Hi Jonathan,
How do you know that you were not created a week ago with the memories of decades of life implanted in your freshly created brain?
Grace and peace,
Chris Falter
2 Likes
As others have noted, there are places where there are sediments from each of the geologic eras. Nonetheless, every single place that has rock has a geologic column. There is no such thing as THE geologic column. There is simply a geologic column in each place. By seeing how different layers overlap other layers across continents they are able to determine their relative ages. Radiometric dating allowed scientists to determine their specific age.
A good analogy might be a historical timeline that you find in history books, like this one:
Does this mean that we should be able to go to a place on the Earth, begin digging, and find human artefacts from each of these periods neatly stacked on one another? No, of course not. The idealized geologic column found in geology textbooks is no different. It is a historical timeline of sedimentation. It isn’t trying to say that every single place on Earth has sediments from each of those historical periods, just as every place on Earth does not have artifacts from the Hellenistic period. However, there are tons of places on Earth that do contain human artifacts from specific periods, and the same applies to the geologic column in each place on Earth.
You can find more than 29 experimental tests of macroevolution here. You seem like a very honest and intelligent guy, so I am not criticizing you when I say that this is the type of mistruths that we find coming from professional creationists. Macroevolution is easily tested by experiments, and has been tested countless times. It passes those tests. The observations used to test the theory include transitional fossils, morphological phylogenies, molecular phylogenies, atavisms, vestigial features, and much more.[quote=“J.E.S, post:78, topic:36732”]
and the never-observed Oort clouds which somehow allow comets to survive the billions of years.
[/quote]
But we do observe comets whose orbits takes them out to very distant places in the Solar System.
@jammycakes
I really find it ironic that you’re saying this, considering previous posts from you. I would say that the burden of proof lies on you to prove directly that these things do indeed exist. You’ve expected nothing less of me in the past. I won’t ask you for the indirect evidence portion (unless you desire to provide it), as @gbrooks9 seems to indicate I should be able to find it on my own…
P.S: Is the list of geologic column sites listed in order of “best example” to “worst example,” or is it in no special order? Just wondering…It would be interesting to do some further research. Do you have some pictures?[quote=“jammycakes, post:79, topic:36732”]
The “were you there?” argument is patent nonsense. Stop using it. Just stop.
[/quote]
I’ve also heard from you that people’s eyewitness testimonies can be deal-breakers. God says he created the universe in 6 days (and how he created it), and God’s testimony should be pretty reliable (and I can say that here, because I assume you believe in God); infinitely more reliable than that of a supposed hoaxer. So I guess the burden of proof lies with you once again. 
As for your ice cores, @gbrooks9:
This is a photo of the retrieval of those planes. That looks a lot like your ice cores, @gbrooks9 ! (Hope you can make the image itself bigger)…
The problem I see with a lot of these “evidences of evolution” is that many (if not most) of them could be explained by Young earth creationism, and would not provide a problem to it. Your thoughts on that?
@T_aquaticus
I’m afraid that I don’t remember enough about the geologic column to continue that discussion 
…
Thanks for the link too; I think I shall check it out…Assuming you have read all of it yourself, do you know of places that you think would be good to start?
No time to discuss right now, but here is a link if you want more explanation: CD410: Airplanes Buried in Ice
In the case of the airplane, it crashed at the foot of a glacier. Also, it crashed on the coast where there is tons of snow per year. Neither of these conditions apply to the places where they extract ice cores. For example, precipitation in the middle of the Greenland ice sheets is only a few inches a year, and there are no glaciers. On top of that, they measure fluctuations in different isotopes to determine if the layers are annual, something that wasn’t done in the case of the airplane. It isn’t simply the depth or the look of the ice that determines how many years of ice have accumulated.
Just for the record, I would count this oft cited argument as another lie that professional creationists spread.
