Bait

No Kosh, you don't have to...I just thought you'd get a laugh. I read where someone was using this as a theory to justify the YEC position, so I thought I'd use it too...to goad you a bit (since your buddies agree with me on the Psalms thing).
Like I said...it all depends on how you look at it.
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Ron

Peez

For what it's worth, Penicillium is not a single-celled organism. The evidence that we have indicates that only unicellular (single-celled) organisms exited for a couple of billion years (prokaryotic only for the first part), then multicellular forms appeared. How many times multicellular organization evolved is uncertain, but it only had to evolve once (all multicellular organisms would then evolve from that species). You will have to explain this. I can see no reason to expect an increase in chromosome number with evolution, and I do not know what you mean by "advancement." [quote][b]Using your example though, even in the Vendian period, there were several different types (kinds) of fossils and fauna...not just one. Nowhere is there fossil evidence that all of the different types of fossils came from only one.[quote][b]What would you consider as evidence of this?There are plenty of fossils, some of single-celled organisms that lived over three billion years before the Cambrian period. No. In fact, some were prokaryotes and others were eukaryotes. No. The fossils are widely distributed. I am not sure if I follow you here. The fact that all living things share the same genetic code strongly suggests that they share a common ancestor. You are confused here. We are not discussing the theory of evolution, we are discussing the common descent of all living things. No, they are not the same thing. The theory of evolution is the explanation for the pattern of evolution that has been observed (from the fossil record, comparative anatomy, genetics, biogeography, etc.). Common descent is sometimes called the fact of evolution.

In any event, do you think that the location of the first living cell is relevant to this discussion? Do you think that our not knowing where this first living thing was found is a problem for common descent? I do not understand what you are getting at. See above. They do, as much as it is possible for them to. It has already been explained to you that an increase in chromosome number is not an expected effect of evolution. Beyond that, I should point out that we did not evolve from a fern either. We did not evolve from any living species. We are not more "advanced" (in any biological sense) than Penicillium, ferns, or any other living thing. I don't know much about snow accumulation, nor about how accurate that information is, but in any event are you suggesting that the average rate of accumulation over the past 48 years is necessarily representative of the average rate over the past 2500 years? You do know that we have understood for many years that the speed of light can be changed? The only thing that is constant is the speed of light in a vacuum.

Peez

Bait

Mr. MrDarwin sir,
Finally!!! THANK YOU!!!! (Oolon, you reading this??) What you haven't been involved in on other parts of the forum is my position in these debates. First, though I'm a Christian, I do not necessarily hold to the YEC position...I believe that Biblically it can be shown that the earth could be much older than 6,000 years. Second, I stated that I believe that God created all of the various "kinds" of creatures...but the Bible does not specifically say HOW he went about it. I also said that the Bible and science does not necessarily disagree on many of the major points normally debated. I DID say that I believed that each living thing was created after it's kind...but that we do not have a good definition of what "kind" is, or was meant in the genesis account. Just because a lion mates with a tiger to form a liger does not disprove the Genesis account. I also said that since everything was created after it's kind, that would mean that the "Darwin" part of the theory of evolution stating every living thing came from ONE source is incorrect. Mammals did not necessarily come from plants as an example. Oolon stated (I paraphrase)that one theory was that these first living organisms multiplied so rapidly, that they ate up all of the chemicals, etc. that made them come into being to start with. This to me, does not make sense, and is not consistant with any evidence I have ever seen. Theoretically it should still be happening today, and new life should be forming today as it did back then. So now we have a new definition to work with...and a new direction for debate.
Ron

Peez

I hope that you don't mind if I put in my 2 cents. The theory of evolution does not require that all living things evolved from one living thing. However, all the evidence that we have indicates that this is the case. I should point out that the evolution of multicellular organisms probably did not involve adding a cell or two at a time in an increasingly multicellular form. Rather, there would have been colonies of unicellular organisms in which some cells began to specialize for certain functions, leading to a truly multicellular organism (instead of a bunch of cells stuck together). I should also point out that "man" is not the end product of evolution any more than bacteria are. Humans and bacteria are the results of billions of years of evolution. Darwin had nothing to say about the origin of life, nothing at all. Neither the theory of evolution nor common descent address the first life form. In fact, if one or more gods could had created that life form it would not change the theory of evolution or common descent at all. As I have pointed out, that is not part of the theory of evolution, nor is it required for that theory. What failure is it that you are referring to?

Peez

Valentine Pontifex

I am not a geologist, but even I see some really nasty errors in it. I am looking at Brown's discussion of the magnetically reversed sections of the seafloor. Brown says that there are none.

From: <a href="http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverviewa3.html" target="_blank">http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverviewa3.html</a>

First of all Brown false implies that the magnetic bands such as in the Atlantic are what caused geologists to suggest the magnetic reversals. This is false. That the magnetic fields reversed was already known from land. Geologists can see the orientation of magnetic field a rock was exposed to when it formed. These "fossils" of ancient magnetic fields in ancient rocks show that the magnetic field of the Earth periodically had reverse polarity.

Patrick once posted a bit of comparing radiometric dates versus magnetic polarity. And behold, at various dates given by radiometric dating the magnetic polarity is consistent. At x million years ago, the rock will of a consistent magnetic polarity.

Brown's claim that the seafloor shows no magnetic reversals is just plain bunk. The magnetic polarity was measured by surface ships. They see overall polarity of the weak magnetism of the rocks below them plus the stronger magnetism of the Earth's magnetic field. A bigger positive number plus a smaller negative number is always positive! At least that is my understanding of it. John and Patrick might have some nitpicks on what I have said.

