Dodging Darwin: How Ken Ham's Ark is slowly embracing evolution

Wow!

Yep. The kinds thing makes no sense and never has... at least to anyone who has even a passing interest in the variety of species out there. Not to mention, who on the ark had all the venereal diseases.

I noted that there was one of the two exceptions (which they tell us about) to "kind"=family was with the family Bovidae. It interests me because the Bible tells us that in the time of Abraham, just a few centuries after the Flood, there was a distinction between cattle, sheep and goats, three species of bovids.

That seems to be one of the very few hints which one can gather from the Bible which one can draw on to to make distinctions needed for baraminology. Oddly, I didn't notice any citation to the Bible for the results of this essay.

One important thing which the Bible has nothing to tell us, is the baramin of human beings. The Bible never uses the Hebrew word min (often translated as "kind") in reference to humans.
I don't think that this essay names the human baramin, either. I don't know what to make of this.

Tom, here is the same Jean Lightner that David refers to speaking about the bovine kind:
From Lightner’s article (Identification of species within the cattle monobaramin (kind)):

"Alleged hybrids of cattle with members of another subfamily (Caprinae) and family (Cervidae) hint that the holobaramin (all organisms derived from the created common ancestors, whether known or not) could possibly include the entire family Bovidae and several, if not all, of the five other ruminant families."

I'm writing about her views on this right now. Just in case some aren't familiar with bovine classification the Bovidae includes: bison, buffalo, antelopes, gazelles, sheep, goats, muskoxen and all domestic cattle. There are more than 140 recognized living species and over 300 identified extinct species of bovines. Lightner is suggesting they all may be one "kind" but as you note, the Biblical evidence is wanting and could be said to work against this hypothesis since goats, sheep and cattle all seem to be clearly distinguished and understood as giving rise to more of the same when they reproduce.

But then she makes the mind-blowing statement that maybe five other ruminant families are also part of the same kind. Yes, she is willing to cosider that a giraffe, a deer, a goat and a cow all descended from just a single ancestral pair just 4350 years ago. Wow!

Re "One of the largest such postings, by retired veterinarian Jean Lightner, organizes the majority of Order Carnivora into nine distinct “baramins”: felines, civets, dogs, hyenas, bears, weasels, and red pandas."

Mongooses got missed from the paragraph, and what's the ninth "baramin"?

how does credibility work here? If this guy is credible, NOW, because he rejects YEC then why not before he did? why was he less intellectually and morally legitimate as a origin thinker? Why are not all his companions of like age and interests who embrace YEC not credible science investigators? Everybody does it i notice in these circles or general mankind.
Anyways.
There are problems here in some YEC stuff. I don't think its just decay from a parent group , that allows diversity. In fact in these dog types I would include the marsupial wolf. Surely a change, increase in information to become marsupial, .
I don't think there was a simple dog type but some general creature that only included dog types.
We only know there were kinds. THE KIND is speculation. Yet we can speculate.
remember for YEC its desirable to shrink biology into small numbers because of the ark issue. YEC simply drags its heels in shrinking but is forced to it. Still they don't like the marsupial wolf being another wolf anymore than evolutionism.

Mr. Byers gets one comment; please do not encourage him. Further comments by Mr. Byers will be sent to the Bathroom Wall.

Yes, she is willing to cosider that a giraffe, a deer, a goat and a cow all descended from just a single ancestral pair just 4350 years ago.

Remember that bovids are "clean" animals, so they were represented on the Ark by 7 pairs.

how does credibility work here? If this guy is credible, NOW, because he rejects YEC then why not before he did? why was he less intellectually and morally legitimate as a origin thinker?

The observed pattern, a nested hierarchy. is best explained by a branching pattern of speciation. Any attempt to explain the pattern in some other way will have to do a better job than that. The creationists have once again failed miserably, but now they will be asking that people pay for the chance to see their mistakes. What are they going to do when some bright ten year old points out their errors? Hell, even Byers says their wrong. (And that's the way he would say it).

If I recall correctly, IAG basically just used taxonomic families for their "kinds". Which is kind of interesting in and of itself. But that kind of breaks down with insects.

Of course, the whole thing breaks down considering fish, corals, cetaceans, and geography specific groups.

"As the strict young-earth creationists at Answers in Genesis work to complete their Ark Encounter “theme park”, they have expended an impressive amount of energy organizing the millions of species of land animals alive today into a handful of small groups they call “baramins”. They claim these groups represent the original created kinds of which Noah would have brought pairs onto the ark."

I hope to see Ham in another debate in which he will summarize this "research" and his interlocutor will ask him, "How do you know? Were you there?"

... clade (the technical/evolutionary equivalent of the term “kind”) ...

Izzatso? IANA taxonomist, nor more than a casual amateur student of creationist jargon, but I doubt those terms really match up functionally. F'rinstance, can't scientists speak of a "clade" of descendants of Galapagos finches or East African cichlids, while creationists would have to lump those in with the bird or fish "kinds"?

Do these AiG models acknowledge extinct creatures - such as miacids (or do they only consider animals that are extant today or maybe went extinct very very recently such as the thylacine)?

Figure 2 is an excellent representation of one of the most conspicuous contradictions in ID/creationist pseusoscience.

Originally, Henry Morris's "second law of thermodynamics" argument served multiple purposes in propping up the notion of "The Fall." Everything is supposed to be running down into simpler and less durable states from the "perfection" they were supposed to have had before Eve ate the fruit. Lifetimes are getting shorter, rust and decay are all around, and everything is coming all apart. Disorder is the trend, and order, it is asserted, can't be explained by science. Ham studied under Morris and Gish.

Yet, we also are told that "information" increases despite the second law. Thus the repeated "gotcha" question by ID/creationists, "Where did all that information come from?"

So what are we to make of "baramins; is that "conservation of "information?" Does "information" increase in "microevolution?"

One of the big problems with ID/creationism is that there are so many different sectarian agendas that have to be accomodated that various terms they invent take on multiple meanings that depend on who is defining them. Furthermore, not one ID/creationist, including Dembski, has ever been able to do an instructive calculation of "complex specified information" in any context that makes any sense.

The world is decaying since "The Fall," yet information is increasing. Their deity has cursed the world into decay and at the same time increased its information content. Sometimes "information" is the same as what they think entropy is, and other times it is something their critics are required to explain in order to justify the appearance of order and complexity in the face of "the second law of thermodynamics."

ID/creationist don't have a clue of what they are talking about.

ID/creationism has been pretty much reduced to "razzle-dazzle" in order to keep its followers thinking something of substance is being discussed. If it is confusing, it must be because ID/creationist leaders are geniuses of the highest order of baramin.

Pierce R. Butler said: ... clade (the technical/evolutionary equivalent of the term “kind”) ... Izzatso? IANA taxonomist, nor more than a casual amateur student of creationist jargon, but I doubt those terms really match up functionally. F'rinstance, can't scientists speak of a "clade" of descendants of Galapagos finches or East African cichlids, while creationists would have to lump those in with the bird or fish "kinds"?

Re "Disorder is the trend, and order, it is asserted, can’t be explained by science."

Funny thing about that is that stars running out of usable hydrogen could be taken as sort of analogous to that so called trend. But only on a much longer time scale, measured perhaps in hundreds of billions of years.

Then that dark energy thing might be an even closer analogy, but that's on even longer time scale.

But, both of those are science.

So is this guy claiming to be an evangelical Christian, just going where the evidence leads him? I'm sorry but there's one statement in here that destroys that image: 'Noah's purported vessel'. So does the author mean the ark didn't exist at all? Then Noah probably didn't either. So all genealogies including Noah, and references to Noah and the flood are wrong too? So then Jesus, the apostles and others, were mistaken from time to time? The thread keeps unravelling, bringing into serious question what this author actually believes and therefore what his starting assumptions are.

One other thing, his pseudo science which disproves biblical creationism doesn't include a single reference. Seems to me a whole bunch of assumptions and hand waving. Wait, isn't that what he accuses YECs of?

The analysis by David is great. But looking at Dr. Jean's analysis, it doesn't take much to find her flustered to do her job ... enter the platypus kind:

"Some may question the need of putting a semi-aquatic creature on the Ark. Who really wants to bring a creature with venomous spurs on the Ark? Besides, extant platypuses aren't exactly known for doing particularly well in captivity. ... Times of resting on land appear essential to its well being. It seems unlikely that months of swimming in Flood waters would be conducive to the survival of this created kind. Therefore we will assume it was on the Ark."

There goes a scientist assuming things, just like an evolutionist.

Anthony Whitney said: So is this guy claiming to be an evangelical Christian, just going where the evidence leads him? I'm sorry but there's one statement in here that destroys that image: 'Noah's purported vessel'. So does the author mean the ark didn't exist at all? Then Noah probably didn't either. So all genealogies including Noah, and references to Noah and the flood are wrong too? So then Jesus, the apostles and others, were mistaken from time to time? The thread keeps unravelling, bringing into serious question what this author actually believes and therefore what his starting assumptions are. One other thing, his pseudo science which disproves biblical creationism doesn't include a single reference. Seems to me a whole bunch of assumptions and hand waving. Wait, isn't that what he accuses YECs of?

Anthony Whitney said: So is this guy claiming to be an evangelical Christian, just going where the evidence leads him? I'm sorry but there's one statement in here that destroys that image: 'Noah's purported vessel'. So does the author mean the ark didn't exist at all? Then Noah probably didn't either. So all genealogies including Noah, and references to Noah and the flood are wrong too? So then Jesus, the apostles and others, were mistaken from time to time? The thread keeps unravelling, bringing into serious question what this author actually believes and therefore what his starting assumptions are. One other thing, his pseudo science which disproves biblical creationism doesn't include a single reference. Seems to me a whole bunch of assumptions and hand waving. Wait, isn't that what he accuses YECs of?

DS said: The observed pattern, a nested hierarchy. is best explained by a branching pattern of speciation. Any attempt to explain the pattern in some other way will have to do a better job than that. The creationists have once again failed miserably, but now they will be asking that people pay for the chance to see their mistakes. What are they going to do when some bright ten year old points out their errors? Hell, even Byers says their wrong. (And that's the way he would say it).