2 Likes
His point was, you said, the Bible says the earth happened in 6 days. But the Bible also says the rich man in hell conversed with Arbraham. You said, the Bible says it was a parable, which it does not say. Though one can infer it was a parable, it isn’t explicitly states as such. Which means you could then infer that Gen 6 days is also a parable. OR, you were mislead and indoctrinated that the Lazarus story was a parable, and you now must believe it really happened (to historical people), since it doesn’t explicitly say that it was one. I am not aware of this being in another Gospel, but perhaps it could have been titled as such in a version/translation? Like how NIV gives a title in bold before the verses kind of summarizing it. I’m sure you know this is words from the translators mouth, there is nothing in the original scripture that has a summarized bold title for the preceding passage.
Just trying to mediate/clarify that argument between you two , sorry.
I used to argue this, probably because someone who heard Ken Hamm say it said it to me and it made sense in the argument they presented. We can see micro-evolution, sure it exist, black skin turns white, white skin turns black depending on location to the equator. Why argue something you can see.
We can’t see marcro-evolution, so it has to be false. Makes sense. Maybe not a good argument in debating standards as @jammycakes mentions with “where you there argument”, but it can, and is an effective debating tactic to ‘win sides’ from those who can’t see that tactic.
But think of what causes our skin to change colors? What causes micro-evolution? The body isn’t saying, I need to change colors, so lets do it. The genes are making this “decision”. The change is occurring at a microscopic level, a genetic level.
What limits does a gene have from changing? Can ice change to water easily (melt)? Can water change to steam easily (evaporation) Can ice change to steam easily (deposition) or from steam to ice (sublimation)? Not really, it takes a massive temperature difference. But going from water at 33 degrees to ice (melting) at 32 also happens at a molecular level. So though it takes a great input for ice to turn to steam, it doesn’t take very much input for ice to change to water. And once water, water can easily change to steam. So if you put a pot of ice on the stove set to 212 degrees, and watch the molecules, they behave the same at 32 degrees. Once the H20 heats up to 33 degrees, it turns to water, and once it hits 212, it evaporates Maybe a chemist on the forum or smart scientist can help out. But I think it requires about 5 times the heat to produce deposition. But again this is states of a molecule, not changes within the molecule itself, I am aware, just an analogy.
So though it may not make sense for a fish to turn into a dog or a skin gene could evolve into a bone gene (which isn’t what evolution teaches). Could it make sense for a large land animal (pakicetus) to turn into a whale instantly? that would require “5 times life energy”. A gene, has no boundaries or limits tell it what it can and can’t end up as. It only ‘knows’ what it is. A “structural gene of bone”, knows it as a structural gene of bone. It can get weaker or stronger, possibly grow or shrink. A skin gene can realize there is less bone here, why not shrink to fit the bone better. Why could skin not grow to reduce stretching of skin from this growing bone? Animal instinct is to live, if your legs aren’t working, you will die, maybe you can try the water? i.e A pakicetus turning into a whale. When all of these individual genes do their own thing, this results in a"chain reaction" of an evolutionary change in a much larger scale.
As this video explains of the fossil record of whales we found would suggest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVq9O3F97J0
Now as to how that all happens in technical terms, I would refer you to the Biologos staff biologist on here that are educated in that field. I just understand the concept, and how it is logical, I don’t know the inner workings. Though I started to try and read about IC (irreducible complexity) which is interesting, uses many terms that are way above my head, I am starting to get the concept. Addiction sounds a bit like IC. In that you didn’t need something, but now that you took it, you become dependent on it. Though were an addiction results in withdraw, IC results in death.
Here is a question for the evolution experts. Could evolution be seen as binary? Micro-evolution being that a gene can only strengthen or weaken? That’s it. And macro evolution is all the other genes responding to that change, and micro-evolving themselves? If that is what evolutionist believe, that is actually a very simple concept and extremely logical can can be observed.
What does an organism life require? Oxygen, nutrients? All blood is, is a means to carry oxygen and nutrients, all a heart is, is a pump for the blood, lings provides a way for us to get oxygen (gills provide oxygen for fish) ect. Monkeys climb trees to get nutrients, crabs go deep in the water. The first type of organism had these building blocks in them, it just developed/evolved different ways to supply and provide those things.
