Greg Krehbiel
New blog on evolution
by Greg Krehbiel on 11 January 2005
There’s a new blog called Evolution News & Views. The purpose statement says it’s there to track the “misreporting of the evolution issue.” It’s probably worth keeping an eye on.
For the record, my opinion on evolution is generally as follows. I accept the “basic facts” of evolution, by which I mean an old earth and universe, the general reliability of the geological column and fossil record, and that descent with modification from common ancestors is the best way to explain biological diversity. I dislike both the assumption of philosophical naturalism inherent in modern evolutionary thought and the ridiculously arrogant attitude the evolutionary establishment takes towards creationists (of any stripe). Sometimes the creationists raise good points, and evolutionists often make themselves look like offended church ladies in their inquisition-like responses.
I strongly suspect that as we learn more about the structure and complexity of life it will become essentially impossible to believe that life arose by chance. Rather, I suspect that living systems are designed with the ability to fill ecological niches and adapt to environmental changes.
On the origin of man, I think the evidence that we share common ancestry with apes is pretty compelling, and I find it very hard to figure out how there could possibly have been a historical Adam and Eve. (It seems to me that you’d have to go back hundreds of thousands of years to imagine a single pair of ancestors for the whole race.)
2005-01-11 » Greg Krehbiel
11 January 2005 @ 10:35 am
Greg, I don’t want to pick a fight, and I am not by any means a six/seven-day creationist, but I find myself responding to your post with, “Of course, there has to be a historical Adam and Eve. Monkeys don’t have souls. People do. One doesn’t have a primordial soul; he has one or he doesn’t.” (IMHO, saying otherwise invites us to promote the idea that some races are not fully human.) Adam and Eve were the first material creatures with souls. If I am to go out on a limb, I’d say it doesn’t make any sense that Adam would consider all the animals in his search for a helpmeet if you’re just referring to giraffes, tigers, bears, cats, dogs, and fish. He had to be considering creatures that looked like him, but had no light of a soul behind their eyes. Then God makes Eve, another ensouled animal, and Adam recognizes her at once.
11 January 2005 @ 10:38 am
I’m not saying that there wasn’t an Adam and Eve, only that it’s very hard (from a historical perspective) to figure out how it could work. Where and when would they have lived?
11 January 2005 @ 11:25 am
I think evolution absolutely requires an “adam and eve” unless you are suggesting two separate couples evolved to human status. I’ve never heard that theory. Anthropologists have picked various dates and pegged it alternately in Africa, China, and persia I think.
To Lydia, I think that view of humans having “souls” that make them unique is of questionable orthodoxy. We are “in God’s image” but the idea of a soul as separate “whatzit” that makes us what we really are, quickly becomes more platonic than Christian, no matter how many saints have said things that sound like they could be interpreted that way.
The integrated whole is the creation that was pronounced “in God’s image” and “good”.
Nevertheless I, with you, firmly believe there must be an Adam and an Eve.
11 January 2005 @ 11:34 am
Symeon, I am a philosophical neophyte, but I didn’t mean to imply that a soul is what makes us human; rather that somehow a human is a body united with a soul. I think that’s why we are equally repelled by dead (human) bodies and ghosts: “they just ain’t nacheral.”
11 January 2005 @ 1:50 pm
The real issue is the authority of the scripture. There’s no way you can read Genesis (alone) and come away with anything other than a literal 6 day creation. This is true not only grammatically (the use of the word Yom with an identifying number and the phrase “evening and morning”) but also because of the scriptures that refer to this passage (“in 6 days God created the heavens and the earth…”).
Ken Ham quotes dozens of theologian’s who admitted as much but refused to believe the literal Genesis account because they believed that science proved it wrong.
That simply isn’t true. Evolution (molecules to man) is simply bad, 19th century science that is literally crumbling under the weight of evidence that is now being presented against it.
