Summations Only

Gee, thanks so muchly for responding to the first 5% of my post, while despite feeling so poorly posting 24 messages to other people on this day. Obviously how you feel is no obstacle for you, and now a few days later you must be feeling much better and could post 50 or even a 100 messages a day, especially since so many of them are content-free and some even one-liners.So how about responding to the rest of my post now? That is, if you have anything of substance to say in response, like something describing how the evidence supports your views, something that hasn't already been rebutted but that you just decided to ignore, like all the stuff you ignored in Message 1369.--Percy

Pollux didn't reply to this for some reason, so I will. Not method but methods plural:

1. Toba erupted about 74,000 years as established by ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar and K/Ar radiometric dating.
2. Toba ash was found in cores taken from the lakebed of Lake Malawi in Africa at a depth corresponding to about 74,000 years as established by ¹⁴C dating to 50,000 years and then extrapolating the additional layers.
3. Greenland and Antarctic ice cores reveal a match of volcanic gases at about 74,000 years established by counting ice layers.

These are three independent methods, not one. Multiple independent methods is how confidence in scientific findings is established. You're not so much guessing as making things up. No evidence points to a global flood.--Percy

Pollux didn't reply to this one either, so I'll reply. Science is a "human production." We're doing science in this thread, not religion. Making up silly stories is unconstructive. If you have something to say about the evidence that convinced the early geologists the Earth is ancient then this is the thread to say it. Because Hadrian's Wall was constructed from local limestone taken from the hills. Since the rock in the wall and the rock in the hills are the same rock, the hardness is the same. Here's an image of Hadrian's Wall with some local rock right next to it. The top of Hadrian's Wall, being perpendicular to falling rain, seems more exposed to erosion than the rock, which looks like a pretty common rock: True, Pollux provides no numbers, but obviously the mild hills were once mountains. As you can see in the image, the hills very nearly have disappeared. Here's a more aerial view: If you type "Hadrian's Wall" into Google Image you'll see many images of different portions of the wall (it's about 70 miles long), and you'll see that for the most part the hills are pretty mild. Of course Earth is an active planet with tectonic forces constantly push mountains up and erosion constantly tearing them down. I've never heard such a thing before, but from your description it seems these "Christian geologists" were reaching a conclusion at odds with their erroneous assumption of rapid erosion.--Percy

Current rates of sea floor spreading range from around an inch per year (Atlantic sea floor) to around 5 inches per year (East Pacific Rise). Yes, by around 70 feet. Yes, the Vikings around 1000 AD would have had a shorter trip than Columbus, again by around 70 feet. Well, not really. Sea levels in the Mediterranean have varied over time which of course would have affected its size. Evidence tells us that around six million years ago the Mediterranean dried up when it was closed off from the Atlantic at the current opening at the Rock of Gibraltar. This caused huge salt deposits on the sea floor. How did the Flood deposit salt, by the way? The same way it did all the other magical things?There's a subduction zone in the northern Mediterranean that extends roughly from Italy to Lebanon, and there's a ridge beginning to open at the eastern end of the Mediterranean (it extends down into Africa where it's created a structure known as the Great Rift Valley), but these don't affect the size of the sea.But to your point, there's no mid-sea ridge in the Mediterranean to cause sea floor spreading that would increase the distance between its coasts.--Percy

Pollux didn't reply to this, so I will: Where is your evidence that this happened only 4500 years ago? Where is your evidence that any mountain range anywhere in the world is only 4500 years old? Where is your evidence that any strata were twisted in the last 4500 years? Where is your evidence that there was ever a global Flood responsible for all the geology of the planet we see today? Where is your evidence that the Grand Canyon is 4500 years old? How do receding flood waters create a massive flow at a high point? How do massive flows create meanders? Wouldn't massive flows occur where water gathers at low points? What evidence tells you this took place 4500 years ago? Why might the Middle East "have been the least affected area on the planet," especially given that a huge rift is opening up there? It's responsible for the Dead Sea. If there were "shakings" they undoubtedly felt them, but where is your evidence that there were any shakings? The sole basis for your fictional account is a few chapters from a book written by ancient nomads. About that spreading population from just a few, there is no evidence of a genetic bottleneck of all species 4500 years ago.--Percy

