You have made some good points here. So my question is, can you apply your generalization to this situation of the silurian salt beds? Did they have ocean life remains in them. And do we apply the same logic to the remains of sea life found on mountain tops, that seas must also have deposited that sea life in place?
If we can assume that mountains moved dramatically from their original location under the seas, can we assume the possibility that these salt beds were also formed through some rather dramatic events, rather than a simple slow in-situ evaporation process?
Your example of how some lakes, Great lakes, (and of course the Salton Sea, the Dead Sea, and Manitou Lake) have dramatically higher salt content than the rivers that run into them, does demonstrate that lakes and oceans tend to increase salt concentrations over time. Five hundred feet of salt underground along with other layers to a cumulative depth of 2000 feet, is quite a bit, however.
I just became aware of another book called: "Unlocking the mysteries of creation." The Explorer's guide to the Awesome Works of God. copyright 2002. by Dennis Petersen. Master Books, Box 726, Green Forest, AR 72638.
I have just opened a copy of this on CD, and I don't know if the book is available on-line. But it raises some very interesting questions just in the first fifty pages, and makes points about the unreliability of radiometric dating, for example, among other things. The book is about 240 pages long with numerous references sited. Dennis first obtained a B.S. (science), and a M.A. in museum administration, spending several years as a museum curator, and then later took courses at a Canadian Bible College, and then taught there for four years. He founded the Creation Resoure Foundation in California.
I'm not suggesting that he is more expert than everyone else, but he asks good questions, and reveals many inadequacies of the evolutionary paradigm.
So in addition to Walt Brown's book, this one might be worth reading.
Just a correction for a mistatement I made above: the amount of ordinary present day seawater to evaporate to produce between 500 to 2000 feet of salt, would not be 1500 to 6000 feet. 1500 to 6000 feet of water would be required to solubilize all the salt at the maximum capacity of water to hold salt in solution. Normal seawater would require about ten times that much, about 15,000 to 60,000 feet, if it was assumed to be directly vertical water above the salt beds. However, if the area of seawater was much larger than the salt beds, for example about ten times as large an area, then the water would not have to be that deep, and then 90% of the seawater could evaporate before salt started to precipitate. If the residual seawater accumulated above the salt beds, then it could deposit all the salt there.
If much of the origin of the salt water was subterranean, it may have had a much higher concentration of salt than ordinary seawater. Given the apparent volcanoes that existed in the region at one time, and the heat associated to increase evaporation rates, maybe something else happened than mere entry of ordinary sea water and its evaporation at normal atmospheric temperatures.
For those who are interested, creationist Ian Juby has a new video on youtube about the errors of whale evolution, as well as "the faint young sun", and other topics. youtube.com/user/wazooloo You can also view his previous videos on this site, or view his presentations on the miracle channel.
Not all churches have lost members. "The Christian and Missionary Alliance has experienced steady and significant growth since its inception. In 1925, there were just 25,000 members in 392 churches.[9] Membership reached 50,000 members in 1950 and by 1976 had reached 150,000.[9] In 2006, there were 417,008 members in 2,010 congregations.[9] ….[10] As of January 1, 2011, there was recorded more than 2,000 U.S. churches with a combined membership of more than 430,000 regularly gather to celebrate Jesus in multiple languages, according to the C&MA website." But you are right, elder Lubbert, that most churches have declining membership, and some, like the Rom Cath that seem to have high membership still, have very low attendance and participation rates. In North America and Europe. On the other hand, in Asia and Africa, memberships and participation is generally growing. Complacency, apathy, lack of passion, lukewarmness, lack of trial and testing, lack of real committment, and affluence have all combined to reduce the desire of many for a God who saves and rules. The thorns and thistles of the world are reducing the yield of the Word sown. In many cases, the churches fertilize the weeds as much as the crop.
"As noted already by Darwin, the fossil record is woefully incomplete.[1] Ideally, this list would only recursively include 'true' transitionals, fossils representing ancestral specie from which later groups evolved, but most, if not all, of the fossils shown here represent extinct side branches, more or less closely related to the true ancestor.[2] They will all include details unique to their own line as well. Fossils having relatively few such traits are termed "transitional", while those with a host of traits found neither in the ancestral or derived group are called "intermediate".
