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Author Topic:   Peanut Gallery for the Keys/RAZD Debate
Percy
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Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1 of 57 (406135)
06-17-2007 10:18 AM


I don't see why RAZD should have all the fun in the Creation Museum Age of the Earth is False (Simple and RAZD)(Simple and RAZD)[/color](KEYS and RAZD)[/color]< !--UE--> thread, so I'm starting up this peanut gallery thread to follow the action. I'll try to only touch on points RAZD hasn't hit, and I'll begin at Keys Message 14:
Keys writes:
Your point is that the tree rings are laid down a certain way now, seasonally. If the trees did grow in a different past world, where things were fundamentally different, there would be no summer rings, or winter. If we, for example had a tree grow in 2 weeks, with, say, 336 rings, each ring, of course does not represent a summer. It represents an hour. In that early Earth, we may have had a cool of the day, an windy part of the day, a nighttime, a daytime, a time when the waters came up from below to water the Earth. In fact, for all we know, the water could have come up every 3 hours. Etc. In other words, we still could have rings, and variations in a pattern, that later would be replaced by a pattern taking more time.
Keys is not claiming that it's possible to lay down tree rings in very short time periods today. He's claiming that the universe was different in the past and that processes occurred at a much faster rate. It doesn't really matter how much evidence RAZD presents for dendrochronology, Keys response will always be the same: RAZD cannot know that the physical laws we're familiar with today were the same in the past, and therefore processes must have taken place at an accelerated rate because it is consistent with the Bible.
This is a religious view unsupported by any evidence, and there is copious evidence that the physical laws have not changed to any noticeable degree in the last few billion years, so of course they could not have changed in the last 10,000 years, either. If Keys is arguing religiously then I don't think there's much point in continuing the discussion - he'll just continue dismissing all the evidence because it's incompatible with an old Earth as represented in the Bible.
An alternative approach to tackling this subject with Keys might be to avoid saying that the world *is* ancient, but rather just examining the evidence. RAZD could say to Keys, "Okay, the Earth is young because the Bible says so, but approaching this from a scientific perspective, what are the problems you can identify with the evidence I've presented so far for an ancient Earth, and what positive evidence can you present for a young Earth?"
It is actually you that have been doing this, and I simply point it out. But I do have some basis for my idea, the documentation of the bible. What do you have to tell us that the state of this earth was the same, and tree growth rates had to be the same as well?? -Nothing at all.
The position of science is that unless there is evidence to the contrary, physical laws are the same everywhere throughout time and space. Keys is taking the position that there is no evidence that physical laws were the same in the past as today.
The problem with this position is that there is a huge amount of evidence that physical laws haven't changed over billion years, and RAZD has noted some of it, pointing out that the Bible doesn't record anyone noticing accelerated processes. In fact, the Bible doesn't say anything about accelerated processes, because they are not a Biblical position but a creationist one. It is one of the explanations creationists advance for the lack of accord between the Bible and real world evidence.
It's amusing to imagine what a world of accelerated processes would have been like. The premise, as I understand it, is that everything but people moved at an accelerated rate. Cain could could have planted grain in the morning and harvested it that evening. The sheep in Abel's flocks would have mated in the morning and had lambs during lunch. Trees would have grown from twig to adulthood in a single day, and one could sit and watch them. Somehow the flow of sap would start and stop a hundred times a day, the breadth of the tree trunk would visibly increase, along with the underlying root system, and thrust aside the ground. The leaves would sprout to fullness in just a second, rest there for a minute, then turn brown and fall to the ground, and this would repeat many times per hour. Resting under a tree would be dangerous because one would risk bombardment by acorns and being buried under leaves. Within an hour the tree would die, and within a day bacteria and insects and animals would have weakened it, it would fall over, and then decay to dust. Ah, it must have been an exciting time.
