Why is evolution so controversial?

Aside from what your dating methods say is possible or not, is there no OBSERVATIONAL fact about the Vishnu schist to determine its original sedimentary content?

It's something Faith believes. One can't help wondering where all the material the flood deposited to form the geologic column came from, and Faith's answer is that it washed off the antediluvian landscape. But most of the layers of the geological column are marine, and so the material of these marine layers, including their fossils, originally lay on land. Which of course makes no sense at all. I can include this distinction if you think it's important, but isn't Faith confused enough already? She doesn't even believe sedimentation in the ocean is contributing to the geologic column, so if I start distinguishing between ocean versus continental shelf sedimentation I can only imagine her confusion getting worse, though in what specific ways I couldn't possibly predict.I did make clear in one of my messages that sedimentary deposits near continental margins differ from those in mid-ocean. Right now I'm keeping it simple. If it's below sea level in the ocean then I'm calling it ocean floor. Again, Faith believes the material forming the layers of the geologic column was originally washed off the antediluvian landscape. Even though you put "land" in quotes, I'm sure when Faith read that she thought you were saying most of these layers were deposited on dry land and that you're pretty much taking her side.I do value being clear and accurate, but this is Faith we're talking about, and given Faith's level of ignorance and resistance to knowledge (e.g., she rejects repeated sea transgressions onto continents) I'm afraid that if I start saying the layers were deposited onto submerged portions of continents that she'll just get more confused. I'm open to suggestions for expressing it in ways that won't increase Faith's confusion.--Percy

So concerning the 12 mile thick layers in the Gulf of Mexico and off Long Island Sound and in various other places around the world, you're telling us that you don't believe they represent the geologic column in their respective parts of the world over the past hundred million years or so?Faith, you're not discussing, you're testifying. You're making statements of faith that are in no way tied to evidence, and you're even rejecting the application of simple terminology like the "geologic column" to cases where it clearly and unambiguously applies.You know, I think we're all okay with you not accepting the views of modern geology, with you believing they are wrong. What ticks everyone off is the great effort you make at insuring you don't even understand those views.What you need to do now is make an effort at understanding that modern geology views the layers on the sea floors all around the world to be part of the geologic column, and that the geologic column is growing in some places and being eroded in others. You don't have to accept this view yourself, but you do have to understand it (and many other things) in order to have an intelligent conversation. And then you have to develop arguments supported by evidence for why they're wrong. Just repeatedly declaring them wrong is testifying. It's religion, not science.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Actually, Dr A represented your views pretty accurately. For example, you do believe that God is responsible for the flood, as you stated here in Message 31, and which Dr A also quoted: You do have this tendency to get uppity whenever someone reminds you of what you've said in other threads. Why do you so often retreat from your own words? They certainly aren't taken out of context, as you just accused Dr A of doing, and they *do* accurately reflect your views, so what's the problem?And you do believe in magic water. You might not call it that yourself, but you've got to stop objecting every time people use different words than you would use. We know you don't call it magic water, but you believe water has properties that it clearly doesn't have, properties that one might only expect to find in a fantasy novel, and so magic water is the perfect term.And Dr A was also correct in stating that you don't know anything about geology. Your behavior here perfectly explains why that is: you reject geological views without understanding them.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Have you been drinking?This general complaint just won't do. You were not making "original observations." Rather, you were being dead wrong over and over, and I explained precisely where you were wrong and how. If you disagree post another reply to my Message 421 where you're specific about where you disagree and how.--Percy

Correct. This is sometimes called microevolution, however this is the process through which all species evolve and all evolution occurs at the breeding population level. The reduction or loss of interbreeding (gene flow, sharing of mutations) between the sub-populations results in different evolutionary responses within the separated sub-populations, each then responds independently to their different ecological challenges and opportunities, and this leads to divergence of hereditary traits between the subpopulations and the frequency of their distributions within the sub-populations.The process of forming a nested hierarchy by descent of new species from common ancestor populations, via the combination of phyletic change in species (evolution over many generations) and divergent speciation, and resulting in an increase in the diversity of life, is sometimes called macroevolution. This is often confusing, because there is no additional mechanism of evolution involved, rather this is just the result of looking at evolution over many generations and different ecologies. Such as the objective observation that lizards, turtles, crocodiles and birds are all tetrapods that have the same bone patterns (morphology) in their skeletons ...That they all have limbs with one bone near the torso, with similar shoulder and hip structures, then two bones below the elbow\knee joint (which is also a similar feature) and then many bones below the wrist\ankle joint (which again is a similar feature) ...That they all have similar vertebrae running from head to tail, and ribs and skull bones ...Etc Etc Etc ... and by comparing these bones, their various adaptations (like the shell of the turtle and the wind of the bird), and when they branched from a common ancestor based on morphology gave us this cladogram:

