Thank God for Evolution!

[wildleafblower]

Hi Tim

You, Alec and Zian are doing a splendid job. On the other hand, Ed and a few individuals aren’t making history.LOL! As a professional geologist Tim, I thought you would especially like knowing that Pope JOHN PAUL II recognized the importance of geology. His beatification of Niels Stensen on October 22, 1988 as Anatomist - Founder of Geology - Knight of God, Pope Paul said that he was “*a servant of God which means that through his life and actions, through his fidelity and perseverance, he became similar to the Lord himself. In this way he is an example and an inspiration for us all: for this we implore his help and intercession.” * And as a believer I am doing that right now, asking for Niels intercession and praying that the Holy Spirit guide us toward the truth. (1) He was the Father of Geology and his principles ‘continue to be used today by geologists and paleontologists’. (2)

I finally received my journal Archaeology from the Archaeological Institue of America, January/February 2008, Volume 16, Number 1. It lists the Top 10 Discovereries of 2007. There’s a great article on page 26 ** KNM-ER 42700 and KnM-ER 42703 Lake Ileret, Kenya **by Zach Zorich. I’ll quote the last two paragraphs of the article which adds some depth to our discussion about evolution:

*A team of paleonthropolgists led by Meave and Louise Leakey of the Koobi Fora Research Project uncovered the upper jawbone of a H. Habilis dated to 1.44 million years ago, and the skull of a H. erectus dated to 1.55 million years ago. *H. habilis **was thought to have gradually evolved into *H. erectus *over hundreds of thousands of years, fading out of existence around 1.65 million years ago. A previously discovered *H. erectus *fossil dated to 1.9 million years combined with the new finds show the two species lived together in the same lake basin for close to 500,000 years.

“I think increasingly they will be recognized as sister species that lived in the same area and did different things,” says Fred Spoor of University College London and a member of the team. H. erectus’ smaller teeth and less powerful jaws suggest it was probably eating more meat. If the two species both evolved from a common ancestor, it changes the human race’s relationship to H. habilis, “strictly speaking, if our scenario is correct” says Spoor, “Homo habilis, as we know the species, seems to be a dead branch.”

Another article from the same journal which I’m sure you and others will enjoy, especially PhilVaz, is the Nebro-Sarsekim Tablet, The British Museum, UK by Laura Sexton located on page 24:

*Last June, Austrain Assyriologist Michael Jursa was doing what he has done since 1991, poring over the more than 100,000 undeciphered cuneiform tablestys in the British Museum. but while analyzing records from the Bablonian city of Sippar, he made a startling discovery with Biblical implications. It came in the unlikely form of a tablet noting a one-and-a-half pound gold donation to a temple made by an officical, or “chief eunuch,” Nebo-Sarsekim.

"At first I was just pleased to have found a reference to the title ‘chief eunuch,’ as these officials are mentioned very rarely in the sources, " says Jursa. “Then it suddenly came to me that this text was very close chronologically to an episode narrated in Jeremiah 39 in which Nebo-Sarsekim is mentioned, and that I might actually have found the very man. So then I got quite excited and instantly went and checked (and double-checked) the exact spelling of the name in the Hebrew Bible and saw that it matched what I had found in the Babylonian text!”

The tabelet is dated 595 B.C., the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign. The Book of Jeremiah relates that after Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem in 587 B.C., he committed the prophet Jeremiah to Nebro-Sarsekim’s care.

" It is so incrediably rare to find people appearing in the Bible, who are not kings, mentioned elsewhere," says Jursa. “Something like this tablet, where we see a person mentioned in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and quoting the exact date, is quite extraordianry.”*

1. vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1988/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19881022_beatificazione-stensen_en.html
   http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/j...i_spe_19881022_beatificazione-stensen_en.html
2. ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/steno.html
   Nicholas Steno

Moi’s Xmas present - an archaeological tour! And possibly excavating Maya ruins in Blue Creek, Belize!?

