Freethought & Rationalism Archive

lpetrich · 08-30-2002, 09:21 PM

Quote:

(where the water from Noah's Flood came from)
Ed:
Read "The Waters Above" by John Whitcomb.

I dont remember, it has been about 20 years since I read that book. I think it has fallen out of favor with most creationists now however. I think most of the water came from under the crust and from supernatural creation.

God waved his magic wand, it would seem.

Quote:

lp: However, I find it curious that nobody has ever tried to build a replica of the Ark.
Ed:
There are more important things to spend money on. It wouldn't convince most ultraskeptics such as those on this site.

There have been re-enactments of other famous voyages, and there is at least one Bible-inspired theme park, so why not Noah's Ark?

Quote:

lp: ... Looking all nice and neat would look like the work of a single creator or team of creators. Looking like a giant mess suggests a multitude of creators who had not communicated very well with each other. Which is what we see in.
Ed:
No, if a committe wrote your name without seeing your actual signature it would look nearly perfect, ...

However, the committee's members may put in their individual quirks -- I've seen numerous quirks in things that have been produced by groups of people, like computer games. My favorite one is in the level "Silvermines" in the game "Myth: the Fallen Lords", in which a cemetery has gravestones with the names of the game's main creators on them.

Quote:

Ed:
but when you actually write your signature it has little quirks in it, that is how handwriting experts tell the difference between different handwritings. ...

Which is what the members of a committee could do.

Quote:

Ed:
No, it is you atheists that are wasting your time talking about the flood and believing that if they refute the evidence for the flood then they disprove God. This is backwards.
(LP on Ed doing a mirror-image projection)
No, go back and read some of yours and others earlier posts especially in the Noah's flood thread.

Where should I look?

Quote:

Ed:
I have never denied that speciation cannot happen. But there is no evidence of movement between higher taxa.

I wonder what Ed would consider acceptable evidence? Following species through time in a time machine?

Quote:

lp: And how does one recognize myth from literary styling? It has to be something other than "I know it when I see it".
Ed:
We covered this in another post.

Where?

Quote:

LP:
Cladistics is designed around the concept of biological evolution. If reasonable cladograms could not be made despite heroic efforts, that would cause trouble for the idea of evolution. But they can be.
Ed:
It only recognizes characteristics that the organism already has.

If that is the case, then so what?

Coragyps · 08-31-2002, 01:30 PM

Quote:

I think most of the water came from under the crust and from supernatural creation.

No supernatural creation required - just supernatural cooling! Ed, do tou have any idea how hot it is ten miles below the Earth's surface?

Ed · 09-02-2002, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lpetrich:

Ed:
... I notice that you use linguistic terms when talking about genes, confirming my earlier post about DNA being linguistic in nature.

lp: Linguistic terms???[/b]

Yep, go back and reread your post.

Quote:

(rates of evolution...)
lp: There's some literature on doing exactly that, such as finding out from the fossil record when horse and rhinoceros ancestors become so much alike that they become indistinguishable. One then sequences some horse and rhino genes with the same functions and compares them and derives an average rate of evolution from them.
Ed:
You are assuming what you are trying to prove, you need to start with the rate of evolution to determine the appropriate ancestor. Instead you choose a hypothetical ancestor and then determine the hypothetical rate of evolution.

lp: A big mixed load of horse and rhino dung. One follows horses and rhinos backwards in the fossil record until their fossil records merge. Fossils can be dated with the help of the rocks that contain them, and this provides a divergence date totally independent of hypotheses about molecular-evolution rates.

But you are assuming that their fossil records merge molecularly, but we have no DNA evidence from the supposed ancestor in the fossil record.
Also, the supposed "merging" is highly questionable. Many of the so-called horse ancestors were living at the same time and the same place as more "advanced" horses. This shows that they are probably just different species of horses.

Quote:

lp: What makes such family trees "highly speculative"?
Ed:
Because they are based on historical extrapolations and disputable "transitional" forms.
lp: How are they any more speculative than your ad hoc hypotheses about Noah's Flood?
Ed:
Noahs flood is a one time event, you are speculating on thousands of historical events, none of which have ever been empirically observed.

lp: Because we have not been around to watch them happen. Ed, what will it take? A time machine?

