Two questions about how central the question of origins is to your core beliefs

Dear T_aquaticus,

To apply a rule that some use here on this site, any document that includes works from those proven to be intentionally fraudulent is not worth the paper is it written on.

Haeckel, E. (1898) The Last Link. London: Adam and Charles Black.

God bless,
jon

Because none of that is in the Bible. It is made up by YEC organizations.

2 Likes

Evasion. That was a reference to historical, pre-molecular studies, which largely converge. The date, 120 years ago, ought to have been a clue that it is not current.

2 Likes

Yes. The problem is that the track record of arguments for a young earth that we have seen is so bad as to put claims in its favor at a similar level to “Space Alien weds Two-Headed Elvis Clone”.

As do @pevaquark and myself.

Okay, now you’ve started using kettle logic, given that you’ve previously claimed intermediates between species to not exist.

As a systematist, this is not a good argument. There are sets of species that can produce fertile hybrids, and that has been known about for decades to centuries. What’s actually important for classifying extant taxa that reproduce sexually as separate species is whether they normally do: Mallards are actually capable of hybridizing with almost any member of Anatidae, but Canada Geese are not going to hybridize with Mallards under any normal circumstances; most members of Larus can hybridize, but few of them normally do.

It still wouldn’t be low enough to fit all terrestrial invertebrates, all freshwater organisms, and all non-salt tolerant plants on the ark.

These are the same bad claims that have been repeated before, and they haven’t improved.

So, use a different naming system. Species are the highest taxonomic unit that is not to some extent arbitrary in choice of extent. Species can be defined using the biological species concept, a taxonomic/ancestry-based definition, or morphologically, but they are not arbitrary. Every definition I have seen so far of a “kind” other than of corresponding to a species is inconsistent and arbitrary.

4 Likes

Depends on how it is used. If it is the primary basis of the claims being made, then yes. If, as here, it is simply “here’s another person who tried classifying these things and got a similar result”, then this is not a legitimate grounds for dismissal.

2 Likes

Well Tim that is your view, I certainly cannot speak for others and I certainly do not have the time to read through whatever others have posted in the past. All I can do is be open and honest about what I believe. Although I did once and for many years believe just as you do, I now find it difficult to see how so many highly intelligent people get the Bible so terribly wrong with regard to origins, death and the Global flood of Noah.

Wonderful and I would have expected nothing less.

Not at all, there is no conflict here whatsoever, new species ( in the sense taxonomic convention), arise through Natural Selection, no one I know has ever disputed that clear reality.

I see there is a worldview misunderstanding here on your part. Perhaps I haven’t been lucid enough in my posts, if that is the case, I apologise unreservedly.

Those new species are real, but they are always limited to remain within the ‘kind’, that is cats remain cats, dogs remain dogs, cattle remain cattle, they may be new varieties classified that way because of a particular morphological feature or trait that differs to others in that Genus within a population, but they are NOT intermediates in the microbes to man Big picture evolution sense, they are merely variants of a ‘kind’.
It is very clear to me, that this is precisely how the fallacy of evolution deceives so many.

But Tim, you appear to miss the point here and go off on a tangent about preferential choices in breeding of certain species that is utterly irrelevant to what I was saying.

To be brief, the fact I was attempting to communicate, is simply that although taxonomists love to create and name new species, in reality they are merely slight variants within an existing already classified population, of that Genus. That’s all!

Again the worldview we each hold has us coming at this from opposite directions that unfortunately appears to result in us talking past each other.

But Tim, who said anything about terrestrial invertebrates?

I was only ever stating what the Bible so clearly tells us that it was only “nephesh chayyah” creatures, i.e., terrestrial animals that needed to board the ark, as God does not mention the invertebrates, nor the fish, not the marine mammals, I think it is reasonable to expect that enough of them survived in the water and on floating log mats that would have been absolutely enormous in extent to account as ancestors of the extant invertebrates we see today.

