Age of the Earth 2

[Bread_of_Life]

He is the first of the ways of God.

[truseek]

First in the ways of God, if one understands the culture and literature of the time, is without a doubt denoting the fact that this is the largest creature.

Who can open the doors of his face definitely implies that no one can.

No evidence in the fossil record does not indicate fallacy, you should know this SA

And you are correct with regards to the bombardier beetle, not technically fire, my apologies. My point was that there is indeed a creature alive today which we know spews a superheated substance as a defence. Doesn't prove that any dinosaurs did this, but it may suggest that there may have been, at one time (or mebbe even today?), other creatures equipped with similar defence mechanisms.

In Christ

Truseek

Edited July 12, 2004 by truseek

[artsylady]

QUOTE

So you accept only evidence that has been found by actual archaeologists? Hmmm that's interesting.

THat isn't what I said. But a sentence starting:

"a woman once found," or

"an iron pot was found,"

without any papers confirming this, without a picture, without any scientific analysis of the find, without any confirmation that the find is actually genuine, with no details on who this woman was so that she can be contacted and asked about her find - is extremely dubious. It's what urban legends are made of artsylady, not science.

Okay, if I asked you who found all of the archeaopterix fossils, you'd be able to remember researching to find their names or finding out if those people who discovered them were legit? Give me a break. And that goes for every single 'transitional fossil". rotf!!!! You don't do that and you know it! Lol. So, did you find out their addresses as well and write to them too? Were just their names sufficient or did you have to talk to them? lol!!! Don't even respond that you actually research all the many people who have found all of these fossils. PLEASE!!!

[artsylady]

QUOTE 

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.

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!

QUOTE 

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. Thank you. Or maybe they just died out 100 years ago, right? We don't know what we don't know and the presumptions being made are ridiculous!

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Clearly the latter scenario is possible, but very unlikely,

QUOTE 

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

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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.

QUOTE 

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 nimal genomes, and we know the rates at which is occurs.

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

QUOTE 

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.

QUOTE 

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.

QUOTE 

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.

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QUOTE 

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

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

Ok.

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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.

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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, remember?

Remember those quotes. It's time for some deprogramming. Maybe I should post them again so we can all remember that evolution is about philosophy and the conclusions these scientists come to is a result of their PHILOSOPHY.

[artsylady]

http://www.evolution-facts.org/2evlch18b.htm

An interesting site with great tidbits, including references from science magazines and quotes from scientists.

[Bread_of_Life]

Okay, if I asked you who found all of the archeaopterix fossils, you'd be able to remember researching to find their names or finding out if those people who discovered them were legit? Give me a break. And that goes for every single 'transitional fossil".

Correct. I may not be able to remember them all, but if I forget I would just have to go on Pubmed, or nature, and find out who it was, where it was, and find peer review, criticism and comment.

Lol. So, did you find out their addresses as well and write to them too?

I have written to some scientists yes, having read their papers. And yes, papers do usually list addresses, contact details etc etc. That's because they're describing real people and real finds, not folklore about women somewhere find some skull encased in coal.

They contain pictures, photos, graphs, analysis, and importantly the location of the find so that it can be examined by other scientists. In other words, scientific papers reference the author and the find and the time and date of the find etc etc because they're describing real finds, not made up ones.

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.

No, because the majority of water on earth is salt-water, which may have been diluted by freshwater falling for the flood, but the water would still have been heavily saline.

Extinct or still living - both are possibilities - yes. Thank you. Or maybe they just died out 100 years ago, right? We don't know what we don't know and the presumptions being made are ridiculous!

Take dinosaurs. They were common in the fossil record for over 150 million years. Then, suddenly, they disappear. So do 80% of all lifeforms.

2 possibilities can explain this:

1. They have become extinct through a cataclysmic event

2. Their population has been lowered by a massive event to the extent that there are too few of them so they don't leave fossils.

Now, clearly 2 is a possibility. However, add another fact:

They're not been found in the fossil record for the last 66 million years. None of them. The 80% of forms that disappeared, not a ***single one*** of them is found in the fossil record ever again, or has been found alive today.

That means that, for the majority, only 1 is a possibility, or else in 66 million years their population would have recovered, and they'd be alive today, or at least leaving some fossils.

Now, maybe one day we'll find 1 of that 80% of species that died out at the K-T boundary still alive today, or rather, a relative of one of those species. And the scientific community will be surprised and astonished and get very excited about studying it. But to find all of them or a significant proportion of them is just not possible, because it's almost certain they died out.