I don't blame you. Wonderly's work is long and full of information somewhat more detailed than you're accustomed to. In case you change your mind here's a link to the PDF: NEGLECT OF GEOLOGIC DATA: Sedimentary Strata Compared with Young-Earth Creationist Writings.Since the way you've "sorted it out" doesn't rely upon evidence, you are of course free to "rethink the timing to some extent" (and everything else, for that matter) as often as you like.--Percy

Pollux didn't answer this one, so I will. Any scientific evidence of the Fall or of its effects on the "entire cosmos"? As Pollux said, the moon, rocky planets (and moons) and asteroids are covered in craters, not just the moon. If the debris orbiting our sun in the form of comets, asteroids and meteoroids were from a single explosion of a large body a mere 6000 years ago then that would be obvious in the patterns of many of their orbits, and would be notable in that they wouldn't be confined to the plane of the solar system.The debris from the exploded body would diminish in density by the cube of the distance from the body, and so craters on bodies distant from the explosion would be much more sparse than those close to it. We see no such relationship. Here are images of bodies with no atmosphere or tectonism (which would erase or obscure craters) and for which detailed images exist showing that the concentration of craters is roughly the same on the moon, Mercury, Mimas (top row), Tethys, Dione, Rhea (middle row), Iapetus, Pluto and Ceres (bottom row): It isn't possible that planets and moons all over the solar system were bombarded to roughly the same extent by debris from a single exploding body. The actual origin of the solar system's impact craters is the comets, asteroids and meteoroids that have been orbiting around our sun for billions of years. The Earth has not been special among planets and moons in the intensity of bombardment from space. As on all active planets, craters are gradually erased over time. Of the planets with significant atmospheres, only Earth has a mostly transparent atmosphere through which it's surface is visible. The atmospheres of the rest (Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus) are opaque, though one of the Venus probes descended through the atmosphere and snapped this picture of impact craters (this is a false color photo): It takes a long time to erase a crater. This is Meteor Crater in Arizona, created about 50,000 years ago by a meteor about 160 feet across (roughly the width of a football field in diameter): There is no evidence of the Fall, no evidence of a single exploded body causing all craters in the solar system, no evidence of a global flood 4500 years ago, and certainly no evidence of a connection between a global flood and an exploding celestial body. The Bible is not a source of scientific information, or of any information at all when you don't know what it means. Your scientific questions will be answered when you look to the evidence instead of to ancient religious texts.--Percy