 

[SpiritMeadow]

By “real” shall I assume you mean Church-sanctioned?

mmm…no…like science sites without any pandering to any theological belief system. Oh Panda’s Thumb has a great article on the complexity of the eye…Debunking another of the “irreducible complexity” bugaboos.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

God is so great he has no need of man made explanations for his Creation. more so than ever evolution theory is being exposed for just that a theory,

**Please learn what a theory means in science. You should treat it as fact. **

and its dawn was in the anti God movement.
stay with the faith which DOES NOT contradict science
God Bless

**Evolutionary theory started 150 years ago and is well proven. It does not contradict faith in any way. **

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Tah Dah Man, please please don’t waste all your time writing out these tome’s of creationist nonsense. You’re gonna convince exactly no one because first you will have to convince the Vatican that they are wrong too. The Church accepts the basic premise of evolutionary theory. What are you afraid of here?

 

[The_Barbarian]

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” -Charles Darwin, in The Origin of Species.

Seems as though this is your magic bullet. All you have to do is find such an organ, and then show that it couldn’t have been so formed.

Go for it.

 

[edwest2]

I think the eye is an excellent example. It is highly unlikely it could have formed as described in secular texts.

God bless,
Ed

 

[drpmjhess]

mmm…no…like science sites without any pandering to any theological belief system. Oh Panda’s Thumb has a great article on the complexity of the eye…Debunking another of the “irreducible complexity” bugaboos.

SpiritMeadow, do you not accept the human appendix as irreducibly complex? Since it serves no evolutionary purpose it cannot have evolved through random selection. Rather, I argue that it must have been designed by a wise designer to give abdominal surgeons extra pocket money for Christmas, and to chastise unbelievers who don’t digest their food well and end up contracting acute diverticulitis. I am willing to wager that you have no counter-arguments to this slam-dunk proving the irrefutability of Intelligent Design Creationism!

 

[TMC]

SpiritMeadow, do you not accept the human appendix as irreducibly complex? Since it serves no evolutionary purpose it cannot have evolved through random selection. Rather, I argue that it must have been designed by a wise designer to give abdominal surgeons extra pocket money for Christmas, and to chastise unbelievers who don’t digest their food well and end up contracting acute diverticulitis. I am willing to wager that you have no counter-arguments to this slam-dunk proving the irrefutability of Intelligent Design Creationism!

LOL, very good. Hate to be a wet blanket on your appendix theory, but there is a new thought that it may serve as a reserve for helpful bacteria. When people have their internal colonies wiped out, apparently people with intact appedixes (appendices?) recover from these problems more quickly.

 

[drpmjhess]

I think the eye is an excellent example. It is highly unlikely it could have formed as described in secular texts.
God bless,Ed

Ed, another example of irreducible complexity is reproductive behavior in some Praying mantis species. The male is not capable of ejaculating his sperm into the female until she has chewed her mate’s head off completely. Godless scientists will insist that this behavior evolved, but there is no genetic survival value to males having permitted – during a presumed evolutionary history – their heads to be chewed part way off. Only a wise and loving providence could have devised this ingenious method for delivery of the genetic Praying mantis load!

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

LOL, very good. Hate to be a wet blanket on your appendix theory, but there is a new thought that it may serve as a reserve for helpful bacteria. When people have their internal colonies wiped out, apparently people with intact appedixes (appendices?) recover from these problems more quickly.

Thanks, SpiritMeadow. I’m sad that you’re not convinced. Do you know that toward the end of the heyday of Natural Theology, one British theologian argued that the existence of God is proven by the fact that we all have distinguishable signatures to guarantee our checks. Trust the British banking system to contribute a valuable piece of evidence in support of the argument from design!
Petrus

 

[Neil_Anthony]

SpiritMeadow, do you not accept the human appendix as irreducibly complex? Since it serves no evolutionary purpose it cannot have evolved through random selection. Rather, I argue that it must have been designed by a wise designer to give abdominal surgeons extra pocket money for Christmas, and to chastise unbelievers who don’t digest their food well and end up contracting acute diverticulitis. I am willing to wager that you have no counter-arguments to this slam-dunk proving the irrefutability of Intelligent Design Creationism!

It’s the bizarro world…

 

[Sideline]

Ed, another example of irreducible complexity is reproductive behavior in some Praying mantis species. The male is not capable of ejaculating his sperm into the female until she has chewed her mate’s head off completely. Godless scientists will insist that this behavior evolved, but there is no genetic survival value to males having permitted – during a presumed evolutionary history – their heads to be chewed part way off. Only a wise and loving providence could have devised this ingenious method for delivery of the genetic Praying mantis load!

Petrus

Thank-you for posting that! I LOVED it!

