No Stone Age or Bronze Age in Genesis

[Job 33:6]

Clam shells open when the clam dies, but the world is covered with closed clam fossils. Many dinosaurs were arcing their necks back to try to get a breath. Some fish were halfway through actually eating another fish. Some animals were even caught giving birth. If the organisms were dead, there should be a lot of decay, but how many fossils of decayed animal have you seen?


The point of that notion is that they form so very infrequently today that we shouldn't see them all over the world, but in fact, as you point out, "there are zillions of fossils out there". So if there was no worldwide flood, why oh why are there so many fossils?

Also, if fossils just capture an animal here and there through time as animals evolved, as evolution claims, why do so many appear fully formed suddenly at the start of the so called Cambrian Era? Shouldn't we see a progression of slowly developing forms?

Most clam shells are open clam shells. But some clam shells are buried while closed, and some are buried while open. Just because an animal dies, doesn't mean that it's shell necessarily come apart.

Now, if you go to a museum, they might display more complete shells than fragmented shells, just because this makes for a better display, but this doesn't mean that most shelled fossils are closed.

And anyone who actually goes out and looks at fossils knows the above.

On the contrary, the vast majority of bivalve shell fossils are only halves, and further are broken halves.

Regardless,
In truth, a person will never be able to understand the fossil record without first understanding geology.

What you're doing is, you're trying to skip the fundamentals to reach a conclusion without really understanding the subject matter to begin with.

Which is why I didn't bother answering your question. You asked for me to describe how to fossils support evolution, but if someone isn't first familiar with geology and the fossil record, then nothing on the theory of evolution would make sense to them, to begin with.

It isn't a surprise that you don't acknowledge evolution, because nobody justifiably could if they werent familiar with fundamental science to begin with.

It's like asking someone to describe how to do brain surgery without first knowing what a scalpel is. You have to start with the fundamentals, else nothing else will make sense to you.

And you asked this strange question. How many fossils of decayed animals have we seen? Well, most fossils don't have flesh associated with them, so I'm not even sure what this question means. If the bones themselves were to decay, then it ought to follow that we wouldn't have the fossil to begin with.

In order to have a fossil, indeed, decay shouldn't be an obvious feature, because it is a lack of decay that promotes fossilization.

And lastly, the Cambrian explosion actually spans 10s of millions of years of strata (greater than 40 million). So it's deceiving to suggest that they formed "suddenly".

You have to start with the fundamentals and you have to ask questions to learn. You can't just roll in throwing out baseless claims if you don't have the education needed on the material.

Instead of making the incorrect statement that the Cambrian explosion occurred "suddenly", you could try asking the question "hey, I heard that the Cambrian explosion occurred suddenly, is this true?" Or "can someone teach me about the Cambrian explosion and how long it took to occur?"

You should be asking questions in the infancy of your investigation, not making false claims like they're going out of style.

 

[Job 33:6]

@KenJackson
Most of the Cambrian explosion ended by the middle Cambrian, some 510 million years ago. But really, diversification began really ramping up some 540 million years ago with fossils appearing in the nemakitdaldynian with arthropods, anabarites, sinotubulites, cloudina etc.

Rusophycus, which is like a trilobite resting trace mark, has appeared in rock dated to 537 million years old, while the real expansion of the explosion didn't really ramp up until the atdabanian between 515-520 million years ago, and then it went on to expand up until 510 Mya or so.

So the Cambrian explosion may be an explosion by geologic terms and with the perspective of deep time. But in lay terms, it actually wasn't sudden at all and took tens of millions of years or even dozens of millions.

Whatever your original source of information was, I suspect it lacked this fine print detail.

Early fossil record of Euarthropoda and the Cambrian Explosion

 

[Dale]

You don't seem to have even attempted to make the case that fossils imply evolution. Or do you just assume it? There are fossils, therefore they evolved?

Fossils are much better explained by the flood than by evolution. Why would there be so many fossils if there were no flood? Fossils don't normally form. But the real problem with evolution is in the details of biology.

Life is made up of complex, hierarchical, interdependent systems. Do you know what hierarchical means? It means your heart has no value by itself. It requires blood to pump. It requires your body to be laced with veins, arteries and capillaries to pump blood through. To be useful, it requires lungs, liver and kidneys to scrub the bad and add the good for distribution.

Each of these complex organs has no value by themselves. And they are each constructed of many complex components that have no value by themselves. The complexity by itself is not the issue. But it presents a big problem to natural selection. A change must have an advantage or benefit to be conserved. But the components of any complex mechanism would have to have lots and lots and lots of changes conserved over a long period before there was any benefit at all.