Henry J said: Re "Disorder is the trend, and order, it is asserted, can’t be explained by science." Funny thing about that is that stars running out of usable hydrogen could be taken as sort of analogous to that so called trend. But only on a much longer time scale, measured perhaps in hundreds of billions of years. Then that dark energy thing might be an even closer analogy, but that's on even longer time scale. But, both of those are science.

Re "By that time we’ll all be dead anyway."

Maybe, but so far, so good!

Henry J said: Re "By that time we’ll all be dead anyway." Maybe, but so far, so good!

Robert Byers said: how does credibility work here?

There are problems here in some YEC stuff. I don't think its just decay from a parent group , that allows diversity. In fact in these dog types I would include the marsupial wolf. Surely a change, increase in information to become marsupial,

We only know there were kinds. THE KIND is speculation. Yet we can speculate.

remember for YEC its desirable to shrink biology into small numbers because of the ark issue.

Anthony Whitney said: So is this guy claiming to be an evangelical Christian, just going where the evidence leads him? I'm sorry but there's one statement in here that destroys that image: 'Noah's purported vessel'. So does the author mean the ark didn't exist at all? Then Noah probably didn't either. So all genealogies including Noah, and references to Noah and the flood are wrong too? So then Jesus, the apostles and others, were mistaken from time to time? The thread keeps unravelling, bringing into serious question what this author actually believes and therefore what his starting assumptions are. One other thing, his pseudo science which disproves biblical creationism doesn't include a single reference. Seems to me a whole bunch of assumptions and hand waving. Wait, isn't that what he accuses YECs of?

Surely there exist drawings of these ancestral species, since Noah and his people had them aboard the ark. Talk about rationalizing in overdrive....

On what basis do the creationists use the term "Order Carnivora"? Do they use it because it is a commonly accepted taxon? If so, they should be aware that it is accepted because it is monophyletic, thus they are implicitly assuming an evolutionary explanation. Do they use it to mean meat eating mammals? If so, they have once again employed an evolutionary explanation, since mammals are monophyletic. Do they mean all meat eaters? If so, why did they exclude meat eating worms, insects and plants? There is no reasonable explanation for their chosen scheme, except of course that it corresponds to their preconceptions. That is the antithesis of real science.

And Matt is correct. If there were a representative of every ancestral baramin on the ark, we would already have extensive knowledge about each and every one of them. So where is all of this data? Somebody had to feed these things, both before and during the magic flood. Somebody had to see them diverge, er I mean devolve. Where are the records? Enquiring minds want to know. What are they going to say when some bright ten year old asks this question?

People were too busy making more people to have time to keep records of what their animals were doing. ;)

So before the magic flood, all of the baramins were just wandering around, conspicuously not speciating, even though they were miraculously endowed by their creator, pre programmed to do so. Then, within days after the magic flood, they all began devolving at a spectacular rate, speciating all over the place in a burst of evolution that hasn't been equaled since.

Now exactly why did this happen? Exactly why didn't they speciate before the magic flood? Was it because of all the open niches? No, there were even more open niches just after creation. Was it because of the humpty dumpty fall? No, this was long after that little case of entrapment that nay good lawyer could have gotten you out of. Why did they stop devolving? And why don't you see a unicorn to this very day?

So once again, the creationist explanation makes no sense, has no supporting evidence and ignores all of the existing evidence. How typical.

DS said: And Matt is correct. If there were a representative of every ancestral baramin on the ark, we would already have extensive knowledge about each and every one of them. So where is all of this data?

And Matt is correct.

Matt Young said:

And Matt is correct.

As my wife will tell you, occasionally I am correct. However, David MacMillan wrote this splendid article; I merely posted it for him.

DS said: So before the magic flood, all of the baramins were just wandering around, conspicuously not speciating, even though they were miraculously endowed by their creator, pre programmed to do so. Then, within days after the magic flood, they all began devolving at a spectacular rate, speciating all over the place in a burst of evolution that hasn't been equaled since. Now exactly why did this happen? Exactly why didn't they speciate before the magic flood? Was it because of all the open niches? No, there were even more open niches just after creation. Was it because of the humpty dumpty fall? No, this was long after that little case of entrapment that nay good lawyer could have gotten you out of. Why did they stop devolving? And why don't you see a unicorn to this very day? So once again, the creationist explanation makes no sense, has no supporting evidence and ignores all of the existing evidence. How typical.

DS said: On what basis do the creationists use the term "Order Carnivora"? Do they use it because it is a commonly accepted taxon? If so, they should be aware that it is accepted because it is monophyletic, thus they are implicitly assuming an evolutionary explanation. Do they use it to mean meat eating mammals? If so, they have once again employed an evolutionary explanation, since mammals are monophyletic. Do they mean all meat eaters? If so, why did they exclude meat eating worms, insects and plants?

Then there's the question of which baramin Batman belongs to...

Matt Young said:

And Matt is correct.

As my wife will tell you, occasionally I am correct. However, David MacMillan wrote this splendid article; I merely posted it for him.

Just Bob said:

DS said: On what basis do the creationists use the term "Order Carnivora"? Do they use it because it is a commonly accepted taxon? If so, they should be aware that it is accepted because it is monophyletic, thus they are implicitly assuming an evolutionary explanation. Do they use it to mean meat eating mammals? If so, they have once again employed an evolutionary explanation, since mammals are monophyletic. Do they mean all meat eaters? If so, why did they exclude meat eating worms, insects and plants?

I want to know why they left out bats. Of course they would have to separate the carnivorous bats from the fruit eaters. Obviously different baramins. And if eating insects doesn't count in YECland as carnivory... then drinking blood has to. So wait, I know, bats really belong in 3 different baramins: herbivores (along with cows), insectivores (along with anteaters), and carnivores (along with tigers). Yeah, that must be it. Gee, this baraminology is fun!

Just Bob said:

DS said: On what basis do the creationists use the term "Order Carnivora"? Do they use it because it is a commonly accepted taxon? If so, they should be aware that it is accepted because it is monophyletic, thus they are implicitly assuming an evolutionary explanation. Do they use it to mean meat eating mammals? If so, they have once again employed an evolutionary explanation, since mammals are monophyletic. Do they mean all meat eaters? If so, why did they exclude meat eating worms, insects and plants?

I want to know why they left out bats. Of course they would have to separate the carnivorous bats from the fruit eaters. Obviously different baramins. And if eating insects doesn't count in YECland as carnivory... then drinking blood has to. So wait, I know, bats really belong in 3 different baramins: herbivores (along with cows), insectivores (along with anteaters), and carnivores (along with tigers). Yeah, that must be it. Gee, this baraminology is fun!

DS said: Good point. What about pandas? Are they bears? If so they must have evolved form carnivorous ancestors. So I guess moving from carnivory to herbivory must mean that information is lost. So then it must be true that if a carnivore evolves from an herbivore that information is gained. Man, they sure shot themselves in the foot with that one. Once again, creationists want to have their cake, eat it, shit it out and make people pay money to come see the crap.

Kevin said: The kinds thing makes no sense and never has... at least to anyone who has even a passing interest in the variety of species out there. Not to mention, who on the ark had all the venereal diseases.

harold said: They can't stop slipping into rational thinking - or at least, trying to respond to it. All this "kind" crap is a response to the point that it would be "difficult to get every species on the ark". But the ark is magic. Why not just say "Santa Claus can fit every species in his sleigh and Noah can fit every species on the ark - by a miracle, so there"? Why bother trying to reduce the number of species that Noah had to deal with? It's so inconsistent. God can do anything but he can't help Noah fit all the species onto his ark?

DS said: The observed pattern, a nested hierarchy. is best explained by a branching pattern of speciation. Any attempt to explain the pattern in some other way will have to do a better job than that.

So before the magic flood, all of the baramins were just wandering around, conspicuously not speciating, even though they were miraculously endowed by their creator, pre programmed to do so. Then, within days after the magic flood, they all began devolving at a spectacular rate, speciating all over the place in a burst of evolution that hasn't been equaled since.

ashleyhr said: Do these AiG models acknowledge extinct creatures - such as miacids (or do they only consider animals that are extant today or maybe went extinct very very recently such as the thylacine)?

Henry J said:

Pierce R. Butler said: ... clade (the technical/evolutionary equivalent of the term “kind”) ... Izzatso? IANA taxonomist, nor more than a casual amateur student of creationist jargon, but I doubt those terms really match up functionally. F'rinstance, can't scientists speak of a "clade" of descendants of Galapagos finches or East African cichlids, while creationists would have to lump those in with the bird or fish "kinds"?

Aside from horizontal transfer and hybrids between closely related species, clades can't interbreed with each other. It's just that subsets of a clade can become separate clades. Seems to me that that satisfies the requirement to produce their like kind (or however that was said), since as far as I know, the Bible doesn't say that kinds can't generate new kinds from within, just that they can't cross breed with other already separate kinds.

DS said: On what basis do the creationists use the term "Order Carnivora"? Do they use it because it is a commonly accepted taxon? If so, they should be aware that it is accepted because it is monophyletic, thus they are implicitly assuming an evolutionary explanation.

Charles Deetz ;) said: But looking at Dr. Jean's analysis, it doesn't take much to find her flustered to do her job ... enter the platypus kind: "Some may question the need of putting a semi-aquatic creature on the Ark. Who really wants to bring a creature with venomous spurs on the Ark? Besides, extant platypuses aren't exactly known for doing particularly well in captivity. ... Times of resting on land appear essential to its well being. It seems unlikely that months of swimming in Flood waters would be conducive to the survival of this created kind. Therefore we will assume it was on the Ark." There goes a scientist assuming things, just like an evolutionist.

Matt G said: Surely there exist drawings of these ancestral species, since Noah and his people had them aboard the ark. Talk about rationalizing in overdrive....

DS said: What about pandas? Are they bears? If so they must have evolved form carnivorous ancestors. So I guess moving from carnivory to herbivory must mean that information is lost. So then it must be true that if a carnivore evolves from an herbivore that information is gained. Man, they sure shot themselves in the foot with that one.