No, that wasn't what I said. I said that tigers and lions are not the same cat species. They are different though closely related cat species. Different trilobite species are not at all analogous to tigers and lions. Tiger and lion skeletons are virtually identical. That identical skeletons can be from different species means that identifying species from fossils alone will result in misidentification of some fossils as being the same species when they are not. This means we undercount the number of fossil species.It also means that when fossils are different that they are very likely not the same species. A wide variety of different trilobite fossils have been found, and it is highly likely that they all represent different species. For example, these two trilobite fossils very likely represent two different species, and are in fact classifed as Phacops rana and Cheirurus ingricus. They're not only different species, they're even different genera, and they're also different families (Phacopidae and Cheiruridae respectively): According to Wikipedia there are thought to have been around 17,000 different trilobite species over the roughly 270 million years of their existence. Why would you think that? How do you know which characteristics are incidental and which are not? How often do you find species today where individuals are as different as those trilobites but are still the same species? Pollux touched on this point already, but to emphasize again, sea stars, sea cucumbers and sea daisies are not the same species. They cannot interbreed. They're the same phylum - that's as close as they get. Well, then, since you have the same number of limbs, since your mouth is in the same place, and since you have segmented vertebrae, I guess you're the same species as a chimpanzee.Seriously, Faith, after all these years, do you really not understand that for sexual organisms that populations incapable of interbreeding cannot be the same species? What we would be able to tell from their fossils is that they are definitely different species. See above about you and the chimpanzee. Using kind as a synonym for species is completely contrary to how you've used kind in the past. Your scenario went like this. Noah collected two of each kind on the ark. After the flood the kinds, relying upon their built-in store of genomic variation, rapidly evolved into all the species we see today. Sound familiar?Until creationists come up with a single consistent and tangible definition of kind, they should avoid the term. If you mean species, say species. Look, I'm fine with it if you want to define kind as a synonym for species - I'm just reminding you that isn't how you've used kind in the past. No, species does not get used for all levels of differentiation. For sexual species, which is what we're almost always talking about, a species is an interbreeding population. A "species of cat" would be a lion or tiger or house cat. If kind is a synonym of species, which is what you just said, then a "kind of cat" would also be a lion or tiger or house cat. But you just said kind would not include all cats.Were you drunk when you wrote that paragraph, because within it you managed to both contradict what you've said in the past and be self-contradictory? It's obviously hard for you to be clear when you use species. No one else is having a problem. You're doing strange things with the quoting again, I straightened it out when I requoted it above.I used the word era, and one of Edge's posts reminds mind me that era is a formal geologic term. Eras (Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic, etc.) are divided into periods (Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic for the Mesozoic era) are divided into systems are divided into series and stages.But I wasn't writing geologically. By eras I meant periods of life where enough time has elapsed for evolutionary change to be apparent. But using the term era was perhaps confusing since we only know about evolutionary change in the past through the fossil record which resides within the geological strata, raising the question of whether it would be best to stick to geological terminology when talking about evolutionary history. I don't know the answer to that.But leaving that aside and avoiding the term era, I was making the point that where the fossil record is continuous for a species that evolutionary change is gradual. The problem is that although life is continuous, the fossil record often is not because the geological strata are not. The Kaibab Limestone, about 300 feet thick, was deposited over a period of at least 2 million years and contains a record of gradual and continuous evolutionary change.The age of the Kaibab Limestone also increases by millions of years from west to east because it wasn't deposited simultaneously all across its geographic range. Rather the Kaibab Limestone layer moved eastward as the coastline moved gradually eastward.This means that not only is the Kaibab Limestone a record of evolutionary change from bottom to top, but also from east to west.The Kaibab is continuous with the underlying Toroweap Formation (i.e., there's no unconformity), so the Toroweap represents a different depositional environment closer to shore. The Toroweap records a transgressing and regressing sea resulting in a mix of deposits of sandstone (coastline), shale (offshore) and limestone (shallow sea far from shore). Because of these different environments the life in the Toroweap was different from the Kaibab, so the Kaibab and Toroweap do not represent a continuous record of life. The species populations inhabiting the sea and sea floor when the Kaibab sediments were being deposited were not the same species populations as those of the Toroweap.The base of the overlying Moenkopi Formation is an unconformity with the Kaibab. That unconformity represents millions of years. Also, the Moenkopi is sandstone and represents a different environment and would not host the same types of species as the Kaibab, so the record of evolving species is of course not continuous across the unconformity.So while it is true that fossils become increasingly different from modern forms with increasing geologic depth, one has to select strata of the relevant time period from different geographic regions in order to construct a continuous picture. The Kaibab Limestone only records fossils of species that lived in shallow seas over a period of a few million years around 250 million years ago. For a record of fossils of species that lived more recently or less recently, say 240 million or 260 million years ago, one must seek out limestone layers in other parts of the world. But of course once one changes geographic location then that, too, becomes a factor affecting what species lived there.This hopefully gives you a better idea of the realities of constructing histories of species change. Piecing together a complete picture of species evolution over time is not only difficult but probably impossible. There are far too many missing pieces to ever hope for a complete picture. But a complete picture isn't necessary for discerning the clear trend that fossil species become increasingly different from modern forms with increasing depth. Rebuttal requires far more than name-calling like "illusion" - it requires an examination of the evidence and a demonstration of how the record of increasing differences from modern forms really doesn't exist. I don't think anyone has described sedimentation rates as "the model for the geologic column." Rather, sedimentation rates tell us how long it can take sediments of great depth to accumulate. There you go with the pronouns again. What does "they" refer to? That would be incorrect. Strata exist everywhere around the world, including beneath seas and lakes. Because the fate of most sea floor is subduction, strata beneath the sea are are rarely older than a couple hundred million years. Abyssal plains are pretty straight and flat. That's why they're called plains. From the Wikipedia article on Abyssal Plain:

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An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) and 6,000 metres (20,000 ft). Lying generally between the foot of a continental rise and a mid-ocean ridge, abyssal plains cover more than 50% of the Earth’s surface. They are among the flattest, smoothest and least explored regions on Earth.