Now, you claim that because we've only surveyed 20% of all life on earth, that we can't know what we'll find in the remaining 80%. Well, that's not quite true either. 20% is a huge huge survey, it's about 2 million creatures. Out of that massive survey, we've not found a single one that we thought went extinct at the K-T boundary. Not one. Not a sausage. Yet, if a significant ammount survived, you'd think in the massive sample we'd taken, that we'd find one or two, actually, that we'd find many if all 80% survived the K-T boundary. Indeed, if all the 80% of creatures we think died out at the K-T are still alive today, we'd have found 20% in our 20% sample. But we don't find one, and we don't find any modern bones or fossils of one. Nothing, at all, no evidence, no nothing, even though we've taken a sizeable sample of the creatures alive today, and of the fossil record.

So the truth is artsylady, you're living in never never land. 80% of all life died out at the K-T. They leave no descendants today, or fossils in the Tertiary. Maybe one day we'll find one that we thought died out but didn't - but we'll never find a significant number, because the vast majority did in fact die out - because if they didn't, in the 66 million years intervening, their population would have recovered, they'd have left fossils, and we'd have found a few of them today.

And by the way, I'm amazed that all you took out of my last post was that extinct or still living were both possibilities, since I showed, both in the last post and this one, that one was such an immensely remote possibility that it wasn't worth worrying about.

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!

Firstly, you've taken the biggest estimate of species alive today. 100 million is quite an old estimate, most scientists agree that a more realistic number would be 10 - 20 million creatures. We've catalogued about 2 million of them.

Would 4 thousand years not enough to produce significant enough changes between a wolf and a dog

With a very large population, and heavy artificial selection and cross breeding it could be. But we're not talking about a wolf turning into a dog through artificial selection. We're talking about 10,000 creatures turning into 10-20 million, through natural selection.

That's one more species every generation. Now, can a wolf turn into a dog in one generation? The answer is "no", no matter how big a population or strong selection you have.

In fact, if you take your estimate of species numbers (100 million), it becomes 10 species per generation per creature. Is this possible? No. It's even more impossible than one species per generation. It's cloud-cuckoo land stuff - fantasy, not science.

The sheer genetic difference between species indicates a minimum time that they have been diverged, and that is far longer than 4000 and odd years.

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

No, because it's not a single mutation that seperates species. It's not a single mutation that seperates ourselves and gorillas. It's not a single mutation that seperates Parrots from Macaws, or Lions from Tigers. It's many many mutations, cumulatively selected over tens or hundreds of thousands of generations, not one.

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

No, it doesn't, it creates about 1-2 thousand generations. Enough to seperate some **breeds** (not species) of dogs with strong artificial selection. But not nearly enough to create the thousands of species needed, per species on the ark.

There is disagreement even among evolutionists and that disagreement is caused by different PHILOSOPHIES.

ACtually, I have already explained the quote from the NY Times. It was about gradual vs punctuated evolution. It wasn't about evolution vs creationism. None of the scientists thought that the fossils wern't intermediate or transitional, but rather some thought that they showed gradual evolution, and some punctuated evolution.

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

But not older than the names of the tribes that the places were named after. Could it be that moses named the characters after tribes, and then the places later on were named after tribes...

Maybe I should post them again so we can all remember that evolution is about philosophy and the conclusions these scientists come to is a result of their PHILOSOPHY.

Yes, post them again, and I'll post my response again so that you can actually see just how you misrepresented the topic of discussion. Go ahead, post them in full.

[Guest Saint Wes]

I hang out at www.answersingenesis.org - it is the single best Christian-based creation site I have ever seen. You most likely have all heard of it.

Their motto: "UPHOLDING THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE FROM THE VERY FIRST VERSE."

Clikc the link below and then click, young age evidence.

Answers in Genesis Q&A page

[artsylady]

Correct. I may not be able to remember them all, but if I forget I would just have to go on Pubmed, or nature, and find out who it was, where it was, and find peer review, criticism and comment.

So you don't believe in an artifact not so much because of WHO found it, but on the peer reviews, right?

QUOTE 

Lol. So, did you find out their addresses as well and write to them too? 

I have written to some scientists yes, having read their papers. And yes, papers do usually list addresses, contact details etc etc. That's because they're describing real people and real finds, not folklore about women somewhere find some skull encased in coal.

No, we're talking about the people who FIND the artifacts, remember? You had problems because the particular site posted didn't give their names. That was the problem you had then, wasn't it?

They contain pictures, photos, graphs, analysis, and importantly the location of the find so that it can be examined by other scientists. In other words, scientific papers reference the author and the find and the time and date of the find etc etc because they're describing real finds, not made up ones.

Well, maybe scientists who hear about findings that aren't in line with evolution just ignore them and don't bother to do any peer review on them. If I called the university and told them I found an archeopteryx fossil, they'd be at my door in minutes to check it out and review it. If I said I found a battery encased in coal, they'd probably tell me to call the creationists. lol.

