The Waters Above the Firmament

[The Barbarian]

Just found this:

Genetics Spills Secrets From Neanderthals’ Lost History

 

[chad kincham]

The concept of a "designer" (which the ID people say "might be a space alien") is opposed to the concept of an omniscient Creator. Being omniscient, He would have no need for "design", which is something limited creatures must do.

God never has to figure anything out.



Hardly. It's the difference between an omnipotent Creator, and a mere "designer."



Since YE creationism is no older than the 20th century, He would have to be a theistic evolutionist. How could it be otherwise? He made it that way, after all.

You claim God can’t create man and animals exactly the way He wants, but is so limited in power that he has to use random mutations filtered through natural selection and death of the many inferior versions of the life forms He wants.

I’ll stick with the Genesis account that God created man and animals the way He wanted them, in 6 days.

 

[Dale]

There’s no way to believe the Bible and be a theistic evolutionist - the two are diametrically opposed.

Adam can not be the product of evolution. He was alone, without even a woman around, until God cloned Eve from Adams rib cells.

And death did not exist until the fall of Adam and Eve, yet evolution is based on death, per Darwin:

In the conclusion of The Origin of Species, Darwin stated, “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

Evolution requires death of all the precursor animals that gradually evolved into humans.

Adams origin was not from Darwinian gradualism - thus one can be a theistic evolutionist, but not a bible believing evolutionist.

Chad Kincham: “Adam can not be the product of evolution. He was alone, without even a woman around, until God cloned Eve from Adams rib cells.”



When you say that Eve was “cloned” from Adam, you are introducing modern concepts into an ancient story. I find that creationists are constantly doing just that, inserting modern concepts into sentences from ancient manuscripts. You can only come up with an arbitrary interpretation doing this. Apparently your view is that Adam and Eve were identical twins of different genders.

The notion that Eve was “cloned” only reminds me that Adam and Eve can never explain the genetic diversity of the human race today. It would be bad enough if they were two individuals with different genetic makeup.

When I was in high school, in a Bible Study class, a boy asked our teacher how Adam and Eve could explain the different races we have today. The teacher responded that there wasn’t just one Garden of Eden, there were other couples created by God around the world. So there were white couples, black couples, brown couples and so forth. None of this is in the Bible, of course. I found it to be an amusing attempt to reconcile creationism with the humanity that we see today.

 

[chad kincham]

No, that's wrong. The Neanderthal genome has been sequenced, and they are an entirely different sub-species of human; some geneticists even think they qualify as a separate species.
Neanderthals: species or subspecies? | COMPASS

To summarize, present-day humans outside of Africa show traces of Neanderthal DNA, but there are no Neanderthal mtDNA or Neanderthal Y chromosomes in modern human populations. The current consensus among anthropologists is that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens are indeed separate species, although that might change with further research and with the discovery of more Neanderthal samples.
Neanderthal DNA: How different were they from humans? | Real Archaeology

I tend to think they are a subspecies of H. sapiens, mainly because early Neanderthals looked more like us than later ones. But that's not a sure thing. It looks as though most geneticists think the evidence shows them to be a separate species.



Wrong. They were genetically quite different than anatomically modern humans.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the facts that now show they were completely human, but will just post one of the facts about this:

Evolutionists claim a 1997 study Neanderthal mtDNA shows they were not human. This claim is based on the degree of differences in Neanderthal and living human mtDNA. However, as is often the case, nothing destroys a good Evolutionary argument like the original paper. The bases for the claim is a comparison with Neanderthal mtNA positions 16,024 to 16,383 which is just 360 nucleotides.


In 2006, news was released that scientists had found Neanderthal DNA to be as much as 99.9% identical to modern humans.[5] However, this does more than shorten the gap between Neanderthals and humans, since it is recognized by the mainstream scientific community that any two humans on earth have genes that are 99.9% identical to each other.[6] Such recognition of modern genetic divergence also serves to acknowledge Neanderthals as fully human genetically.

The claims of huge anatomical differences also have not held up.

 

[chad kincham]

No. Not only is that assumption not in scripture, there were whales romping around in the seas, according to God. So much, much bigger bodies of water. (edit: actually, it doesn't say they were romping, but they obviously were doing well)

An orca (a medium-sized cetacean) needs about a quarter-million kcal of food per day, meaning that a huge area of ocean is needed for every whale to provide that kind of food.



No, it actually doesn't say that. That's man's alteration of God's word.



The Earth isn't 71% water. Moreover, without a hydrologic cycle, there would be no rivers. Basic physics.

