Hurray for the First Amendment

when this times out let's go here:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/ramdas_lamb/2010/01/the_law_of_karma.html

Hi Pam!

PAM: "You know that if I go look at your anti-evolution links, I'm going to have to tell you why and where I find them wrong, and thus keep the evolution discussion going, so I'm going to hold off on looking at them for now."

No, that is fine. I would be curious to see how you go about tackling Alvin Plantinga. He is one of the foremost Christian philosophers in the world at present. Unfortunately it is not a one to one confrontation. You only have little old me with my outdated knowledge of evolution to challenge your basic assumptions.

PAM: "You asked Walter:
"Have you read The Genesis Flood account on the Flood or just researched it on Talk Origins Net?..."

PAM : "I hope you will apply this to yourself during the time that you're taking to brush up on evolution. Read one or two actual books on evolution - not just the Christian anti-evolution screeds."

What would you recommend?

PAM: "Read, and formulate your own arguments."

My arguments are based on God's word in the respect that He has stated how the world and man came into being and from this we can deduct the general timeframe.

The last time I read a book on evolution was Darwins Natural Selection and before that The Origin of Species some thirty or so years ago. That was when I was living as though God did not exist. I had a friend who was heavily into philosophy and eastern religions, so naturally we read a lot of what was popular back then like Whitehead, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alan Watts, Freud, Jung, Darwin, Alister Crowley, Confucius, The Noble Way, and a whole bunch of other bazaar, mind bending stuff.

PAM: "I can tell you that I do read on the other side, and I read the Bible."

May I ask who and what you have read in the form of creation literature? Have you read old earth as well as young earth authors?

PAM: "Sadly, I find most of the anti-evolution stuff to be appallingly naive and uninformed....they're arguing with a cartoon version - what they think evolution says. If they would actually try to read and understand it, they might come up with some more sophisticated arguments."

What would constitute a more sophisticated argument in your opinion?

Hi Peter,

You know that if I go look at your anti-evolution links, I'm going to have to tell you why and where I find them wrong, and thus keep the evolution discussion going, so I'm going to hold off on looking at them for now.

You asked Walter:
"Have you read The Genesis Flood account on the Flood or just researched it on Talk Origins Net? What have you read along the lines of Young Earth Creationist literature? I just want to get an idea of whether all your information comes from the opposing camp, or have you actually read from the Christian camp in these respects."

I hope you will apply this to yourself during the time that you're taking to brush up on evolution. Read one or two actual books on evolution - not just the Christian anti-evolution screeds. Read, and formulate your own arguments.

I can tell you that I do read on the other side, and I read the Bible.

Sadly, I find most of the anti-evolution stuff to be appallingly naive and uninformed. Most don't seem to know anything about evolution - they're arguing with a cartoon version - what they think evolution says. If they would actually try to read and understand it, they might come up with some more sophisticated arguments.

Hi Pam,

Here are a couple for you,

http://static.veritas.org/media/files/a96oreg10.mp3

http://apologetics315.blogspot.com/search/label/naturalism

Hi Walter,

WALTER: "while you're studying up on evolution, i'd like you to keep the flood in mind. remember, i've called that the most impossible story in the bible. i believe you've conceded the "difficulty" in compressing all that egyptian archaeology/anthropology to be before 2200 bc, and are hoping for god's guidance as it's not resolved in your mind."

Thanks for the heads up. These are the bottlenecks for playing in your ballpark with your A-team.

As I have said before, either the biblical time line needs to be altered somewhat or these Egyptian time lines do. I gave you reasons for believing they might be wrong, including gaps in the biblical chronologies or misinterpretation of the historical evidence such as some of these Egyptian dynasties running together, as in the case for Israel and Judah in OT history.

Again, the problem with anything that is not chiseled in stone and dated is placing the date for the oldest records or manuscripts that are available, to their numbers and to the accuracy of them.

If there is no date stamped on them, then the difficulty is in determining if there are outside factors that have not been foreseen altering the testing methods. It depends on where you date the different forms of record keeping in the historical setting.

WALTER: "In that same vein, you could study up on the archaeology of jericho. there's that famous destruction layer "that could be joshua" which albright, garstang and kenyon etc... have argued about? i presume you know about this? they've "dated" the destruction layer variously from 1220ish to 1550 bc.

Okay, I'm not familiar with this data. Where did you read this?

WALTER: "anyway, moving away from the post-flood age, whenever you're ready, i'd like to discuss the problems of the flood itelf: the logistics, which animals, extinctions, flood geology etc... whenever you're ready."

Okay, let me prepare. I've read the Morris and Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood, but that was back in the 80's along with many other books along the same vein, including Morris' "The Long War Against God" during this period. Have you read The Genesis Flood account on the Flood or just researched it on Talk Origins Net? What have you read along the lines of Young Earth Creationist literature? I just want to get an idea of whether all your information comes from the opposing camp, or have you actually read from the Christian camp in these respects.

Hi Walter,

No, not from the entire On Faith forum (although that is not a bad idea until April), just from the subject of evolution until I refresh and learn more on disputing Pam's ideas. I have a reading list that keeps growing longer from our discussions here on these forums.

I'm not forgetting that both of your worldviews are oriented at looking at life and origins from the evolutionary perspective, as mine is oriented from a young earth biblical perspective. Again, your worldview does not come close to a reasonable explanation in the underlying questions of meaning and purpose, explaining ethics, or in explaining how we got here. But for Pam, her mainstay or specialty is in the field of evolutionary, pardon the expression Pam, dogma. Since that is her ballpark I need to find out more on how my team best plays there.

In that respect you might like Kenneth Samples or Ronald Nash. They come at the evolutionary question favoring an old earth and old universe. I know how they reconciles this viewpoint, but I don't see it as biblical. Anyway, here are posts that looks at the ideas of origins that refutes evolution on the side of special creation,

http://www.biblicaltraining.org/category/topics/arguments-gods-existence

http://www.biblicaltraining.org/lecture/th601-15

http://links.christreformed.org/realaudio/20070518a.mp3

yeah pam, the amazing randi is great. i love his standing offer of $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers under laboratory conditions...

peter,
sure, you can pause. i'm not sure if you mean a "hiatus" from evolution or from the entire discussion. anyway, if it's the entire discussion, come get me/us on susan's thread on april fool's day or so and we'll continue somewhere.

while you're studying up on evolution, i'd like you to keep the flood in mind. remember, i've called that the most impossible story in the bible. i believe you've conceded the "difficulty" in compressing all that egyptian archaeology/anthropology to be before 2200 bc, and are hoping for god's guidance as it's not resolved in your mind.

in that same vein, you could study up on the archaeology of jericho. there's that famous destruction layer "that could be joshua" which albright, garstang and kenyon etc... have argued about? i presume you know about this? they've "dated" the destruction layer variously from 1220ish to 1550 bc.

now the interesting thing as it relates to our discussion is how much archaeology there is BELOW "joshua's" layer. jericho goes back to ~9000 bc. turns out it's one of the oldest cities in the world. regular archaeologists think it's been more or less continuously (but not including 1550-900 bc...) inhabited since 6000 bc! there's no place to put the flood there either...

anyway, moving away from the post-flood age, whenever you're ready, i'd like to discuss the problems of the flood itelf: the logistics, which animals, extinctions, flood geology etc... whenever you're ready.

Some food for thought, Peter.

http://www.skepdic.com/carlos.html

Note the people who continued to believe, even when the hoax was revealed.

PH: Evolutionary science has an agenda too. Its aim is to preserve evolutionary science as the only viable means of explaining life. It will not entertain anything supernatural, never mind that material or empirical beginnings can't account for the intangible, non-physical things in life, like the universality of logical thinking.”

Scientists realize that evolution is the best explanation of what we see when we study geology, biology, paleontology, embryology, and more. Science isn’t about pushing ideas on the populace. Most scientists would be happy if they never even had to talk to a science writer. They just want to do their research and have as little to do with the “great unwashed” as possible. They’re motivated by a need to know. They want their peers to know what they’ve discovered, because they respect their opinions, but they couldn’t care less about you and me. They’ve often been criticized for not getting enough of what they know into the public sphere.

The reason they don’t “entertain anything supernatural” is that no one has ever shown them evidence of any such thing. Certainly not in a way that is subject to testing, or is falsifiable. Where testable claims have been made (e.g., Uri Geller) they have been tested - and falsified. Google James Randi.

Again, logic is just a higher brain function. This is eminently provable by studying damaged brains.

PH: ”Real science is not evolutionary science.”

Of course it is – as is the reverse. Evolution was discovered by application of the scientific method, just as was every other branch of science.

