Is TO.org actively maintained?

[Christopher]

Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org? Some of the more useful articles date back almost 20 years and would be wonderful to read in an updated format. The last POTM dates to March 2010.

I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint claims around the issues.

[Ron O]

On Mar 29, 4:04 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org? Some of the more useful articles date back almost 20 years and would be wonderful to read in an updated format. The last POTM dates to March 2010.
>
> I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint claims around the issues.

I believe that it is still active. There was a thread in the last
year about adding some modification to one of the articles, and people
still vote for post of the month.

The fact is that the intelligent design creationist scam was still
born. It never really got off the ground and the guys that were
perpetrating the scam not only dumped scientific creationism into the
toilet, but ended up running a stupid bait and switch scam on their
own creationist support base. No one ever got the science of
intelligent design to teach in the public schools and the switch scam
is just the old scientific creationist negative arguments and
naysaying.

Basically nothing has changed in decades, and things are even going
backwards.

Ron Okimoto

[Arkalen]

But the state of the science changes, and every once in awhile there
will even be some scientific discovery creationists will seize on as
some kind of argument, which can result in claims which aren't treated
on the TO.org site when they very well could.

I think I recall something about water-bearing rocks (I think Suzanne
brought them up although I'd seen them before) "explaining" where the
flood waters came from or went to, which AFAICT wasn't in the index of
creationist claims when I looked.

It's a small thing, but it's too bad given how comprehensive the index is.

And though creationist claims hardly ever change, the state of the
science of evolution does. So for example some things like some
transitional fossil FAQs are no longer as complete as they could be.

So although the site isn't dead, I think it could still be more active
than it is. (obviously not an indictment on anybody taking care of it,
it's hard work)

[Friar Broccoli]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:04:47 -0700 (PDT), Christopher
<christophe...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org?
>Some of the more useful articles date back almost 20 years
>and would be wonderful to read in an updated format.

You don't like the choice of font?

>The last POTM dates to March 2010.

Already prepared and in place. They will be linked in, on the 31st
after the authors have given me their comments.

>I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org
>perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint
>claims around the issues.

Are you an Old Earth or Young Earth creationist?

You've already said you don't believe the earth is fixed. What about
- the creation of all languages after the Tower of Babel?
- the saving of all animals in Noah's ark?

--
Friar Broccoli (Robert Keith Elias), Quebec Canada
I consider ALL arguments in support of my views

[Mark Isaak]

On 3/29/12 2:04 AM, Christopher wrote:
> Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org? [...]

Most of the people involved with it are devoting their energies to The
Panda's Thumb blog now.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume

[Christopher]

On Thursday, March 29, 2012 3:31:51 PM UTC+2, Friar Broccoli wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:04:47 -0700 (PDT), Christopher

> <> wrote:
>
> >Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org?
> >Some of the more useful articles date back almost 20 years
> >and would be wonderful to read in an updated format.
>
> You don't like the choice of font?
>
> >The last POTM dates to March 2010.
>
> Already prepared and in place. They will be linked in, on the 31st
> after the authors have given me their comments.
>
>
> >I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org
> >perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint
> >claims around the issues.
>
> Are you an Old Earth or Young Earth creationist?

Young

>
> You've already said you don't believe the earth is fixed. What about
> - the creation of all languages after the Tower of Babel?

I have not studied this issue, so I cannot comment. Thanks for giving me something to look into though.

> - the saving of all animals in Noah's ark?

Not entirely sure about this one, I guess it depends on how you define "kind". But in general, I believe all non-aquatic animals today are descended from the ark, most likely from a set of generic ancestors for each "kind".

[Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org]

At this point, what intrigues me the most about
this discussion is that it appears to be civil on
both sides. Sad to say, it does tend to happen
that one or the other has somebody turn nasty,
and be repaid in kind, which really doesn't get
us anywhere. Still, there are many questions
that we can explore together.

We occasionally also get outright pranksters.

So, apparently you believe that Noah's Ark
actually happened. People do get provoked by
a direct attack on their belief, but - well,
would you like to say something about when
that may have been?

[Friar Broccoli]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:43:07 -0700 (PDT), Christopher
<christophe...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, March 29, 2012 3:31:51 PM UTC+2, Friar Broccoli wrote:
>> On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:04:47 -0700 (PDT), Christopher
>> <> wrote:
>>
>> >Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org?
>> >Some of the more useful articles date back almost 20 years
>> >and would be wonderful to read in an updated format.
>>
>> You don't like the choice of font?
>>
>> >The last POTM dates to March 2010.
>>
>> Already prepared and in place. They will be linked in, on the 31st
>> after the authors have given me their comments.
>>
>>
>> >I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org
>> >perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint
>> >claims around the issues.

.

>> Are you an Old Earth or Young Earth creationist?
>
>Young

OK. A couple of standard starter questions:

The following shows the nearest 63 million galaxies all within 1 billion
light years of Earth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Superclusters_atlasoftheuniverse.gif

(The Andromeda galaxy [M31] is the nearest to us at 2 million ly.
distance.)

Q01: Since light takes one year to travel one light year (ly), how could
the light from remote galaxies have reached us in 6000 (or so) years?

Q02: How do you explain the roughly 10,000 or so species of Trilobite
and 1,000 species of Dinosaur found in the fossil record:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilobite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur

?

>> You've already said you don't believe the earth is fixed. What about
>> - the creation of all languages after the Tower of Babel?

.

> I have not studied this issue, so I cannot comment. Thanks for
> giving me something to look into though.

The Tower of Babel story is of interest because it tells a story about
the origin of different languages. Since languages change so that
roughly every 1,000 years modern speakers could not have understood
ancient speakers, we know that different languages will rapidly evolve
by themselves without help from God. Therefore the Tower of Babel story
is completely unnecessary.

Since the Tower of Babel story is therefore implausible, might not the
recent creation of immutable "kinds" by God also be implausible?

>> - the saving of all animals in Noah's ark?
>
> Not entirely sure about this one, I guess it depends on how
> you define "kind". But in general, I believe all non-aquatic
> animals today are descended from the ark, most likely from a
> set of generic ancestors for each "kind".

OK. Again two starter questions:

From Genesis 6:16 we learn that the Ark had a single window and a single
door. To prevent methane buildup and suffocation, modern livestock
carriers have either mechanical ventilation or an open design:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_carrier

Genesis 7:24 tells us the animals were on the ark for at least 150 days
so:

Q01: How did the animals breath (let alone eat) during that time?

Q02: How did the Kangaroos get back to Australia and why did they go
only to Australia? Note that this is a general problem: Many Islands
(Madagascar, New Caledonia) have many unique (endemic) species.


Hope that wasn't too long.
Bye for now.

[Christopher]

Dr. Jason Lisle over at AiG has published a lengthy paper proposing a model for how starlight may have travelled vast distances in relatively short time, based on synchronized clocks.

You can read the full paper here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/contents/379/arj/v3/anisotropic_synchrony_convention.pdf

>
> Q02: How do you explain the roughly 10,000 or so species of Trilobite
> and 1,000 species of Dinosaur found in the fossil record:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilobite
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur

I believe Dinosaurs and trilobites both existed pre-flood and probably after it as well. Various suggestions have been made as to why they died out, assuming that they actually did (I am not too sure how much credibility can be given to "sightings" of dinosaurs by cryptozoologists).

If they were on the earth as well before the Flood, it is reasonable to believe that we should find them in the fossil record.

>
> ?
>
> >> You've already said you don't believe the earth is fixed. What about
> >> - the creation of all languages after the Tower of Babel?
>
> .
>
> > I have not studied this issue, so I cannot comment. Thanks for
> > giving me something to look into though.
>
> The Tower of Babel story is of interest because it tells a story about
> the origin of different languages. Since languages change so that
> roughly every 1,000 years modern speakers could not have understood
> ancient speakers, we know that different languages will rapidly evolve
> by themselves without help from God. Therefore the Tower of Babel story
> is completely unnecessary.

True, but you would agree with me that unnecessary does not equate to untrue.

>
> Since the Tower of Babel story is therefore implausible, might not the
> recent creation of immutable "kinds" by God also be implausible?
>
> >> - the saving of all animals in Noah's ark?
> >
> > Not entirely sure about this one, I guess it depends on how
> > you define "kind". But in general, I believe all non-aquatic
> > animals today are descended from the ark, most likely from a
> > set of generic ancestors for each "kind".
>
> OK. Again two starter questions:
>
> From Genesis 6:16 we learn that the Ark had a single window and a single
> door. To prevent methane buildup and suffocation, modern livestock
> carriers have either mechanical ventilation or an open design:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_carrier
>
> Genesis 7:24 tells us the animals were on the ark for at least 150 days
> so:
>
> Q01: How did the animals breath (let alone eat) during that time?
>

John Woodmorappe has published a length study on the feasibility of Noahs Ark, it is available for reference here:
http://www.bestbiblescience.org/ark/index.htm

Interesting question also...I am not really sure just what manner of animals were on the Ark itself. The mainstream view among creationists is that they were all parts of their representative "kinds" (which is generally defined as a generic archetype). It is also possible Noah brought only young animals, which would significantly reduce the need for space, air and fodder.

> Q02: How did the Kangaroos get back to Australia and why did they go
> only to Australia? Note that this is a general problem: Many Islands
> (Madagascar, New Caledonia) have many unique (endemic) species.
>

Very good question, I believe several creationists have attempted to give answers to this one. I would have to research it further for myself...for now, I will refer to an answer from AiG:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/how-did-animals-spread

>
> Hope that wasn't too long.
> Bye for now.
>

No problem! I apologize if I provided relatively few answers of my own, rather than a lot of references. I hope you would still find it worth discussing, I of course promise I will (at least attempt, depending on how technical and long they are) read references you cite as well related to the topic.

[Christopher]

According to AiG (I have not verified it, but found the same number in another source as well), the Flood happened 4360 years ago, or about 2348 BC. You can read the detailed calculations here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2012/03/09/feedback-timeline-for-the-flood

[Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org]

On Friday, March 30, 2012 9:36:44 AM UTC+1, Christopher wrote:
> According to AiG (I have not verified it, but found the same number in another source as well), the Flood happened 4360 years ago, or about 2348 BC. You can read the detailed calculations here:
>
> http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2012/03/09/feedback-timeline-for-the-flood

And - I really /don't/ want to start the fight
that usually happens around an immovable object
that is talking about this sort of thing, but,
that would have been for every country in the
world, I suppose?

We go over this every time we get a floodie.
But I personally feel that it isn't directly
related to the origin of of living things,
and so is off-topic.

You may have seen at AIG or elsewhere an argument
that since dinosaurs clearly were living at the
time of the flood (since their fossils are buried
in rock beneath our feet), Noah must have obeyed
the command to bring /all/ of the living things
(except trilobites, which only lived in water),
but after he released them, they died in the
terrible Ice Age that imrediately followed the
Flood and which the bible does not bother to
mention happening. Then again, I wonder if we
can rule out that Noah sacrificed them all.
It was a big sacrifice. Careful readers also
may wonder how the bible describes God sending
Noah seven animals of each of the sacrificial
kinds which still go onto the Ark two by two.
(To save you the trouble of asking AIG, I think
you're supposed to believe that it means
seven pairs. I think other readers believe that
two distinct versions of Noah's story are fused
together, one with twos and one with sevens.)

I didn't know that Archbishop James Ussher’s
_Annals of the World_ was available in softcover.
Fortunately, I haven't yet bought a copy.

[Friar Broccoli]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 01:31:30 -0700 (PDT), Christopher
<christophe...@gmail.com> wrote:

[snipping old lead]

>>>>> I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org
>>>>> perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint
>>>>> claims around the issues.
>>
>> .
>>
>>>> Are you an Old Earth or Young Earth creationist?
>>>
>>> Young
>>
>> OK. A couple of standard starter questions:
>>
>> The following shows the nearest 63 million galaxies all within 1 billion
>> light years of Earth:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Superclusters_atlasoftheuniverse.gif
>>
>> (The Andromeda galaxy [M31] is the nearest to us at 2 million ly.
>> distance.)
>>


>> Q01: Since light takes one year to travel one light year (ly), how could
>> the light from remote galaxies have reached us in 6000 (or so) years?
>
> Dr. Jason Lisle over at AiG has published a lengthy paper proposing a model
> for how starlight may have travelled vast distances in relatively short time,
> based on synchronized clocks.

.

> You can read the full paper here:
> http://www.answersingenesis.org/contents/379/arj/v3/anisotropic_synchrony_convention.pdf

Basically, this is an attempt to solve the biblically literalist
"distant starlight 'problem'" by selecting an arbitrary reference frame
(very similar to the one Tony often uses to try and make the earth the
unmoving center or the universe - also by invoking relativity)

The problem with all such models is that they ignore the fact that the
universe is physically real, and that the passage of time has real
consequences:

The most obvious consequence is that light that has travelled billions
of light years (ly) passes through many (sometimes up to 15)
interstellar gas clouds, and this passage knocks out hydrogen absorption
lines in the light we see at various frequencies depending on how long
ago the light went through the cloud:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman-alpha_forest

There is also a light-stretching or light-disappearance problem
depending on how you look at it:

As light-stretching: If God brought all the light in 6000 years ago then
now the light (created during a very short period of time) from those
stars is stretched over thousands, millions, or billions of light years
consequently galaxies as close as millions of ly away should be
redshifted to the point where they are essentially invisible. (If you
don't understand why this is so, ask and I will try to explain in more
detail - however note that I need you to try and explain as best you can
what you don't understand.)