Since all species will always be subject to natural selection, the very term "transitional fossil" is essentially a misconception. it is however a commonly used term, and a useful concept in evolutionary biology. The fossils listed represent significant steps in the evolution of major features in various lines, and therefore fit the common usage of the phrase."
This quote from your article makes it abundantly clear that the theory of evolution postulates that every species is actually transitional and/or intermediate. That the "intermediates" are only intermediate relative to other species. This transition is not proven, nor even provable. It is merely assumed. The evidence could never ever prove that members of one species changed into another species. It can only demonstrate that some species resemble other species in many ways.
Ken, wow. Good response. I’ll try to respond to both of your posts in this one response.
You said: "I'm not at all uncertain. Are you? Your comment about reef growth, "At...approx one-half metre per year, it might have taken about 300 years to form", is a case in point. You can plug in any number you want, realistic or not, and get the result you want, but that doesn't prove or disprove anythiing. You need to consider all of the data."
My response is that yes, I am uncertain about many things. That is what makes learning interesting. I realize that plugging in .4 m per year does prove or disprove anything; it merely indicates a possibility. This number is possible, based on some present day data, but that does not mean that it actually happened that way. But even if it took twice as long or four times as long, then the reefs could have formed in 1200 years.
You said: " our material on the growth of the Andes is confusing to me because it is unclear what is a quotation and what is your commentary" I try to put quotation marks around quotes – I believe I did that there
You said: "So the Andes may have had a growth spurt, and geologists have discovered something we didn't know before. This doesn't significantly change the plate tectonics model, and is a much more complicated situation than reef growth or evaporite deposition." The article indicated some significant changes to the plate tectonics model would be required. But my point was only that the amount of time for something to happen in geological history still appears to be relatively fluid.
You asked: "In answer to your final question, let me ask how much sea water would have to evaporate in order to precipitate the amount of salt in the Salina Group in Michigan. " I think I already gave a number for the amount of normal sea water to evaporate, something between 1500 and 6000 feet of water. For highly saline water, slightly more than a tenth of that amount would be required.
You said: "The deepest crustal rocks in Michigan are granites and metamorphic rocks, the kinds of rocks that we find in the depths of mountain belts, and the surface of this basement rock is rather flat, which suggests that there were mountains here at one time, and those mountains were eroded away."
My reply is that your reasoning could go both ways based on what you are saying here. In other words, in this location, the granites and metamorphic rocks remained in place, rather than being uplifted into mountains. The Canadian Shield is full of this type of rock as well, which is near the surface. The literature indicates a belief that this used to be many large mountains at one time. The reasoning is that rocks found under mountains are similar. Other evidence is lacking, apparently, since as mountains erode, the roots of mountains rise up. So in this case of the Shield, any mountain roots would be much smaller than they were originally, but then how would we know really? The article I saw also indicated that there used to be hundreds of volcanic belts in this area, each one with several hundreds of volcanos and numerous vents.
You said: [quote]"John, I have an entire shelf of books by Christians on the issue of origins, and covering the entire spectrum of views from young-Earth creationism to evolutionary creation, and many of them misquote or quote out of context what scientists have written, distort or misrepresent the data (either deliberately or unwittingly), and show vast ignorance of the subject. Judging from the reviews of these two books on Amazon, they are probably more of the same. Usually the more "orthodox" such books are, the worse the science is. Some Christian writers even simply recycle material gleaned from other writers, and use "mined quotes" from books that have lifted quotes out of context. Often authors have minimal education in the field they write about, such as engineers writing on geology, paleontology, etc. This is embarrassing to many Christian scientists."[/quote]
My response: Yes, probably, some material is recycled from other writers. But the evolutionary theory proponents do this all the time. Continually. Many evolutionary geologists do nothing else than recycle the thoughts of others. And many of those thoughts are already recycled. Generalizations about "orthodoxy" and "worse science" is also a recycled thought, and the judgement about "worse science" is often based on whether it fits with the prevailing paradigm or not. From my point of view, the absolutely worst science has been the evolutionary science around the assumed evolution of man. Distorted and misrepresented data, fossils, fraud, unscientific assumptions, etc. When some words by some evolutionary scientists are quoted out of context, it is simply to highlight the fact of what they have said, and not to sugar-coat it. Many evolutionists ignore those statements because they are too difficult to deal with.
