Re: Answering Friar Broccoli

On Oct 31, 10:42 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
NITRO wrote:
On Oct 30, 8:58 am, Friar Broccoli <Elia...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 30, 9:27 am, NITRO <NITRO...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Well I am a Biblical creationist yet I am not sure what he is talking
about. Try asking him what specific scientific assumptions which
underpin evolution are being undermined by quantum mechanics.

At the beginning of this month I showed you a series of
skeletons/skulls of what appear to be human ancestors in this
thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/744eff9...

My last reply to you was in this message:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/7f3e95975c3197d2

which included this comment by you followed by my reply:

N>> So what would this evidence mean in the light of creationism? It
would
N>> mean that God would have created at least 10 different humanlike
N>> species which do not exist today. Its possible, because anything
is
N>> possible when your dealing with the idea of God.

FB> True, but assuming God intended to make man, this looks like
FB> God is practicing, or alternatively intentionally creating
FB> smaller brained forms first in order to create the appearance
FB> that we got here by an evolutionary process. In the first
FB> case, wouldn't God be able to figure out that a 700cc brain
FB> wasn't big enough for His purposes? In the second, if God
FB> was willing to intentionally leave false information in the
FB> fossil record, how can we be sure that He has not left other
FB> false information in scripture?

FB> And these problems only get worse when we look back over the
FB> entire fossil record. Why for example would God have created
FB> and then allowed to die-out at least 15,000 species of
FB> trilobites, only to completely give up on the project 250
FB> million years ago? And then there's that 2 billion period
FB> when nothing but single celled creatures lived. What was
FB> that all about?

So, I'd like to know how your creationist views can be fitted
with a roughly 3 1/2 billion year long fossil record that shows
contentious change, and to which humans (and indeed all mammals)
are relatively recent additions?

First of all I would have to assume that there was such thing as a 3.5
billion year long fossil record.

You mean you would have to assume that there was not.

I find it quite difficult to accept
such an idea based upon the fragments of information available to me,
and is the precise reason why I spend so much time reading and looking
for specific dates, specific locations and specific species. I am not
saying the evidence doesn't exist, Im just saying that I am certainly
having trouble locating it. Any references you might have would be
extremely helpful. Something which is sort of an overview of the
entire fossil record, yet more specific than these simple epoch/era
charts which I see all the time.

It's not clear what you're looking for, and I don't think you know. If
you want to know the grand pattern of the fossil record, I recommend The
Fossil Record II (1993, Chapman & Hall), a multi-volume work that
attempts to give a complete list of families with their dates of first
and last occurrences. But that won't give you evidence for absolute ages
of anything. For that you have to look at individual publications, and I
suggest starting here: Landing, E., S. A. Bowring, K. L. Davidek, S. R.
Westrop, G. Geyer, and W. Heidmaier. 1998. Duration of the Early
Cambrian: U-Pb ages of volcanic ashes from Avalon and Gondwana. Can. J.
Earth Sci. 35:329-338.

If you are so sure that there is a 3.5 billion year fossil record
than I am sure there is some reason or evidence that you personally
have which provides this confidence for you. So what I am asking is
what your sources are for believing it? If you can give me your
sources than I can be working on the same page as you and therefore we
can cover some ground.

Start with Landing et al. See where that takes you.

But ok, assuming that there was such thing as a 3.5 billion year
fossil record, which I dont necessarily deny, I would easily fit such
data in because I am not necessarily a young earth creationist.

Then you must reject the notion that there was a worldwide flood that
accounts for any significant portion of the fossil record. And you must
accept that species have come and gone throughout history, thus
falsifying your creation story. (They don't come and go in the right
order for your story either, so just saying that "day" doesn't have to
mean 24 hours won't fix your problem.) If you admit that the earth is
old, you have to throw out a literal interpretation of Genesis. Are you
prepared to do that?





FB> True, but assuming God intended to make man, this looks like
FB> God is practicing, or alternatively intentionally creating
FB> smaller brained forms first in order to create the appearance
FB> that we got here by an evolutionary process. In the first
FB> case, wouldn't God be able to figure out that a 700cc brain
FB> wasn't big enough for His purposes?