As light-disappearance: If God brought all the light in 6000 years ago
then the light (created during a very short period of time) from those
stars should have been visible for four days and then simply vanished,
until becoming visible millions or billions of years later when
subsequently created light finally arrived. (If you're confused, try
thinking about WHERE the light is in transit - is it near earth or near
the originating star, and why.)

There is also a related time problem associated with Cepheid variable
stars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheid_variable

Basically the stretched light should make them pulse MUCH more slowly
than is observed.

>> Q02: How do you explain the roughly 10,000 or so species of Trilobite
>> and 1,000 species of Dinosaur found in the fossil record:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilobite
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur

.

> I believe Dinosaurs and trilobites both existed pre-flood and probably after
> it as well. Various suggestions have been made as to why they died out,
> assuming that they actually did
> (I am not too sure how much credibility can be
> given to "sightings" of dinosaurs by cryptozoologists).

Such sightings are important because they show that people (including
scientists) with strong beliefs will "see" things that simply are not
there.

> If they were on the earth as well before the Flood, it is reasonable to
> believe that we should find them in the fossil record.

The basic problem with this argument (apart from the radio active dating
data) is that trilobyte fossil species are found in groups. Some are
found only in Cambrian rocks, others only in Ordovician, or only
Silurian, or only in Devonian, and none at all have ever been found
after the Permian (rocks created 250 million years ago). In addition
trilobites are frequently found together with other species, and when
they are, they are invariably found with other species that are also
long extinct. For example:

http://www.trilobites.info/Burgess.htm

Consequently trilobite fossils have never been found with either crabs
(which first evolved 200 million years ago) or modern fish.

The same situation applies with Dinosaurs. Certain species are found
only in Triassic rock, others only in Jurassic or Cretaceous and
excluding birds none is ever found with recent large mammals. For
example horse/equid ancestor fossils are abundant but none has ever been
found with Dinosaur fossils.

>>>> You've already said you don't believe the earth is fixed. What about
>>>> - the creation of all languages after the Tower of Babel?
>>
>> .
>>
>>> I have not studied this issue, so I cannot comment. Thanks for
>>> giving me something to look into though.

.

>> The Tower of Babel story is of interest because it tells a story about
>> the origin of different languages. Since languages change so that
>> roughly every 1,000 years modern speakers could not have understood
>> ancient speakers, we know that different languages will rapidly evolve
>> by themselves without help from God. Therefore the Tower of Babel story
>> is completely unnecessary.
>
> True, but you would agree with me that unnecessary does not equate to untrue.

In this case unnecessary looks a lot like untrue. Consider the reason
why God thought creating separate languages was necessary.

From the Darby Translation (what translation do you prefer?) of Genesis
11:

5 And Jehovah came down to see the city and the tower which the children
of men
built.
6 And Jehovah said, Behold, the people is one, and have all one
language; and
this have they begun to do. And now will they be hindered in nothing that they
meditate doing.
7 Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may
not
understand one another's speech.

As you can see, it was not necessary for God to create separate
languages since it would have happened naturally anyway within a
thousand years, but that was His stated motive.

This quite apart from the absurdity of the idea that, even united,
bronze age herders could have presented any kind of threat to God.

>> Since the Tower of Babel story is therefore implausible, might not the
>> recent creation of immutable "kinds" by God also be implausible?
>>
>>>> - the saving of all animals in Noah's ark?
>>>
>>> Not entirely sure about this one, I guess it depends on how
>>> you define "kind". But in general, I believe all non-aquatic
>>> animals today are descended from the ark, most likely from a
>>> set of generic ancestors for each "kind".
>>
>> OK. Again two starter questions:
>>
>> From Genesis 6:16 we learn that the Ark had a single window and a single
>> door. To prevent methane buildup and suffocation, modern livestock
>> carriers have either mechanical ventilation or an open design:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_carrier
>>
>> Genesis 7:24 tells us the animals were on the ark for at least 150 days
>> so:
>>
>> Q01: How did the animals breath (let alone eat) during that time?
>>
>
> John Woodmorappe has published a length study on the feasibility of Noahs Ark,
> it is available for reference here:
> http://www.bestbiblescience.org/ark/index.htm

Woodmorappe claims that:
"The ark "window" was actually a long "slot" under the roof eaves. It
was a particularly important feature, as it provided needed ventilation
and illumination."

without providing any other detail. A ventilation engineer would laugh
at the idea that this could provide adequate ventilation (or lighting)
for a 3 story vessel. Among other things the wind velocity needed for
such natural ventilation to work would certainly have carried enough
water with it to quickly sink the ark.

> Interesting question also...I am not really sure just what manner of animals
> were on the Ark itself. The mainstream view among creationists is that they
> were all parts of their representative "kinds" (which is generally defined as
> a generic archetype). It is also possible Noah brought only young animals,
> which would significantly reduce the need for space, air and fodder.

Would these be milk feeders? Small animals would need much more
attention than mature ones. And anyway most animals grow to full size
within 150 days. Without exercise young animals would have grown to
adulthood without adequate muscles making the trip home even more
interesting. Neither lack of light nor size would have been a problem
for animals like bats, but I wonder what Noah fed 1200 species of bat
and how he restrained them with only eight hands on board?

>> Q02: How did the Kangaroos get back to Australia and why did they go
>> only to Australia? Note that this is a general problem: Many Islands
>> (Madagascar, New Caledonia) have many unique (endemic) species.

.

> Very good question, I believe several creationists have attempted to give
> answers to this one. I would have to research it further for myself...for now,
> I will refer to an answer from AiG:
> http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/how-did-animals-spread

That article deals with non-problems, avoiding the real issues. It
admits for example that there are no kangaroo fossils between the middle
east and Australia, but doesn't deal with the fact that there is an
extensive fossil record of Kangaroo ancestors in Australia. Nor does it
explain why almost all Marsupials (except Opossums) also went to
Australia, including marsupial "cats", "dogs", "squirrels", "pigs" etc.

In short the evolutionary account is well evidenced and consistent,
while the Biblical account looks, well, just plain nutty.

>> Hope that wasn't too long.
>> Bye for now.

.

> No problem! I apologize if I provided relatively few answers of my own, rather
> than a lot of references. I hope you would still find it worth discussing, I
> of course promise I will (at least attempt, depending on how technical and
> long they are) read references you cite as well related to the topic.

Replying to many different topics at the same time is also difficult for
me, and I am sure that just reading my reply here was a real chore, if
indeed you got this far, so feel free to focus on just one issue at a
time. I ask only that if you want to focus on the difficulty of some
aspect of evolution, you say what biblical explanation is preferred, and
why it is a better explanation.

[Garamond Lethe]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:36:03 -0400, Friar Broccoli wrote:


> In short the evolutionary account is well evidenced and consistent,
> while the Biblical account looks, well, just plain nutty.

For sake of civility, I assume you meant to say "this particular
interpretation of the Biblical account".

[Friar Broccoli]

Don't know what "civility" has to do with it, but yes I should have
refereed to "this interpretation". Thanks for catching that.

[Garamond Lethe]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:58:14 -0400, Friar Broccoli wrote:

> On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:47:02 -0500, Garamond Lethe
> <cartogr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:36:03 -0400, Friar Broccoli wrote:
>>
>>
>>> In short the evolutionary account is well evidenced and consistent,
>>> while the Biblical account looks, well, just plain nutty.
>
> .
>
>>For sake of civility, I assume you meant to say "this particular
>>interpretation of the Biblical account".
>
> Don't know what "civility" has to do with it, but yes I should have
> refereed to "this interpretation". Thanks for catching that.

The "civility" was referencing Robert's comment upthread.

"At this point, what intrigues me the most about this discussion is that
it appears to be civil on both sides."

I thought you had made the comment (it's very much in character for both
of you).

Apologies for the confusion. Diet Coke is now in hand and clear thinking
will be following along shortly afterwards.

[Mark Buchanan]

On Mar 29, 5:04 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org? Some of the more useful articles date back almost 20 years and would be wonderful to read in an updated format. The last POTM dates to March 2010.
>
> I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint claims around the issues.

Glad to see a creationist actually take the site seriously.

Your original post to this group in Feb. proved to be quite an
entrance and was quite interesting. Did that exchange change any of
your thinking on genetics?

Mark

[Tom McDonald]

On 3/30/2012 3:36 AM, Christopher wrote:
> On Thursday, March 29, 2012 9:01:30 PM UTC+2, Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc wrote:

<snip>

>> So, apparently you believe that Noah's Ark
>> actually happened. People do get provoked by
>> a direct attack on their belief, but - well,
>> would you like to say something about when
>> that may have been?
>
> According to AiG (I have not verified it, but found the same number in another source as well), the Flood happened 4360 years ago, or about 2348 BC. You can read the detailed calculations here:
>
> http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2012/03/09/feedback-timeline-for-the-flood
>

How do you square this with written records going back more than 600
years before this time, and with the fact that the Giza pyramids (not to
mention the earlier pyramids and mastabas) were built one to two
centuries before this date--and none show any sign of having been
submerged in brackish water?

[John S. Wilkins]

We have no money to maintain it and most of the old volunteers now lack
time to do it. It began to decay when the feedback was hacked by
someone.

However, Jim Foley's marvellous Hominid FAQ is actively updated.

--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre

[Christopher]

It did absolutely demonstrate that the issue is not nearly as simple as any superficial take on it would ever allow.

It has lead me (in conjunction with other studies) to a certain feeling of, I don't know, intellectual despair if you will.
There is simply so much data, so many arguments, so many studies, so many criticisms, so many factors that the layman (who normally lacks the technial credentials to even properly evaluate the data) simply feels helpless in trying to form an educated opinion. For every point there are a hundred counterpoints, and each counterpoint raises a hundred replies on its own. So while it is deeply fascinating to me, it frustrates me even more.

[Garamond Lethe]

One of the great pleasures I took from grad school was learning how to
get around this problem.

First caveat: We're now in a world where "educated" means having access
to the library of a good research university (and knowing how to use
it). If I have access to a copy of "Linkage disequilibrium in the human
genome" and you don't, it doesn't matter if you're smarter than I am.
You have to rely to me to tell you what's in that paper. The
digitization of decades of the primary literature has amplified this
disparity. If you want to evaluate claims and counterclaims for
yourself, the price of admission is at least part-time university
enrollment.

Second caveat: Learning to read the primary literature is a skill that's
easiest to pick up in a grad seminar class. You can figure it out on
your own, but you'll have a lot more frustration and you'll make a lot of
avoidable mistakes. Each community will have an understanding of what
can be assumed and what needs to be explicit and you'll have to read
several dozen papers before you can start evaluating the quality of the
work with any competence. If you still want to dive in, then read the
abstract first, then the conclusion, then the introduction, then the
discussion. You'll know you're getting good when you start skimming the
bibliography early on to see if there's any papers or authors you
recognize.

So here's the trick: pick one claim and master it.

Here's how this works in practice.

When you posted your query about Carter's genetics paper I stopped
reading when I got to his first citation. He made a claim that "there is
abundant evidence that the entire human race came from two people just a
few thousand years ago" and I decided to focus my efforts on that
particular claim.

That in turn led to Nelson's paper in the journal of creation, and again
I focused on one claim there and followed up to the paper he cited
(Dorit). Then I read Dorit and read several of the papers that came
later that cited Dorit and improved on the work. (I also had to consult
an evolution textbook and a few wikipedia articles to figure out what a
few of the more technical terms meant.)

Having done all of that reading do I understand linkage disequilibrium?
Hell, no. But I have a general idea of what's involved, I have a decent
sense that this technique is well-regarded in the community, and most
important I can see the error bounds decreasing over time. And based on
this I'm confident that Nelson's claim about linkage disequilibrium was
wrong.

I then turned to Nelson's next claim, followed up the citation to Reich,
and figured out straightaway that Reich didn't say what Nelson said it
did. (I don't think Nelson was clever enough to lie about this; he
probably just didn't read the paper carefully.)


So let's take a step back. I've invested a few hours of highly technical
reading to figure out that the first two claims of Nelson are wrong and
that Carter shouldn't have relied on Nelson for support. Nelson makes a
lot more claims in his paper that I didn't look at and I haven't even
gotten to the meat of Carter's work yet. I could easily spend two months
doing this kind of analysis on Carter's paper and that's just one paper
out of the thousands of creationists publication that are out there.

But all is not lost.

After doing a couple of dozen deep dives like I've illustrated above
you'll begin to realize that, if a creationist makes a scientific claim
in support of creationism, the claim is either wrong or trivial. After
another couple dozen deep dives you'll start to see patterns in the
errors. And at some point you'll be comfortable reaching the (tentative)
conclusion that if the first fifty claims you investigated were wrong or
trivial then then you can start making increasingly confident predictions
about creationist claims in general.


Let's take another step back.

You mentioned points and counterpoints. That's very much a debating
approach. If you're talking to folks who don't have access to the peer-
reviewed literature then that's probably the only model for a
conversation you have. You can enumerate your beliefs, they can
enumerate their beliefs, and there's really no way for one person to
convince the other.

The approach I've outlined doesn't have that problem.