Some things could possibly be explained, the bent rocks and ice cores or whatever Ken Ham finds. It might be a legitimately possible explanation. I hope they are legitimate and not skewing things to prove ones agenda.
But, can YEC explain that? If a YEC believes in micro-evolution, how would one explain the chain reaction that must occur to these micro-evolutionary events? That would surely take a lot of time.
I heard on the radio a current scientific study from observing a massive rise in knee arthritis. This is coming from all the sitting we do. Atrophy, go to space, you lose muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it, if you need it, you increase in it.
Though with regards to IC, if you need something to live, and you don’t have it you die, how does the living ones know that they need it now if they receive the same IC as you? If they couldn’t keep it and it killed them, why can you now keep it? It is almost like genes communicate from within the species, which if true also has a spiritual element to it showing God’s incredible design.
1 Like
Where specifically did I say what exactly?
Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence if and only if it is evidence that you would reasonably expect to be able to see. For example, if dinosaurs and humans had ever coexisted, we would expect to have found dinosaur carcasses with fully sequenceable DNA somewhere, and far, far more soft tissue than just a few scraps of badly degraded remnants in the inside of large, unbroken, deeply buried bones.
On the other hand, the absence of evidence of things that are beyond the resolution limits of our telescopes (such as the Oort Cloud) provides no evidence of absence whatsoever.
Jonathan, I seriously can’t believe I’m having to explain this to you. It is just common sense.
No particular order. It’s just a copy of Glenn Morton’s list in the article I linked to. For what it’s worth, his article contains a complete and detailed description of the different layers in North Dakota. Read it, it contains a detailed description of how chalk, shale, evaporites, and layers with burrows in them could not have been formed by a one year global flood.
God also says that a day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. (2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4). And don’t give me any “but it’s thousands, not billions” talk — that completely misses the point of these verses that God’s time does not map 1:1 onto Earth time. It’s a completely different dimension altogether.
The fact remains that the only way that the earth could be six thousand years old, and created in six literal 24 hour days, is if God had created evidence for a lengthy history of events that never happened. Yes, I believe in God, but I do not believe that He would deceive us by doing things like that.
As others have said, those planes were on the coast, where there’s a lot of snow.
In any case, scientists don’t just assume ice cores are annual simply by looking at them. As well as visual layers they also check dust levels, electrical conductivity, and ratios of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 — and find that they are in very close agreement. See this article for an explanation. Have any similar analyses been done near those aeroplanes? I think you need to tell us.
2 Likes
In reading your post, the comments about micro evolution and macroevolution reminds me that those terms are really not used much by anyone other than AiG. However if you chose to use those terms, we would agree that only micro evolution occurs. It just occurs a lot over a long period of time.
1 Like
I disagree with that. As seen here Comparing Interpretations of Genesis 1 - BioLogos There day-age theory could have made this possible. When I believe this theory is flawed, is the fact that it is out of order in what science says happened.
If my understanding above is correct (which no one told me it is or isn’t yet (though I am aware not much time has passed yet)), I would argue that, that is actually a great use of those terms. The genetic changing, being something on a _micro_scopic level. And all of these microscopic things happening and reacting to each other, would be evolution on a macro-scale. It isn’t just the means of micro evolution occurring a lot over a long period of time, I am suggesting that the fact that these have micro evolutions are interacting and reacting with each other makes it macro. Like if a bone gene just shriveled, and the skin gene never interacted to shrink, you would have some weird floppy skin tags on fish and the muscle genes would also have nothing to move and the arteries would feed blood to nothing. But that obviously doesn’t happen, these individual micro evolutions, that occur a lot over time, interact and react to one another.
If that is correct, maybe I need to search for a better term to express individual evolution, over ‘group’ evolution, which cold confuse as then you are lead to believe a group of species are evolving. Or perhaps it already exist and I am just unfamiliar with that world. Maybe cellular evolution to imply is what occurs on the cellular level, organ evolution to imply what those cells become, and and system evolution to imply interaction of why being too heavy for a limb causes it to atrophy away?