TomS said: One important thing which the Bible has nothing to tell us, is the baramin of human beings. The Bible never uses the Hebrew word min (often translated as "kind") in reference to humans. I don't think that this essay names the human baramin, either. I don't know what to make of this.

Robert Byers said: If this guy is credible, NOW, because he rejects YEC then why not before he did? why was he less intellectually and morally legitimate as a origin thinker? Why are not all his companions of like age and interests who embrace YEC not credible science investigators? Everybody does it i notice in these circles or general mankind.

Anthony Whitney said: So is this guy claiming to be an evangelical Christian, just going where the evidence leads him? I'm sorry but there's one statement in here that destroys that image: 'Noah's purported vessel'. So does the author mean the ark didn't exist at all? Then Noah probably didn't either. So all genealogies including Noah, and references to Noah and the flood are wrong too? So then Jesus, the apostles and others, were mistaken from time to time? The thread keeps unravelling, bringing into serious question what this author actually believes and therefore what his starting assumptions are.

Very exciting. Two questions:

1. Does the Creation Museum offer any of the evidence that led them to conclude these particular holobaramins?

2. Did they ever do anything similar with birds?

Anthony Whitney said: So is this guy claiming to be an evangelical Christian, just going where the evidence leads him? I'm sorry but there's one statement in here that destroys that image: 'Noah's purported vessel'. So does the author mean the ark didn't exist at all? Then Noah probably didn't either. So all genealogies including Noah, and references to Noah and the flood are wrong too? So then Jesus, the apostles and others, were mistaken from time to time?

John Harshman said: Very exciting. Two questions: 1. Does the Creation Museum offer any of the evidence that led them to conclude these particular holobaramins?

2. Did they ever do anything similar with birds?

I didn't see the Tasmanian Tiger anywhere in the YEC sets of carnivores. Where do they place it? (Just curious.)

JimV said: I didn't see the Tasmanian Tiger anywhere in the YEC sets of carnivores. Where do they place it? (Just curious.)

Marsupials are placed in their own section in the first link above, so that the thylacine is grouped with kangaroos and koalas and bandicoots even though it is given its own holobaramin.

Which makes no sense, because thylacines, kangaroos, lions, civets, crocodiles, and oak trees are all considered to be equally separate and distant in creationism.

I'm particularly impressed by the ancestral "kind" that would eventually give us the elephant, hyrax and manatee.

Yup, no major evolutionary changes there,

Re "No joking, I’ve been a part of a conversation with someone who wanted to reclassify Tasmanian wolves as dogs because they were “wolves”… sigh."

So where do they put spider monkeys? Tiger sharks? Duck-billed platypus? Rhinoceros beetle? Anything else where the name was borrowed from the name of some other "kind"?

Kevin said: No joking, I've been a part of a conversation with someone who wanted to reclassify Tasmanian wolves as dogs because they were "wolves"... sigh.

stevaroni said: I'm particularly impressed by the ancestral "kind" that would eventually give us the elephant, hyrax and manatee. Yup, no major evolutionary changes there,

But in one specific case they can still claim that all these speciations exclusively arose from *loss* of information, where different "kinds" of information loss lead to different "information-poorer" variations of the "master" species. Like, God put a number of super information-rich "master species" out which over time, slowly decayed into their information-reduced subspecies. Which could be partly addressed with molecular genetics / bioinformatics.

It would make for some funny "information-richness trees" within "baramins"...

David MacMillan said: They have largely rejected statistical approaches to baraminology on the basis that statistical studies may depend on arbitrarily-selected characteristics. Of course, the real reason is that statistical studies never terminate where creationists want them to, because they're measuring actual evolutionary distance and thus will inevitably generate a complete tree of life.

dvizard said: But in one specific case they can still claim that all these speciations exclusively arose from *loss* of information, where different "kinds" of information loss lead to different "information-poorer" variations of the "master" species. Like, God put a number of super information-rich "master species" out which over time, slowly decayed into their information-reduced subspecies. Which could be partly addressed with molecular genetics / bioinformatics.

eric said: According to YECs, evolution cannot produce new information. If, say, a bacterium evolves the capability to ingest citrate, its parent species must always have had that capability resident in its genes somewhere, and we should be able to find it.

I've now read their "methods" paper and their bird paper in their entireties. Pretty easy because they don't say much. The "method" is to search the literature for hybridization data and, in its absence, go with what looks the same to them or, sometimes, what's been put in a different family by somebody or other. No consistency. I notice that they tend to ignore phylogenetic analyses, with one exception: frequent citations of Sibley and Ahlquist. I wonder if that's based on a misunderstanding that "DNA hybridization" has something to do with hybridization.

From the "methods" paper:

"To some, using sequence data may seem more objective. Certainly identifying sequences is objective. It is the interpretation that is not. How does one distinguish between sequences that are the same because two creatures are from the same kind and sequences that are the same because God created them the same in two different kinds? Why do differences exist? Are they simply variability God placed in one created kind at Creation? Are they differences that have arisen within a kind since Creation? Are they created differences between different kinds? Are they differences that have arisen between two different created kinds that originally had identical or very similar sequences in a particular region? The bottom line is that we don’t have enough understanding of genetics to understand the significance of most sequence data. "

No comment needed.

The bottom line is that we don’t have enough understanding of genetics to understand the significance of most sequence data.

John Harshman said: [quoting YEC article]...sequences that are the same because two creatures are from the same kind and sequences that are the same because God created them the same in two different kinds?

How does one distinguish between sequences that are the same because two creatures are from the same kind and sequences that are the same because God created them the same in two different kinds?

John Harshman said: From the "methods" paper: "To some, using sequence data may seem more objective. Certainly identifying sequences is objective. It is the interpretation that is not. How does one distinguish between sequences that are the same because two creatures are from the same kind and sequences that are the same because God created them the same in two different kinds? Why do differences exist? Are they simply variability God placed in one created kind at Creation? Are they differences that have arisen within a kind since Creation? Are they created differences between different kinds? Are they differences that have arisen between two different created kinds that originally had identical or very similar sequences in a particular region? The bottom line is that we don’t have enough understanding of genetics to understand the significance of most sequence data. " No comment needed.

There is absolutely no reason for any of these characters to be similar in different organisms except for common ancestry.

How does one distinguish between sequences that are the same because two creatures are from the same kind and sequences that are the same because God created them the same in two different kinds?

TomS said: (all birds were taken by 7s, even the unclean kind).

Robert Byers said:

David MacMillan said: Marsupials are placed in their own section in the first link above, so that the thylacine is grouped with kangaroos and koalas and bandicoots even though it is given its own holobaramin. Which makes no sense, because thylacines, kangaroos, lions, civets, crocodiles, and oak trees are all considered to be equally separate and distant in creationism.

Casting pearls means it should be the pearl KIND. Anyways. i was not attacking your credibility. I was making a HIGHER point about , on anybody's side, WHY someone becomes credible when befiore they were not. Or rather is credibility only determined by whether someone agrees with your side. It seems here you are credible BUT OBNLY because you agree with evolutionism. When you didn't you would be said to have no credibility JUST BECAUSE of conclusions. I think its poor form in how folks profile opponents. I offer this pearl to worthy opponents. KIND is what the bible says and so what KIND is IS fair to speculate on. There are disagreements. People don't know. I say marsupials are not a other group of kinds but are the same KINDS as their placental cousins. Marsupialism being a minor adaption upon/preceding migration soon after the flood. SO a marsupial bear or wolf or lion is just that. They simply have a pouch and a few other details. Watch the still/moving pictures of the last marsupial wolf on the internet. I wrote a essay called POST FLOOD MARSUPIAL MIGRATION EXPLAINED by Robert Byers. Just google. I extend it to include other orders in the fossil record. By tghe way. People here are saying you were persuaded out of Christianity by the evolution/creation contention. Yet you said first you questioned it all and LATER the evo/creo thing came up. Few people ever leave Christianity because of the evo/creo contention. Evolutionism never makes a good case to creationists for many reasons.

Creationism runs rampant throughout the Muslim world, especially in those regions where Radical Islamists have substantial populations under their control. As a thought question, I have to wonder how long Christian creationists will realize that they are fundamentally no better than their Radical Islamic peers.

If I may suggest another reason why "something or other happens so that things turn out as they are" is not accepted as an alternative scientific explanation: It is not an explanation.

Unless there is something more substantial, some "who, what, when, where, how or why"; something more positive than "somehow, something is wrong with evolution": "There is an explanation better than naturalistic evolution" (without suggesting what that might be) - then that is not going to be taken as an alternative scientific explanation.

It might be true that God is the creator of all things, visible and invisible. It might be vitally important. But that doesn't make it an explanation.

harold said: Just to make one thing super-clear, too - science prefers natural explanations for natural observations. Not for "everything". For natural observations. [...] ID/creationists are hell bent of demanding magical explanations for natural observations. That's okay too, if those explanations are testable [...].

(ID, of course, is worthless money-grubbing pseudo-legalistic bullshit that's set up to evade detection of its motivation or testing of its claims, and exists solely to get money by pretending to have a strategy to deny evolution in public schools.)

Eric Finn said: We don't need to apply any extended definition of science to allow supernatural hypotheses.

eric said:

Eric Finn said: We don't need to apply any extended definition of science to allow supernatural hypotheses.

I would tend to agree. As Larry Moran says in the link, its enough to say testable and let the chips fall where they may. As for the reason more science labs don't investigate testable supernatural hypotheses, (a) their proponents don't seem to be offering any, and (b) their past failure would put them at the bottom of the inductively justified investigative priority stack (by which I mean: few scientists who don't already believe in the supernatural would think testing a supernatural hypothesis had a good chance of panning out).

David MacMillan said: Marsupials are placed in their own section in the first link above, so that the thylacine is grouped with kangaroos and koalas and bandicoots even though it is given its own holobaramin. Which makes no sense, because thylacines, kangaroos, lions, civets, crocodiles, and oak trees are all considered to be equally separate and distant in creationism.

harold said:

eric said:

Eric Finn said: We don't need to apply any extended definition of science to allow supernatural hypotheses.