Testiduines
           ---------------- turtles
           |
           |              Lepidosauria
           |            ------------------ lizards
           |            |
----------▼|            |                   Crocodylomorpha
           | Diapsida   |                 ------------------ crocodilians
           ------------♦|                 |
                        | Archosauria     |
                        -----------------•|
                                          | Dinosauria
                                          ------------------ birds

While using genetic markers in genomes of these various organisms gave us this cladogram:

Lepidosauria
           ---------------- lizards
           |
           |              Testiduines
           |            ------------------ turtles
 Diapsida  |            |
----------♦|            |                   Crocodylomorpha
           |            |                 ------------------ crocodilians
           ------------▼|                 |
                        | Archosauria     |
                        -----------------•|
                                          | Dinosauria
                                          ------------------ birds

Where the only "dispute" is which came first, the turtle or the lizard ...A similar cladogram could be developed from embryology and determining the points at which fetal development diverged. A lot of the morphological and embryological observations were made before Darwin and his theory explained the causal basis for the observed structure of relatedness It is an objective process Faith, one that has been replicated with the same results. Once again we see that genetics could have provided an entirely different picture ... but didn't.The consilience of similar results from entirely different processes reinforces the validity of the whole. All characteristics are used. The more homologies and derived traits the better. Characteristics such as the heart structure:Adelaidean -- Crocodile evolution no heart-warmer

quote:

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"There's an assumption that warm-bloodedness always evolves from cold-bloodedness, because being warm-blooded is seen as better - this is a reversal of that thinking," he said.

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"The strongest clue comes from the four chambered heart that living crocodiles share with birds and mammals. Such a heart perfectly separates blood going to the lungs from that going to the body, which is a requirement for the high blood flow rates and high metabolic rates characteristic of warm-bloodedness. However, living crocodiles are cold-blooded, so it didn't make sense for them to have a warm-blooded heart.

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Professor Seymour's work on the development of salt-water crocodile hearts and that by Christina Bennett-Stamper on American alligators shows that the embryos go through stages that indicate their evolutionary history.

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"When I looked at the palaeontology of crocodiles, a consistent picture appeared-the earliest ancestors of crocodiles were definitely not sit-and-wait predators. Instead, many had long legs and some ran around on only two legs. These were obviously highly active, terrestrial predators which would have been well served by warm-bloodedness and a four chambered heart.

​

"Between 200 and 65 million years ago, the crocodilian lineage diversified into more than 150 genera in all kinds of habitats from land-based to fresh water and the ocean," he said.

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Well it is your choice whether you want to learn or hide from knowledge.Edited by RAZD, : add

Again, have you been drinking?So now you're objecting that you weren't talking about the oceans.Except that you were.Faith, what is wrong with you? Unless you're going to go back and edit your message to conform with your revisionist claim, your words are there for all to see. You say you weren't talking about the oceans, yet here are your actual words from Message 334 making it perfectly clear that you *were* indeed talking about the oceans when you said they weren't the same scale: Could we please have no more of your "I didn't say that, you're misrepresenting me" crap?--Percy

Probably, but it's not really relevant. The point is that your statement is/was wrong. You cannot derive the Vishnu from a formation that did not yet exist.

It hasn't been absolutely clear what the nature of Faith's original material was in your view. You could be interpreted as saying that the original material on land was marine. Of course, it's hard to make any sense whatsoever out of her mish-mosh.

Why is evolution so controversial?Personally, I think it has to do with the religious fanaticism of its adherents: Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

And what do these quotes have to do with religious fanatacism?