No, just an experiment that demonstrates that such a thing is remotely possible.

Quote:

Ed:
See above about subject-object correlation.
lp: Whatever precisely that is supposed to be.
Ed:
It is the correlation between what you observe and what is really there.

lp: Being able to unconsciously model one's environment does not prove nearly as much as Ed seems to think it does, because the capability can be selected for if it can emerge.

Thats the problem, how can it emerge?

Quote:

Ed:
Pantheism denies the existence of individuality, thereby providing no basis for justice and a host of other ethical and logical problems.

lp: I don't see how that happens.

Well for one, if everything is god then Hitler was just part of god and never did anything wrong because there is no right or wrong since god is both good and evil.

Quote:

(me on a better-flowing translation of Genesis 1:1 ...)
Ed:
I dont think that version is as accurate, but anyway your point is......?

lp: That the Genesis-1 creation story has a serious ambiguity in it.

What ambiguity? They both say basically the same thing.

Quote:

lP: Ed, your advocacy of both big-sediment and little-sediment Flood Geology gives new meaning to the term "two-faced". ...
Ed:
No, I am just trying to show you cannot be too dogmatic about totally dismissing the flood.

lp: I don't see how I am more dogmatic about that than you are about the Bible.

Yes, but atheists always make a big show about how open minded they are. Is lp not that open minded?

Quote:

lp: Ed, the worldwide version of Noah's Flood was discredited in the early 19th century, well before Charles Darwin published his magnum opus. It was discredited not out of an attitude of "I know that the Christian God is 100% real and I've decided to declare war on It", but because it did not fit the evidence.

No, it was primarily rejected because if the Christian God was real then they would have to be accountable for how they spend their time and secondarily because the evidence did not fit their preconceived ideas of what the evidence should be.

[b]

Quote:

lp: However, many places contain alternations of coarse-grained and fine-grained rock, when after a big flood, the coarse-grained sediment would settle first, and then the fine-grained sediment.
Ed:
Not necessarily. Its a little more complex than that.
lp: What a weird miracle flood Noah's Flood was (sarcasm). And I take it that you are currently supporting the big-sediment version.
Ed:
I am sure a hydrologist could explain why it is not as simple as you portray it.

lp: And how is that the case, O Ed?

There have been cases where floods were thought to have occured and yet there was no flood and vice versa. I.e sometimes water in combination with other factors does weird things.

lpetrich · 09-02-2002, 09:21 PM

Quote:

Ed:
... I notice that you use linguistic terms when talking about genes, confirming my earlier post about DNA being linguistic in nature. ...

So what? Does it indicate that some long-ago elf had designed the first genetic systems?

Quote:

lp: ... One follows horses and rhinos backwards in the fossil record until their fossil records merge. Fossils can be dated with the help of the rocks that contain them, and this provides a divergence date totally independent of hypotheses about molecular-evolution rates.
Ed:
But you are assuming that their fossil records merge molecularly, but we have no DNA evidence from the supposed ancestor in the fossil record.

DNA does not fossilize very well, so one has to work with whatever evidence is available. However, common ancestry is a reasonable extrapolation; what would one expect to find if one could go back in a time machine and sequence some of these creatures' genes?

Quote:

Ed:
Also, the supposed "merging" is highly questionable. Many of the so-called horse ancestors were living at the same time and the same place as more "advanced" horses. This shows that they are probably just different species of horses.

Ancestral and descendant species can coexist; Ed, your existence does not imply that your parents are now dead.

Quote:

lp: Being able to unconsciously model one's environment does not prove nearly as much as Ed seems to think it does, because the capability can be selected for if it can emerge.
Ed:
Thats the problem, how can it emerge?

That question will be difficult to answer until we discover the mechanisms of how environment-modeling works. However, there is evidence of that in nonhuman species, like chimpanzees. Chimps can perform "insight learning", in which they pause for awhile, and then implement a solution. A reasonable hypothesis is that they were working out that solution in their minds as they paused.

