Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham

This is your typical garbling that I don't even recognize as representing anything I've ever saidl. "No pre-Flood layers survived the Flood" is absolute gobbledygook, I have NO idea what you mean or what I could have said to inspire such nonsense. I don't believe there WERE any "pre-Flood" layers. What ARE you talking about?But yes, all the strata we see today I believe were the result of the Flood. So far so good. No, tectonic movement was the cause of the tilting, but I believe the volcano occurred at the same time, triggered by the tectonic movement, and formed the granite and the schist and the other evidences of magma intrusions. Yes, I believe the tectonic force was sufficient to buckle the lower strata beneath the weight of the strata above which were at least two miles deep. I have never ever changed my position. I do sometimes change my terminology when it seems necessary to get across a point. I do try to accommodate the objections I get from you all, but my basic position has remained the same.Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.

One creationist (Woodmorappe) has written about that, but he places some of the fossil hominids in the post-flood and post Babel timeframe.

The relevant evidence clearly shows that Homo sapiens sensu lato is a separate and distinct entity from the other hominids. No overall evolutionary progression is to be found. Adam and Eve, and not the australopiths/habilines, are our actual ancestors. As pointed out by other creationists [e.g., Lubenow], Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis can best be understood as racial variants of modern man—-all descended from Adam and Eve, and most likely arising after the separation of people groups after Babel.

Just one problem.If the change from modern man, i.e., Adam and Eve, to these four species of fossil man took place since the Babel incident, which is usually placed after the global flood and in the range of 4,000 to 5,300 years ago or less. The change from modern man to Homo ergaster would require a rate of evolution on the order of several hundred times as rapid as scientists posit for the change from Homo ergaster to modern man! This is in spite of the fact that most creationists deny evolution occurs on this scale at all; now they have not only proposed such a change themselves, but see it several hundreds of times faster and in reverse!Adapted from:http://blog.darwincentral.org/...-at-creation-science-part-i

the point is that they're not. in your model, it would what's on top of the geologic column. the icing on the cake, so to speak. not the rock of the column itself, but the unlithified sediment above it. not sedimentary rock, no. sediment. the stuff that rivers wash down stream. the stuff the beaches are made of. the stuff that if you go into your front yard right now and start digging you'll hit just below the top soil. ken ham argues that the bible loosely means families when it says kinds. i happen to agree with him, and it's probably the only biblical exegesis i happen to agree with him on. you waffled on this at the time.the problem is that you have to get from those representative "kinds" to the individual species. and that means lots and lots of speciation events. we would see tons of "microevolution" transitions in the archaeological and historical record.

You said I answered: Now you quote the other thread: This looks to me like what I just said and not what you characterized me as saying. I objected to your characterizing my saying any of the rock was SOFT, and clearly I DIDN’T say that. Didn't I just say it was HARDENED, and not that it was ROCK or LITHIFIED? Didn't I just say it was pretty solid because of the stack that had compressed it from above? Then that it would have dried. And I added this time that it would eventually have lithified too, which is the same thing as saying it may not have been true rock for quite some time.
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I don't think you can read, Percy. Not as I read it I didn’t, I said what I just said I said and not what you said I said. The problem is that you are reading something into my words that isn't there, and when I even say the same thing again in slightly different words you think I'm contradicting myself. The problem here is the way you are reading me.

But I don't think in terms of sediment above the geologic column at all. There is just the surface of the earth which is not segregated into sediments the way the column is. There is no relationship whatever. The geologic column is the specific product of a one-time event; it will never be repeated. But nothing like the DISCREET SEGREGATED sediments of the geologic column, just mixed STUFF. DIRT if you will. MIXED sediments. That's the stuff of the surface of the earth, nothing at all like the strata of the geologic column. And it will never BE part of the geologic column. Ken Ham is welcome to his opinion and maybe he's right, but I don't know if there is a clear representative of the Kinds in the Linnaean chart. Even if some fit the Family level my impression is that others may not. Here finally you are making it clearer what you are trying to say but it's still awfully muddled.There would have been no pure representatives of the original Kinds on the ark, thanks to death. There would only have been varieties that had already microevolved from the originals to that point. There would already have been many varieties or breeds or races of cats, dogs, bears, horses and so on. There was still enough genetic variability for two of each Kind to be the progenitors of all the varieties, breeds, races that developed since then. This is a very strange idea. Each Kind is represented by all its varieties, the way the human race is represented by all its races, the way dogs are represented by all its breeds and so on. There is no "getting from" Kind to species, or from anything to anything else. I think you have a very muddled idea that still needs straightening out. Well, if you mean that the cat pair that were on the ark would have been the parents of lions and tigers and cheetahs and bobcats and jaguars and the domestic tabby, sure, all that obviously happened since the ark. And the varieties of dogs and bears and all the rest of it. Well, surely you do see all the varieties of cats and dogs and bears and all the rest of them, don't you? But I'm leery of that word "transitions" because none of these are transitions, they are breeds or races or varieties unto themselves.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are proposing a rate of evolution that is hundreds to thousands of times faster than any evolutionist ever proposed. Or, even more, as this rate of evolution would have had to occur right after the ark before anyone was around, or folks like the Egyptians and all the rest would have noticed it. So, your superduperevolution would have had to be close to instantaneous.And as I pointed out upthread, some creationists even propose that evolution goes in reverse!How can you folks post these things with a straight face? At some point you have to realize you are just making things up, and that the evidence from the real world says you are wrong. Don't you worry about how silly you are, and how little credibility your cause has when you make things up like that?c.f., St. Augustine