PH:”The shift from thinking young earth to thinking old earth largely came from the Enlightenment and 'Age of Reason.' Darwin's Origin of Species is what pushed the old earth paradigm over the brim to acceptability. Many of the household name scientists before Darwin believed in a young earth.”

It isn’t a philosophy, Peter. The age of the Earth was deduced from observation and the rest of the scientific method in the field of geology – a hard science. Darwin could not have developed his hypothesis if geologists hadn’t first given him the luxury of time.
James Hutton developed many modern tenets of geology and the idea of deep time before Darwin was even born. Steno was even earlier.

http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/earth/p_hutton.html

That earlier scientists believed in a literal bible is no great surprise. The farther back you go, the more ignorant people are. What’s surprising is that they managed to make scientific enquiry in the face of it. We should be glad they did.

Sure, that's fine, Peter. And I'm happy to play in your ballpark (the bible) until that time, if you'd like.

Hi Pam and Walter,

I'm going to take a little hiatus from our discussion on evolution. Pam has made me realize that my answers to her questions in this specific area need more meat in them. So I will research the issue for a couple of months before resuming discussion on this particular area. It is obvious to me that your particular orientation will not take my fluffy answers lightly. Since this is your area of specialization Pam I need to refresh and dig into the claims you are making so that I can expose them more convincingly.

Thank you both for making me think hard about these issues! I will continue to work on this, since I have saved your questions to my documents. Let's make a date for April, if you are interested?

Hi Pam,

PAM: "Here's how you tell which side to believe:
Creation "science" has an agenda. Its sole aim is to discredit actual science and preserve belief in the literal reading of an ancient text."

Evolutionary science has an agenda too. Its aim is to preserve evolutionary science as the only viable means of explaining life. It will not entertain anything supernatural, never mind that material or empirical beginnings can't account for the intangible, non-physical things in life, like the universality of logical thinking.

PAM: "Real science has no such agenda. It doesn't aim to destroy faith - it may, in fact do so, but that is an unintended side effect, not the goal."

Real science is not evolutionary science.

PAM: "Practically everything in your paragraph is dead wrong. Geology came first. Without the recognition of the great age of the Earth, Darwin’s ideas would not have worked. Geology and biology were (and are) independent fields of study, but evolution united them (and others) into one unified theory."

The shift from thinking young earth to thinking old earth largely came from the Enlightenment and 'Age of Reason.' Darwin's Origin of Species is what pushed the old earth paradigm over the brim to acceptability. Many of the household name scientists before Darwin believed in a young earth.

peter,
oh brother.... you really don't "get" that darwin statement?!?! here, i have to wonder what color is the sky in your world.

he says it SEEMS absurd, but that the difficulty in believing it can hardly be considered real.

One more thing...

Here's how you tell which side to believe:
Creation "science" has an agenda. Its sole aim is to discredit actual science and preserve belief in the literal reading of an ancient text.

Real science has no such agenda. It doesn't aim to destroy faith - it may, in fact do so, but that is an unintended side effect, not the goal.

Scientists do what they do because they want to know how and why things work. The answer "Goddidit," which stifles all further inquiry, isn't good enough for them. They are insatiably curious.

Wherever the evidence leads, they follow.

When you look things up online, and you come to an actual science site you won't find any references to God, the bible, or religion at all. But at ID sites, you'll find plenty of attacks on mainstream science. Agenda.

cont'd

PH: ”In approximately two hundred years you have these ideas permeate and take hold of every science known to man. Only in the last fifty and last fifteen or so for ID has the theory again come into question on a level that serious scientists from all walks of science are again daring to question that these theories, all strung together, can possibly be true. And all this in the wake of fierce opposition. Everything is at stake, our thinking for the last two hundred or so years, so anyone who dares to question and propose contrary evidence is scorned, stifled, mocked, bad mouthed, and especially in the scientific community.”

Practically everything in your paragraph is dead wrong. Geology came first. Without the recognition of the great age of the Earth, Darwin’s ideas would not have worked. Geology and biology were (and are) independent fields of study, but evolution united them (and others) into one unified theory.

The reason that there is “fierce opposition” and that ID propositions are “scorned,” etc., is not that anyone is trying to protect some flimsy theory from exposure as bad science, but that creation “science” is not science at all. Its proponents have proposed no testable hypotheses, nor have they done any of the actual research. They just take the work of real scientists and try to find some way to either twist it to fit with the bible, or, failing that, to blow holes in it.

Suppose that you were an engineer, Peter, and you’d designed a bridge. Now suppose that someone else came along, someone with no engineering qualifications, and said that he didn’t “believe” in your design or your calculations, and he wanted to build it another way. You know that his way will result in an inferior and unsafe structure. Would you “scorn” his plans?

You’re being lied to by evangelical leaders who say that real scientists are now questioning the validity of evolution. They have a vested interest in keeping you believing – you (and those like you) are their sole source of income. It just isn’t true. everything that we’ve learned since Darwin has served to confirm and reconfirm his idea of natural selection. It’s so strong at this point that it’s difficult to imagine what could possibly overturn it. Remember those Steves.

More of Peter on Darwin…
PH: And his reason, yes, his reason that wants to look at life from those suppositions. He is trying to formulate a world view that does not include his Maker.”

Nonsense, Peter. The man had planned to become a vicar. His wife was very religious, and he was very much afraid of upsetting or even alienating her. However, he couldn’t help seeing what he saw. And he couldn’t help connecting what he saw as obvious dots. He may have lost his own faith in the process, but we don’t know to what degree, and in any case, that certainly was not his aim.

PH: ”Yes, you can piece together a picture of how things came about, but to take things that appear similar and think that they not only share the same environment, but also the same common ancestry, now that is reading between the lines, especially when all these common ancestors of the eye cannot be shown evolving through the fossil record.”

They don’t share the same environment Peter. Unless you’re using that so broadly that we’re talking about a planet that’s lit by a star. Because that’s the commonality, and it’s the reason that nearly every life form above, say, worms, has some form of light detector.

The fossil record doesn’t preserve eyes (as soft tissue) very well – that’s why we look for similar forms (and find them in abundance) among extant animals. Do you know about the planarium? He’s a flat worm with eyespots (cute – he looks cross-eyed) that are slightly cupped. Are we descended directly from planaria? No, but likely something similar. All life has a common ancestor if you go back far enough. You are related to your African violet.

PH: “When Darwin goes to the Galapagos Islands, sees all this adaption, sees a finch with a different type of beak and then formulates change from other species instead of adaption within kind, that is reading an interpretation into what is.”

No, Peter. He knew it was an “adaptation within kind,” but that’s how evolution works. Small changes become larger, and other changes pile on. Macroevolution is just microevolution writ large.

PH:”When he has the added influence of Lyell's Principles of Geology as a reading companion on his voyage, his grandfather, Huxley, and people like Spencer who were developing the same kind of thoughts, plus the Enlightenment's inquiry into man as the measure of all things, the climate was right for the taking.”

Perhaps so. We don’t learn in a vacuum. Reading the works of others gives us ideas that we then run with. But I don’t think Spencer or Huxley influenced him – rather the other way around. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer
Malthus did, though.

Walter isn't "reading between the lines," Peter, he's reading what Darwin actually wrote.

The Victorian English may be a little difficult, but to paraphrse, he's saying that at first glance it may seem impossible, but when analyzed, it's actually perfectly understandable.

He isn't saying that every example of eye in contemporary animals is directly ancestral to ours - not at all. He's saying that the existance of these simpler forms of the eye show how the more complex one was able to come about, and is probably exactly how it did.

And don't read too much into my use of the word "probably" above. That's a sort of legal requirement - like reciting the side effects of medicine on the TV ads. No one was there to see every step of it, so the word has to be there, but eye evolution is quite clearly understood.

Eyes are so useful to Earth animals, that they've been evolved more than once independently. Insect eyes are nothing like ours, but are better in some ways.

Cephalopods (e.g., octopus, squid) evolved the same sort of camera eye that we have, only more efficient. Ours is upside down and backward compared to theirs. They don't have nerve fibers on top of the retina, with a blind spot where the fibers pass through, as do we vertebrates.

I cited the eagle as the highest form of the vertebrate eye because he has lots more visual acuity than we do, and he sees several more colors than us. Not to mention that he can fly. Why did God cheat us?

Walter, good to see you're back. Pam, please forgive me, I have been busy on the John Mark forum with some of the comments there the past two days. Your posts require so much more thought, so I continue to think about them.

Since you are reading between the lines Walter, here is my take:

"...could have been formed by natural selection, SEEMS, I freely confess, ABSURD IN THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE DEGREE. YET REASON TELLS ME..."

So his reason is going with the absurdity of such thoughts that Natural Selection could have created an eye. Did you get that - absurdity in the highest possible degree. I mean, here he is looking at life through a new paradigm, one that is just developing.