Not basic physics, since the pre flood earth was watered solely from underground sources, and the rivers and small seas were part of that process - once again, Genesis says it didn’t rain on the pre flood earth, which explains why there was no such thing as a rainbow until after the flood,

 

[chad kincham]

When you say that Eve was “cloned” from Adam, you are introducing modern concepts into an ancient story. I find that creationists are constantly doing just that, inserting modern concepts into sentences from ancient manuscripts. You can only come up with an arbitrary interpretation doing this. Apparently your view is that Adam and Eve were identical twins of different genders.

Whether it was cloning or not is irrelevant to the point that Adam was alone - there was not even a woman on earth until God made Eve from Adams rib - absolutely precluding Adam existing as a result of Darwinian gradualism, which would mean there were a lot of other humans there, instead of only Adam.

 

[chad kincham]

Just found this:
View attachment 306747
Genetics Spills Secrets From Neanderthals’ Lost History

All old information and discredited claims.

 

[Dale]

Jesus taught Adam and Eve literally, and no text says Genesis is allegorical that I’ve ever seen.

No form of death existed before the fall, neither spiritual or physical.

Death did not exist, and no animals were carnivores before the fall. On the new earth, all things will be restored to Edenic conditions, and there will again be no death and animals like lions will be herbivores again, per the prophet Isaiah.

One can’t escape the fact Adam has a sudden appearance from dirt, and was alone until God cloned Eve from Adams rib cells, eliminating any possibility that he arrived as a product of evolutionary gradualism.

In fact, Jesus never referred to the Bible as a literal history. He often taught allegories and parables as ways of teaching. So it's not surprising that He taught those from the Bible.



The text in Genesis 1, for example, makes it clear that it's not literal. Referring to mornings and evenings before there was a sun to have them, makes that clear.

Chad Kincham: “Jesus taught Adam and Eve literally, and no text says Genesis is allegorical that I’ve ever seen.”

If Jesus taught Adam and Eve while they were in the Garden of Eden, why didn’t they know about Good and Evil? Wouldn’t that be the first thing Jesus taught them? Genesis 3 says they didn’t know about that until they ate the forbidden fruit.

On the creation stories in Genesis being allegorical, Barbarian hit the nail on the head in post #86. In the first chapter of Genesis there are “days” before the sun is created. There is no doubt about it, the “days” are dividers, like section headings. They aren’t literal days.

 

[The Barbarian]

All old information and discredited claims.

Denial really won't help you. Reality doesn't care what we think.

 

[The Barbarian]

Not basic physics, since the pre flood earth was watered solely from underground sources, and the rivers and small seas were part of that process - once again, Genesis says it didn’t rain on the pre flood earth,

It doesn't say that. In fact, it only says that was the case in the Garden. Since there were already at that time, seas and rivers, the hydrologic cycle was already in place.

 

[The Barbarian]

In 2006, news was released that scientists had found Neanderthal DNA to be as much as 99.9% identical to modern humans.

Well, let's take a look...

The first analysis of any Neanderthal DNA was mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), published in 1997. The sample was taken from the first Neanderthal fossil discovered, found in Feldhofer Cave in the Neander Valley in Germany. A small sample of bone was ground up to extract mtDNA, which was then replicated and analyzed.

Researchers compared the Neanderthal mtDNA to modern human and chimpanzee sequences and found that the Neanderthal mtDNA sequences were substantially different from both (Krings et al. 1997, 1999). Most human sequences differ from each other by an average of 8.0 substitutions, while the human and chimpanzee sequences differ by about 55.0 substitutions. The Neanderthal and modern human sequences differed by approximately 27.2 substitutions. Using this mtDNA information, the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans dates to approximately 550,000 to 690,000 years ago, which is about four times older than the modern human mtDNA pool. Since this study was completed, many more samples of Neanderthal mtDNA have been replicated and studied.
Neanderthal Mitochondrial and Nuclear DNA

Your links appear to be broken. And as you see, Neanderthals are quite different genetically.

 

[Dale]

There’s no way to believe the Bible and be a theistic evolutionist - the two are diametrically opposed.

Adam can not be the product of evolution. He was alone, without even a woman around, until God cloned Eve from Adams rib cells.

And death did not exist until the fall of Adam and Eve, yet evolution is based on death, per Darwin:

In the conclusion of The Origin of Species, Darwin stated, “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

Evolution requires death of all the precursor animals that gradually evolved into humans.

Adams origin was not from Darwinian gradualism - thus one can be a theistic evolutionist, but not a bible believing evolutionist.

Jesus taught Adam and Eve literally, and no text says Genesis is allegorical that I’ve ever seen.