I would tend to agree. As Larry Moran says in the link, its enough to say testable and let the chips fall where they may. As for the reason more science labs don't investigate testable supernatural hypotheses, (a) their proponents don't seem to be offering any, and (b) their past failure would put them at the bottom of the inductively justified investigative priority stack (by which I mean: few scientists who don't already believe in the supernatural would think testing a supernatural hypothesis had a good chance of panning out).

I see that a point I made was not clearly enough expressed. Science favors testable explanations. In practice those are usually natural explanations. For an obvious reason. Somthing has to be constrainable to be testable. Supernatural forces may or may not have constraints. Natural things always have constraints. Supernatural claims are frequently set up to be untestable. I mentioned that some magical YEC claims are testable.

Matt G said: How would the writers of the Bible have known about marsupials? Or monotremes? Or any plant or animal not known to people from that region of the world?

Matt G said:

David MacMillan said: Marsupials are placed in their own section in the first link above, so that the thylacine is grouped with kangaroos and koalas and bandicoots even though it is given its own holobaramin. Which makes no sense, because thylacines, kangaroos, lions, civets, crocodiles, and oak trees are all considered to be equally separate and distant in creationism.

How would the writers of the Bible have known about marsupials? Or monotremes? Or any plant or animal not known to people from that region of the world?

Science Avenger said:

Matt G said:

David MacMillan said: Marsupials are placed in their own section in the first link above, so that the thylacine is grouped with kangaroos and koalas and bandicoots even though it is given its own holobaramin. Which makes no sense, because thylacines, kangaroos, lions, civets, crocodiles, and oak trees are all considered to be equally separate and distant in creationism.

How would the writers of the Bible have known about marsupials? Or monotremes? Or any plant or animal not known to people from that region of the world?

They have more company than you think. Once in a bar trivia contest a question was "What is the only mammal not mentioned in the Bible?" I literally submitted "You have got to be kiddding" as my answer. I did not receive credit.

TomS said: I was curious about what the designated answer to that question could possibly be. Kangaroos would be an obvious answer... the "official" answer seems to be "cats".

Science Avenger said:

Matt G said:

David MacMillan said: Marsupials are placed in their own section in the first link above, so that the thylacine is grouped with kangaroos and koalas and bandicoots even though it is given its own holobaramin. Which makes no sense, because thylacines, kangaroos, lions, civets, crocodiles, and oak trees are all considered to be equally separate and distant in creationism.

How would the writers of the Bible have known about marsupials? Or monotremes? Or any plant or animal not known to people from that region of the world?

They have more company than you think. Once in a bar trivia contest a question was "What is the only mammal not mentioned in the Bible?" I literally submitted "You have got to be kiddding" as my answer. I did not receive credit.

stevaroni said:

TomS said: I was curious about what the designated answer to that question could possibly be. Kangaroos would be an obvious answer... the "official" answer seems to be "cats".

I immediately thought "polar bear". And then I thought, "no, they probably say 'bear' somewhere". Then I had the uncharitable thought "I could say 'Any of the great apes'" but creationists would argue that 'monkey' is probably used in the Bible and that covers it. But then I realized that no, great apes are mentioned in the Bible extensively. The word 'human' is probably in there 500 times.

Cat. — Mention of this animal occurs only once in the Bible, namely Bar., vi, 21. The original text of Baruch being lost, we possess no indication as to what the Hebrew name of the cat may have been. Possibly there was not any; for although the cat was very familiar to the Egyptians, it seems to have been altogether unknown to the Jews, as well as to the Assyrians and Babylonians, even to the Greeks and Romans before the conquest of Egypt. These and other reasons have led some commentators to believe that the word cat, in the above cited place of Baruch, might not unlikely stand for another name now impossible to restore.

Sorry Mike, that's not good enough. "An implicit understanding of what the evidence is". That's an assumption. The author wants to engage AiG or other Biblical creationists, he needs to reference the data that forms this evidence.

When you start talking about 'real science' and 'don't know any science' you're just displaying your own biases. There is the data, and ones interpretation of it. You may interpret it one way, a creationist may interpret it differently. You may disagree with their interpretation, but that doesn't mean your view is 'real' and theirs 'unreal'. That's the sort of thinking that's hindered scientific progress over the centuries.

By the way, the many PhD scientists who've made valuable contributions in their respective fields, and also happen to believe in biblical creation, would probably take issue with your assertion that they don't know any science.

One last thing, you're saying that a scientist who sides with the majority view is courageous and honest? Please, give me a break. The scientist who looks at the data and makes up their own mind, even if it goes against mainstream thinking, and could harm their career, is courageous and honest.

(sits down with popcorn to watch the fisking)

Anthony Whitney said: Sorry Mike, that's not good enough. "An implicit understanding of what the evidence is". That's an assumption. The author wants to engage AiG or other Biblical creationists, he needs to reference the data that forms this evidence. When you start talking about 'real science' and 'don't know any science' you're just displaying your own biases. There is the data, and ones interpretation of it. You may interpret it one way, a creationist may interpret it differently. You may disagree with their interpretation, but that doesn't mean your view is 'real' and theirs 'unreal'. That's the sort of thinking that's hindered scientific progress over the centuries. By the way, the many PhD scientists who've made valuable contributions in their respective fields, and also happen to believe in biblical creation, would probably take issue with your assertion that they don't know any science. One last thing, you're saying that a scientist who sides with the majority view is courageous and honest? Please, give me a break. The scientist who looks at the data and makes up their own mind, even if it goes against mainstream thinking, and could harm their career, is courageous and honest.

Here is the reference again, just in case you missed it:

Flynn et. al. (2005) Molecular phylogeny of the Carnivora. Systematic Biology 54(2):317-37.

Eric Finn said: We don't need to apply any extended definition of science to allow supernatural hypotheses. Please, have a look at the attached writing, which explains the basic idea better and more fluently than what I can state it. http://www.talkreason.org/articles/unfair.cfm

OK, so we observe that humans and chimps share unique genetic markers, including a broken vitamin C gene and, in humans, a fused chromosome that is identical to two of the chimp chromosomes (with all the appropriate doubled centromeres and telomeres).

Anthony Whitney said: Sorry Mike, that's not good enough. "An implicit understanding of what the evidence is". That's an assumption. The author wants to engage AiG or other Biblical creationists, he needs to reference the data that forms this evidence. When you start talking about 'real science' and 'don't know any science' you're just displaying your own biases. There is the data, and ones interpretation of it. You may interpret it one way, a creationist may interpret it differently. You may disagree with their interpretation, but that doesn't mean your view is 'real' and theirs 'unreal'. That's the sort of thinking that's hindered scientific progress over the centuries. By the way, the many PhD scientists who've made valuable contributions in their respective fields, and also happen to believe in biblical creation, would probably take issue with your assertion that they don't know any science. One last thing, you're saying that a scientist who sides with the majority view is courageous and honest? Please, give me a break. The scientist who looks at the data and makes up their own mind, even if it goes against mainstream thinking, and could harm their career, is courageous and honest.

Scott F said: The "discovery" of the fused chromosome was an "experiment". The "discovery" of the tiktaalik fossil was also an "experiment", and a "test" of the hypothesis of Evolution. Such "discoveries" are not simply new unconnected "observations", but are in fact the results of earlier observation-hypothesis-experiment cycles. I don't think that gets emphasized enough.

Just to get back to David MacMillan's discussion of baraminology, I wanted to express my support for baraminology. They should keep at it. They have no way to prevent baramins from getting bigger and bigger. Finally they will end up with one big baramin (and Noah's Ark will not need to be very big, or if it was big then it would have been very roomy). The single species can then get off the Ark and evolve into all known species.

Which I think was MacMillan's point.

Eric Finn said:

Scott F said: The "discovery" of the fused chromosome was an "experiment". The "discovery" of the tiktaalik fossil was also an "experiment", and a "test" of the hypothesis of Evolution. Such "discoveries" are not simply new unconnected "observations", but are in fact the results of earlier observation-hypothesis-experiment cycles. I don't think that gets emphasized enough.

I agree that the example by Lenny Flank can be improved. Further, I agree that doing science is quite different from collecting stamps. “Observations” in science are highly connected, as you said. For example, the scientific field of geology started more than 200 years ago in an attempt to find telltale marks of a relatively recent world-wide flood. They found something else. The data appeared to indicate huge time spans and the physics was totally unable to explain that old a solar system at that time. This was a big problem for geology – not for physics – because physics was already established. It is fair to demand that the contemporary theories (hypotheses) on biological evolution need to comply with physics (and chemistry and biochemistry). And they do. Claims that biological evolution might violate thermodynamics (entropy) are either misconceptions or bullshit (and usually both). The following link shows an example of a physical theory that – according to the author – can not any more be considered a scientific theory. http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2015/12/23/why-string-theory-is-not-science/ The reason is that it has failed to predict anything new than can be tested. On the other hand, if someone some day would use those ideas to predict something new and testable, then the string theory (“string hypothesis”) would again turn into a legitimate scientific hypothesis. .

Sorry Mike, that’s not good enough. “An implicit understanding of what the evidence is”. That’s an assumption. The author wants to engage AiG or other Biblical creationists, he needs to reference the data that forms this evidence.

When you start talking about ‘real science’ and ‘don’t know any science’ you’re just displaying your own biases. There is the data, and ones interpretation of it. You may interpret it one way, a creationist may interpret it differently. You may disagree with their interpretation, but that doesn’t mean your view is ‘real’ and theirs ‘unreal’. That’s the sort of thinking that’s hindered scientific progress over the centuries.

One last thing, you’re saying that a scientist who sides with the majority view is courageous and honest? Please, give me a break. The scientist who looks at the data and makes up their own mind, even if it goes against mainstream thinking, and could harm their career, is courageous and honest.

Joe Felsenstein said: Just to get back to David MacMillan's discussion of baraminology, I wanted to express my support for baraminology. They should keep at it. They have no way to prevent baramins from getting bigger and bigger. Finally they will end up with one big baramin (and Noah's Ark will not need to be very big, or if it was big then it would have been very roomy). The single species can then get off the Ark and evolve into all known species. Which I think was MacMillan's point.