A Biblical answer to the question which I have always looked favorably
at was the notion of seperate creations of human-like creatures which
would account for these different species, (once again assuming that
the evidence for them actually exists). A lot of the Biblical
reasoning from this comes from the Genesis 1:2 record which states
that the earth at that time was covered with water.

"And the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face
of the deep"...the conclusion here is that the water or "the deep"
covered the earth so how did it get there? The idea is that God had
caused a flood to destroy a previous 'dispensation' of life, the
fossils you had mentioned could be members of that previous
dispensation.

Ah, so now you're going with gap theory. Sorry, that doesn't work
either. He would have had to have recreated exactly the same world that
he had previously destroyed, since there is no time at which all old
species suddenly disappear and a completely new set of species appears.
Instead, the record is more or less continuous. Even during mass
extinctions, some groups pass through unscathed.

Nor does the record allow for any time at which the entire world was
covered with water, neither in the Flood of Noah or at the second
sentence of Genesis.

So I dont think that such creatures with 700 cc brains would have been
considered 'not big enough for God's purposes', but rather they were
creatures that were much like modern man,
I think they were used as principal players on earth at the time,
perhaps among other principal players, but I dont think they were of
the same caliber of modern man in that modern man would be the only
ones "made in the image of God"

But there is a fairly smooth series of transitions between these
small-brained hominids and modern humans. Where is the cutoff?

Obviously there is a lot of speculation here, and none of this stuff
is backed up scientifically, but you asked how I fit different human
ancestor fossils within the creationist framework.

He was asking how you could fit the actual evidence. All you have done
here is present a ridiculous notion that requires you to ignore the
evidence. That's not the same thing at all.

There is more information on my particular brand of creationism at:
http://www.custance.org/library_menu.html

Although I don't agree with everything Custance says, I agree with the
basic idea of the gap theory. I also get a lot of my gap theory/old
earth beliefs from Biblical analysis done by Finnis Dake.

None of this stands up to the actual evidence about earth history.

FB> In the second, if God
FB> was willing to intentionally leave false information in the
FB> fossil record, how can we be sure that He has not left other
FB> false information in scripture?

I don't rule out the possibility of God leaving false information in
the fossil record given that He went to great lengths to ensure that
people never depended upon physical evidence for their belief in Him,

Why should this be "given"? What reason could he have for this? What
evidence do you have for it?

and that He has always required faith without evidence. This idea is
repeated throughout the teachings of Jesus, and it could be the reason
why places and objects such as the Ark of the Covenant, the Cross, the
Grave, and the Holy Grail are missing.

If that's so (and it's certainly convenient for you) then why argue
about evidence at all? By this reasoning, all evidence is useless. (And
your claim raises theological problems that we don't have to get into.)

FB> And these problems only get worse when we look back over the
FB> entire fossil record. Why for example would God have created
FB> and then allowed to die-out at least 15,000 species of
FB> trilobites, only to completely give up on the project 250
FB> million years ago?

Why is it such a tragedy that they were allowed to die out, and aren't
they the most likely canidates for the formation of petroleum?

I for one miss them, and it was certainly a waste of time and effort to
produce such diversity only to have it disappear before there was anyone
to appreciate it. And no, trilobites have nothing to do with petroleum.

FB> And then there's that 2 billion period
FB> when nothing but single celled creatures lived. What was
FB> that all about?

God might have needed them to populate the atmosphere with O2.

What? An omnipotent being is not capable of creating a world with
ready-made O2?



I don't know. The point is, maybe there were entire dispensations
created for other purposes such as oil and O2, or maybe for God's
entertainment or His own study, or practice, or some other use, I can
only speculate. I don't know what your point is in this line of

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No, that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was to show that creationism
can't deal with the evidence. And you have accepted this implicitly,
since one of your major responses is to reject the idea that evidence
has anything to do with truth. As you have said, God wants you to
believe by faith, without evidence or even in the face of evidence. If
that's so, there is no point in discussing anything with you. There is
no point in you looking for evidence, since it has no function for you.
All you can do is believe what your faith tells you God wants you to
believe. I'm at a loss to explain what you thing you're doing in this
newsgroup.