No form of death existed before the fall, neither spiritual or physical.

Death did not exist, and no animals were carnivores before the fall. On the new earth, all things will be restored to Edenic conditions, and there will again be no death and animals like lions will be herbivores again, per the prophet Isaiah.

One can’t escape the fact Adam has a sudden appearance from dirt, and was alone until God cloned Eve from Adams rib cells, eliminating any possibility that he arrived as a product of evolutionary gradualism.

Chad Kincham in #46: “And death did not exist until the fall of Adam and Eve, yet evolution is based on death, per Darwin:”

Chad Kincham in #59: “No form of death existed before the fall, neither spiritual or physical.
Death did not exist, and no animals were carnivores before the fall.”



The claim that animals were immortal and death did not exist before the Fall is completely mistaken. Genesis says the opposite. You are following interpretations that arose hundreds of years after the time of Christ.


Since this is a big subject, of general interest, and it will take me some time to answer it, I will answer in a separate thread.

 

[Dale]

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the facts that now show they were completely human, but will just post one of the facts about this:

Evolutionists claim a 1997 study Neanderthal mtDNA shows they were not human. This claim is based on the degree of differences in Neanderthal and living human mtDNA. However, as is often the case, nothing destroys a good Evolutionary argument like the original paper. The bases for the claim is a comparison with Neanderthal mtNA positions 16,024 to 16,383 which is just 360 nucleotides.


In 2006, news was released that scientists had found Neanderthal DNA to be as much as 99.9% identical to modern humans.[5] However, this does more than shorten the gap between Neanderthals and humans, since it is recognized by the mainstream scientific community that any two humans on earth have genes that are 99.9% identical to each other.[6] Such recognition of modern genetic divergence also serves to acknowledge Neanderthals as fully human genetically.

The claims of huge anatomical differences also have not held up.

There is evidence that Homo Erectus used fire as long a one million years ago.


Human Ancestors Tamed Fire Earlier Than Thought
Campfire remains from a South African cave suggest fire control by early humans dates back 1 million years.

Quote
The researchers found the evidence in a layer of rock containing hand axes, stone flakes and other tools attributed by previous excavations to a particular human ancestor: Homo erectus. Characterized by its upright stance and robust build, this early hominin species lived from 1.8 million to 200,000 years ago. “The evidence from Wonderwerk Cave suggests that Homo erectus had some familiarity with fire,” said Francesco Berna, an archaeology professor at Boston University and the lead author of a paper on the team’s findings.
End Quote


Quote
Scientists working outside the realm of archaeology—most notably primatologist Richard Wrangham—have persuasively argued that Homo erectus tamed fire, Berna noted. Wrangham has long been championing the theory that cooking allowed human ancestors to consume more calories and, as a result, to develop larger brains. He has largely based his hypothesis on physical changes in early hominins—for instance, a shift toward smaller teeth and stomachs—that took place around the time Homo erectus evolved.
End Quote


Homo Erectus were definitely pre-human. They were not very bright, but the evidence is telling us that they used fire, knew how to make fire and it is likely that they were using it for cooking.


Link
Human Ancestors Tamed Fire Earlier Than Thought

 

[Dale]

Genesis states that it did not rain before the flood, but the fountains of the deep watered the earth - there was not enough water above ground at that time to have the hydrologic cycle.

To flood the earth the fountains of the deep were opened up and spewed gigantic fountains of high pressure water high into the air all over the world, which fell to earth as rain.

Post flood the earth is 71% covered with water, sufficient to have significant evaporation into the atmosphere for today’s hydrological cycle to occur.

Moses didn’t invent the Genesis creation account - God spent 40 days with Moses on Mount Sinai and gave it to him.

For many decades the standard cosmological model was the steady state model, aka the uniformitarian model, that said the universe always existed, yet all along the Genesis account stated that the universe had a sudden beginning in a point in time, long before science caught up with that fact with the Big Bang theory and proved Genesis right.

Long before astronomy and telescopes existed, the Bible knew that the earth floats in space, at a time when it was thought the earth was supported on the back of Atlas or on an elephants back.

Chad Kincham: “To flood the earth the fountains of the deep were opened up and spewed gigantic fountains of high pressure water high into the air all over the world, which fell to earth as rain.”

Where are these “fountains of the deep”? Has anyone found them? Have creationists ever looked for them? The answer is that no one has found them. I’m not aware that anyone has ever looked for them, but geologists would have found them if they existed. Creationists keep demanding more evidence from non-creationists but they have none to offer themselves.

In your image of “gigantic fountains of high pressure water high into the air” you are adding to scripture, which does not give us this picture.