And his reason, yes, his reason that wants to look at life from those suppositions. He is trying to formulate a world view that does not include his Maker. So, of course the absurdity of such an idea of an eye evolving through Natural Selection is going to look reasonable after he dismisses the absurdity of such a notion that it could, and interprets and makes up the facts to fit this highly absurd premise by reading into the evidence.

Yes, you can piece together a picture of how things came about, but to take things that appear similar and think that they not only share the same environment, but also the same common ancestry, now that is reading between the lines, especially when all these common ancestors of the eye cannot be shown evolving through the fossil record.

When Darwin goes to the Galapagos Islands, sees all this adaption, sees a finch with a different type of beak and then formulates change from other species instead of adaption within kind, that is reading an interpretation into what is.

When he has the added influence of Lyell's Principles of Geology as a reading companion on his voyage, his grandfather, Huxley, and people like Spencer who were developing the same kind of thoughts, plus the Enlightenment's inquiry into man as the measure of all things, the climate was right for the taking.

In approximately two hundred years you have these ideas permeate and take hold of every science known to man. Only in the last fifty and last fifteen or so for ID has the theory again come into question on a level that serious scientists from all walks of science are again daring to question that these theories, all strung together, can possibly be true. And all this in the wake of fierce opposition. Everything is at stake, our thinking for the last two hundred or so years, so anyone who dares to question and propose contrary evidence is scorned, stifled, mocked, bad mouthed, and especially in the scientific community.

peter,
i said,
"if darwin was wrong about something, scientists are glad to throw whatever he said out."

the reason i say "glad" is because when something is proven wrong it is a GOOD thing. that means our state of knowledge has been IMPROVED. this is how the "ever-changing" scientific view comes closer and closer to "truth".

Hi Peter,
Walter has the Darwin quote exactly right. He also wrote this: "if darwin was wrong about something, scientists are glad to throw whatever he said out."

Which ties in perfectly with what I got on to post about.

I wrote below that fish probably developed lungs from their air bladders, but that's not correct. Darwin thought this likely, and so did biologists for more than 100 years afterwards. Cladistics, however, has recently shown that it's the other way 'round.

I’ve just learned of this from the book I'm currently reading: At the Water's Edge, by Carl Zimmer. It's about how life emerged from the sea, and how some of it later returned – quite interesting.

Fish blood circulation goes from heart to gills, where it is oxygenated, then to the rest of the body, and back to the heart. The heart gets whatever oxygen is left. It is therefore possible to kill a fish by making it swim as hard and fast as possible for a long enough time. The muscles use more and more oxygen, and the heart is starved.

Reptiles and amphibians improved on this 2-chambered fish heart by evolving a third chamber, but oxygenated and depleted blood was still mixed. Mammals and birds went the final step, and developed the 4-chambered heart so that circulation to the lungs and that to the body are separate (and the heart gets first dibs on the oxygen).

But back to fish – somewhere along the way, some fish evolved well-vasculated cheek pouches that they could fill with air at the surface. This supplemented the gills, and made them able to swim longer at high rates of speed. They were then more efficient predators, and also able to escape enemies.

This worked well until the air wars began. When pterodactyls and, later, birds began raiding from above, coming to the surface for air became much less attractive. The cheek pouches became true lungs in the lobe-finned lungfishes (the fish living in the shallows – remember that the high-set eyes could spot airborne predators), but in the ray-finned fishes (two different lines of them) they became swim bladders.

One of the lobe-finned fishes, the coelacanth, stopped living in the shallows, and went back to deep water, although he still walks along the bottom with his bony fins, and scratches in the sediment for prey. Where he once had a lung, there is now a fat-filled chamber used for buoyancy.

peter,
ah, yes....the darwin "evolution is absurd" misquote....

first of all, IT DOESN'T MATTER if darwin thought his theory was crazy: scientists are not "darwinists" - they don't worship darwing the way religionists revere their heroes. if darwin was wrong about something, scientists are glad to throw whatever he said out. (turns out he wasn't wrong about much...)

i give you credit for posting the entire darwin quote... most obfuscationist/denialists stop after "absurd in the highest degree".

and though you posted the rest, you must not have read (or comprehended) it. i will bold the parts that illustrate that darwin IS NOT saying what you think/imply he's saying.

"Organs of extreme perfection and complication. To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, SEEMS, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, an be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, CAN HARDLY BE CONSIDERED REAL. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound."

so, you're trying to imply darwin thought evolution was "absurd to the highest degree" - but that's NOT what he's saying.

after saying "absurd", he says "yet, if..." and lays out numerous "ifs", which he says are "certainly the case", and so says the "difficulties" in believing evolution happened "CAN HARDLY BE CONSIDERED REAL."

Hi Pam,

I'll answer your posts when I get some spare time, hopefully later this weekend, starting with the earliest. Obviously we are not going to agree. So let's start with the eye. Here is what Darwin had to say about it in the chapter, Difficulties with the Theory,

"Organs of extreme perfection and complication. To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound."

So Darwin had to fit the evolution of the eye into his framework, even with the difficulties that made him say its evolution seemed absurd to the highest degree. I'll have to leave that for more time however.

I do have to comment on a bit of the material from one of your links, Peter:

“During Noah’s Flood much of the water came from inside the earth. Genesis 7:11 records that the fountains of the deep broke open. If the earth opened, this would probably have involved much volcanic activity as well. Even today up to 90% of what comes out of volcanoes is water. Furthermore, in the last two decades many springs have been discovered issuing forth prodigious amounts of hot (350°C) salty water from deep-seated cracks and vents in volcanic rift zones on the ocean floor.29 Such a global upheaval as Noah’s Flood would have been catastrophic, for all the mountains on the earth’s surface were covered with water (Genesis 7:18–23) and the earth’s crust was broken up by earthquakes and volcanoes. The erosion and debris produced would have been phenomenal.
This unique catastrophe would have devastated the entire forest and vegetation cover of the earth’s surface. Some debris would been buried immediately by explosive volcanic blasts, whereas other debris would have been carried off by the rising waters as huge floating log rafts, only to be buried later as the logs became waterlogged and sank, or further surges of volcanic ash and/or sediment-laden water buried them. Thus whole coal measure sequences with multiple seams would have been deposited rapidly. The heat flow produced by the catastrophic volcanism, crustal upheavals (tectonism), rapid deep burial, circulating hot waters (hydrothermal activity) and rising granitic magmas carrying radioactive elements…”

Wow. The bible just talks about rain and flood. All of the crust of Earth is broken up and the water is hot? Where in the bible does it say this? And how could one little wooden boat possibly survive in this maelstrom? And as soon as the waters receded there were olive trees, with leaves? And vegetation to feed all the herbivores coming off the ark? (We won’t even ask what the carnivores ate.)

You should probably know, Peter, that the hot water that is ejected from Old Faithful, and from the hydrothermal vents on the sea bottom, is coming from lake or sea water that is seeping down through fissures caused by magma upheaval, being heated by the magma, and regurgitated as hot water and steam. It’s not part of some vast underground water source.

Hi, Pam and Peter,

Coal does have a surprising variance, and is graded according to hardness, carbon content, heat content (BTUs produced when burned), moisture content, volatiles (microscopic drops of hydrocarbons), and other stuff in it like sulfur, etc. Whatever layers of stone above it (often shale) have no effect on this.

LAST

The forest on top of the coal seam that I linked to wasn’t denuded of leaves – leaves were fossilized, too – that was what was in the picture. And there were enormous soft plants fossilized. This wasn’t a collapsing volcano.

PH: ”Your the expert, so you tell me, but could not different coal formations - i.e. young and old - depend on any number of factors, like the type of vegetation and animal matter involved, the amount of pressure bearing down on the vegetation basin, temperatures, the type of matter covering the formation, etc?”

Well, hardly a coal expert, but no. Vegetation type wouldn’t be a factor – it was a variety of swamp plants, and as the climate was equatorial at the time, the same plants likely grew everywhere, anyway. Pressure and temperature, yes, directly related to depth of burial and age. What it’s covered with is immaterial.

THREE

PH: (Two links to articles on coal formation)

These are so slanted, Peter. The first from a book called “Noah’s Flood,” the second from creation.com. Gee whiz, wonder if they have an agenda? Here’s a line from the first one:
“...there is no actual evidence that peat is now being transformed into coal anywhere in the world...”

Well, duh. Coal forms when the peat is deeply buried and under great pressure from the sediments above. How would one observe that? We do find both peat bogs (on the surface) and buried lignite (the youngest coal). What else would you expect?