The geologic column has been completed refuted by real-time sedimentary models and experiments conducted at Colorado State university. (Julien P, Lany, Berthault G., 1993, “Experiments on stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures,” Bulletin of the Geological Society, France, 164-5, 649-660. Also see Berthault G. 1986, “Sedimentology-experiments on lamination of sediments,” C.R. Acad. Sc. Paris, 303 II, 17, 1569-1574. Berthault G. 1988, “Sedimentation of heterogranular mixture-experimental lamination in still and running water,” C.R. Acad. Sc. Paris, 306, II, 717-724; ICR, Impact no. 328)
Even before such evidence was compiled, the column represented the worst in circular reasoning. The layers were dated based on the index fossils found in them (the fossils were dated based on the layers they were found in). All this before radiometric dating. Now, if you take a sample to a lab to be tested, the first thing they ask you is where did you find it and how old do you think it is. This is because they need to calibrate their tests to match the underlying assumption of age. There’s been tons of research showing the unreliability of radiometric dating and I won’t go into it here.
Simply put, there’s no scientific evidence that makes a pressing need to compromise our literal reading of the Genesis creation account which is the only interpretation the text supports.
11 January 2005 @ 2:00 pm
Lydia, I hear you. This is just a bugaboo of mine because it is an area where I think I’ve only lately come to a balanced understanding that I can live with. Christian teaching has not always been as clear on this as it should be IMO.
11 January 2005 @ 2:42 pm
Greg B., I beg to differ. The real issue is not whether or not Scripture is authoritative, but whose hermeneutic is authoritative. It is difficult for me to read the rhythmic “evening and morning” part of Genesis and not think “poetry,” which leads me to consider that God may be saying something that is deeper and more important for us to know than how He created the physical universe. I’m not saying I don’t believe Genesis to be true. I also would affirm that God shelters us under His wings, while denying that He *has* wings. I don’t think six-day creation was much of an issue until evolutionary philosophy and religion was shoved down people’s throats. (I believe Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis was that each “day” took place over a long period of time.) But, in general, I think Science (or the reaction to it) makes bad Religion.
11 January 2005 @ 3:03 pm
Greg, It’s my understanding that the fossil record only shows fully formed life forms. And that there is not a single fossil that reflects any of the so-called transitional life forms. That does seem a bit interesting since one would think after all those millions of years, at least one or two of the transitional life forms would have been caught on record. I don’t see how the fossil records supports evolution. It just seems to show us various life forms that existed at the moment they were fossilized.
11 January 2005 @ 3:17 pm
According to the YEC “Appearance of Age” argument, all the old-Earth evidence is “backfill” in order that a fully functioning universe is in existence after the seven literal days of creation.
The inverse of this is a creation according to modern scientific theories (which of course we do not and perhaps never will have a complete picture of) that actually did occur in time and Genesis 1-11 is the “mythological backfill” that God inspired in the OT writers to give Israel, his chosen people, a sense of their place in His creation.
If the objection to current scientific theories is that it makes out God to be “dishonest” in what he inspired the OT authors to write, is He any less “dishonest” for creating a false appearance of age? Why is believing that Genesis 1-11 is a mythological “backfill” theologically suspect while believing that light from distant stars, geologic sediments etc. is “backfill” is unquestionably orthodox?
11 January 2005 @ 3:23 pm
A co-worker of mine was talking with her son about the Genesis creation story and asked him what he thought of it. He said, “it’s not true.” She asked, “Why do you say that?” and he said, “stories with talking animals are fables.”
I don’t know if the kid was fed that answer or not, but it’s a pretty good one. If I say, “A chicken and a pig were walking down the road when they saw a poor man laying in the gutter. The chicken said to the pig, ‘Let’s give that man a bacon and egg breakfast.’” etc., then you know immediately that the story is not meant to be taken as historically accurate.
The question here is not the authority of the Bible, but the way we interpret the Bible. Certainly God can make a donkey talk, but are we supposed to believe that a donkey really talked? I suppose so, but if somebody says “we’re obviously supposed to read that as a joke,” I’m not going to accuse him of rejecting the authority of the Bible.
11 January 2005 @ 3:31 pm
Jack — that’s not true. There are plenty of transitional forms. (The creatures leading up to the horse are a good example.) The trouble is that saying that B is a transitional form between A and C assumes something we can’t really prove — that B descended from A and C descended from B. We don’t really know that. The best we can know is that there was A, then there was B, then there was C. The rest is speculation. I happen to think it’s reasonable speculation, but it is speculation.
IMO, the most troubling “transitional form” for the anti-evolution crowd is Homo Erectus, which was clearly not an ape and clearly not a man.
