A 6,000 year old, and Biblical, Earth and universe?

[a_haworthroberts]

As sent to CMI:


http://creation.com/ice-sheet-age
""The old ages ‘seen’ in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores depend upon the belief that the ice sheets are old to begin with." Untrue. Rather, the 'young' ages ‘seen’ in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores by people like you depends upon the religious belief that the ice sheets only formed during the last 4,300 years because you have an unscientific belief in a worldwide hill-covering flood and claim it happened just 4,300 years ago. Also your talk of 'uniformitarianism' (do you mean gradualism) is largely irrelevant to visible ice core evidence. Nice try.
First, there has never been a global flood in historical times - never. Second, snow and ice could not produce such massive ice sheets in just 4,300 years. Third, there has been NO 'ice age' within the last 4,300 years. Fourth, if there had been average polar precipitation would probably have been less than today and not greater.
"It is also interesting that the ice cores only show one ice age, just as expected within the biblical paradigm". That's because there has only been one glaciation within the LAST 110,000 years - the last of many, and which ended around 12,000 years ago. You refer to a 'biblical paradigm' but there is NO hint even of a 'post-flood rapid ice age' in Genesis - NONE AT ALL.
Please also explain THIS:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23866810
Your claims about Antarctica are nonsensical.
"It is obvious that accepting the Bible’s history of the Earth is most likely to lead you to the truth". Yes - because real science shows the Bible to be wrong where and when it touches on scientific topics or the planet's history. Which annoys you. Thus you are trying to rewrite science to 'help' God (if he exists)."


THIS IS THE BEST THEY CAN DO BUT YEC FUNDAMENTALISTS STILL CLING TO THEIR ANTI-SCIENCE.

[a_haworthroberts]

An ex creationist and ex science denier in the US speaks:
http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/ ... cs-part-i/

[a_haworthroberts]

Comment as sent to David Coppedge:

"
David

http://crev.info/2013/10/global-flood-o ... utionists/
'Global Flood OK if proposed by Evolutionists'.

If there had been a biblical global flood (literally so) less than 5,000 years ago, there would be compelling historical and scientific evidence for it.

You have promised me - under your post about dinosaur tracks in Alaska - that I will be censored for not answering a question you posed that had nothing to do with the article. Censor away (this will be posted on the BCSE community forum too)!

This Nature letter is referring to what might have happened on the planet more than 500 million years ago. A flooding event from sea level rise so long ago could not be expected to leave overwhelming evidence in today's landscape.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 10969.html

"It’s not clear from the Nature paper whether the authors believe all the high mountains on Earth were covered by water". I very much DOUBT it.

Ashley"

[a_haworthroberts]

Someone commenting at Amazon.com - well the author himself actually - has flagged this new book entitled 'Where the Bible contradicts creationists' (damn I was half, well 10%, toying with trying to write something along those lines):
http://www.amazon.com/Where-Bible-Contr ... duct_top#_ (you can search inside part of the book)
http://www.biblicalfreedom.com/creationism.html

[a_haworthroberts]

Comment as sent to David Coppedge:

"
David

http://crev.info/2013/10/global-flood-o ... utionists/
'Global Flood OK if proposed by Evolutionists'.

If there had been a biblical global flood (literally so) less than 5,000 years ago, there would be compelling historical and scientific evidence for it.

You have promised me - under your post about dinosaur tracks in Alaska - that I will be censored for not answering a question you posed that had nothing to do with the article. Censor away (this will be posted on the BCSE community forum too)!

This Nature letter is referring to what might have happened on the planet more than 500 million years ago. A flooding event from sea level rise so long ago could not be expected to leave overwhelming evidence in today's landscape.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 10969.html

"It’s not clear from the Nature paper whether the authors believe all the high mountains on Earth were covered by water". I very much DOUBT it.

Ashley"

Yep - Coppedge has kept his promise and has duly CENSORED me - without informing any other readers that a post was censored.

I guess that I must not post silly rubbish as he has decided that censorship rather than rebuttal is the best option...

[a_haworthroberts]

Email as just sent:


Young Earth creationists fantasise about dinosaur footprints.

They are reacting to a very recently reported discovery.