PH: ”That would explain possible one or two layers of fossilization in the geologic column, but not all. It doesn't explain how millions of the other fossils formed? It doesn't explain how an estimated 95% of fossils are marine fossils and marine fossils are found on top of mountain ranges. It doesn't explain how in these coal formations we have vertical trees through various layers. And it doesn't explain the other problems associated with fossils and the theory of evolution.”

I never said it explained the entire geologic column, Peter. I was adding it to a list of other ways that fossils form that I had given you in an earlier post about Karroo.

For most of Earth’s history, all life was marine, so of course they are the greater part of the fossil record. But Karroo is a higher layer, and has no marine fossils.

I already told you how marine fossils end up on top of mountains – mountains are pushed up by the collision of tectonic plates, exposing layers long buried (remember those tilted layers in the road cuts through mountains?). Note that the fossils atop mountains don’t represent marine animals currently extant.

What other problems?

All that Mt. St. Helens proves is that disasters happen. Yes, things can be washed away suddenly by floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions. It happens every year. Trees can be fully buried upright. So? Small coal fields might be from rapidly buried vegetation, but no volcano was sufficient to account for the major coalfields in the US. Nor would a world-wide flood explain them. Why the concentrations and different ages?
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1996/of96-092/Comp/main.gif

TWO

And didn’t you tell me once that no new information could be added, only lost? So, even if the ark dogs were wolf gray (the most dominant color), how did they manage to produce black, black and tan, sable, red, yellow, blue, brindle, black-masked fawn, etc., etc., etc., when there are only two possible alleles at any locus in any given dog?

PH: ”A dog is still a dog as is a human a human. They are still their own kinds - human and canine. Macro evolution is the belief that a simple unrelated organism can evolve into a complex different organism over long periods of time. As Duane Gish would say, ‘Molecules to man, particles to people.’”

But look what we’ve done with dogs – compare the afore-mentioned Peke to a Great Dane. Or the Chihuahua to a mastiff. Obviously, DNA is very malleable. Look what computers do with just 1s and 0s. It’s the same thing. Now give it more time. Lots more time.

And why are you so wedded to this time frame? The bible never comes out and says what happened when, or how much time passed between. You’re following Bishop Ussher and his counting by the genealogies; yet when we were discussing the Jesus genealogies through Joseph, you said that some generations might have been left out. Well, yeah! They certainly might have. Especially with people passing down oral traditions. How long do you think memories are, anyway?

PH: ”No, each has the ability given it by its Maker, and that is the ability to adapt to its environment, but not become 'anything' over time, just to stay in the "kind" of design it was purposed for with degrees of variation built into its kind so that it can live in different environments.”

But Peter, when you talk about adaptation and the “degrees of variation,” don’t you realize that you’re talking about DNA? Every living thing on Earth - plant, fungus, amoeba, virus, worm, fish, bird, insect – all of it is coded by those same little nucleobases – A,C,G, & T. They can make elephants or redwoods – praying mantises or jellyfish. And relationships derived from the study of cladistics exactly match the amount of like DNA that we share with any other given living thing. Changing the code, which we know for a fact happens, changes the result.

When you look at this picture of mudskippers, isn’t it obvious to you that they’re somewhere between fish and frog? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GambianMudskippers.jpg

PH: ”No, we are still humans, as we were created in the beginning. We have the genetic ability programmed into us by our Creator to adapt, but not change or evolve into something that is outside our kind.”

As long as we’re using those four little bases to program what we are, anything is possible.

ME: In just about 4,000 years, we’ve gone from a human “kind,” to all the races of man…

PH: ”Still human.”

You miss my point, Peter. In such a short time, I would find it amazing that there was any human variation, let alone as much as there is. I don’t find it at all surprising that we’re all still human in only 4,000 years. And actually less, because by the year one CE, all the races and variations were already known – so all the changes must have happened in only half that time. Laughable.

And in the same short time, ark-to-Jesus, we’ve gone from the “dog kind” to three species of hyenas, 4 species of jackals, 23 wolf species, 25 species of foxes, 19 species of coyotes, cape hunting dogs, dholes, bush dogs, raccoon dogs, maned wolves, dingoes, greyhounds, salukis, mastiffs, chow-chows, Pekingese, and basenjis (I’m naming only the breeds that I know for sure go back that far).

Compare a maned wolf (google it) to a Pekingese – a mastiff to a fennec. Awful lot of variation there in just, what, 2500 years? Not to mention that they’re in all sorts of isolated parts of the globe.

My goodness, Peter, there must have been at least one puppy in every litter that looked completely different from its parents – and that set off long-distance walking (and swimming) as soon as it could.

"great posts, pam. i'm reading... i'll be commenting soon. still not smoking... i guess that's the main thing..."

Thanks, Walter. Glad to see you're still with us. And yes, not smoking is definitely the main thing.

peter:
"Man is unique in that he has some of the qualities of his Maker - the ability to reason, love, feel, think in abstract terms, etc. He functions on a higher level by these abilities than anything else in the created realm with the possibly exceptions of angelic beings that God created."

pam:
"Horse puckey, Peter. Other animals can reason, love, feel (emotion, I assume you mean), and some can even think abstractly to a degree."

yeah, peter, this is weird how you think "logic" or any of these "qualities of his [imaginary] Maker" make man unique, in a qualitative (as opposed to merely quantitative) way.

we used to think there were all kinds of things that make humans "unique". as we've learned more about other animals these have fallen by the wayside. we used to say it was language or tools or "altruistic" behavior or whatever, but we've found all these things in other animals. we just have MORE brains, language, etc... what really does "set us apart" is our grotesquely huge brains.

right, pam? can you think of any anatomical feature unique to humans?

other animals - especially on the mammal branch of the tree - DO reason and love and so on. surely you've had a pet and agree that pets are conscious.

i suppose one thing that, as far as we know, does distinguish us from other animals is that we are the only ones to have the capacity to ponder how we got here, and the only ones to have invented gods (in our image!), then science, to explain it.

great posts, pam. i'm reading... i'll be commenting soon. still not smoking... i guess that's the main thing...

THREE

PH: As humans it is the difference between something organic and inorganic, something that needs oxygen, that is capable of dying, thanks to the Fall.”

Nope. There are plenty of organic things that aren’t alive. They just have to contain carbon. And anaerobic bacteria (which hail from a time before photosynthesizing bacteria turned Earth’s atmosphere to one of oxygen with their waste products) not only don’t need oxygen, it is toxic to them. Defining life as that which is capable of death is a bit circular, no? But then that kind of faulty reasoning appeals to you.

If it makes you feel any better, life is very difficult to define. Dictionaries don’t do much better than you. But most biologists would agree with my definition, I think – something that can replicate itself, but not so perfectly that evolution can’t work on it.

PH: ”Man is unique in that he has some of the qualities of his Maker - the ability to reason, love, feel, think in abstract terms, etc. He functions on a higher level by these abilities than anything else in the created realm with the possibly exceptions of angelic beings that God created.”

Horse puckey, Peter. Other animals can reason, love, feel (emotion, I assume you mean), and some can even think abstractly to a degree. And when was the last time you met an “angelic being”?

Me (about life): A single strand of DNA (or RNA) qualifies. It can become a double strand by attracting its opposite amino acids, and then those strands can unwind, and each become double again the same way.

PH: ”You say, ‘it can’ which means that it might not, therefore it is a chance, random thing as to whether it does.

No, Peter. I mean it is able to. It’s happening millions of times a day in your own body. Every time a cell divides, this occurs. Can it be stopped? Sure, someone might kill you – then it would stop. But it is not by simple random chance. Far from it.

ME: Base pairs can be lost, or changed for others, providing the variation required to evolve. Simple as that. Run the clock long enough, and that can become anything.

PH:Rubbish. There is your magic word again: T-I-M-E.

Sorry you don’t like it, but that’s simply the case. Nothing magic about it. Suppose your wife tells you that someone’s coming to dinner in half an hour, and she wants you bake a cake. Even if you have an easy mix, you’re going to have trouble doing it. But if you have two day’s notice, you can make the most elaborate cake possible. Time counts.

More Tomorrow

TWO (in this series)

Or picture a bunch of normal agouti-brown rabbits nibbling in a field. To the eyes of a fox (red/green colorblind) they blend in with the grasses and are well-camouflaged. But once in a while, to the fox’s delight, a white rabbit is born (normal genetic variation). The white rabbit stands out like the proverbial sore thumb, and he’s easy pickings. Now an ice age is coming, and the climate is changing. Soon the ground is covered with snow most of the year…and then all year long. Now those brown rabbits are easy to spot, but the white ones blend right in. The white ones now live longer, and reproduce more than their brown brethren. After a few years, almost all of the rabbits will be white.

This is how natural selection works, and it’s most assuredly not random.

