Re: Nearly All Animal Phyla Present in the Cambrian


Seanpit wrote:
Richard Forrest wrote:
Seanpit wrote:
Richard Forrest wrote:

Let's try that again, backwards. If there was a universal flood that
produced most of the fossil record quickly, there was no Cambrian
explosion. If there was a flood, all our reasons for believing that the
explosion was real are wrong, gross misinterpretations of the data.
Therefore the ideas of scientists are worthless, and can't be used to
support your flood theory.

Exactly . . . I'm not trying to use the interpretations of science to
support my flood theory. Don't you get that?

What is very clear, Sean, is that you have so little confidence in your
"theory" that you are not even prepared to confirm the key elements of
your theory, let alone defend it.

Regardless of the fact that I have defended many aspects of my
"position", many times in this forum

Oh? Where?
Your defence consists mainly of going off at a tangent when pressed, as
was the case when you started a red herring about erosion rates when
you couldn't defend your assertions about taphonomy.

Futhermore, most of your so-called "defence" consists of cherry-picking
quotations from papers whose content you clearly don't understand, and
presenting arguments between scientists about the interpretation of
evidence as negating whole fields of research. This is not defending
your "theory", it is attempting rather cack-handedly to negate other
scientific theories.

You "theory" seems to consist of nothing more than rather vague
hand-waving based on the assertion that a goblal flood occured, and
making very strained attempts to interpret geological structures with
that a priori ssumption. Your "theory" makes no predictions, provides
no interpretive framework for evidence, is inconsistent with all the
findings of geological science over the past two and a half centuries,
and your arguments in support of your theory are based mainly on
assertions which do little other than to expose your ignorance of
geology, taphonomy and palaeontology, as well as science in general.

and on my own website,

Yet apear to be quite happy that your web site contains statements
which are categorically false.

I really
don't have to do this in order to question or doubt the validity or
tenability of your theory. Your position, or rather the mainstream
position of science in general, as stated regarding this topic, seems
inconsistent or at least strained.

So what are those inconsistencies?
How is it "strained"?

What do you know that generations of geologists don't?


Obviously, you think otherwise. If you didn't, we wouldn't be having
these nice little friendly discussions now would we ; )

RF

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


The reason why I continue to participate in these threads is because
the more you post, the more you expose the utter lack of substance of
your "theory", and the fact that your whole case is built on
misrepresention, distortions, outright falsehoods and ignorance.

Ditto . . .

You are the one who deliberately quotes half sentences and mixes and
matches paragraphs in an effort to distort my position.

On one occasion I mis-copied a sentence from one of your postings. This
was not a deliberate attempt to distort your position, and furthermore
I didn't think that it *did* distort your position significantly.

As I recall, your sentence boiled down to the assertion that if we
ignore all factors affecting erosion except slope angle, slope angle is
the most significant factor.

Do I have to point out that this is a rather silly statement?


You are the one
who presents references to support your position that do nothing of the
sort - like your recent reference that supposedly spoke against
dinosaur bone orientation when in reality it did just the opposite.

Your assertion is that hydraulic sorting is universal. It isn't.

Interestingly, you don't seem able to recognize the perpendicular and
parallel orientation of bones in the photograph in my website. You are
also very good and presenting a host of references without any
quotations - which is distinctly not helpful and which, when reviewed,
often do not support and occasionally even directly contradict your own
arguments.

This may come as a shock to you, Sean, but the vast majority of
scientific papers are *not* available on the web, and if you want to
gain an understanding of a subject you cannot do so by skimming over
the surface on the odd texts that are available on the internet. It
requires years of study, attending lectures, reading books and papers,
going on field trips, looking at rocks, working in the lab, and testing
your knowledge against that of your peers.

You can't learn about science by reading a few quotations.

You don't even quote mine - you just reference mine.

As your references frequently don't mean what you think they do because
you lack basic knowledge of the subject, why not?

At
least I present what I believe to be relevant snippets of the
references I provide - for easy review by you guys so that you can
point out if I am actually misreading and/or misrepresenting the
author's statements.