It all comes down to that context thing. Brown failed to show the context of what was being measured.

[ February 28, 2002: Message edited by: LordValentine ]</p>

faded_Glory

If I may, I too had a look at this theory. What I think? The guy is a total crackpot!

The biggest problem of his theory is that it completely superfluous, unnecessary and pointless. When we build geological hypotheses and theories we do so to explain the observations we have made. Walt Brown builds a theory of a worldwide flood, but unfortunately there aren't any observations that such a flood ever happened - so what is the bloody point of his theory ? I might as well build a theory how the Earth was transformed into cheese during the Permo-Triassic, and back into rocks during the Cretaceous....there is as much evidence for that as there is for his worldwide flood

I won't go into the physical, chemical and biological nonsense that is dripping from every page. Just for tasters, he explains the kilometers thick salt layers present in many basins as formed by evaporitisation during a worldwide flood that was caused by the heaviest rainfall ever seen on the planet . Yeah, right

Or this one: Similarly, waters escaping from under the western edge of the European hydroplate may have dumped the soft, fine-grained type of limestone known as chalk. Most famous are the exposed layers in England’s White Cliffs of Dover and France’s coast of Normandy. (See Figure 103 on page 161.) While chalk contains a few organic remains, most of it is inorganic.

Inorganic chalk. Yeah, right again....

Look, the only use for this book is when you're out of paper on the johns. Honestly... <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

fG

PS I forgot the best: the reference he used to support his statement that most of the Chalk is inorganic:

W. A. Tarr, “Is the Chalk a Chemical Deposit?” Geological Magazine, Vol. 62, No. 6, June 1925 , p. 259.

ROTFLMAO

fG

[ February 28, 2002: Message edited by: faded_Glory ]</p>

MrDarwin

Peez is quite correct and I would like to emphasize this point; there is absolutely nothing about the theory of evolution that says that all life on earth had to come from a single origin. There is no reason (that we know of) why life could not originate multiple times on a planet, with each origin giving rise to completely independent lineages. The various phyla could have had completely independent origins; but as Peez points out, all the evidence we have been able to accumulate does indeed point toward all the living phyla--in fact, all life on earth--coming from a single unique origin. We don't believe this because evolution says it must be true; we believe it because there is evidence that it is true.

Kosh

Damn, I thought we were discussing Flood
Geology (or lack of)...

ps418

Bait:
Second question:
has it been estimated that the cores of the ice caps, have been around? Were the polar regions always ice? Now I'm on shaky ground here, and I'm really only looking for the evidence to dispute this, but I read that the Ice cores of the polar regions have a maximum of about 14,000 feet of ice. An airplane was excavated (I read) that had been exposed to the climate for 48 years, and it was buried 262 feet in ice (which equals to 5.45 feet per year). The calculations I read about estimates then the ice caps at a little over 2500 years old. Geologically then, is this a true estimate?

No, like other YEC attempts to date various geologic features of the earth, this estimate is based on a complete lack of knowledge about how ice sheets are dated. In particular, it assumes that a) ice sheets can be dated by simple thickness, and that b) there is a linear relationship between thickness and age.

Both assumptions are false.

First ice sheets are not dated by thickness, but by annual layer counting, by isotopic correlation with indedependently-datable paleoclimate records such as tree ring series and varved deposits, and other methods.

Second, annual layers become thinnner with depth in the ice, because of the greater and greater weight of overburden (and because the ice flows outward under the weight - like a rubber band becoming thinner as you stretch it). Last year's snow might be several feet thick, whereas layers from, say, 20,000 years ago mght be an inch thick or somewhere in that neighborhood. The ice at the firn/ice boundary may be a century or more old.

As an example of how ice layers thin with age, Cronin (Principles of Paleoclimatology, p. 433) shows several ice core sections with well-defined annual layers from 82, 105, 120, and 135 meters below surface in a glacier in south america. Over that thickness of 53m, average annual layer thickness shrinks from 16.9, to 5.0, to 3.0, and 1.7 cm, respectively.

Even if we ignored layer counting and other methods and just took the YEC estimate at face value, adding a correction for ice compaction with depth, even then you'd get an age 'estimate' that is far too long to fit into the YEC timescale.

Also, as Richard Alley points out in his book The Two-Mile Time Machine, the planes of the Lost Squadron landed near the coast, in an area of extremely high snow accumulation rates, far higher than the accumulation rates near the center of the ice sheet where the GISP, GRIP, and GISP2 cores were taken.


Patrick

Peez

Keep in mind that when we say that Chordates first appeared in the Cambrian, we are talking about creatures that most people would likely call "worms." There were no mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, cartilaginous fish, or jawless fish. They had a notochord, gill slits, and a post anal tail, but not much else in common with us. The Bible is rather vague on many things, and can be, um, interpreted in a wide variety of ways. This allows most observations to be fit in one way or another, but even so there are clear errors in the Bible. Perhaps that is because any definition of kind would shed more light on how silly the creationist position is. That is not part of Darwin's theory. However, we do have evidence that all known living things evolved from a common ancestor. This certainly seems to contradict the Genesis account. The obvious conclusion is that the Genesis account is, at best, not meant to be taken literally. LOL Nobody thinks that mammals "come from plants." Mammals and plants share a common ancestor.

Peez