Errors (mutations) don't accumulate to form complex, hierarchical, interdependent systems. Life was clearly designed.

KenJackson: "Life is made up of complex, hierarchical, interdependent systems. Do you know what hierarchical means? It means your heart has no value by itself. It requires blood to pump. It requires your body to be laced with veins, arteries and capillaries to pump blood through. To be useful, it requires lungs, liver and kidneys to scrub the bad and add the good for distribution."


We don't know everything about the past but it is clear that simpler forms evolved into more complex ones. You point to the heart as an example of a complex organ. In frogs and other amphibians, the heart only has three chambers. In reptiles, birds and mammals the heart has four chambers. This is biological improvement.

"The simplest form of animal circulatory pump consists of a blood vessel down which passes a wave of muscular contraction, called peristalsis, that forces the enclosed blood in the direction of contraction. Valves may or may not be present. This type of heart is widely found among invertebrates, and there may be many pulsating vessels in a single individual."

"In the earthworm, the main dorsal (aligned along the back) vessel contracts from posterior to anterior 15 to 20 times per minute, pumping blood toward the head."

Link
Circulatory system - Vascular systems

 

[The Barbarian]

Professional historians make many nuanced conclusions that seem to go over people's heads. But it sure seems most should be able to grasp that you can't prove the absence of something. As such, the historian will say, "The first known occurrence of domesticated camels, the use of iron, etc. occurred in year xxxx." That it was the first known occurrence is not a claim that it never happened prior to that.

Nor can you declare that it did. That's the logical problem for creationism. The default is not "we don't know, so my version is right."

 

[Dale]

Let me restate this. Paleontology depends on life evolving from a microbe, so if life did not so evolve, many of the findings of paleontology are in trouble.

You can at least agree with this conditional statement. So the only issue is whether life could have so evolved and is even capable of living for millions of years. So I tend to not dive in to discussions about geology and paleontology but rather stick with the crucial thing they depend on--evolution from a microbe.


That's what evolutionists say when they feel trapped. They just fallback on that old saw. Sadly, it often signals that they've checked out and will no longer even try to think. But please think.

In fact, I find that those who have total faith in evolution always refuse to discuss permutations. Mutations are random in a universe of permutations that is so large that it really is effectively infinite. There is no difference between "infinite" and "effectively infinite" in any practical discussion.

There are 10^130 (ten to the 130 power) possible arrangements of the 20 kinds of amino acids (aa) in a small chain of 100. But there have been less than 10^18 seconds since the big bang (if that happened). Just think about those two numbers.

And one final detail. Think about natural selection. It selects based on advantage or benefit. But how can it possibly select and conserve a component that has no advantage by itself but only as part of a structure, or molecular machine? Remember the effectively infinite universe of mutations.

If life were made of cells of jelly, as Darwin believed, evolution would probably be possible because every tiny little change would be beneficial or detrimental on its own without being part of a larger whole. But now we know that belief is wrong.

Coffee: "Animals died in tar pits, so?
the La Brea pits have over three million fossils, representing more than 565 different species as well as hundreds of human artefacts.
Animals didn't just wander in and die and become fossils, fossilization requires rapid burial. There are mountains of crushed bone fragments flung every which way. sounds like a big catastrophe, wonder what that could be, perhaps a huge flood."



Any animal that falls into a tar pit and dies gets "rapid burial."

On the "crushed bone fragments," I'm not sure about that.

The La Brea Tar Pits give us a remarkable picture of the ecosystem of the Ice Age. Do creationists believe in an Ice Age? As far as I know they don't. I could do a thread, No Ice Age in Genesis.

The La Brea Tar Pits captured animals and from around 50,000 BC forward. There are no dinosauars, no animals from the age of the dinosaurs or before. There are saber tooth tigers, mammoths and giant sloths because those animals were around during the Ice Age.

Creationists believe that all animals were created at the same time. The most primitive animals, early vertebrates, dinosaurs, Ice Age animals and humans were all there at once, at some time in the past. I can't picture what that world would look like and there is no sign the creationists can either. This is not what we see in the La Brea Tar Pits. They show exactly what the standard scientific timeline predicts. The pits contain Ice Age animals and plants. They do not contain anything from earlier ages. There are no dinosaurs, small or large.

KenJackson: "There are 10^130 (ten to the 130 power) possible arrangements of the 20 kinds of amino acids (aa) in a small chain of 100. But there have been less than 10^18 seconds since the big bang (if that happened). Just think about those two numbers."



I'm familiar with biochemistry. Your figuring here seems to assume that we are limited to one mutation by amino acid replacement per second. We are not, there is no particular limit. I have some figures for you.

