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Author | Topic: Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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I'm surprised at your reaction. When you say things like this, as you did in Message 2659:
Faith in Message 2659 writes: ...or maybe I'm just up against a hidebound bunch of anti-creationists. Then you should expect a defense against what feels to us like an unwarranted and untrue characterization. You called us narrow, rigid in opinion, and inflexible (that's the definition of hidebound). Calling us anti-creationists in that context declares our opposition to be based on obstinacy, intolerance, intransigence and obduracy rather than on data and analysis. Of course there's going to be a defense.
Keep it up and I'll keep on ignoring you. I still have a long ways to go before I'm caught up in this thread, but I catch bits and pieces of what lies ahead each time I post a message, and it seems possible that you may not be ignoring me. I think that's a good thing, because I don't think on-topic posts that argue from evidence should ever be ignored. I encourage you to eschew engaging in the periodic shunning of one person or another.
YOUR behavior should have gotten you suspended many times over by now, but you are so self-righteous about it you don't even see your own egregious violation of your own rules. You don't say which posts, but they're likely just like the one you're responding to, a response to another of your insults.
The way I see it is that I am a lone individual who is at the mercy of a punitive autocratic madman. I'm really a pussycat once you get to know me.
What I get out of being here is being able to work through some of my own views. I don't much care any more whether I convince anyone here or not. Then I think you have to ask yourself whether you're really getting anything of value out of EvC Forum. Developing and refining your ideas by soliciting feedback and engaging in a give and take is a valuable exercise, but that's not what you're doing here. You just throw your ideas out to us and demand we accept them. You dispute almost all feedback, no matter how significant or minor, and usually on the weakest of grounds. If feedback is just an annoyance to you then you're not gaining any advantage from it. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
14174dm writes: But the tops of the layers above the sags are horizontal? Where is the sag above the channel? Are you referring to this diagram:
If that's the right diagram then Faith referred to sags, too, but I couldn't find them. I asked her to point out where the sags were, but she never replied. Could you describe where they are? Thanks. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
NoNukes writes: Really, no kidding. You didn't happen to jot down the figures when you did this analysis, did you?
I think it is generally accepted that dogs are one of the most varied species on earth. Not much point in nitpicking this one. Varied genetically? What Faith said in Message 2711 that I was replying to was about genetic diversity:
Faith in Message 2711 writes: ...but dogs nevertheless have enormous genetic diversity compared to other species today,... There are many dog breeds, but breeding reduces genetic diversity. Creating more breeds cannot create new alleles and might eliminate alleles from any new breed. That is, breeding cannot increase genetic diversity, and so dogs cannot be any more genetically diverse than wolves. I don't know how the genetic diversity of wolves compares to other species, but I'll go out on a limb and just flatly state that the gray wolf does not have "enormous genetic diversity compared to other species today," and if it doesn't then the dog doesn't. Concerning possible mutational contributions to dog diversity, there hasn't been enough time for mutations to meaningfully increase it unless dogs descended from wolves much longer ago than ten or fifteen thousand years. My bet is that the total genetic diversity of dogs across all breeds must be less than that of the gray wolf from which it is descended, though the success of efforts to exterminate the wolf in some regions over the past couple hundred years could possibly have negatively influenced modern wolf diversity. I did do a couple quick Google searches to make sure my brain hasn't jumped the tracks in thinking that dog diversity can't be that different from wolf diversity. Doggie Diversity is very non-technical, but a quick scan revealed it consistent with my thinking that dog diversity isn't anything to rave about. The canine genome is technical and looks interesting, though it doesn't look like it attempts anything quantitative about relative dog/wolf diversity. Analysis of Genetic Variation in 28 Dog Breed Populations With 100 Microsatellite Markers says in passing:
quote: I don't think this warrants any more time, so I'm going to move on. But as far as Faith's claim that the dog has "enormous genetic diversity compared to other species today", that's total hogwash. Like most everything Faith says, it's made up. If Faith would like to prove me wrong then she can toss us a bone, so to speak, and provide some of the numbers from her analysis. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
No problem - none of us are perfect. I didn't understand your last sentence:
I nevertheless think it's important to make the equation. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Faith writes: I do wish it would be acknowledged that just because my views have been "rebutted" doesn't mean the rebuttal is automatically correct, Good grief. This is a spurious but highly ironic objection. You're responding to a complaint that you ignore responses by ignoring it and going off about something else. The way discussion between two people ideally works is that one person makes a point, the other person rebuts it, the first person rebuts the rebuttal, the other person rebuts that rebuttal, and so forth and so on. Discussion with you often doesn't work that way. What often happens is that you make a point or a claim or an assertion or whatever, someone rebuts it, and you ignore it. Then in a later post you make the same point again as if no one had ever rebutted it, so someone rebuts it again, and you ignore it. Then in a later post you make the same point yet again as if no one had ever rebutted it,...etc... That you do this constantly is the complaint. You also do this brazenly, openly telling whoever happens to raise your ire (me in this particular thread) that you're ignoring them without regard to the quality of their arguments. But I would like to express my thanks for not totally ignoring me. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
What a load of crap.
