Try believed?
The earth was believed to be flat for millennia. It was no more right or proven than Nested Hierarchy is now.
And that still proves what?
Not in your mind, for sure.
Richard
When you show me that I do. because that was not what I said or meant in the post you parrotted it to.
Richard
So no, you canât point to where I have dismissed the proposer instead of the details they have presented. Thanks for the clarification.
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No, known, because some-one generated that hierarchy.
But apparently you arenât aware of that, despite supposedly having taken training in biology and having examined evolution for decades.
That animals (and plants) fall into a nested hierarchy.
It says nothing about why animals and plants fall into a nested hierarchy, but the hierarchy is definitely present.
So despite disputing the merit and certainty of animals falling into morphological and genetic nested hierarchies, you have absolutely nothing to back that disputation up.
Youâre nothing but empty words. All mouth and no trousers. A cojone-free zone.[1]
This last line is so you have something to reply to which doesnât require any knowledge, expertise or thought on your part. âŠď¸
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Why do i need anything new? I am just not convinced by the âmountainsâ of evidence you (et al) have presented. Are you claiming superior understanding? (yes) but that is al it is. it is a claim, based on your view of my posts here. Do you really think I bare my soul here? Do you bare yours?
You know nothing about me other than what I have revealed (sound familiar?) So, go ahead, make your judgements and assertions. It makes no difference other than to bolster your already over zealous ego.
This forum has no weight, no authority, and no status. It is not a scientific forum although it has some scientific content. neither is it a Christian forum inasmuch as it does not promote Christianity although it has Christian content and participants.
It is a forum.
Richard
Iâve never quite gone there, unless asking, âWhat is wrong with these people?â qualifies. I once spent most of a day trying to find some honest articles on one of the YEC sites as research for a response to a question Iâd been asked, and just kept getting more and more baffled.
I think most of them donât even know theyâre doing it; they just echo what theyâve been told, and fit everything into predetermined categories that make it impossible to see whatâs actually being said (a phenomenon quite common here in discussions as well).
It got defended as âshowing what Darwin was really up toâ.
No, the claim is that the trails are observable, so we know that the footsteps follow them. To make the analogy fit evolutionary science better, weâve even found dozens of signs along the way to show where hikers went â a crude latrine here, a campfire there, foliage crushed where a tent was placed somewhere else.
No â only that it did â there is no evidence otherwise.
And I argue that because God is faithful, not capricious.
Ah, the phenomenon of trust by footnote! Back in the day, a footnote was worth something; it indicated that a scholar had examined a source and was employing its content properly. So most people when seeing a footnote assume that its mere existence establishes trustworthiness.
In any course I took above the 100-level, that would have gotten not just an F on the paper but ejection from the course â and these people call themselves scholars?!?
The really crafty ones spend three paragraphs or so setting things up to make the lie believable.
- Errors have nothing to do with âviewâ, they have to do with fact.
- âThe lotâ gets dismissed because given that itâs basically impossible to find a YEC article that doesnât lie, it isnât worth the effort to bother looking further â itâs like going to a certain water fountain dozens of times and it always has sulfurous rusty water and deciding to stop going there.
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Lack of evidence is no evidence. Like taking the 5th. It proves nothing except by insinuation.
Repetition of a disputed assertion is a waste of time.
Black and white. I live in a wider spectrum.
And, of course, it is not worth filtering out the impurities. You might get drinkable water.
Richard
Dear Buzzard, Your thought is a good and one on the minds of many thinking people. I looked into this over the past few years and I believe the following.
I think the weight of the evidence support an evolvement of life over time with both macro and micro evoution involved. I consider that a strong indication of proof but maybe not absolute proof.
The evidence for a six-day creation does not exist but that does not mean that the events described in Genesis 1 and 2 did not happen.
The evidence we know is the result of natural processes and God could have set natural processes in motion to achive his goal of human beings to be saved. That is in agreement with Godâs plan of salvation given in Ephesians 1:4-10.
That there was a creation and an origin of life including man over time is obvious so the evidence needs to be aligned with Genesis 1 if we are to understand the relationship between the two. The writers of Genesis had no knowledge of the evidence so they wrote from what they knew and understood.
I believe the two can be aligned even though in the evidence view Adam was not the first man. Importantly, even though Adam was not the first man there is still agreement with Romans 5: 12-19, the cornerstone of Christian Theology that Adam brought sin into the world and Christ paid the price for that for us.
I do not see evolution as an enemy of the faith but I do see evolutionism as an enemy. I think we all need to keep our minds open as the evidence will continue to unfold.