Fantasist 1
http://biblicalgeology.net/blog/dinosau ... mment-7152
'Dinosaurs caught fleeing rising waters of Noah's Flood along the
Yukon River, Alaska'.
"It's clear that the prints were preserved in most unusual conditions.
There could not have been much time between the animal stepping in the
mud and the sand filling in the depression, otherwise the print would
have eroded away. And the thickness of the strata indicate that the
water level was rising, allowing space for more sediment to be
deposited on top.
Footprints like this are classic evidence for the Inundatory stage of
Noah's Flood, in particular the period as the waters were approaching
their peak ...".
In response to sceptical comments, Walker informs them that "It was
worked out by application of the biblical geological model". He
supplies two links. Both written by himself. Convincing, eh.
I tried to make a critical comment (also flagging David Coppedge - see
the next link below) but Tas Walker censored it without even
acknowledging it.

Fantasist 2
http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... lelinkedin
'Alaskan Dinosaur Tracks Buried in the Global Flood'
"The biblical history of the global Flood actually makes sense of
discoveries like these... Thus, mineral-rich water would have surged
over various habitats, perhaps resulting in fleeing animals leaving
their footprints in wet surfaces temporarily exposed during tidal
fluctuations or lulls between the violent upheavals of water. Sand
hauled in by surging Flood waters would have rapidly filled many of
these footprints and, under great pressure, compressed and set them
like quick-setting cement".
AiG do NOT publish any comments regarding their articles, from
internet readers, on their website.

By contrast this YEC did NOT fantasise about Noah's Flood. But look
what happened when I dared offer criticisms and challenges.
http://crev.info/2013/09/dinosaur-tracks-in-alaska/
[minor correction - THIS blogger is David Coppedge]

MEANWHILE:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/thousa ... d=20382216
"Mark Norell, the head of paleontology at the American Museum of
Natural History, said to think of what would happen to your footprints
on a wet and sandy beach. "If there's a big storm and the footprint is
covered in clay blown from the hillside, it will cover the footprint,"
he told ABC News. After it hardens over millions of years, the clay
molding ends up capturing what the foot itself looked like. "It's like
you're seeing the animal's foot while it was alive.""

A H-R

[a_haworthroberts]

http://www.challies.com/articles/why-i- ... lg1sijIbAa
"Science confirms it". What? A 6,000 year old planet Earth? No - that Challies has deluded himself about science because he believes he is obligated to do this (even though he claims always to have believed in a young Earth regardless of any science).

[a_haworthroberts]

http://creation.com/roots-and-fruits
Clearly science theories are evil - once you become a YEC.

[a_haworthroberts]

http://www.piltdownsuperman.com/2013/10 ... books.html
http://crev.info/2013/10/creationism-as ... mment-4906

I think David Coppedge should tell his readers - if he has not already done so - what he thinks of Bob Sorensen's blog posts at Piltdown Superman since Bob regularly links to David's posts. Does he agree with the way in which he regularly name-calls people who disagree with young Earth creationism? If David declines to do this I will assume that he approves of Cowboy Bob's abrasive and sometimes libellous style of argumentation coupled with a refusal to accept any comments whatsoever at his blog page.

I've made this comment at crev.info - but David/the Editor has banned me from posting there again unless I answer his question from the other week (a sort of blackmail) so doubtless the post will soon disappear.

[a_haworthroberts]

A very pertinent comment has been made under this by a Brandon Vogt:
http://www.challies.com/articles/why-i- ... reationist
"Tim, I normally respect and appreciate your thoughtful articles, but this latest is confusing and potentially scandalous. And I mean that in the literal sense of the word: this article is bound to needlessly cause someone to stumble. Intelligent seekers, interested in Christianity, aware that you're one of the more influential Christian figures, will run fast in the opposite direction upon reading an article like this.

A few important questions I have after reading:

1) Would you admit that your interpretation of Genesis 1 is fallible? In other words, are you open to being wrong? You claim quite confidently that, "This is what the author said, because this is what the author meant to convey, because this is what the author believed, because this is exactly how God did it." Later on you even describe the literal six-day belief as "the clear and natural reading of Scripture." Yet as you rightfully note, this is not the universal interpretation of Genesis 1, nor even the most popular (it's actually held by a very small minority of Christians.) Would you therefore posit that the large majority of Christians willfully reject what is, in your mind, the "clear and natural" interpretation of Scripture?