The manic rate of growth would have presented other significant problems, for there would have been far too many plants and animals all living at the same time. Keys can't claim that animals didn't have a new brood everyday and that new trees didn't grow everyday, because we know how much life has to have existed from the fossil record. If it wasn't all growth all the time at huge rates, then there would be much less life recorded in the fossil record. So Keys is forced to claim that not only were rates accelerated in the past, but that the amount of life living simultaneously was immensely greater. Slow footed man would have been overrun.
Any animal carrying out it's entire life cycle in a mere day needs to move extremely fast. A sheep would have to denude an entire meadow in a single minute in order to sustain itself (which isn't a problem for the grass which is also growing at an accelerated rate). Other animals would also have to have moved extremely fast. A wolf capable of catching such a sheep must also have moved extremely fast. But this presents a problem for man. Why would a wolf chase a fast moving sheep when there's a human sitting right there who seems frozen in time and therefore completely defenseless.
It isn't just the processes of life that had to be accelerated, of course, but all processes. One has to contemplate the incongruity of a lamb growing into a sheep in just a few minutes while Abel watched and aged barely at all. This would mean the sheep needed food and water for all it's growth, which means it would have had to eat and excrete much faster. The grass had to grow much faster, the nutrients in the soil had to be replenished much faster, and it had to rain all the time. Bees would have flown much faster, as fast as bullets, in order to pollinate enough flowers and get back to the hive in order to produce enough honey for the next minute's generation, only to repeat the process again a minute later. Wind-borne pollen would have had little time to be distributed unless the winds had been very strong, so it must have been extremely windy, maybe around 100 mph, all the time. But it was also raining all the time, which would have drenched the pollen to the ground, introducing an interesting problem for wind-borne pollen distribution. Or did the rain and wind alternate by the minute?
And of course it isn't just macro processes that would need to be accelerated but micro processes as well. Water would have to seep into the ground much faster so that the constant rain didn't flood the world. The osmotic processes that draw sap up trees would have been much faster. Cells would have replicated faster. Bacteria and viruses would have carried out their life cycles much faster, huge bacterial colonies forming in mere seconds instead of days, introducing another problem for people. With bacteria and viruses and parasites operating at such a fast rate, they would have almost instantly overwhelmed the defenses of any human they came in contact with, since humans were the only things in the known universe moving at the normal rate.
I've just spent many words examining an idea that is ludicrous on its face, because creationists make this "accelerated processes" proposal all the time without thinking through any of the implications. As long as they hear the explanation and don't think any further than "Oh, okay," then it might seem reasonable to them, but it is so full of significant problems that even the merest examination shows it to be ridiculous and impossible. And what's even more ridiculous is that creationists cite it as Biblically supported when accelerated processes don't appear anywhere in the Bible, and such things have never been recorded historically by any civilization anywhere. The evidence for it in any form whatsoever is completely absent.
quote:
the known behavior of all plants, and the known behavior of the solar system and the known factors of climate and seasons on growth and the development of all plants, and we look to see how those factors are represented in the rings.
As I just pointed out you look at present knowns, and assume they apply. That just is not enough to make big claims over.
Except that when we look far out into space we are no longer looking at the present. When we look at the moon we see it as it was about 1.5 seconds ago. When we look at the sun we see it as it was about 8 minutes ago. When we look at Alpha Centauri, the nearest star after the sun, we see it as it was 4.4 years ago. When we look at the Lagoon nebula we see it as it was about 4000 years ago. When we look at the Crab nebula we see it as it was about 6000 years ago. And when we look at the Andromeda galaxy we see it as it was about 2.5 million years ago. And analysis of the light from distant stars and nebulas and galaxies reveals that the physical governing them at those times and places are identical to the physical laws here on earth.
In other words, physical laws have not changed noticeably anywhere in the universe over the past few billion years.
The change I have in mind, was after the flood. It is founded on bible. The evidence fits.
It's hard to understand why Keys believes the evidence fits. The evidence we have says physical laws in the past were the same as today.
--Percy