1. Nelson says Dorit's linkage disequilibrium work supports a population
bottleneck consistent with a worldwide flood. Dorit was doing
exploratory work and his error bars were so wide that it supports a
population bottleneck last Tuesday. Subsequent work (that was available
to Nelson) improved on this technique and excludes a flood-related
bottleneck. Nelson got it wrong, full stop.

2. Nelson says Reich's population bottleneck supports a worldwide
flood. I say Reich specifically mentioned that no bottleneck was found
in the Nigerian population he studied, and I'm happy to send you a copy
of Reich with the relevant passage highlighted. Nelson got it wrong,
full stop.


And that, in microcosm, is the evolution/creation "debate".

To sum up: don't waste your time with points and counterpoints. Find a
claim that interests you and run it to ground. Then repeat. There are
lots of folks here who would be eager to help. If you need a paper
that's paywalled, drop us a line and it will magically appear in your
inbox. If you like, write up your results and post them here. If you've
picked a claim and have no idea where to start, drop me a line or post
here. It gets a lot easier with practice.

[John S. Wilkins]

Nominated

[Friar Broccoli]

On Sun, 1 Apr 2012 09:41:00 +1100, jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins)
wrote:

>Nominated

Seconded.

[Mark Buchanan]

On Mar 31, 7:56 pm, Friar Broccoli <elia...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Apr 2012 09:41:00 +1100, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins)

Thirded

[Mark Buchanan]

On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Christopher, your honesty continues to impress me and, no doubt,
several others here.

As a layman myself (having an undergrad degree in engineering not only
doesn't count but is considered a detriment) I feel your pain. The
advice I try to give to Christian creationists is this:

If you want to engage evolutionists then follow the example of Paul
who 'became all things to all people' to convince some of his message.
At minimum that would require a good understanding of why
evolutionists are evolutionists. It is not necessary (and likely
detrimental) to get involved in the 'debate' to do this. There are
lots of resources for the layman to do this. This approach is also the
best way to answer the question 'Is evolution true?' (If that is one
of the questions you are working on.)

Mark

[bobmy...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:46:51 PM UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
> wrote:

> > > > I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint claims around the issues.
> >
> > > Glad to see a creationist actually take the site seriously.

[much deleted]

>
> Christopher, your honesty continues to impress me and, no doubt,
> several others here.

Agreed; I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, after having given up on this group as an immense waste of time years ago. I was getting very close to doing that again, but I have to admit that Christopher's refreshing honesty and apparent attitude of sincere inquiry has prevented that, at least for now.

Christopher, if you don't mind the question: what is it that caused you to take the creationist position? In other words, can you tell us why it is that you are, or describe yourself as, a "creationist"?

A related question might be: do you believe it is impossible to be a believer in God, a "good Christian," or whatever other labels (besides "creationist") you might also choose to identify yourself with, and NOT also be a young-Earth creationist?

Bob M.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <A1ndr.9627$Ja1....@newsfe02.iad>,

Not to mention the Egyptians and other cultures with writing left us
no records of being under water? We should have some records of the
problems with, for example, breathing and raising crops.

--
This space unintentionally left blank.

[Christopher]

Thanks for the long and very inspiring reply, and sorry for being somewhat late to respond. I see your point with this methodology, and it really makes sense. I will keep it in mind as I look into these issues in the future. It is also one of the reasons why my conversation with F. Broccoli might be getting a bit stale from henceforth...I am sure we can rectify that one way or the other though. Again, much appreciated!

[Christopher]

On Sunday, April 1, 2012 3:07:28 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:46:51 PM UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> > On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > > > I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint claims around the issues.
> > >
> > > > Glad to see a creationist actually take the site seriously.
>
> [much deleted]
>
> >
> > Christopher, your honesty continues to impress me and, no doubt,
> > several others here.
>
> Agreed; I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, after having given up on this group as an immense waste of time years ago. I was getting very close to doing that again, but I have to admit that Christopher's refreshing honesty and apparent attitude of sincere inquiry has prevented that, at least for now.
>

First of all, forgive the late reply! I will try to keep up to speed with updates on this thread the coming days.

> Christopher, if you don't mind the question: what is it that caused you to take the creationist position? In other words, can you tell us why it is that you are, or describe yourself as, a "creationist"?

I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one, based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts available. You could say I am taking a default position with regard to the Christian faith.

That said, I am genuinely open to the possibility that I could be completely wrong. The claims and implications of Christianity are so enormous, that I simply cannot afford to be wrong about it. Thus, I am continuously questioning to see if what I believe to be true really is true.

It has been a disturbing trip in many ways. You could say I have a natural wariness of establishments, and I do not take consensus as a reliable guide to truth. I realize that YEC:ism has several problems, but at the same time I cannot help but feel that there is a certain closed-mindedness in the broader scientific community to controversial evidence. The creationists seem to have so many claims that are either not being addressed or simply cannot be debunked...again, remember that this is from the perspective of a layman who has not looked at all the facts. It might very well be that the YEC:s really do not have a point after all. That is what I want to find out.

>
> A related question might be: do you believe it is impossible to be a believer in God, a "good Christian," or whatever other labels (besides "creationist") you might also choose to identify yourself with, and NOT also be a young-Earth creationist?

I don't know yet, personally. As I'm sure you know, there is a wide spectra of creationists, many espousing the old earth model in various forms. Some of these are openly critical of YEC:ism and attack it directly (for example www.answersincreation.org, which is a ministry almost purely devoted to debunking YEC claims). There are also those that espouse the "virtual time" model, which is essentially a sophisticated version of the "appearance of age" view. They literally believe that the universe LOOKS billions of years old, but hold that all events prior to about 7000BC are simply "virtual" events - they never really happened.

In the end, what really constitutes a good Christian is someone who believes and sticks with the truth no matter what. I want to follow that, and see where the evidence really leads.

[Christopher]

On Saturday, March 31, 2012 3:24:07 AM UTC+2, John S. Wilkins wrote:

> Christopher <christopher.svanefalk> wrote:
>
> > Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org? Some of the
> > more useful articles date back almost 20 years and would be wonderful to
> > read in an updated format. The last POTM dates to March 2010.
> >
> > I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org
> > perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint
> > claims around the issues.
>
> We have no money to maintain it and most of the old volunteers now lack
> time to do it. It began to decay when the feedback was hacked by
> someone.
>
> However, Jim Foley's marvellous Hominid FAQ is actively updated.

Noted! I hope you will get the resources to keep it well trimmed in the near future.

[Christopher]

It's a great point, and one of the issues I have not looked into more thoroughly myself. I would ask here - HOW do we date the pyramids, and how certain are we that those dates are correct?

[Arkalen]

On 03/04/12 20:25, Christopher wrote:
> On Sunday, April 1, 2012 3:07:28 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:46:51 PM UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
>>> On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>
>>>>>> I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint claims around the issues.
>>>>
>>>>> Glad to see a creationist actually take the site seriously.
>>
>> [much deleted]
>>
>>>
>>> Christopher, your honesty continues to impress me and, no doubt,
>>> several others here.
>>
>> Agreed; I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, after having given up on this group as an immense waste of time years ago. I was getting very close to doing that again, but I have to admit that Christopher's refreshing honesty and apparent attitude of sincere inquiry has prevented that, at least for now.
>>
>
> First of all, forgive the late reply! I will try to keep up to speed with updates on this thread the coming days.
>
>> Christopher, if you don't mind the question: what is it that caused you to take the creationist position? In other words, can you tell us why it is that you are, or describe yourself as, a "creationist"?
>
> I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one, based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts available. You could say I am taking a default position with regard to the Christian faith.
>
> That said, I am genuinely open to the possibility that I could be completely wrong. The claims and implications of Christianity are so enormous, that I simply cannot afford to be wrong about it. Thus, I am continuously questioning to see if what I believe to be true really is true.
>
> It has been a disturbing trip in many ways. You could say I have a natural wariness of establishments, and I do not take consensus as a reliable guide to truth. I realize that YEC:ism has several problems, but at the same time I cannot help but feel that there is a certain closed-mindedness in the broader scientific community to controversial evidence. The creationists seem to have so many claims that are either not being addressed or simply cannot be debunked...again, remember that this is from the perspective of a layman who has not looked at all the facts. It might very well be that the YEC:s really do not have a point after all. That is what I want to find out.

Good for you !

>
>>
>> A related question might be: do you believe it is impossible to be a believer in God, a "good Christian," or whatever other labels (besides "creationist") you might also choose to identify yourself with, and NOT also be a young-Earth creationist?
>
> I don't know yet, personally. As I'm sure you know, there is a wide spectra of creationists, many espousing the old earth model in various forms. Some of these are openly critical of YEC:ism and attack it directly (for example www.answersincreation.org, which is a ministry almost purely devoted to debunking YEC claims). There are also those that espouse the "virtual time" model, which is essentially a sophisticated version of the "appearance of age" view. They literally believe that the universe LOOKS billions of years old, but hold that all events prior to about 7000BC are simply "virtual" events - they never really happened.
>
> In the end, what really constitutes a good Christian is someone who believes and sticks with the truth no matter what. I want to follow that, and see where the evidence really leads.

If you have the time and inclination, have you considered reading
general resources on biology, paleontology, phylogenetics or something
like that ?

I know there are many things I didn't truly understand about evolution
until I read a book called "Animal evolution", and this was less because
of what it said about evolution itself but because it went into all
those animals that actually exist but that we never give a second
thought to (because they're tiny marine invertebrates for example),
showing what they're like and how they all fit in the general history of
life. For example, once I understood how sponges worked a lot of my
questions on how stomachs or circulatory systems could have possibly
evolved were suddenly a lot easier to answer.

The thing is that as you have discerned, there is a huge amount of facts
backing the theory of evolution. Huge. Which makes biologists (who are
most aware of those facts) consider evolution itself a fact. And while
creation-evolution debates are excellent for better understanding
evolution and learning about biology, they only get into a fraction of
the facts biologists in every field encounter that also support the
theory. If you want to get a more in-depth feel for what those facts
might be I think it's a good idea to read something that isn't an
introduction to evolution, but a look into one aspect of science that
makes use of it.

Like the biology of some specific group of living things, a history of
science (especially geology and biology in the 18th and 19th centuries),
paleontology in general or the paleontology of some specific group,
genetics and their role in evolution, development...

[Robert Grumbine]

In article <13418948.12.1333481117512.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@vbhy13>, Christopher wrote:
> On Sunday, April 1, 2012 3:07:28 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:46:51 PM UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
>> > On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>>
>> > > > > I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint claims around the issues.
>> > >
>> > > > Glad to see a creationist actually take the site seriously.
>>
>> [much deleted]
>>
>> >
>> > Christopher, your honesty continues to impress me and, no doubt,
>> > several others here.
>>
>> Agreed; I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, after having given up on this group as an immense waste of time years ago. I was getting very close to doing that again, but I have to admit that Christopher's refreshing honesty and apparent attitude of sincere inquiry has prevented that, at least for now.
>>
>
> First of all, forgive the late reply! I will try to keep up to speed with updates on this thread the coming days.
>
>> Christopher, if you don't mind the question: what is it that caused you to take the creationist position? In other words, can you tell us why it is that you are, or describe yourself as, a "creationist"?
>
> I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one, based
>on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my interpretation of
>it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts available. You could say
>I am taking a default position with regard to the Christian faith.
>
> That said, I am genuinely open to the possibility that I could be
>completely wrong.

Therein lies all wisdom (imnsho).

>The claims and implications of Christianity are so enormous, that I
>simply cannot afford to be wrong about it. Thus, I am continuously
>questioning to see if what I believe to be true really is true.

Perhaps some time on thinking about what your standards of truth are
or should be? Not that I can tell you either, but I've seen that
even between people who are seriously interested in understanding,
and open to the possibility they could be wrong (both of them),
some discussions wind up frustrating rather than productive because
they have different standards of determining truth.

Some, and you seem not to be one of them, take it that their
reading of the Bible constitutes truth, and that's the end of it.
Really doesn't matter what physical evidence is pointed to, by
either that YEC or a geologist they're talking to. Physical
evidence is irrelevant there, even when it's the YEC pointing to
it.

On the other hand, even while you're allowing that you could be
wrong, you might have some conclusions that you're less likely to
modify than others. It'd be good to ponder which ones they are,
and whether, indeed, they're open to modification. Probably then
best to examine first the ones you're less concerned about the
effects of a change in your view.

> It has been a disturbing trip in many ways. You could say I have a
>natural wariness of establishments, and I do not take consensus as a
>reliable guide to truth. I realize that YEC:ism has several problems,

.... not least, that it is an establishment itself!

>but at the same time I cannot help but feel that there is a certain
>closed-mindedness in the broader scientific community to controversial
>evidence. The creationists seem to have so many claims that are either
>not being addressed or simply cannot be debunked...again, remember that
>this is from the perspective of a layman who has not looked at all the
>facts. It might very well be that the YEC:s really do not have a point
>after all. That is what I want to find out.

In addition to talk.origins, you might take a look at the
Answers In Genesis web site for their page of arguments they
wish creationists wouldn't use (typically on grounds of being false).

Also, keep in mind that 'simply cannot be debunked' is not
necessarily a good thing if it's science and evidence from the
natural world you're looking at or for. I can assert that the
earth is round. This _could_ be debunked. Seriously unlikely
that it will be. If I say the earth is a sphere, it can fairly
easily be debunked -- it's really an oblate spheroid. If that's
all I say, it simply cannot be debunked (aside from the sense
in which 'round' might be). But if I give you a precise description
of _which_ oblate spheroid I thought it was, it might be fairly
easily debunked. (I once saw someone claim that it was 4:3 oblate,
rather than about 300:299 -- the 4:3 is seriously wrong.)