11 January 2005 @ 3:57 pm
One of the problems with this discussion is that we know how people in our culture react to certain kinds of stories. E.g., if I say, “knock knock,” or if I say, “once upon a time,” or if I say, “there was a minister, a priest and a rabbi,” then you know what’s going on. We have no clear way of knowing how people in the ancient near east understood their creation stories. (Wouldn’t we laugh if we found out that people 5,000 years in the future were debating the truth of blonde jokes?) It’s possible that they understood their creation stories as a “myth that teaches a lesson,” somewhat like the way that famous newspaper article understands the existence of Santa Claus.
Truth is truth. If a Bible story seems to contradict something that we otherwise know to be true (e.g., the sun is the center of the universe), then we need to ask ourselves if we’re interpreting the Bible story correctly. (Or if we have the science right.) In this case, I’m convinced that the science is right enough that we can say with certainty that the earth wasn’t created in six days.
11 January 2005 @ 4:43 pm
Where to begin,
In the words of Collin Patterson, senior paleontologiest for the British Museum of Naturay History and an evolutionist in response to why he didn’t include examples of transitional forms in one of his books: “there are no such fossils for which one can make a watertight argument”. Nuff Said.
Also, in response to Steve, there is no old-earth “evidence”. Any such “evidence” could just as easily lead to the conclusion of a young-earth if interpreted from that underlying assumption.
Since we can’t go back in time and see what really happened we must interpret the observable evidence in light of current physical laws and processes. Our conclusions will depend on our underlying assumptions or philosophy. Evolutionists have an underlying philosophy of naturalism and “can’t allow a divine foot in the door”.
It’s interesting that all current processes are in no way creative or integrative (an essential requirement for naturalistic origins) but are conservative or degredative (1st & 2nd laws of thermondynamics).
And Lydia, whenever the word Yom is used outside of Genesis 1 with either an ordinal number (i.e. the 1st day) or with either a descriptive like evening or morning it always, without excpetion, refers to a literal 24 hour day. In the creation account you not only have the ordinal number but also both the evening and morning descriptives. The only place anybody tries to interpret this combination as anything other than an ordinary 24 hour day is in the creation account. You don’t hear people claiming Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for 3000 years.
The literal 6 day creation was referred by Jesus himself in the gospels and several other scriptures as well.
While arguments from science for a young earth and intelligent design abound and are useful for breaking down barriers to the gospel the are insufficient in and of themselves because they do not point to Christ as the creator. You must start with scripture and Genesis is the foundational book. If there’s a disagreement between scripture and modern science we need to side with scripture. Otherwise, you fall prey to what Philip Johnson calls the Galileo effect. Galileo was intially opposed not by the church as many are taught but by the scientific and educational establishment of his day who foolishly adopted the teachings of Aristotle and rejected scripture. Only after they pressured the church into opposing him did the church compromise and join in with the establishment. The church must not do that today or the gospel loses all authority and relavence. Ken Ham describes this very well in his book Creation Evangelism for the New Millenium.
Remember, Ps 19 The heaven’s declare the glory of God. There’s no language in which they don’t speak.
Romans 1:21 God’s invisible qualities (his divine nature and eternal power) have been clearly seen being evident by WHAT HAS BEEN MADE(created) so that men are WITHOUT EXCUSE.
The fool says in heart there is no God because he must fool himself into believe a modern creation myth based on faulty 19th century “science” that’s not supported by observable evidence or even the fundamental laws of science.
I could go on for pages but I’ll take a break – for now
11 January 2005 @ 5:09 pm
Since we can’t go back in time and see what really happened we must interpret the observable evidence in light of current physical laws and processes.
That’s certainly an assumption that can be questioned. ISTM that creationists and evolutionists are two sides of the same coin; they just come to different conclusions.
Genesis 1 does not begin like Luke 1.
If there’s a disagreement between scripture and modern science we need to side with scripture.
First, we need to figure out what the Scripture in question is trying to tell us and how it’s trying to tell it to us.
In any case, the components of what we understand as a day (“current physical laws and processes”), like that important element called the sun, are not even all in existence until day 4.
What’s important about Genesis? God spoke, and things came to be, ex nihilo, out of nothing. This is so far beyond “observable evidence” that there’s nothing to interpret.