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NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 2 of 57 (406144)
06-17-2007 11:05 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Percy
06-17-2007 10:18 AM


Fun to watch
he'll just continue dismissing all the evidence because it's incompatible with an old Earth as represented in the Bible.
But Keys is doing something else while doing that. You and I know what it is but he doesn't. I'm sure RAZD can use that later.
I dolove your description of life in speed-world but I think you have the time scaling exaggerated a lot. At least based on the acceleration that Keys is trying to use so far. He'll get to that kind of speed later if he persists.
I haven't seen such a good extrapolation of this before.
You haven't stressed enough that this is, contrary to what Keys says, not founded on the bible.

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macaroniandcheese 
Suspended Member (Idle past 3927 days)
Posts: 4258
Joined: 05-24-2004


Message 3 of 57 (406172)
06-17-2007 12:59 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Percy
06-17-2007 10:18 AM


I have no reason to believe that trees did not grow at a much faster rate, as it seems the bible indicates, in the past.
where in the world does the bible suggest that trees grew at a faster rate before? god. if anything, the age of people in the bible suggests that things grew more slowly. this is a crap response to account for the unstated, assumed idea that the bible says the world is only 4-6k years old.

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 4 of 57 (406177)
06-17-2007 1:32 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Percy
06-17-2007 10:18 AM


Percy writes:
And what's even more ridiculous is that creationists cite it as Biblically supported when accelerated processes don't appear anywhere in the Bible
I was waiting for you to say that as I read down the post. Keys has asked for a debate in which the Bible can be considered as evidence, alongside science. If he wants to claim that the world was at some point producing tree rings once a month, and has (obviously) no scientific evidence for this, then he must present Biblical evidence, which is supposed to be counted on an equal footing in this (strange) debate.
He needs something like: "And the winters were twelve in one year, and the summers were also twelve" from the bible, and that would count as evidence.
Otherwise his claims are unsubstatiated, even under the very liberal rules of this (hilarious) debate.
It should be fun!

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Jaderis
Member (Idle past 3425 days)
Posts: 622
From: NY,NY
Joined: 06-16-2006


Message 5 of 57 (406180)
06-17-2007 2:10 PM


Literal Bible?
One of the main problems I see with keys' argument (from a biblical literalist perspective) is that one cannot posit some kind of accelerated time in one breath and then claim that the Earth was created in 6 literal days (meaning that the days were exactly like the days of today) in another. It can't go both ways. Either time was the same as today or it wasn't and without any sort of biblical corroboration (no to mention scientific, but I'm just going with the bible for now) the argument for accelerated time or entire seasons within hours or weeks would definitely not fall under the "literal" category. Same with people's ages. Either Methuselah was really 969 years old or he wasn't and if he was then, why did trees grow so much faster then and not people?
Not only should keys have to show that trees grew differently then and/or that the cycle of seasons was somehow accelerated, but he should have to give a reason why. Of course, there is no biblical evidence for any of this, but it would be fun to see what he comes up with.

  
RAZD
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Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 6 of 57 (406181)
06-17-2007 2:17 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Percy
06-17-2007 10:18 AM


lol
Resting under a tree would be dangerous because one would risk bombardment by acorns and being buried under leaves.
Better not fall asleep in the field and get covered in vines. Could put Lilliput to shame ...
OR this is how those ancient humans attained such great biblical age - they also hyper-aged. In which case what is a year? And if we are now talking hyper-years in the bible now compared to modern years, then the actual age of the universe etc is even younger than 6000 years and we start all over again ...
Thanks.
Enjoy.

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iceage 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5914 days)
Posts: 1024
From: Pacific Northwest
Joined: 09-08-2003


Message 7 of 57 (406187)
06-17-2007 2:48 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Percy
06-17-2007 10:18 AM


Keys in Wonderland
RAZD writes:
I've just spent many words examining an idea that is ludicrous on its face,
Yup. Keys is not really worth the effort to discuss anything, except perhaps to demonstrate to a wide audience the extremes of absurdity and dishonesty one has to go to maintain a YEC view.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 8 of 57 (406193)
06-17-2007 3:30 PM