Of course this hasn’t been proved, nor has it been disproved.
This hypothesis is a logical deduction from what we know from the Holy Scriptures.
The animals on the ark were from the preflood world prior to the genetic bottleneck; they were from the original broad genetic pool of created animals, chosen by God Himself to be the seed for repopulating the Earth with nephesh chayyah animals, thus they are the direct ancestors of all nephesh chayyah animals on Earth today.

Why would God choose genetically deficient representatives of each kind of animal, after all He created the genetic code, the DNA, the RNA, the epigenetic controls, etc. He is far more aware of the importance of genetic information than you or I or anyone else. It seems very reasonable to me to expect that God would have chosen the healthiest individuals with the least damaged genomes to be the ones that boarded the ark.

Of course I can’t prove that, but from what we are so clearly told in the Bible, it is sound logic and I can’t see why God would have done it any other way.

But Tim, it is the God inspired Bible that tells us about ‘kinds’.

The concept of kinds is NOT man made, whereas the concept of a species is man made, albeit by a devout Christian man who was very gifted.

Granted, species and kind do fairly well overlap, but the point of difference is that there are likely more than one specie that is in reality just an individual variation of another specie, that given enough time will probably be either reigned back in by the taxonomists or given another name altogether.

You are probably aware of examples of this occurring yourself, but ultimately, I think ‘kind’ probably falls closer to the Genus level.

God bless,
jon

There is nothing in the Bible about Genus level kinds. There are specifically named common species throughout the Bible.

Why couldn’t birds survive on floating log mats? Or people for that matter?

2 Likes

Dear Ron,

Who ever said there was?

From these questions it appears you don’t appreciate the magnitude or ferocity of the Global catastrophe that befell Earth.

Invertebrates surviving in bark and hollow logs is one thing but warmblooded birds and humans would have died of exposure and hunger long before the flood year had passed.

God bless,
jon

Then use consistent terminology. Do not claim that

and then that they are all within a “kind”. Use “kind” whenever you are referring to something other than the standard definition of species.

A genus is not a population. It is a set of similar or closely related species of a convenient size for communicaticatory purposes. This is untrue and a slander against taxonomists.

I gave an example of where viable hybrids can form between different species that no one sane will claim are conspecific. That is abundantly relevant.

Was the flood water saline? Then virtually all of the freshwater organisms died. If it was fresh, then virtually all of the marine organisms died. There is one endemically freshwater phylum known. Sessile terrestrial organisms and non-salt tolerant plants cannot survive being under a salty ocean.

Yes. And defines them in a way that matches modern species, not made-up hyperevolving proto-kinds that solely exist to be able to fit more animals on the ark.

Slugs would die faster than birds.

2 Likes

Why? Plenty of birds can swim, fish, and fly near indefinitely.

2 Likes

They have never addressed the actual worldview of the writer of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. They have never addressed the fact that the opening Creation account is an edited version of the Egyptian creation story. They have never addressed the fact that “evening . . . morning” describes a night, not a day. They have never, in short, read Genesis as an ancient Israelite would.

Where does it say, “This is a scientific term”?

“After its kind” means nothing more than “matches its parents” – a requirement, BTW, of evolutionary theory.

The few I’ve read, if submitted in any of my university science courses, would have been handed back to be re-written on the grounds they weren’t good enough to even be graded.
Which makes sense since the instructions to writers basically boil down to “cater to an audience that reads at a fifth-grade level”.

3 Likes

So? That’s like claiming that the beginner book See Jane Run provides a scientific definition of running. I.e. just because a word is used doesn’t make it a scientific term. Indeed just because a word is used doesn’t indicate that it means what someone who has no foundation in the appropriate material thinks it does.

Nope – if it was, it would have shown up long before the twenty-first century.

Sorry, but that’s the entire foundation of YEC: it uses special pleasing to try to justify the actual biblical inexpertise of those stuck in a modern scientific worldview who don’t even realize that they are forcing that alien worldview onto the text.

I will ask again, where does the scripture say it intends to tell us scientific truth? Because if it doesn’t, and you are insisting that the scripture does so, then you are imposing an alien concept into the scriptures.