Now, if we could observe some pre-Fall evidence of creation that hadn’t been “subjected to frustration,” then we’d have something we could analyze with the hope of definite conclusions. Nevertheless, we’d never get to “Vayomehr Elohim,” “And God said…”
11 January 2005 @ 5:41 pm
Someone responded to the argument against evolution based on the second law of thermodynamics by saying that the second law does not apply because we don’t live in a closed closed system. How do we know that we don’t live in a closed system? If God created time and space, then doesn’t it make sense that there is a beginning and end of time and space — within eternity. Maybe some of you brighter bulbs can shed some light on this for me. Thanks.
11 January 2005 @ 6:55 pm
The point is moot because it’s never been demonstrated that the 2nd law doesn’t apply in any system. What we do know is that without an external source of energy and guidance things will inevitably break down. Einstein said the 2nd law is “the premier law of all science”.
11 January 2005 @ 8:22 pm
Greg B < < why he didn’t include examples of transitional forms in one of his books: “there are no such fossils for which one can make a watertight argument". Nuff Said. >>
In my opinion, Greg B is crazy, he’s been reading too much young-earth creationist nonsense. I’m not sure where he gets his information. Read Dalrymple The Age of the Earth, the evidence for an old earth is quite overwhelming.
The Patterson quote above has been shown not to represent Patterson’s views. Its typical creationist out-of-context “quote mining.” The Patterson quote is dealt with here
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html
You can now stop using it.
Phil P
11 January 2005 @ 8:25 pm
Jack, I’m not an expert, though I did study physics in school. I’m not sure there’s agreement among scientists whether or not we live in a closed universe. The second law of thermodynamics says that any closed system will tend toward increasing entropy (disorder). A system is not closed unless there is no matter or energy leaving the system. If one pumps energy into a system, it is quite possible to produce an increase in order (i.e., a decrease in entropy), as when a toddler stacks blocks, which had been scattered over the floor, into a pile.
11 January 2005 @ 8:33 pm
Greg B says: Remember, Ps 19 The heaven’s declare the glory of God. There’s no language in which they don’t speak. Romans 1:21 God’s invisible qualities (his divine nature and eternal power) have been clearly seen being evident by WHAT HAS BEEN MADE(created) so that men are WITHOUT EXCUSE.
Response: Now how can that be if the creation itself (“by what has been made”) has been LYING to geologists for 200 years? Christian creationist geologists knew the earth was quite old well BEFORE Darwin.
See this http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geohist.html
It was only in this century with the discovery of radioactivity that we learned how old: 4.5 – 4.6 billion years old. The “six days” can easily be understood other ways. For example, God is still resting on the “seventh day” according to Hebrews 4. And the sun was created after the “first day.” The sun is what determines night and day, right? Many options available here.
Also see this http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html
Phil P
11 January 2005 @ 9:03 pm
Now how can that be if the creation itself (“by what has been made”) has been LYING to geologists for 200 years? Christian creationist geologists knew the earth was quite old well BEFORE Darwin.
Not true, it was between 1831-1836 that Darwin took his Beagle trip.
James Hutton – A geologist, In 1795 opposed the universally accepted thought that the earth is roughly 6,000 years old .
Charles Lyell, “The father of modern geology†writes Principles of Geology, in 1830 expanding Huttons ideas to say the evidence of geology supports an old earth. Until this time, almost all geologists believed the Genesis flood was the best explanation for the state of the earth’s geologic formations.
No matter how you slice it, that’s not WAY BEFORE DARWIN and it was a direct attack on the heretofore universally accepted belief in the creation and flood.
This attack was politically motivated: Francis Hitching, The World Atlas Of Mysteries “It was as much for political reasons as scientific reasons that the new theory of uniformitarianism grew up to challenge the biblical theory of creation. If the Bible told the truth, there was no way of peaceably challenging the monarchy in Britain, for sovereignty was supposed to descend from God to the king…â€
Radioactivity poses far more problems for old-earth geologists than it does young earth geologists. The lack of equilibrium in C14 alone is a serious blow to an old earth. If the earth were any older than 5370 years old the special production rate and special decay rate should be in equilibrium, it isn’t. If you adjust the catalog of dated fossils to account for this lack of equilibrium then you will see that all of the “deaths” occurred within the past 6000 years and there is a tremendous spike in extinctions ~4000 years ago (precisely when the genesis flood would have occurred.