More Speculations
While Keys makes occasional claims that the evidence is on his side, he hasn't as yet said what that evidence is, and one has to wonder how important evidence is in driving his views. Does he accept the Biblical account because he thinks the evidence supports it? If that's the case then convincing him that the evidence does not support it will be a function of his level of denial.
Or does he accept the Biblical account no matter what the evidence? If this is the case then presenting him evidence won't have any effect.
There were a couple comments about how great fast might be the accelerated processes Keys mentions but never describes. Before radiometric dating geologists already believed that the earth had to be at least hundreds of millions of years old, and this before plate tectonics. Even back when geologists believed the continents were largely static they had already collected a large enough record of geological change to require hundreds of millions of years.
According to a quick Internet search, the first trees appeared about 360 million years ago. If just for the sake of argument and simplicity we assume that modern trees only first appeared around 150 million years ago, and that we have fossil evidence of this that doesn't require radiometric dating, then Keys has to fit 150 million years worth of trees growing and dieing into just 1500 years. The ratio is 100,000 to 1. So if your average tree lives, say, 500 years (just to be generous to Keys) then before the flood a tree would have had to carry out its entire life cycle in just 2 days.
That means it would grow to roughly its full size in the first 5 hours of life, and over the 2 days of its life leaves would grow and fall 500 times, necessary for creating the 500 rings. That means fall would occur for the trees every 6 minutes.
One wonders what tree sap must have been like back then. In order to pump sap up the trees at a rate necessary to grow all the leaves in just a few seconds, it could not have been the viscous sticky liquid we know today. Even if back then it flowed as easily as water it would have been a difficult pumping task - we're talking fire hose velocities here.
And about bees, if bees were accelerated at the same rate, and if we assume that bees on their way to and from the nest fly at the rate of 10 feet/second, then accelerating bees by the same amount means that they would have to fly at 1 million feet per second, which is almost 200 miles per second or almost 700,000 miles/hour. Any bee striking you would be instantly fatal. Note that even if I'm off by a factor of a thousand, 700 miles/hour is about 500 feet/second, the speed your average rifle fires a bullet. And speaking of bullet speeds and thinking about sap again, how would bullet-speed mosquitoes ever become embedded in the ancient water-like sap to create the ancient-mosquitoes-trapped-in-amber fossils that we find today?
Fitting all the geological events known to science into a Biblical time scale is even more difficult. The Allegheny Mountains, now a very ancient mountain range worn down to a shadow of its former self, were preceded by an even more magnificent mountain range from around a billion years ago now all but gone except for the silt and sediments its erosion left behind. If these geological events were crammed not into a billion years but into 1500, then a mountain range with 3 and 4 mile high mountains rose in just a few decades at most, then was worn down to nubs in just a thousand years, then another nearly-as-large mountain range rose in its place in just a few decades, and then was warn down to perhaps half its height in perhaps a few hundred years.
With mountain ranges rising and falling at such great rates, one wouldn't have wanted to live anywhere near their shadow with such immense tectonic and erosive events taking place. I assume the near constant rain of the period necessary to foster the growth of billions of years of life living nearly simultaneously must have been what wore the mountains down so quickly, though it seems hardly enough. Odd that the Biblical accounts, written by a civilization well aware of the nearby mountain range that includes Ararat, never mention the immensely quick comings and goings of any mountain ranges.
--Percy

Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 9 of 57 (406199)
06-17-2007 4:17 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Percy
06-17-2007 3:30 PM


just a few nits
Note that even if I'm off by a factor of a thousand, 700 miles/hour is about 500 feet/second, the speed your average rifle fires a bullet.
Not quite. Really slow calibers like the 45acp or some loading of the 38 Special might go as slow as 500fps, but the average rifle caliber will be considerably higher, 1200fps to over 3000fps.
But that is a small issue. So far keys has simply not provided anything in support of his position except the assertion that "if there is any imaginable way around the problems, regardless of how silly the imaginary solutions are, they must be true."
It is a tiny little theological position, hardly worthy of notice.