Quote:

lp: Ed, the worldwide version of Noah's Flood was discredited in the early 19th century, well before Charles Darwin published his magnum opus. It was discredited not out of an attitude of "I know that the Christian God is 100% real and I've decided to declare war on It", but because it did not fit the evidence.
Ed:
No, it was primarily rejected because if the Christian God was real then they would have to be accountable for how they spend their time and secondarily because the evidence did not fit their preconceived ideas of what the evidence should be.

Evidence that Ed presents for his view: {}

Quote:

Ed:
... sometimes water in combination with other factors does weird things.

Like hide all evidence of a flood?

Duvenoy · 09-03-2002, 03:55 AM

I cannot believe that this cannon ball is still flying! And still pounding on the same horse that was beaten to death some umpteen pages ago.

Ed, how do you do it?

doov

(Apologizing for not adding to the content of the thread but I can think of nothing that hasn't already been stated, argued, rejected, misrepresented, and laughed at ad nauseam.)

Ed · 09-04-2002, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lpetrich:

Ed:
Cypresses may have only occurred in higher elevation swamps if you accept the young earth model. But if you accept the old earth flood theory then the two trees would also appear where they are now in the strata and the gap would be explained.

lp: Notice how Ed fails to draw the clear inference that non-Gosse young-earthism is just plain false.

And let's see who knows what I mean by "non-Gosse".[/b]

Why dont you tell me?

Quote:

Ed: I meant relatively speaking, trilobites are slow footed and slow witted compared to many sea creatures, such as porpoises, even compared to most bony fishes. ...

lp: Ed, let's see if you can justify that contention independent of trilobites' position in the fossil record. And why do you seem to be switching to big-sediment Flood Geology for this occasion?

Their respective modes of locomotion make it quite obvious.

Quote:

(OC on there being no trilobite-seagrass association)
Ed:
Probably because the number of trilobites was small in that area.

lp: Let's see if Ed has any independent reason to believe that to be the case, instead of a desire to rescue big-sediment Flood Geology.

Sorry I dont have any hard evidence for that being the case.

[b]

Quote:

Ed:
Of course there are some things we dont know, creationist research does not have the finances and governmental backing that evolution has.

lp: However, with all the money that TV evangelists rake in, I'm sure that they could easily afford to finance serious research.

But an indicator of the true priorities of the creationist and ID movements can be indicated by how much of their resources they put into publicity and political pressure as opposed to serious research

That is not the TV evangelists top priority, remember they are evangelists not scientists. Actually the people at ARN are working to raise money for research and Dembski has already done some preliminary statistical research.

lpetrich · 09-05-2002, 01:00 AM

Quote:

lp: ...
And let's see who knows what I mean by "non-Gosse".[/b]
Ed:
Why dont you tell me?

Ed, you've never heard of Philip Gosse's "Omphalos" theory? He was a young-earther who argued that the Earth had been created with the appearance of great age -- and that this was a logical way for God to create.

Quote:

Ed: I meant relatively speaking, trilobites are slow footed and slow witted compared to many sea creatures, such as porpoises, even compared to most bony fishes. ...
Their respective modes of locomotion make it quite obvious.

How so? And are trilobites really much worse than shrimp in the locomotion department?

Ed · 09-05-2002, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lpetrich:

Ed:
There is documentary evidence for Moses, ie the Torah. But there is no documentary evidence for the hypothetical authors of JEPD.

lp: True, the evidence is only indirect, but it's a reasonable hypothesis. However, Moses is yet another heroic founder figure, and heroic founder figures tend to attract mythology to them.[/b]

True but careful study of the evidence can help strip away the myth.

Quote:

lp: And what internal problems are there?
Ed:
When you separate out the different authors texts (JEPD), they dont make any sense or flow of story.

lp: How so? If anything, each one taken in isolation is more coherent. I suggest that you start a thread in Biblical Criticism & Archaeology if you wish to pursue this subject any further.