When it is pointed out that your snippets are misrepresenting the views
of the author, or do not mean what you think they do, you ignore the
responses. Take your assertion:
"It is now believed" - presumably by mainstream science, not
creationist "science" - that "magnificent catastrophes formed much of
the geologic column with the millions of years passing between these
catastrophic episodes of deposition"
It has been pointed out to you, and explained to you by several posters
that this is quite simply false. This is quite categorically *NOT* the
view of mainstream geology, and the quotations you provided (which were
20 years old, by the way) did not support this assertion of yours.

When are you going to remove this statement from your web site?

You could think about doing the same.

You don't learn science from quotations, Sean.

Even when
you can't find a misrepresentation, your reflex is to find anything at
all to discount the relevance of the article. You often say something
to the effect of "That article is too old. We've learned a lot more
since then."

Why not? Do you think that science is frozen in the past? It moves on
all the time, in some fields - such as genetics - very quickly indeed.
It's hard work to keep abreast of developments even in a small field of
science.

Yet, you fail to provide your evidence for what we've
supposedly learned "since then". Or, you say that no article written
by a creationist, even one who is more credentialed and more published
than you are by far, is not trustworthy by default (i.e., Leonard
Brand's work).

I'm sure that the papers Brand publishes in academic journals are
perfectly sound scientific work. I don't think that the articles he and
other creationists publish without peer-review on web sites are.

I have analysed several such articles and shown that they are full of
distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.

This includes several statements on your site which are categorically
false, such as your "magnificent catastrophes" assertion, and the
"nearly all animal phyla are present in the Cambrian" assertion.

Perhaps you could do the same for an "evolutionist" web site. Start
with mine.

If it isn't trustworthy, then why not spend a little
time explaining why?

John Harshman has done so in detail.
Your response?
"I am not convinced"

Here's some news for you Sean: It doesn't matter in *science* whether
you are convinced or not. It doesn't matter if I'm convinced or not.

If you are not conviced by John's critique, you need to explaihn *why*
you are not convinced, and demonstrate by evidence and argument that
John's argument is not valid.


Your attempts at this thus far have simply been
far from impressive (see link to our discussion last year about Brand's
work on fossil trackways).

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/5c3892d1ba4116bc?dmode=source&hl=en


What?
You mean your demonstration of ignorance of taphonomy?

Have you started to read the links to "Palaeobiology I" I posted? It's
goes into considerable detail about the different taphonomic processes
which led to the creation of Lagerstatten. What's more, it can all be
downloaded as a series of pdf's, so you wont even have to spend rather
a lot of money on it, as I did.

When you've finished that, you'll be delighted to know that
"Palaeobiology II" was published last year, and that science has moved
on considerably in the last ten years.

Mind you, you'll have to buy that one, or borrow it from a library.

I should warn you however that before embarking on either volume, you
need to get a basic education in geology and palaeontolgy.


RF

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Nearly All Animal Phyla Present in the Cambrian
    ... If there was a flood, all our reasons for believing that the ... I'm not trying to use the interpretations of science to ... you couldn't defend your assertions about taphonomy. ... geology, taphonomy and palaeontology, as well as science in general. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Bad science is still science
    ... The great flood produced the Grand Canyon. ... Maybe in old geology texts, but swift runoff is being favored more and more. ... which led to the rise of science as we practice it today. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Bad science is still science
    ... The great flood produced the Grand Canyon. ... Maybe in old geology texts, but swift runoff is being favored more and more. ... which led to the rise of science as we practice it today. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The fantasy of the theory of evolution
    ... "Creation Science" is NOT science. ... Real science follows the evidence ... Sedimentation and Tectonics project. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Poor Noah and tree ring dating
    ... while Noah sailed *the*ocean only a few thousand ... through the Noachian flood, not why it goes back before creation. ... of water in the deepest ocean layers. ... Some religions realize that science and their beliefs do not coincide. ...
    (talk.origins)