Age of the Earth 2

[Wildgraywolf]

What is time anyway and how do we know it's always been a constant?

[Bread_of_Life]

mscoville,

Before we discuss the subject farther, you're going to have to answer some of the questions I raised in my previous post to you. Essentially I'd like you to define information - in other words, tell me what you understand the meaning of that word to be, and then tell me what you would accept as an increase in information, and why that is necessary in evolution given your definition of information.

Thanks,

Nik

[Guest mscoville]

SA,

I'll do my best. But you know I'm a painter and not a scientist. Ha.

Well in a single celled organism I would assume there is no mechanism for creating anything other than a single celled organism. In humans there are no mechanisms for creating anything other than a human, 2 eyes, 2 arms etc. I assume in the DNA the information for creating those things are there. So for a Human to adapt to their surroundings they have to adapt using the information contained in them through random mutations , beneficial or they'll die. Or more information has to be added to there genetic make up, to make them adapt. So their genetic material whatever that is, has to get some new information to survive or change. In a single celled organism, there is a lot less genetic information, like how to make an arm, so where did the information to create arms come from? Is that helpful. It's the best I can do I'm afraid.

I'd say God bless here, but you don't think he would anyway. Ha.

~ martin

[artsylady]

No, saltwater fish would not have been hugely affected by a slight percentage lowering in the salinity of the oceans - the ones affected would have been fresh-water fish, most of whom, with the exception of the salmon and a few others, would have died in the saltwater environment.

The whole concept of how we are looking at this is wrong. Say there is the earth before the flood. One continent and salt water with salt water fish in it. Then for the first time it RAINS FRESHWATER. So, we should be looking at salt water fish

adapting to fresh water - not fresh water fish adapting to salt water.

QUOTE 

how do we KNOW that some of those ancient fossils won't resurface as living? It's certainly very possible. I mean, we've already seen two that were supposedly extinct millions or billions of years ago.

Well, firstly, I've only seen one example of an animal that we've found that we thought was extinct - and it was a fish, naturally, since the oceans and the least surveyed part of the planet.

Then there is the creature that looks remarkably like a trilobite - it barely changed. So that's two. But there ARE millions out there to explore, so they say. There's no way you can say that the ancient fossils may not resurface more ! TO say so would be silly because there's no way you could know that right now!

Secondly, we can look at the fossil record to find out when we find the last fossils of certain animals. For example, the last jawless fish fossils appear hundreds of millions of years ago. Now, there are two possibilities. Either jawless fish went extinct hundred of millions of years ago, or a population of jawless fish still exists, somewhere, undetected, having left no fossils for hundreds of millions of years, and having never been seen or caught by anyone.

Extinct or still living - both are possibilities - yes.

Clearly the latter scenario is possible, but very unlikely,

which is why it's such a momentus event when we do find something that was supposedly extinct, even if that extinction was meant to have been very recent.

but it happens. And since we are aware of only one PERCENT Of species, it seems bizarre to say for sure that so many of these species are definitely extinct!

QUOTE 

Your last statement depends??? We don't know how quickly new species evolve! IT's another unknown! A huge unknown!

Species can evolve at different rates - some slowly, some more quickly, depending on circumstances. However, there are upper limits to how fast species can evolve.

Would 4 thousand years not enough to produce significant enough changes between a wolf and a dog? Without direct observation, I don't know how you can answer this with any certainty at all.

The most obvious limiting factor is mutation. Mutation is very rare, but it is the only source of genuinely new material or alleles in the genome. Sexual recombination is more like a shuffling of cards - it doesn't create new cards, or change the cards themselves. Mutation can and has been observed in many animal genomes, and we know the rates at which is occurs.

It only takes one generation to have the necessary mutation, right?

There is another factor limiting evolutionary change, and that is the speed of natural selection. In a population of thousands or millions (required for sufficient variation and mutations to take place), it takes time for an evolutionary change to become common and fixed. That is, one or two animals may acquire a helpful adaptional mutation, but it takes quite a few generations for that mutation to spread through a population and become common and fixed.

four thousand years of canine species creates a LOT of generations.

So you see, 4000 years for several million species to evolve is simply ridiculous, given the genetic differences between species and the known rates of genetic change. It couldn't happen.

Again, when you compare the known (2 percent) with the UNKNOWN or 100 percent, we really don't or can't know that much! It's that simple really.

