Not sure how many people you would find here that would suggest God has no part in this creation…
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Right. That’s exactly the “no transitional species” sleight of hand that always happens.
That’s why I’m still looking for a definition or description of “transitional (or intermediate) species” from the nay-sayers. What qualifies?
Old earth interpretations make up the rules as they go along. Wrong rules, and circular reasoning:
"Paleontology seeks to map out how life evolved across geologic time. A substantial hurdle is the difficulty of working out fossil ages. Beds that preserve fossils typically lack the radioactive elements needed for radiometric dating. This technique is our only means of giving rocks greater than about 50 million years old an absolute age, and can be accurate to within 0.5% or better.[19] Although radiometric dating requires careful laboratory work, its basic principle is simple: the rates at which various radioactive elements decay are known, and so the ratio of the radioactive element to its decay products shows how long ago the radioactive element was incorporated into the rock. Radioactive elements are common only in rocks with a volcanic origin, and so the only fossil-bearing rocks that can be dated radiometrically are volcanic ash layers, which may provide termini for the intervening sediments.[19]
Stratigraphy
Consequently, palaeontologists rely on stratigraphy to date fossils. Stratigraphy is the science of deciphering the “layer-cake” that is the sedimentary record.[20] Rocks normally form relatively horizontal layers, with each layer younger than the one underneath it. If a fossil is found between two layers whose ages are known, the fossil’s age is claimed to lie between the two known ages.[21] Because rock sequences are not continuous, but may be broken up by faults or periods of erosion, it is very difficult to match up rock beds that are not directly adjacent. However, fossils of species that survived for a relatively short time can be used to match isolated rocks: this technique is called biostratigraphy"
Beds that preserve fossils typically lack the radioactive elements
Consequently, palaeontologists rely on stratigraphy… to date fossils. Stratigraphy is the science of deciphering the "layer-cake"
Except when anomalous objects are found in the “wrong” layers, such as man-made objects where they shouldn’t be.
You don’t know that they died first. All you know is that fossils of marine dinosaurs are not found with fossil whales. Whales may have died at the same time, but not left fossils. Or they may have died in other areas. Or whales are better swimmers than dinosaurs. Whales can handle immense amounts of water pressure; marine animals likely not. Furthermore, dinosaur is a wierd categorization of animal. It signifies dead animal, fossilized, which appears to be reptilian. Lots of reptilian animals have survived as well as the whales. But the larger species apparently could not hand the extreme conditions, whether extreme cold, extended wet periods, or extreme water pressure. Many reptiles (dinosaurs) buried alive in sediment, in large groups, in sediment obviously laid down by water which appeared to drown them with water and sediment. Whales, on the other hand, would swim, fast, to better locations and better conditions.
So you say. It is actually a part of evolution, but a part you are not willing to accept. Good for you. At least you are able to put aside one small but essential part of the theory.
But you must realize that what you call the observation of evolution, is not really that. You are observing mechanisms which would be required for evolution, post-initial beginning, to occur. However, you do not see the unbroken continuum of common descent, nor do you really see the transition between species of major groups. All you see is mutations occurring, and of course the natural selection that everyone sees. You see only a very small part of the process, if such a continuous process actual did occur. And as such, you extrapolate the rest of the way, without sufficient evidence.
What kind of chaos would you expect to see with a global flood? And why?
Glad to hear that you recognize evolution would have to be a miraculous process, if it actually did happen that way.
John, you know as well as I do that that is simply not true. The quote you have given does NOT demonstrate circular reasoning, and it does NOT demonstrate “making up the rules as they go along” either.
Circular reasoning would be rock A being used to date fossil B then being used to date rock A. In isolation.
What happens in reality – and what is described here – is igneous rocks A, B and C being used to date fossils D, E and F, which are then used to date sedimentary rocks G, H and I. In conjunction with other multiple independent lines of evidence. There is nothing circular whatsoever about that.
Finally, can I remind you of the RATE project. The young-earth PhDs themselves admitted that squeezing the evidence for the age of the earth into six thousand years would have required the release of enough energy to raise the earth’s temperature to 22,000°C. That alone should be sufficient to show that the evidence CANNOT be interpreted as being consistent with a young earth. Everything else is, quite frankly, window dressing.
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Exactly. While thousands of large dinosaur fossils have been found not a single large mammal fossil has been found mixed in. While thousands of large mammal fossils have been found not a single dinosaur fossil has been found mixed in. And these fossils were all laid down in a chaotic world wide flood that should have mixed the fossils up completely.
Whales and marine dinosaurs were both air breathers and both would drown if they couldn’t reach the surface, unless you want to propose whales could hold their breath for a year. Which wouldn’t surprise me.
But none of the reptiles are anywhere near as large as a whale. What happened to the large reptiles?
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I’m not putting it aside so much as not conflating it with the process of evolution. Regardless of whether or not abiogenesis occurred “naturally” or via supernatural intervention, it happened somehow, and the method doesn’t invalidate evolutionary theory.
Isn’t that pretty much essential in the scientific process? The ability to extrapolate and make predictions from incomplete evidence? Otherwise there’d be no need for evidence in the first place. Even theories that involve “incomplete” evidence can be used to make testable predictions.
I wouldn’t. I’m not the one making the claim that everything was wiped out in a global flood, except for a select few species, nor do I require a catastrophe to explain away millions of years of fossils and rock layers.
As opposed to what alternative?
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