The problem here is that our society has been indoctrinated in uniformitarianism and naturalism. The evolutionists “own the microphone” as Phillip Johnson says and all our museums, nature shows, major science mags and of course our government controlled schools hammer the naturalistic world view down our throats. It takes a brave soul to stand against the tide (like Galileo). Scientists can’t get grants of funding if they don’t “tow the line”.
Dr. George Wald (Nobel Prize Winner In Science): “When it comes to the origin of life on this earth there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation (Evolution). There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved 100 years ago. But that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds. Therefore, we choose to believe the impossible, that life arose spontaneously by chance.†Translation: Evolution is impossible but I don’t want to believe in God!
Niles Eldridge: “We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports the story of gradual adaptive change, while all the while really knowing that it does not.â€
Dr. Herbert Neilson: “My attempt to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years has completely failed. The idea of evolution rests on pure belief.â€
It’s not for scientific reasons that people reject the Bible.
11 January 2005 @ 9:36 pm
Phil — Greg B is an old and dear friend of mine, and while in his younger days he may have done some silly things, he’s not crazy.
11 January 2005 @ 9:51 pm
Thanks Greg, that’s nice of you to say. I wish I could say the same about you but I know that you are (or were) crazy. Why else would you have agreed to climb my Dad’s 40′ ham radio tower to fix his antenna?
YOU NOTICE I DIDN’T DO IT!!!!
11 January 2005 @ 9:52 pm
P.S. If I had climbed the tower, natural selection would probably have taken care of me at that point since I had not yet procreated
11 January 2005 @ 10:10 pm
One big problem with young earth creationism is sedimentary layers. I’m sure you all know the basics on how tree rings are used to date wood. There’s something similar in geology called varved sediments, where sedimentary layers alternate between wet and dry seasons — making an annual layer that allows you to count back the years. In some places varved sediments can be traced back for more than 50,000 years.
Then there’s the seasonal variation in snow deposits in the arctic. Like tree rings and varved sediments, they leave a record of time, and they go back way farther than 6,000 years.
But that’s not the end of it because under the varved sediments, and under the snow, are other features that show signs of age.
A universal flood would certainly cause a lot of mess and could explain a lot of things, but it simply can’t explain enough. For example, consider the Appalachian mountains. They are incredibly eroded. They used to be as tall as the Rockies, but they’ve been warn down over the years.
It’s conceivable (I suppose) that a flood could have warn them down. But then we have to ask what made all the formations that comprise the mountains themselves, and what process bent, twisted and uplifted them to make them mountains in the first place. It becomes a very tall order for one flood.
Think of it this way. Some process had to lay down all the formations in the first instance. Then another process had to smash it all together to make a mountain. (Somewhat like the way a throw rug will bunch up if you push one end of it.) Then another process had to wear it all down to its present size. I’m sorry, but it strains credulity to say that the flood did all that. Oh — and I forgot one thing. The rock formations have fossils in them.
So, from a flood geology perspective, it would have happened like this. The flood stirs up rocks, sediment and critters into an enormous soup, which settles into various kinds of formations. That’s trouble to start with, because some of the formations in the Appalachians have sedimentary layers indicating many years of sleepy, peaceful deposition. But anyway, so somehow this happens. Then the flood causes massive tectonic changes that smash these formations together and make a mountain. (Never mind the fact that they haven’t had much time to turn from sloppy sediment to rock.) Then the flood has to tear down the mountains it just created.
Sorry. When I put the evidence that the creation stories are supposed to be literal against the evidence that the earth is old, the old earth wins. Fortunately, there’s a long tradition in the church of reading Genesis in other ways, and the Jews have similar traditions.
11 January 2005 @ 10:14 pm
Okay, so it was 40 feet, but that was only about, say, 25 feet above the top of the roof, so as long as I fell in the right direction I wouldn’t have been killed entirely.
11 January 2005 @ 10:43 pm
With you on the old earth position, but don’t see how that necessarily works against a historical Adam and Eve.
You wrote :
“I find it very hard to figure out how there could possibly have been a historical Adam and Eve. ”
So, how is that any harder to believe than that God Almighty became incarnate as the Second Adam, and was crucified , died, buried , and rose again from the dead ?
12 January 2005 @ 8:27 am
David — when I say “hard to believe,” I mean “hard to reconcile with contrary evidence,” not “inherently hard to believe.” While belief in the incarnation is “hard” in the second sense, I don’t know of any evidence against it.
