Creationism, fact or fiction?

[pollywog]

Originally Posted by Jaywalker

Does not the bible say that thou art made from dirt? Art thou saying that dirt is alive?..And your lecturing us what's scientific or not now

Not to mention Eve, coming from Adam's ribs. Cloning perhaps?!

...mordecai?

[Mordecai]

Originally Posted by essex

And I guess an obvious answer to an obvious question is in order:

I hope that answers that

Oh that old thing? Anybody can cut and paste a webpage from the internet, it's another thing to assimilate the facts and think for yourself.

1) First, according to Schweitzer's own account, everyone who looked at the microscope saw or described what they saw as red-blood cells. Secondly, to confirm it they injected samples into rats. If there was even a minute amount of hemoglobin present in the T. Rex sample, the rats’ immune system should build up detectable antibodies against this compound. This is exactly what happened in carefully controlled experiments.

And why shouldn't the preservation be questioned? When the fact is there shouldn't be ANY preservation after supposedly 70 millions years of fossilization and since "no DNA would remain intact much beyond 10,000 years." (Sykes, Brian, "The past comes alive," Nature, Vol. 352, No. 6334, Aug. 1, 1991, p. 381.)

2) You have ignored the article by Reuters from March 2005:
--> Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue

Do those look fossilized to you?

3) The reliability of the amino racemization dating is a controversy in itself in the scientific community. So what was the age that resulted from this dating? Do you know? Or you are just believing that internet site you copied from by FAITH?

4) It's news because we're talking about a supposedly 70 MILLION year old dinosaur bone. There is zero evidence that there can be such preservation for that long.

WRONG!, please know what you are arguing against before you attack them.
Evolution takes no position whatsoever as to where origional life comes from.

This encyclopedia doesn't seem to have any problems associating the two together.

Just to let everyone know, I am not an evolutionist, or atleast I have yet to form any concrete opinion on evolution, however, I DO definitely find it to be more viable than creationism (which I personally think is a load of BS), just my two cents.

Then why are you trying to defend it?

[Mordecai]

Originally Posted by micketymoc

I’ve done more than just “dismiss that as a conspiracy theory”. I’ve devoted several posts to demonstrating the fallacy of your “bigotry” argument. Because you seem to have difficulty reading long paragraphs, I’ll sum up my earlier arguments in shorter sentences that link to my original posts:

Fact number one:

Science is a human endeavor. Because there are so many egos involved in the scientific process, scientists let the evidence decide who’s right and who’s wrong.

It doesn't answer the question why the common experience of Creationist and ID scientists is to have their work rejected, not because of the evidence, but because it strikes of theism?

And its funny how micketymoc in that link he gave associated Creationists with this article "Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science". I have already exposed his blatant dishonesty on that there, that article has nothing to do with the works of Creationists at all, but that of the old Cold-fusion debacle. But obviously micketymoc thinks he can earn some points by maligning Creationists as "bogus science". Now we see, just how bigoted some evolutionists are with Creationists.

Fact number two:

Peer review is tough, sometimes traumatic, but in the long run it ensures that only verified phenomena are published and accepted as science.

Even mainstream scientists are sometimes so traumatized by the experience of their pet theories being attacked by fellow scientists in the peer review process, sometimes they experience sour grapes.

Creationists are afraid to submit their work to an objective peer review process, for obvious reasons (i.e. NO EVIDENCE to support their claims). Thus, they do the next best thing: claim bigotry where none exists!

The Creationist complaint is not that its tough, of course its tough, but the toughness is not the problem, it's the outright rejection by evolutionists on anything that smells of anything theistic.

Fact number three:

The scientists on the highest pedestals (Einstein, Darwin, etc.) got there by toppling the dominant scientific paradigms of their day. Any scientist who actually discovers real evidence of a young earth would actually be put on a pedestal of his own. But first he’s gotta go through the peer review process; he’s gotta provide unimpeachable evidence that can be confirmed objectively by other scientists.