Faith writes: I thought I answered this idea that the depth would have been the same by saying a lot of the stratified sediment left by the Flood came from the ocean itself,... Most strata are marine. If the sediments for the marine strata originated in the oceans then there's a big problem with sandstone and slate/shale. These are coastal and near-coastal sediments. There isn't enough coastline in the world, and particularly not around Pangaea which had much less coastline than the world today, to provide all the sediment necessary for creating all the sandstone and shale/slate strata we see today. For some reason you never find numbers persuasive, maybe you're just not a math person, but I'm going to do some math anyway. Total length of the world's coastline today is 221,000 miles (Google). I can't find a figure for Pangaea, but whatever its total coastline length was, it was much less than today. So I'll use the current figure because it's most favorable to your scenario. These sand and silt/mud/clay deposits had only 2000 years to accumulate between creation and the flood, so to be most favorable to your scenario we'll assume a massive accumulation rate of a meter per thousand years. Contemporary figures are a few centimeters per thousand years, so I'm using a figure at least ten times greater than current rates. Using this figure of a meter of sediments per thousand years, the total depth of sand and silt/mud/clay deposits was 2 meters at the beginning of the flood. We'll assume that sand deposits extend a mile off the coast, and that silt/mud/clay deposits extend an additional 10 miles off the coast. The total volume of sand deposits in the world when the Flood began is 2 meters multiplied by 221,000 miles of coastline multiplied by 1 mile in extent from the coast out to sea. That is 442,000 cubic miles of sand sediment. The total volume of silt/mud/clay deposits in the world when the Flood began is 2 meters multiplied by 221,000 miles of coastline multiplies by 10 miles in extent from where the sand deposits end and further out to sea, which is 4,420,000 cubic miles of silt/mud/clay sediment. Adding together the volumes of all sand and silt/mud/clay deposits when the flood began, we take the 442,000 cubic miles of sand and add it tothe 4,420,000 cubic miles of silt/mud/clay to get a total of 4,862,000 cubic miles of available sediments for the Flood to redistribute to the land. I'll round this up to 4.9 million cubic miles, again, more favorable to your scenario. Total world land area today is about 200 million square miles, and average elevation of land is about a half mile, so that tells us there are about 100 million cubic miles of strata on land. So subtracting the total volume of sand/silt/mud/clay deposits of 4.9 million cubic miles from the total land strata volume of 100 million cubic miles we get 95.1 million cubic miles of strata we can't account for. Limestone is 11% of all strata. 11% of 100 million cubic miles is 11 million cubic miles, so we subtract that from the 95.1 million cubic miles and get 84.1 million cubic miles of strata remaining to be accounted for. Terrestrial strata are much less common than marine strata, but we'll use a figure highly favorable to your scenario, 5 million cubic miles of terrestrial strata (there couldn't have been much more - pile terrestrial strata too deep and it will lithify, making it impossible for the rain to wash it into the sea). We subtract this 5 million cubic miles from the remaining 84.1 million cubic miles and get 79.1 million cubic miles of unaccounted for strata. This 79.1 million cubic miles of unaccounted for strata disproves your idea that the sediments that the flood deposited on land came primarily from the sea. While these calculations are all just ballpark approximations, all figures were biased in favor of your scenario. In particular don't forget I used the length of the modern coastline, not of the Pangaea coastline which would have been much less than the modern figure.