You said, "On the subject of radiometric dating, many are "expert" on the subject who have never done anything with it."
My reply is that the experts should be able to use radiometric dating objectively. But it is not as simply as a chemical test for chlorine, or for acidity, or for aluminum or arsenic in water. Radiometric dating requires a tremendous number of assumptions. The actual testing of chemical content of material, including the evaluation of proportions of various isotopes, is not the problem. That can be done objectively. What cannot be done objectively is the assumption of what that proportion should have been originally, which is what the whole radiometric dating process relies on.
You said:[quote] "Incidentally, I know the former manager of a large lab that does radiometric dating, who was asked by a geologist affiliated with the Institute for Creation Research to date a recent basalt sample from Hawaii. The manager pointed out what this geologist probably already knew, that relatively young volcanic samples give very old radiometric dates by the K-40/Ar-40 method, because a lot of non-radiogenic argon in the magma is trapped in the resulting volcanic rock, noting that it is not their practice to date such material. He was told to go ahead and do the dating, and the lab was paid for the work. The ridiculous result has since been published as an example of the unreliability of radiometric dating." [/quote]
This illustrates my point. Is the dating method determining the age, or is the assumption about age made already before the dating method is used? If the method is ridiculous for this known- to- be- relatively- young basalt, then how can the same method be used to indicate that some other basalt is very old? Maybe it is also young?
The method by which God created, reveals His character, don't you think? An interesting video by Juby interviewing three scholars/scientists/speakers/writers who have researched on the implications of evolutionary thought on social morality. It's called the Dark Side of Darwinianism. The dogma's of evolution, natural selection towards survival of the fittest, onwards and upwards eugenics, are discussed in this video. http://www.youtube.com/user/wazooloo
Correction: in the second paragraph, I meant to say that a moist finger will stick to a bone fossil but not to stones in the same layer as the fossils. In that way you can distinguish a bone fossil from the stone around it.
Bill, maybe it would not be wrong to say that your power saw still works.... even though you know that it takes someone to operate it, and that it needs power to make it work. Just that analogy work for you?
The problem is, how far do you go, and what are the implications? It is also a simple but wrong solution to simply say that it does not matter how man was created, or whether he was not directly created at all. It is also simple and wrong to say that man falling into sin is only an allegorical or sylized literal (meaning metaphorical) idea. It seems that because it is difficult to believe that God could make man out of dust, or woman from man, that we must find another interpretation? God could not do that, and therefore we must find another answer? But how could God create the universe in the first place? Where did God get that power?
A quote from your link: "Unfortunately, Behe doesn't mention the Krebs in his book. A pity. Here is a complex biochemical system, clearly an excellent hook on which to hang his thesis. Right? However, closer inspection of the literature reveals problems with such a "Krebs cycle is irreducibly complex" hypothesis..."
Why would you try to refute a comment that Behe never made, as you acknowledge yourself? Seems a bit like bait and switch?
Irreducibly complex does not mean that you could not have a smaller eye, or a different eye. It means you need more than half the parts to make it work. If you take 90% of it away, you do not have something useful, and usually if you take one small part away, it is also not very useful. This reduces the chances based on random mutations, to get a combination of simultaneous mutations that would produce something useful, and this must be combined with a larger organism in which there are other parts that are also complex, and need to be there for the whole organism to function. It is not only that you need all the parts, but they must also be there at the same time, in the right position, of the right size, and fitted together properly, and then hooked up to the larger organism properly. A perfect eye without a brain behind it would also be useless.
The eye of the ragworm is useful to the ragworm, but not to the human; it would be like walking around with your eyes closed.
The beefalo tends to revert back to the bison. This appears to be more of a selection than a mutation. There is an assumption by evolutionists that recessive genes must have originated from a mutation, but how is that proved?
