Re: Why would cultural Christians reject evidence if it existed?
Faith writes:
Boy was that a gobbledygook of an answer.
I was able to understand JonF's point, but I can see how it might have seemed a bit garbled to you. But in that case it is incumbent upon you, if working toward mutual understandings is your goal, as it should be for everyone here, to make clear what it was you felt he hadn't explained properly.
But you didn't do that. Your goal seems to be to make discussion as chaotic and confused as your views.
I didn't know the size variation was that great. That's a variation of 350×. Faith would no doubt cite dogs as having a large size variation, and they do. But calculating it out by height, the Chihuahua can be as small as around 4 inches tall, while the Great Dane is around 40 inches tall, a variation of a mere 10×.
You are right I would point to the dog species Kind...
You still haven't defined kind. This failure to define kind despite it being repeatedly called to your attention is just one of many of those silly needless fatal mistakes you spawn that make your arguments like zombies that march mindlessly on not knowing they are dead.
...since they vary greatly in size and are all still dogs. The trilobites had a lot more genetic diversity to play with than today's dogs do,...
Well, it does seem very likely that there was a great deal more genetic diversity in trilobites than in dogs given that trilobites are a class of animal while dogs are a subspecies. Let me remind you of how far class is above subspecies. The classification hierarchy from class downward is: class, order, family, genus, species, subspecies. Trilobites are five levels of classification above dogs. Of course a class consisting of multiple orders, families, genera and species is going to have far, far more genetic diversity than a subspecies.
If you have nothing more than your specious argument about body plan then you indeed have nothing.
...but dogs nevertheless have enormous genetic diversity compared to other species today,...
Really, no kidding. You didn't happen to jot down the figures when you did this analysis, did you? I mean, even though most of what you say is made up there's no reason for anyone to believe that you're making this up too, but hey, just to quiet suspicions that this is made up why don't you throw a few numbers our way.
...although they went through the bottleneck of the Flood and the trilobites are all pre-Flood with all or at least most of their original genetic diversity available.
This seems made up, too.
Yes this is my own theory of course,...
It's actually some weird genre of fiction.
...that I've been arguing for the last decade or so. I don't know if it would ever be possible to persuade anyone here of it but it seems to me to hold together very well;...
Aw, you're so proud, that's so cute.
...it's certainly consistent.
Uh, no. Not even close. Not with itself or with reality or (and this is irrelevant to this thread's topic) with the first eight chapters of Genesis.
If there are better ways to argue for it I hope I run across them.
Oh, the better ways to argue for your viewpoint are not subtle or obscure or anything that has to be sought out. They are things not only obvious to first graders but that have been explicitly suggested to you many times by many people in this thread and in many others. To list just the ones that come to mind right now:
Define your terms, for example, kind.
Don't make stuff up.
Don't endlessly defend made up stuff.
Support your assertions with facts or a rationale or both, as appropriate.
Respond to the points others make in a substantive way, in other words, with facts or a rationale or both, as appropriate.
Do not ignore posts, especially content laden posts. Especially do not ignore content laden posts by replying with two or three dismissive lines, or by responding to one point while ignoring all the others.
Learn your subject.
Do not post content-free messages.
Stay on topic.
Do not post conceited boastful claims about yourself that turn you into the topic of discussion, and that people will feel compelled to rebut.
Do not leave important and relevant issues unaddressed. Examples in this thread would be radiometric dating, Walther's Law, sediment sorting, fossil sorting, the specifics of how waves deliver sediments, etc.
Yes this is my own theory of course...that I've been arguing for the last decade or so. I don't know if it would ever be possible to persuade anyone here of it but it seems to me to hold together very well.....it's certainly consistent.
Percy writes:
Not even close. Not with itself or with reality or (and this is irrelevant to this thread's topic) with the first eight chapters of Genesis.
Faith writes:
If there are better ways to argue for it I hope I run across them.
Percy writes:
Oh, the better ways to argue for your viewpoint are not subtle or obscure or anything that has to be sought out. They are things not only obvious to first graders but that have been explicitly suggested to you many times by many people in this thread and in many others. To list just the ones that come to mind right now:
Define your terms, for example, kind.
Don't make stuff up.
Don't endlessly defend made up stuff.
Support your assertions with facts or a rationale or both, as appropriate.
Respond to the points others make in a substantive way, in other words, with facts or a rationale or both, as appropriate.
Do not ignore posts, especially content laden posts. Especially do not ignore content laden posts by replying with two or three dismissive lines, or by responding to one point while ignoring all the others.
Learn your subject.
Do not post content-free messages.
Stay on topic.
Do not post conceited boastful claims about yourself that turn you into the topic of discussion, and that people will feel compelled to rebut.
Do not leave important and relevant issues unaddressed. Examples in this thread would be radiometric dating, Walther's Law, sediment sorting, fossil sorting, the specifics of how waves deliver sediments, etc.
--Percy
Perhaps you are not asking Faith the right questions. Keep in mind that her reasoning is based on supporting the belief that she knows to be true. We have compared it to this cartoon many times before:
Perhaps you should ask her if she honestly believes that by being an enlightened believer that God gives her the wisdom to reason out how the flood must have happened?