PH: ”How does something impersonal and non-thinking 'work' with anything? …random blind, indifferent beginnings! And you are telling me that evolution is a provable fact without knowing how it could have possibly started. You need to answer the more basic questions before you arrive at your conclusion. Until that happens how can you discount God?”

As explained above. And yes, evolution is a provable fact. We see it in action all the time. I don’t actually have to know how life started to know that it evolved once it was here. You can believe that God started it, if you want. But I do know how it could have possibly started. There are a number of possible scenarios (see that first link on the “abiogenesis” search page). It’s just a matter of time and research until we figure out which one it was.

Me: But we haven’t agreed on what, exactly, life is, have we? What do you think it is? Is a virus alive?

PH: ”It depends in what relationship you are using the word. It has different meanings for different things.

Oh, nonsense, Peter. It does not. If you can’t define it, it’s pretty hard to talk about its origins, isn’t it?

PH: ”Your beginnings start with impersonal non-information and proceed during the magical number of years to highly complex highly intelligent beings with an amazing capability of using, seeing and storing information for their own good. How can such a non-intelligent process develop such an organism in the first place?”

First, DNA is hardly “non-information.” It’s code – just like the code that makes you computer work. This is the very definition of information, seems to me.
The number of years isn’t magical at all, but it is relevant. The more time that natural selection has to work, the more it can do. This shouldn’t be revolutionary information.

PH: ”How did the organism acquire the information to gradually evolve? It just happened by blind indifferent chance. The INFORMATION just came about by trial and error over millions upon millions of years. It just ‘happened’ to direct the information to perform and conform in a certain manner by chance.”

No, Peter. Once again, you fail to understand how natural selection works. Variation happens. It happens randomly. It happens all the time. Two parents have children who don’t all look alike. Some comes from varying alleles at genetic loci, some from genetic mutations, some from variation in the timing and duration of embryonic processes, some from the crossing over that occurs when chromosomes divide during mitosis. These varying siblings will have differential rates of reproduction.

Let’s say you have a family of five daughters. One is a real looker, but the other four are ugly as mud fences. No one wants the ugly daughters, and they never marry, and never have children. The pretty one marries and has a large family. Which genes got passed on? What is the next generation more likely to look like?

That’s a crude example, but that is how natural selection works. Let’s go back to Australopithecus. Let’s say there’s a group of them scavenging meat from animal kills on the African plains. One is a bit smarter than the others – just natural variation. He figures out that he can smash bones with a rock to get at the marrow, but no one else knows how. Because of his extra nutrition, he is more healthy and robust than his tribe mates. He shares his marrow with his mate, and with his children. They’re healthy enough to reproduce at a higher rate. His children are smarter, and they learn the trick from him. Soon, the tribe consists of a much larger proportion of his descendants, then those of any of his contemporaries. In time they all carry his genes.

THREE

The Nova special that I recommended had a bit about the kind of mutation that results from defective replication of DNA.

A geneticist who had two brothers with muscular dystrophy began looking for answers in the genes that code for various things to do with muscles. For the human sample, he used his own DNA (handiest) and began comparing it to other animals. Eventually, he came across a shocking difference – in his own DNA, there was a gene sequence that was missing two letters – two base rungs in the ladder. He knew that that was a large enough difference to have major effects.

He quickly collected DNA samples from everyone in his lab and compared them – every human he tested was missing the same two letters.

Further research eventually determined that this gene had to do with the size and strength of the muscle that closes the lower jaw – the muscle that gives you your bite power.

We already knew that our bite was far weaker than that of most mammals, pound for pound. It’s way weaker than that of our nearest relatives, chimps and gorillas. And this led to an interesting insight. The jaw muscle runs beneath the cheekbone and attaches to the back of the skull, and just below the ear (check out these muscles in a pit bull sometime – bone-crushing power). Because of these attachments, the animals with powerful jaws have to close the sutures in their skulls at an earlier age, in order to withstand the pull, and this limits brain growth.

So, what might have been a detrimental mutation that kept us from breaking bones open for their nutritious marrow, turned out to be the factor that allowed us to grow the brain that enabled us to make tools for the same (and other) purpose(s). Therefore, the “defective” humans were the ones that succeeded, and left their “normal” compatriots in the evolutionary dust.

TWO

Once we had sequenced the genomes of several animals, we were able to do comparative genomics. This turned up some interesting, and surprising, results.

Turns out that some of the junk DNA actually is artifactal – genes that have accumulated errors over the animal’s evolutionary history, to the point that they have become non-functional (but they give us a fascinating look into our history, and the things we once shared with other animals), and others turned out to be highly conserved sequences, found in animals stretching back to some of our very earliest ancestors. Why? Because they control the protein-coding genes in subtle and wonderful ways. They’re the control genes that turn the other genes on and off, and determine the timing and duration of their effects. They mostly work during embryonic growth.

So, for instance, if the genes that make hind legs are turned on for a relatively long period, and those for the arms for a short period, you get a kangaroo, or a T-rex, or an ostrich. A bit less of that dichotomy gives you a rabbit. If it’s the other way around, you get a gibbon, or an orangutan. Still more, and you get whales. Equal growth gives you horses, dogs, deer. (Please understand that I’m not speaking literally here, but only about relative fore-to-hind limb proportions.)

The same principle applies to relative proportions of any body trait you care to name – long muzzles to flat faces, long or dense hair coats to nearly bald, long slender bodies to short squat ones, nails to claws to hooves…

This was exciting stuff. We had known about gene mutations, but we also knew that most of those were detrimental, and the small proportion that were beneficial didn’t seem rapid enough to account for all the evolution that had taken place, even given 3.5 billion years. This filled in the missing pieces.

Peter, I’m going to digress from the blow-by-blow for a bit to talk about DNA and the basics that allow evolution. I hope this won’t turn into a book, but it may take a few posts, I also hope you won’t find it condescending. I never know how much of this people already know; but I know some very smart and otherwise well-educated people who don’t know squat about it – it all depends on where your interests lie.

I’m sure you know about the double-helix structure of DNA – the spines are made of sugars and phosphates, with nucleobases attached to the sugars in two long anti-parallel polymers. The bases are C (cytosine), G (guanine), A (adenine), and T (thymine). These bases (the “rungs” on the twisted “ladder”) attach to each other with hydrogen bonds, always A to T and C to G. Hydrogen bonds are not covalent (no electrons are shared between atoms), so they can be separated and reattached fairly easily. When the DNA is “unzipped,” each strand can then duplicate the other. Most of the time this is exact, but sometimes something goes wrong - but I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the nucleus of a cell, DNA is organized into chromosomes (so called because they stain well). Humans have 46 chromosomes (23 pairs) comprising approximately 3 billion pairs of nucleobases. A gene is a certain sequence of these bases, some long, some short. At the ends of the gene sequences, there is a “stop” sequence – sort of like in a telegram (remember those?). Genes code for the synthesis of proteins and enzymes. There are also long stretches of DNA that don’t code for proteins. This used to be called “junk” DNA, because no one knew why it was there – they thought it was probably an evolutionary artifact.

Hi, Pam,

"“Certainity” is religion’s stock in trade..."

To some, yes, but it is wrong. Those benighted people who claim this, to profess to know the mind of God, are only fooling themselves. They do not fool us, nor do they fool God. We see through a glass darkly. Faith is not a destination, it is a journey, it is lifelong, and it is not easy. We cannot comprehend the magnitude of it, any more than we can truly comprehend the grandeur of the observable universe. Faith is, in the core meaning of the Arabic 'jihad', an internal struggle - just how do I even begin to understand my relation with the Creator, and what do I do about it?

Just where I stand. Sadly, Peter does not understand that the more we know, the more we don't know. And in the face of the true wonder of Creation as even our poor intellects can comprehend it - the mythos of Genesis are reduced to a pathetic side show.

FOUR

PH: ”Why would a fish develop legs in place of fins? In the process it would be utterly useless, not able to swim as effectively in water and unable to survive effectively on land until its legs were fully formed. These parts needed to be working in the first place in order for the fish or organism to win the battle for survival. What would purpose a fish towards walking on land? Nothing but blind, random chance unless you can show how impersonal matter has intent?”

Matter doesn’t need intent. The first fish to develop stiff fins supported by bones, were fish that avoided being the lunch of some pretty fearsome sea critters by living in the shallows, where the big guys couldn’t go. Even the earliest step in the direction of legs was useful – they pushed themselves along the sandy bottom, and dug in it for prey. Their eyes moved upwards on their heads, so they could poke them above water (pushing up with those boney fins) to look around. The next step was to convert the swim bladder (which they really no longer needed) into a lung. Such fish still live today. Google “mudskipper,” or “lungfish.”

The next step is short forays onto land to get prey that stay just away from the water’s edge – insects, and aquatic arthropods. Success reproduces and passes on the genes that coded for its successful traits. Simple, really.