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
You have made some good points here. So my question is, can you apply your generalization to this situation of the silurian salt beds? Did they have ocean life remains in them. And do we apply the same logic to the remains of sea life found on mountain tops, that seas must also have deposited that sea life in place?
If we can assume that mountains moved dramatically from their original location under the seas, can we assume the possibility that these salt beds were also formed through some rather dramatic events, rather than a simple slow in-situ evaporation process?
Your example of how some lakes, Great lakes, (and of course the Salton Sea, the Dead Sea, and Manitou Lake) have dramatically higher salt content than the rivers that run into them, does demonstrate that lakes and oceans tend to increase salt concentrations over time. Five hundred feet of salt underground along with other layers to a cumulative depth of 2000 feet, is quite a bit, however.
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
I just became aware of another book called: "Unlocking the mysteries of creation." The Explorer's guide to the Awesome Works of God. copyright 2002. by Dennis Petersen. Master Books, Box 726, Green Forest, AR 72638.
I have just opened a copy of this on CD, and I don't know if the book is available on-line. But it raises some very interesting questions just in the first fifty pages, and makes points about the unreliability of radiometric dating, for example, among other things. The book is about 240 pages long with numerous references sited. Dennis first obtained a B.S. (science), and a M.A. in museum administration, spending several years as a museum curator, and then later took courses at a Canadian Bible College, and then taught there for four years. He founded the Creation Resoure Foundation in California.
I'm not suggesting that he is more expert than everyone else, but he asks good questions, and reveals many inadequacies of the evolutionary paradigm.
So in addition to Walt Brown's book, this one might be worth reading.
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
Just a correction for a mistatement I made above: the amount of ordinary present day seawater to evaporate to produce between 500 to 2000 feet of salt, would not be 1500 to 6000 feet. 1500 to 6000 feet of water would be required to solubilize all the salt at the maximum capacity of water to hold salt in solution. Normal seawater would require about ten times that much, about 15,000 to 60,000 feet, if it was assumed to be directly vertical water above the salt beds. However, if the area of seawater was much larger than the salt beds, for example about ten times as large an area, then the water would not have to be that deep, and then 90% of the seawater could evaporate before salt started to precipitate. If the residual seawater accumulated above the salt beds, then it could deposit all the salt there.
If much of the origin of the salt water was subterranean, it may have had a much higher concentration of salt than ordinary seawater. Given the apparent volcanoes that existed in the region at one time, and the heat associated to increase evaporation rates, maybe something else happened than mere entry of ordinary sea water and its evaporation at normal atmospheric temperatures.
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
For those who are interested, creationist Ian Juby has a new video on youtube about the errors of whale evolution, as well as "the faint young sun", and other topics. youtube.com/user/wazooloo You can also view his previous videos on this site, or view his presentations on the miracle channel.
Posted in: When Churches Lose Members
Not all churches have lost members. "The Christian and Missionary Alliance has experienced steady and significant growth since its inception. In 1925, there were just 25,000 members in 392 churches.[9] Membership reached 50,000 members in 1950 and by 1976 had reached 150,000.[9] In 2006, there were 417,008 members in 2,010 congregations.[9] ….[10] As of January 1, 2011, there was recorded more than 2,000 U.S. churches with a combined membership of more than 430,000 regularly gather to celebrate Jesus in multiple languages, according to the C&MA website." But you are right, elder Lubbert, that most churches have declining membership, and some, like the Rom Cath that seem to have high membership still, have very low attendance and participation rates. In North America and Europe. On the other hand, in Asia and Africa, memberships and participation is generally growing. Complacency, apathy, lack of passion, lukewarmness, lack of trial and testing, lack of real committment, and affluence have all combined to reduce the desire of many for a God who saves and rules. The thorns and thistles of the world are reducing the yield of the Word sown. In many cases, the churches fertilize the weeds as much as the crop.
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
"As noted already by Darwin, the fossil record is woefully incomplete.[1] Ideally, this list would only recursively include 'true' transitionals, fossils representing ancestral specie from which later groups evolved, but most, if not all, of the fossils shown here represent extinct side branches, more or less closely related to the true ancestor.[2] They will all include details unique to their own line as well. Fossils having relatively few such traits are termed "transitional", while those with a host of traits found neither in the ancestral or derived group are called "intermediate".