A fair amount of yec arguments have indeed been addressed.
Not necessarily at talk.origins. Many which have not, can't be,
but not for reasons which reflect badly on science. The phrase
is 'not even wrong'. Famously around here is a Jack Chick tract
which argued that there was no such thing as the strong nuclear
force -- it was Jesus who held atomic nuclei together.

> I don't know yet, personally. As I'm sure you know, there is a wide
>spectra of creationists, many espousing the old earth model in various
>forms. Some of these are openly critical of YEC:ism and attack it
>directly (for example www.answersincreation.org, which is a ministry
>almost purely devoted to debunking YEC claims). There are also those
>that espouse the "virtual time" model, which is essentially a
>sophisticated version of the "appearance of age" view. They literally
>believe that the universe LOOKS billions of years old, but hold that
>all events prior to about 7000BC are simply "virtual" events - they
>never really happened.

The omphalos argument, and goes back to my point about standards
of truth. Regardless of what you observe, it can _always_ be argued
that God made it look that way. 6000 year old earth viewing events
4 billion 'years old', no problem. A problem with that approach, though,
is that such a God could also have made things last Thursday, and
just made it look older. There's no evidential basis of truth that
could accept a 6000 year old earth and reject a 6 day old earth.

> In the end, what really constitutes a good Christian is someone who
>believes and sticks with the truth no matter what. I want to follow
>that, and see where the evidence really leads.

Good luck with your journey. You might pick a particular question
of interest, such as 'How do we know that the tree dated to be 9,000
years old really is that old' and pursue that. Given the crowd here,
unless you're looking for a broad sampling of comments, it's best to
start a fairly focused thread. (You'll still get a broad sample,
but they'll be at least tangentially related to a smaller field.)

--
Robert Grumbine http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/ Science blog
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences

[Christopher]

On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 10:02:18 PM UTC+2, Arkalen wrote:
> On 03/04/12 20:25, Christopher wrote:
> > On Sunday, April 1, 2012 3:07:28 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> On Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:46:51 PM UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> >>> On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>
> >>>>>> I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint claims around the issues.
> >>>>
> >>>>> Glad to see a creationist actually take the site seriously.
> >>
> >> [much deleted]
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Christopher, your honesty continues to impress me and, no doubt,
> >>> several others here.
> >>
> >> Agreed; I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, after having given up on this group as an immense waste of time years ago. I was getting very close to doing that again, but I have to admit that Christopher's refreshing honesty and apparent attitude of sincere inquiry has prevented that, at least for now.
> >>
> >
> > First of all, forgive the late reply! I will try to keep up to speed with updates on this thread the coming days.
> >
> >> Christopher, if you don't mind the question: what is it that caused you to take the creationist position? In other words, can you tell us why it is that you are, or describe yourself as, a "creationist"?
> >
> > I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one, based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts available. You could say I am taking a default position with regard to the Christian faith.
> >
> > That said, I am genuinely open to the possibility that I could be completely wrong. The claims and implications of Christianity are so enormous, that I simply cannot afford to be wrong about it. Thus, I am continuously questioning to see if what I believe to be true really is true.
> >
> > It has been a disturbing trip in many ways. You could say I have a natural wariness of establishments, and I do not take consensus as a reliable guide to truth. I realize that YEC:ism has several problems, but at the same time I cannot help but feel that there is a certain closed-mindedness in the broader scientific community to controversial evidence. The creationists seem to have so many claims that are either not being addressed or simply cannot be debunked...again, remember that this is from the perspective of a layman who has not looked at all the facts. It might very well be that the YEC:s really do not have a point after all. That is what I want to find out.
>
> Good for you !
>
> >
> >>
> >> A related question might be: do you believe it is impossible to be a believer in God, a "good Christian," or whatever other labels (besides "creationist") you might also choose to identify yourself with, and NOT also be a young-Earth creationist?
> >
> > I don't know yet, personally. As I'm sure you know, there is a wide spectra of creationists, many espousing the old earth model in various forms. Some of these are openly critical of YEC:ism and attack it directly (for example www.answersincreation.org, which is a ministry almost purely devoted to debunking YEC claims). There are also those that espouse the "virtual time" model, which is essentially a sophisticated version of the "appearance of age" view. They literally believe that the universe LOOKS billions of years old, but hold that all events prior to about 7000BC are simply "virtual" events - they never really happened.
> >
> > In the end, what really constitutes a good Christian is someone who believes and sticks with the truth no matter what. I want to follow that, and see where the evidence really leads.
>
> If you have the time and inclination, have you considered reading
> general resources on biology, paleontology, phylogenetics or something
> like that ?

I am a Nature subscriber, and I have committed to working through some undergraduate material on Geology when I get more time (currently working towards a MS in computer science which takes a lot of my time). A friend of mine is a geologist and has given me some pointers what to read (he is an old earth creationist, for the record)

>
> I know there are many things I didn't truly understand about evolution
> until I read a book called "Animal evolution", and this was less because
> of what it said about evolution itself but because it went into all
> those animals that actually exist but that we never give a second
> thought to (because they're tiny marine invertebrates for example),
> showing what they're like and how they all fit in the general history of
> life. For example, once I understood how sponges worked a lot of my
> questions on how stomachs or circulatory systems could have possibly
> evolved were suddenly a lot easier to answer.
>
> The thing is that as you have discerned, there is a huge amount of facts
> backing the theory of evolution. Huge. Which makes biologists (who are
> most aware of those facts) consider evolution itself a fact. And while
> creation-evolution debates are excellent for better understanding
> evolution and learning about biology, they only get into a fraction of
> the facts biologists in every field encounter that also support the
> theory. If you want to get a more in-depth feel for what those facts
> might be I think it's a good idea to read something that isn't an
> introduction to evolution, but a look into one aspect of science that
> makes use of it.
>
> Like the biology of some specific group of living things, a history of
> science (especially geology and biology in the 18th and 19th centuries),
> paleontology in general or the paleontology of some specific group,
> genetics and their role in evolution, development...

Thanks, I understand the body of evidence is vast, and I still have a lot to look into.

[Friar Broccoli]

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 12:25:17 -0700 (PDT), Christopher
<christophe...@gmail.com> wrote:


> ... I will try to keep up to speed with updates on this thread the coming days.

Except for very unusual people keeping up is not usually possible here.
You are likely to be deluged with replies from many people. You will
need to focus on certain topics or people or both.

Good Luck

[Garamond Lethe]

1. Checked wikipedia. Not much there.

2. Typed in "pyramid dating" into google. Found this.
http://www.archaeology.org/9909/abstracts/pyramids.html

3. Then typed "dating the pyramids" into scholar.google.com. Clicked on
the link that would take me to the eight papers that had cited this paper.

4. Found a recent, freely-available paper here:

M. W. Dee et al, "Reanalysis of the Chronological Discrepancies Obtained
by the Old and Middle Kingdom Monuments Project", Radiocarbon, 51:3, 2009.

https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/
viewFile/4073/3498
http://preview.tinyurl.com/85xp4ww

Enjoy!

[bobmy...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 1:25:17 PM UTC-6, Christopher wrote:


>
> I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one,
> based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my
> interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts
> available. You could say I am taking a default position with
> regard to the Christian faith.

Fair enough; again, I definitely appreciate an honest answer to what
sincerely was an honest question. And I believe in the above you've sort-of
answered a later question, about whether or not being a creationist was
necessary to being a "good Christian."

However, I would like to suggest something, if I may, for your
consideration. It has always seemed to me that belief in the inerrancy
of the Bible was NOT necessarily part and parcel of an honest faith
in the other (and more central) aspects of Christianity; in fact, when
I was in a similar position to yours, I came to the conclusion that
in fact one could NOT simultaneously believe in the inerrancy of the Bible
and in any measure of "perfection" or "inerrancy" in God. It was simply
too easy to find any number of examples where the Bible was internally
inconsistent and simply could NOT be expected to be taken literally.
There was, further, ample evidence that God did not intervene to preserve
the correctness of the Bible as it was translated, interpreted, etc.,
through the ages (the infamous "Adulterous Bible" of 1631, in which the
word "not" was omitted from the seventh commandment, being one classic
example). I was forced to conclude that, IF I insisted on tying belief in
a perfect God to the requirement for an inerrant Bible, God would lose.
On the other hand, there did not appear to be any reason to require this;
if one can simply accept the proposition that the Bible itself is a creation
of man, not DIRECTLY of God, then one can most certainly reconcile a belief
in the God of Christianity with the existence of a flawed, human document
describing Him. In short, one can worship their God without equally
worshipping the Bible itself. It would certainly remain, to a practicing
Christian, a book to be revered, but one should not make the mistake of
confusing the book with the God.

Further, even if the Bible had been directly dictated by God originally -
and we assume that the currently-held scientific models for the evolution
of the cosmos are correct - how would God have ever given the full, correct
story to a band of people we could most charitably describe as semi-literate
nomads? Couching the story in metaphor wouldn't be just a clever ploy, it
would be absolutely, utterly necessary! What would the ancient Hebrews have
made of a story which started off with "In the beginning, billions of years ago, the space/time continuum itself appeared from nothingness in a massive, cataclysmic event..." and went on from there? You don't try to teach general
relativity in a second-grade classroom, and you certainly wouldn't try to give
the REAL story to a species not prepared at that point to understand it.

>
> That said, I am genuinely open to the possibility that I could be completely wrong. The claims and implications of Christianity are so enormous, that I simply cannot afford to be wrong about it.

By that same token, however, I would suggest that the enormity of the subject
at hand - i.e., the true nature of God, reality, and the universe - essentially
guarantees that NO person's beliefs regarding it will be completely correct.
It is simply too complex a question for any person to get entirely right.
We are, of course, merely human.

And by extension, no finite work written in a human language - whether it would be the Bible we're considering, or any other "holy book" of mankind - could
possibly contain within it a complete and totally accurate description of God.
If God exists, then by definition He/She/It would be far too complex to be thus
contained. All such books are, by necessity, flawed and incomplete.

Bob M.

[Christopher]

Thanks!

[Garamond Lethe]

On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:52:22 -0700, Christopher wrote:

>> M. W. Dee et al, "Reanalysis of the Chronological Discrepancies
>> Obtained by the Old and Middle Kingdom Monuments Project", Radiocarbon,
>> 51:3, 2009.
>>
>> https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/
>> viewFile/4073/3498 http://preview.tinyurl.com/85xp4ww
>>
>> Enjoy!
>
> Thanks!

Wrong tinyurl. Try this one:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/7eedclp

Sorry for the bother.

[Christopher]

No worries, thanks again!

While we are on the subject of radiocarbon, I thought you might find the following interesting:

http://www.dinosaurc14ages.com/carbondating.htm

I have not reviewed it yet according to the methodology you suggested, but it seems compelling. Apparently these researches have demonstrated that dinosaur bones can be reliably carbondated to ages in <50,000 year range, challenging the assumptions of old age.

You gave a great analysis of the genetics article already, and I do not mean to waste your time. If you have the time and the will for it, however, I would like to hear your take on this.

[Michael Siemon]

In article <AsadneZgHqF...@giganews.com>,

Hmmm; an interesting [in the USA political sense :-)] note is this:

"Funding was secured from David H Koch in 1995 for a second phase,
entitled the Pyramids Radiocarbon Dating Project."

Now, if the Kochs would stick to funding sensible archaeology, I
might revise my opinion of them... :-)

[Christopher]

On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 7:09:45 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 1:25:17 PM UTC-6, Christopher wrote:
>
>
> >
> > I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one,
> > based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my
> > interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts
> > available. You could say I am taking a default position with
> > regard to the Christian faith.
>
> Fair enough; again, I definitely appreciate an honest answer to what
> sincerely was an honest question. And I believe in the above you've sort-of
> answered a later question, about whether or not being a creationist was
> necessary to being a "good Christian."
>
> However, I would like to suggest something, if I may, for your
> consideration. It has always seemed to me that belief in the inerrancy
> of the Bible was NOT necessarily part and parcel of an honest faith
> in the other (and more central) aspects of Christianity; in fact, when
> I was in a similar position to yours, I came to the conclusion that
> in fact one could NOT simultaneously believe in the inerrancy of the Bible
> and in any measure of "perfection" or "inerrancy" in God. It was simply
> too easy to find any number of examples where the Bible was internally
> inconsistent and simply could NOT be expected to be taken literally.

I hear you here, but I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply something that is demanded by Scripture itself. God inspired it and intended it to be His preserved written Word, therefore it must be solid.

However, note the problem of defining exactly what "inerrancy" means. Does it mean that Scripture is 100% correct on all the factual claims it makes? I sincerely believe so. Does it mean that there have not been major flaws introduced by successive copying? Not at all, but the vastness of the manuscript evidence we have points to such "errors" being insignificant at best. They do not change the claim of the work as a whole.

As for internal inconsistencies, I believe that any serious investigation into them reveals them to not be inconsistencies at all. Most that I have seen are based on misreadings of the text, neglect of context, or other factors. There simply are no blatant errors in the Bible.