More tomorrow.

PH: ”The question is why would an eye gradually evolve? What would make an organism without an eye feel the need for an eye in the first place? What would make it gather the information needed in the first place to form an eye when it didn’t know what an eye looked like or the complexity of an eye to function and perform its task? No, information was arranged in a specific order for an eye to form – by design, not chance, not trial and error. How does an impersonal, non-thinking process arrange anything and KEEP it uniform and specific?”

Oh, Peter, Peter. I could cry for your ignorance. There are so many books that are filled with full explanations of all the questions you ask, but you won’t read them. Instead, you expect me to explain it all in a few pithy sentences. It wouldn’t turn you to stone, you know. If your faith is strong, it wouldn’t even shake it. But it would make you a better debater.

No organism “felt the need” for an eye, nor “gathered the information” to make one. No animal needed to know what an eye looked like, nor how it functioned. Animals don’t “will” traits into being – that’s God’s little magic trick.

The Earth is bathed in light from the Sun half of every day. Plainly, anything that could perceive this would have a clear advantage over something that couldn’t. Even some single-celled animals, and nearly all plants, have a way to detect sunlight, and to respond to it. All that’s needed for eye evolution to begin (and here comes the random part), is for a nerve cell at the surface of the animal to respond (i.e., fire its chemical message to the brain) in response to light. Then evolution takes over. This animal, being more successful, gets more food, leaves more offspring (many of which will also have light-detecting cells), and we’re off to the races. One cell becomes two, protective clear cells grow over the nerve endings, eventually the eyespot becomes a pit, allowing some focusing ability… a retina develops… a lens… rods and cones…

It’s all an arms race – animals competing with each other, and with their prey. The best pass on their genes in greater abundance. Since there are extant animals with every possible degree of “eye,” from a few simple light-detecting cells to the fully developed camera eye of the eagle – and everything in between, eye evolution is no mystery. Some that have no more use for them (blind cave fish) have gone the other way and lost them. Why keep something that’s easily injured, when you don’t need it?

TWO
ME: I was being facetious, Peter. And you’re not keeping up with abiogenesis theory. Primordial soup is no longer the leading candidate. Also, you keep using the word “random.”

PH: “There you go, another change from the way in which Darwin looked at it. The great certainty of modern science.

As for abiogenesis,

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=abiogenesis&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA358CA232&ie=UTF-8&aq=9&oq=abiogenesis”

How many times do we have to tell you that science never claims ultimate certainty? It is an ongoing process of increasing knowledge and gradually refining theory. “Certainity” is religion’s stock in trade, not ours. Scientists would hate it if they thought they had the answers to absolutely everything – they’d have nothing to do.

And Darwin never said a word about “primordial soup,” nor did he speculate on the origin of life at all. Or were you referring to the word “random”? I have explained to you so many times that changes in DNA – the raw material that evolution works with, are random – but natural selection is not random at all. In fact, it’s the very antithesis of random. Darwin knew this, and said so.

As for your link – it takes me to Google search results for “abiogenesis.” What was your point? The first two hits are quite good, actually. The Wikipedia article is a nice encapsulation of the current research directions. The next, good answers to creationists. I didn’t keep going down.

PH: ”Yes, random. That is the word used by many evolutionists to describe the evolutionary process.”

Not by any who actually have a clue what they’re talking about.

ME: I wouldn’t find it “uncomfortable” to face God – just silly.

PH: “As an unsaved person you will find it more than just ‘uncomfortable’ if that is your final demise when you die.”

I was talking about the idea of it. Silly, to me. I believe that “God” is a mythical creature (yes, “creature” – created by the human imagination), so there is no fear.

PH: “First, what is its explanatory power into how life can come from non-life, the personal from impersonal matter? How does a mind form out of muck?”

First of all, a mind didn’t come directly from muck, so your whole premise is off. You do know that we are made of atoms of chemical elements and work by electro-chemical reactions, don’t you? Everything is made of these elements, so where is the mystery? What arose first, RNA, or something similar, might not be your idea of “life,” but all it takes to set evolution in motion is something that can reproduce itself, and that sometimes does so imperfectly. This is all that evolution requires – that, and time. The “mind” is just a function of the brain (if you don’t believe me, get your pre-frontal cortex removed and see how much “mind “ you have left).

PH: “Second, it is a belief, in that it is what you put your trust in. It is what you rely on to look at life by. The difference between our views of life and origins are that without God you cannot show me certainty, for without God what you BELIEVE could all change tomorrow. You construct your system of truth based on "you" as the highest authority, the final arbitrator. You filter everything on your ability to determine what is true. You choose the evidence that you will believe in the limited capacity that you have in which to understand it.”

No, it is not a “belief” in the sense that yours is. It is a conviction based on evidence. Lots of evidence. There is no faith involved – there doesn’t have to be. And we have discussed already your “unchanging” God. God who makes a world, then regrets it and destroys it. How is that not a change? God who makes many animals and then lets them go extinct. Guess he changed his mind. God who makes one covenant with people, then changes it and makes another. God who tells people to take slaves and tells them how to sell their own children into slavery (daughters only, of course) and then changes his mind and says slavery is wrong – oh, wait, he never did, did he?

"indeed pam... i envy farnaz and arminius - they could have a smoke right now... i've heard eventually the idea of smoking will repulse me, but...uh...not there yet..."

No, that took about a year for me - for some it takes longer. But well before then the craving will subside. Those two-minute attacks will come farther and farther apart, until they're gone. And you'll see benefits even before then.

"i can't even do a crossword puzzle or read a newspaper or ponder a floor plan without wanting to smoke...aaarrrggh..."

That's just habit - it can be broken. Substitute something. Eat M&Ms, or peppermints. Drink tea. You might gain a few pounds. You can deal with that later, when the cravings are gone.

Remember that you were going to do this anyway - it just seemed comfortably far in the future. Well, the future is now. It's no more difficult now than it would have been then, and you'll get more years of feeling better. Don't give in.

Well, damn, I go to bed early and miss all the fun.

Farnaz and Walter - even if I'm going to quit, you have my support. Be tough. It CAN be done.

Hi Pam,

PAM: “Addendum to post on fossil formation: Don't forget swamps and peat bogs.”

http://creationwiki.org/Rapid_coal_formation

http://creation.com/coal-volcanism-and-noahs-flood

That would explain possible one or two layers of fossilization in the geologic column, but not all. It doesn't explain how millions of the other fossils formed? It doesn't explain how an estimated 95% of fossils are marine fossils and marine fossils are found on top of mountain ranges. It doesn't explain how in these coal formations we have vertical trees through various layers. And it doesn't explain the other problems associated with fossils and the theory of evolution,

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA358CA232&q=coal+formations+and+fossils&start=10&sa=N

PAM: "I wasn't trying to write a comprehensive essay on coal, but just to show that A) swamps are one way that fossils are preserved, and B) that there are "young" coals and "old" coals in the same state - so it didn't all happen during the mythical flood."

Your the expert, so you tell me, but could not different coal formations - i.e. young and old - depend on any number of factors, like the type of vegetation and animal matter involved, the amount of pressure bearing down on the vegetation basin, temperatures, the type of matter covering the formation, etc?

Walter,

Hand in there. Don't smoke. I'm going to try to use you as inspiration. Whatever knows, I need it.

Really, Walter, this is a good, good thing.

Farnaz

"I posted to you on R. Brous's thread. I'm game for all texts if you are."

Farnaz, I an not interested. I don't know how many times I have to say it - I find both parts of the bible ridiculous and offensive. Thoroughly. I am not the least bit interested in defending either one. Give it a rest.
-----------------------------
Pam, try comprehension. I'm not interested in a "defense" of either text. How much clearer I can make that, I know not.

Once again, one cannot attack either testament as superstitious or nonsensical, while leaving the other to dwell in peace in fairy land.

That is the point.

Part 3, Pam,

PAM: "To me, life is just the ability to reproduce, and to vary enough for evolution to work. A single strand of DNA (or RNA) qualifies. It can become a double strand by attracting its opposite amino acids, and then those strands can unwind, and each become double again the same way."

You say, "it can" which means that it might not, therefore it is a chance, random thing as to whether it does.

PAM: "Base pairs can be lost, or changed for others, providing the variation required to evolve. Simple as that. Run the clock long enough, and that can become anything."

Rubbish. There is your magic word again: T-I-M-E.

No, each has the ability given it by its Maker, and that is the ability to adapt to its environment, but not become 'anything' over time, just to stay in the "kind" of design it was purposed for with degrees of variation built into its kind so that it can live in different environments.

PAM: "But, clearly, you believe in this, too – just on an enormously sped-up scale."

