I don’t particularly care what YEC are saying. If the Flood was global, then special acts of post-Flood creation is my explanation for the diversity of life we see today. My Christian belief system can accommodate miracles quite comfortably.
And so? That’s your refutation?
We have thousands of case-studies, supported by fossils in the ground, terminating populations alive today, with corroborating physical evidence about the environment now, and the environment at the time of fossilization.
They all converge on speciation being an obvious process - - because nothing else can explain how these new creatures keep showing up in progressively more recent layers of rock …
Unless God was on a terrestrial conveyer belt:
A) “makin’ em”, then
B) “killing them”, then
C) “Covering up the corpses with rock”
. . . all in 6000 years … YEC’s have zero answers for how this could be.
Over and over … do you know how many kinds of life forms we have pulled out of the ground that apparently never once ate a human being … and were never once eaten by a human being?
Thousands and thousands of them. Do you really think God would have arranged this?
While the evidence, as I have already said, that converges into a unity virtually all support Evolutionary processes.
I take your (and Mervin’s") point.
So… to summarize:
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You once claimed to be an Old Earther, but apparently your minimum estimated range for Earth is exactly the same as the Young Earther estimates. Please look in the mirror; let me introduce you to another Young Earth Creationist.
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You sometimes sound like you accept Speciation … but in reality you oppose it so much, you even oppose the descriptions of speciation agreed to and confessed by various groups of nevertheless ardent Young Earthers.
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And you apparently think God spent a few centuries creating thousands of different life forms so that he could destroy them soon thereafter and bury them with layers of rock. And that created a pattern of the newer ones looking a lot like the ones he just wiped out the year before.
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You have no explanation for Australia. You have no explanation for the sudden emergence of the large mammals… all buried long after the dinosaurs had all been wiped out (I guess by the Flood, right?).
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And you have no grounds of any kind for explaining why continuous trends for the natural selection of low levels of mutation will suddenly stop just short of two separated populations of the same animal - - because some “Imaginary Force of Mutation” knows that it shouldn’t trigger speciation - - this is, after all, God’s job… even if he is pretty busy with creating hundreds and hundreds of unique life forms and then killing them before Humans discover what he’s up to… all in the last few thousand years.
Pretty sweet explanations all the way around…
In order for an organism to be fossilised it would have to be covered by sediment very soon after its death, I would imagine; otherwise it rot and fall apart or be torn apart and scattered by scavengers. So I’m thinking of a flood scenario in which a lot of sediment can be laid down very quickly … but not necessarily just Noah’s Flood - a localized flood would do the trick, of which there have been a vast number. So I imagine the “rock” you refer to was originally sediment laid down by floods. But I’m not expert …
I guess you aren’t an expert. Do you think all these animals … all over the world… were buried by different floods? And yet the floods are so perfectly timed that only dinosaurs died first… then were buried… even the dinosaurs that could swim and lived in the water?
And then all around the world, dozens of other floods, started killing and burying the larger mammals… the bodies of which have never been found down where the dinosaurs were buried… apparently the one thing that water does to dinosaurs was kill them instantly ? … even the ones that lived in water?
And finally, the proto-whales and the whales… swimming around happily (unlike the marine dinosaurs who were killed virtually instantly) finally started to die … but never where there were people around and dying … pretty clever. All these animals … layer after layer… .no humans were killed by these same floods? Not when the dinos were flooded… and not when the first elephants were flooded (they actually swam around longer than the dinosaurs … even the marine dinosaurs…).
And in each successive period… animals that had never ever been found in the sediments with the dinosaurs keep showing up out of nowhere … only to be buried (on top of) the already buried dinosaurs?
And - - for the grand finale - - all these layers of mud… layered down over a couple of eons … become hardened rock … all with deceptive and rare trace elements … making them look like really really old rock.
Looks like you have a lock on this fossil stuff… write it up and send it to the journals!
Funny you should mention this. Just recently I came across this statement in a CMI article, “It’s not science”:
“This matches what we would expect from Genesis 1, where it says that God created organisms to reproduce true to their different kinds.”
This brings us back around to what I think is rather non-controversial:
Biblical language of “kinds” and “bringing forth by their kinds” seem to state the obvious: a “Kind”, by definition, appears to be whatever population can reproduce itself.
This is not mysterious, and it is not the same as saying a population cannot change over time. And it is perfectly consistent with the biological definition proposed by Meyr back in the 1940/1950’s when we didn’t even know how DNA functioned.
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This article?
http://creation.mobi/its-not-science
Because I just read the whole thing (it is very blithe about asserting a LOT of untrue things!) but I didn’t see the quote you reference. Perhaps it was one of the linked articles?
If I tried to respond to all those claims at once, it would be an overwhelming amount of reading material, so here’s just a start. I read this series yesterday, about how Dennis Venema accepted evolution. It contradicts CMI’s claim that most evolutionists hold their views “because they haven’t heard anything else.” I recommend it to you!
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A tremendously high percentage of scientists would agree that there are “observable properties” to evolution. And again, denying the observable properties 127 times is no more effective than denying them once. Repetition does not equal truth.
Regarding randomness - it has been mentioned in several posts in the last few weeks, mutations and other changes in DNA have random tendencies, but natural selection and how it relates with these DNA changes is certainly not random. In all fairness, these comments may not have been in direct reply to you, so you may not have read them.