So you're the third case of miscommunication now. Shouldn't be a surprise I guess. But I'm suspicious of the word "sediments" although I'm sure it's technically correct enough, because the sediments in the geologic column are strictly segregated and I don't think of the sediments on the surface of the earth or in the archaeological digs as the same sort of thing at all, but as I just wrote to Arach, mixed stuff, dirt etc. I don't know what Ham said about this but I certainly don't believe anything "super" happened after the Flood, just that there was enough genetic variability in the pairs of the Kinds to produce all the varieties or breeds or races since then. If you can appreciate that degree of genetic variability, which I suppose is mostly a significantly greater percentage of heterozygosity than we see today, then the varieties that came from them are the perfectly normal NONSUPER generation of the range of varieties since then. Their offspring pair up and when a population gets large enough, some of them go off to new areas where they become reproductively isolated from the parent group and that's how new varieties or breeds or races are formed. Here's where you lose me. I have NO idea of "intermediate" forms of anything. And why should they be in sediments anyway? I would suppose that the bones of some domesticated animals would be found in archaeological digs but they'd just be one or another variety of the Kind, nothing "intermediate" or "transitional," just a breed like other breeds. Most of which I would expect to have been walking around on the earth and not buried in archaeological sediments anyway, but running in their own wild populations and forming their own varieties or races or breeds as they became geographically isolated from each other. [ABE: The strikeout is where I was puzzled about why you wanted them buried but I finally realized that of course you want to compare them to the fossils in the strata. Duh. Sorry]What would I expect to find buried in archaeological sites after the Flood I guess you are asking? Well, breeds of whatever animals were domesticated by the people in those settlements. What that has to do with "transitionals" or anything "intermediate" -- between what and what anyway? -- is beyond me.ABE: Or the bones of the animals they hunted for food. No intermediate anythings there either, just whatever races or varieties were wild in that area.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That's for sure.But all the formation of races or varieties or breeds takes is the reproductive isolation of a small number of individuals. The size of the population would determine how long it would take for the whole group to mix its genes to the point of developing a shared new look or phenotype, but no more than a couple hundred years should be needed in any case, and much smaller groups would take a lot less time.In fact the shortness of time needed to bring about quite striking changes, new breeds for instance, is probably an argument against the ToE's millions of years for anything.

On the contrary, the rate of evolution we see is a substantial argument against the post-flood idea of a superevolution.Do you not see the basic problem here? Creationists argue against evolutionary change over millions of years, then propose the same change in a few hundred years, or maybe a thousand years at most?Don't you see a problem with that?

No problem at all because only variation within a Kind is genetically possible as I've argued many times. All you can get is breeds or varieties or races, you can never get anything that isn't already built into the genome of the Kind.

There's no mention of Jerusalem, Jericho, the Nile, the Dead Sea or the Red Sea before the Flood, but it's a valid question why the Tigris and Euphrates still exist since they were mentioned as flowing out from Eden. I would suppose the two that exist now aren't the same ones but named after them. Or the stratigraphy of the region might be a clue I suppose.

Looks to me like your chart of trilobites demonstrates what I said, or maybe you agree with me and don't consider the ones in the higher strata to have evolved any more from those in lower strata than those that share the same strata would have from each other. In which case you agree with me that they are all simply varieties possible within the trilobite genome and could just as well have all lived at the same time.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