For all we know, the entire universe was created a week ago at 10 a.m. Moscow time.
Besides which, when you have good ancestral candidates right at hand, playing âfor all we knowâ is childish.
Or pretending metamorphic rocks can form in a week. Or ignoring the known angles of repose of different types of soft sediments. Or claiming there are no cracks in rocks in a formation that is known for the cracks in the rocks. Or pretending that tectonic plates can gallop along with no heat of friction generated. Or pretending that crystal deformation isnât a known and measured process. Or . . . scores of other blatant falsehoods AiG and others pass off that are âunmistakeable and inexcusableâ even for atheists, let alone for Christians.
Yes â you forgot to read the whole sentence and understand what it said.
The lack of respect is mind-boggling. You have an agenda and donât care how much you have to ignore and distort what people write in order to push it.
And because every summer for twenty-plus years I have climbed ladders to trim trees and watched ships appear from behind the horizon as I ascended a ladder and disappear as I descended.
And because I have gone swimming in a lake where from shoulder-deep in the water a resort at the other end of the lake wasnât even visible but it appeared from the top down as I waded up out of the water.
And because I have gone sky-diving and seen the curvature of the horizon.
Among other things.
Which biologist (paleontologist?) a while back noted that at this point all new fossils are transitional?
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You seem to think he was referring to flat earth
I thought he ws reffering to flat earth.
I was not arguing that the flat earth paat was correct. So,
would seem to be a false claim.
But perhaps you didnât read my post properly, just as you accused e of doing to him.
Richard
If some-one stands in front of the cracks, they no longer exist!
(@Buzzard, do you know about this one?)
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oh i have significant doubts about that statementâŚeven the study itself makes the observation in its abstract that snakes likely independantly evolved hollow fangsâŚthis means that the evolutionary trail isnt able to determine how this occured via normal darwinian methodsâŚthats a red flag for me and it damages the claim actually. When we have mutliple sources of these kinds of things, that almost certainly points to controlled design in a number of different snakesâŚthat also means the different types of snakes who have these fangs, that they also didnt evolve but were designed.
Now i will add fuel to my own fire here in that, the notion that poison exists in snakes in a world where there are no tears, no sickness, no suffering, no death (Revelation 21)âŚthat is highly problematic for the entire future Biblical model!
Thatâs overstating things a little bitâthere are also last-in-a-lineage fossils (like Ecphora quadricostata, Carolinapecten solarioides, or any of the final Atlantic members of pacifiphile genera.
Honestly Roy, thats problematicâŚwe dont know how many living things have existed on this earth over its history, it could me far less in fact. So your statement there is nothing more than an assumption based on a lot of other assumptions
- knowing exactly how old the earth actually is
- knowing when life actually started to exist on this earth
- knowing whether or not and how many mass extinction events (such as a global flood) might have caused gaps in the population density for significant periods of time! (because the earth would have to repopulate)
If the earth was far younger, and if it also did experience a global flood then the numbers would be far less. So in fact we may have more of the fossil record than we think (Biblical model), or it could be less(Darwinian model)
I agree that we can say we believe we have only a small percentage of the fossil record, but we dont actually know what that mimimum threshold number isâŚso its certainly not evidence beyond knowing how many specimens we do have. We cannot test what we dont have and what we cannot test isnt data that science can use. That leaves us with essentially a wild guess.
I dont think one can apply the estimate method for coal deposits to the fossil recordâŚwe can pysically test the extents of coal depositsâŚwe can even make geological assumptions that are realitively accurate, however, fossils are not all found in coal/oil depositsâŚwe cant test for example the boundries of the areas where large numbers of fossils are locatedâŚand that is because we could miss a fossil by a matter of inchesâŚwe could miss hundreds of them by a matter of meters and because there are so few by comparison, coal deposit estimate accuracy would be far better i think.
What all of the above means is that Buzzards answer is certainly an equally valid point.
Iâm not a scientist, but from my amateur point of view, I would be reluctant to propose a theory that explains the history of life on earth without knowing what that history is.
It seems to me that that history is unkown and unknowable - one can only theorise about what it might be, That means a theory of evolution is built on a theory of history - a theory built on another theory sounds kinda pointless to me.
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The only facts that can be established about our History is that humanity has existed for at least as long as there are human records. We also know that humans give birth to humans. To suggest that a human was born from a creature that was not human is to suggest something that cannot be demonstrated
If the scientific method is to demonstrate then ToE is not using the scientific method when it claims that something other than a human gave birth to a human.
Perhaps this is being to simplistic or literal?