Then you might ask her why the other methods of reasoning employed by so many others, yourself included...are wrong and why they are wrong.
She will be forced to acknowledge that her belief drives her contrary observations.
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. –RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." –Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith Paul was probably SO soaked in prayer nobody else has ever equaled him.~Faith :)
I certainly have no problem with even extreme erosion of cliffs, but I can't regard some sand on top of tilted and apparently deeply buried siltstone layers as an angular unconformity,...
And your evidence/rationale for this position?
...just as there is no way that I can see how any current landscape could ever become a slab of rock such as we see in the geo/strat columns.
And your evidence/rationale for this position?
I understand I'm probably not going to be able to persuade anyone of this, though I'll keep trying anyway.
Lacking any evidence/rationale, on what basis are you hoping to persuade anyone?
Re: Why would cultural Christians reject evidence if it existed?
Faith writes:
That's how we know that the fossils we see in the strata lived at the time the strata was formed: The only way they could get into those layers is to be there at the time of the layer.
But there's a big big problem here. Perhaps I needed to be more specific but the main problem is that you can't prove the time period itself, meaning prove that there ever was a time on the earth when certain plants and animals lived.
The evidence for this position has been provided many, many times, including at least several times in this thread alone. You can't keep starting the discussion from square one. Either you can't remember anything before an hour ago, in which case you should retire from discussion, or you're very much aware the evidence has been presented many times, in which case you're dishonest and should withdraw from discussion in disgrace, or you haven't bothered to read any of the messages describing the evidence, in which case you're derelict, unreliable and incompetent and should be shamed and thrown out of the discussion.
Or you could acknowledge the evidence and rationale already presented and attempt to pick up discussion at the last message that mentioned it.
A note on your terminology: Science doesn't prove things - it is tentative. Science gathers evidence that it constructs into explanatory frameworks called hypotheses and theories around which it tries to build consensus through the gathering of more evidence.
You are assuming the time period, assuming that a particular layer of rock really does represent that time period, but that can't be proved any more than the animals in it can be proved to have lived at any given time.
You know this isn't true, and you know that we know you know this isn't true. Please stop resetting discussion to square one. Go back to the last message that described why we think we know which rocks and fossils are associated with which time periods and pick up discussion there.
It's really the same problem. You can claim the rock is some particular age, but not that it represents a landscape with creatures in it.
Same point.
In order for organisms from, say, the Paleocene to show up in, say, the Permian, or the other way around, you're going to have to disturb all the layers in between in order to move them.
But that isn't the problem I had in mind.
But it's the problem you should have in mind if you had any inkling about the subject.
In my frame of reference the rocks are just rocks, not time periods such as Paleocene or Permian or whatnot.
You have no frame of reference outside of Genesis 1-8. Your views are anchored in your religious beliefs.
You seem to have forgotten (again) that even your flood buffoonery associates rocks with time periods, even if you don't give them names. You accept the Law of Superposition and know full well that the lower the strata the earlier the time it was deposited, whether you measure that time in hours or millions of years.
When you have such variation, it usually means that the relief was low so you had minor transgressions and regressions. If you look up the term 'cyclothem' you'll get a boatload of information on that. However, in those cases, the rise and fall of sea level is not fast enough to plane off the mountains and sea cliffs. It's always a race (relative) between uplift and erosion.
I looked up cyclothem, I get it, thanks.
When the deposition is terrestrial (lakes and rivers and swamps, etc.), you can fill in some of the lowlands and stream channels that way.
Regarding deposition and preservation of coastal swamps and lagoons, I'm trying to reason out for myself how this could happen with a slow transgression. I spent a little time looking at the Everglades with Google Maps. The coastal swamps don't directly join the sea but are a little distance inland. Sometimes they're only tens of feet inland, if that, and are probably often connected to the ocean at high tide. But many are up to several hundred feet inland.
So speculating now I'll say that these swamps are mostly protected from wave action and so do not get eroded away by it. When a slowly rising sea does finally overcome a bit of land and inundate a swamp it is a sudden thing (on a geological timescale) that might happen between one and a hundred years with the sea becoming an increasing presence in the swamp until it is finally there all the time. In this way the swamp would be protected from most wave action but would still be subject to increasing deposition.
Just panning around in Google Maps I didn't see an actual lagoon, but I imagine the process is similar. How am I doing? Don't expend too much effort being gentle, I'll be okay.
I have always suspected that you have a hard time visualizing in three dimensions.
I bet many people have 3D visualization difficulties when it comes to geology. Give me a car and I'm all over where everything is in three dimensions, but give me tilted strata to visualize from different angles and in a short time my mind is a haze. Add faults and intrusions and lateral transitions between strata and it becomes really hopeless.
I think I do okay in the end, but I have to work at it. It is lucky I didn't go into geology, because I would have really sucked at it. Fortunately I never became aware of the subject while in college, because I find it fascinating and might have considered it as a major.
Yes, the amount of salt is something I already mentioned. Not even enough to cause the sagging.
