Message 31 of 53 (542241) 01-08-2010 12:30 PM

Reply to: Message 30 by Sky-Writing 01-08-2010 12:15 PM

You are making the claim, therefore it is you who have to show the evidence not us, having to go on a "wild goose chase ."

Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

Message 32 of 53 (542243) 01-08-2010 12:31 PM

Reply to: Message 30 by Sky-Writing 01-08-2010 12:15 PM

source

or have you changed your mind to only be asserting that the colorado river didn't create the canyon?

{ABE} Another nice bit from that article you might like:

So, who is this majority that thinks this?

{ABE number 2} Man, this gets better and better:

(fromt he same article)

Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.

Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan

Message 34 of 53 (542248) 01-08-2010 12:41 PM

Reply to: Message 30 by Sky-Writing 01-08-2010 12:15 PM

This is an odd thing to quote in support of the view that the Grand Canyon was carved in a few weeks. Out of context, it's difficult to tell what this Dr. Elston was talking about. In context, it has nothing to do with the Grand Canyon being carved in a few weeks.

The quote comes from this article on a website offering Grand Canyon tours, who say it's originally from the NYT. Elston is quoted as defending the traditional view that the canyon was carved out slowly between 60 to 75 million years ago; against more popular modern hypotheses that believe it all happened within the last 5 million years.

Of the various geologists quoted in the article, none advances a view at all resembling the idea that the canyon was carved in months, though it does mention that some support the idea of "a catastrophic flood that carved the Grand Canyon very quickly, within a couple million years" (emphasis added).

Message 35 of 53 (542253) 01-08-2010 12:58 PM

Reply to: Message 23 by Sky-Writing 01-08-2010 11:02 AM

You seem to be missing the point. The Grand Canyon and Mt. Saint Helens are valid topics in this thread only to the extent that they touch on this thread's topic, which is how small changes can over time create large effects. This is what happens in geology, and this is what happens in evolution.

It's not really relevant to the topic that you don't believe the Grand Canyon formed gradually. If the Grand Canyon is not a good example for you of small changes accumulating over time then there are many other examples we can supply to make clear the way evolution works. But you did make a couple errors that are worth correcting just for purposes of creating an accurate record in this thread.

You can't have the flood both deposit and erode the same sedimentary layers, and as mentioned earlier, a flood cannot carve canyons in the landscape it covers. That takes the focused flow of a river.

Dr. Elston believes the Grand Canyon is even older, millions and millions of years older, than mainstream geology, and that it was formed by rivers even more ancient than the Colorado, not by a global flood a mere 4500 years ago. You're citing in support of your position someone who disagrees with you even more than mainstream geology.

Your many short posts and frequent errors indicate that you're not taking sufficient time and care.

At EvC Forum you're expected to support your position yourself, not ask those who disagree with you to do it for you. This is from the Forum Guidelines:

4. Points should be supported with evidence and/or reasoned argumentation. Address rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not repeat previous points without further elaboration. Avoid bare assertions.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Message 36 of 53 (542263) 01-08-2010 1:39 PM

Reply to: Message 33 by DavidOH 01-08-2010 12:38 PM

Me too. I'm not finding a place on the site where it's been discussed in detail though.

Here are a couple of links

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH581_1.html
http://www.icr.org/article/mt-st-helens-catastrophism/

If you want to fish for people to discuss it with you, I suggest A question about "Great Flood" geology.

The main point for this topic, as Coyote demonstrated, is that both are cases of gradualism. The much smaller scale in size and density at Mt. St. Helen's simply leads to a much smaller timescale in proportion. Message 28

Message 37 of 53 (542265) 01-08-2010 1:58 PM

Anyway, I was actually hoping more prominent creationists would join in the debate. Wasn't really expecting a troll to resurrect the thread.

PS I know nothing about geology or the grand canyon. You guys have fun with it.

Message 38 of 53 (542282) 01-08-2010 3:57 PM

Reply to: Message 1 by Taz 10-20-2009 5:30 PM

Your OP got me thinking about another aspect of gradual accumulation you mentioned.