You haven't come up with any "PHYSICAL FACTS" so far, just plenty of false assertions. Well, now you're just being self-serving by making stuff up again about what was said. No one mentioned sedimentary deposits accumulating on land, including you. Unlike the things you make up, the words in this thread actually exist and have been recorded, and anyone can review them and see that you are making things up.Marine layers outnumber terrestrial layers by a wide margin because most land is not usually the lowest point. There are exceptions, but usually the lowest point is not on land but in rivers, lakes and oceans. That's why most sedimentary layers are marine.What is your evidence that the material in the strata of the geologic column was washed off the antediluvian landscape? How is it that this material that washed off the land is the same kind of material that is created over long periods in the ocean near continents, just as we observe today? The sandstone, shale and limestone that we see being deposited today off continental coasts and in shallow warm seas is the same as in the layers of the geologic column.What we see today is that sandstone is deposited onto the geologic column immediately off the coast. If the material for the sandstone layers actually washed off the antediluvian landscape, then how did all this sand come to be on land? And how did it become full of marine fossils?You know, it's amazing how you do this, but every new thread where you discuss the flood brings to light yet another basic geological principle about which you have no clue. We had no idea that you didn't understand that the sedimentary processes we see taking place along continental margins today are the same ones that created the marine layers we observe in the geologic column. You said you read Dr Adequate's Introduction To Geology thread, and he discusses marine transgressions in Message 176. Even if you don't think transgressions can ever happen (I wonder if this disbelief will continue if you live long enough to witness the seas transgress over Bangladesh and Venice), you still have to incorporate it into your thinking as one of the principles of geology that is supported by a great deal of observational evidence. You can't just ignore it, at least not if you want to maintain any claim at all to intellectual integrity. You're making stuff up again. What we believe geologically is as firm as the evidence supporting it. If the evidence changes then our views will change.The problem is that with no evidence you declare that "I know what He has said is true,", and then you cleave to that view in the face of mountains of contrary evidence. This is an expression of deeply felt religious faith. There's no science in it.--Percy

I'm going by what Faith says, for example here in her Message 359: I'm describing what Faith believes, not what I believe. Faith believes that the material for the layers of the geologic column was washed off the antediluvian landscape. Since most sedimentary layers are marine, it follows that Faith's views require that most of the material covering the antediluvian landscape must have been marine.It feels to me like I'm expressing this clearly, but if not then let me know how I can improve it. I certainly don't want to further Faith's confusion.--Percy

Well, theoretically, the sediments are marine when they are deposited in a marine environment, regardless of where they came from. However. we can say that the sediments are terrigenous in that they came from the land.The point here is that there must have been a whole lot of land mass exposed right up to the end of the fludde (and, logically, after, since terrigenous deposits have been continuously forming since the beginning of the geological record up to the present). Certainly, the Mississippi Delta has been accumulating for much more than 6ky.

Somebody asks me a question, where did the sediments come from for the strata, I toss off a casual answer that they must have been washed off the land mass. Now I'm hearing that "most sedimentary layers are marine," so I must be wrong. I'm just astonished at how a big problem can be made out of a big nothing.OK, sediments may ALSO come from the ocean, and should also have been churned up in the Flood and then also deposited in the strata. But since all of it ended up in the ocean and since the marine layers in the strata are interspersed among terrestrial layers, there apparently isn't a strict correlation between origin and deposition. Big screaming deal about nothing.AGAIN let me point out the alternative view of the formation of the strata by Establishment Geology: that if there is a layer containing marine fossils, or even a limestone layer, they postulate, no they assume, no they call it a fact, that that layer was formed right there on that spot in a marine environment. Then if the layer above that one contains land fossils they declare that the sea had receded for the duration of that land deposition. And it goes on up the strata back and forth like that depending on what sort of sediment is involved with what sort of fossil contents. By the time we get to the Permian, a mile above the Precambrian in the GC area anyway, we have a deep water formation according to a website about the GC that I suppose I can dig up if I have to. So at that level the ocean has risen to an enormous depth, even deeper than the Flood rose I would guess, which means it has done so all over the globe of course, but this doesn't bother anybody for some reason. Risings and fallings of sea level to such enormous heights seems to them to be normal geology. But they always complain that the Flood couldn't have done that even once, and where would that water have gone anyway?SO with all the mixing of the sediments and ocean water in the Flood there is no necessary problem with interspersing some marine layers with some land layers.