Thanks for taking the time to read the article. I agree that your illustration is plausible, but I do not think that kind of a thing can enable life to climb Mt. Improbable.
I have made a decision to stop posting on this site, but I appreciate your interaction.
blessings!
Thank you for participating, @tokyoguy111, and blessings to you as well.
This is really exceptionally well explained. Thank you so much!
I can very much empathize with Tokyoguy111 on this because it takes a lot of time and energy invested in studying the science to educate our powers of intuition to where the mechanics and the statistics of evolution begin to make sense. That is, even after I became convinced that the Theory of Evolution was a wonderfully powerful explanation for the diversification of life on earth, in my gut it still seemed kind of far-fetched.
As has already been stated by others, not until we “train” our intuitive powers can we start feeling like the Theory of Evolution makes sense. I believe that many of us have to repeatedly study and review the science of biological evolution—even by starting over from the beginning through online videos, introductory textbooks, and articles like those which Sy_Garte has provided us—so that the fundamentals of evolution become so clear that we can start feeling all of the pieces fitting beautifully together and producing a wondrous mosaic of explanation. I have yet to meet an evolution-denier who made the necessary investment to reach that level of comprehension of the material. (I’m not saying that no such person exists. I’m simply reflecting on my own experience. I’ve not met that person.)
In other words, it takes work.
ICR looks for any tidbit that may even minimally support their YEC view and runs with it. This includes bad science by their own researchers. They had a paper by a PhD some 4-5 years ago that claimed the Noah flood story clearly showed that the pre-flood month was 30 days long and the year had 360 days. The flood apparently changed both of these times to the values we have today. Any knowledgeable scholar of the ancient world would have known the biblical writer was using a secular 30-day calendar used in commerce, etc. and not the lunar calendar used for determining religious dates. The writer clearly knew nothing of ancient calendrical practices and obviously didn’t bother to learn about them since this might have challenged his pre-suppositions. Furthermore, it is fairly easy to show that geophysical limits or restrictions on collisions with extraterrestrial bodies could not produce time changes anywhere near what is needed to match their claimed changes. However, they still claimed this is what happened. Such practices on their part, whether well intentioned or not, are counter-productive and even embarrassing to knowledgeable Christians.
And even more importantly, I suppose, the process you describe takes the willingness to understand. This is where things usually get stuck.
This is for anybody who has shown interest in this thread: @OldTimer, @Sy_Garte, @Christy, @jammycakes, @Eddie, @tokyoguy111, @Dr.Ex-YEC, and more…
Recently, Joel Duff of Naturalis Historia published an article featuring the same Mr. Thomas of ICR. Apparently, Mr. Thomas stated that the chimpanzee and human genomes are different from each other on as many as 9 billion base pairs! This is an amazing discovery since the human genome itself only has 3.2 billion base pairs… Professor Duff attributes this inaccuracy to the lack of critical peer review and academic staff among YEC scholars.
Perhaps Mr. Thomas was comparing three particular chimpanzees with three particular humans!
To me, that’s a polite understatement. In my experience, it is more about a casual disinterest in accuracy and, in many cases, blatant dishonesty.
I’ve read some of his articles. Mr. Thomas is clearly lacking in scientific training and academic rigor in general. To call him amateurish would be an insult to most amateurs so I’ll simply call him uninformed and unqualified to address any of his chosen topics. The fact that ICR lacks anyone on staff who is more qualified or the fact that ICR simply doesn’t bother to care if he is qualified says a lot.
This is Christians succumbing to moral relativism. If you think that the greatest good is the salvation by faith of your audience, then moral relativism necessitates protecting that faith by whatever means necessary. If you also have a flawed theology that does not allow for thiestic evolution, then honesty goes out the window.
Hello Caspar, In the last year of my study for my Master’s degree, I was assigned to work at a test plant and to produce the results that a teacher at the university needed to get his PhD. During five years some 20 students had each worked some 3 months to get these results and had failed to get them. When I was told what was intended, I immediately understood the importance and at the same time I was convinced that a compagny like General Electric must have had the same idea. So what was wrong?
I took the next Friday afternoon free from my job to test the testplant. Within a hour I knew that it was impossible to get te required results, but I did not now why they could.not be produced. I stopped, went home and took the whole evening to think about it. Next morning I started calculating and within two hours I had solid proof why the wanted results were impossible. On Monay I went to the teacher. He was not amused, but ordered me to continu testing. I did and 3 months later I delivered my report. The teacher blocked my study during a half year and later during the last exam he tried to trip me.
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But there is a way to stop those YEC-ies: undeniable proof that our Earth is old. I’m trying to do that. Please join me.
Hi Casper
You can find the issues in my 4 posts about the history of humanity and Earth. Evolution is an extremely slow process. I’m convinced that the humans living 500 ky ago were as intelligent as we are and emigrated into space. I explain why our ancetors were living in Stone Age 10 ky ago, what caused the Flood, why the Flood was world wide, etceteras…
Prof. Robert S. Coe is a nice and honest man, and an expert on paleomagnetisme. I admire his research, but apparantly he has not the faintest idea of the cause of the magnetic field of the Earth and of the nature and cause of what he calls a Pole shift. So his conclusions are completely wrong.
Scientists working at an university have to add something to science and have to produce new insights. I understand that some get a tendency to “borrow” something some time.
@Jan_de_Boer
Please refrain from posting negative assessments of the character or motivations of entire groups of people (i.e. scientists). It violates our “gracious dialogue” guidelines. I’m going to remove the offending part of your post.
It looks like Joel Duff has removed that post from his Natural Historian blog.
Not sure why, but to be honest it wasn’t a good example of YEC dishonesty anyway. It was the kind of error that anyone could make, that is easy to overlook (especially since this was a promotional video – i.e. advertising, and which organisation carefully peer reviews its advertising?) and that is easy to hold up as a bona fide mistake, especially since they removed it and it’s not a widespread YEC claim anyway. To rub their noses in this one would be churlish and ungracious if not outright vindictive.
Of course, this doesn’t absolve them from the need to be held accountable for the accuracy and integrity of other claims that they make.
Evidently IRC edited the video in response to the critique.
Hmmm, looks like he just changed the date rather than removing the post altogether. Probably by mistake, but it changed the URL.
@Christy
I regret and apologise for having violated the rules and I thank you for correcring it.
It was and is not my intention to hurt, ridicule or offend anyone.
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