> There was, further, ample evidence that God did not intervene to preserve
> the correctness of the Bible as it was translated, interpreted, etc.,

The correctness of the whole was preserved, the manuscript errors that do exist are insignificant, and in the vast majority of cases have to do with punctuation, wording etc. In some cases, these flaws are so minuscule that they cannot even be reproduced in the english language.

> through the ages (the infamous "Adulterous Bible" of 1631, in which the
> word "not" was omitted from the seventh commandment, being one classic
> example). I was forced to conclude that, IF I insisted on tying belief in
> a perfect God to the requirement for an inerrant Bible, God would lose.

But would He really? As long as we can clearly detect any potential errors that have crept in, and have a vast body of documentary evidence that points to the preservation of the Bible as a whole throughout time, are we not justified to believe that what we have today really is what the original authors gave us?

> On the other hand, there did not appear to be any reason to require this;
> if one can simply accept the proposition that the Bible itself is a creation
> of man, not DIRECTLY of God, then one can most certainly reconcile a belief
> in the God of Christianity with the existence of a flawed, human document
> describing Him. In short, one can worship their God without equally
> worshipping the Bible itself. It would certainly remain, to a practicing
> Christian, a book to be revered, but one should not make the mistake of
> confusing the book with the God.

In Christianity, the Word is God (John 1:1), and thus Scripture is Christ Himself.

>
> Further, even if the Bible had been directly dictated by God originally -
> and we assume that the currently-held scientific models for the evolution
> of the cosmos are correct - how would God have ever given the full, correct
> story to a band of people we could most charitably describe as semi-literate
> nomads? Couching the story in metaphor wouldn't be just a clever ploy, it
> would be absolutely, utterly necessary! What would the ancient Hebrews have
> made of a story which started off with "In the beginning, billions of years ago, the space/time continuum itself appeared from nothingness in a massive, cataclysmic event..." and went on from there? You don't try to teach general
> relativity in a second-grade classroom, and you certainly wouldn't try to give
> the REAL story to a species not prepared at that point to understand it.
>

I think you are relying on a flawed assumption here - that God would act as humans expect Him to act. He does not, and Scripture is clear on this. His ways are not our ways. What we should do is to examine the fact claims of the Bible itself, not how God choose to bring them to us.

[Christopher]

Noted, thanks. I apologize by the way for not replying to you as of yet. We went into several topics, and to do the discussion any justice from my side I would need to do more research. I do not want to reiterate claims that have already been debunked.

[Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org]

On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 9:18:32 AM UTC+1, Christopher wrote:
> I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply
> something that is demanded by Scripture itself.
> God inspired it and intended it to be His
> preserved written Word, therefore it must
> be solid.

Well, it is not directly on the point here, since
talk.origins is mainly about the facts of origins
of the natural world and living beings - but
everything in "Scripture" except the Ten Commandments,
and that bit in Daniel, is written by human hands.

Preaching comes from human mouths. Do you
believe it's inerrant? I once listened to
a sermon about the patriarch Isaac and how
God redeemed him from his youthful wickedness,
in particular, the episode where Isaac obtained
his father's blessing by disguising himself
as his dutiful law-abiding brother. It wasn't
in my own church so I didn't feel entitled to
heckle. Nor did anybody else.

Do you have any more support for a statement that
"Scripture" is inerrant - and does that apply to
(1) all the "books" of a modern bible and (2) to any
particular translation into English that you use?

As another side question, do you believe that it's
necessary to /know/ all of Scripture to be a Christian?

[Garamond Lethe]

I don't think this is the kind of belief that comes from evidence.
Certain classes of God are constrained to use inerrant communication;
Biblical inerrancy follows given this belief combined with an
unsophisticated understanding of how we interact with texts.

In fewer words: consistency is the hobgoblin of little gods.

[Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org]

On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 5:36:14 AM UTC+1, Garamond Lethe wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:38:22 -0700, Christopher wrote:
>
> > On Friday, March 30, 2012 8:35:14 PM UTC+2, Tom McDonald wrote:
> >> How do you square this with written records going back more than 600
> >> years before this time, and with the fact that the Giza pyramids (not
> >> to mention the earlier pyramids and mastabas) were built one to two
> >> centuries before this date--and none show any sign of having been
> >> submerged in brackish water?
> >
> > It's a great point, and one of the issues I have not looked into more
> > thoroughly myself. I would ask here - HOW do we date the pyramids, and
> > how certain are we that those dates are correct?
>
> 1. Checked wikipedia. Not much there.
>
> 2. Typed in "pyramid dating" into google. Found this.
> http://www.archaeology.org/9909/abstracts/pyramids.html

I feel that Google is not necessarily a good way
to find reliable scientific information, versus
carefully prepared nonsense. This does look all
right but it may be just a trap.

I think the short answer to how we know the dates
of Egyptian relics is that they wrote it down.
The river Nile provides a reasonably controlled
local flood almost every year, and that's about it.

[Garamond Lethe]

On Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:29:01 -0700, Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc
talk-o...@moderators.isc.org wrote:

> On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 5:36:14 AM UTC+1, Garamond Lethe wrote:
>> On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:38:22 -0700, Christopher wrote:
>>
>> > On Friday, March 30, 2012 8:35:14 PM UTC+2, Tom McDonald wrote:
>> >> How do you square this with written records going back more than 600
>> >> years before this time, and with the fact that the Giza pyramids
>> >> (not to mention the earlier pyramids and mastabas) were built one to
>> >> two centuries before this date--and none show any sign of having
>> >> been submerged in brackish water?
>> >
>> > It's a great point, and one of the issues I have not looked into more
>> > thoroughly myself. I would ask here - HOW do we date the pyramids,
>> > and how certain are we that those dates are correct?
>>
>> 1. Checked wikipedia. Not much there.
>>
>> 2. Typed in "pyramid dating" into google. Found this.
>> http://www.archaeology.org/9909/abstracts/pyramids.html
>
> I feel that Google is not necessarily a good way to find reliable
> scientific information, versus carefully prepared nonsense. This does
> look all right but it may be just a trap.

You were very nearly right in this case. The original research was paid
for by folks who were expected a particular answer.

"It was 1984 and the Edgar Cayce Foundation, named for an early twentieth-
century psychic who claimed that the Sphinx and Khufu's Great Pyramid
were built in 10,500 B.C., was paying for the analysis of our samples."

>
> I think the short answer to how we know the dates of Egyptian relics is
> that they wrote it down.
> The river Nile provides a reasonably controlled local flood almost every
> year, and that's about it.

That doesn't appear to be the case from what little I've read. Do you
have a cite for that handy?

[Garamond Lethe]

On Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:18:32 -0700, Christopher wrote:

> On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 7:09:45 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 1:25:17 PM UTC-6, Christopher wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> > I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one,
>> > based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my
>> > interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts
>> > available. You could say I am taking a default position with regard
>> > to the Christian faith.
>>
>> Fair enough; again, I definitely appreciate an honest answer to what
>> sincerely was an honest question. And I believe in the above you've
>> sort-of answered a later question, about whether or not being a
>> creationist was necessary to being a "good Christian."
>>
>> However, I would like to suggest something, if I may, for your
>> consideration. It has always seemed to me that belief in the inerrancy
>> of the Bible was NOT necessarily part and parcel of an honest faith in
>> the other (and more central) aspects of Christianity; in fact, when I
>> was in a similar position to yours, I came to the conclusion that in
>> fact one could NOT simultaneously believe in the inerrancy of the Bible
>> and in any measure of "perfection" or "inerrancy" in God. It was
>> simply too easy to find any number of examples where the Bible was
>> internally inconsistent and simply could NOT be expected to be taken
>> literally.
>
> I hear you here, but I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply
> something that is demanded by Scripture itself.

Well.... no.

That is an *interpretation* of scripture, not scripture itself. The
inerrancy associated with creationism is an interpretation very much
rooted in Midwestern America of the 1930s. As an interpretation, I can
compare it to other interpretations and, using several disparate criteria
(authorial intent, literary quality, theological elegance) see how it
measures up.

Frankly, the scientific arguments against inerrancy (when combined with
literalism) are pretty trivial when compared to the theological
arguments. The creator of the universe in transformed into a pedant who
is unable to speak metaphorically. All the (extraordinarily) difficult
historical, linguistic, literary and theological work that used to be
required for biblical interpretation can be replaced with "it means what
it says", and if what it says tends to conform to the prejudices of the
time that's taken as evidence for correctness.

> God inspired it and
> intended it to be His preserved written Word, therefore it must be
> solid.

Any literate atheist would have no difficulty agreeing with your
assessment of the Bible's solidity --- it's absolutely a foundational
document of Western civilization and that wouldn't have happened if it
was wrong enough to be useless. But the folks who contributed to making
it foundational didn't take Genesis literally.

>
> However, note the problem of defining exactly what "inerrancy" means.
> Does it mean that Scripture is 100% correct on all the factual claims it
> makes? I sincerely believe so. Does it mean that there have not been
> major flaws introduced by successive copying? Not at all, but the
> vastness of the manuscript evidence we have points to such "errors"
> being insignificant at best. They do not change the claim of the work as
> a whole.
>

"Inerrancy" and "literalism" are distinct terms of art. Catholic
inerrancy assumes the bible is inerrant if properly interpreted, but that
this interpretation can be (in parts) metaphorical. "Literalism" assumes
inerrancy but rejects all but the most obvious metaphorical
interpretations. Modern American creationism comes out of the literalist
tradition.

> As for internal inconsistencies, I believe that any serious
> investigation into them reveals them to not be inconsistencies at all.

What serious investigations would you recommend I read?

Based on my reading of Ehrman and Pagels, the factual inconsistencies of
the New Testament are much less interesting than the theological
contradictions. I consider this a strength of work, btw: God is big
enough (and generous enough) to allow a few contradictory views to
coexist.

> Most that I have seen are based on misreadings of the text, neglect of
> context, or other factors. There simply are no blatant errors in the
> Bible.

Well, I can certainly provide you with a list, but could you first tell
me why this is important? Why is your God constrained to provide an
inerrant Bible?

>
>> There was, further, ample evidence that God did not intervene to
>> preserve the correctness of the Bible as it was translated,
>> interpreted, etc.,
>
> The correctness of the whole was preserved, the manuscript errors that
> do exist are insignificant, and in the vast majority of cases have to do
> with punctuation, wording etc. In some cases, these flaws are so
> minuscule that they cannot even be reproduced in the english language.
>
>> through the ages (the infamous "Adulterous Bible" of 1631, in which the
>> word "not" was omitted from the seventh commandment, being one classic
>> example). I was forced to conclude that, IF I insisted on tying belief
>> in a perfect God to the requirement for an inerrant Bible, God would
>> lose.
>
> But would He really? As long as we can clearly detect any potential
> errors that have crept in, and have a vast body of documentary evidence
> that points to the preservation of the Bible as a whole throughout time,
> are we not justified to believe that what we have today really is what
> the original authors gave us?

Ehrman points out that, so far as the New Testament is concerned, we have
more variants than text.

>
>> On the other hand, there did not appear to be any reason to require
>> this;
>> if one can simply accept the proposition that the Bible itself is a
>> creation of man, not DIRECTLY of God, then one can most certainly
>> reconcile a belief in the God of Christianity with the existence of a
>> flawed, human document describing Him. In short, one can worship their
>> God without equally worshipping the Bible itself. It would certainly
>> remain, to a practicing Christian, a book to be revered, but one should
>> not make the mistake of confusing the book with the God.
>
> In Christianity, the Word is God (John 1:1), and thus Scripture is
> Christ Himself.
>

John wrote that, right? And you're saying that John was claiming the
words he was writing were not just equivalent to Christ, but Christ
Himself? That seems a little strange, does it not?

Is this your personal interpretation? If not, I'd be curious to hear
where you read it. Do you have a cite handy?

>
>> Further, even if the Bible had been directly dictated by God originally
>> -
>> and we assume that the currently-held scientific models for the
>> evolution of the cosmos are correct - how would God have ever given the
>> full, correct story to a band of people we could most charitably
>> describe as semi-literate nomads? Couching the story in metaphor
>> wouldn't be just a clever ploy, it would be absolutely, utterly
>> necessary! What would the ancient Hebrews have made of a story which
>> started off with "In the beginning, billions of years ago, the
>> space/time continuum itself appeared from nothingness in a massive,
>> cataclysmic event..." and went on from there? You don't try to teach
>> general relativity in a second-grade classroom, and you certainly
>> wouldn't try to give the REAL story to a species not prepared at that
>> point to understand it.
>>
>>
> I think you are relying on a flawed assumption here - that God would act
> as humans expect Him to act.

Modeling the actions of God is the point of theology, is it not? And we
have an entire Bible filled with models of how people expected God to
act, and how God either falsified or confirmed those models.

> He does not, and Scripture is clear on
> this. His ways are not our ways. What we should do is to examine the
> fact claims of the Bible itself, not how God choose to bring them to us.

Saying something is off limits is a good way to broadcast the weaknesses
in your arguments. Just sayin.....