This, of course, refers to the popular "irreducible complexity" argument of which we're all so fond. Anyway, this example has perhaps been used before, but your examples of John Doe got me thinking of our current society as an example of something that has gradually accumulated, yet exhibits some aspects of being irreducibly complex.

Por ejemplo, just 20 years ago, it was difficult to find anyone that had their own email address. Yet now, if you could some how shut down the entire internet without affecting other aspects of society, things would get chaotic pretty damn quickly. The internet has become something that is necessary for the stability of our economy (not that it's very stable right now) and our society in general. But, just because it is necessary now, doesn't mean it was always so.

The power of gradual accumulation is not just that massive changes can occur over a series of many small steps (grand canyon, walking across the country) but that as changes accumulate it can change the very nature of the system so that removing an accumulated trait does not simply revert it to what it was before.

Message 39 of 53 (542303) 01-08-2010 5:44 PM

Reply to: Message 24 by Sky-Writing 01-08-2010 11:09 AM

I am the one Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
-Lyrics by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

Message 40 of 53 (542317) 01-08-2010 7:04 PM

Reply to: Message 38 by Stagamancer 01-08-2010 3:57 PM

The idea of irreducibly complex is that something can't function at all if a even a single part of it is removed. The problem with this idea is that IDists don't even consider all the possible alternative functions the thing can have after a part is removed. A mouse trap, after the pin is removed, could serve as a perfectly good tie holder. An internet-dependent economy/society will continue to exist in another form if the internet is removed. It will turn into a barter economy or something, who knows...

Message 41 of 53 (542323) 01-08-2010 8:11 PM

Reply to: Message 29 by Coragyps 01-08-2010 11:54 AM

This is a little mixed up, as uplift raised the ridge cut by the canyon, but the "inland sea burst" is one of Hovind's hoaxes. The problem with it is that the supposed burst point is near a hill-top, on the side of a slope, and there are several lower points north and south of the canyone that show absolutely no erosion on either side, a point that Hovind (being the fraud that he is) fails to mention. He also crops the pictures he shows to remove this evidence from view.

Dark areas are higher than light areas. "A" is where the Grand Canyon crosses the uplift ridge

Google Hovind Grand Canyon

If you are interested, I can try to dig up an old post on another forum on this, but it may take a while (herballure forum run by Russ ... if it hasn't been deleted after I was banned for exposing such lies). Found them:

A couple of my posts on the Grand Canyon there:
Post37849
Post38129

From what I can see, the ash erosion patterns at Mt St Helens fails to explain how the spires and ridges perpendicular to the river formed in the Grand Canyon (nor does it mimic the effects of wind and ice erosion in the older strata, or several other features) -- it only mimics some of the most rudimentary erosion patterns seen in the canyon, not all. To show this is the case, one would have to show mile by mile how the features of the Grand Canyon were replicated at Mt St Helens.

The formations at Mt St Helens generally show single level broad U shaped valleys with vertical sides and one set of rubble slopes at the bottom.

What we see is closer to what is seen in the Channeled Scab-lands:

wikipedia article (with one picture)
article by a geologist (with several pictures and some maps)
Channeled Scablands Overview (with many good pictures of different locations along the path and some maps).

There are several pictures on the last site that match the pictures of Mt St Helens better than the Grand Canyon does. Of course that could be because the mechanism that formed them was the same, while the mechanism that formed the Grand Canyon was actually quite different. In neither case are there any formations that look like:

http://www.nps.gov/archive/grca/photos/

quote:

---

---

Note the spires and perpendicular formations, and also where the erosion has occurred in several stages with multiple soft and hard layers unlike any of the formations at Mt St Helens.

Then there is Horseshow Bend, also part of the Grand Canyon:

Slow flowing rivers in flat land create meanders, burst dam outflows do not.

Of course creationists are not fond of complete evidence, it's too inconvenient.

Enjoy.

Edited by RAZD, : links, additional info

Edited by RAZD, : link to google maps & citation

Message 42 of 53 (542325) 01-08-2010 9:18 PM

Reply to: Message 21 by Sky-Writing 01-08-2010 10:40 AM

This is at 1"=2 miles. I don't see a single feature that looks like this:

Mt St Helens show fairly linear erosion in the ash flows, similar to what is seen in the Channeled Scablands. Only when you zoom out, to the point where areas not affected by the ash, do you see the underlying ridges and canyons formed by erosion in a pattern similar to what is seen in the Grand Canyon, however these areas were not formed in weeks by erosion through ash deposits.

