. Strongly and unequivocally.<<

This is your attempt at honesty? Let me repeat: The subject at issue is not a critique of evolution, but an objection to the long time spans so often attached. In that light, most data has absolutely *NO* *NADA* *ZILCH* chronology, duration, or age attached. One must resort to associative and comparative means to determine a provisional sequence. That much is unequivocal. In addition, most data is *neutral,* a fraction favors long timespans, a fraction disputes them.

>>I'm willing to accept all of the above pending something better... << (and on and on and on)

In essence, you are blindly willing to accept all of the above, and when it is revised you will blindly discard the old and blindly accept the new. And you have the impertinence to condemn me for taking a skeptical and adversarial position? What you've described with your characteristic verbosity is a religious movement with all participants agreeing on the general precepts, while quibbling over the crossing of i's and dotting of t's. We've been there already. You have proven that you do not let veracity get in your way by contradicting your own argument. Either evolution includes cosmology, or it does not. Make up your mind, so you don't appear to be speaking with forked tongue.

>>... and you are desperate to find flaws to fit a belief system inconsistent with EVERY BIT of all those centuries of work by countless smart and trained people. Or failing that, at least cast a whole lot more doubt on what we do know than the wealth of available evidence justifies. <<

Again with the mischaracterization. Have ad hominem arguments gained some validity I am unaware of? I am not "desperate" in any way, shape or form, and your efforts to color the argument are merely provocative. I *would* like to know what you mean by "all those centuries of work...". Do you mean "... all those *two* centuries..."?

>> I was even a bit offended at your implication that in setting up orbits, God cobbled together a slapdash, temporary, error- ridden system. It's fortunate for both of us that the fairly incompetent God you describe is inconsistent with actual observation. <<

I have not the vaguest idea what you're saying here. But once again, you seem to be shadow boxing. I am not trying to *prove* Creationism, but only point out inconsistencies with cosmologically long time spans. As you have already argued, disproving one does not necessarily prove the other. So what's your problem?

>>Correct me if I'm wrong here, since I'm mostly guessing, but the "young Earth" proposal is quite old, originally proposed at least hundreds of years ago, before the bulk of the great weight of current knowledge had been developed.<<

You are confusing two different subjects. I suppose the first "scientific" effort to date the earth was Bishop Ussher's attempt to calculate Biblical generations back to Creation and arrived at 4004 B.C. And while I am not attesting to the accuracy of that method, the concept is as old as the Bible itself. But the theory of Special Creation is quite new, probably no more than 50 years.

>>Interesting. I recall an evolution VS. religion thread, not an evolution AS religion thread. I even started that thread. Your error of recollection mirrors your error of thought. How embarrassing for you. <<

Get out of here, Flint. My words were meant as a description, not a subject title. But I will concede that I forgot the title name and author if you will concede that in your "mendacity," you contraverted your own argument.

>>I wasn't aware of this. Do you have a source? Seriously, I'd be highly interested. I AM familiar with Gould's (and many others') argument that when SOME outcome of a process is guaranteed, AND there's an infinity of possible outcomes, THEREFORE the probability of each of them, INCLUDING what actually happens, is infinitely small. Gould (and others) go on to point out that it's mendacious to argue backwards from the outcome, saying that whatever outcome happened MUST be a miracle because its probability was so small! After all, the probability of SOME infinitely unlikely outcome was 100%. But I don't know if this is related to your paraphrase, because I'd need to read what Gould actually said.<<

Although I have read some of Gould's stuff, I believe my source in this case was a quotation on radio, and that you have roughly restated his point. But he was hinting at extraterrestrial origins as an answer. This is a regression of decreasing probabilities to an already infinitely small possibility. The largest problem, however, is that his argument weighs in against evolution, and his conclusion is neutral. He is dangerously close to arguing that, obviously, we exist, therefore evolution must be how we came to exist.

>>Ever tried debugging your own code? Blindness indeed! <<

Heh-heh. I make no claims to being a programmer. For me, it is a slow, tedious and unrewarding activity. But I have done Y2K remediation, and written code, so I can certainly relate. But, (knowing that these analogies break down easily) aren't we talking about attempting to debug someone else's code in an unfamiliar language, where not just the statements but the elements within the statements have no obvious sequence? And this begs the question: Doesn't a program imply a programmer? :-) (Smiley to indicate that I am honest enough to acknowledge that the question is a red herring.)

>>But why throw out the baby *because* the bathwater became dirty? <<

I have been trying to interpret your points in terms of dates and ages, not evolutionary theory. So I submit that my problem is with any judgment calls as to what is baby and what is bathwater. You seem to be arguing for sweeping the skeletons under the carpet. How's that for a mixed metaphor?

>>Instead, we have LOTS of intermediate forms, and we're finding more all the time. The problem seems to be a misunderstanding of what "intermediate" really means *in this context*. We find form A and form B and form C, chronologically. Each form is fairly close to the prior form, with some feature(s) different. Form B is the clear intermediate between A and C.<<

I must disagree vehemently here. What we have is evidence of forms which were alive and of signficant numbers to leave fossil remains and are now extinct. The chronology and sequence are at issue. I make no attempt to argue against your context, which is an unadulterated evolutionary mindset. Framed your way, concurrency is not an option.

>>As an analogy, paleontology is like watching a movie with most of the frames missing. What's left is a clearly understandable story line, albeit with jerky motion. <<

As I said, these analogies break down quickly. I would suggest that it more closely resembles an attempt to piece together a single movie from the individual frames from an archive devastated by a tornado with individual frames scattered across the state. You continue to insist that the sequence and chronology are indisputable.

>>Evolution is still a fact just like it's a fact that airplanes fly, even though we barely understand the fluid mechanics of turbulence.)<<

If that isn't fitting the data to the foregone conclusion, I don't know what is. Airplanes fly by design. Are you implying a Designer?

