Would Anyone Care To Defend The Creation Model?

[bhsmte]

The vast majority of geologists did not think about this question. Some do (by a variety of reasons, most of them are related to the Bible). Those people are studying the mountain building process and the magma process in the mantle of the earth. Confused? Not a surprise.

Nope. The vast majority of geologists have ruled out a flood. Do a quick google search, if you choose to deny the same.

But I would imagine, in your mind, they simply are clueless in their findings.

 

[Loudmouth]

Not at all. The Global Flood is more likely to be true than not. Scientifically, you are absolutely in no position to argue with me on this issue.

Ice cores and lake varves show that there has been no recent global flood. The science is on our side.

 

[Loudmouth]

The vast majority of geologists did not think about this question.

For the same reason that a majority of astronomers do not think about geocentrism or epicycles.

 

[The Cadet]

Not at all. The Global Flood is more likely to be true than not. Scientifically, you are absolutely in no position to argue with me on this issue.

Care to address any of my previous questions, along with these ones?

When prolonged flooding occurs, it typically leaves a single distinct layer in the sediment. Why do we not observe such a sedimentary layer in the geologic column? At a mere 4000 years ago, such a layer should be trivially easy to find, and yet we don't find anything like it.
We can observe low genetic diversity in some species; this can be traced back to a genetic bottleneck. For example, Cheetahs underwent a near-extinction event some 10,000 years ago. Why can we observe such a dearth of genetic variance in the cheetah population, but nothing comparable in most species?
How did Koalas get from Australia to the Middle East and back? What did they eat during the journey each way?
How did Noah keep the tons of meat necessary to feed the carnivorous animals from spoiling for a year?
How did Noah survive the high altitude, low oxygen content, and frigid temperatures "above the highest mountains" implies?

Let me know when you get to any of that.

The vast majority of geologists did not think about this question.

Actually, the history of early geology is basically a bunch of people setting out to find evidence for the biblical flood. Almost everyone at the birth of the field believed in the flood, and wanted to justify it with science as well as the bible. It wasn't until evidence began to be unearthed suggesting that the earth was far more ancient than described in the bible that the profession moved away from the biblical model. Modern geologists don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it for largely the same reason they don't spend a lot of time thinking about whether the earth is flat.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I'm dubious that you can take an unbroken line of living species from house cats to tigers... but I guess since Puma to Jaguar is possible, why not. (Manx is just a weird tailless breed of house cat, can you give me an example of one breeding with a Jaguar?)

Trace it yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrid

There's your start. See domestic cat and hybridization.

I don't get why you are cool with [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] cats and Tigers "micro evolving" in only one or two thousand years at most (we have mummies of both house cats and lions), why is chimp and human diverging in several million years a problem?

Because had cats and dogs been left to the natural course - the divergence you see would barely have begun. Even at an accelerated rate caused by us, they all remain easily recognizable as to what they are. Sorry, we don't see that occurring in nature. Even at an accelerated rate above that of nature we brought about, the divergence is not as pronounced as you want to claim between man and monkey.

Evolution didn't need to develop everything at once, and traits and attributes could change their purpose through a process or scaffolding.

So now your giving free will to the process of evolution? Conscious knowledge of a plan needed to be built piece by piece until once all the parts are assembled over millions of years it becomes functional? Are you seriously proposing this and then going to deny God as being supernatural?

 

[Loudmouth]

Trace it yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrid

There's your start. See domestic cat and hybridization.

How did you get from the common ancestor of cats to the parents of the hybrids?

Because had cats and dogs been left to the natural course - the divergence you see would barely have begun. Even at an accelerated rate caused by us, they all remain easily recognizable as to what they are. Sorry, we don't see that occurring in nature. Even at an accelerated rate above that of nature we brought about, the divergence is not as pronounced as you want to claim between man and monkey.

Humans and monkeys are still recognizable as primates. Why is that such a problem?

Also, where did you show that the amount of genetic divergence between any two dogs is as great as between humans and any species of primate? Last I checked, dogs were within 0.1% whereas humans and chimps are over 1% different at the DNA level.

So now your giving free will to the process of evolution? Conscious knowledge of a plan needed to be built piece by piece until once all the parts are assembled over millions of years it becomes functional? Are you seriously proposing this and then going to deny God as being supernatural?

Where did anyone claim that? We anthropomorphize natural processes all of the time without suggesting that they are conscious.

 

[juvenissun]

Care to address any of my previous questions, along with these ones?

When prolonged flooding occurs, it typically leaves a single distinct layer in the sediment. Why do we not observe such a sedimentary layer in the geologic column? At a mere 4000 years ago, such a layer should be trivially easy to find, and yet we don't find anything like it.
We can observe low genetic diversity in some species; this can be traced back to a genetic bottleneck. For example, Cheetahs underwent a near-extinction event some 10,000 years ago. Why can we observe such a dearth of genetic variance in the cheetah population, but nothing comparable in most species?
How did Koalas get from Australia to the Middle East and back? What did they eat during the journey each way?
How did Noah keep the tons of meat necessary to feed the carnivorous animals from spoiling for a year?
How did Noah survive the high altitude, low oxygen content, and frigid temperatures "above the highest mountains" implies?