Richard
ââŚIt seems to me that no one can prove - and will never be able to prove - that the history of life on earth is the result of any natural process, let alone prove that the process is described by the neo-Darwinian modelâŚâ
The problem with asserting that you need physical evidence to determine âproofâ is a somewhat dangerous concept, especially with YEC.
Do we have any direct physical evidence that anything in the Bible is true, since none of us were there, and the amount of non-biblical information and/or eyewitness accounts outside of the text in the Bible is sparse, if nonexistent?
And using the Bible to prove what is in the Bible without a secondary source is circular reasoning.
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Warning: this post is dripping with fully justified sarcasm.
Iâve emphasised the relevant portion of the post @adamjedgar was replying to:
Really?
You really think there could have been far less than 10^20 living things on the Earth over its history?
You actually think that the total number of living organisms that have ever existed on earth is less than the number of organisms that are alive now?
Or, phrased another way, you think there are more living organisms than living and dead organisms?
Is that your actual view, or did you just not bother to read what you were replying to, and consequently come across as a blithering idiot?
While there were a few assumptions behind my statement, I donât think there were âa lotâ of them.
The number of living organisms that have existed and died without being fossilised I gave (10^20) was based on an estimate of the number of nematode worms in the Earthâs topsoil.
So I admit that I am assuming that the authors of that article were (i) truthful, and (ii) doing their sums correctly.
Iâm also assuming that, since they did their work in 2019, most of the topsoil nematodes that were alive then are now dead. Since most resources that discuss nematode lifespans (including lots of practical gardening ones) say that nematodes mostly have a lifespan measured in months, that seems a reasonable assumption. But even if some nematodes do live longer than 6 years - and since there have been cases of nematodes being revived from frozen arctic soil, that is definitely the case - the number I gave (10^20) is less than a quarter of the estimated number of nematodes on Earth (4.4*10^20), so even if some of the topsoil nematodes from 2019 are still alive, most wonât be.
I also assumed that most of the topsoil nematodes that have died since 2019 werenât fossilised. This can be justified in two different ways. First, nematodes are soft-bodied creatures that donât fossilise except under exceptional circumstances. Even if a few nematodes are currently living in such circumstances, for this to make enough of a difference those circumstances would have to currently apply to a sizeable percentage of the Earthâs surface, and we know from observation that lagerstatten-producing anoxic swamps donât cover entire continents.
But thereâs a better justification. Nematodes have predators. They get eaten by mites, centipedes, tardigrades, beetles, fungi(!) and each other. Organisms that have been eaten wonât fossilise. And once again, the number I gave was only a fraction of the nematodes from 2019 so I donât need all of them to have been eaten. Less than half.
So the assumptions I made are:
- The calculated number of topsoil nematodes is roughly in the right ballpark.
- Half of those nematodes havenât survived the last six years.
- Half those that didnât survive were eaten, either at death or afterwards.
None of those assumptions look remotely dubious to me. Even if they are dubious, Iâm only including nematodes, and only a fraction of those. There are similar numbers of insects, arachnids and grass, and orders of magnitude more bacteria, algae and other single-celled organisms. And thatâs just now, not over the Earthâs entire history. 10^20 organisms is a vast underestimate.
So letâs see what assumptions @adamjedgar is concerned about:
Exactly how does the age of the Earth fit into these numbers? Was the 2019 population of worms lower under a YEC paradigm? If so, how???
If the worm population is a lot lower under a YEC paradigm, wouldnât the populations of other organisms be equivalently lower? Scaling down the estimated number of prokaryotes on Earth to be less than 10^20 would lead to scaling the human population to less than 1. I know I exist (Descartes), but maybe you donât.
But perhaps thatâs not what you meant. I suppose that strictly speaking if the Earth is less than 6 years old, then the nematodes supposedly around in 2019 didnât actually exist.
So are you questioning the assumption that the Earth is at least 6 years old? That would fit with âknowing exactly how old the earth actually isâ, but I donât think even YECs think the earth is that young. Not that it would matter - the Earth could be 6 seconds old and thereâd still be more organisms in its history that you think is a problematic number.
Some time before 2019, right? Again, are you arguing that the Earth might be less than 6 years old? Or did you just post a load of garbage because you couldnât be bothered to read, let alone understand, what you were replying to?
Iâm fairly confident that there hasnât been a global flood in the last six years that decimated the topsoil nematode population, but perhaps you can tell me what Iâve missed? I was on holiday last month, so maybe the flood happened then and I missed it because I slept late. Though if that is what happened, the Earth got repopulated really quickly. With people, anyway. There are plenty of marine nematodes that wouldnât have cared.