I have, of course, saved my comment immediately above in a text file. That way, after suitable periods of time, I can post it again (and again) until Anthony Whitney either accurately answers the questions (prediction - this will not and cannot happen) or finally runs away because he can't (prediction - this will happen, and may have already happened).

So lots of 'microevolution' after the Flood (roughly 4350 years). If I understand correctly God only created 8 species out of which evolved all the present carnivores. This could solve the Ark-space problem.
But what about 'microevolution' between the Fall and the Flood (roughly 1650 years)?

The big problem with a baraminology research program is that it isn't intended seriously; it's cargo cult science, or perhaps fig leaf science. And the clearest evidence of this is the fact that baraminologists don't even attempt a theoretical justification of their criteria, both the ones they accept and the ones they reject.

Hybridization is accepted as an absolute proof that two species belong to the same baramin. But why? Why couldn't god make two separately created species interfertile if he wanted to? Yet DNA sequence analysis is rejected exactly for that reason.

AiG's most common criterion is that two species look similar, as judged by some creationist. But there is no attempt to demonstrate that two members of a baramin ought to look similar, and there are certainly many clades in which most species look similar, but others, well nested in that clade, have diverged considerably. AiG tries not to think about such things. Really, what they do is just find some classification and, mostly, declare that the families are holobaramins without much more thought than that. A case in point from birds: in the last few years it's been found that the family Rallidae (rails) is paraphyletic, because the family Heliornithidae (finfoots) more closely related to one rail genus, Sarothrura (flufftails) than to other rails. The taxonomic solution has been to erect a new family, Sarothruridae, just for the flufftails. And AiG has slavishly copied this by declaring three holobaramins, one for each family, despite the fact that flufftails don't look that much different from other rails, and that before DNA sequence analysis nobody had suspected that rails were paraphyletic. Finfoots are just highly divergent rails.

Todd Wood and colleagues have developed a few statistical methods to discern holobaramins, a somewhat better simulation of science, but even Wood completely omits any argument for why his methods ought to separate created kinds.

AiG doesn't care. It's all just cargo cult/fig leaf science.

harold said: I have, of course, saved my comment immediately above in a text file. That way, after suitable periods of time, I can post it again (and again) until Anthony Whitney either accurately answers the questions (prediction - this will not and cannot happen) or finally runs away because he can't (prediction - this will happen, and may have already happened).

Eddie Janssen said: So lots of 'microevolution' after the Flood (roughly 4350 years). If I understand correctly God only created 8 species out of which evolved all the present carnivores. This could solve the Ark-space problem. But what about 'microevolution' between the Fall and the Flood (roughly 1650 years)?

TomS said:

Eddie Janssen said: So lots of 'microevolution' after the Flood (roughly 4350 years). If I understand correctly God only created 8 species out of which evolved all the present carnivores. This could solve the Ark-space problem. But what about 'microevolution' between the Fall and the Flood (roughly 1650 years)?

It's a much shorter period after the Flood when we have evidence for the divergence of contemporary species from the original baramins. We have the testimony of the Bible, which tells us about cattle, sheep and goats in the time of Abraham, just a few centuries after the Flood; and the catalogs of clean and unclean animals from the law of Moses. There is the testimony of ancient pictures of animals. There are mummies of animals in Egypt which look very much like today's animals. I don't know how old the animal mummies are, I looked at the Wikipedia article "Animal mummy" which didn't give much help.

And every time we catch them using the conclusions of science, we should call them on it. Why do they accept some conclusions and not others? What kind of twisted logic are they using? Why group some carnivores together and not others? Why not group whales in with fishes? Why even use terms like mammal or bird?

And what about the aquatic forms? Was it unnecessary to bring the marine forms on the ark? IF so, what about the freshwater forms? Could they both survive? Would they both die? How did they get to the ark? How did they survive on the ark? Like Lucy Ricardo, these guys got a lot of splainin to do.

It's a bizarre, shifting mix of rational and irrational.

That about sums it up.

TomS said: I was curious about what the designated answer to that question could possibly be.

Animal mummification, at least on a large scale, was a fairly late development in Egypt. The books I have don't notice it particularly until no earlier than 800 BCE, and this site http://www.history.com/news/scientists-reveal-inside-story-of-ancient-egyptian-animal-mummies seems to confirm that.

But even 800 BCE is only 1800 years or so after the supposed date of Noah's flood, and there's no how-you-say evidence for any morphological changes in the animals whose remains were preserved. Cats, baboons, hawks, even crocodiles - avatars of the Egyptian gods - were anatomically indistinguishable from the same species today.

Abraham is of course legendary, but if he existed it would have been approximately 1800-1600 BCE. Certainly he could have come from Ur, which was ancient even then, but at least his flocks of goats, sheep and cattle were apparently well differentiated then, only about 600-800 years after the flood. Interestingly, the text (Gen 12:17) also says that Abram (Abraham) acquired camels in Egypt. The general scholarly opinion is that camel domestication in Palestine and Egypt probably did not occur until the eleventh century BCE - after even Moses's time. But if the Bible is correct, and camels were domesticated that early, that's another ruminant species that diverged with truly stunning speed, but, oddly didn't change after that time.

John Harshman said: Todd Wood and colleagues have developed a few statistical methods to discern holobaramins, a somewhat better simulation of science...

Dave Luckett said: Animal mummification, at least on a large scale, was a fairly late development in Egypt. The books I have don't notice it particularly until no earlier than 800 BCE, and this site http://www.history.com/news/scientists-reveal-inside-story-of-ancient-egyptian-animal-mummies seems to confirm that. But even 800 BCE is only 1800 years or so after the supposed date of Noah's flood, and there's no how-you-say evidence for any morphological changes in the animals whose remains were preserved. Cats, baboons, hawks, even crocodiles - avatars of the Egyptian gods - were anatomically indistinguishable from the same species today. Abraham is of course legendary, but if he existed it would have been approximately 1800-1600 BCE. Certainly he could have come from Ur, which was ancient even then, but at least his flocks of goats, sheep and cattle were apparently well differentiated then, only about 600-800 years after the flood. Interestingly, the text (Gen 12:17) also says that Abram (Abraham) acquired camels in Egypt. The general scholarly opinion is that camel domestication in Palestine and Egypt probably did not occur until the eleventh century BCE - after even Moses's time. But if the Bible is correct, and camels were domesticated that early, that's another ruminant species that diverged with truly stunning speed, but, oddly didn't change after that time.

DS said:

Joe Felsenstein said: Just to get back to David MacMillan's discussion of baraminology, I wanted to express my support for baraminology. They should keep at it. They have no way to prevent baramins from getting bigger and bigger. Finally they will end up with one big baramin (and Noah's Ark will not need to be very big, or if it was big then it would have been very roomy). The single species can then get off the Ark and evolve into all known species. Which I think was MacMillan's point.

Absolutely. In fact, we could start an entire research program based on the "theory". We could get two cows, put them in a big boat, let them float around for forty days, then take them out. WIthin ten years they should devolve into about thirty different edible species and presto, world hunger is solved! Why didn't anyone think of this before?

TomS said: It's a bizarre, shifting mix of rational and irrational. That about sums it up.

harold said: The only reason to come up with this "kinds" crap is to address rational arguments against a natural Noah's ark. All they would have to do is say that the ark was miraculous. Instead, they bother to try to address rational arguments that you couldn't fit that many animals into a seaworthy human boat.

prongs said: Baraminology is a new fairy tale, and fairy tales are much easier to understand than the Real World, with Real Science. Easier for the simple-minded.

Just Bob said:

prongs said: Baraminology is a new fairy tale, and fairy tales are much easier to understand than the Real World, with Real Science. Easier for the simple-minded.

You know what I wonder about FL? Others have noted that one of the reasons he comes here may be to try out new 'material' before dishing it out to the suckers his congregation. I wonder if he reflects on the simple-minded gullibility of folks who would swallow such crap unquestioningly (unlike those whom he refers to as 'Pandas', who question everything). I wonder if anybody else thinks that FL likely doesn't believe all the nonsense he displays (e.g., that a 'miracle cure' shown on a sensationalist TV show, along with UFOs and Sasquatch, was indisputably a divine miracle).

TomS said: As I read, Ushher has the Flood at 2348 BC...

Science Avenger said:

TomS said: I was curious about what the designated answer to that question could possibly be.

Llama.

phhht said: ... Your gods are nothing but figments of your imagination...

TomS said: ... “What is the only domestic mammal not mentioned in the Bible?” And the “official” answer seems to be “cats”.

Creationists have long maintained that adaptive radiaton within the created kinds (baramins) has happened. Creationists have always accepted microevolution which is what 90% of evolutionary biologists concern themselves with. What creationists have always rejected, and continue to reject, is the notion of universal common descent by means of natural selection.

Ravi said: Creationists have long maintained that adaptive radiaton within the created kinds (baramins) has happened. Creationists have always accepted microevolution which is what 90% of evolutionary biologists concern themselves with. What creationists have always rejected, and continue to reject, is the notion of universal common descent by means of natural selection.

Ravi said: Creationists have long maintained that adaptive radiaton within the created kinds (baramins) has happened. Creationists have always accepted microevolution which is what 90% of evolutionary biologists concern themselves with. What creationists have always rejected, and continue to reject, is the notion of universal common descent by means of natural selection.

eric said: Young earth creationists do no accept 'microevolution' the way biologists characterize it, because no biologist thinks adaptive radiation could produce all birds (for example) within a few thousand years. YECs must believe in a sort of hyper evolution which no biologist thinks can happen, if their belief is that all land animals are descendants of pairs from the ark.

phhht said: But they're wrong, Ravi. There are no created kinds. We know this because there are no creator gods.

Tell that to Ray Martinez, Ravi. He's a "species immutabalist", in his own words.

Dave Luckett said: Tell that to Ray Martinez, Ravi. He's a "species immutabalist", in his own words.

Ravi said:

phhht said: But they're wrong, Ravi. There are no created kinds. We know this because there are no creator gods.