Let me know when you get to any of that.

One at a time. Your pick.
But I warn you, the content would be off topic.

 

[The Cadet]

One at a time. Your pick.
But I warn you, the content would be off topic.

Actually, given that the flood model is usually offered part and parcel with creation models, it's hardly off topic. If you think the flood is an integral part of the model of our history, then defending it is absolutely on topic in this thread. So with that in mind, why don't you start with the Koalas. How'd they make the trip from Australia to the Middle East, how did they make the return journey, and why haven't we found any Koala skeletons anywhere in between the two places?

 

[juvenissun]

Actually, given that the flood model is usually offered part and parcel with creation models, it's hardly off topic. If you think the flood is an integral part of the model of our history, then defending it is absolutely on topic in this thread. So with that in mind, why don't you start with the Koalas. How'd they make the trip from Australia to the Middle East, how did they make the return journey, and why haven't we found any Koala skeletons anywhere in between the two places?

I don't know. This has nothing to do with the Global Flood.

 

[Shemjaza]

Tell me who (or what) he is, and I'll let you know.

Skull recognition isn't one of my stronger points.

It's a skull of a hominid we call Homo habilis, "Handy Man" thought to be the first tool crafter.

Here's a reconstruction from the skull:

Because had cats and dogs been left to the natural course - the divergence you see would barely have begun. Even at an accelerated rate caused by us, they all remain easily recognizable as to what they are. Sorry, we don't see that occurring in nature. Even at an accelerated rate above that of nature we brought about, the divergence is not as pronounced as you want to claim between man and monkey.

You are okay with pussycat to tiger in 1,000 years, but somehow thing human changes are faster?

Humans and chimps have been separate for at least 4,000,000 years... but still have the same basic body plan, diet and even vaguely similar behavior.

So now your giving free will to the process of evolution? Conscious knowledge of a plan needed to be built piece by piece until once all the parts are assembled over millions of years it becomes functional? Are you seriously proposing this and then going to deny God as being supernatural?

No plan needed.
The parts have to be useful for something else or benignly connected to something that is useful. Random change and increased survivalist is all that you need.

I don't know. This has nothing to do with the Global Flood.

It really does. Global flood implies all terrestrial animals migrated across the planet from a single location in the recent history.

 

[crjmurray]

I don't know. This has nothing to do with the Global Flood.

Hilarious

 

[Oncedeceived]

Right out of the gate we run into some problems.

What is God? Is god a natural entity? Is he in any way understandable or predictable? If God is supernatural, then we're kinda stuck for all the reasons I describe in this thread - we cannot even in theory provide evidence for or against this answer, and as a result it is untestable and unsupportable. Whether the universe had a beginning or not is unrelated; however, the big bang model does not imply that the universe necessarily had a beginning. It merely implies that the universe was, at some point, collapsed into a hot, dense point. There are various concepts in cosmology which do seem to imply some sort of beginning, but there is not a significant amount of evidence for them as far as I can tell.

If we are going to test reality against Christian Theology and the Creation model it goes without saying that God is the Christian God and that the Creation Narrative was given by God to men and written down to use to understand our universe. God is as described in Christian Theology. The model must be testable and supportable as it has details of what we should find in our universe.

First of all you said the universe at some point collapsed into a hot, dense point. There is absolutely no evidence of the universe ever collapsing that I am aware of. The singularity is not our universe in a condensed version as you seem to be implying. What evidence we do have points to space, time, matter and energy coming into existence about 10-32 seconds after the "big bang". We do know from testing that this very early moment is when our universe with space, time, matter and energy came into being. Most evidence that we do have supports a beginning for the universe.

You might be interested in this: http://gizmodo.com/5904714/mathematic-proof-that-the-universe-had-a-beginning

Okay, so thus far, as far as I can tell, the model you've described is, "God created the big bang, and then the solar system and earth coalesced from there"?

God created and it came into existence, He didn't create the "big bang". He formed the earth, sun, moon and stars. All this includes of course other planets and galaxies but God focused on our location.

So basically your standard cosmological model, plus a little more clarity around the singularity? Was there any significant amount of time between the big bang and the formation of earth? I'll pass on asking for the evidence, as if you're just going to describe standard cosmological models, then we can just refer to the evidence for those.

I don't have any information that would give clarity to the timeline of earth's existence and the big bang or creation event.

Fair enough. The evolutionary model would imply very heavily that land plants did not predate algae (or, indeed, multicellular life), but as you say the evidence here is weak, I won't press you further on it. The beginnings of life on this planet are very, very difficult to examine, as soft single-celled organisms don't tend to preserve very well.

Agreed.

Whole bunch of stuff in here that I disagree very little with. My main quibble is with the postulation that the earth predates the sun, or that the moon was formed near the same time as the sun. There is simply no model in modern cosmology in which a solar system such as ours does not form out of a Protoplanetary disk, formed well after the sun has started nuclear fusion. The idea that the earth was there before the sun requires some pretty stellar evidence (although the earth predating the moon is entirely accurate).