12 January 2005 @ 9:33 am
Greg I hear where you’re coming from and I feel your pain
You’re not alone in your quandry.
It seems that there are two issues here:
1. Should the Genesis creation account be interpreted literally (i.e. 6 24 hour days, a real Adam & Eve, etc) or should it be taken figuratively. Does the text support one over the other?
2. Is the “science” as you put it “right”? Is the observable evidence (“contrary evidence” as you put it) for an old earth so compelling that we should disregard a literal reading of Genesis?
What is NOT at issue here is whether or not you can believe in Evolution and millions of years and still be a Christian.
There are many people, like yourself, who are intimidated by the “scientific evidence” for evolution and have trouble reconciling that with a literal reading of Genesis.
I believe that this not because anything in the text suggests anything other than a recent creation and a young earth but just because they see a need to make the Bible fit the “science”.
Compromise on this issue will not keep you from salvation but it does weaken the relavence of the Bible and Christianity in our society because it undermines the very foundation of scripture and the path to the gospel ( Creation / Fall / Flood … ).
I am highly encouraged though because the obstacles you enumerated are very easily dealt with and I will do so as succinctly and eloquantly as I can during my lunch break today. I’m sure you’ll be waiting in eager anticipation
12 January 2005 @ 9:34 am
Rats! I just remembered I need to drive to Louisburg during lunch to pick up some deer meat from the processor. I promise I will get back to this though
12 January 2005 @ 11:14 am
Okay, very easily dealt with? Deal with Dalrymple’s book then, deal with the Ken Wiens article. In my opinion, NOT easily dealt with from a 6,000 to 15,000 year old earth viewpoint, or however you early date it.
Radiometric Dating Does Work! By Dalrymple
Radiometric Dating, a Christian Perspective by Ken Wiens
Carbon-14 (half-life about 5700 years) has nothing to do with the OLD age of the earth, since it can only date organic material going back 40,000 – 50,000 years. Radioactive isotopes with much longer half-lives and the dates from these (thousands of them have been published) is what dates the oldest earth rocks, moon rocks, and meteorites in the 4.5 to 4.6 BILLION year old range. We’ve known this since the 1950s. And it is well BEFORE Darwin’s “Origin of Species” (1859) at least that the Christian geologists knew the earth was very old. Even the major “catastrophists” did not accept a worldwide flood, they accepted various catastrophes. Look it up. They didn’t take Genesis 6-9 literally.
Sorry for calling Greg B crazy, but I’ve been tearing my hair out at Catholic Answers boards debating creationists. I need to take a break.
Phil P
12 January 2005 @ 11:23 am
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/6061_radiometeric_dating_does_work_12_30_1899.asp
Dalrymple link didn’t want to work, its this long link from NCSE. Please, young-earthers, study the science, give it a chance.
Phil P
12 January 2005 @ 6:16 pm
The point I was making regarding C14 was that the SPR and SPD are not in equilibrium which it should be C14 has been building up in the earths atmosphere for longer than 5370 years. You can read all about this in God at Ground Zero by Kurt Sewell, a scientist who worked on the manhatten project and pioneered the field of radiometric dating.
And I was specifically referring to Greg’s issues of sedimentary layers and mountain formation which as it turns out are very easily dealt with. I will post more when I get some more time to put my notes together.
12 January 2005 @ 7:07 pm
My first attempt at this post got deleted (too many links?) so here’s another try.
This link details the experiments at Colordo State which deal effectively with Greg K’s lamination/varve problems.
It’s got some cool video clips (some don’t have audio) and good diagrams.
12 January 2005 @ 7:08 pm
Here’s an AIG article on the same with some more detail.
12 January 2005 @ 7:08 pm
And of course we can’t forget
12 January 2005 @ 7:09 pm
Ooops don’t know what happened there:
ICR link on same
12 January 2005 @ 7:09 pm
And more
12 January 2005 @ 7:10 pm
Why does it sometimes omit the hyperlink?
Here it is again:
And more
Cut and past this if the link isn’t there:
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/38/38_3/Crimean.htm
12 January 2005 @ 7:12 pm
More on Varve problems:
http://www.creationinthecrossfire.com/documents/Varves/VarvesProblems.htm
You see Phil, I do read the science
Tomorrow I will deal with the mountain formation issue.