Since all species will always be subject to natural selection, the very term "transitional fossil" is essentially a misconception. it is however a commonly used term, and a useful concept in evolutionary biology. The fossils listed represent significant steps in the evolution of major features in various lines, and therefore fit the common usage of the phrase."
This quote from your article makes it abundantly clear that the theory of evolution postulates that every species is actually transitional and/or intermediate. That the "intermediates" are only intermediate relative to other species. This transition is not proven, nor even provable. It is merely assumed. The evidence could never ever prove that members of one species changed into another species. It can only demonstrate that some species resemble other species in many ways.
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
Ken, wow. Good response. I’ll try to respond to both of your posts in this one response.
You said: "I'm not at all uncertain. Are you? Your comment about reef growth, "At...approx one-half metre per year, it might have taken about 300 years to form", is a case in point. You can plug in any number you want, realistic or not, and get the result you want, but that doesn't prove or disprove anythiing. You need to consider all of the data."
My response is that yes, I am uncertain about many things. That is what makes learning interesting. I realize that plugging in .4 m per year does prove or disprove anything; it merely indicates a possibility. This number is possible, based on some present day data, but that does not mean that it actually happened that way. But even if it took twice as long or four times as long, then the reefs could have formed in 1200 years.
You said: " our material on the growth of the Andes is confusing to me because it is unclear what is a quotation and what is your commentary" I try to put quotation marks around quotes – I believe I did that there
You said: "So the Andes may have had a growth spurt, and geologists have discovered something we didn't know before. This doesn't significantly change the plate tectonics model, and is a much more complicated situation than reef growth or evaporite deposition." The article indicated some significant changes to the plate tectonics model would be required. But my point was only that the amount of time for something to happen in geological history still appears to be relatively fluid.
You asked: "In answer to your final question, let me ask how much sea water would have to evaporate in order to precipitate the amount of salt in the Salina Group in Michigan. " I think I already gave a number for the amount of normal sea water to evaporate, something between 1500 and 6000 feet of water. For highly saline water, slightly more than a tenth of that amount would be required.
You said: "The deepest crustal rocks in Michigan are granites and metamorphic rocks, the kinds of rocks that we find in the depths of mountain belts, and the surface of this basement rock is rather flat, which suggests that there were mountains here at one time, and those mountains were eroded away."
My reply is that your reasoning could go both ways based on what you are saying here. In other words, in this location, the granites and metamorphic rocks remained in place, rather than being uplifted into mountains. The Canadian Shield is full of this type of rock as well, which is near the surface. The literature indicates a belief that this used to be many large mountains at one time. The reasoning is that rocks found under mountains are similar. Other evidence is lacking, apparently, since as mountains erode, the roots of mountains rise up. So in this case of the Shield, any mountain roots would be much smaller than they were originally, but then how would we know really? The article I saw also indicated that there used to be hundreds of volcanic belts in this area, each one with several hundreds of volcanos and numerous vents.
You said: [quote]"John, I have an entire shelf of books by Christians on the issue of origins, and covering the entire spectrum of views from young-Earth creationism to evolutionary creation, and many of them misquote or quote out of context what scientists have written, distort or misrepresent the data (either deliberately or unwittingly), and show vast ignorance of the subject. Judging from the reviews of these two books on Amazon, they are probably more of the same. Usually the more "orthodox" such books are, the worse the science is. Some Christian writers even simply recycle material gleaned from other writers, and use "mined quotes" from books that have lifted quotes out of context. Often authors have minimal education in the field they write about, such as engineers writing on geology, paleontology, etc. This is embarrassing to many Christian scientists."[/quote]
My response: Yes, probably, some material is recycled from other writers. But the evolutionary theory proponents do this all the time. Continually. Many evolutionary geologists do nothing else than recycle the thoughts of others. And many of those thoughts are already recycled. Generalizations about "orthodoxy" and "worse science" is also a recycled thought, and the judgement about "worse science" is often based on whether it fits with the prevailing paradigm or not. From my point of view, the absolutely worst science has been the evolutionary science around the assumed evolution of man. Distorted and misrepresented data, fossils, fraud, unscientific assumptions, etc. When some words by some evolutionary scientists are quoted out of context, it is simply to highlight the fact of what they have said, and not to sugar-coat it. Many evolutionists ignore those statements because they are too difficult to deal with.