There are many problems and unanswered questions in regard to our current model. You must admit that our understanding of this early history of the universe is based on speculation and is not in anyway certain.

It seems to me that what you're putting forward, at least in terms of cosmology, a model which is very, very similar to the leading models of the day. You replace the big unknown behind the big bang with "God did it" (which I find problematic for numerous stated reasons), you disagree about the order of sun vs. earth, which, while not the leading hypothesis, is not completely unreasonable, and you accept the cosmological age of the universe. So far, really can't disagree with most of this.

So as you see the Creation model is not as far out as you thought right? The real kicker here is where evidence becomes very personal. I have one piece of evidence that you are not capable of accessing and that is my personal knowledge of God. I don't of course expect you to accept that but from my view this makes all this more logical.

And this is where the problems really start.

You are, as far as I can tell, asserting that god essentially created each of these creatures at the respective times. This is, to put it bluntly, phenomenally unscientific. Science only examines natural causes, as supernatural causes are unfalsifiable and indeterminable. If some supernatural entity poofs a cake into existence in front of me, how am I to know which supernatural entity that is? God? Satan? Magical Cake Faeries? How could I possibly distinguish a supernatural cause from merely an extremely advanced naturalistic cause? I strongly recommend looking into my thread on miracles and magic, as if we're trying to build a model of the universe, "God did it" is not helpful. It offers us no useful information and allows us to make no predictions about reality ("Why did god do X?" "Because god works in mysterious ways"). It's not even really a satisfactory explanation, because "God did it" could answer literally any question, and throwing it in there with no evidence (because, again, there can be no evidence for a supernatural cause even in theory).

As I said in the beginning, you are asking for the Creation model of the Christian God. That is the identity behind this model. It is a given if you are taking the model of Genesis 1 and looking at it in a scientific way. As I've shown, the "predictions" are what we should see in reality if the Creation model is true. You yourself said that it fits pretty well with our current understandings of the universe. The evidence is the scientific discoveries I have shown in my post.

 

[DogmaHunter]

It is a mechanism, not a definition.

That didn't really answer my question...

They are processes. I do not know if it is a root mechanism of anything. If you apply it to evolution (definition?) it won't work.

So, just to be sure because you seem to be doing your best to not give a direct answer....

You disagree that the root mechanism of evolution is survive, reproduce with variation, repeat?

If you do disagree with that, then I can only inform you that you aren't arguing against evolution. I don't know what you are arguing against in that case, but that's what evolution is all about.... Managing to survive, reproduce with variation and repeat in the next generation. That is what makes it work.

So far, you have zero.

I gave you two, have you already forgotten? It's only 2 posts back......

Adam and Eve: genetics disprove the idea of all humans being descendents of a single human couple.

The Flood:
- no global flood layer, geology disproves the idea of the entire world being flooded at some point in recent history (or ancient history, for that matter)
- no genetic bottlenecks in all living things (and there should be, if the story is true - and not just one or two... every species should show this bottleneck. every single one)

I have many many. But you should be the one to raise question. If you don't have a question, then either quit, or try to find one.

The only questions I have are about why you are so stubborn and willfully ignorant.

 

[DogmaHunter]

The vast majority of geologists did not think about this question.

Dude.... geologogy as a field was pretty much kickstarted by people who wanted to show with evidence that the biblical flood happened........

They failed to do so. The evidence is simply not there.

Some do (by a variety of reasons, most of them are related to the Bible). Those people are studying the mountain building process and the magma process in the mantle of the earth. Confused? Not a surprise.

What are you talking about?

 

[High Fidelity]

Genesis covers it pretty well.

 

[The Cadet]

Genesis covers it pretty well.

Which interpretation? Straight reading? Usher's chronology? Gap theory? The version @Oncedeceived supports? Each one has some non-trivial problems and many are straight-up refuted by the evidence we find in the world.

 

[juvenissun]

You disagree that the root mechanism of evolution is survive, reproduce with variation, repeat?

No. Because those three won't give you the necessary product of evolution. For example, they won't change a ??? to whale.

 

[High Fidelity]

Which interpretation? Straight reading? Usher's chronology? Gap theory? The version @Oncedeceived supports? Each one has some non-trivial problems and many are straight-up refuted by the evidence we find in the world.

Eve trusted something 'of the world' instead of God's word, too.

 

[The Cadet]

I don't know. This has nothing to do with the Global Flood.

Well why don't you pick one that does have something to do with the global flood? I'd think that the logistics of taking an animal known only to live on one particular continent far away from the place the boat landed and who lives off a very specific diet is kind of important.

No. Because those three won't give you the necessary product of evolution. For example, they won't change a ??? to whale.

Really? Simple algorithms based on nothing more than this can produce some phenomenal changes in very short timespans:

 

[juvenissun]

Which interpretation? Straight reading? Usher's chronology? Gap theory? The version @Oncedeceived supports? Each one has some non-trivial problems and many are straight-up refuted by the evidence we find in the world.

Do you want to check one of them in a little detail?