No, we are still humans, as we were created in the beginning. We have the genetic ability programmed into us by our Creator to adapt, but not change or evolve into something that is outside our kind.

PAM: " In just about 4,000 years, we’ve gone from a human “kind,” to all the races of man,"

Still human.

PAM: "and from a dog “kind” to all the wild and domestic variations of canids in the world, according to Peter. Evolution on steroids!

A dog is still a dog as is a human a human. They are still their own kinds - human and canine. Macro evolution is the belief that a simple unrelated organism can evolve into a complex different organism over long periods of time. As Duane Gish would say, "Molecules to man, particles to people."

Part 2 Pam,

Yes, random. That is the word used by many evolutionists to describe the evolutionary process. The question is why would an eye gradually evolve? What would make an organism without an eye feel the need for an eye in the first place? What would make it gather the information needed in the first place to form an eye when it didn’t know what an eye looked like or the complexity of an eye to function and perform its task? No, information was arranged in a specific order for an eye to form – by design, not chance, not trial and error. How does an impersonal, non-thinking process arrange anything and KEEP it uniform and specific?

Why would a fish develop legs in place of fins? In the process it would be utterly useless, not able to swim as effectively in water and unable to survive effectively on land until its legs were fully formed. These parts needed to be working in the first place in order for the fish or organism to win the battle for survival. What would purpose a fish towards walking on land? Nothing but blind, random chance unless you can show how impersonal matter has intent?

Your beginnings start with impersonal non-information and proceed during the magical number of years to highly complex highly intelligent beings with an amazing capability of using, seeing and storing information for their own good. How can such a non-intelligent process develop such an organism in the first place?

How did the organism acquire the information to gradually evolve? It just happened by blind indifferent chance. The INFORMATION just came about by trial and error over millions upon millions of years. It just "happened" to direct the information to perform and conform in a certain manner by chance.

PAM: "Evolution is not random at all. The variations and mutations that it works with are random, but that’s all. I suppose that the beginning of life was random."

How does something impersonal and non-thinking 'work' with anything?

Exactly, random blind, indifferent beginnings! And you are telling me that evolution is a provable fact without knowing how it could have possibly started. You need to answer the more basic questions before you arrive at your conclusion. Until that happens how can you discount God?

PAM: "But we haven’t agreed on what, exactly, life is, have we? What do you think it is? Is a virus alive?"

It depends in what relationship you are using the word. It has different meanings for different things. As humans it is the difference between something organic and inorganic, something that needs oxygen, that is capable of dying, thanks to the Fall. Man is unique in that he has some of the qualities of his Maker - the ability to reason, love, feel, think in abstract terms, etc. He functions on a higher level by these abilities than anything else in the created realm with the possibly exceptions of angelic beings that God created.

Hi Pam (January 6, 2010 6:10 PM ),

PAM: "I wouldn’t find it “uncomfortable” to face God – just silly."

As an unsaved person you will find it more than just "uncomfortable" if that is your final demise when you die.

PH: “The evidence is made to fit the belief. It has no explanatory power into how life can arise from none life, the personal from the impersonal, the consciousness from matter and the physical convocation of atoms colliding together.”

PAM: "No, Peter, the evidence led to the conclusions (I won’t use “belief,” because I don’t want you to conflate it with the sorts of belief that you hold – it’s not the same)."

First, what is its explanatory power into how life can come from non-life, the personal from impersonal matter? How does a mind form out of muck?

Second, it is a belief, in that it is what you put your trust in. It is what you rely on to look at life by. The difference between our views of life and origins are that without God you cannot show me certainty, for without God what you BELIEVE could all change tomorrow. You construct your system of truth based on "you" as the highest authority, the final arbitrator. You filter everything on your ability to determine what is true. You choose the evidence that you will believe in the limited capacity that you have in which to understand it.

PAM: "I was being facetious, Peter. And you’re not keeping up with abiogenesis theory. Primordial soup is no longer the leading candidate. Also, you keep using the word “random.”

There you go, another change from the way in which Darwin looked at it. The great certainty of modern science.

As for abiogenesis,

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=abiogenesis&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA358CA232&ie=UTF-8&aq=9&oq=abiogenesis

Hi Pam, Walter,

PAM: "Alas, I fear Walter is lost in a blue funk. I hope for his revival."

So do I.

Sorry to hear of your battle Walter. I hope you conquer this monkey! Your mind is not your own until you do, for something else masters over it.

Forgive me for the illustration, but it is like the problem of sin. You don't realize how much it controls you and know how much you are in bondage until you try not to do what it is that is controlling you.

Paul recognized the problem in Romans 7:7-25.

That is the enslavement that I was talking about when we were discussing the OT and slavery. The historical and physical slavery of the Hebrews and those they conquered taught a spiritual truth, a lesson of the real problem, our slavery to sin. Thankfully God has supplied the solution, the victory is in Christ!

Hi, all

Are we continuing our dialog here?

indeed pam... i envy farnaz and arminius - they could have a smoke right now... i've heard eventually the idea of smoking will repulse me, but...uh...not there yet...

i can't even do a crossword puzzle or read a newspaper or ponder a floor plan without wanting to smoke...aaarrrggh...

"Tomorrow late looks good for more on our continuing saga, but that is only tentative. Be prepared. (^8"

I'm ready, Peter - bring it on. Alas, I fear Walter is lost in a blue funk. I hope for his revival.

"I posted to you on R. Brous's thread. I'm game for all texts if you are."

Farnaz, I an not interested. I don't know how many times I have to say it - I find both parts of the bible ridiculous and offensive. Thoroughly. I am not the least bit interested in defending either one. Give it a rest.

Hi Peter,

I've been away from my computer, but I think we're on R. Brous's thread. At any rate, I see posts there from Schaum, Pamsm, and the aging but still untalented Moderate (in disguise).

Moderate,

You can join us. I don't think anyone would mind.

Hi Farnaz,

I get confused on many of these threads as to who is saying what. Don't let it bother you! I'd be in a real state if I let everything I've said in challenging someone's point of view bother me. I would not be able to stand for the truth of the gospel if that was the case. As soon as you say Jesus is the only way to God you meet the wrath of scorn.

Thus Spake On Faith's most prolific sock farmer, just for the LOLZ:

"And then there was her sock puppet, ... Have you no moral sense?"

OMGZORS!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Arminius,

Thanks, but I fear I'm a hopeless case. I have to smoke out the window or outside when family are here. When they're not I smoke inside with the windows open, but they know in a split second. It's upsetting my girl, especially, since she fears for me. I've got to do something.

PAM,

I posted to you on R. Brous's thread. I'm game for all texts if you are.

Peter,

YOU did not imply that R. Brous was an atheist. You did not comment on her children. Someone else did.

But let's forget about it, and move on.

Thanks, anyway, for your replies!

Farnaz,

I have a debt to pay to you, for your offer on the smoking thing.

Thank you for your offer. I still support you on this.

Peter Huff,

And you, too, be prepared! My reply to you might be a mighty volume, delivered in appropriate amounts, in order not to bore our co-conspirators here.

We have a struggle here, my friend. But it is a very benign one.

Hi Pam and Walter,

Tomorrow late looks good for more on our continuing saga, but that is only tentative. Be prepared. (^8

Ah, alas, the philosophies of tobacco!

The cigarette - perhaps the epitome of the horrendous American urge for the instant gratification, the perfect addictive silver bullet of satisfaction. Damn handy when one is committed to smoking in a cold garage.

A pipe, filled with fragrant tobacco, burning slowing, filling the air with a seductive perfume, must be properly enjoyed whilst sitting in a suitable easy chair, drink nearby, book on lap, fire on the hearth, music in the air, TV in the trash.

That is my wish for Heaven. I have no such chair nor a fire. And a pipe demands an hour, and I can't take that in sub-zero temperatures!

Woe is me...

Yeah, right. Uh-huh. Be strong.

Hi Arminius,

I understand. Ah, well. I thought it was worth a shot!

Farnaz,

I am truly an unrequited reprobate.
I have no intentions of quitting.
I only want to drop cigarettes and return to pipe smoking.
Life's too short.....

Arminius,

You can do it to. Do you want to quit together?

You'd outlast me, I'm sure.

In all honesty -
To all of you quitters -
DO IT! Be strong and be well.
To rephrase a recent political slogan:
Yes you can! Yes you will!
Ignore my sorry poetry.

Hi Peter,

I replied to your most recent post on R. Brous's thread. Please go there if you aren't now.

You are taking her much too literally.

Pam

Some people are physically addicted, others not.

It sounds like you and Walter are in the latter category. Unfortunately, I'm not. My body goes out of wack in endless ways.

It takes a good year, not unusual, I've learned, for people with physiologies like mine.