12 January 2005 @ 7:36 pm
More on rapid coal formation and other Mt. St. Helens stuff:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v6/i1/mtsthelens.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i3/radiodating.asp
12 January 2005 @ 7:36 pm
And more (very detailed)
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v1/i1/noah.asp
12 January 2005 @ 7:48 pm
Here’s some articles that deal with the mountain formation problem:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c001.html
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v16/i1/plate_tectonics.asp
12 January 2005 @ 7:48 pm
http://www.icr.org/research/as/platetectonics.html
12 January 2005 @ 10:31 pm
Here’s some articles that deal with the mountain formation problem:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c001.html
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v16/i1/plate_tectonics.asp
12 January 2005 @ 10:31 pm
Here’s some articles that deal with the mountain formation problem:
http://www.icr.org/research/as/platetectonics.html
12 January 2005 @ 10:31 pm
More on rapid coal formation and other Mt. St. Helens stuff:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v6/i1/mtsthelens.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i3/radiodating.asp
12 January 2005 @ 10:32 pm
More on rapid coal formation and other Mt. St. Helens stuff:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v1/i1/noah.asp
12 January 2005 @ 10:33 pm
Here’s a link that deals very effectively with Greg’s stratifcation issue. It cites the work done at Colorado State that I mentioned earlier. It includes several cool video sequences.
To summarize, everything you’ve been taught about strata is wrong. It’s not layed one in successive layers with the oldest underneath. The strata is simply the sorting out of materials (vertically) within horizontal layers deposited by water. The strata on top is not younger than the strata underneath because they were both deposited at the same time. The “layers” are layed down next to each other. The diagrams and video explain this very well.
Here’s some more detail
12 January 2005 @ 10:33 pm
This has been confirmed by a real-life, present day event at Spirit Lake at the base of Mt. St. Helens. After the eruption in 1980 a mud dam formed which then breached and carved out a canyon, 1/40th scale of the Grand Canyon complete with all the lamination and stratification that supposedly takes millions of years (and successive ages) to form. All formed within hours.
At the bottom of Spirit Lake we seen the beginings of coal bed formations and the beginnings of a fossil forest just the like one in Yellowstone. Of course the evolutionists never bothered to dig down and see that the trees in the Yellowstone fossil forest don’t have roots. They were formed by a floating log mat consisting of trees ripped up during the flood which then sunk in an upright position until they settled in the silt and had sedimentation desposit around them where they fossilized. Precisely what we see happening at Spirit Lake and all with the past 25 years.
Amazing.
14 January 2005 @ 5:32 pm
Late to the party, but what the heck?
Atheistic evolution is just not working. Young earth views don’t square with scientific nor all of the biblical evidence. A historical Adam and Eve works for me.
14 January 2005 @ 9:37 pm
Greg B < < You see Phil, I do read the science >>
Nope, no science in your links that I can see. ICR, AnswersInGenesis, “ChristianAnswers.net” you’re kidding right?
Phil P
14 January 2005 @ 9:39 pm
Darn it, doesn’t like my quoting. I use the less than and greater than signs, it mistakes that for HTML. Let’s try this again
Greg B: You see Phil, I do read the science
Nope, no science in your links that I can see. What I see is a literal interpretation of Genesis at those sites posing as science. They really could care less about the science. Why you don’t see that, I don’t know.
Phil P
16 January 2005 @ 7:27 pm
If we’re free to allegorize parts of the Bible which contradict reason/natural-observation, and still maintain that the Bible has an important spiritual value for mankind, what about other sacred texts? How about the Hindu Purranas, which detail the stories of the various vedic gods? If allegorizing away that which is “inconvienient” can leave us with a spiritually important text, why the Bible alone? Doesn’t this shut down almost any criticism of non-Christian religious texts as being “unscientific” or “irrational”?
16 January 2005 @ 8:37 pm
Good question.
18 January 2005 @ 1:46 pm
Phil, I can only assume that you are judging the articles by the site they’re hosted at (christiananswers.net, irc.org, answersingenesis.org) and didn’t actually read them. They are very detailed explanations of scientific models for the formation of strata as well as plate tectonics theories for how the earth’s mountain ranges and continental shelves formed, parallel to the oceanic ridge. They are backed up by solid research and experimental evidence.
I think I’ve beaten this horse enough and I don’t really expect to change your mind so I guess we’ll just have to disagree.