I am probably over complicating it by dumbing it down. But I think if not correct, this is a slightly better explanation than a fish turning into a dog.
Hi @still_learning,
I’m afraid I can’t make head or tail of what you’re trying to say here. You’ve only quoted half of my sentence, which completely garbles what I’d actually said, and besides, a day-age theory isn’t six literal 24 hour days.
never mind misread what you said, sorry. and some typos there, does make it hard to understand.
Disregard.
perhaps we are just defining words differently. The usual understanding of micro evolution does not refer to microscopic chances in cells, but to small changes in phenotype. Macro evolution is the fish to fisherman changes. Big changes. At least that is my understanding of how the terms are usually used.
[content edited]
Virtually all of [these YEC arguments] have been discussed here in the BioLogos pages. Search BioLogos… and search in Google.
Thank you for the conclusive cartoon on the matter of retrieving the plane from the ice…
I have a cartoon where Moses has a cartoon dinosaur … I guess that settles things.
@J.E.S. highly recommend watching this. This explains creation (evolution) brilliantly using the. Bible and not science.
It doesn’t just say, the Bible says so in one place and potentially eludes to a person of it in other places so it must be true and literal.
It takes the core meaning of the Bible in its entirety and creation and explains how Jesus’ interpretation of Genesis is through gentle process of evolution, not literal brute, 6 day force of power, just like the new creation (Jesus).
@gbrooks9
I was really looking for the photo, but I put in the cartoon for good measure. I’m glad they convinced you! (;))
I disagree. My question for you is which is MORE important:
-The teaching of your church and AiG on a young earth and sin
or
-The teachings of Jesus Christ from the gospel:
Mateo 22
36 “Teacher, what is the most important commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus answered: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. 38 This is the first and most important commandment. 39 The second most important commandment is like this one. And it is, “Love others as much as you love yourself.” 40 All the Law of Moses and the Books of the Prophets[a] are based on these two commandments.
Mateo 25
37“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Jesus says that the most important comandments are about loving, not about sin. I am asking whether you and your church and AIG agree.
There are no commandments about sin. There are doctrines. We shouldn’t confuse orthopraxy and orthodoxy, or focus on and ignore the other. The earliest creeds of the church reflect the need to be forgiven for our sins, that is clearly part of orthodoxy.
Top picture is (about) where planes where recovered, bottom picture is of where the ice cores were/are retrieved. I was unable to find snowfall charts etc. however…Perhaps you have something?
Maybe it is my English, but is not -Thou shalt not commit adultery- telling us that adultery is sin?
My point is that Jonathan and his church and AiG focus on what we should not do, and threats from others, while Jesus Christ teaches what we should do, and how we should love the least of our fellow people. I think that includes both orthopraxy and orthodoxy, yes?
Jonathan still has not explained why he sees a incorrect claim about what a group of other people think to be compelling. I find the form of the argument itself to be uncompelling.
He started this thread to say that we are threats to christianity, no?
Sin is disobeying God, so yes all commands are giving us God’s standard, and to fail to meet the standard is sin. But we don’t derive our doctrines about sin (what it is, what it does to us and our relationship with God, what is to be done about it) from commands, we get them from other places in Scripture.
We don’t know that. [quote=“RHernandez, post:100, topic:36732”]
Jesus Christ teaches what we should do, and how we should love the least of our fellow people.
[/quote]
Yes, this is orthopraxy, right living. It’s very important. It’s central to Kingdom work, but it isn’t the whole of the gospel, or the only thing churches or Christians should focus on. Paul and the other apostles write a lot about sin. And what not to do. And every Evangelical I know is going to affirm that the whole counsel of Scripture is useful for teaching, correcting, and training in righteousness, not just Jesus’ words.
No, he agreed with someone who said theistic evolution was a threat to Christianity. There is a difference. I think materialism is a threat to Christianity, but that doesn’t mean I think everyone who owns a boat is out to destroy my faith, or that rich people can’t be devout Christians.