Because mutation is observable, and so, to an extent, is natural selection. Furthermore, we know from the fossil record how long stuff took to evolve. The transitional series from ape to human took around 5 million years for example.

It's time for those quotes from the NY times again. There is disagreement even among evolutionists and that disagreement is caused by different PHILOSOPHIES.

QUOTE 

Not voodoo, but I would love to know how they date sand.

So would I. Maybe I should write to 'em.

Ok.

QUOTE 

The problem with your second thought, is that the Biblical geneology came FIRST, then the tribes were named.

Are you sure? After all, the biblical genealogy may never have actually happened, and it was written when the tribes were named, not before. It could simply have been an attempt to explain the tribal names, or simply used these names to gain credibility and explanatory power.

Yes. The writings in Genesis are older than the names of these places.

QUOTE 

Oh good. So you're NOT trying to prove their closer relatives.

I would not try to use a Gorilla's intelligence to prove that they are close cousin no, because it doesn't. However, Gorillas are close cousins, and there are plenty of evidences to prove this.

So you say and so they say. However, the evidence is subject to interpretation and evolutionists disagree based on their PHILOSOPHIES.

QUOTE 

To be honest, I can't remember now where I saw it.

hmmmmmm

Doesn't mean it's wrong. I see you haven't proven it wrong yet.

QUOTE 

Again, those are not the contents mentioned.

yes they are, these figures were taken directly from your linked in page on your last post, not from my own. These are the figures that you claimed prove that goat's milk is similar to humans.

We simply cannot compare goats milk, human milk and ape milk if we don't have the figures for ape milk.

QUOTE 

I noticed you didn't mention the figures for ape milk.

That's because it wasn't on your link, and I couldn't find it elsewhere, which is why I suspected that you didn't know what it was either - and you've subsequently admitted that you "can't remember" where you heard this from.

You're right, I can't remember. Doesn't mean that it's not a fact. I just can't prove it right now- lol.

[truseek]

Here is some more stuff I dug up, cogitate and masticate on this, sorry if it's repeated info it's a long thread and I just kinda skimmed most of it:

It is my understandi ng that Natural Gas is usually contained in porous rocks, like sandstone or limestone, which are usually sealed by some impermeable rock such as shale. Fluids and gases can move around in the porous rock, but pass slowly through the impermeable rock. Eveolutionary theory postulates that long, long ago the fluids and gases were trapped. However:

The concept is proposed that gas accumulations in the subsurface have only a limited life in terms of geologic time scales. If this is true, known gas fields in older strata like lower Paleozoic reservoirs can be explained only by assumption of a relatively young accumulation age or by the assumption of a much longer duration of the hydrocarbon generation process than currently accepted."

Edited July 1, 2004 by truseek

[Bread_of_Life]

Truseek,

I'm afraid I'm no petrochemist, nor am I a geochemist, so I can't comment on the stuff about oil and natural gas (also, I've never seen these "proofs" before - perhaps I should look on talkorigins, someone else may have seen them and debunked them). However, I have seen many of the others before, indeed some have been around for years (some before I was born), and most have been refuted for that long too, so hopefully you'll get good answers for a lot of them:

How has the earth managed to maitain its molten core for so long without cooling?

From Robert Gentry, Nature's Tiny Mystery: Zircon crystals were taken in core samples from five levels of a very hot, dry 15,000-foot [45,720 dm] hole in New Mexico; with temperatures always above 313

[truseek]

Now, this is classic creationism. The first three paragraphs claim that there is too much erosion going on, the last paragraph claims there is too much sedimentation! The creationists are going to have to make up their minds to convince anyone.

How so?

You seem to ignore the fact that a dead sequoia, not killed by a saw has never been found. You think that it is preposterous to believe a tree survived the flood? Yet you can believe life came from a rock? uh huh

You seem to ignore the fact that Humphreys, when proving the mississippi delta was created during the flood, used an evolutionist's method!

It is thought that the period between 1650 and 1850 would be a typical time span to analyze population growth prior to our present century, with its many technological advantages. One estimate, based on population changes between 1650 and 1850, provides us with the fact that at about the year 3300 B.C. there was only one family! (See also J.C. Whitcomb and H.M. Morris, Genesis Flood, p. 398.)