You said, "On the subject of radiometric dating, many are "expert" on the subject who have never done anything with it."
My reply is that the experts should be able to use radiometric dating objectively. But it is not as simply as a chemical test for chlorine, or for acidity, or for aluminum or arsenic in water. Radiometric dating requires a tremendous number of assumptions. The actual testing of chemical content of material, including the evaluation of proportions of various isotopes, is not the problem. That can be done objectively. What cannot be done objectively is the assumption of what that proportion should have been originally, which is what the whole radiometric dating process relies on.
You said:[quote] "Incidentally, I know the former manager of a large lab that does radiometric dating, who was asked by a geologist affiliated with the Institute for Creation Research to date a recent basalt sample from Hawaii. The manager pointed out what this geologist probably already knew, that relatively young volcanic samples give very old radiometric dates by the K-40/Ar-40 method, because a lot of non-radiogenic argon in the magma is trapped in the resulting volcanic rock, noting that it is not their practice to date such material. He was told to go ahead and do the dating, and the lab was paid for the work. The ridiculous result has since been published as an example of the unreliability of radiometric dating." [/quote]
This illustrates my point. Is the dating method determining the age, or is the assumption about age made already before the dating method is used? If the method is ridiculous for this known- to- be- relatively- young basalt, then how can the same method be used to indicate that some other basalt is very old? Maybe it is also young?
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
The method by which God created, reveals His character, don't you think? An interesting video by Juby interviewing three scholars/scientists/speakers/writers who have researched on the implications of evolutionary thought on social morality. It's called the Dark Side of Darwinianism. The dogma's of evolution, natural selection towards survival of the fittest, onwards and upwards eugenics, are discussed in this video. http://www.youtube.com/user/wazooloo
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
Correction: in the second paragraph, I meant to say that a moist finger will stick to a bone fossil but not to stones in the same layer as the fossils. In that way you can distinguish a bone fossil from the stone around it.
Posted in: Alpha Still Works!
Bill, maybe it would not be wrong to say that your power saw still works.... even though you know that it takes someone to operate it, and that it needs power to make it work. Just that analogy work for you?
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
The problem is, how far do you go, and what are the implications? It is also a simple but wrong solution to simply say that it does not matter how man was created, or whether he was not directly created at all. It is also simple and wrong to say that man falling into sin is only an allegorical or sylized literal (meaning metaphorical) idea. It seems that because it is difficult to believe that God could make man out of dust, or woman from man, that we must find another interpretation? God could not do that, and therefore we must find another answer? But how could God create the universe in the first place? Where did God get that power?
Posted in: Genesis - Again!
A quote from your link: "Unfortunately, Behe doesn't mention the Krebs in his book. A pity. Here is a complex biochemical system, clearly an excellent hook on which to hang his thesis. Right? However, closer inspection of the literature reveals problems with such a "Krebs cycle is irreducibly complex" hypothesis..."
Why would you try to refute a comment that Behe never made, as you acknowledge yourself? Seems a bit like bait and switch?
Irreducibly complex does not mean that you could not have a smaller eye, or a different eye. It means you need more than half the parts to make it work. If you take 90% of it away, you do not have something useful, and usually if you take one small part away, it is also not very useful. This reduces the chances based on random mutations, to get a combination of simultaneous mutations that would produce something useful, and this must be combined with a larger organism in which there are other parts that are also complex, and need to be there for the whole organism to function. It is not only that you need all the parts, but they must also be there at the same time, in the right position, of the right size, and fitted together properly, and then hooked up to the larger organism properly. A perfect eye without a brain behind it would also be useless.
The eye of the ragworm is useful to the ragworm, but not to the human; it would be like walking around with your eyes closed.
The beefalo tends to revert back to the bison. This appears to be more of a selection than a mutation. There is an assumption by evolutionists that recessive genes must have originated from a mutation, but how is that proved?