If you want to overturn a dominant scientific theory, the only way to do it is to propose an alternative model based on solid scientific principles. To beat ‘em, you gotta join ‘em.

Bigotry. Let me guess – is it just a nice synonym for “sour grapes”?

Is that how you dismiss actual experience of bigotry by creationist scientists? Label their sentiments as "sour grapes"?

On the other hand, their experience of bigotry at the hands of evolutionists speak for themselves. Here's a couple of more for you to dismiss as "sour grapes":

Dr Michael Behe, associate professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University author of Darwin's Black Box, is not even a biblical creationist, but has experienced blatant censorship simply because he highlights the strong evidence for an intelligent designer of life. Like Dr Gentry, he wasn't even given a chance to respond to his critics — see his Correspondence with Science Journals.

Scientific American refused to allow Phillip Johnson to defend himself against a vindictive and petty review by the atheistic Marxist, Stephen Jay Gould. So Johnson published Response to Gould on the Internet, from Access Research Network.

[essex]

Originally Posted by Mordecai

Oh that old thing? Anybody can cut and paste a webpage from the internet, it's another thing to assimilate the facts and think for yourself.

You know what? For the first time, we both agree on something. The question is, do you have what it takes to assimilate the facts? We'll find out in few moments...

Originally Posted by Mordecai

1) First, according to Schweitzer's own account, everyone who looked at the microscope saw or described what they saw as red-blood cells. Secondly, to confirm it they injected samples into rats. If there was even a minute amount of hemoglobin present in the T. Rex sample, the rats’ immune system should build up detectable antibodies against this compound. This is exactly what happened in carefully controlled experiments.

And why shouldn't the preservation be questioned? When the fact is there shouldn't be ANY preservation after supposedly 70 millions years of fossilization and since "no DNA would remain intact much beyond 10,000 years." (Sykes, Brian, "The past comes alive," Nature, Vol. 352, No. 6334, Aug. 1, 1991, p. 381.)

2) You have ignored the article by Reuters from March 2005:

--> Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue

Do those look fossilized to you?

3) The reliability of the amino racemization dating is a controversy in itself in the scientific community. So what was the age that resulted from this dating? Do you know? Or you are just believing that internet site you copied from by FAITH?

4) It's news because we're talking about a supposedly 70 MILLION year old dinosaur bone. There is zero evidence that there can be such preservation for that long.

You know, I thought about posting a long explanation about how wrong you are but I'd just be wasting my time, so I thought I'd just let Schweitzer tell you herself how wrong you are , then we'll find out how well you actually assimilate the facts yourself.

Originally Posted by Mordecai

This encyclopedia doesn't seem to have any problems associating the two together.

This school says otherwise, so does this school, and this ...

Please, i urge you to please read this to avoid further misinformation on your part.

Originally Posted by Mordecai

Then why are you trying to defend it?

I'm defending it coz you're making misinformed claims against it, if by doing that it makes me an evolutionist then so be it, better to be an accidental evolutionist than an ignorant creationist

[Ischaramoochie]

Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is a Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers and sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. It has editions in roughly 200 different languages (about 100 of which are active) and contains entries both on traditional encyclopedic topics and on almanac, gazetteer, and current events topics. Its purpose is to create and distribute a free international encyclopedia in as many languages as possible. Wikipedia is one of the most popular reference sites on the internet,[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped..._PopularityRef) receiving around 60 million hits per day.

Wikipedia contains approximately 1.6 million articles. More than 595,000 of these are in English, more than 240,000 in German, and more than 100,000 each in Japanese and French. It began as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia on January 15, 2001. Having steadily risen in popularity,[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...ote_Popularity) it has spawned several sister projects, such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. It is edited by volunteers in wiki fashion, meaning articles are subject to change by nearly anyone. Wikipedia's volunteers enforce a policy of "neutral point of view" whereby views presented by notable persons or literature are summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth. Because of its open nature, vandalism and inaccuracy are problems in Wikipedia.