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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RAZD
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Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
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Message 10 of 57 (406202)
06-17-2007 5:36 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Percy
06-17-2007 3:30 PM


The problems with accelerated time scales
A fun thread in it's own write ...
And about bees,...
Supersonic wing speeds? What about dragonflies (what is the fastest bug?)?
We also have the problem that if radioactivity didn't operate then, then there must have been a period of super-radioactivity to produce the daughter elements in the proportions we see, and what would this do to the amount of material needed to reach critical mass and how does THAT compare with the size of deposits found? Kaboomed or not?
Edited by RAZD, : sp

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Vacate
Member (Idle past 4600 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 10-01-2006


Message 11 of 57 (406220)
06-17-2007 11:54 PM


Flood proof tree
keys writes:
Therefore, the rings do not represent years, at all, as we get closer to the time of the flood. Now, yes, of course, they do.
Keys has shown that he believes the tree rings do not represent years when talking about pre-flood conditions. He states that growth rates where higher in those times and science does not have any evidence to show otherwise. Razd has shown that counting tree rings has added up to what scientists believe is a 9000 year history. If the Earth is only 6000 years old at least 3000 rings must have been produced in these accelerated pre-flood conditions.
The problem with Keys logic is that it appears to conflict with 'creation science' geology. These trees grew above what creationists insist is evidence of a world wide flood. How did these trees survive a world wide flood that raised mountains and moved continents in a single year; yet at the same time manage to be growing on top of the very same flood deposits?

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jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 12 of 57 (406223)
06-18-2007 12:18 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Vacate
06-17-2007 11:54 PM


Re: Flood proof tree
Keys has shown that he believes the tree rings do not represent years when talking about pre-flood conditions. He states that growth rates where higher in those times and science does not have any evidence to show otherwise.
That is fine but irrelevant.
The trees RAZD has discussed were cut down while living. If there had been a flood, it killed all the trees living at that time. A tree living when cut down and documented, must be a post flood tree. Unless keys can show evidence that conditions POST flood are different than today, he has nothing.
But then we all knew that anyway.

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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anglagard
Member (Idle past 836 days)
Posts: 2339
From: Socorro, New Mexico USA
Joined: 03-18-2006


Message 13 of 57 (406229)
06-18-2007 2:00 AM


Keys Has No Key
From what I have seen, Keys responds to every comprehensive and brilliantly presented argument with either the incredibly simplistic 'oh no it's not' straight from the kindergarten sandbox or 'all physical science operated differently back then according to what I say.' There is no supporting evidence, no rational refutation, not even scriptural documentation, just nothing but one-sentence bluster, the true hallmark of a troll.
RAZD is a saint.
As for Keys, all I have to say is 'whatever,' or is that too 'simple?'
Edited by anglagard, : slight adjustment

  
PaulK
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Message 14 of 57 (406230)
06-18-2007 2:07 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Vacate
06-17-2007 11:54 PM


Re: Flood proof tree
He's now saying that all he trees used in the chronologies are post-flood.
So we now have the idea that at some point in the past current species of trees grew in a radically different way - but he's offered no evidence or even a plausible explanation for why this should be so. It's just bullshit made up for the express purpose of ignoring the clear evidence. The whole basis for the argument is that the truth must be whatever is convenient for him. I'd like to see him argue for that proposition instead of assuming it all the time. Let's see some of the real truth from a creationist for once.
Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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Vacate
Member (Idle past 4600 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 10-01-2006


Message 15 of 57 (406234)
06-18-2007 4:05 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by PaulK
06-18-2007 2:07 AM


Re: Flood proof tree
My mistake for not reading the entire thread before posting in the peanut gallery! I did not think he would shift his position so fast in the debate.
From this:
Keys writes:
Not really that relevant, because this is after the period of the flood. I expect present rates were in effect
To this:
Keys writes:
Not if all the trees on earth grew only after the flood.
To his credit, now he does not have to explain how the trees got on top of the flood deposits. All he had to do was make an accelerated process even faster.
Its a wonder though that Noah could build an ark out of such bizarre materials. As fast as he cut the tree it would repair itself. Was this hyper growth in effect before the flood or just in the small period of time after? ( The period of time before the new laws came into effect )

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