Well thats a good point, but the subject still interests me, and
regardless of whether God might have miraculously messed with dna or
something similar to cause the ruination of a definitive point of
evidence bears no effect at all on my intensity of interest, and I
will tell you why. The fossils which exist present a picture to me,
the story I may or may not know the exact sequence of, and I may not
know the exact time frame, it doesn't matter to me, the fact that
dinosaurs existed, and strange human-like creatures existed is real
and it is interesting to me.

I am also interested in the evidences which do not bear down on one
specific conclusion. So, if there were evidences that were hidden or
evidences that were planted, either by God or the scientific community
I really don't care, I take evidence for face value and simply adapt
to it no matter what its ultimate origination might be. Bear in mind
that this is completely subjective to me as an individual, and that in
reality, all evidence is hidden from me untill I, in the process of my
lifetime, uncover it piece by piece.

But as to why I'm on this specific newsgroups or any similar forum is
that you people seem to be interested in the same sorts of things.
Even though I don't particularly like the way some of the people here
talk to me, I would still probably have more to say to you at a party
than I would someone who wasn't interested. To put it simply I come up
with a question or some other idea, and I am interested in what others
might think of it. And I have a lot to learn so sometimes I get
answers from just reading the posts here.

There, now hopefully you are no longer at a 'loss' for why I am here.

Back to the 'evidence' in this particular thread:

What? An omnipotent being is not capable of creating a world with
ready-made O2?

This is a theological question which you don't really want to know the
answer to. But I'll answer it in case anyone actually has sincere
curiosity of what I might think. Yes perhaps God needs bacteria
millions of years ago the same as He does today, unless of course he
were to tube down O2 from heaven. The theological answer here is that
He made this system to operate largely by natural means, only
interspersed with the supernatural on occasions. I mean, your question
really can expand to anything. If God is omnipotent, why didn't He
just recreate every human and 'pop' them on the earth as spontaneous
adults? If God is ominipotent, why do plants need to photosynthesize?
Why can't their foods just automatically appear within them? The
answer is that God created the ecosphere to abide by certain natural
laws, relationships, and processes, one of them being the food chain,
one of them being natural selection, one of them being adaptation.
Over and over again within nature we see a canvas within which living
organisms can freely paint their own destinies upon. That canvas is a
framework which is not perfect from individual to individual, but is
perfect at large, or at least it is as perfect as we will ever see.


And no, trilobites have nothing to do with petroleum
Apparently it is just simply your habit to be rude and belch out
certainties without any qualification at all, but I for one do not
care for simple statements with no evidence to back it up. The science
I learned stated that we know very little about the formation of
petroleum and that it was probably formed by organisms that lived 500
million years ago. Since trilobites allegedly lived 500 million years
ago according to all the charts I have looked at, perhaps you can tell
me why they have nothing to do with the formation of petroleum, and
what DOES contribute to it?

But there is a fairly smooth series of transitions between these
small-brained hominids and modern humans. Where is the cutoff?
I don't know. Perhaps there were many races, perhaps they are just
different breeds of apes altogether. There should be many more human
fossils rather than the relatively few I have seen. Twenty or so
skulls don't seem like nearly enough to trace a lineage of human
history that spans a million years. I don't really know all the
details, thats why I'm studying it.

Nor does the record allow for any time at which the entire world was
covered with water, neither in the Flood of Noah or at the second
sentence of Genesis.
There you go with one of your statements again. Pardon me for calling
you out on it, but why would you assume that the record does not allow
for a flood?

Ah, so now you're going with gap theory. Sorry, that doesn't work
either. He would have had to have recreated exactly the same world that
he had previously destroyed, since there is no time at which all old
species suddenly disappear and a completely new set of species appears.
Right. That point has indeed always bothered me, but it wouldn't have
to be a complete re-creation. I'm not clear on how that would all fit
together to be honest with you. Thats part of the reason why I'm
interested in the subject.

Instead, the record is more or less continuous. Even during mass
extinctions, some groups pass through unscathed.
Right, but all of it depends upon the accuracy of radiometric dating,
and since we can't all understand or operate that equipment, how do we
know it is right?


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