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Sediments accumulating on abyssal plains form large flat sedimentary layers. Some sea floor does manage to become appended to continents, but the fate of most sea floor is probably subduction. You don't have a scientific paradigm. You have religious views that you're attempting to dress up in scientific jargon through a process of studied ignorance and fabrication. By evolutionary pace I meant the rate of genetic change, not to be confused with adaptive evolution based upon existing variation where no genetic change occurs.Jutland cattle are not a different species - they're a particular breed of cow of the species Bos taurus, the same species as Holsteins and Herefords and Jerseys.The lizards of Pod Mrcaru are genetically identical to the parent population on Pod Kopiste - they're the same species. I know the articles you've read about the lizards have called it evolution, but more accurately it is adaptive evolution with no genetic change, in other words, microevolution, equivalent to breeding. The technical article Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource explains it pretty well:

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Recent reviews have illustrated how rapid adaptive evolution is common and may be considered the rule rather than the exception in some cases. Experimental introductions of populations in novel environments have provided some of the strongest evidence for natural selection and adaptive divergence on ecological time scales...microevolutionary responses to environmental changes have been well documented,...

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Macroevolution requires genetic change to provide additional variation. The pace of evolution is governed by the rate at which genomic change is introduced into the population. With extant species we can estimate the amount of evolution that has occurred between two related species by measuring differences in DNA. With human ancestry a molecular clock based upon mitochondrial DNA is often used.So when I included the pace of evolution as one of the evidences supporting long eras of time it was because the amount of evolutionary change we observe in the fossil record is consistent with long time periods, and the estimates of the rate of that evolutionary change is roughly consistent (rough estimates are often all that is possible with fossils since DNA is usually not available) with the rates we measure today. Again, you don't have a scientific paradigm. You have religious views that you're attempting to dress up in scientific jargon through a process of studied ignorance and fabrication. This is just a silly thing to say, not even wrong. Environmental pressures exist everywhere there is life. Yes, that is one source of generational change. Selection of the most fit for existing environmental conditions is another. Again, a silly way to put it. Environmental pressures are omnipresent for all life.The environment drives selection which in turn drives adaptation. In breeding (artificial selection) species are forced to adapt to the requirements of the breeder, that is, the breeder controls the environment. In the wild species are forced to adapt to the requirements of the natural environment. Again, you don't have a scientific paradigm. You have religious views that you're attempting to dress up in scientific jargon through a process of studied ignorance and fabrication. Yes, so. That would be through drift. Drift would be a very, very slow and very directionless way to effect change. Jutland cattle were bred, meaning selection pressures were provided by farmers doing the breeding. And the Pod Mrcaru lizards were subjected to different selection pressures than those on Pod Kopiste because (they think) of a different diet. Breeders impose selection pressures. And selection is apparently why darker skins are common in southern climes and lighter skins in northern. Yes, that could happen. More generally, and with the exception of sudden extinction brought about by sudden and severe environmental change (a meteor strike, a local volcano, a sudden and persistent drought, a flood, etc.), an unfavorable environment can gradually reduce population sizes which will of course be accompanied by decreased variation. When variation reaches 0, which occurs when only a single individual is left, then in sexual species extinction will result when that last individual dies. Yeah, I clarified up above that I wasn't using the term eras geologically. When the fossil record shows little change over long time periods then that means that the environment has changed little. Again, see clarification up above that I wasn't using the term eras geologically. The point here is that the amount of species change within a stratum would tend to be less than the amount across multiple strata. Unknown factors and a buzzword that neither you nor anyone else know how it achieves the effect you claim? Really? And these unknown factors and hydraulic mechanisms are so incredibly precise that the fossil record contains not a single anomaly? Not one dinosaur got buried with mastodons? Not one possum got buried with trilobites? Please describe your thinking as you went through this process of elimination. You always say you've already answered something when you have no answers. Ignoring facts doesn't make them go away. It just makes clear you have no answers. Oh, come now, I can't hold a candle to you. There's nothing I've been wrong about for 17 consecutive years.--Percy

Pollux hasn't replied to this, so I will. First, it is not a case of two different paradigms. It is a case of science representing knowledge and creationists misrepresenting religion as science.Second, kind is not a scientific term, at least not within biology.Third, species has a very clear definition for sexual organisms, which is what we're usually talking about. You cannot invent your own definition. But you just said the opposite in your Message 1812: So in one message you say that kind and species are synonymous, then just a very few messages later you say that species is meaningless with regard to kind. Contradictory much?--Percy

That seems to describe you pretty well.--Percy

You often do a pretty fair job understanding scientific terminology (mainly the labels for things, like "strata" and "intrusion", but not terms representing more complex concepts, like "Walther's Law"). Unfortunately you have a bad habit of inventing your own personal definitions for some terms, as you just said you'd do with species.But even after all these years you understand very little of evolutionary and geological processes, even extremely simple concepts like that sediments being deposited today contribute to stratigraphic columns, or that mutations contribute to variation. Though such processes been explained again and again, the explanations never stick, and you reject them before ever understanding them. If you don't understand them or their supporting evidence then you can't assess how they are right or wrong. You're sort of reduced to calling them names like "illusion" and "paradigm".--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fill out first paragraph so it's a bit more clear - it became two paragraphs.