Instead of the linear patterns at Mt St Helens, the Grand Canyon shows many side canyons, each with their own side canyons in a branching format. Many of these side canyons are lower at their beginning than the rim of the main canyon is where they join the main canyon. This is explained by slow continuous erosion during geological ages as the ridges are uplifted in a geological process that is still going on (and can be measured). This is not explained by rapid outflow from some burst dam.

Whether it is evolutionary forms or geological forms, the slow accumulation of small effects add up over time to much larger effects, sometimes arriving at an end result that seems (at first glance) impossible to form by natural processes (water flows uphill?). Only by understanding all the evidence can one come to an understanding of how these seemingly impossible features can actually be formed by the known natural mechanisms.

Enjoy.

Edited by RAZD, : topic

Edited by RAZD, : more

Edited by RAZD, : clrty

Message 43 of 53 (542326) 01-08-2010 9:40 PM

Plan of the moment - Close this topic down sometime in the next 24 hours.

Adminnemooseus

Message 44 of 53 (542345) 01-09-2010 6:46 AM

In this way evolution is analogous to geology. For the most part evolution is the accumulation over time of tiny changes, though occasional larger changes like gene or chromosome duplication can also occur. There's even the equivalent of asteroid strikes when a segment of virus DNA becomes inserted in an organism's own DNA.

All these processes, both geological and evolutionary, leave evidence behind. Things that actually happened in the past leaves traces of the fact that they actually happened.

--Percy

Message 45 of 53 (542363) 01-09-2010 11:35 AM

Reply to: Message 7 by slevesque 10-21-2009 12:41 AM

Moose has threatened to close the topic due to drift, so I thought I would go back to the beginning and see what it says.

Can you think of anything that has not been made or modified by an accumulation of characteristics\traits\features?

Maybe I'm a little brain lazy this saturday morning, but I can't think of any.

But what is it a straw man of? I find many people make this claim when they don't like an argument, but they never show why it is a straw man -- what is the more complex issue that has been simplified, and what is thereby being refuted?

Straw Man

quote:

---

Definition:
The author attacks an argument which is different from, and usually weaker than, the opposition's best argument.

---

Here Taz is proposing that accumulation is almost universally apparent around us, that the effects of accumulation can be seen in virtually everything we observe, do, use, interact with.

You are a product of accumulation, most recently having just accumulated the reading of this post.

What is your stronger argument?

I agree that portraying creationists as 'those people' is not very ennobling.

Let's just say 'people who don't understand evolution'.

Curiously, I have heard this argument several times from people who don't understand evolution - it is one of the common arguments they make regarding macroevolution, the "hopeful monster" argument. To paraphrase Taz:

The (people who don't understand evolution) would argue that the first (hopeful monster) must have evolved into the (hopeful monster) miraculously at the same time as another creature evolved into the (hopeful monster) in order for them to reproduce more (hopeful monster)s. Another specific example along this line is the rise of specific structures like the eye and the wing. The (people who don't understand evolution) would argue that something like the eye would have required all the necessary components to assemble at the same time in order for the eye to exist. Both cases show a gross ignorance of the power of accumulation.

The eye example is a well known PRATT (Claim CB921.1: What use is half an eye?), so citing this as an example is based on evidence of many typical arguments put forth by people who don't understand evolution.

Would you agree that the features of the mammalian eye can be explained by an accumulation of characteristics\traits\features?

We can also look at explaining the development of the octopus eye by an accumulation of characteristics\traits\features to the point that it seems to be similar to the mammalian eye, except for a couple of distinct differences:

• the nerves are on the back side of the octopus eye and on the front side of the mammalian eye.
  
• the eye is focused by changing the length of the octopus eye to move the retina to the focal point of the fixed lens, and by changing the focal length of the lens to focus on the fixed retina in the mammalian eye.

I would say that the accumulation of characteristics over time is so universal that we can regard it as a natural law.

Enjoy.