[Garamond Lethe]

On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:46:14 -0700, Christopher wrote:

> On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 8:28:03 AM UTC+2, Garamond Lethe wrote:
>> On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:52:22 -0700, Christopher wrote:
>>
>> >> M. W. Dee et al, "Reanalysis of the Chronological Discrepancies
>> >> Obtained by the Old and Middle Kingdom Monuments Project",
>> >> Radiocarbon,
>> >> 51:3, 2009.
>> >>
>> >> https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/
>> >> viewFile/4073/3498 http://preview.tinyurl.com/85xp4ww
>> >>
>> >> Enjoy!
>> >
>> > Thanks!
>>
>> Wrong tinyurl. Try this one:
>>
>> http://preview.tinyurl.com/7eedclp
>>
>> Sorry for the bother.
>
> No worries, thanks again!
>
> While we are on the subject of radiocarbon, I thought you might find the
> following interesting:
>
>
>

> I have not reviewed it yet according to the methodology you suggested,
> but it seems compelling. Apparently these researches have demonstrated
> that dinosaur bones can be reliably carbondated to ages in <50,000 year
> range, challenging the assumptions of old age.
>
> You gave a great analysis of the genetics article already, and I do not
> mean to waste your time. If you have the time and the will for it,
> however, I would like to hear your take on this.

The Parable of the Odometer

I recall (correctly) that you're getting an MS in CompSci, right? And
that you had expressed (and I'm paraphrasing here) that scientists should
be more open to evidence that contradict their beliefs?

I'm a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I'm doing
research on the newest Intel Sandy Bridge processors. We have two
clusters that use these processors (one of the is the 15th fastest
machine in the world at the moment) and, because the processors have on-
board power meters, for the first time I can get power profiles of large-
scale physics codes.

Generally I'm seeing anything from 50 watts to 80 watts average power per
processor over a run, depending on the program, its memory accesses, and
its compiler options. The counter I'm using actually measures joules
(power in watts multiplied by time) and does so in very tiny increments.
To get average power I call gettimeofday() at the beginning and ending of
the program and take the difference to determine how long the program
ran. I also read the energy counter at the beginning and ending of the
program and take the difference to find out how much energy was used,
divide energy by time and that's my average power.

Of course, the power counter might wrap around, so if the ending energy
is smaller than the starting energy I simply calculate observed energy to
be (max-start)+end.

All of this works perfectly well and I've validated it on multiple
benchmarks. I did have a bit of a surprise the other day, though: on
the same machine I had been using previously, a particularly long-running
code only used 4 watts on average. The code ran correctly to completion
and was load-balanced across all the cores on the processor for the
duration of the run.

I expect the authors of the web page you cited would be terribly excited
by this result. I now have solid experimental evidence that, all
experience and most physics to the contrary, low-power supercomputing is
not only possible but observed on a real machine. The Supercomputing
conference deadline is coming up in early May. Do you think I should
write up my results and submit them?

[People who subject dinosaur bones to radiocarbon dating make a similar
mistake, but I'll be happy to look at the article.]

[Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org]

On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 6:16:01 PM UTC+1, Garamond Lethe wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:29:01 -0700, Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc
> talk-o...@moderators.isc.org wrote:
>
> > On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 5:36:14 AM UTC+1, Garamond Lethe wrote:
> >> 1. Checked wikipedia. Not much there.
> >>
> >> 2. Typed in "pyramid dating" into google. Found this.
> >> http://www.archaeology.org/9909/abstracts/pyramids.html
> >
> > I feel that Google is not necessarily a good way to find reliable
> > scientific information, versus carefully prepared nonsense. This does
> > look all right but it may be just a trap.
>
> You were very nearly right in this case. The original research was paid
> for by folks who were expected a particular answer.
>
> "It was 1984 and the Edgar Cayce Foundation, named for an early twentieth-
> century psychic who claimed that the Sphinx and Khufu's Great Pyramid
> were built in 10,500 B.C., was paying for the analysis of our samples."

I noticed that. But why would they hire honest
scientists rather than a bunch of controversialist
razor-sharpeners with, as it might turn out, their
own agenda?

Google finds strange things.

> > I think the short answer to how we know the dates of Egyptian relics is
> > that they wrote it down.
> > The river Nile provides a reasonably controlled local flood almost every
> > year, and that's about it.
>
> That doesn't appear to be the case from what little I've read. Do you
> have a cite for that handy?

Which part? For writing down: that web page
refers to "historical dates" and a "Cambridge
Ancient History". Which is written down.
If not by the ancient Egyptians in person.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djoser#Reign_length
implies that they didn't always write it down
very carefully, but this is the old stuff: well
before Archbishop Ussher's calculated date of
Noah's flood. Which is the point here, really.

I assume that the Nile's annual flood is uncontroversial.
http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Nile#Role_in_the_founding_of_Egyptian_civilization

[Friar Broccoli]

On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 01:18:32 -0700 (PDT), Christopher
<christophe...@gmail.com> wrote:


> I hear you here, but I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply
> something that is demanded by Scripture itself. God inspired it
> and intended it to be His preserved written Word, therefore it
> must be solid.

I normally view discussions of Biblical inerrancy as a pointless
digressions.

In an attempt to short circuit this discussion, I would like to ask: Do
you think it may be possible to read Genesis as saying that God created
living things using the evolutionary process?

[Mark Isaak]

On 4/3/12 11:46 PM, Christopher wrote:
> On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 8:28:03 AM UTC+2, Garamond Lethe wrote:
>> On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:52:22 -0700, Christopher wrote:
>>
>>>> M. W. Dee et al, "Reanalysis of the Chronological Discrepancies
>>>> Obtained by the Old and Middle Kingdom Monuments Project", Radiocarbon,
>>>> 51:3, 2009.
>>>>
>>>> https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/
>>>> viewFile/4073/3498 http://preview.tinyurl.com/85xp4ww
>>>>
>>>> Enjoy!
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>
>> Wrong tinyurl. Try this one:
>>
>> http://preview.tinyurl.com/7eedclp
>>
>> Sorry for the bother.
>
> No worries, thanks again!
>
> While we are on the subject of radiocarbon, I thought you might find
> the following interesting:
>
> http://www.dinosaurc14ages.com/carbondating.htm
>
> I have not reviewed it yet according to the methodology you suggested,
> but it seems compelling. Apparently these researches have demonstrated
> that dinosaur bones can be reliably carbondated to ages in<50,000
> year range, challenging the assumptions of old age.

That article has a number of faults, the main one being its emphasis on
"problems" with dating methods without corresponding emphasis on when
those problems apply and how they are dealt with. All dating methods,
including looking at your watch, have problems. (Does your watch run
fast? Did its battery die? Did you reset it after changing timezones?
Are you reading it upside-down?) When the problems are dealt with,
methods such as radiocarbon and argon dating are about as reliable as
looking at a watch.

The article says there are no absolute calibration points for C-14
dating over 10,000 years. In fact, it has been calibrated to 45,000
years. See Kitagawa & van der Plicht, 1998, "Atmospheric radiocarbon
calibration to 45,000 yr BP: Late glacial fluctuations and cosmogenic
isotope production." _Science_ 279: 1187-1190.

The article says argon dating is accurate for dates 100,000 years and
older. In fact, argon dating has been successfully tested on the
volcanic debris that buried Pompeii in historical times. (I'll let you
look for the reference.)

Regarding dinosaur bones dated <50,000 years ago, note that 50,000 years
is near the limit of how far C-14 dating can measure. Depending on the
lab, it could be over the limit. Even a little carelessness at any of
several points could account for those results. And even if you accept
a young age for the bones, you still have to explain how they got buried
under rocks that are reliably dated at tens of millions of years old.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume

[Mark Isaak]

On 4/3/12 12:25 PM, Christopher wrote:
> On Sunday, April 1, 2012 3:07:28 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:46:51 PM UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
>>> On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher<christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:

> > [snip]

>
> I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one,
> based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my
> interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts
> available. You could say I am taking a default position with
> regard to the Christian faith.
>
> That said, I am genuinely open to the possibility that I could
> be completely wrong. The claims and implications of Christianity
> are so enormous, that I simply cannot afford to be wrong about it.

I challenge your claim that the claims and implications of Christianity
are enormous. I suspect rather that the implications of *your
particular interpretation* of Christianity are enormous. Christianity,
for example, says nothing about the age of the earth. Some sects within
Christianity make such statements, but Christianity per se does not deal
with it. Likewise, though many Christians do, Christianity does not say
anything about the truth or falsehood of evolution.

I suppose one might fairly consider the actual claims of Christianity to
be enormous, but those claims -- about the nature of God and the
existence of forgiveness -- do not seem relevant to what you have been
posting about.

[Mark Buchanan]

Christopher,

I took a quick look at the article you linked to but haven't done much else.

Dr. Lorence Collins (geologist who has done quite a bit of work on radiohalos) happened to send me this article by Brent Dalrymple:

http://ncse.com/rncse/20/3/radiometeric-dating-does-work

Dalrymple wrote the book 'The Age of the Earth' and is considered the authority on the subject. He was an expert witness in one of the high profile creation trials in the 80s.

Mark

[Mark Buchanan]

On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 4:18:32 AM UTC-4, Christopher wrote:

On the consistency and accuracy of the bible - this is my own personal list:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1wBDP30qdIog146UiI52l7_S2Zzsn7pzecjcd4eMmE6M

This short list has been given to one creationist so far - only 3 very unsatisfactory answers came back. 2 of the more difficult issues were not even responded to.

I used to believe that the bible was innerant (and a YEC). The evidence led me down the slippery slop to the pit of evolution - beware of following the evidence. :-) or is it :-(

Mark

[Mark Isaak]

On 4/4/12 1:18 AM, Christopher wrote:
> [snip]
> [...] but I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply

> something that is demanded by Scripture itself.

Even the story of Abraham? Scripture itself demands that that story be
interpreted as allegory. See Galatians 4:24 (and surrounding verses for
context).

As you might guess, I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply
something that is ruled out by Scripture itself. Obviously we are not
both correct. Rather than argue about inerrancy, though, I invite you
to consider how either of our beliefs affect the physical nature of the
universe.

[Garamond Lethe]

On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:46:14 -0700, Christopher wrote:

Ok, let's start one page up the tree:

http://www.dinosaurc14ages.com/

1) "Sedimentary rocks are NOT datable by non C14 radiometric methods as
they contain no radioactive decay elements."

That strikes me as odd --- what is it about the process of big rocks
turning into little rocks and conglomerating that removes "radioactive
decay elements"?

Section 3.5 "Dating Sedimentary Rocks" (starting at page 54) of Alan P.
Dickin's _Radiogenic Isotope Geology_ describes techniques that use Rb-Sr
dating that go back to 1962.


2) "We are examining Radiocarbon journal and many other technical
journals to improve our expertise concerning C-14 dating, its problems,
best methods and pre treatment of samples to ensure elimination of
possible old and young contaminants."

Ok, so we're not dealing with professionals here.


Moving on to the page you asked about:

http://www.dinosaurc14ages.com/carbondating.htm

3) "We have no absolutely reliable dates of anything that is over 100,000
years old."

It looks like "able to be cross-checked" is what they mean by
"reliable". This is false. See Roger C. Wiens's "Radiometric Dating: A
Christian Perspective", 2002.
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/wiens2002.pdf



4) "If,as popularly claimed, dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million
years, there should not be once molecule of carbon 14 left in their
bones."

.... and thus, if we find any C14 at all, we have a choice between
expected experimental contamination or throwing away everything we know
about geology and most of what we know about radiochemistry.

Did I tell you that I can get a recent Xeon processor to run all eight
cores at 2.6GHz doing mathematically intensive physics codes on only 4
watts of power?


Look --- you don't get any scientific cred by reporting an anomalous
result. If you did, then undergraduate would be picking up most of the
Nobels in science.

The authors of this article aren't asking *why* they're seeing the
results that they're seeing. Why do multiple, cross-checking alternative
radiometric (and non-radiometric) techniques all agree on the far older
dates? Why do they consider their younger dates to be within the
tolerances of what C14 can do reliably? How does their work hold up for
more recent fossils? (Does everything after a certain date fall into the
same age range? Does this suggest a limitation of C14 dating rather than
the actual age of the material?)

In short, there's no *curiosity* here. These folks aren't trying to find
out how the world works; they're trying to come up with excuses so they
can continue to believe what they've chosen to believe.

[Garamond Lethe]

On Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:27:49 -0700, Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc

talk-o...@moderators.isc.org wrote:

> On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 6:16:01 PM UTC+1, Garamond Lethe wrote:
>> On Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:29:01 -0700, Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc
>> talk-o...@moderators.isc.org wrote:
>>
>> > On Wednesday, April 4, 2012 5:36:14 AM UTC+1, Garamond Lethe wrote:
>> >> 1. Checked wikipedia. Not much there.
>> >>
>> >> 2. Typed in "pyramid dating" into google. Found this.
>> >> http://www.archaeology.org/9909/abstracts/pyramids.html
>> >
>> > I feel that Google is not necessarily a good way to find reliable
>> > scientific information, versus carefully prepared nonsense. This
>> > does look all right but it may be just a trap.
>>
>> You were very nearly right in this case. The original research was
>> paid for by folks who were expected a particular answer.
>>
>> "It was 1984 and the Edgar Cayce Foundation, named for an early
>> twentieth-
>> century psychic who claimed that the Sphinx and Khufu's Great Pyramid
>> were built in 10,500 B.C., was paying for the analysis of our samples."
>
> I noticed that. But why would they hire honest scientists rather than a
> bunch of controversialist razor-sharpeners with, as it might turn out,
> their own agenda?