Let’s look at one more thing in that quote once again…
I have a hard time believing that you don’t understand that BioLogos does NOT support “blind, mindless, purposeless” evolution, especially since I have addressed this directly to you previously. It is almost as if you are purposely misrepresenting the BioLogos position… that wouldn’t possibly be true, would it?
Now let’s look at the one more question from your post.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:144, topic:35830”]
And if the universe started randomly, how do we ever get to purpose - like you replying to my posts rather than writing a random text?
[/quote]
Again, I (and most others here) believe that evolution is a tool of God’s creation process, not a random happenstance. Since I believe in a Creator, then I believe the Creator had a purpose for His creation. When it comes to details regarding the process of His creation, I believe that the “Book of God’s Works” has a lot more to say than the “Book of God’s Word”. On the other hand, when it comes to the purpose of His creation, the “Book of God’s Word” is clearly more important.
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You are assuming that stochastic processes (which imply randomness) cannot exist. From the scientific perspective, stochastic processes like quantum mechanics, radioactive decay and evolution are as certain as protons and electrons. Stochastic processes have observable properties (probability distribution functions) just like protons and electrons.
I affirm that God is the designer of the universe, so He intended for us to have the ability to reply to one another’s posts, among other things.
Have a great day,
Chris Falter
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Worst argument ever.
Fine. Then you should not be so fixated on your limited understanding of this tool. It’s quite likely you misunderstand how God’s tool works. Historically, our knowledge of the universe has been faulty, again and again.
And if not a “random happenstance”, then how do you see it happen? You know this deviates from the Darwinist dogma, right?
No. Read again. Assumptions are OK or not depending on the model - if essential to the model, then you better triple-check them. Example: to check gym weights you can say pi=3 and spheres of 100% iron, but you can’t say that about Earth when preparing a rocket launch and space station docking.
What is it that I’m missing about evolution? Do you have information that can increase my limited understanding? Please also clarify the misunderstandings I have presented.
Would you agree with the statement that having better tools for science has actually improved the accuracy of our understanding of the universe? I would suggest that our faulty knowledge has been improved with tools like telescopes, microscopes, computers, etc.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:158, topic:35830”]
And if not a “random happenstance”, then how do you see it happen?[/quote]
Your question here is a very good one, it also happens to be one that I honestly don’t have a good answer for. Did God set up all the physical laws governing evolution and let it go from there? Possibly. Did God physically assemble the first cells and let evolution take its course? Possibly. Did God “nudge” certain evolutionary hurdles like those first cells, emergence of eukaryotes and multicellular organisms? Possibly. I don’t believe we have enough scientific knowledge to form solid answers here. There is clearly enough ambiguity for atheists to state that God was not necessary at all. I maintain based on the message of Genesis (God’s Word) that God is indeed responsible for creation, using His tool of evolution (God’s Works). I just don’t have a list of specific details that God attended to personally.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:158, topic:35830”]
You know this deviates from the Darwinist dogma, right?
[/quote]
If by “Darwinist dogma”, you mean “evolution occurred on its own and did not need God”, then yes, I know.
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@NonlinOrg, saying something like this, to a BioLogos supporter, is like saying to an American Revolutionary that something deviates from The English Parliament’s position!
That’s the whole point of holding the position!
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So here’s what we know about stochastic models:
- They have been used successfully in physics for over a century. Einstein pioneered the approach.
- They have been used successfully in biology and chemistry for many decades. College science texts have been published to this effect.
- They have properties, namely the underlying probability distribution function(s).
- They have demonstrated explanatory and predictive power with respect to population genetics and phylogeny.
I said more than enough about this subject to satisfy the curiosity of anyone who wishes to understand the value of stochastic models in biology. I honestly do not see anything scientifically inaccurate or theologically objectionable in the assumptions that undergird stochastic models.I do note that a stochastic model does not necessarily imply ontological randomness.
I do wish you a blessed day, @NonlinOrg.
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It’s in the section “Predictions or postdictions?”, paragraph 5.
“Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, breeding experiments reach limits; change is not unlimited. See the article by the creationist geneticist, Lane Lester. This matches what we would expect from Genesis 1, where it says that God created organisms to reproduce true to their different kinds.”
If breeders wanted to create a hybrid animal that was a brand new species… something that couldn’t breed with any other animal other than itself … they could easily do so in a lifetime.
And then they would have nothing… it would have no commercial value. Because it would be like breeding an animal that was neither cat nor dog… let’s call it a Cog, or a Dat … it would have an extremely inbred genetic profile … with no hope of introducing any other alleles for important traits - - because this hybrid they created can only reproduce with itself.
Which means even the ability to create a new species that looked or acted Very Differently from its original source population would end virtually as soon as it achieved “New Species” status. Once a life form becomes closed off from all other contributing populations for traits … the only thing that can change the nature of that life form is being exposed to punishing changes in its environment … where new traits are promoted by killing off those iterations that are too mainstream.
You have not spent any real time understanding the consequences of Human-designed breeding. You think it’s about the failure to create species - - when in fact it is about wanting to Avoid creating new species.
If you continue to speak about breeding in this ignorant and irrelevant point, I’ll know you aren’t pursuing knowledge - - but simply another bat to bang on the hats of Evolutionists.
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Have you never heard of a mule?
I’m not sure what your point is? Have you never heard of a Liger?
A mule is not a species. It is the infertile offspring of two different Equine species.
And as you know, a mule is not difficult to create. But it would be very difficult to make a sterile offspring into a species of its own, yes?
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Yes, I misunderstood you.
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