But that’s exactly what the instructions to writers declares.

2 Likes

Your example here shows that your approach to conversation involves deliberately degrading and insulting “many fine Christians have gone in to battle for the Truth with the full armour of God on this website”.
You wonder why you are treated with the respect you get here (yet do not recognize)? You are being treated more politely, more respectfully, more patiently than CMI or AiG or any other YEC site treats “many fine Christians have gone in to battle for the Truth with the full armour of God”.

See, I read that and I see that the serpent now is saying, “Did God really speak in Hebrew? Did He really have His writers use forms suitable to get His message to His people?” YEC is founded on rejecting the actual text of scripture and replacing it with an imagined version defined by a modern scientific worldview, the worldview that leads people to think that the Holy Spirit was bound to speak in their terms to make things easy for them. It is the same temptation the serpent gave to Eve, to take a shortcut, to take an easy path rather than doing the hard work that Yahweh had set out.

Except you also argue vehemently against belief in the actual text of the scriptures! And you ignore the fact that the study of evolution has brought people to Christ!

2 Likes

Dear Ron,
As I said before, from your questions it appears you really do not appreciate the magnitude or fierce ferocity of the Global catastrophe that befell Earth.

The Bible tells us:
20 The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. 21 So all creatures that moved on the earth perished: birds, livestock, animals, and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; 22 of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. 23 So He wiped out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from mankind to animals, to crawling things, and the birds of the sky, and they were wiped out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark. 24 The water prevailed upon the earth for 150 days. Genesis 7:20-24

So Ron, what do you want from me?

Are you just one of those argumentative people that keeps prodding trying to provoke or do you really not understand the clear words written in the Holy Scriptures for our edification?

20 The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. 21 So all creatures that moved on the earth perished: birds, livestock, animals, and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; 22 of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. 23 So He wiped out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from mankind to animals, to crawling things, and the birds of the sky, and they were wiped out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark. 24 The water prevailed upon the earth for 150 days. Genesis 7:20-24

What is it that is unclear to you in the above Holy Scripture, that you continue to ask questions that should be known by you, if you just took three minutes and read Genesis Chapter 7???

God bless,
jon

I have never said that a Genus is a population, I said, “in reality they are merely slight variants within an existing already classified population, of that Genus.”

I mean no disrespect to anyone, and I have no issue with any taxonomists, and I probably could have worded my post a tad more clearly, but the thrust of what I am saying remains the same, which to summarise, is that the term ‘kind’ is broader than the term specie and as such there are in many animal groups in the world many ‘species’ within that animals 'kind".

How would I know, I wasn’t there four and a half thousand years ago with an electrical conductivity meter to measure the salinity, but it is common knowledge that fresh water is less dense than sea water, so it is fairly reasonable to postulate that during the flood a fairly thick layer of fresh water would have been in the area of the surface given the torrential rain that fell on Earth for forty days and nights.
I’m sure that most freshwater organisms did indeed die as would have most marine organisms also, however some survived for whatever reason to repopulate the Earth after their kinds.
The same applies to plants that many of which would have remained alive and floating until the water drained off the land and they could put down roots in soil again. As for seeds, they would have been dispersed according to the currents during the flood and settled down into the fresh sediment to create the forests again, and as new islands such as Surtsey testify, it doesn’t take very long for a barren landscape to become green with plants and biodiversity.
See:

AND:

Absolute hogwash!
Who is trying to fit more animals onto the ark? Where did that come from?
If anything I would have thought that the number of animals on the ark would have been considerably less than the numbers that evolutionists would like to pretend!

I think you are getting your wires a tad crossed here!
Hyperevolving proto-kinds, what unmitigated gibberish, no one that I know has ever made such a claim.

Clearly, this is yet more of the same old slander against anyone, (in this case me) who has the audacity to challenge the sacred cow of evolution, that is clearly a False Teaching.

So you are an expert on the chemistry of the water that covered the globe during the catastrophic flood of Noah’s day are you? Might I ask how you know that?