The status of Wikipedia as a reference work has been controversial, and it is both praised for its free distribution, free editing and wide range of topics and criticized for alleged systemic biases, deficiencies in some topics, and lack of accountability and authority when compared with traditional encyclopedias. Its articles have been cited by the mass media and academia and are available under the GNU Free Documentation License. Its German language edition has been distributed on compact discs, and many of its other editions are mirrored or have been forked by websites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
mew...

[Ischaramoochie]

vs.

[pollywog]

...some people would want to believe what they WANT to believe.

[crazy legs]

4) It's news because we're talking about a supposedly 70 MILLION year old dinosaur bone. There is zero evidence that there can be such preservation for that long.

If the T-Rex is 10,000 years old or less the question then becomes--how did the dinosaurs become extinct?

How come there is no mention of Fred Flinstone in the bible?

Did Noah loaded his arc with a pair of those nasty T-Rex?

[pollywog]

^I have a feeling that the "dinosaur w/ man footprint" argument would again resurface. Together with the "behemoth" and the "leviathan" of Job.

[Mordecai]

Originally Posted by essex

You know, I thought about posting a long explanation about how wrong you are but I'd just be wasting my time, so I thought I'd just let Schweitzer tell you herself how wrong you are , then we'll find out how well you actually assimilate the facts yourself.

Is this how you evade the evidence? How did Schweitzer tell me that I'm wrong in that article? By saying that she affirmed in a billions of year old Earth in agreement with you? So what? This is about the evidence before us--unpetrified dinosaur bones and tissues. Science is about where the evidence leads. Where does this evidence lead us? To 70 million year old view, or to the few thousand year old view?

This school says otherwise, so does this school, and this ...

Please, i urge you to please read this to avoid further misinformation on your part.

Thank you, I checked out the links.
The first link definitely agrees with you.
The second link disagrees with you and had a link which leads to your fourth link at TalkOrigins, they even had this statement, "Ultimately, all species trace back to the origin of life itself".
The third link neither agrees nor disagrees with you, so its pretty useless.
The fourth link is by far the most damning to your point, TalkOrigins itself does NOT deny that evolution includes Abiogenesis (origin of first life from non-life), in fact it included it as part of the process, it only denies that purely random chance was involved.

It seems clear then that it is YOU who is misinformed of your own sources.

I'm defending it coz you're making misinformed claims against it, if by doing that it makes me an evolutionist then so be it, better to be an accidental evolutionist than an ignorant creationist

Umm...better inform yourself better first of evolutionism before you defend it. Just a suggestion. By the way, are you an atheist or theist or what? Just curious.

[Mordecai]

Originally Posted by crazy legs

If the T-Rex is 10,000 years old or less the question then becomes--how did the dinosaurs become extinct?

The flood of Noah itself, and the conditions after the flood.

How come there is no mention of Fred Flinstone in the bible?

Because the Bible wasn't written by Hanna Barbera.

Did Noah loaded his arc with a pair of those nasty T-Rex?

Noah loaded the ark with a pair of EVERY KIND of animals. Instead of loading up tigers, lions, and cheetahs which are all the same KIND, he could've just loaded just a pair of tigers as representatives for example. Likewise, he could've loaded just a smaller gentler version of a T-Rex.

Originally Posted by pollywog

^I have a feeling that the "dinosaur w/ man footprint" argument would again resurface. Together with the "behemoth" and the "leviathan" of Job.

Of course the name "dinosaur" wasn't invented until 19th century, so its natural that people back in Job's time had a different name for them. The descriptions given in Job 40 and 41 for the "leviathan" and the "behemoth" certainly fits that of a dinosaur if we just let the scriptures speak for itself.