...and that I'd assume the enormous amount of vegetation on the land would have contributed to the looseness of the soil there. Big trees have deep roots. This is a strange thing to say. Where I live anything growing in the ground is in pretty solid soil. I just removed about 1000 small white pines growing along the driveway. The break in the tree line created by the driveway encouraged their growth, and after 30 years they had become a nuisance, blocking our view of the road and tilting over into the driveway in the snow, blocking the driveway and turning clearing the driveway of snow into a major exercise because we first had to shake the snow off the white pines so they'd straighten up and get out of the way.They ranged in height from a few inches to 10 feet. When we could we just grabbed them firmly and pulled them out of the ground. It was hard work. Any white pine taller than a few feet had a big enough root system to put up a determined fight. Many that were taller than 6 feet could not be pulled from the ground, so we cut them off as close to ground level as possible. The ground around this dense growth of white pine was by no means loose. Don't you have trees where you live? If so, is the soil loose around your trees? Can you just walk right up to them and just yank them out of the ground or just push them over? I wouldn't think so. This claim of looseness of soil due to big trees and an "enormous amount of vegetation" seems like nonsense. But the claim is irrelevant anyway because vegetation and trees only affect the very topmost layer of soil. You don't say what the average elevation of land was before the flood, but it's not really important since any figure you gave would be made up, but even the deepest roots wouldn't extend deeper than 10 feet. Shrubs and trees only affect the very topmost portion of land. Summing up, there wasn't enough sediment in the seas to provide sufficient material for all the strata we see on land today, not even close. And plants and trees don't loosen soil, and even if they did it would be the very topmost layer of soil. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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I hope you read this one.
Faith writes: I just lost a fairly long post I was composing and am not up to reconstructing it right now but I remember all its parts so may come back to it later. Sorry that happened, but it's just as well that the long version was lost. I say that because you're operating under a misimpression - you think geology takes a position that it does not. This misunderstanding has been explained several times in this thread, which is why I said at the top that I hope you read this one, because then the discussion can finally move past this.
If it's land you were thinking about when you asked this question, most land does not become strata. Land that does become strata is most often near coastal.
I just lost a fairly long post I was composing and am not up to reconstructing it right now but I remember all its parts so may come back to it later. This idea that "flat" land of the sort you are always showing photos could ever become a rock like those in the geo/strat columns needs to be answered but I don't think any answer will do it for you. I don't know how anyone could possibly be convinced of such an idea but of course you'll remind me that incredulity is not an argument. Too bad, it really should be in a case as obvious as this. Incredulity is a perfectly legitimate emotion, but it is not an argument. "I can't believe I have to explain this yet again," is a legitimate expression of incredulity (and frustration and exasperation), but if I left it at that then you would not understand why I was incredulous, would you. And so it must be explained. Again. But if you read and understand this then the discussion might move onward instead of repeatedly rehashing this issue. We don't insist you believe this is what actually happened, but it would represent significant progress if you understood that this is what geology actually thinks happened, instead of repeatedly arguing against things geology does not believe. In Message 2760 you made this assertion:
Faith in Message 2760 writes: Nothing that flat [as strata] exists on the earth's surface normally,... But this is, of course, untrue. Beneath the sea the abyssal plains are extremely flat and of great extent. On land even your own state has vast flat stretches, as shown in this image of Ash Meadows:
This image was offered because it is very flat, not because it's likely to be preserved as strata, but it could be. It depends upon what happens geologically in the future. If the region experiences no uplift then the mountains and the prairie will gradually be eroded lower and lower and disappear. A thousand or two feet of strata beneath the prairie could be eroded away over time. But maybe instead a nearby region will experience uplift, increasing deposition onto this plain and gradually burying it more and more deeply in sediment, eventually to be lithified. Uplift will at some point cease, then erosion will dominate again and the now lithified prairie will one day be exposed. Perhaps a river will deeply incise parts of the region and expose the lithified prairie as a stratum in its walls.