God bless,
jon

(haš·še·reṣ) הַשֶּׁ֖רֶץ

This is used in Leviticus to describe insects, which are invertebrates and you claim survived in floating logs.

1 Like

A buffalo and an giraffe are merely slight variants of an ark kind? Cheetahs and bobcats are slight variants of an ark kind? Do you hear yourself?

YEC makes that exactly that claim. Hyperevolving proto-kinds is an accurate description of what they are saying, and yes, I have already read and understand Jeanson and the rest. They just do not much like being called on it.

For the sake of argument, and putting aside the engineering and nautical issues, granting the size of the ark being as imagined by YEC, that might have made sense to the ancient Hebrews who were unaware of most of the planets fauna. There is no rapid speciation in the Bible. The only reason all this ad hoc heterozygosity nonsense was fabricated is that the ark is woefully and unarguably far too small to accommodate all the world’s species or even closely related species.

Certainly land slugs are goners. You don’t know the thing about salt and slugs?

2 Likes

Dear Ron,

Yes, I live on a rural property, and I know something about salt and slugs and leaches too, they definitely don’t like salt, however as I have already stated, there would have been a fairly thick layer of fresh water on top of the salt water in deep areas.

Of course where the depth was considerably less, their probably would have been thorough mixing of salt water with fresh water and slugs etc. in those areas probably didn’t make it, but the ones on floating vegetation rafts in deeper water ocean areas probably were in fresh water and some did make it because we see them now all over the planet and they weren’t on the ark.

When diving and fishing here in Australia in estuary mouths from rivers in water depths of up to around 100 feet, I have observed the sharp separation between brown silt laden cold fresh water from the river sitting neatly on top of the warmer clear ocean salt water underneath. When you break through the fresh water boundary down into the salt water and look up it is like a flat brown ceiling, they really don’t like mixing unless physically agitated quite violently

As a brother in the Lord I encourage you to watch this video, titled:

What God’s Kingdom ACTUALLY Looks Like in Today’s World

at:

God bless,
jon

That would make

mix into the ocean long before the flood ended. Depth wouldn’t matter–this is an ocean filled with tsunamis whose currents are going at over 30 mph. Nothing is making it through that sort of mixing as intact layers.

This still implies that taxonomists and systematists are incompetent, because delineating and organizing species are their entire jobs.

Not at the same time as having the flood be a churning mud slurry filled with tsunamis and with currents going over 30 mph. Also, that doesn’t help the sessile ones that sink in water.

How exactly do they grow in salt-saturated mud?

And if the seeds are types that die on exposure to salt water?

The problem is that there would be nowhere for the plant biodiversity to come from. Also, this would be a salt-saturated barren landscape, so the edges of the Salton Sea would be a better comparison.

The same ones who are trying to fit radioactive decay into the flood.

That’s exactly what this requires:

No, but if it was salt water, slugs wouldn’t survive very well. If it was fresh water, they might survive, but then marine life would all go extinct. The fact that the same trends in d18O, the same compositions of salt deposits (which couldn’t have been formed in a global flood without killing basically everything), and the same global planktonic foraminifera are recognizable around the globe requires relatively even water properties.

That were getting flipped and smashed by the tsunamis and irradiated beyond possibility of life…

The biggest problem with most YEC models is that they aren’t even just wrong, they’re inconsistent and incoherent. There’s a reason that oil companies use standard geological models to find oil, and it has nothing to do with “presuppositions” or “worldview”–it’s because they work. YEC models can’t even give wrong answers for where resources should be because they aren’t coherent enough to give any answers. That the flood is supposedly somehow ripping boulders out of plutons and scouring the landscape with continent-crossing tsunamis while also depositing clay is one of the most egregious examples.

3 Likes

Dear Tim,
who knows, that may well be the case, whatever we assume, it is always going to be an assumption, I don’t know, I wasn’t there. What I do know though is that macro invertebrates are common today, and they weren’t taken aboard the ark as far as I know, thus whatever the mechanism, obviously a sufficient number of them survived somehow because they are here.
Perhaps there were calmer areas somewhere on the global ocean, perhaps the floating rafts of vegetation were very thick and sufficient to protect them, who knows, they are here and that’s what matters, whatever the mechanism, it worked!