I don't think you get to work for the Edgar Cayce Foundation because
you're the sharpest knife in the drawer..... ;-)

>
> Google finds strange things.
>
>> > I think the short answer to how we know the dates of Egyptian relics
>> > is that they wrote it down.
>> > The river Nile provides a reasonably controlled local flood almost
>> > every year, and that's about it.
>>
>> That doesn't appear to be the case from what little I've read. Do you
>> have a cite for that handy?
>
> Which part? For writing down: that web page refers to "historical
> dates" and a "Cambridge Ancient History". Which is written down.
> If not by the ancient Egyptians in person.

This paper
http://preview.tinyurl.com/7eedclp
gave a quick rundown of the state of Egyptian dating. That mentioned the
"King Lists" as well as describing the problems caused by relying on it,
and how radiocarbon dating didn't quite line up with the existing
literary and artifactual approaches.

>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djoser#Reign_length implies that they
> didn't always write it down very carefully, but this is the old stuff:
> well before Archbishop Ussher's calculated date of Noah's flood. Which
> is the point here, really.

Certainly.

[Arkalen]

The article also seems to have no clues what "absolute dates" are. It
doesn't mean "absolutely exact dates to an infinitely high level of
precision", it means "dates which can be expressed as a number of years
before the present". As opposed to relative dates, which can only be
expressed as coming before or after something else.

[Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org]

On Thursday, April 5, 2012 5:59:29 AM UTC+1, Garamond Lethe wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:46:14 -0700, Christopher wrote:
>
> 4) "If,as popularly claimed, dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million
> years, there should not be once molecule of carbon 14 left in their
> bones."
>
> .... and thus, if we find any C14 at all, we have a choice between
> expected experimental contamination or throwing away everything we know
> about geology and most of what we know about radiochemistry.

Actually there's a mistake there, and not only
the mistake of writing "once molecule" to mean
"one molecule", or describing C-14 as a "molecule"
at all. In the context, "atom" will do. But do
you notice how they use the word "scientist"
as though they don't even know any of those people
personally?

Very old material can be let's say induced to contain
C-14. Including, as we have discussed recently, diamond.
AIG is very excited: "Diamonds are the hardest
known natural substance" [we don't count
gopher wood], and according to "scientists" are all
billions of years old [unless you make your own,
which you can, now], so-of-course carbon-14
can't penetrate into diamonds (maybe). But radiation can penetrate, and can convert
atomic nuclei in the diamond to C-14, apparently
at a rate that can just be detected above
experimental contamination, using the latest laboratory methods.

Creationist science from time to time includes
Herculean wilful ignorance. And sometimes bare-faced
lies, as well.

[Garamond Lethe]

I missed the diamond discussion --- that's really cool. Thanks for
pointing that out.

[Friar Broccoli]

Thanks for this insight.
I find it really difficult to figure out how to respond to the most
ridiculous arguments, although I do wonder how they can accurately date
50,000 year old fossils in a 6,000 year old world ... but maybe it's
just me.

>
>Creationist science from time to time includes
>Herculean wilful ignorance. And sometimes bare-faced
>lies, as well.

[Friar Broccoli]

On Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:44:47 -0700, Mark Isaak
<eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net> wrote:

>On 4/4/12 1:18 AM, Christopher wrote:
>> [snip]
>> [...] but I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply
>> something that is demanded by Scripture itself.

.

>Even the story of Abraham? Scripture itself demands that that story be
>interpreted as allegory. See Galatians 4:24 (and surrounding verses for
>context).

Thanks for this reference. Very useful.

[Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org]

On Thursday, April 5, 2012 12:44:47 AM UTC+1, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 4/4/12 1:18 AM, Christopher wrote:
> > [snip]
> > [...] but I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply
> > something that is demanded by Scripture itself.
>
> Even the story of Abraham? Scripture itself demands that that story be
> interpreted as allegory. See Galatians 4:24 (and surrounding verses for
> context).

I think that does not itself mean that it didn't
happen for real. Even if God did it on purpose to
create an allegory.

Some Christian scholars find that many Old Testament
persons are what's called a "type" of Christ,
which means either God using them as a prototype
for Christ, or the nature of Christ being imprinted
in their selves, or just vaguely similar stories.
Or hints at what's coming in the New Testament.
Googling the words "type of Christ" seems to turn
up plenty of this stuff - "Noah's ark is an early
type of Christ" is one that I boggled at. Maybe it makes more sense with Noah as the type, and the ark standing in for the cross. I should have
mentioned to Christopher before that I'm not currently
a believer, but I may have given that away already.

If I take these results at face value, in the story
of King Saul, the future King David, and Saul's son
and David's very good friend Jonathan, /all/ of them
were types of Christ, but perhaps not simultaneously.

[pnyikos]

Did Lethe's article make the POTM? or was it the rival, by Harter?

On Mar 31, 3:01 pm, Garamond Lethe <cartographi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 05:46:15 -0700, Christopher wrote:
> > On Friday, March 30, 2012 7:26:12 PM UTC+2, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> >> On Mar 29, 5:04 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> > Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org? Some
> >> > of the more useful articles date back almost 20 years and would be
> >> > wonderful to read in an updated format. The last POTM dates to March
> >> > 2010.
>
> >> > I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org
> >> > perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint
> >> > claims around the issues.

I heartily agree. I would go on to say that Usenet is the best forum
I know of for exploring point-counterpoint. I could go on and on
talking about the deficiencies of the other forums I've looked at.

Basically, their formats -- the way they display replies and replies
to replies, etc. -- totally ignore the fact that in a contentious
newsgroup/blog like talk.origins, initial arguments and initial
counter-arguments seldom accomplish much. And even counter-counter
arguments, and counter-counter-counter arguments are generally just
warm-ups. It is in only later "counters" that a picture has a good
chance to emerge, and usually it takes many more exchanges (if it
happens at all) before spectators can really get a good idea of where
the truth lies.

This is enough to make just about every other format outside Usenet
impractical.

> >> Glad to see a creationist actually take the site seriously.
>
> >> Your original post to this group in Feb. proved to be quite an entrance
> >> and was quite interesting. Did that exchange change any of your
> >> thinking on genetics?
>
> >> Mark
>
> > It did absolutely demonstrate that the issue is not nearly as simple as
> > any superficial take on it would ever allow.
>
> > It has lead me (in conjunction with other studies) to a certain feeling
> > of, I don't know, intellectual despair if you will.
> > There is simply so much data, so many arguments, so many studies, so
> > many criticisms, so many factors that the layman (who normally lacks the
> > technial credentials to even properly evaluate the data) simply feels
> > helpless in trying to form an educated opinion. For every point there
> > are a hundred counterpoints, and each counterpoint raises a hundred
> > replies on its own. So while it is deeply fascinating to me, it
> > frustrates me even more.
>
> One of the great pleasures I took from grad school was learning how to
> get around this problem.
>
> First caveat:  We're now in a world where "educated" means having access
> to the library of a good research university (and knowing how to use
> it).  If I have access to a copy of "Linkage disequilibrium in the human
> genome" and you don't, it doesn't matter if you're smarter than I am.
> You have to rely to me to tell you what's in that paper.

Absolutely. And I all too frequently run into smart alecs and stuffed
shirts who respond to requests like this with "Do your own research"
or words to that effect. It negates one of the main virtues of
Usenet.

A fairly distinguished paleontologist did this to me once, and I
responded with "Your attitude does not exactly inspire me to run down
to the library to apply for an interlibrary loan." [This was before
my university made it possible to apply online. Even so, I still have
to run down to the library to pick up the book when it arrives.]

[...]

> So here's the trick:  pick one claim and master it.
>
> Here's how this works in practice.
>
> When you posted your query about Carter's genetics paper I stopped
> reading when I got to his first citation.  He made a claim that "there is
> abundant evidence that the entire human race came from two people just a
> few thousand years ago" and I decided to focus my efforts on that
> particular claim.
>
> That in turn led to Nelson's paper in the journal of creation, and again
> I focused on one claim there and followed up to the paper he cited
> (Dorit).  Then I read Dorit and read several of the papers that came
> later that cited Dorit and improved on the work.  (I also had to consult
> an evolution textbook and a few wikipedia articles to figure out what a
> few of the more technical terms meant.)

Yeah, people are bad about answering questions about terms. If you
aren't in good with them, you can expect catcalls about how you are
ignorant of the most elementary concepts, even if those concepts are
very specialized.

> So let's take a step back.  I've invested a few hours of highly technical
> reading to figure out that the first two claims of Nelson are wrong and
> that Carter shouldn't have relied on Nelson for support.  Nelson makes a
> lot more claims in his paper that I didn't look at and I haven't even
> gotten to the meat of Carter's work yet.  I could easily spend two months
> doing this kind of analysis on Carter's paper and that's just one paper
> out of the thousands of creationists publication that are out there.
>
> But all is not lost.
>
> After doing a couple of dozen deep dives like I've illustrated above
> you'll begin to realize that, if a creationist makes a scientific claim
> in support of creationism, the claim is either wrong or trivial.

Yeah, but that sometimes requires figuring out whether someone is a
creationist or not. I have been falsely accused of being a
creationist innumerable times, and I've seen Behe being subjected to
the same treatment.

In Behe's case, though, it depends on what definition of "creationist"
one employs and I have to find that out for each one.

And in Behe's case, I soon came to learn that when an anti-ID person
[which means most of the regulars of talk.origins] alleges that Behe
has made this or that scientific claim in support of crationism, the
allegation is either wrong or trivial.

[...]

> To sum up:  don't waste your time with points and counterpoints.  Find a
> claim that interests you and run it to ground.  Then repeat.  There are
> lots of folks here who would be eager to help.

And lots of others who will put obstacles in your way if they are
convinced you are a creationist.

> If you need a paper that's paywalled, drop us a line
> and it will magically appear in your inbox. If you like,
> write up your results and post them here. If you've
> picked a claim and have no idea where to start,
> drop me a line or post here.

You are unusually helpful, Garamond. One minor nipitck: for "us"
substituted "me", unless you are willing to monitor all the posts he
does.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[Ray Martinez]

On Apr 4, 4:20 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net>
wrote:

> On 4/3/12 12:25 PM, Christopher wrote:
>
> > On Sunday, April 1, 2012 3:07:28 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> On Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:46:51 PM UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> >>> On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher<christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> > > [snip]
>
> > I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one,
> > based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my
> > interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts
> > available. You could say I am taking a default position with
> > regard to the Christian faith.
>
> > That said, I am genuinely open to the possibility that I could
> > be completely wrong. The claims and implications of Christianity
> > are so enormous, that I simply cannot afford to be wrong about it.
>
> I challenge your claim that the claims and implications of Christianity
> are enormous.  I suspect rather that the implications of *your
> particular interpretation* of Christianity are enormous.  Christianity,
> for example, says nothing about the age of the earth.  Some sects within
> Christianity make such statements, but Christianity per se does not deal
> with it.  Likewise, though many Christians do, Christianity does not say
> anything about the truth or falsehood of evolution.
>

Completely false.

The entire New Testament exists in the context of the Old Testament.
The Old, in turn, exists in the context of Genesis 1 and 2. And the
two genealogies of Christ in the New end in Adam either directly or by
implication. Also:

John 1:1 says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God...."

Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth."

The Logos was with God in the beginning when He created the heavens
and the earth. According to Colossians, Christ (the Logos) was the
agent by which God spoke creation into existence.

A wide range of Scripture says Christianity was founded in Creationism
(Intelligence did it).

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

On Apr 4, 4:44 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net>
wrote:

> On 4/4/12 1:18 AM, Christopher wrote:
>
> > [snip]
> > [...] but I believe that a belief in inerrancy is simply
> > something that is demanded by Scripture itself.
>
> Even the story of Abraham?  Scripture itself demands that that story be
> interpreted as allegory.  See Galatians 4:24 (and surrounding verses for
> context).
>

Doesn't say that at all.

It says the account of Abraham & Sarah and their two sons becomes an
allegory depicting what was going on in Paul's day (and today by
extension). The context is how salvation is maintained (previous
chapters). The Church at Jerusalem insisted on works of the law
(depicted as Ishmael, the son of Abraham's bondwoman). Paul's message
insists on faith alone (depicted as Isaac, the son of his wife, a
freewoman, and miracle promise). The Church at Jerusalem was
attempting to negate Paul's message by persecuting his converts with
requirements of law (depicted by the fact that Ishmael persecuted
Isaac, which caused Abraham to send him away). Paul says we are to do
the same with anyone that attempts to infect the gospel with the
message of works (compliance to a code of conduct in order to maintain
salvation). He said:

"Cast out the bondwoman and her son (Ishmael): for the son of the
bondwoman shall not be heir with the son (Isaac) of the freewoman."

As usual, the Atheist has no understanding of Scripture. Their minds
are poisoned by unintelligence (evolution).