There is no landscape of the sort you illustrate with photos that is anywhere near the extent of the rock formations you think could come from such land. You're connecting two different things that no one has ever suggested should be connected. In response to your assertions that none of the Earth's surface is as flat and straight as strata we have repeatedly pointed out that large portions of the Earth's surface are extremely flat, like Ash Meadows, large parts of Kansas and the abyssal plains. But then you're making a false connection between this fact and your mistaken notion that geology believes the strata of the Grand Canyon region formed by deposition atop flat landscapes like these. No one is suggesting or has ever suggested that. We have said time and again that the strata of the Grand Canyon are the result of Walther's Law, about which I still see no indication that you understand. Walther's Law produces alternating layers of sandstone, shale and limestone. Because that is what we see in the Grand Canyon region naturally we believe Walther's Law was responsible. What we don't see is paleosols, which is what we would see had ancient prairies become buried and lithified. The strata above the Kaibab that can be seen west of the Grand Canyon, for instance in the Bryce Canyon area, have more varied histories. Some formed through Walther's Law, some formed in lake-filled regions that were also affected by nearby orogeny, some formed other ways.
None of your "flat" landscapes could ever form a knife-edge straight contact with another,... Sure they could. One obvious way is deposition in a terrestrial environment followed by uplift resulting in erosion followed by subsidence into a marine environment.
...let alone cover even a hundredth of the territory the rocks actually cover. This again reflects you mistakenly combining our corrections of your assertions that nothing as flat and straight as strata exist on the Earth's surface with your misimpression that we think the strata of the Grand Canyon region resulted from deposition atop flat terrestrial regions of the Earth. Again, all the evidence suggests that the strata in the Grand Canyon region resulted from Walther's Law. Moving on to your Message 2833:
Where on earth did I say "paleosols can't happen????" Quoting you from your Message 2760:
Faith in Message 2760 writes: "Earth" can't become a sedimentary rock; "soil" can't become a sedimentary rock. A paleosol is soil that has become sedimentary rock, so you just said that paleosols can't happen.
Here's a paragraph from Wikipedia, Geological Formations, that is about the connection between the strata and the time periods. You don't quote anything I say, and this doesn't look like a response to anything I said.
Without the strata there would be no Geological Time Scale. How convenient that each time period has at least one such rock. I never mentioned the Geologic Timescale. What is it you think I said that you're attempting to rebut here?
Of course I don't buy any of the "depositional environments" stuff about tidal mudflats, beaches and sand dunes etc. Of course, but can you explain why? The rest of this message contains some really neat images and useful descriptions but nothing that requires rebuttal. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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I switched to using Kind in this discussion where I sometimes used to use species because I realized species has meanings I don't intend. You quote nothing I said, I can only guess you're responding to where I said that according to you, around mid April species and kind were the same thing, but now in early May they're not. You didn't switch to using kind - you changed it from being defined as a species to having no definition at all.
Kind is meant to define a creature that may vary greatly but only within its own genome. A genome is all the genes and chromosomes of a species. Unless kind is synonymous with species, a kind cannot have a genome.
Where you use "species" I would probably usually use "subspecies." These words already have definitions - you cannot change them. The gray wolf is a species, dogs are a subspecies of the gray wolf.
I usually don't try to define Kind at all because it seems futile... Without a definition you've got an unintelligible proposition.
...but in some cases it seems clear enough to define it for a particular creature. Having a different definition of kind for different creatures just makes more clear that you're making things up as you go along.
Hence what I've said about dogs and cats and trilobites, attempting to define them by their "basic shape." This is so vague as to be useless. Dogs and cats have the same basic shape.
It doesn't seem ambiguous to me. If all that matters to you is how your ideas seem to you, why are you here?
No other mammal has the same skeleton as the dog, or the cat. So now you're changing your criteria from "same basic shape" to "same skeleton"?
I included wolves with coyotes with dogs as a Kind for that reason, that their skeletons are so similar;... And now you're changing your criteria from "same skeleton" to "similar skeletons"?
...and defined trilobites as sharing the three-lobed structure with the side lobes made up of spines that can be lengthened or shortened etc. And now you're changing your criteria from "similar skeletons" to lobe numbers?
...which includes an enormous variety, many of which are different enough to be hard to recognize. Your criteria for determining kind lack generality and consistency. So are all fish the same kind? Are all insects the same kind? Are all snakes the same kind?
I have one consistent idea in my mind about all these things so I'm not sure how I've given you the impression I have different definitions. You changed your criteria three times in this post alone. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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At one point I estimated that Faith had only responded to 10-15% of my posts, and naturally that left many unanswered questions. Some answers were provided, but they were usually made up and so can't be considered answers. Here is a list of questions still unanswered:
And here are a list of things Faith still has doesn't understand or has misconceptions about:
--Percy Edited by Percy, : Typo.
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