How long does it take for a new species to evolve?The figure I heard in 1984 was 50,000 years and that that was the most radically rapid rate advocated by the most radical evolutionists.You are advocating rates of a few hundred years or 1,000 years at most. That is more than 50 times more rapid than that advocated by the most radical evolutionists.You obviously have not given this any thought at all. Information can be added through mutation. There are several classifications of mutation, but the only one that is of any possible interest in evolution is genetic mutation in which the genetic code germ cells have changed. Only changes in germ cells (sperm and eggs) can be passed on to future generations; a body cell could not.There are a handful of types of genetic mutations; follow that link to learn what they are. For example, in insertion mutations an entire allele can be copied and inserted, resulting in an extra copy of a gene. I assume that you were taught some genetics in high school biology; I know that I was in 1967. Dominant and recessive genes occurring in pairs. Homogeneous dominant or heterogeneous pairings (eg, BB or Bb) result in the trait (eg, black skin) expressing itself, whereas homogeneous recessive (eg, bb) results in white skin. But black would mean completely black and white would mean albino, so how do we explain the wide range of brown that actually exists? Multiple alleles, many copies of that gene pair, each one producing melanin or not; the more dominant alleles the individual possesses, the darker his skin will be -- so for a single allele, a dominant would not actually produce a black individual, but conceptually that is what expression or non-expression of a trait would be. And where did all those multiple alleles come from? From insertion mutations creating extra copies of that gene.You really should learn something about genetics before you make such ignorant statements. Well, yeah, duh! So what point do you think that you are making? Haven't you ever heard of nested clades? Do you have any idea at all what you are talking about? Or are you simply mindlessly parroting creationist nonsense again?What do you think that evolution requires? From far too many creationists, I have heard proclamations to the effect of "I would believe in evolution if a dog gave birth to a cat". And in Message 198 where Dr. Adequate posted a graphic from Answers in Genesis depicting the creation of all the different feline species from some "originally created kind" of cat -- you "replied" to that message with a non sequitur Message 205 of "There were no post-Flood STRATA." That graphic states:

quote:

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But every species belongs to its original kind -- cats are still cats, and dogs are dogs.

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So how is that supposed to refute evolution? Unless the author believed that evolution requires that a dog could give birth to a cat or vice versa.Is that what you believe? If so, then should you try to learn something about evolution before you try to refute it?

Perhaps on this one occasion you could get over your lifelong suspicion of correct things long enough to answer the question. Well, I call it "superevolution" because it would be much faster than ordinary evolutionists say evolution can go. Call it what you like, "mega-evolution", perhaps, or "hyperevolution"? Do you propose, then, that the superevolution (or whatever you want to call it) was so fast as to be actually saltational?

What do you mean by a "new species?" Assuming a population that starts out with pretty high genetic variability, I figure a new variety or breed or race could form fairly rapidly just by some relatively small number of individuals becoming reproductively isolated from that population, geographically for instance. A few hundred individuals could become a new variety in a couple hundred or so years. You are going to get a lot of new phenotypes in the new population when first isolated, within the first five or ten generations, because of the new gene frequencies, and that ought to be a clue how fast it can happen. Then if that population continues to inbreed and there is no gene flow with other populations, it would take more generations to establish it as a recognizable new variety. I'm guessing a couple hundred years. But based on what? And what is meant by "new species?" I think evolutionists are hampered by their idea that it takes mutations to bring about genetic change. No, all it takes is some number of generations of sexual recombination within the existing gene pool of a population over time, and not a terribly long time either. I'm just talking about what it takes to get a new variety/race/breed. It's the same as how you get a new breed in domestic breeding although that should normally be faster because you start with fewer individuals and protect them from breeding with unwanted types. In the wild it shouldn't take very long either if you start with a relatively small group of individuals, as long as there is complete reproductive isolation. It's the same genetics. I haven't? Actually I've thought about it a lot.; But what evolutionists think doesn't influence me much because I know they are hampered by their assumptions, especially about mutation, and aren't really thinking along these lines. In reality it doesn't take a long time for recognizable change to occur under the right circumstances, meaning reproductive isolation of a relatively small founding group. But you don't need mutation, and even if you have it and it does what you say it does it isn't going to speed up this process. It just naturally plays out by the change in gene frequencies brought about by the formation of a daughter population in reproductive isolation. That's all it takes. That's all you are doing in principle in breeding programs anyway.And besides, of course, the idea that mutations add any information is a fantasy, an article of faith. All mutations do is destroy the normal functioning DNA. No wonder the evolutionists estimate such long time periods. Mutation takes so long. And what good does that do? More than one gene for the same trait should do it. According to one creationist book, "there are at least four genes for skin color in the human gene pool: A, a, B, b." from combinations of which they figure all shades of skin are possible, AABB being the darkest, and aabb being the lightest. {What is Creation Science, Morris and Parker I have no idea why you are going on about all this. What ignorant statement have I made? I disagree with evolutionist thinking on this, I don't think it makes sense, I don't believe mutations have anything constructive to do with how variations develop. I hardly ever parrot creationists. "Within a Kind" means it can never vary genetically beyond the boundary of the Kind, a built in genetic limit. That's what I meant. Is that what you thought I meant? It's simply another way of describing microevolution, means therefore that macroevolution is genetically impossible. You still agree with it? As far as I know nothing I've been saying has anything whatever to do with that chart or anything else you've said. My reference is population genetics and my own often-argued position on these things.