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

On Mar 31, 12:01 pm, Garamond Lethe <cartographi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 05:46:15 -0700, Christopher wrote:
> > On Friday, March 30, 2012 7:26:12 PM UTC+2, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> >> On Mar 29, 5:04 am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> > Is active maintenance still being invested in talkorigins.org? Some
> >> > of the more useful articles date back almost 20 years and would be
> >> > wonderful to read in an updated format. The last POTM dates to March
> >> > 2010.
>
> >> > I am a creationist, and I am asking since I consider talkorigins.org
> >> > perhaps the best resource available for exploring point-counterpoint
> >> > claims around the issues.
>

> >> Glad to see a creationist actually take the site seriously.
>
> >> Your original post to this group in Feb. proved to be quite an entrance
> >> and was quite interesting. Did that exchange change any of your
> >> thinking on genetics?
>
> >> Mark
>
> > It did absolutely demonstrate that the issue is not nearly as simple as
> > any superficial take on it would ever allow.
>
> > It has lead me (in conjunction with other studies) to a certain feeling
> > of, I don't know, intellectual despair if you will.
> > There is simply so much data, so many arguments, so many studies, so
> > many criticisms, so many factors that the layman (who normally lacks the
> > technial credentials to even properly evaluate the data) simply feels
> > helpless in trying to form an educated opinion. For every point there
> > are a hundred counterpoints, and each counterpoint raises a hundred
> > replies on its own. So while it is deeply fascinating to me, it
> > frustrates me even more.
>
> One of the great pleasures I took from grad school was learning how to
> get around this problem.
>
> First caveat:  We're now in a world where "educated" means having access
> to the library of a good research university (and knowing how to use
> it).  If I have access to a copy of "Linkage disequilibrium in the human
> genome" and you don't, it doesn't matter if you're smarter than I am.

> You have to rely to me to tell you what's in that paper.  The
> digitization of decades of the primary literature has amplified this
> disparity.  If you want to evaluate claims and counterclaims for
> yourself, the price of admission is at least part-time university
> enrollment.
>
> Second caveat:  Learning to read the primary literature is a skill that's
> easiest to pick up in a grad seminar class.  You can figure it out on
> your own, but you'll have a lot more frustration and you'll make a lot of
> avoidable mistakes.  Each community will have an understanding of what
> can be assumed and what needs to be explicit and you'll have to read
> several dozen papers before you can start evaluating the quality of the
> work with any competence.  If you still want to dive in, then read the
> abstract first, then the conclusion, then the introduction, then the
> discussion.  You'll know you're getting good when you start skimming the
> bibliography early on to see if there's any papers or authors you
> recognize.

>
> So here's the trick:  pick one claim and master it.
>
> Here's how this works in practice.
>
> When you posted your query about Carter's genetics paper I stopped
> reading when I got to his first citation.  He made a claim that "there is
> abundant evidence that the entire human race came from two people just a
> few thousand years ago" and I decided to focus my efforts on that
> particular claim.
>
> That in turn led to Nelson's paper in the journal of creation, and again
> I focused on one claim there and followed up to the paper he cited
> (Dorit).  Then I read Dorit and read several of the papers that came
> later that cited Dorit and improved on the work.  (I also had to consult
> an evolution textbook and a few wikipedia articles to figure out what a
> few of the more technical terms meant.)
>

> Having done all of that reading do I understand linkage disequilibrium?
> Hell, no.  But I have a general idea of what's involved, I have a decent
> sense that this technique is well-regarded in the community, and most
> important I can see the error bounds decreasing over time.  And based on
> this I'm confident that Nelson's claim about linkage disequilibrium was
> wrong.
>
> I then turned to Nelson's next claim, followed up the citation to Reich,
> and figured out straightaway that Reich didn't say what Nelson said it
> did.  (I don't think Nelson was clever enough to lie about this; he
> probably just didn't read the paper carefully.)

>
> So let's take a step back.  I've invested a few hours of highly technical
> reading to figure out that the first two claims of Nelson are wrong and
> that Carter shouldn't have relied on Nelson for support.  Nelson makes a
> lot more claims in his paper that I didn't look at and I haven't even
> gotten to the meat of Carter's work yet.  I could easily spend two months
> doing this kind of analysis on Carter's paper and that's just one paper
> out of the thousands of creationists publication that are out there.
>
> But all is not lost.
>
> After doing a couple of dozen deep dives like I've illustrated above
> you'll begin to realize that, if a creationist makes a scientific claim
> in support of creationism, the claim is either wrong or trivial.

I think it is quite fair to point out right here that G. Lethe is an
Atheist-Evolutionist. It's hard to imagine that his conclusion was
ever in doubt.

But Lethe's advice on how to investigate claims (in view of the fact
that so many sources exist) is nonetheless valuable.

Ray

> After
> another couple dozen deep dives you'll start to see patterns in the
> errors.  And at some point you'll be comfortable reaching the (tentative)
> conclusion that if the first fifty claims you investigated were wrong or
> trivial then then you can start making increasingly confident predictions
> about creationist claims in general.
>
> Let's take another step back.
>
> You mentioned points and counterpoints.  That's very much a debating
> approach.  If you're talking to folks who don't have access to the peer-
> reviewed literature then that's probably the only model for a
> conversation you have.  You can enumerate your beliefs, they can
> enumerate their beliefs, and there's really no way for one person to
> convince the other.
>
> The approach I've outlined doesn't have that problem.
>
> 1.  Nelson says Dorit's linkage disequilibrium work supports a population
> bottleneck consistent with a worldwide flood.  Dorit was doing
> exploratory work and his error bars were so wide that it supports a
> population bottleneck last Tuesday.  Subsequent work (that was available
> to Nelson) improved on this technique and excludes a flood-related
> bottleneck.  Nelson got it wrong, full stop.
>
> 2.  Nelson says Reich's population bottleneck supports a worldwide
> flood.  I say Reich specifically mentioned that no bottleneck was found
> in the Nigerian population he studied, and I'm happy to send you a copy
> of Reich with the relevant passage highlighted.  Nelson got it wrong,
> full stop.
>
> And that, in microcosm, is the evolution/creation "debate".

>
> To sum up:  don't waste your time with points and counterpoints.  Find a
> claim that interests you and run it to ground.  Then repeat.  There are

> lots of folks here who would be eager to help.  If you need a paper

> that's paywalled, drop us a line and it will magically appear in your
> inbox.  If you like, write up your results and post them here.  If you've
> picked a claim and have no idea where to start, drop me a line or post

> here.  It gets a lot easier with practice.

[*Hemidactylus*]

http://bible.cc/genesis/37-25.htm

http://bible.cc/genesis/39-1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmaelites

[Mark Isaak]

Like I say, your particular interpretation says what you say, but your
particular interpretation of Christianity is not Christianity.
Christianity, for example, (as opposed to your interpretation of it)
does not say the Old Testament exists in the context of Genesis 1 and 2
(especially since parts of the Old Testament were written before Genesis
1 and 2).

Besides, if you really want to trace things back, Genesis 1 and 2 exist
in the context of evolution. Reality trumps scripture.

> And the two genealogies of Christ in the New end in Adam either
> directly or by implication.

Yawn. So did Herod's.

> John 1:1 says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
> God...."
>
> Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
> earth."
>
> The Logos was with God in the beginning when He created the heavens
> and the earth. According to Colossians, Christ (the Logos) was the
> agent by which God spoke creation into existence.
>
> A wide range of Scripture says Christianity was founded in Creationism
> (Intelligence did it).

Still, Christianity says nothing about the age of the earth, or the
truth or falsehood of evolution, or what, if anything, "intelligence did
it" even means. Creation is an important part of Christianity, true,
but Christianity does not declare the when or how or why of creation.
You do, but Christianity does not stem from Ray Martinez.

[Christopher]

On Friday, May 25, 2012 7:52:51 AM UTC+2, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 5/24/12 1:32 PM, Ray Martinez wrote:

> &gt; On Apr 4, 4:20 pm, Mark Isaak&lt;eci...@curioustaxonomyNOSPAM.net&gt;
> &gt; wrote:
> &gt;&gt; On 4/3/12 12:25 PM, Christopher wrote:
> &gt;&gt;
> &gt;&gt;&gt; On Sunday, April 1, 2012 3:07:28 AM UTC+2, bobmy...@gmail.com wrote:
> &gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; On Saturday, March 31, 2012 6:46:51 PM UTC-6, Mark Buchanan wrote:
> &gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; On Mar 31, 8:46 am, Christopher&lt;christopher.svanef...@gmail.com&gt;
> &gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; wrote:
> &gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; [snip]
> &gt;&gt;
> &gt;&gt;&gt; I will admit openly that my current position is a dogmatic one,
> &gt;&gt;&gt; based on my belief that the Bible is true, and based on my
> &gt;&gt;&gt; interpretation of it, not a thorough evaluation of all the facts
> &gt;&gt;&gt; available. You could say I am taking a default position with
> &gt;&gt;&gt; regard to the Christian faith.
> &gt;&gt;
> &gt;&gt;&gt; That said, I am genuinely open to the possibility that I could
> &gt;&gt;&gt; be completely wrong. The claims and implications of Christianity
> &gt;&gt;&gt; are so enormous, that I simply cannot afford to be wrong about it.
> &gt;&gt;
> &gt;&gt; I challenge your claim that the claims and implications of Christianity
> &gt;&gt; are enormous. I suspect rather that the implications of *your
> &gt;&gt; particular interpretation* of Christianity are enormous. Christianity,
> &gt;&gt; for example, says nothing about the age of the earth. Some sects within
> &gt;&gt; Christianity make such statements, but Christianity per se does not deal
> &gt;&gt; with it. Likewise, though many Christians do, Christianity does not say
> &gt;&gt; anything about the truth or falsehood of evolution.
> &gt;
> &gt; Completely false.
> &gt;
> &gt; The entire New Testament exists in the context of the Old Testament.
> &gt; The Old, in turn, exists in the context of Genesis 1 and 2.

>
> Like I say, your particular interpretation says what you say, but your
> particular interpretation of Christianity is not Christianity.
> Christianity, for example, (as opposed to your interpretation of it)
> does not say the Old Testament exists in the context of Genesis 1 and 2
> (especially since parts of the Old Testament were written before Genesis
> 1 and 2).
>
> Besides, if you really want to trace things back, Genesis 1 and 2 exist
> in the context of evolution. Reality trumps scripture.
>

> &gt; And the two genealogies of Christ in the New end in Adam either
> &gt; directly or by implication.
>
> Yawn. So did Herod&#39;s.
>
> &gt; John 1:1 says &quot;In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
> &gt; God....&quot;
> &gt;
> &gt; Genesis 1:1 says &quot;In the beginning God created the heavens and the
> &gt; earth.&quot;
> &gt;
> &gt; The Logos was with God in the beginning when He created the heavens
> &gt; and the earth. According to Colossians, Christ (the Logos) was the
> &gt; agent by which God spoke creation into existence.
> &gt;
> &gt; A wide range of Scripture says Christianity was founded in Creationism
> &gt; (Intelligence did it).

>
> Still, Christianity says nothing about the age of the earth, or the

> truth or falsehood of evolution, or what, if anything, &quot;intelligence did
> it&quot; even means. Creation is an important part of Christianity, true,

> but Christianity does not declare the when or how or why of creation.
> You do, but Christianity does not stem from Ray Martinez.
>
> --
> Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net

> &quot;It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
> honesty and benevolence has more effect on men&#39;s conduct, than the most
> pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems.&quot; - D. Hume

Bumping this thread in an attempt to resurrect it (I hope to address some of the questions later on).

[Greg G.]

On Jul 15, 11:26�am, Christopher <christopher.svanef...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Have you ever noticed that in all the Epistles and Revelation (the
last 22 books of the Bible), there isn't a single mention of Jesus'
life on Earth? These epistles include those that are supposed to have
been written by those who knew him. Sometimes they argue points that
would have been more convincing if they said they heard it from Jesus.
We don't see any of that. That's not what we would see if there had
been an actual Jesus.

See if that ressurects the thread.

[Friar Broccoli]

On Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:32:56 -0700 (PDT), "Greg G." <ggw...@gmail.com>
wrote:

.

>Have you ever noticed that in all the Epistles and Revelation (the
>last 22 books of the Bible), there isn't a single mention of Jesus'
>life on Earth?

Never read them that closely, or anywhere near completely.

> These epistles include those that are supposed to have
> been written by those who knew him.

Well, Paul certainly never knew him. Can you give an example of a
person we are certain was supposed to have known Jesus who made an
argument that would have been more authoritative if he had referred back
to Jesus?

>Sometimes they argue points that
>would have been more convincing if they said they heard it from Jesus.
>We don't see any of that. That's not what we would see if there had
>been an actual Jesus.
>
>See if that ressurects the thread.

[Christopher]

[snip]

> > Bumping this thread in an attempt to resurrect it (I hope to address some of the questions later on
>
>
>
> Have you ever noticed that in all the Epistles and Revelation (the
>
> last 22 books of the Bible), there isn't a single mention of Jesus'
>
> life on Earth? These epistles include those that are supposed to have
>
> been written by those who knew him. Sometimes they argue points that
>
> would have been more convincing if they said they heard it from Jesus.
>
> We don't see any of that. That's not what we would see if there had
>
> been an actual Jesus.

This is simply not correct. Paul never met Jesus (as far as we know) during His earthly ministry - he claims his own interaction with Him was largely supernatural.

Other did walk with Jesus, and Peter is one of them. His first epistle has a direct reference to the Gospels, in describing the Transfiguration.

[J.J. O'Shea]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:04:12 -0400, Friar Broccoli wrote
(in article <aa9018l5pe0o1u3qi...@4ax.com>):

> Well, Paul certainly never knew him. Can you give an example of a person we

> are certain was supposed to have known Jesus who made an argument that would
> have been more authoritative if he had referred back to Jesus?

Mark, in theory, was an apostle. Kinda difficult to tell from this distance
in time.

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.