2) You claim other biblical writers attest to a literal six-day creation, but you provide absolutely no evidence to support this claim. It's just a groundless assertion. What other writers or passages are you referring to?

3) You say "science confirms [a literal six-day creation]", which again is totally unsupported.
You reference no scientist, no theory, and no peer-reviewed study confirming your belief. It's simply unsubstantiated. Honestly, I'm pretty familiar with this area of cosmology and I'm not aware of *any* mainstream cosmologist who believes in a literal six-day creation. Therefore I don't see how "science confirms it." (As a side note, you also don't explain what about the mainstream scientific view you find uncompelling. You simply assert it without reason.)

4) How would you reply to the seemingly devastating challenge to your literal six-day theory that God did not create the sun, moon, and stars until the fourth day, thereby making three previous 24-hour days impossible?

For these reasons and more, I think publishing this article was a big mistake. I respect your freedom to hold the six-day view, and agree with you that it's not central to the Gospel--one can be a Christian even while embracing bad science--but I think you're doing immense damage to the Gospel by publishing this piece. If nothing else, you're creating unnecessary roadblocks to faith."

[a_haworthroberts]

http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... sil-record
"While we cannot know the pre-Flood earth’s geography, the order and diversity in the fossil record suggest that certain types of ecosystems—perhaps more low-lying ones—were destroyed and buried before others. This is a reasonable and biblically consistent explanation of why the majority of floral fossils appear in higher strata, just as it explains the preponderance of marine invertebrates in lower layers and the distribution of vertebrates in the higher ones". (See the final section.)

AiG think the majority of the world's flowering plants grow at high altitude and far from the oceans. Or at least their ridiculous reading of Genesis and their resultant science abuse force them to suggest such things.

And they have the gall to claim "The “abominable mystery” is actually only a mystery for those espoused to evolutionary presuppositions".

No, those mystified (they won't admit that their suggestions about where flowering plants must have grown 4,300 years ago are plain daft as well as unsupported by 'observable science') are those who seek to 'explain' the fossil record by appealing to 'Noah's Worldwide Flood'. Not those who start with the EVIDENCE - though of course they do not know everything because there is not evidence to tell us everything and evidence needs careful evaluation.

I've not sent this to AiG. Let them come here to read it, if they dare.

[a_haworthroberts]

As sent to CMI:


http://creation.com/ice-sheet-age
""The old ages ‘seen’ in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores depend upon the belief that the ice sheets are old to begin with." Untrue. Rather, the 'young' ages ‘seen’ in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores by people like you depends upon the religious belief that the ice sheets only formed during the last 4,300 years because you have an unscientific belief in a worldwide hill-covering flood and claim it happened just 4,300 years ago. Also your talk of 'uniformitarianism' (do you mean gradualism) is largely irrelevant to visible ice core evidence. Nice try.
First, there has never been a global flood in historical times - never. Second, snow and ice could not produce such massive ice sheets in just 4,300 years. Third, there has been NO 'ice age' within the last 4,300 years. Fourth, if there had been average polar precipitation would probably have been less than today and not greater.
"It is also interesting that the ice cores only show one ice age, just as expected within the biblical paradigm". That's because there has only been one glaciation within the LAST 110,000 years - the last of many, and which ended around 12,000 years ago. You refer to a 'biblical paradigm' but there is NO hint even of a 'post-flood rapid ice age' in Genesis - NONE AT ALL.
Please also explain THIS:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23866810
Your claims about Antarctica are nonsensical.
"It is obvious that accepting the Bible’s history of the Earth is most likely to lead you to the truth". Yes - because real science shows the Bible to be wrong where and when it touches on scientific topics or the planet's history. Which annoys you. Thus you are trying to rewrite science to 'help' God (if he exists)."


THIS IS THE BEST THEY CAN DO BUT YEC FUNDAMENTALISTS STILL CLING TO THEIR ANTI-SCIENCE.

Well, Bob Sorensen likes it.
http://www.piltdownsuperman.com/2013/10 ... heets.html
He makes an unsupported - because it is false - claim that scientists who recognise the real age of polar ice sheets indulge in 'circular reasoning'. Yawn.
Then he links to a recent Telegraph news story about Antarctica:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro ... sheet.html 'Vast streams found beneath Antarctic ice sheet'
His comment on the article? "Conditions change and new discoveries are made". Thus Bob thinks he has debunked uniformitarianism (the fact that disproving a maximum age for polar ice sheets of around 4,300 years has next to nothing to do with such an -ism and is based on observable ice core science and acquired knowledge of how ice behaves and of climatology has clearly passed him by).
Besides, the Telegraph article is not really about a significant change in environmental conditions. Rather it is about a new discovery (like the canyon under Greenland which most YECs have totally ignored since it was reported a few weeks ago).