 

[SpiritMeadow]

I think the eye is an excellent example. It is highly unlikely it could have formed as described in secular texts.
Ed

Now I see part of your problem, you either don’t read posts or certainly don’t go to the links. I just got through sending Petrus to Panda’s Thumb. In a post he filed this week, he wrote on the eye as the latest irreducible complexity poster child to be debunked. You can get the link from my blog, either under the section, watching the religious right or in the body of today’s blog, under the linked title, “One in the Eye for Intelligent Design”. And btw to all my fellow evolutionists. check out his site for real. Hit his links page and you’ll find like 30 or more links to everything imaginable science group and writing to debunk the creationist .

 

[SpiritMeadow]

SpiritMeadow, do you not accept the human appendix as irreducibly complex? Since it serves no evolutionary purpose it cannot have evolved through random selection. Rather, I argue that it must have been designed by a wise designer to give abdominal surgeons extra pocket money for Christmas, and to chastise unbelievers who don’t digest their food well and end up contracting acute diverticulitis. I am willing to wager that you have no counter-arguments to this slam-dunk proving the irrefutability of Intelligent Design Creationism!

Good lord, I’ll be hanging my head in shame. Which gets me to wondering about freckles. And the fact that our ears are in good alignment with our eyes for glasses…Ha…got ya there no doubt.

 

[Peter_Wilders]

Orogeny posts (758) the diagram from Berthault’s 2002 article in Lithological and Mineral Resources showing that any part of the lower beds upstream was deposited before any part of the same bed downstream. Similarly, any part of the upper bed deposited upstream is older that any part downstream of the bed beneath it.

He asks:

Now show me where the deeper bed is younger than the older bed:

I think he means:

B]”show me where the deeper bed is younger than the UPPER bed “

The diagram shows that parts of the deeper bed are younger than parts of the upper bed.

(Berthault has never claimed all of the upper bed is younger than all of the is older bed)

**The principle of superposition requires the beds to be deposited successively giving a bed by bed chronology whereby the lower one is older in its entirety than the one above. Evolution chronology and the fossil register are based upon this principle.

The static diagram used by Orogeny from Berthault’s paper proves sideways chronology, the dynamic one in the video drawn by Pierre Julien, however, is more explicative, showing how particles at the top of a prograding series of beds can be older than those at the bottom.

As Berthault has already said a vertical line drawn through superposed beds will inevitably show a sedimentary particle at the top of the line as being younger than one at the bottom. To extrapolate from this fact that all particles in a horizontal line show the same particularity, is to overlook that the sediments driven by a current are prograding from upstream to downstream and the particles are being sorted by size during the process. This is clearly shown by Pierre Julien in his glassboard demonstration.**

The diagram supports Julien and Berthault’s conclusion that:
Rather than successive sedimentary layers, these experiments demonstrate that stratification under a continuous supply of heterogeneous sandy mixtures results from segregation for lamination, non-uniform flow for graded beds and desiccation for joints.

The experiments do not support the principle of supeposition.

Peter

 

[Peter_Wilders]

My response to hecd2’s post 764 are interpolated in red:

**…the features that invalidate the rapid deposition of the Tonto group do not depend on the principle of superposition. **

Statements of this kind are made without any supporting experimental evidence. Moreover, the experimental results published by the French academy and Geological Society contradict the statement.

It is also a false claim to say that the principle of superposition has been invalidated.

The same published results give empirical reasons for validating the claim.

**…Berthault has not managed to get a paper published in a mainstream western geology journal for 14 years. **

The eastern geological mainstream geology journal published his paper because the western scientific media is closed to challenges to the evolutionist paradigm. Ironically today there is more liberty of scientific thought in the East than the west. Incidentally, the libellous accusations made by members of this thread being against the Russian Academy of Science display ignorance and intolerance unworthy of any scientist.

…his own collaborator on the 1993 paper who has published dozens of papers on sedimentology and who is a highly respected sedimentologist rejects Berthault’s conclusions. (

**(Hecd2 refused to publish in his website Berthault’s refutation of his critique which addressed this point.)

The sedimentologist was Pierre Julien who in conjunction with Berthault endorsed the conclusions. They were published in the 1993 paper Experiments in Stratification of Heterogeneous Sand Mixtures (Julian, Lan , by the Geological Society of France (with three sedimentologist referees). It states: Rather than successive sedimentary layers, these experiments demonstrate that stratification under a continuous supply of heterogeneous sandy mixtures results from segregation for lamination, non-uniform flow for graded beds and desiccation for joints**.