It is estimated that there are a trillion species living on earth, although not all have been discovered or described, as of May 2016.

It is estimated that there are three trillion trees on earth. It is also estimated that there are 3.5 trillion fish in the ocean.

Switching to individuals, instead of species, the number of insects seem to be in the octillions. The number of ants alone is estimated to be in the quadrillions.

I'm not even going to talk about the numbers of bacteria.

All of these multicellular organisms have zillions of cells, which are capable of mutating. Some of the mutations turn out to be beneficial.


Link
Lists of organisms by population - Wikipedia

 

[The Barbarian]

KenJackson: "There are 10^130 (ten to the 130 power) possible arrangements of the 20 kinds of amino acids (aa) in a small chain of 100. But there have been less than 10^18 seconds since the big bang (if that happened). Just think about those two numbers."

Take a deck of cards. Shuffle it thoroughly. Then deal out the cards one at a time, noting the order. That order has a probability of about 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000124

Rather unlikely. And you'll get that likelihood every time. If you calculate the likelihood of your genome, given the genomes of your great, great grandparents, you'll get an even less likely result. So your argument has "proven" that poker games and you are effectively impossible.

Does that suggest why the probability argument is such a loser for creationism?

 

[Dale]

Here's another thought.

"More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct."

I assume that God created functioning ecosystems. If 99 percent of the species that God created are now gone, extinct, it is certainly amazing that any of those ecosystems are still functioning.


Link
Lists of organisms by population - Wikipedia

 

[Unqualified]

Marine fossils were found on mt Everest. The Bronze Age started with tubal-Cain in gen4:22. There was much upheaval during the flood, that’s why it all seems upside down.

 

[KenJackson]

Take a deck of cards. Shuffle it thoroughly. Then deal out the cards one at a time, noting the order. That order has a probability of about 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000124

You've fallen victim to both a fallacy and an error.

The fallacy is that any and every possible dealing of cards is equally valid, whereas only an infinitesimally small fraction of the effectively infinite number of possible polypeptides will even fold correctly, much less fulfill a need that would advance the hypothetical state of development of an organism.

The error is that you're working with a probability whereas I referenced the size of the numerical space that would have had to have been searched to find a functional protein. I try to be careful to never mention the word "probability". It would be extraordinarily difficult to calculate an actual probability and impossible to verify it. But the size of the search space is easy to calculate and every bit as damning.

 

[KenJackson]

"More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct."

I assume that God created functioning ecosystems. If 99 percent of the species that God created are now gone, extinct, it is certainly amazing that any of those ecosystems are still functioning.

I think that's all true. But it sure doesn't take away from intelligent design or creation in any way. It just boggles the mind all the more at how astounding the original creation was.

It's also very sad to realize that ever since the start, the number of species, or at least taxonomic families (approximately a "kind"), has been shrinking and shrinking. Every species, including humans, accumulate a few damaging mutations with every generations that will result in more and more genetic disease and eventual extinction of each species. The truth is very dismal without salvation.

 

[The Barbarian]

The fallacy is that any and every possible dealing of cards is equally valid, whereas only an infinitesimally small fraction of the effectively infinite number of possible polypeptides will even fold correctly, much less fulfill a need that would advance the hypothetical state of development of an organism.

Take a wild guess as to how many different versions of Cytochrome C there are. Your fallacy is in assuming that there was a certain form that it had to be, while there are many, many such combinations that would potentially work.

And you're assuming the first living things were as complex as they are today, which is a huge and unwarranted assumption. And increments had to each work, as they appeared; the ones that didn't, never got past the first try.

Let's consider your genome and it's likelihood, given the genomes of your great,great, great, grandparents. You are much, much less likely than a shuffled deck of cards. And yet here you are and you work pretty well. A little prone to premature assumptions, but that's probably training, not genes.

It's also very sad to realize that ever since the start, the number of species, or at least taxonomic families (approximately a "kind"), has been shrinking and shrinking.

Actually, that's false. We have had periods like the Cambrian and the Triassic, when the number of taxa greatly increased, and other times, like the Perimian and Cretaceous when they greatly decreased.

Every species, including humans, accumulate a few damaging mutations with every generations that will result in more and more genetic disease and eventual extinction of each species.

No, that's false, too. Natural selection tends to remove damaging mutations. Anything that decreases an organism's likelihood of surviving long enough to reproduce will tend to be removed from the gene pool. And new mutations that improve survival will tend to spread through the population.

That's how it works. Observably so. This is why mongrels tend to be more hardy than purebred animals.