We can experimentally demonstrate the notion of the baramin by trying to cross breed between the kinds. A wolf may be able to breed with a dog, since they are the same canid king, but a wolf cannot breed with a panther.

Ravi said:

Dave Luckett said: Tell that to Ray Martinez, Ravi. He's a "species immutabalist", in his own words.

All creationists accept that goats and sheep share a common ancestor, a geep, who had a cabin on the Ark.

Evolution within "kinds" after the Ark is vastly more improbable than standard evolutionary biology - a few thousand years compared to a 12.6MY split between dogs and foxes - or 3000x faster. Not too much incredible migration rates that would be involved.

The stupid that tries to fit reality into a biblical narrative is immense.

phhht said: Are you seriously arguing that that constitutes evidence for a creator god?! Don't make me laugh!

Ravi said:

phhht said: Are you seriously arguing that that constitutes evidence for a creator god?! Don't make me laugh!

It is evidence for distinct created kinds. Sorry.

Michael Fugate said: Evolution within "kinds" after the Ark is vastly more improbable than standard evolutionary biology - a few thousand years compared to a 12.6MY split between dogs and foxes - or 3000x faster. Not too much incredible migration rates that would be involved. The stupid that tries to fit reality into a biblical narrative is immense.

Ravi said:

Dave Luckett said: Tell that to Ray Martinez, Ravi. He's a "species immutabalist", in his own words.

All creationists accept that goats and sheep share a common ancestor, a geep, who had a cabin on the Ark.

Ravi said:

Michael Fugate said: Evolution within "kinds" after the Ark is vastly more improbable than standard evolutionary biology - a few thousand years compared to a 12.6MY split between dogs and foxes - or 3000x faster. Not too much incredible migration rates that would be involved. The stupid that tries to fit reality into a biblical narrative is immense.

Speciation can happen within a generation or two. Anyway, some creationists accept an old earth.

Ravi said:

Michael Fugate said: Evolution within "kinds" after the Ark is vastly more improbable than standard evolutionary biology - a few thousand years compared to a 12.6MY split between dogs and foxes - or 3000x faster. Not too much incredible migration rates that would be involved. The stupid that tries to fit reality into a biblical narrative is immense.

Speciation can happen within a generation or two. Anyway, some creationists accept an old earth.

Ravi said:

phhht said: But they're wrong, Ravi. There are no created kinds. We know this because there are no creator gods.

We can experimentally demonstrate the notion of the baramin by trying to cross breed between the kinds. A wolf may be able to breed with a dog, since they are the same canid king, but a wolf cannot breed with a panther.

Michael Fugate said:

Ravi said:

Michael Fugate said: Evolution within "kinds" after the Ark is vastly more improbable than standard evolutionary biology - a few thousand years compared to a 12.6MY split between dogs and foxes - or 3000x faster. Not too much incredible migration rates that would be involved. The stupid that tries to fit reality into a biblical narrative is immense.

Speciation can happen within a generation or two. Anyway, some creationists accept an old earth.

The evidence is against both of your replies, but when you are just practicing apologetics evidence doesn't matter.

Ravi said: Ken Ham has always accepted that rapid speciation happened after the animals disembarked the Ark and colonized the Earth. He has stated (in the great debate with Bill Nye) that the "created kind" is, in most cases, similar to that of a "family" in the evolutionary taxonomy.

Ravi, are humans animals? More specifically, are they mammals? I ask, because there are certainly creationists who deny both of those.

Pierce R. Butler said: Bzzzt! (A very small percentage of) Lions have been tamed, and a few of those brought into somebody or other's houses, which qualifies them as domestic as well as Bible-mentioned instances of the Kitty-Kitty Kind. /bibleweasel

Ravi said: We can experimentally demonstrate the notion of the baramin by trying to cross breed between the kinds. A wolf may be able to breed with a dog, since they are the same canid king, but a wolf cannot breed with a panther.

Science Avenger said:

Ravi said: We can experimentally demonstrate the notion of the baramin by trying to cross breed between the kinds. A wolf may be able to breed with a dog, since they are the same canid king, but a wolf cannot breed with a panther.

Our experience with other "kinds" works against your thesis of distinctness. Lions and tigers would surely count as the same kind, as would horses and donkeys. Yet they can't succesfully interbreed in the sense of creating a sustainable breeding population, since ligers, mules and hennies are sterile. However, this is exactly what we'd expect under the evolutionary hypothesis, where related groups gradually move from fully compatible, through partial compatibility, to total incompatibility.

Just Bob said: I believe that, very rarely, a female mule can be fertile -- which supports your point: partial (slight) compatibility.

"However, this is exactly what we’d expect under the evolutionary hypothesis, where related groups *lie on a continuum* from fully compatible, through partial compatibility, to total incompatibility."

prongs said: Are you saying that goats and sheep are in the same baramin? Is it true they interbreed (Ovis and Capra)? Are their offspring fertile? (I don't know, I'm just asking.) What I want to know is this: Are goats and antelope in the same baramin? After all, there is one living species of Antilocapra: A. americana, abundant in Western North America; the only "goat-antelope" alive in the World today. So what say ye, Ravi? Can goats breed with Antilocapra? Can African or Asian antelope breed with Antilopcapra? What baramin for Capra? What baramin for Antilocapra? What baramin for Antilope? These are important questions. Please answer. If not, perhaps Mr. MacMillan knows more about this than you.

Science Avenger said: Our experience with other "kinds" works against your thesis of distinctness. Lions and tigers would surely count as the same kind, as would horses and donkeys. Yet they can't succesfully interbreed in the sense of creating a sustainable breeding population, since ligers, mules and hennies are sterile. However, this is exactly what we'd expect under the evolutionary hypothesis, where related groups gradually move from fully compatible, through partial compatibility, to total incompatibility.

Well, you’re here right now. Start by defending your position. Could any evidence convince you of the basic tenets of evolution - even if you don’t think such evidence exists, is there anything that would convince you? Who is the designer? How can we test this? What did the designer do? How can we test this? When did the designer do it? How can we test this? What is an example of an experiment which you think will differentiate between design and evolution? A thought experiment will do? What outcome does ID predict? How old is the Earth? I’d like to add several more questions based on Just Bob’s reminder. Is there anything the designer didn’t design? If there is, what is it and where did it come from, and how can I test whether things are designed or not - a reproducible method that will give the same results no matter who uses it?

Ravi said:

Science Avenger said:

The offspring of the hybrids you mention are sterile because of chromosomal rearrangements. However, a cat cannot produce any kind of offspring at all with a dog like a horse and donkey can.

I notice that Ravi failed to address the question of the human baramin. Now I wonder why that is?

He fails to address everything except his pre-programmed talking points. I'm betting it's another sophomore at a bible college.

Science Avenger said:

Ravi said:

Science Avenger said:

The offspring of the hybrids you mention are sterile because of chromosomal rearrangements. However, a cat cannot produce any kind of offspring at all with a dog like a horse and donkey can.

1) I'm pretty sure that's false, surely one of the biologists will comment on "chromosonal rearrangements". Sounds like nonsense to me. 2) So what? The reason is irrelevant. If they are part of the same kind, they should be able to reproduce just fine per your assumptions, the same as a dog and a wolf.

Ravi said: We can experimentally demonstrate the notion of the baramin by trying to cross breed between the kinds. A wolf may be able to breed with a dog, since they are the same canid king, but a wolf cannot breed with a panther.

Ravi said: All creationists accept that goats and sheep share a common ancestor, a geep, who had a cabin on the Ark.

Just Bob said: He fails to address everything except his pre-programmed talking points. I'm betting it's another sophomore at a bible college.

Matt Young: It seems that Ark’s enthusiastic depiction of the variation and speciation presumed to have taken place since the Flood may end up being the most obvious endorsement of “evolution” that Answers in Genesis could ever make.

Ravi said:

Dave Luckett said: Tell that to Ray Martinez, Ravi. He's a "species immutabalist", in his own words.

All creationists accept that goats and sheep share a common ancestor, a geep, who had a cabin on the Ark.

Ravi said:

eric said: Young earth creationists do no accept 'microevolution' the way biologists characterize it, because no biologist thinks adaptive radiation could produce all birds (for example) within a few thousand years. YECs must believe in a sort of hyper evolution which no biologist thinks can happen, if their belief is that all land animals are descendants of pairs from the ark.

Ken Ham has always accepted that rapid speciation happened after the animals disembarked the Ark and colonized the Earth. He has stated (in the great debate with Bill Nye) that the "created kind" is, in most cases, similar to that of a "family" in the evolutionary taxonomy.

Ravi said: Creationists have long maintained that adaptive radiaton within the created kinds (baramins) has happened. Creationists have always accepted microevolution....

Baraminology is one hundred percent pseudo science at its ultimate worst. There is no such thing as a "created-kind." The Bible says no such thing. YECs quote mine the English Bible because they are too stupid to know what the original says.

Created-kinds presuppose the truth of microevolution, speciation, and restricted macroevolution. Any term that has the word "evolution" in it or any term that presupposes macroevolution as having occurred, like speciation, contradict the concepts of creation, created, and create because the latter indicates by supernatural agency whereas the former indicates by non-supernatural agencies. Again, the utter inexcusable stupidity of YECs seen clearly.

Ray Martinez said: I accept Mayr’s Biological Species Concept (BSC). For example, wolves, coyotes, and feral dogs exist because each only mate with members of their own species. I know you guys have little ability to understand species, but try.

Actually Ray, I applaud you for taking on Ravi's ideas. Very few Creationists are willing to contradict other Creationists, even when their positions differ dramatically.

Ray Martinez said: YECs quote mine the English Bible because they are too stupid to know what the original says.

Baraminology is one hundred percent pseudo science at its ultimate worst. There is no such thing as a “created-kind.” The Bible says no such thing. YECs quote mine the English Bible

Just Bob said:

Ray Martinez said: YECs quote mine the English Bible because they are too stupid to know what the original says.