**It should be remembered that experments demonstrating layers do not deposit successively is a refutation of the principle of superposition, which claims that layers deposit in succession one upon the other.

Once again, if hecd and his colleagues can produce similar experimental proof that layers do form in succession they will have grounds upon which to base their criticism**.

Without going on, it should be clear to any objective person that, Berthault’s critic believes arguing from his own opinion and appealing to the majority is sufficient. Let him back his objection by solid science and he will be listened to.

Peter

 

[Orogeny]

Orogeny posts (758) the diagram from Berthault’s 2002 article in Lithological and Mineral Resources showing that any part of the lower beds upstream was deposited before any part of the same bed downstream. Similarly, any part of the upper bed deposited upstream is older that any part downstream of the bed beneath it.

Thank you for confirming what I wrote, Peter. I said that in no part of that diagram is a younger deposit below an older deposit. As I also pointed out, the only way it is is if up and down are not vertical components, but oblique components. No geologist would look at it that way and no rational non-geologist would either.

The principle of superposition requires the beds to be deposited successively giving a bed by bed chronology whereby the lower one is older in its entirety than the one above. Evolution chronology and the fossil register are based upon this principle.

It certainly does not require one to look sideways and call that deeper. Besides, you don’t understand the principle. It does not require a bed to be deposited across the entire globe, which is what would be necessary for your statement to be true. At some point, the deposition ends and the bed stops. Any sediment deposited above that bed would, if deposition was at the edge of the older bed, be deposited next to the older bed. That, according to your YEC expert, means that the younger bed has been deposited beneath the older bed. Nice.

The static diagram used by Orogeny from Berthault’s paper proves sideways chronology, the dynamic one in the video drawn by Pierre Julien, however, is more explicative, showing how particles at the top of a prograding series of beds can be older than those at the bottom.

Once again, thank you for proving me right. To you, above and below really mean next to and sideways. Where is the term “sideways chronology” found in the principle of superposition? If it is not there, you and your buddy are barking up an imaginary tree.

As Berthault has already said a vertical line drawn through superposed beds will inevitably show a sedimentary particle at the top of the line as being younger than one at the bottom.

End of discussion then.

** To extrapolate from this fact that all particles in a horizontal line show the same particularity, is to overlook that the sediments driven by a current are prograding from upstream to downstream and the particles are being sorted by size during the process. This is clearly shown by Pierre Julien in his glassboard demonstration.**

Not needed at all. Show me where a younger deposit is beneath an older deposit in that diagram, Peter. Better yet, what was the younger material deposited on if it is beneath the older material?

The diagram supports Julien and Berthault’s conclusion that:
Rather than successive sedimentary layers, these experiments demonstrate that stratification under a continuous supply of heterogeneous sandy mixtures results from segregation for lamination, non-uniform flow for graded beds and desiccation for joints.

The experiments do not support the principle of supeposition.

Peter

Pierre Julien does not agree with Berthault’s conclusions.

Peace

Tim

 

[wildleafblower]

Tim and Alec, you two should read what I just found. The puppets of Kolbe Center are at it again! **Teaching on evolution in European Schools **By Maciej Giertych 2007.
Here is a snippet of the document:

In an explanatory memorandum the rapporteur specifically mentions among the reasons for this report my engagement in the topic as a Member of the European Parliament and the position expressed in the Polish Ministry of Education following the media uproar the Brussels session has created. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had sufficient common sense to refuse debate on the Lengagne report by a vote it took on the 25th of June 2007. The document was returned back to committee to be altered under a new rapporteur, Anne Brasseur from Luxemburg. A revised and softened version of the document (no. 11375) returned to the Parliamentary Assembly for debate, which was held on Oct. 4th 2007. After introduction of some amendments it was adopted. The vote was 48 for, 25 against, and 3 abstentions, with 449 not voting. It is obvious that on the issue of evolution the European political establishment is far from unanimous.

giertych.pl/ksiazka4/evolution_en.pdf
http://giertych.pl/ksiazka4/evolution_en.pdf

Alec, maybe an article on your website might curtail evil masterplotter Giertych.