Edge didn't reply to this, so I will. Judging by the links you've posted, you watch YEC video screeds. Which is why you never adopt the views of Bertault or of Is Genesis History (Netflix)? Your time would be better spent learning some geology, or even just paying attention to what people say here instead of letting it roll off you. That's your most serious problem, that information has no influence on your views. The sanity of anyone who understands that but posts to you anyway should be questioned, unless they view you purely as entertainment. Don't forget that you also have no explanation for radiometric dates or the fossil distribution. Casting spurious labels like "illusion" and "paradigm" are not explanations, they're diversions. I think everyone on the thread would agree with that. Really? And when will you start? You don't have "another paradigm" - people with paradigms provide explanations of evidence instead of ignoring it. You have a couple pages out of an ancient religious book that serve as the basis for your tall tales about Earth history.--Percy

This has several replies that I haven't read yet, but I just have to respond. This is a good example of why you're a most unchristian Christian. Here you lie and waste people's time with a one-liner response that in essence denies what even the most casual reader of the thread knows is true, that you *have* been presented a great deal of independent lines of evidence for which your response has been either nolo contendere or something so obviously wrong that it is immediately rebutted or (if sufficiently absurd) ridiculed. As you testify for your religious views (because that's what your discussion is, not science) you might at least try to set a Christian example of honesty and integrity.A few days ago I was 140 posts behind. Now I'm about 180 posts behind. I have some spare time today, I'll try to make a bigger dent.--Percy

First, that's not what you said. Here's the actual exchange exactly as it appeared in your Message 1839. There's no mention of excluding radiometric dating: Second, of course you don't want to discuss radiometric dating - because you have no answers for it.Third, here's a summary of evidence mentioned in Tangle's quote, which is about the age of the Earth. I don't actually know the online source of the quote he used. A version of it appears at Geologic Time: The Age of the Earth, but not divided into paragraphs.

• Ancient rocks exceeding 3.5 billion years in age are found on all of Earth's continents.
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• A wide variety of radiometric dating techniques have been used to date these rocks.
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• Zircons as old as 4.3 billion years have been found in western Australia.
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• Meteorites dated as old as 4.4 billion years have been found.
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• The oldest rocks from the moon have dated as old as 4.5 billion years.
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• Dating of ancient lead ores in combination with meteorites results in an age of 4.54 billion years with 1% error.
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• This last one is not from Tangle's quote but from Dalrymple's book The Age of the Earth. Radiometric isotopes with half lives shorter than about 80 million years and that don't appear in the decay chain of other isotopes (that is, they aren't currently being produced naturally) are completely absent from the Earth. This could only happen if the Earth were older than at least 4 billion years so that enough time had passed that these isotopes had decayed to the point of undetectability. If the Earth were only 6000 years old then these isotopes would still be present in great abundance. See page 376 of Dalrymple's book and read forward.

A genuine scientific 6000-year paradigm would at a minimum explain why radiometric dating yields an age of the Earth of around 4.5 billion years.--PercyPS: While searching for the source of Tangle's quote I found pieces of it at websites and in books, enough to indicate a disturbing amount of plagiarism.

Another one-line response.Why don't you take the initiative on this subtopic and present evidence demonstrating that all the world's tectonic events took place over a relatively brief span of time around 4500 years ago? I'd be particularly interested in the evidence of continents moving miles per day.I'm also very interested in your evidence showing there was only ever a single supercontinent. Why do you even accept the existence of a supercontinent (I assume Pangaea, but you don't say), since the same type of evidence that established the existence of one supercontinent also established the existence of all the others. If you reject that type of evidence then how do you know there was ever any supercontinent during Earth's history? I'm of course referring to your comment in your Message 1771: So tell us about this clear evidence.--Percy