Once again, Ray, you're having trouble saying what you mean. Either that, or if you DO mean what you wrote above, then you're an order of magnitude crazier than I thought. No, YECs don't know what the "original" bible said, but stupidity is not the problem (at least in that matter). Nobody knows what any of the original 'autographs' of the bible said. Not I, not Albert Einstein, not any scholar of ancient Hebrew or Greek, and not you. Or do you perhaps have an original copy of any of the writings that were incorporated into the bible? Or maybe you have some arcane knowledge that makes you certain of what any "original" bible text said.

Scott F said: Hi Ray, welcome back. On another thread, you made this comment:

Ray Martinez said: I accept Mayr’s Biological Species Concept (BSC). For example, wolves, coyotes, and feral dogs exist because each only mate with members of their own species. I know you guys have little ability to understand species, but try.

I just wanted to confirm. Are you saying that wolves, coyotes, and dogs are separate species? And you know they are separate species because they can only mate (successfully) with members of their own species? Am I understanding you correctly? Your comment was slightly ambiguous. I just want to make sure that I understand your position, so that I don't misstate it. Thanks.

Just Bob said:

Ray Martinez said: YECs quote mine the English Bible because they are too stupid to know what the original says.

Once again, Ray, you're having trouble saying what you mean. Either that, or if you DO mean what you wrote above, then you're an order of magnitude crazier than I thought. No, YECs don't know what the "original" bible said, but stupidity is not the problem (at least in that matter). Nobody knows what any of the original 'autographs' of the bible said. Not I, not Albert Einstein, not any scholar of ancient Hebrew or Greek, and not you. Or do you perhaps have an original copy of any of the writings that were incorporated into the bible? Or maybe you have some arcane knowledge that makes you certain of what any "original" bible text said.

Ray Martinez said:

Scott F said: Hi Ray, welcome back. On another thread, you made this comment:

Ray Martinez said: I accept Mayr’s Biological Species Concept (BSC). For example, wolves, coyotes, and feral dogs exist because each only mate with members of their own species. I know you guys have little ability to understand species, but try.

I just wanted to confirm. Are you saying that wolves, coyotes, and dogs are separate species? And you know they are separate species because they can only mate (successfully) with members of their own species? Am I understanding you correctly? Your comment was slightly ambiguous. I just want to make sure that I understand your position, so that I don't misstate it. Thanks.

Yes, separate species; now listen close: the FACT that populations of wolves, coyotes, and feral dogs exist dictates that individual members, as a rule, mate within their own species only.

I've read that inter-species mating sometimes happens in zoos. It was suggested that boredom might have something to do with it.

Hey there Ray, have you come up with anything yet -- any REAL object -- that is not designed? You tried Paley's stone, but that was merely a posited undesigned stone in his thought experiment. Which of course no one challenged because it was HIS made-up analogy, so the posited stone had whatever posited properties he said it had. A useful fiction.

Now, give us an example of a REAL thing that is not designed, and -- most important -- explain how you can determine that god did NOT design and manufacture that rock or whatever, atom by atom, to be exactly THAT rock. Surely god could do that. If your contention is that he wouldn't or doesn't, how do you know?

Just Bob said: Hey there Ray, have you come up with anything yet -- any REAL object -- that is not designed? You tried Paley's stone, but that was merely a posited undesigned stone in his thought experiment. Which of course no one challenged because it was HIS made-up analogy, so the posited stone had whatever posited properties he said it had. A useful fiction. Now, give us an example of a REAL thing that is not designed, and -- most important -- explain how you can determine that god did NOT design and manufacture that rock or whatever, atom by atom, to be exactly THAT rock. Surely god could do that. If your contention is that he wouldn't or doesn't, how do you know?

So Ray were all 5000+ mammals, 7000+ species of amphibian, 10,000+ species of birds and reptiles on the Ark? What about insects and other terrestrial arthropods?

Ray, it would help everybody, and help prevent our mis-attributing beliefs to you, if you would just give us a simple outline of exactly what your beliefs are regarding creation.

When was the creation? Were all present day species formed at that time and have remained 'immutable' since? Does that include all extinct species as well? Do you define your 'immutable' species more or less as biologists currently define species? Was there a flood and ark as described in Genesis, including a complete repopulating of the Earth by the species thus rescued? Were extinct species on the ark, or did they go extinct before the flood, or because of it, or did they ever exist at all? Wouldn't extinction be a very drastic form of 'mutability'? etc. Our inquiring minds want to know.

harold said:

Just Bob said: Hey there Ray, have you come up with anything yet -- any REAL object -- that is not designed? You tried Paley's stone, but that was merely a posited undesigned stone in his thought experiment. Which of course no one challenged because it was HIS made-up analogy, so the posited stone had whatever posited properties he said it had. A useful fiction. Now, give us an example of a REAL thing that is not designed, and -- most important -- explain how you can determine that god did NOT design and manufacture that rock or whatever, atom by atom, to be exactly THAT rock. Surely god could do that. If your contention is that he wouldn't or doesn't, how do you know?

And, once you come up with that example, where did it come from? If I see a real rock and a real watch lying in the forest, where did the rock come from?

Michael Fugate said:

harold said:

Just Bob said: Hey there Ray, have you come up with anything yet -- any REAL object -- that is not designed? You tried Paley's stone, but that was merely a posited undesigned stone in his thought experiment. Which of course no one challenged because it was HIS made-up analogy, so the posited stone had whatever posited properties he said it had. A useful fiction. Now, give us an example of a REAL thing that is not designed, and -- most important -- explain how you can determine that god did NOT design and manufacture that rock or whatever, atom by atom, to be exactly THAT rock. Surely god could do that. If your contention is that he wouldn't or doesn't, how do you know?

And, once you come up with that example, where did it come from? If I see a real rock and a real watch lying in the forest, where did the rock come from?

God designed the rock and put it next to the watch so you could compare the two and believe in God.

Ravi said: We can experimentally demonstrate the notion of the baramin by trying to cross breed between the kinds. A wolf may be able to breed with a dog, since they are the same canid king, but a wolf cannot breed with a panther.

Grumpy Santa said:

Ravi said: We can experimentally demonstrate the notion of the baramin by trying to cross breed between the kinds. A wolf may be able to breed with a dog, since they are the same canid king, but a wolf cannot breed with a panther.

So as an outsider looking in on the conversation, let me see if I get this right... all the speciation we see today is due to rapid speciation after the Noachian flood and is the result of information degradation after the fall... i.e. we're losing information in the genome, becoming less "perfect" over time. Then I see your wolf v. dog example and have to wonder... where did dogs, the descendents of wolves, gain the additional information to be able to digest carbohydrates that wolves do not possess? Somewhere along the way "information" was gained. http://www.nature.com/articles/nature11837.epdf?referrer_access_token=rrqEaB277MABjTKzvC2p3tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PsEGswKvNWIO3XBtlr6qEwCRlfq6ujV3HtpeTkmFXdxe88cFoedtUhBEGDCQIUwRTRRo25rKrYNV8lIVx49Ewogk-vsDffm3ibx-BnOGmHinbR2uDeHE80rJ-4qo-uVP8JMe6Cy2lNdeKBtHj-4nozJk-_jDU7bpQInWbUQcN06Q%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nature.com

Just Bob said:

Grumpy Santa said:

Ravi said: We can experimentally demonstrate the notion of the baramin by trying to cross breed between the kinds. A wolf may be able to breed with a dog, since they are the same canid king, but a wolf cannot breed with a panther.

So as an outsider looking in on the conversation, let me see if I get this right... all the speciation we see today is due to rapid speciation after the Noachian flood and is the result of information degradation after the fall... i.e. we're losing information in the genome, becoming less "perfect" over time. Then I see your wolf v. dog example and have to wonder... where did dogs, the descendents of wolves, gain the additional information to be able to digest carbohydrates that wolves do not possess? Somewhere along the way "information" was gained. http://www.nature.com/articles/nature11837.epdf?referrer_access_token=rrqEaB277MABjTKzvC2p3tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PsEGswKvNWIO3XBtlr6qEwCRlfq6ujV3HtpeTkmFXdxe88cFoedtUhBEGDCQIUwRTRRo25rKrYNV8lIVx49Ewogk-vsDffm3ibx-BnOGmHinbR2uDeHE80rJ-4qo-uVP8JMe6Cy2lNdeKBtHj-4nozJk-_jDU7bpQInWbUQcN06Q%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nature.com

Creationists can make up an answer for any problem: obviously wolves used to be able to digest carbohydrates. It was wolves losing information, not dogs gaining! When magic is always a possibility, the answers are always easy.

Michael Fugate said: So Ray were all 5000+ mammals, 7000+ species of amphibian, 10,000+ species of birds and reptiles on the Ark? What about insects and other terrestrial arthropods?

Ray Martinez said:

Michael Fugate said: So Ray were all 5000+ mammals, 7000+ species of amphibian, 10,000+ species of birds and reptiles on the Ark? What about insects and other terrestrial arthropods?

The Bible does not say representatives of ALL species on earth were on the Ark. It says representatives of all species in a given region of earth were on the Ark.

Just Bob said: Ray, it would help everybody, and help prevent our mis-attributing beliefs to you, if you would just give us a simple outline of exactly what your beliefs are regarding creation.

When was the creation?

Were all present day species formed at that time and have remained 'immutable' since?

Does that include all extinct species as well? Do you define your 'immutable' species more or less as biologists currently define species?

Was there a flood and ark as described in Genesis, including a complete repopulating of the Earth by the species thus rescued?

Were extinct species on the ark, or did they go extinct before the flood, or because of it, or did they ever exist at all? Wouldn't extinction be a very drastic form of 'mutability'? etc. Our inquiring minds want to know.

Ray Martinez said:

Michael Fugate said: So Ray were all 5000+ mammals, 7000+ species of amphibian, 10,000+ species of birds and reptiles on the Ark? What about insects and other terrestrial arthropods?

The Bible does not say representatives of ALL species on earth were on the Ark. It says representatives of all species in a given region of earth were on the Ark.

Ray Martinez said:

Just Bob said: Ray, it would help everybody, and help prevent our mis-attributing beliefs to you, if you would just give us a simple outline of exactly what your beliefs are regarding creation.

I hold the exact position that science held prior to 1860.

When was the creation?