Here's the diagram again:
Where do you see any sagging in any layer? Maybe you're looking at the channels that have been cut downward through strata? If so, that's not sagging.
Again I'll need confirmation from real geologists, but I think the salt layers lying between limestone layers may represent warm shallow seas that receded/evaporated, and that the salt layers between shale layers may represent coastal areas that receded/evaporated.
You are always credulously treating the evogeo paradigm interpretation as unassailable fact and making my eyes roll out onto the floor. This is unprovable nonsense, and it ends any motivation I might have to answer you in spite of all the other reasons I have to ignore you.
The interjection of your personal feelings into matters of evidence and reasoning is really inappropriate and should stop. Emotions have no role in this context.
Do you have any questions or comments about my observations about the contacts in the diagram that I described in Message 2718? It's fine if you approach this with the opinion that it's all a bunch of malarkey and that you're only trying to figure out where the problems lie. Edge responded to that message and didn't indicate that he saw any significant problems with my analysis, so apparently I got it at least mostly right, and if I actually didn't and he was just being polite then I hope he speaks up.
Sand over the tilted siltstones would not form an angular unconformity, it would just bury the siltstones.
You have a first class mind whose powers you use to avoid and deflect rather than embrace scientific knowledge.
I was going to suggest you look up angular conformity at Wikipedia, but they garble the definition in my opinion. It says it occurs when horizontal sedimentary rock strata are deposited upon tilted strata, but sedimentary rock strata are never deposited. It is sediments that are deposited, and under the right circumstances the sediments might eventually become sedimentary rock strata. And horizontality is only approximate (certainly Welcombe Mouth Beach is only close to horizontal). And it needn't be sediments - it could be volcanic basalt or ash or mud, or it could be glacial till.
I guess you think you explained how that grooved landscape could become a slab of rock but it doesn't explain that at all, it's just eyeball-rolling mystification.
What is actually called for here are comments and/or questions about Edge's explanation. And again, your emotional reactions to evidence and reason have no place in this discussion.
You really don't seem to know that what you like to call "reality" is just an unprovable and really quite nonsensical impossible interpretation.
What the other participants in this thread have done in support of their views is connect concepts and explanatory frameworks to facts. You should do the same.
Here: Take a time period, say the Jurassic, and find a map showing its distribution. It covers enormous areas of the whole earth.
You’re already confusing the strata with the time period. You can say that large areas of the planet had some sedimentary deposition during the Jurassic period, but it is nonsense to say that the period covered “enormous areas”.
It is very common to find time periods associated with their rocks, it's not considered a confusion and I'm certainly not making up the idea. You can find a map of "the Jurassic period" which obviously associates it with the rocks.
I think I can straighten this out. PaulK was by no means implying that strata are not associated with periods. In fact, there is a one-to-one correspondence between systems (stratigraphic sequences corresponding to a period) and periods, as you might recall Edge describing for us a while back.
PaulK was responding to where in Message 2740 you said, "Take a time period, say the Jurassic, and find a map showing its distribution. It covers enormous areas of the whole earth." He was trying to explain that it makes no sense to say this. I'll explain why in my own way.
The Jurassic period lasted from 208 to 146 million years ago. We want to, quoting you, "find a map showing its distribution." But the entire world was Jurassic during that time period. There can be no "distribution" because everything was Jurassic. That's why you get a map of the entire world when you type "Jurassic period map" into Google Images, e.g.:
I considered whether perhaps you meant to say to find a map showing the distribution of where Jurassic strata (not the Jurassic period) can be found today, but then it still makes no sense to say, "It covers enormous areas of the whole earth," so in the end I concluded you couldn't possibly have meant that kind of map.
So I don't think there's any interpretation of what you said that makes sense.
Since we are talking about a flood still depositing sediment, the salt would have been dissolved into the flood water. How does salt deposit during a flood since the water must evaporate off from the salt solution to get the solid salt? The salt would immediately dissolve back into the flood water.
entire stratigraphic column sagged as a unit
But the tops of the layers above the sags are horizontal? Where is the sag above the channel?
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.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand. Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World.
Worrying about the "browning of America" is not racism. -- Faith
I hate you all, you hate me -- Faith
No it is based on math I studied in sixth grade, just plain old addition, substraction and multiplication. -- ICANT
As usual, she never presents the model, method, mechanism, process or procedure to do that.
Right. All we want is answers to what are now at least dozens of unanswered questions about Faith claims that range from the questionable to the impossible. Mostly we get either crickets, or nonsensical declarations about how she thinks geology really works, or repeats of her original claims that give no hint of awareness that they've already been rebutted at least several dozen times.
I think what happened is that I googled "Jurassic time period map" having in mind finding out about the distribution of the sediments in that period and wondering if that would show up if I just named the time period without mentioning the sedimentary deposits. When I got a whole page of maps in Google Image I concluded, wrongly it turns out, that the time period is normally equated with the sedimentary rocks. As I look at that page now I see that they are maps of the continents during the Pangea era before they were separated, so now I figure that they show that the Jurassic time period occurred when the world looked like that, rather than showing anything about the distribution of the strata. My mistake. I nevertheless think it's important to make the equation.
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