Did you take a look at the other thread, with the news story on that creature they call a 'spotted rat fish"? Does it look like a spotted rat fish to you at all? I'd like to know what you think about that, if you don't mind.

QUOTE 

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.

No, because the majority of water on earth is salt-water, which may have been diluted by freshwater falling for the flood, but the water would still have been heavily saline.

Okay...... I'll say this differently. Maybe there were no freshwater fish. Maybe all of the fish had adapted from saltwater. In the case of the flood, this could likely be the scenario.

QUOTE 

Extinct or still living - both are possibilities - yes. Thank you. Or maybe they just died out 100 years ago, right? We don't know what we don't know and the presumptions being made are ridiculous!

Take dinosaurs. They were common in the fossil record for over 150 million years. Then, suddenly, they disappear. So do 80% of all lifeforms.

Well maybe they did go through a period where a lot of them DID die. We call it the flood! Even if you don't believe that, don't you think there can be catastrophic events that kill off many animals, while other animals of the same species continue to live. You're saying that because we know for a fact that some died 'here', then they all must have died 'here'.

2 possibilities can explain this:

1. They have become extinct through a cataclysmic event

Yes. Or just SOME Of them died from such an event, which is a THIRD possibility.

2. Their population has been lowered by a massive event to the extent that there are too few of them so they don't leave fossils.

Yeah sure. Maybe they did just have their population lowered for awhile. Or the FOURTH possibility - maybe their population diminished for awhile and then heightened again and they thrived again and maybe there are a few of these creatures left today! In the world of evolution, ANYTHING is possible, so certainly my THIRD and FOURTH are possible too. Now don't go and dismiss these possibilities just because they fit with the creation account. Please, for your own sake.

Now, clearly 2 is a possibility. However, add another fact:

They're not been found in the fossil record for the last 66 million years. None of them. The 80% of forms that disappeared, not a ***single one*** of them is found in the fossil record ever again, or has been found alive today.

But some of these fossils have been found. The coelacanth. The larger version of the trilobite. I'll post some more. There's a whole book on the subject of living fossils. I can find out more if you'd like to learn more about this.

Now, you claim that because we've only surveyed 20% of all life on earth, that we can't know what we'll find in the remaining 80%. Well, that's not quite true either. 20% is a huge huge survey, it's about 2 million creatures. Out of that massive survey, we've not found a single one that we thought went extinct at the K-T boundary. Not one. Not a sausage.

So what? We have 80 percent not yet discovered yet. That's the bottom line. just because they stopped fossilizing doesn't mean they stopped living! Do you think the animals that are dying today are fossilized?

Tell me what percentage of animals that have lived and died in the last thousand years are becoming fossilized? What percentage would YOU estimate?

QUOTE 

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!

Firstly, you've taken the biggest estimate of species alive today. 100 million is quite an old estimate, most scientists agree that a more realistic number would be 10 - 20 million creatures. We've catalogued about 2 million of them.

Well, 100 million I thought was a bit way off, but that would be better for your argument. In any case, the unknowns are FAR greater than the knowns when it comes to living species.

QUOTE

Would 4 thousand years not enough to produce significant enough changes between a wolf and a dog

With a very large population, and heavy artificial selection and cross breeding it could be. But we're not talking about a wolf turning into a dog through artificial selection. We're talking about 10,000 creatures turning into 10-20 million, through natural selection.

but what if dog was man's best friend over the past 4 thousand years and man was manipulating them as far back as 4 thousand years ago. What's so difficult about that? We know the Egyptians had cats as pets. But no to dogs? Why?

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

It's not a single mutation that seperates Parrots from Macaws, or Lions from Tigers. It's many many mutations, cumulatively selected over tens or hundreds of thousands of generations, not one.

How many mutations do you estimate it is, and how many years would those mutations take?

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

But not older than the names of the tribes that the places were named after. Could it be that moses named the characters after tribes, and then the places later on were named after tribes...

So you think they could have been real men now? Or is it real tribes, but not real mens names?

[artsylady]

I hang out at www.answersingenesis.org - it is the single best Christian-based creation site I have ever seen. You most likely have all heard of it.

I like that site too. Please, stick around and join us!

[Guest shadow2b]

-The true scientists have proven the 6 day creation.

-Now "That"is a FACT right down to the missing 1hour when-GOD made the sun stop while the hebrew children were engaged in a battle--They used computers to check out the time & where the stars were at a given point & they came up an hour short till they read GODS WORD & "Found"that lost hour----

-bddeeee0---bdddeeee-tthaasa-thassss -THATS ALL FOLKS--