Which creation?

Were all present day species formed at that time and have remained 'immutable' since?

Question assumes the YEC view; the YEC view is TOTAL nonsense because it assumes the main claims of Darwinism true. Prior to 1860 science held each new species created independently therefore each species was considered immutable. And science had very little to say about original creation since science, at the time, accepted earth tens of millions of years in age.

Does that include all extinct species as well? Do you define your 'immutable' species more or less as biologists currently define species?

I accept the BSC. I've already quoted Coyne 2009 in support.

Was there a flood and ark as described in Genesis, including a complete repopulating of the Earth by the species thus rescued?

There was a worldwide flood in 3140 BC; eight human beings survived on the Ark; animals on the Ark repopulated a small portion of the world, the vast majority was repopulated by periodic acts of special or independent creation.

Were extinct species on the ark, or did they go extinct before the flood, or because of it, or did they ever exist at all? Wouldn't extinction be a very drastic form of 'mutability'? etc. Our inquiring minds want to know.

In the context of answers that I just gave these questions don't make sense.

Ray Martinez said:

Michael Fugate said: So Ray were all 5000+ mammals, 7000+ species of amphibian, 10,000+ species of birds and reptiles on the Ark? What about insects and other terrestrial arthropods?

The Bible does not say representatives of ALL species on earth were on the Ark. It says representatives of all species in a given region of earth were on the Ark.

I hold the exact position that science held prior to 1860.

There was a worldwide flood in 3140 BC; eight human beings survived on the Ark; animals on the Ark repopulated a small portion of the world, the vast majority was repopulated by periodic acts of special or independent creation.

Ray wrote:

"There was a worldwide flood in 3140 BC; eight human beings survived on the Ark; animals on the Ark repopulated a small portion of the world, the vast majority was repopulated by periodic acts of special or independent creation."

Really? Do tell. Exactly what is your evidence for these claims? Does it say this in the bible? Is there fossil evidence? Is there genetic evidence? Where is this published? Did you just make stuff up?

If the flood was "worldwide" then why were only representatives from a given region saved? Was god incapable of saving the others? How does this solve the problem of so many species on the ark?

If you want to go back to 1859 Ray, no one is stopping you. Is that really what you want? Why exactly so you think that science before that was correct and science after that was not correct? What changed? Was it science, or was it you/

Thanks for showing Ravi the error of his ways Ray. I'm sure he'll come around to your point of view eventually. Or not.

I wonder if Ray can point to one other person who believes exactly what he does. Or is he the misunderstood and persecuted Only Man to Know the Truth?

Just Bob said: I wonder if Ray can point to one other person who believes exactly what he does. Or is he the misunderstood and persecuted Only Man to Know the Truth?

So when Genesis says God rested on Day 7, it was only for a day. God started back to work on the following Monday and has been pumping out species ever since.....

Ray Martinez said: I hold the exact position that science held prior to 1860.

Daniel said:

Ray Martinez said: I hold the exact position that science held prior to 1860.

The most interesting thing about this, is that the position of science prior to 1860 was that species did come into being naturally, they just didn't know how and why. They already accepted the reality of extinctions, it had been almost 60 years since Cuvier proposed his Age of Fish, Age of Reptiles and his Age of Mammals, uniformitarianism was already the norm, the geologic column had begun its existence some 80 years before, the Earth was understood to be at least a million years old for at least 100 years, and the global flood had been accepted as a regional flood for some 50 years and then finally relegated to myth since the acceptance of the Ice Ages in 1840. So in reality, Ray wants to go back to circa 1750

Ray Martinez said:

Just Bob said: Ray, it would help everybody, and help prevent our mis-attributing beliefs to you, if you would just give us a simple outline of exactly what your beliefs are regarding creation.

I hold the exact position that science held prior to 1860.

Were all present day species formed at that time and have remained 'immutable' since?

Question assumes the YEC view; the YEC view is TOTAL nonsense because it assumes the main claims of Darwinism true. Prior to 1860 science held each new species created independently therefore each species was considered immutable. And science had very little to say about original creation since science, at the time, accepted earth tens of millions of years in age.

I don't believe the dingo genome has been completely sequenced. But it has long been known that dingoes can mate with domestic dogs and successfully produce fertile offspring, but that they generally don't, in the wild, because of different social habits apparently instilled by living in Australia for what is believed to be about forty thousand years. The sparse and generally harsh environment does not favour pack predation, and dingoes therefore are found as solitaries or mated pairs, not in packs, except where they have been joined by feral dogs. This can happen in agricultural regions where stock is watered by bores or dams.

So, until the full DNA evidence comes in, the question is moot. Are dingoes a separate species, or are they simply Canis familiaris? DNA evidence from a nearly complete sequencing of Neanderthal DNA demonstrated that Neanderthals were sufficiently genetically different to rate calling them a separate species, Homo Neanderthalis, rather than having the each-way bet of H. sapiens Neanderthalis. But the dingo is a bit closer to its parent clade than that.

This, of course, is exactly what evolution says would happen, and exactly what Ray thinks can't happen.

phhht said: Ray doesn't want to go anywhere near reality. If he doesn't accept anything since 1860, then he doesn't accept Maxwell's equations, for example. I guess he's posting by the power of prayer.

Scott F said: According to Ray, there are only 63 naturally occurring elements, as those are all that were defined by science in 1860.

prongs said:

Scott F said: According to Ray, there are only 63 naturally occurring elements, as those are all that were defined by science in 1860.

Scott, please be fair. Clearly God created, by Special Creation, the elements beyond number 63, after 1860. And as God continues to create new elements in the future, Man will discover them in due time.

The existence of radioactive elements in nature is evidence that the earth is not infinitely old, for whatever that is worth.

Ray claims to be a Paleyite. Let's consider this enhanced scenario: You are walking along a path and you encounter a stone, a watch, and a snake. Which are "intelligently designed"? Humans as godlike intelligent designer analogies make both watches and stones (from diamonds to countertops to building blocks), but don't make live snakes. What pray tell can we conclude from this? See how many different explanations you are able to develop?

One question may possibly have dwelt in the reader's mind during the perusal of these observations, namely, Why should not the Deity have given to the animal the faculty of vision at once? ... Why resort to contrivance, where power is omnipotent? Contrivance, by its very definition and nature, is the refuge of imperfection. To have recourse to expedients, implies difficulty, impediment, restraint, defect of power. ... amongst other answers which may be given to it; beside reasons of which probably we are ignorant, one answer is this: It is only by the display of contrivance, that the existence, the agency, the wisdom of the Deity, could be testified to his rational creatures.

TomS said: Indeed, doesn't the display of contrivance tend to imply difficulty, impediment, restraint, or defect of power, rather than omnipotence, omniscience and wisdom?

phhht said:

TomS said: Indeed, doesn't the display of contrivance tend to imply difficulty, impediment, restraint, or defect of power, rather than omnipotence, omniscience and wisdom?

Doesn't it imply deceit?

Scott F said:

prongs said:

Scott F said: According to Ray, there are only 63 naturally occurring elements, as those are all that were defined by science in 1860.

Scott, please be fair. Clearly God created, by Special Creation, the elements beyond number 63, after 1860. And as God continues to create new elements in the future, Man will discover them in due time.

While looking up that number, I discovered that "they" have actually found trace amounts of "primordial" plutonium. My understanding is that the reason we don't find "natural" elements heavier than uranium is that their half lives are too short. If they actually were created, they have since decayed into lighter elements.

Just Bob said:

phhht said:

TomS said: Indeed, doesn't the display of contrivance tend to imply difficulty, impediment, restraint, or defect of power, rather than omnipotence, omniscience and wisdom?

Doesn't it imply deceit?

Ah, but to some fundies I've met, such deceit by god is a feature, not a bug. See, only the unsaved are deceived by things like fossils and the geologic column. Good, born again Christians, who know the Truth, aren't deceived for a minute, and they smirk about being in on God's little jokes that send the rest of us to Hell.

TomS said:

Just Bob said:

phhht said:

TomS said: Indeed, doesn't the display of contrivance tend to imply difficulty, impediment, restraint, or defect of power, rather than omnipotence, omniscience and wisdom?

Doesn't it imply deceit?

Ah, but to some fundies I've met, such deceit by god is a feature, not a bug. See, only the unsaved are deceived by things like fossils and the geologic column. Good, born again Christians, who know the Truth, aren't deceived for a minute, and they smirk about being in on God's little jokes that send the rest of us to Hell.

Design is recognized in contrivance. It is the mark of the limit of power to resort to design. To make something according to a design is to follow rules.

How does Paley’s suggestion not suffer from the same problem: Why should not the Deity have given to us the knowledge of the existence, the agency, and the wisdom of the Deity without the display of contrivance. Indeed, doesn’t the display of contrivance tend to imply difficulty, impediment, restraint, or defect of power, rather than omnipotence, omniscience and wisdom?

Contrivance, by its very definition and nature, is the refuge of imperfection. To have recourse to expedients, implies difficulty, impediment, restraint, defect of power. … amongst other answers which may be given to it; beside reasons of which probably we are ignorant, one answer is this: It is only by the display of contrivance, that the existence, the agency, the wisdom of the Deity, could be testified to his rational creatures.

prongs said:

Scott F said:

prongs said:

Scott F said: According to Ray, there are only 63 naturally occurring elements, as those are all that were defined by science in 1860.

Scott, please be fair. Clearly God created, by Special Creation, the elements beyond number 63, after 1860. And as God continues to create new elements in the future, Man will discover them in due time.

While looking up that number, I discovered that "they" have actually found trace amounts of "primordial" plutonium. My understanding is that the reason we don't find "natural" elements heavier than uranium is that their half lives are too short. If they actually were created, they have since decayed into lighter elements.

Scott, Scott, Scott, The reason they find "primordial" Plutonium is that it was recently created, in just the right amounts, in just the right places. The reason we don't find elements heavier than Uranium is that they have been created in extremely small quantities AND their half-lives are very short. They're out there, recently created, and God allows them to form in high-energy cyclotron colliders, so that Man can discover them. See how easy that was? (There's no sense arguing with Ray.)