Walter, Stay off those things, pleez!

Ode to an Idiot

Cigarettes are evil
They also are stupid
I guess I am evil
Perhaps I'm stupid too
But I'm gonna live forever
Or bloody well die trying!

- Arminius

Life is too short to be small.
- Disraeli

Hi Peter,

Saw your post on R. Brous's thread and replied.

Can we go back there, for a moment? No rush, though.

Just, please, let me know--on this thread--when you are heading back over to hers.
-----------------------------------
Pam,

I replied to you, as well (earlier) on R. Brous's thread.

Walter,
It's painful now, and probably puts you in a bad mood, but this too shall pass (to borrow a phrase).

I quit nearly thirty years ago. I, too, loved smoking. My doctor asked me, on my second visit for bronchitis in one year, if I'd ever seen anyone with emphysema. He said that if I had, I'd know that it was something I really didn't want - and that was exactly where I was headed. I gave myself a couple of weeks to get used to the idea, and then threw my cigarettes away.

You're right that the pyschological part takes the longest to get over (the physical addiction only takes a week). I tried to develop new habits to replace the old ones. I used to smoke while talking on the phone - I took up doodling, instead...

On the jumpseat of the plane, right after takeoff, was the hardest. When I'd find myself reflexively reaching for my purse, I'd give myself a mental slap on the wrist, and tell myself "you don't do that anymore."

Just remember that when the craving hits, it never lasts more than two minutes. You can stand almost anything for that long.

In the end, you'll be glad you did it. Within just a few months I had stamina that I'd forgotten it was possible to have.

Hang in.

Hi Farnaz,

FARNAZ: "The last post was for you. Perhaps, rather than attack the rabbi, "Sharon," you might save your ire for the antisemites on the thread, eg., Mary Cunningham, who described her as "an atheist (?)"

The Lord was born to Jewish parents when He became man and was of the seed of the woman Mary, a Jew. I have a deep respect and admiration for the Jewish people and what they have been through. Without God's plan of redemption, that included the Jews, there would be no reconciliation with God, for that is what God chose to do. But Jew as well as Gentile is guilty before God and needs the saving grace and reconciliation found only in Jesus the Messiah.

To answer your question, I've never seen her describe herself as an atheist. I believe she is Roman Catholic, anybody? It would be a shame for her to look away from the only means of saving faith (not that Romanism is, but it points to the One who is, although not by the light of God's word all to often), the Lord Jesus and embrace a system of belief - evolutionary dogma - that has no ultimate answers, nothing that can make sense of what is important in life.

FARNAZ: "And then there was her sock puppet, the Holocaust denier, Whistling."

I'm not familiar with him.

Three points that I was illustrating are, 1) When you point the finger be prepared for what comes with it. I have done that many times and suffered the consequences. I have put my foot in my mouth and continue to do so, but for the sake of the Gospel. 2) There is no neutrality. 3) In order for you to state something objective you have to have an objective source and correctly interpret that source. Can you point to such a source?

FARNAZ: "Have you no moral sense?"

Where does morality come from? First answer that question and then I'll tell you, although you already know.

Walter!

Good Lord - you ain't just in a pickle, yer in a whole damn jar!

Yeah, I smoke cigarettes - a pipe too, on occasion. (Can't find good pipe tobacco any more.) Clove ciggies? PUKE! Menthol? BARF! Give me my unfiltered pure tobacco coffin nails, please! If yer gonna do sumpin' purely stupid, might as well go whole hog. Meanwhile, tax the living hell outa it, because a stupidity tax is always in order. Just don't raise the tax so high that the black market gets attractive.

Walter,

It's great that you quit! REally. My campus has now been declared "smoke free," which means I'll probably be arrested, if I don't become seriously ill first.

People die of lung cancer in their forties, even younger.

Congratulations! Stay away from the nasty things. I wish I could, had to. Probably will--have to, I mean.

Peter, Pam,

I replied to you on R. Brous's thread. If you would like to reply, let me know, please.
------------------------------------
Arminius,

I smoke too. Quit and started again.

Farnaz,

Yes, a referendum overthrowing that law is the best path. And you are right, the non-believers must tread carefully, because they will need allies. Street demonstrations would be woefully counterproductive! The next step, if they (hopefully!) succeed, is a very long term effort to get a new constitution, with a real bill of rights.

There is a very special place in my heart for the Emerald Isle. This situation has hit me hard.

Hi Walter,

I understand what you are going through. My wife had been trying to quit for years, and even after she was diagnosed with COPD she continued to sneak a puff, all the while impairing her health that much more. Now she has other complications, such as mini stokes in which we are traveling to a medical facility fifty miles down the road in which to treat.

We are off for a cat-scan tomorrow, so, like you, time is limited until the weekend or late at night when she sleeps, or when I'm not working shift work. Some weeks it is harder than others to spend lots of time on the posts.

She tried the patch to no avail. It is only when her breathing got so bad that it worried her enough to go cold turkey. She has taken to sucking sweets such as horehounds or humbugs. That helps somewhat.

I have seen her demise and recline in health caused in large measure, I'm sure, by cigarettes. Both my parents were chain smokers. They both died prematurely from cancers and lifestyles that I believe can be related to cigarettes.

I wish you the best in your endeavors to end this addiction!

arminius,
i did not WANT to quit. i loved smoking...

my type of cigarette (clove) was recently made illegal. apparently they taste too good or something and are appealing to "children"....oh brother....(i mean mommy state).... i don't even like the taste of "regular" cigarettes. i hoarded as much as i could, but i've run out. i kind of paced myself at the end to run out around the new year.

while i appreciate the government's concern for my health and all, and i was willing to pay whatever tax my smoking "costs" society, but where does it end? how 'bout a "fat ban"? or mandatory SPF20 sunscreen? - obesity and skin cancer "cost" society too...

and, i understand smoking is dangerous and all that and was planning on quitting when i reached 50... it galls me to have it thrust upon me rather than quitting on my own terms...

there are substitutes out there. arbitrarily, i don't think menthol is banned and there are clove "cigars" available now...

Arminius,

Because of the problem with the Constitution, the law must be overturned with a referendum.

It could have been called by the president, thus avoiding what has occurred, but, clearly, he wanted to wait it out. That was probably wise.

Realize it passed by a single vote, was inspired by a legislator impressed by the blasphemy laws in democratic Saudi Arabia. This is now known in Ireland.

In the meantime, a demonstration has been scheduled for February 6th. From what I've gathered, the atheists and agnostics are in a quandary. They are not happy, but, understandably, want to keep the rhetoric limited so that they don't alienate secular Catholics.

To reply to the subject of the thread:
"Is this new law a sign of religious arrogance, religious intolerance or a legal attempt to control and silence criticism? "

The answer? Yes.
Religious arrogance spawns religious intolerance, and the method of suppression is to silence criticism. So, all three.

It has been noted elsewhere that this law is something of a red herring, dragged across the trail of retreating pederast priests, hoping to allow them to escape.

The worst part of this is that if it ever goes to court - and this must be attempted! - it will probably be defeated because the constitution of Ireland is quite religious. The only hope is a noisy but non-violent revolution patterned after the Civil Rights Movement in America in the 60's.

Religion without freedom is but the slavemaster in ornate robes.

Peter,

The last post was for you. Perhaps, rather than attack the rabbi, "Sharon," you might save your ire for the antisemites on the thread, eg., Mary Cunningham, who described her as "an atheist (?)"

And then there was her sock puppet, the Holocaust denier, Whistling.

Other sock puppets.

Have you no moral sense?

Don't let people like Sharon, the Pope (who has so nobly graced our presence on this post), Farnaz or anyone else create a smoke screen by fanciful words. God's word is our highest authority, measure and standard for it transcends man's limited subjective knowledge, ideas and ideals on what is right and wrong. Without His revelation we are lost.

"Don't be deceived, my brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created." (James 1:16-18)

There is only one perfect standard, just as there is only One perfect, true and living God.
-----------------------

Like "Sharon"? Are you a personal friend of the rabbi? Have you lost your mind?

Peter, Pam, and Walter - Hail and Well Met!

Peter, I owe you a lengthy reply - I beg for your patience, it will take a bit of time.

Pam - your rock-solid reasoning is always welcome.

Walter - I refuse to quit smoking, but I am trying to cut down. The grim winter is helping, since I do not smoke in the house, only in the unheated garage!

peter, pam,
sorry for my recent absence from the comments. it's not for lack of interest. i quit smoking cigarettes on jan 2nd. i'm finding the physical "withdrawl symptoms" easy to deal with. it's the psychological/habitual ones that are killing me. i used to love to read/comment on this blog while smoking a cigarette.... now every time i begin or even think about beginning to comment, i want a cigarette...