[essex]

Originally Posted by Mordecai

Is this how you evade the evidence? How did Schweitzer tell me that I'm wrong in that article? By saying that she affirmed in a billions of year old Earth in agreement with you? So what? This is about the evidence before us--unpetrified dinosaur bones and tissues. Science is about where the evidence leads. Where does this evidence lead us? To 70 million year old view, or to the few thousand year old view?

sigh... no one's evading your questions Mordecai, I posted that link hoping you would come to realize how wrong your (creationists) tactics are, from Schweitzer herself.... You simply pick the stuff you WANT to believe in and leave the rest out.

Yes science is about where the ENTIRE EVIDENCE leads, NOT just picking certain evidence that agrees with your beliefs.

haaaaaaaaay.... here

Originally Posted by Mordecai

Thank you, I checked out the links.
The first link definitely agrees with you.
The second link disagrees with you and had a link which leads to your fourth link at TalkOrigins, they even had this statement, "Ultimately, all species trace back to the origin of life itself".
The third link neither agrees nor disagrees with you, so its pretty useless.
The fourth link is by far the most damning to your point, TalkOrigins itself does NOT deny that evolution includes Abiogenesis (origin of first life from non-life), in fact it included it as part of the process, it only denies that purely random chance was involved.

Holy misinterpretation Batman!

One should also note that the theory of evolution doesn't depend on how the first life began. The truth or falsity of any theory of abiogenesis wouldn't affect evolution in the least.

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html

That's what happens when you pick and choose only what you like instead of accepting ALL the facts, typical of most creationists.

Originally Posted by Mordecai

It seems clear then that it is YOU who is misinformed of your own sources.

No Mordecai, as we have just found out, it is you who's misinformed, and your unwillingness to explore ALL the facts simply shows what a hindrance your religion is to society.

Originally Posted by Mordecai

Umm...better inform yourself better first of evolutionism before you defend it. Just a suggestion. By the way, are you an atheist or theist or what? Just curious.

Don't worry about me, I'm more informed on the subject than you are... obviously.

And by the way, I'm an agnostic, probably bordering on atheism.

[pollywog]

Originally Posted by Mordecai

Of course the name "dinosaur" wasn't invented until 19th century, so its natural that people back in Job's time had a different name for them. The descriptions given in Job 40 and 41 for the "leviathan" and the "behemoth" certainly fits that of a dinosaur if we just let the scriptures speak for itself.

"Let the scripture speak for itself" In Noah's time, the appearance of a rainbow is considered a "miracle."(I can make one using a garden hose!) ...Cavemen feared lightning beacuse they tought it came from evil spirits! Just imagine someone carrying a lighter in Noah's time. Noah would've worshipped that guy carrying the said lighter!

Bottomline: The bible was written given the limited knowledge in those times. What is considered a 'miracle' at that time is just an ordinary occurence today. Just so they called something a 'leviathan'/'behemoth' "with tails as thick as the Cedar tree" doesn't automatically mean they saw a dinosaur.

Let me ask you, do you honestly think that people in those times regard an elephants trunk to be its nose? Heck! They even thought a bat is considered a bird! They don't even know how many legs an insect has! Now you're telling us that they know what a dinosaur is?!

...so you believe in the 'dinosaur w/ man' footprints?

[crazy legs]

Originally Posted by Mordecai

The flood of Noah itself, and the conditions after the flood.

Was that in the bible?

Originally Posted by Mordecai

Noah loaded the ark with a pair of EVERY KIND of animals. Instead of loading up tigers, lions, and cheetahs which are all the same KIND, he could've just loaded just a pair of tigers as representatives for example. Likewise, he could've loaded just a smaller gentler version of a T-Rex.

Maybe a couple of gay T-Rex. Thats why they became extinct. Then the tigers miraculously morphed to become lions, cheetahs and cats once again just like before the flood. And this is called Creatinist Science.

[Onomatopoet]

EVERY KIND of animal? the variety of insects alone go into the millions. that must have been one farging huge ark.

[pollywog]

^because God works in "mysterious" ways.

[easter]

Originally Posted by Onomatopoet

EVERY KIND of animal? the variety of insects alone go into the millions. that must have been one farging huge ark.