I don’t see it that way, rather it is the paradigm in which they are operating that permits this sort of thing to happen, it is rather a fairly strong indicator that the paradigm is flawed. The taxonomists are doing their job well and correctly, but the assumptions they operate under such as for example, the assumption of common descent as a given, rather than common design, is where the error lies.

As already stated, it is always going to be guesswork how they survived, but the reality is they did.
We may never know the mechanism, but as the Bible is clear as crystal that the flood covered ALL the land on Earth and ALL mountains were covered, and we have such organisms in the world today, God obviously knew enough numbers survived to repopulate the Earth after the flood.
I have a sawmill on my property and have sawn large hardwood logs into building lumber and never cease to be amazed at the enormous two foot plus long centipedes and other invertebrates that come at speed out of Tallowood heart timber when I saw large logs in half!

Again, you and I weren’t there, perhaps the mud was as salty as you believe, perhaps a flush of rain on the mud removed sufficient salt to allow plant growth, we may never know one way or the other, but plants cover the planet now except for Antarctica, how do you think the vegetation that rapidly covers isolated new volcanic islands gets there? Perhaps similar mechanisms were at play, who knows?

Really? see above.

But you are merely making a gross assumptions that no one could possibly know.
What if the floating rafts were more in the order of twenty five to fifty feet thick and included soil and remained somewhat intact, above the maelstrom below them, who knows, I sure don’t!
But I know that plants are presently over most of the land masses so obviously they survived somehow.

Well I am certainly not trying to fit MORE animals onto the ark!
I trust the Lord and believe in faith that what the Bible reliably tells us is faithful and true, that is good enough for me, if you disagree, that is your prerogative, believe whatever you wish.

Not at all, all that is required is for normal animals that God created that came from the preflood world, that by common sense, is clearly prior to the genetic flood bottleneck by definition and hence their genetic information capacity was vastly superior to what that has incrementally degenerated to what we can sequence today.

But Tim, how can you possibly say that floating vegetation rafts were getting flipped and smashed, you weren’t there! All you can do is all I or anyone else can do and that is make assumptions about what you think might be the case.
Take Tsunamis for example, they are an energy wave, they are not a transverse progressive wave type, any floating vegetation rafts in deep water during the violent inundatory stage of the Global flood that most likely would have generated Tsunamis would have those Tsunamis pass underneath them without a ripple on the surface, after all the ark survived also, so the surface is not where the catastrophe occurred anywhere near as much as the sea floor that would have been ripped apart by rapid tectonic movements, volcanism and mass sediment transport.

Get a grip, mate!
For starters the amount of money and time spent on developing an understanding of what occurred during the flood in biological and geological terms faithfully consistent with the Holy Scriptures historical account is miniscule when compared to the Trillions spent on developing an understanding consistent with the uniformitarian slow and gradual belief.

As for finding oil and coal and gas; there is that much of it all over the planet that blind Freddy wouldn’t have had too much trouble locating fossil fuel bearing seams in the early days of fossil fuel exploration, so please don’t get too high and mighty about the predictive power of standard geologic models.

I have personally observed coal seams close up in sandstone in the Sydney Basin and the Hunter valley in Australia.
I have seen petrified stumps with no roots or trunks, just strewn about willy nilly.
I know of many polystrate tree trunks that expose the slow and gradual deposition belief for the deception that is is.

It is very clear to me the geological and biological processes that occurred during and since the Global Flood of Noah are not well understood at present and perhaps never will be, but that doesn’t automatically mean that long age geological and biological beliefs are correct, it simply means we need to do more research to gain a more detailed picture of mechanisms and processes under the Biblical paradigm of creation and catastrophism.

With the tiny amount of funding for creation research available, the work relies heavily upon dedicated generous Christians people, scientists and lay people who give freely of their time and money to advance this important work.

God bless,
jon