 

[The Barbarian]

The error is that you're working with a probability whereas I referenced the size of the numerical space that would have had to have been searched to find a functional protein.

That sounds like a testable belief. Show us your numbers. Start with 4-Oxalocrotonate tautomerase; it has maybe 65 amino acids, IIRC. I'd like to see your analysis.

And you've assumed that you need proteins to build cell components. The cell membrane is a simple, self-assembling array of phospholipids, composed of molecules known to form abiotically.

Scientists now know that there are many possible self-replicating chemical systems less complex than ours.

 

[KenJackson]

Your fallacy is in assuming that there was a certain form that it had to be, while there are many, many such combinations that would potentially work.

Many, many? Thousands? Suppose there were tens of thousands. Millions. All close enough that they perform the same function across various species. So? Aren't they pretty similar, close together in the search space? What fraction of the search space is a million?

Your Cytochrome C has 105 amino acids, which means there are 20^105 or 10^137 (ten to the 137 power) permutations that size. That's effectively infinite. ("Effectively infinite" means there's no difference between that number and infinite in any practical application.)

Starting from before any organism had Cytochrome C, how long would it take to evolve into any of those million permutations that might work? Make some assumptions and do some math. Say a trillion organisms, constantly reproducing once per second, with a junk gene mutating every reproduction with no repeated sequences across the population. (That's absurdly improbable, but let's give evolution every chance just for discussion.) But remember, you have less than 10^18 seconds (the age of the universe) to get there.

Can natural selection (NS) help? How? NS requires an advantage or a benefit to guide the path of evolution. But would a wildly mutating junk gene have any advantage if it coded for a polypeptide that doesn't even fold right, much less perform a needed function? No. It would not. NS can't help. You must rely on random mutations alone.

And you're assuming the first living things were as complex as they are today, which is a huge and unwarranted assumption.

Why would I have to make that assumption? In fact, I'm assuming we're working with an organism that doesn't have Cytochrome C, no mitochondria, so it's probably pretty simple.

Pick any protein in any organism. How did the first implementation of that protein evolve? The subsequent similar proteins could "evolve" with a simple mutation here or there. But the first one is the problem.

I claim they were all designed. You claim it's possible that they evolved. You have the far more difficult burden of proof. I say it's impossible.

 

[The Barbarian]

Many, many? Thousands? Suppose there were tens of thousands. Millions. All close enough that they perform the same function across various species. So? Aren't they pretty similar, close together in the search space? What fraction of the search space is a million?

Hard to say, because you seem reluctant to show us the numbers for your "search space."

Your Cytochrome C has 105 amino acids, which means there are 20^105 or 10^137 (ten to the 137 power) permutations that size. That's effectively infinite. ("Effectively infinite" means there's no difference between that number and infinite in any practical application.)

No, that assumption is wrong, too. If you look at the way cytochrome C varies in organisms, you'll find there are areas where it often varies, and others where it varies not at all. Why is that? If you know why, you will have one clue why your assumption is incorrect.

Make some assumptions and do some math. Say a trillion organisms, constantly reproducing once per second, with a junk gene mutating every reproduction with no repeated sequences across the population. (That's absurdly improbable, but let's give evolution every chance just for discussion.) But remember, you have less than 10^18 seconds (the age of the universe) to get there.

And now you've actually established something. In the absence of natural selection, evolution wouldn't work. But as Darwin showed, natural selection is the antithesis of randomness. And that's why you see variation in some things and little or no variation in others. You're getting close to an important truth now.

But would a wildly mutating junk gene have any advantage if it coded for a polypeptide that doesn't even fold right, much less perform a needed function?

Yes, sometimes it does. Barry Hall's bacteria managed to evolve a new irreducibly complex enzyme system over a period of weeks, by random mutation and natural selection. Reality beats anyone's rationalizations.

I claim they were all designed.

Your problem is that there isn't any evidence to support that. But we do see enzymes evolve. So there's that reality thing again. We know things evolve, because we see them do that.

If "design" is really important to you, at least one IDer has figured out a way to make it at least partially consistent with the evidence. Michael Denton has moved the idea of "front loading" to keep a teleological element in evolution, while still being consistent with the evidence. The "designer" (I'm not sure who he things the designer is or was) just made everything so that natural processes would produce the world we have.

t is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school." According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God's direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world--that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny

It's a good read, and although I disagree with him on many things, he at least has this right, IMO. It could clear up some important things for you.

 

[The Barbarian]

Pick any protein in any organism. How did the first implementation of that protein evolve?

The MDCO-216 Apolipoprotein evolved from a similar molecule by mutation. It first occurred in 1780, in Giovanni Pomarelli. It provides very good resistance to arteriosclerosis, unlike the molecule from which it evolved.