>> We can even *watch* the process happen with simple organisms like viruses and bacteria. <<

This is simply misdirection. Attempts to compare the life processes of viruses and bacteria to higher lifeforms are specious. However, Flint, have *any* of these viruses or bacteria metamorphosed into something *other* than more viruses and bacteria?

>> "Public opinion" is hardly the font of scientific knowledge!<<

Here you come close to a conclusion I made long ago: Truth is not determined by majority vote. Another: The majority is almost always wrong. (This may even be a paraphrase from a Heinlein novel.) So, I do not feel uncomfortable in my position at all.

>>And THIS is where creationism, especially very recent creation, is most reprehensible. Creationism is NOT a theory derived from a huge and growing body of consistent observation, mostly helped (but often hindered) by sincere (but sometimes mistaken) efforts to deduce "best fit" explanations. <<

Dissenting opinions are difficult to hear over the thundering hooves of a stampeding herd. You've already demonstrated a remarkable ignorance of Special Creation. Have you taken steps to correct that shortcoming yet? You have relapsed to your "huge, consistent body of evidence" litany again after admitting to its paucity. As I said at the outset, *most* data does not favor evolution over creationism; as you yourself said, it's just data, meaningless in and of itself. If you feel obliged to claim the "swing vote" for your side of the argument, then so can I.

Elbow

-- LBO Grise (LBO Grise@aol.com), April 30, 2000.

Elbow:

I can't find much in what you say that's worth commenting on. One thing about the body of evidence, though. For those determined to deny it, it can NEVER be large enough or clear enough to suit them. Fossil evidence is sufficiently clear and unambiguous as to be accepted by all but a small group of self-blinded religious nutballs. Sorry, but that's the way it is, however you choose to weasel. At least you should be honest enough to admit that even if, over the course of time, we unearth several orders of magnitude more fossils than we have to date, your argument won't change a bit. Indeed, we could luck into a complete set of every creature that ever lived, complete with trends and details, and you would STILL deny that they told any coherent story.

Your repetition that data are not relevant (except, of course, where they can be misrepresented in support of whatever you choose to believe a priori) apparently satisfies you. And I know, I know, you're saying data take on whatever meaning we choose to impose, one imposition being as good as any other. Which amounts to the same thing.

And I'm not blindly accepting what "they" say, pending blind acceptance of whatever "they" decide is true next. Theories are like a horse race, one leads and then another, among a field of competing theories. What you refuse to accept is that all these theories are based on what has *already* been established beyone reasonable doubt. You can keep right on applying unreasonable doubt to your heart's content. It obviously makes you feel better.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 30, 2000.

Flint, the problem with your race horse analogy is that I believe's horse wearing blinders, and started the race pointed ninety degrees off track. By now it's off on South Broadway somewhere, still crying out, "I'm going to WIN this race!"

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 30, 2000.

Flint, you said,

On rereading, I toned it down a LOT. But I felt it was necessary to show that we both needed to do this, without quoting a whole paragraph of insults. Or did your "interest" last only long enough to read the first sentence?

No, my point wasn't in the overall quantity of your insults to LBO, but the fact that after saying you were going to tone down your post, subsequently opened with two insults in the first two lines. To me that set the tone for your remaining post, IMHO weakening the content.

You might not agree, and that's fine, but that's how it came across to me.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), May 01, 2000.

Frank:

I think you make a legitimate criticism here.

I regard what I'm doing as much more explaining than arguing, since the basic points I'm making have needed no defense for a long time now. And I regard Elbow as either hopelessly brainwashed or deliberately acting stupid for dialectical purposes. Since either one helps forward the flow of explanation, this is a distinction without a difference.

The interpersonal byplay is something I look at as ancillary -- it adds spice and interest for some, but might make others uncomfortable. If it distracts too much or otherwise reduces the clarity of explanation, then it's a bad thing. I've noticed, though, that when the mutual insults dominate the content, the subject matter has run dry (though I notice you don't chide *him* on this). Again, if you have something new to add you're welcome to dive right in. Our Beloved Moderator hasn't yet indicated that this is *our* thread and your input would be deleted, at least not yet. So welcome!

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 01, 2000.

Flint, you said,

"(though I notice you don't chide *him* on this).

Personally, I find it very hard to accept the notion that the Earth and all its contents were created in 6 literal days. Therefore, I'm kind of giving LBO the benefit of the doubt on this sort of stuff since I think he's got such an uphill battle to fight anyways.

That's my bias showing through though,

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), May 01, 2000.

Frank:

Elbow is going beyond that, as I understand it, and claiming that those 6 literal days happened no more than 10,000 years ago! To justify this, one must reject nearly all of geology, nearly all of astronomy, nearly all of evolution, great gobs of physics, all of paleontology, and significant supporting structures in maybe a dozen other long-established and thoroughly documented fields. An uphill battle is putting it mildly!

And he supports this notion NOT by making specific claims supported by the preponderance of evidence, but rather by making absurdly specious attacks on what is known, and accepted as being so well established and amply documented as to be incontrovertible. As soon as one points this out, he immediately claims that's not what he said at all, no matter what he said. So it's kind of like playing a game against a child who gets to make up the rules as he goes along. Fun for the child, perhaps, but certainly not how an adult tries to support a serious idea.

At some point, it gets a bit tricky deciding how seriously one should address this smoke and mirrors, and when one should either lose patience or start laughing. I've decided Elbow really isn't ever going to come out and actually *say* anything. I defy you or anyone to go through everything Elbow has written and derive any shred of logical or evidentiary basis for his beliefs, beyond the limited argument I outlined to JOJ above, itself a negative argument.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 01, 2000.