If the Earth was far younger (less than 6 years old!) and did experience a global flood (last month!) then the numbers would be far less.
Do you think there was? If you donât, your objection is worthless; if you do, youâre crazy.
If you had bothered to even glance at what you were replying to, youâd have known that I wasnât talking about the fossil record. If you knew how many extant organisms there are on Earth - even to within 10 orders of magnitude - youâd have know I didnât need to include the fossil record.
Are you one of those creationists who never got to grips with high school maths, so you donât know how to deal with large numbers? The kind that gets confused by exponents and makes massive errors as a result? The kind that thinks a billion is such a huuuuge number that nothing real can possibly be greater than that? Iâve encountered several creationists who consistently make mistakes in calculations that are taught to ten-year olds - yet still claim their views are worth attention - so I wouldnât be at all surprised.
As for the fossil record under a Biblical model, if you were capable of doing the calculations, which you clearly arenât, youâd know that there are far more fossils than could possibly have been produced in a YEC timescale unless Satan had his minions spend ages burying fake ones, and even then itâd probably take longer than your accepted age of the Earth to do the job.
If Satan has x minions, and each minion can bury y coccoliths per hour, how many years (in terms of x and y) would it take to produce the Cretaceous chalk formation that outcrops near Dover? For extra credit you can insert suitable values for x and y into your answer and find a minimum age for the Earth that is going to be a better approximation than anything you could come up with by yourself.
Which you donât know. You donât know how many living organisms there are, and you donât know how many fossil organisms weâve found. You donât even have the faintest idea what order of magnitude those numbers are.
It leaves you with a wild guess, because you are dividing one number you donât know by another number you donât know to give a number you donât know what to do with.
But some of us can actually do maths, arenât fazed by exponents, and have some idea of the relative sizes and scales involved. Also, weâre not scared of research and can acquire numbers by means other than sticking a wet finger in the Derry air. Itâs one of the reasons for rejecting YEC.
Iâd ask you why not if I thought youâd have an answer.
I will note that coal deposits are part of the fossil record, so youâre effectively saying that we canât apply coal deposit estimation methods to coal deposits.
We can physically test the extent of other fossil bearing strata too.
You canât, because youâre a YEC.
Such as chalk beds? Are you seriously saying that we can tell where the edge of a coal deposit is, but canât tell where the edge of a chalk deposit is?
That applies to other fossil-bearing rock formations too. You seem to think that geologists are incapable of differentiating one rock layer from another. It may be hard to find fossils in a particular layer, especially in sedimentary deposits from areas which didnât include plant life, such as deserts or beaches, in which fossils are scarce, but finding the boundaries of those deposits just consists of being able to tell the difference between two different rock formations. Iâm not surprised that you might think that difficult, but professional geologists and palaeontologists donât suffer from your limitations.
So few by comparison of what to what? Chalk to coal? Limestone to the Karoo formation? Jurassic coast sandstone to the Burgess shale? Solnhofen to Fossil grove? La Brea to Donetsk?
You seem to share the view of at least one other person here that (non-coal) fossils are only ever found singly in isolation, and are located only by randomly searching isolated pinpoint locations.
@Buzzard certainly did have a valid point, and if youâd bothered to read and understand what you were replying to before opening your faucet of fiddle-faddle you might have noticed that I was agreeing with him.
You, on the other hand, have produced only a stream of irrelevant innumeracy.
As I see it, you now have three options:
-
Admit you didnât and donât have the faintest idea how many organisms there are, extant, former or fossilised, and that 10^20 is not only plausible as a number of organisms that existed and died without being fossilised but is so far below the actual number - under standard geochronology or YEC - that you were being massively ignorant and incompetent in questioning it;
-
Complain that you are being treated with the lack of respect that is easily justified by your failure to read and understand what you were replying to before tossing off a list of supposed assumptions that were not even close to being relevant, and then go into a huff and refuse to provide any other response;
-
Disappear silently and hope that your ignorance and innumeracy will be forgotten, only to run the risk of being reminded of it if at any future time you post about biological population sizes or the fossil record.
Over to you.
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I have asked you several times to explain why my reasoning is wrong. For example, can you explain why common ancestry and vertical inheritance should not produce a nested hierarchy?
We are putting our reasoning forward and asking people if it is wrong, and if so, why?
If the answer is, âYes, the evidence is consistent with evolution, but I still donât accept it,â then fine.
note: Not sure why it linked Buzzard in the reply. Adding the @RichardG tag just in case.
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Have you taken speed-reading courses?