 

[BeyondET]

Not basic physics, since the pre flood earth was watered solely from underground sources, and the rivers and small seas were part of that process - once again, Genesis says it didn’t rain on the pre flood earth, which explains why there was no such thing as a rainbow until after the flood,

no where does the bible say the seas was formed from underground sources just the opposite is said. the water was part of the upper water then divided the remaining below was called seas.

 

[Aussie Pete]

Dtaylor: “It is science that is lying about God's creation not The Bible.”

Science has no motive to lie. Scientists have no motive to lie.

Perhaps you misunderstand the Bible.

Scientists are human and humans lie. Science is desperate to hold onto the godless myth of evolution. I will give just one example of how science lies. Fusion power is the subject of much research and correspondingly vast budgets. Researchers have managed to get to create a reaction which produces 0.7 times the energy used to create the reaction. So they say. This is simply not true. The figures are deceptive because they ignore the power required to generate the power to create fusion. One technique is lasers. Lasers require power to function, and a huge amount to produce enough for fusion research. The researchers quote the power of the laser, not the total power including that to make the laser work. There is also no mention of the power losses that will occur when converting heat from fusion to usable energy. So no, fusion power is not even remotely close to practical applications. But funding is at stake, so such minor details are glossed over.

 

[chad kincham]

no where does the bible say the seas was formed from underground sources just the opposite is said. the water was part of the upper water then divided the remaining below was called seas.

The upper water was a canopy of thin crystals of ice surrounding earth like a Dyson sphere, that made the whole earth climate a temperate paradise.

 

[BeyondET]

The upper water was a canopy of thin crystals of ice surrounding earth like a Dyson sphere, that made the whole earth climate a temperate paradise.

both involve Hydrogen and Oxygen, 1st and 3rd most abundant elements in the cosmos.

The magnetic firmament makes it a paradise enables an atmosphere.

 

[chad kincham]

Chad Kincham: “To flood the earth the fountains of the deep were opened up and spewed gigantic fountains of high pressure water high into the air all over the world, which fell to earth as rain.”

Where are these “fountains of the deep”? Has anyone found them? Have creationists ever looked for them? The answer is that no one has found them. I’m not aware that anyone has ever looked for them, but geologists would have found them if they existed. Creationists keep demanding more evidence from non-creationists but they have none to offer themselves.

In your image of “gigantic fountains of high pressure water high into the air” you are adding to scripture, which does not give us this picture.

So you’re unaware that there are vast networks of caverns and caves worldwide?

Some are 8,000 feet deep.

They’re hiding in plain sight.

But there’s no signs posted on them saying FOUNTAINS OF THE DEEP, so that’s probably unacceptable evidence for you.

Just as there aren’t signs on the strata found worldwide that say LAYERS OF ROCK SORTED IN MOVING WATER BY SIZE AND DENSITY, so that geology will recognize evidence hiding in plain sight of the great flood that occurred due to the underground reservoirs being opened up.

 

[Dale]

So you’re unaware that there are vast networks of caverns and caves worldwide?

Some are 8,000 feet deep.

They’re hiding in plain sight.

But there’s no signs posted on them saying FOUNTAINS OF THE DEEP, so that’s probably unacceptable evidence for you.

Just as there aren’t signs on the strata found worldwide that say LAYERS OF ROCK SORTED IN MOVING WATER BY SIZE AND DENSITY, so that geology will recognize evidence hiding in plain sight of the great flood that occurred due to the underground reservoirs being opened up.

Chad Kincham: “ So you’re unaware that there are vast networks of caverns and caves worldwide?”


Are you aware that to cover the top of Mt. Everest would take seven times as much water as we have in the world today? Are there caverns large enough to hold that much water?

I am well aware of caverns. I tour every cavern I pass that has public tours, including Mammoth Caverns and Carlsbad Caverns. I also know something about how they are formed. They are formed because of rain on the surface, which percolates down and dissolves certain minerals. Since creationists keep telling me there was no rain before the Flood, it follows that there would be no caverns before the Flood, either.

Even if huge caverns existed containing huge amounts of water, it would have to be under great pressure to burst out in great geysers. The only time that happens in our world is where there are “thermal areas” in places like Yellowstone National Park. There high temperatures under the ground heat water to boiling until it burst out to the surface. The Bible doesn’t say that Noah faced boiling water, so that can’t be what happened in the Flood.

If vast caverns existed before the Flood, holding huge amounts of water, it is reasonable to think that creationists would look for them, and they should find them. Or geologists would already have found them. I can’t imagine how that could release enough water to cover Mt. Everest.