There's an entire suite of novel proteins in Tibetans, all associated with adaptations to high-altitude survival.
Mutations may reveal how Tibetans can live on world’s highest plateau

One of them seems to have been gained by interbreeding with an extinct subspecies of human. That gene is now rare in the original Han Chinese population, as it offered no special advantage in lowland environments, but it's been retained by Tibetans (who descended from Han Chinese) because it provides better usage of oxygen at high altitudes.

A mutation to the LRP5 protein for bone production makes it resistant to the inhibitory action of Dkk, leading to very dense bones, that are highly resistant to fracture. People with this mutated protein have walked away from auto accidents that would have badly injured people with the normal gene.

The downside is that people with 8 times the usual bone density don't swim very well. I knew a person in high school who could not float. I've since wondered if he had this condition.

 

[Dale]

Marine fossils were found on mt Everest. The Bronze Age started with tubal-Cain in gen4:22. There was much upheaval during the flood, that’s why it all seems upside down.

Welcome to Christian Forums, since you seem to be new.

Unqualified: "The Bronze Age started with tubal-Cain in gen4:22."

I'm afraid that won't work. According to Genesis there was no Bronze Age because the Iron Age started at the same time, so they were already in the Iron Age.

 

[Dale]

Let me restate this. Paleontology depends on life evolving from a microbe, so if life did not so evolve, many of the findings of paleontology are in trouble.

You can at least agree with this conditional statement. So the only issue is whether life could have so evolved and is even capable of living for millions of years. So I tend to not dive in to discussions about geology and paleontology but rather stick with the crucial thing they depend on--evolution from a microbe.


That's what evolutionists say when they feel trapped. They just fallback on that old saw. Sadly, it often signals that they've checked out and will no longer even try to think. But please think.

In fact, I find that those who have total faith in evolution always refuse to discuss permutations. Mutations are random in a universe of permutations that is so large that it really is effectively infinite. There is no difference between "infinite" and "effectively infinite" in any practical discussion.

There are 10^130 (ten to the 130 power) possible arrangements of the 20 kinds of amino acids (aa) in a small chain of 100. But there have been less than 10^18 seconds since the big bang (if that happened). Just think about those two numbers.

And one final detail. Think about natural selection. It selects based on advantage or benefit. But how can it possibly select and conserve a component that has no advantage by itself but only as part of a structure, or molecular machine? Remember the effectively infinite universe of mutations.

If life were made of cells of jelly, as Darwin believed, evolution would probably be possible because every tiny little change would be beneficial or detrimental on its own without being part of a larger whole. But now we know that belief is wrong.

Ken Jackson: "Paleontology depends on life evolving from a microbe, so if life did not so evolve, many of the findings of paleontology are in trouble."


Paleontology doesn't depend on microbes. It depends on being able to dig bones and other remnants of the past out of the ground and evaluate them.


Ken Jackson: "If life were made of cells of jelly, as Darwin believed, evolution would probably be possible ... "

Maybe you could show me where Charles Darwin ever said that living cells are made of jelly.

Why do you object to what cellular biologists believe about what cells are made of?

 

[The Barbarian]

Ken Jackson: "Paleontology depends on life evolving from a microbe, so if life did not so evolve, many of the findings of paleontology are in trouble."

Genetics says that eukaryotes evolved from microbes. So that's not an issue.

 

[Dale]

I think that's all true. But it sure doesn't take away from intelligent design or creation in any way. It just boggles the mind all the more at how astounding the original creation was.

It's also very sad to realize that ever since the start, the number of species, or at least taxonomic families (approximately a "kind"), has been shrinking and shrinking. Every species, including humans, accumulate a few damaging mutations with every generations that will result in more and more genetic disease and eventual extinction of each species. The truth is very dismal without salvation.

"Around 99.8% of genes that undergo mutations are deemed silent because the nucleotide change does not change the amino acid being translated."


Link
Silent mutation - Wikipedia.


"Most amino acids are encoded by several different codons. For example, if the third base in the TCT codon for serine is changed to any one of the other three bases, serine will still be encoded. Such mutations are said to be silent because they cause no change in their product and cannot be detected without sequencing the gene (or its mRNA)."

"Only 1.2% of our DNA encodes the exons of our proteome, and for a long time it was thought that much of the rest was "junk" DNA. Mutations in it would most likely be harmless. And even in coding regions, the existence of synonymous codons could result in the altered (mutated) gene still encoding the same amino acid in the protein."

In other words, most mutations are not harmful.


Link
Mutations

 

[Jok]

.