Yes it was.

The Size of the Ark:

"The total available floor space on the ark would have been over 100,000 square feet, which would be more floor space than in 20 standard-sized basketball courts."

"The total cubic volume would have been 1,518,000 cubic feet [462,686.4 cubic meters] --that would be equal to the capacity of 569 modern railroad stock cars."


About the Animals:

"...the vast majority of these are capable of surviving in water and would not need to be brought aboard the ark. Noah need make no provision for the 21,000 species of fish..."

"Doctors Morris and Whitcomb in their classic book, "The Genesis Flood," state that no more than 35,000 individual animals needed to go on the ark."

Read more here: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c013.html

[Onomatopoet]

and how old was noah again when he built this?

[essex]

Originally Posted by easter

Yes it was.

The Size of the Ark:

"The total available floor space on the ark would have been over 100,000 square feet, which would be more floor space than in 20 standard-sized basketball courts."

"The total cubic volume would have been 1,518,000 cubic feet [462,686.4 cubic meters] --that would be equal to the capacity of 569 modern railroad stock cars."

Note that 20 "standard-sized basketball courts" is not that big, if it were 20 "standard-sized basketball stadiums", it would be a different matter.

First, let's talk about building the ark itself...

source

Wood isnt the best material for shipbuilding, a ship must be built to hold together and must also be sturdy enough that the changing stresses don't open gaps in its hull.

The longest wooden ships in moder seas are about 300 feet and requires reinforcing with iron straps and leaks so badly they must be constantly pumped.

1) wood isnt strong enough to prevent separation between the joints, specially in the heavy seas that the ark would have encountered.
2) the ark would have leaked in water in so many places almost 24/7, how could a crew of 8 possibly maintin the ark from sinking?

Originally Posted by easter

About the Animals:

"...the vast majority of these are capable of surviving in water and would not need to be brought aboard the ark. Noah need make no provision for the 21,000 species of fish..."

WRONG, first of all, not all fishes can survive in salt water and vice versa...

source

Your link talks about fishes being able to tolerate different ranges of salinity but the fact that many fishes can do this does not mean that all can, Furthermore, the problem applies to more than fish. Freshwater invertebrates are commonly used as indicators of the health of streams. Even a tiny amount of pollution can cause many species to disappear from the stream.

Aquatic organisms would have more than salinity to worry about, such as the following:
1)Heat. All mechanisms proposed to cause the Flood would have released enough heat to boil the oceans. The deposition of limestone would release enough heat to boil them again. Meteors and volcanoes that occurred during the Flood, as implied by their presence in layers attributed to the Flood by flood geologists, would probably have boiled them again (Isaak 1998). Woodmorappe (1996, 140) dismissed the problem of volcanoes but ignored all the other sources of heat.
2)Acid. The volcanoes that erupted during the Flood would also have produced sulfuric acid, enough to lower the pH of the ocean to 2.2, which would be fatal to almost all marine life (Morton 1998b).
3)Substrate. Many freshwater and marine invertebrates rely on a substrate. They anchor themselves on the substrate and rely on currents to carry their food to them. During the Flood, substrates would have been uninhabitable at least part of the time, especially on land. Woodmorappe (1996, 141) suggested floating pumice as a substrate, but it would float with the currents, so currents would not bring nutrients to animals on them.
4)Pressure. The Flood would have caused great fluctuation in sea pressures. Many deep-sea creatures invariably die from the decompression when brought to the surface. Other surface animals would die from too much pressure if forced deep underwater.

oh and lets not even talk about what a flood of that magnitude would have done to the fragile coral reefs

Originally Posted by easter

"Doctors Morris and Whitcomb in their classic book, "The Genesis Flood," state that no more than 35,000 individual animals needed to go on the ark."

source

Woodmorappe (p. 5-7) compromises by using genus as a kind. However, on the ark "kind" must have meant something closer to species for three reasons:
1)For purposes of naming animals, the people who live among them distinguish between them (that is, give them different names) at roughly the species level. [Gould, 1980]
2)The Biblical "kind," according to most interpretations, implies reproductive separateness. On the ark, the purpose of gathering different kinds was to preserve them by later reproduction. Species, by definition, is the level at which animals are reproductively distinct.
3)The Flood, according to models, was fairly recent. There simply wouldn't have been time enough to accumulate the number of mutations necessary for the diversity of species we see within many genera today.