No, large sections are missing if you separate out each of the so-called authors. Also the documentary hypothesis places too much emphasis on source analysis rather than the archaeological data. They also come to the analysis with evolutionary presuppositions regarding the development of religion. When in fact there is evidence that religion started out monotheistic and became polytheistic rather than vice versa. And there are other problems.

Quote:

Ed:
And this is the case with Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 is the overview of creation while Genesis 2 is a telescoping in on the most important event of creation, ie the creation of Man.
lp: However, they contradict each other on important details.
Ed:
Fraid not.

lp: I can easily show that they do.

Be my guest.

[b]

Quote:

Ed:
No, God regrets creating humanity because of the evil things that they were doing. Ea just has a hissy fit.

lp: I don't see any difference.

Punishing someone for a specific reason is very different from punishing someone for no reason whatsoever, even if the reason is not valid.

lpetrich · 09-06-2002, 05:16 AM

Quote:

lp: ... However, Moses is yet another heroic founder figure, and heroic founder figures tend to attract mythology to them.
Ed:
True but careful study of the evidence can help strip away the myth.

Ed, what do you consider mythical about the Bible's account of Moses?

Quote:

Ed:
Also the documentary hypothesis places too much emphasis on source analysis rather than the archaeological data.

WHAT archeological data? There is not a shred of it for the existence of Moses.

Quote:

Ed:
They also come to the analysis with evolutionary presuppositions regarding the development of religion.

The Documentary Hypothesis features NO such presupposition -- it is based on analysis of the text.

Quote:

Ed:
When in fact there is evidence that religion started out monotheistic and became polytheistic rather than vice versa.

WHAT evidence? I've never seen ANY such evidence -- all the older religions have lots of deities.

Quote:

LP:
(on discrepancies between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2)
Ed:
Be my guest.

G1: humanity created after everything else
G2: first man, then animals, then first woman

G1: creation by God's command
G2: creation by God's forming and animating pre-existing material

G1: orderly, step-by-step creation
G2: fix-as-you-go creation

G1: God seems very happy with what he has done
G2: God seems very exasperated

G1: God called Elohim
G2: God called YHWH Elohim

ps418 · 09-06-2002, 01:16 PM

Quote:

lp:
Ed, the worldwide version of Noah's Flood was discredited in the early 19th century, well before Charles Darwin published his magnum opus. It was discredited not out of an attitude of "I know that the Christian God is 100% real and I've decided to declare war on It", but because it did not fit the evidence.

Quote:

Ed:
No, it was primarily rejected because if the Christian God was real then they would have to be accountable for how they spend their time. . .

Fact-free, armchair pseudo-psychoanalysis is no substitute for an examination of the evidence. This claim for instance is laughably wrong, and demonstrates a profound ignorance on your part of the religious beliefs of early geologists. Adam Sedgewick and Roderick Murchison, for instance, rejected the Christian God? Who are YOU to imply, against all evidence, that these men rejected the Christian God? Get a clue!

Ed, I notice that every time in this thread when you have been called upon to defend one of your outlandish 'flood geology' claims (e.g. flood sorting as an explanation of the stratigraphic distribution of fossil taxa), you have simply dropped the claim.

Do you want to seriously examine the evidence for and against flood geology, or not? If you do, then let's start another thread and give the issue a proper and thorough treatment. After all, if geologists are rejecting 'flood geology' for the reasons you claim, then the weakness of their case should be easy to demonstrate. On the other hand, if I can show you that flood geology is hopelessly flawed as an explanation for the geologic record, then you will be freed of a false belief.

Patrick

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09-03-2002, 03:55 AM	#535
Duvenoy Veteran Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Just another hick from the sticks. Posts: 1,108	I cannot believe that this cannon ball is still flying! And still pounding on the same horse that was beaten to death some umpteen pages ago. Ed, how do you do it? doov (Apologizing for not adding to the content of the thread but I can think of nothing that hasn't already been stated, argued, rejected, misrepresented, and laughed at ad nauseam.)

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