 

[wildleafblower]

This is what Maciej Giertych writes in his pdf:

*Stratigraphy
Where did the dating of geological strata come from? The dates were proposed in the 19th century on the basis of the observed rate of sediment deposition in lakes and other still water reservoirs. This is referred to as the uniformitarian mode of strata deposition, as contrasted to the catastrophic mode dominating in geological thinking prior to Darwin (Darwin was inspired by Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, 1830, that first proposed this uniformitarianism in geology). These millimetres of annual depositions, multiplied by the depth of strata of various sedimentary geological formations, gave the proposed millions of years of deposition. Today geology students are being taught how to date strata by the fossils contained in them and how to date fossils by the strata. Circular reasoning indeed! If someone thinks that these 19th century estimates were confirmed by isotopic dating of rocks then they are grossly mistaken. This is being done only for igneous rocks and not for sedimentary ones. The assumption is that at the time when lava solidifies there is crystallization of some crystals that contain radioactive isotopes that will decompose with time. There are many problems with such dating because frequently different crystals from the same solidified magma have very different isotopic age. However this is of no significance to the issue at hand since it does not concern sedimentary rocks. Re-deposition of material does not affect the age of the particles forming them. There is no way we could date the stones or sand grains that constitute the newly formed strata near Mt. St. Helen. Age from their crystallization will tell us nothing about the time when they were arranged into layers.

There are also other problems with the uniformitarian explanation of strata formation. Today at the bottom of lakes dead animals are not being buried. They are eaten by scavengers and decomposed. Fossil remains are not being left for future palaeontologists to discover. People bury their dead, and thus we are able to find the Neanderthals. Animals end up in the fossil record only as a result of catastrophes, when they are buried as, for example, around Mt. St. Helen.

Another problem is posed by the so-called polystrate fossils. We find petrified trees standing erect covered by several geological layers. Have they waited several millions of years for their burial? It is obvious that they were buried in some single catastrophic event.

In view of the new empirical evidence from sedimentological research mentioned above the whole stratigraphic column requires a total rethinking. It will not be easy for geologists to accept such a revolution in their way of thinking, but they
will have to face it.

Catastrophes
In view of the above the topic of major catastrophes returns. For the deposits exposed by the Grand Canyon to form obviously more time would be needed than for those near Mt. St. Helen (it is estimated that it would take several months, while for the 100 m. of deposits near Mt. St Helen 36 hours sufficed), and a lot more water than Spirit Lake held. The whole layering in the Grand Canyon, dated at several hundreds of thousands of years, could be explained by one great catastrophe, with the participation of enormous quantities of water.

Some years ago information hit the news that Bob Ballard, the discoverer of the Titanic, had found traces of human settlements under the Black Sea. He judged that they formed as a consequence of a flood that occurred 7500 years ago. Karol Szymczak, a professor from the Warsaw University, who conducted rchaeological studies in Uzbekistan in similar strata, judged that the same flood must have reached also the region he was studying. He proposed a map covering the Black, Caspian and Aral seas and also Azerbaijan, Turkmenia, the Kuzyl Kum desert and southern Russia.

This is an enormous area, flanked by high mountains in the south (Anatolia, the Caucasus, Elburz, Kopetdag, Pamir, Altai), but open to north on both sides of the Urals. On the other hand we know that in the extensive northern area, from river Ob in Siberia to Alaska, within the permafrost, there are frozen bodies of many animals, including millions of mammoths. They are being mined for ivory tusks and at least half a million have already been placed on the market. The accompanying meat is edible, at least for dogs. It was established that the mammoths died from suffocation. In their alimentary canals there are undigested meadow plants. What incident could have placed such large animals into the permafrost at a rate preventing digestion of consumed herbs? By what technique? Obviously we are dealing with some exceptional catastrophe extending over enormous areas, and at a time not at all that distant.*

 

[drpmjhess]

Thank-you for posting that! I LOVED it!

Thanks,Sideline – it’s all true! The kicker is that Ian Taylor – an Aussie YEC with a radio spot called “Creation Moments” (www.creationmoments.com) – frequently highlights this sort of thing as an example of God’s loving providence.

He did a piece last summer on God’s providence in providing a multicellular creature with harpoons that explode inside the bodies of other creatures, which it then drags back for food. Taylor makes no mention of God’s loving providence for the creatures that get blown up. So much for his theodicy! But then no one ever claimed that creationists were theologically or scientifically consistent…