Whitcomb & Morris arbitrarily exclude all animals except mammals, birds, and reptiles. However, many other animals, particularly land arthropods, must also have been on the ark for two reasons:
1)The Bible says so. Gen. 7:8 puts on the ark all creatures that move along the ground, with no further qualifications. Lev. 11:42 includes arthropods (creatures that "walk on many feet") in such a category.
2)They couldn't survive outside. Gen. 7:21-23 says every land creature not aboard the ark perished. And indeed, not one insect species in a thousand could survive for half a year on the vegetation mats proposed by some creationists. Most other land arthropods, snails, slugs, earthworms, etc. would also have to be on the ark to survive.

Woodmorappe gets his animals to fit only by taking juvenile pairs of everything weighing more than 22 lbs. as an adult. However, it is more likely that Noah would have brought adults aboard:
1)The Bible (Gen. 7:2) speaks of "the male and his mate," indicating that the animals were at sexual maturity.
2)Many animals require the care of adults to teach them behaviors they need for survival. If brought aboard as juveniles, these animals wouldn't have survived.

The Bible says either seven or fourteen (it's ambiguous) of each kind of clean animal was aboard. It defines clean animals essentially as ruminants, a suborder which includes about 69 recent genera, 192 recent species [Wilson & Reeder, 1993], and probably a comparable number of extinct genera and species. That is a small percentage of the total number of species, but ruminants are among the largest mammals, so their bulk is significant.

Woodmorappe (p. 8-9) gets around the problem by citing Jewish tradition which gives only 13 domestic genera as clean. He then calculates that this would increase the total animal mass by 2-3% and decides that this amount is small enough that he can ignore it completely. However, even Jewish sources admit that this contradicts the unambiguous word of the Bible. [Steinsaltz, 1976, p. 187]

The number and size of clean birds is small enough to disregard entirely, but the Bible at one point (Gen. 7:3) says seven of all kinds of birds were aboard.

In calculating the total mass of all the animals, Woodmorappe makes several questionable and invalid assumptions.
1)Collecting each species instead of each genus would increase the number of individuals three- to fourfold. The most speciose groups tend to be the smaller animals, though, so the total mass would be approximately doubled or tripled.
2)Collecting all land animals instead of just mammals, birds, and reptiles would have insignificant impact on the space required, since those animals, though plentiful, are so small. (The problems come when you try to care for them all.)
3)Leaving off the long-extinct animals would free considerable space. Woodmorappe doesn't say how many of the animals in his calculations are known only from fossils, but it is apparently 50-70% of them, including most of the large ones. However, since he took only juveniles of the large animals, leaving off all the dinosaurs etc. would probably not free more than 80% of the space. On the other hand, collecting all extinct animals in addition to just the known ones would increase the load by an unknown but probably substantial amount.
4)Loading adults instead of juveniles as small as Woodmorappe uses would increase the load 13- to 50-fold.
5)Including extra clean animals would increase the load by 1.5-3% if only the 13 traditional domestic ruminants are considered, but by 14-28% if all ruminants are considered clean.

In conclusion, an ark of the size specified in the Bible would not be large enough to carry a cargo of animals and food sufficient to repopulate the earth, especially if animals that are now extinct were required to be aboard.

Oh yeah easter, do you think that insects were also taken into the ark? how do you think noah would have managed to collect and store the millions of species of insects?

[Ischaramoochie]

^ this can be perfectly explained by putting god into the equation.