I guess some unforseen natural disaster or something happened, wiping out large portion of the population? Funny how the evolutionists always use some excuse like this, seems an awful lot like you guys like to claim a sort of divine intervention whenever your theories crumble.

Yours in Christ

Truseek

[truseek]

Also, how do you explain the human remains found during the California gold rush in the Sierra Nevadas, a range supposedly millions of years old?

Yours in Christ

Truseek

[Bread_of_Life]

You seem to ignore the fact that a dead sequoia, not killed by a saw has never been found.

How do we know this to be true? How long have we been looking at the Sequoia?

You think that it is preposterous to believe a tree survived the flood?

Well, yes. The highest mountain (which the flood covered) is kilometres tall, far higher than the largest tree. Put any land plant underwater for a year, and it'll die. Not only will the root structure be exposed and nutrients washed away and flooded, but the plant will not be able to take in oxygen, nor will light (8km underwater) be able to penetrate as well as it ought to.

Yet you can believe life came from a rock?

No, I don't.

You seem to ignore the fact that Humphreys, when proving the mississippi delta was created during the flood, used an evolutionist's method!

No, he didn't. He assumed that everything had always been as it is now, which isn't an evolutionist method, indeed, it's the very opposite of the assumption evolutionists regularly make.

It is thought that the period between 1650 and 1850 would be a typical time span to analyze population growth prior to our present century, with its many technological advantages.

Why, because technology didn't advance from 1650 to 1850? Or perhaps the level of technology and food production etc was the same in 1800 than it was in 3000 BC, or 30,000 BC?

There is absolutely no way that you can assume uniform population growth over the past 1 million years, or indeed over the past 4000 years. It simply hasn't happened. It is especially dishonest from Messrs Morris and Whitcombe to take figures from 1650 - 1850 (which covers a massive surge in technology, the start of the enlightenment, advances in medicine, the agricultural revolution etc etc) and say that these years are typical of the population growth for the last 4000 years, or 1 million years.

Indeed, I would even question exactly how they got these figures. Britain only started a census in 1800, before that, you'd have to go back to parish registers, which were fairly unreliable.

I'm not trying to be nasty to you - after all, you didn't write down or think of these theories - but they're just pure fantasy - they don't represent an honest scientific or historical analysis of anything. They're just based on a misuse of uniformitarianism. Take the sea salts example as a misuse of uniformitarianism - it assumes that salts have been entering the sea, but ignores the other half of the cycle. Or take the example of the Mississippi river delta - a classic example of deltaic cycle, explained here: http://www.lacoast.gov/geography/mr/index.asp. And the ultimate misuse of uniformitarianism is in the example of population dynamics. Assuming a constant population increase over 1 million years is just fantasy. Not only could it not happen, because of overpopulation, it didn't happen, as we know from the genetic evidence, and also the geological evidence pointing to recent ice ages.

Also, how do you explain the human remains found during the California gold rush in the Sierra Nevadas, a range supposedly millions of years old?

I havn't heard of them. If you link me into a peer reviewed paper from the scientist who found them and examined them, then I'll be happy to comment and research on it.

[Guest Genxpastor]

[

I have great difficulty in adding millions of years to the Bible because that implies that there was death and blood shed before Adam's sin. Sin is listed as the reason for death (Romans 8:19-22).

If Genesis goes...there goes our Christian basis for salvation. I'm sure SA understands this all too well.

If we are honest with ourselves, we all have biases that have resulted from our society and parents.

By the way, nice to meet you

Romans 7:17, "But now, it is no longer I who do it, but Sin that dwells in me." Rom. 7:20, "Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but Sin that dwells in me."

"Sin" is a WHO. Sin is the person Satan (who also causes us to "sin"). The Great Rebellion happened before the restoration of the earth and creation of man in God's image (starting at Genesis 1:2b). If everything was "good" and/or made perfect when God created man (in His image), why did God tell Adam to till the land and GUARD the garden? What was there to guard the garden from?

I don't belive in evolution but I do believe that there could be millions if not billions of years inbetween Genesis 1:1 and Gen. 1:2a. Genesis certainly doesn't "go" with this understanding but gives us even more insight and revelatioon than most creationists have been able to grasp to date.

I'm a believer. I love the Lord. We must be open to His will and revelations. We Christians need to grow up.

I'm sorry Stone, but I don't agree. It's nice to meet you though.