Allright, forget the fossils

paleolutheran Since there are a minimum of 1.5 million spesies and perhaps as many as 8 million the ark story falls apart in so many ways just on the basis of food requirements that no one canseriously contemplate the story to be literal.The flood alone produces a 100 % humid enviroment for the 40 days it is raining. Since most animals must sweat in order to cool this situation is patently lethal to those animals including noah and his family.
Of course there is the conflict concerning that noah could not possibly guarantee that every animal on the planet was there only in groups of two or seven since in order to digest food many animals including humans depend upon vast quantites of bacteria in their digestive systems.As if this were not enough Genesis 7:23 delivers a fatal blow as we can see by reading here This means that all soil bacteria and plants are obliterated.Also since the ocean salt will have been evenly distributed across the planet the land available would be incapable of supporting many species of plants. Worms that are so vital to the production of good soil is now reduced to 2 members to tend to the entire planet.The energy release involved in the flood would have raised temperatures beyond the capabilty of animals to survive.Then there is the problem involved with the waters being higher than the highest mountains which places the ark at the range of 30,000 feet in elevation at which point the ultraviolet exposure to light would have been unpleasant at best and deadly at worst.This is a small sampling of the absurdity of the ark story as a literal tale.

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But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn’t understand it. They didn’t understand technology; they didn’t understand their time.

When there is an apparent disagreement over classification between the genetic and morphological data, would not this be for two very close location which most creationists would agree are in the same tree?

I'd say that while a study of any one specific gene or genetic marker may be less representative than a full morphological comparison a full scale genomic analysis will probably provided a fuller data set for analysis and be more representative in the end. Common descent is a much more restrictive hypothesis than a common designer. A common designer, especially one who is not open to study, is not held to any particular mechanisms or methods and we have no idea how he produces or propagates his designs.On the other hand the mechanisms of common descent are readily available for study in the molecular biology of DNA replication and at higher levels in the study of population genetics.So on the one hand we have a well studied and readily accessible series of mechanisms and phenomena and on the other a void of hand waving and philosophising.Clearly if one wants to actually achieve anything in terms of study common descent is the only option that offers anything to work with.It isn't impossible that mechanisms for 'common design' may be identified, but at the moment all you tend to get is abstruse blethering about quantum mechanics.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 10-Jan-2006 01:49 PM

For starters sidlined, I'm not defending the ark story in the least. This post was about forgetting the fossils and all I said was that creationists (YECs) HAVE to accept super evolution after the flood. If you really want to get picky we could disuss how there is no way that the heat could not have been absorbed by the water from all the geological phenomenon (super plate movements, meteorites, not to mention the large amount of water movement over the surface). The lack of animals to sweat would have been the least of Noah's concerns :-). That pesky geophysical crap really does put a damper on it....but I have good news.....I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to.....never mind :-D.Moving on: A full genotypic analysis would take an absurdly long period of time and effort. Even the human genome is based on several humans. When it comes down to relatedness, a specific gene is usually picked. If multiple ones were picked to determine the tree the SAME problem occurs. The question of which gene is more useful is also a question that I don't think has been satisfactorally answered. All I meant by my tyrade was that genetics can help but it should not be used independently of morphology and embryology. The pitfalls of all of these areas should be realized (this includes knowledge of pitfalls yet undreamed of). I also caution people making blanket statements such as "you can make predictions from one and not the other (common descent vs. common designer)" without first giving a reason. The reply to my previous message did a very good job of showing why the one works better than the other scientifically. In the end however, I don't think this debate can truly be completely scientific as YECs in areas point to God fingerwaving things into being and evolutionists in areas point to the changing of systems and organisms by chance against all odds. This occurs on both sides.

PaleolutheranI owe you an apology and would have responded sooner however I was in emergency surgery having my foot removed from my mouth. I shall forthwith have myself flogged and beaten to atone for my crime.Sorry for the interuption of your post. {Side note from Adminnemooseus (don't want to inject another message):
To Paleolutheran - If you are replying to a specific message, it is best to use the reply button at the bottom of that message. Then the little link notes (such as - This message is a reply to: Message 19 by paleolutheran) are automaticly created, and the person you are replying to can get an e-mail notification of your reply}This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 01-11-2006 02:55 PM

At the moment certainly, but as genotyping technology becomes more sophisticated and computing power increases then maybe not. There are already a number of published studies which have full genome comparisons amongst humans, chimps and dogs.For a large tree of the vertebrates it might take many many years, but then it takes an awfully long time for all of the morphological data to be analysed as well the main advantage there is that a lot of the work has already been done in the past, since the technologies for studying morphology are not as arduous as those for genomic analysis. The same problem will always occur if a limited set of data is used, that is why it is preferable to use multiple sets and determine a 'supertree' from the collected data. This is rarely the case in phylogenetic studies, except perhaps those focused on mitochondrial sequences. My view may be skewewd thoug as I work in developmental biology so very few of the papers I read don't touch on embryology. More like indeterminate odds, the calculations for the odds in these cases are often along the lines of marginalia scrawled on the back of a napkin after a particularly good night out*.TTFN,WK*With a heartfelt nod towards that other, great, DNA.

Many journals have recently started to make their old issues available online, but as far as I know Genetics is the only one that has bothered to go back as far as 1916.Here's the first paragraph of the first paper published in January 1916, first ever issue of Genetics

quote:

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There has been a long series of observations and experiments which
has led more and more definitely to the conclusion that the chromosomes
are the bearers of the hereditary materiak2 It was observed that male
and female contribute equally to the inheritance of the offspring, and yet
the contribution of the male consists of little more than a nucleus. That inheritance is a function of the nucleus rather than of the cytoplasm is
shown by many embryological and cytological facts. Attention was next
narrowed to the chromatin and chromosomes. Embryological experiments
showed that the chromosomes are qualitatively different and that
a full complement is essential to normal development. The increasing
cytological knowledge of mitotic division and of gametogenesis made it
clear that the chromosomes were qualified to serve as the material basis
of heredity.

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We've definitely come a long way! It always warms my heart to know that such articles were written in 1916, when the religious weirdos were even stronger than they are today! Truth will out!Mick

Sidelined,I hope you recover from your emergency surgery with the utmost haste. Don't use up all your sick days :-D