Er, I hate to break it to you Bob. The vast streams under an Antarctic ice sheet - just like the various lakes deep under Antarctic ice and the newly identified canyon under Greenland - EXISTED BEFORE HUMANS DISCOVERED THEM. A new geological discovery does not a change in 'conditions' make (even if there was some change in conditions that could form the Antarctic ice sheets in just 4,300 years). It may help real scientists understand better what will happen in future, especially if rapid global warming resumes.

Unless of course some YEC is going to tell us that the streams, lakes and canyons were only formed in 2013?

[a_haworthroberts]

Article as flagged at the Panda's Thumb blog:
http://www.npr.org/2013/10/03/228831363 ... noahs-arks
"The Creation Museum's mission is to show the feasibility of biblical stories. So with the Ark Encounter, they're also setting out to show what day-to-day life would have been like for Noah.
"Not only are we thinking through the different kinds of animals represented onboard and how you deal with 12 million tons of waste every day," Zovath says.
How exactly would Noah have accomplished that? "Very, very carefully I think," Zovath says. "I'm not sure how they did that"".

Noah had a problem with inconvenient animal waste.

Modern YECs have a problem with inconvenient facts.

More information for those who have the time to read it:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... fit-on-ark
http://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com ... /#comments

Perhaps they could try and re-create these conditions and test the hypothesis, once the Ark Encounter is complete. Oh, I forgot - dinosaurs have gone extinct since the Flood. And the AiG Ark will be on LAND not water.

[a_haworthroberts]

Comment/Query as sent to David Coppedge (which I expect he will insist on censoring):


"
http://crev.info/2013/10/wrong-again-se ... -into-one/
"with more morphological variation between them than between the various proposed species of Homo". Where did you get that from? I've not read it anywhere. Is it in the Science paper (I've only been able to read the Abstract)?

You could delete my post but STILL answer my question as a PS type comment."

[a_haworthroberts]

EDITED POST, CORRECTING AN INITIAL ERROR SOON AFTERWARDS

Comment/Query as sent to David Coppedge (which I expect he will insist on censoring):


"
http://crev.info/2013/10/wrong-again-se ... -into-one/
"with more morphological variation between them than between the various proposed species of Homo". Where did you get that from? I've not read it anywhere. Is it in the Science paper (I've only been able to read the Abstract)?

You could delete my post but STILL answer my question as a PS type comment."

And a further comment, as I see the bloke is lying as well.
"No. These are not Homo sapiens."

EDIT: I accidentally MISCONSTRUED him as claiming the Dmanisi fossils are OUR species. A further comment made:
"Sorry, in my last comment I misread what you wrote. You do not explicitly claim that the Dmanisi fossils are our species (they cannot be from what I have read)".

Should any YEC ideologue try to claim that these ARE Homo sapiens fossils, they would be saying in effect that scientists cannot spot a human fossil when they see one. They would be ignoring the fact that - according to at least two press reports - "unlike other Homo fossils, it had a number of primitive features: a long apelike face, large teeth and a tiny braincase, about one-third the size of that of a modern human being".
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/scien ... .html?_r=0

As far as I know, standard YEC dogma does claim that all/most extinct species in the genus Homo are in fact past 'variations' within OUR species (not separate species nor ape species). Part of the reason I misconstrued Coppedge was because he wrote: "The brain case of the new skull been measured at 546 cc, about a third of many modern human skulls, but it’s not always size that counts. One must know the sex and maturity of the specimen, and examine the complex behavior of the individuals". That - together with his sentences "It should have been obvious. Living humans exhibit a huge variation in morphology: height, robustness, facial features, limb length – yet they are all one species, Homo sapiens" - made me think he was trying to pass off the fossils as Homo sapiens fossils.

I've also commented on this Homo news story under both these blogs (they don't censor me for providing information/asking awkward questions):
http://gracesalt.wordpress.com/2013/10/ ... ten-again/
http://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com ... /#comments