The Ark Encounter: Depicting a Real Flood with Unrealistic Images – Naturalis Historia Skip to content Search Search for: Naturalis Historia YouTube Twitter Facebook Menu NH Blog YEC Hyper-evolution Critiques Best of NH About NH Open Search The Ark Encounter: Depicting a Real Flood with Unrealistic Images Guests at the Ark Encounter will observe many descriptions and artistic impressions of what happened before, during and just after Noah’s Flood. One set of images was especially interesting to me because it visualized different stages of the Flood. One panel which explains how the Flood waters prevailed over the highest mountains was particularly perplexing because of the mixed messages it was sending. In this panel the portrayal of the Flood waters runs contrary to the creationist’s own literature in addition to containing implicit messages that are not supported by any evidence. Below is my photo of that image. My eye was drawn to two things: the animals swimming in the water and the water itself. A depiction of one of the events during the Flood year. Photo: Joel Duff on the Ark Encounter, July 15th, 2016. Let’s start by taking a look at the animals that are being depicted. There is a plesiosaur, an ichthyosaur and at least one cetacean – a whale. This depiction is accurate with respect to the YECs own literature. Just as they believe dinosaurs lived at the same time as humans and other mammals, they also believe the sea reptiles must have lived contemporaneously with whales and dolphins. Nonetheless, like their claims about dinosaurs, this depiction is not supported by any evidence. What does the fossil record – the observable, objective facts – tell us about these animals. The first – the sea reptiles – existed as more than 500 species and are found solely as fossils in sedimentary rocks that are dated, by conventional methods, older than 65 million years old. Young-earth creationists all agree these rocks formed during a global Flood. Hence, for the creationist, the evidence strongly suggests that the Flood caused the extinction of hundreds of species of great sea reptiles. The fossil record also tells us that no cetaceans (dolphin, porpoise or whale) have ever been found in rock older than 65 million years. Clearly identifiable cetaceans are only found in young rocks which young earth creationists claim are post-flood in origin. From the young-earth perspective the message of the fossil record is crystal clear: there is no physical evidence that any whale or dolphin was destroyed by the Flood. At the same time, the fossil record clearly indicates that not a single sea reptile – turtles excluded – survived the Flood. Yet, here we have a depiction of both types of animals peaceably swimming below the Ark. Given what happened to both how are we to believe that the Flood would have selected one sea animal for extinction while not killing any of the other? to confuse the matter, in this portrayal of the Flood the waters under the Ark are clear and the plesiosaur has plenty to eat. And yet they all died. From this image you would think the plesiosaurs would have no problem surviving the Flood and therefore might be living in Loch Ness in Scotland. A whale fossil from “whale valley” in Egypt not far from Cairo. Here hundreds of whales fossils lie exposed in this wind eroded valley. These whales where large-headed toothed whales that are not alive today. This is just one example of hundreds of locations where whale fossils may be found and are often very complete. However, all whales fossils are found in “young” rocks and never with sea reptiles which are also very common in the fossils record. (AFP/File/Cris Bouroncle) A deep time perspective has little difficulty explaining these observed facts of the fossil record. Sea reptiles evolved from land reptiles during the Age of the Dinosaurs (Triassic – Cretaceous). Following their extinction, around the same time as the dinosaurs, the oceans lacked large animal predators other than sharks. With the diversification of mammals after the dinosaur age, some lineages, including one that became cetaceans, found conditions advantageous for adapting to life in the ocean. A deep time perspective also provides an explanation for how so many species could have existed. In the Flood scenario millions of individuals of each of 700 or more species of sea reptiles and mammals must have been sharing the same space and competing for much of the same food. Today only 88 species of cetaceans fill our oceans. One might argue that a few more species could coexist with our current species but 600 more species? Where would they all fit? On the other hand, over millions of years some species could have gone extinct as other formed from their ancestors. The gradual replacement of species with new ones allows a sustainable balance of species in the world’s oceans at any point in time. Unrealistic depictions of the Flood used to convince guests of the plausibility of a real ark and a real global flood The very same depiction of the Noahic Flood that contains the sea reptiles and mammals also struck me as inconsistent with the message of the Ark Encounter. Don’t you think there is something strange about the water itself? The water is blue and clear! Where is the sediment? This image depicts a tranquil sea. Nothing in the young-earth flood geology literature suggests a placid flood covering the earth. If the Ark has already been raised above the mountain tops, as shown in the image, how could 20,000 feet of sediment be deposited onto the pre-flood land from clear water? Small particulates in the water column could not have settled out in enough time for the waters to ever have been clear during the Flood. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill here? Well, maybe a bit but stick with me because I think this image provides an illustration of a problem that is found throughout the Ark Encounter. I recognize the clarity of the water is not as important as getting the dimensions of the ark right in the mind of the AiG staff. In addition, they acknowledge that they have used creative and artistic license to depict some aspects of the Noahic account. I believe the artistic license is in reference to giving names to wives of Noah and what their living quarters may have looked like and other such clearly speculative information provided at the Ark Encounter. But, couldn’t this image of the Flood waters covering the earth be just an artistic way of depicting the events of the Flood and therefore not objectionable? No, I don’t think so. I think it presents an inconsistent message and that inconsistently hits right at the core of what the presumed educational value of the Ark is. The problem is that young-earth creationists would not consider the geological consequences of Noah’s flood as being subject to speculation and thus artistic license. There is a well-established base of creationist’ literature which purports to account for how the Flood was initiated, was sustained and subsided on the Earth resulting in all of the sedimentary rock and fossils found in those rocks. A calm sediment-free ocean as depicted here is a direct contradiction to all of their published literature. I understand that showing a murky-brown sediment-filled ocean below the Ark would not be especially pleasing to the eye. It also raises even more questions such as how would filter feeding whales survive in muddy water? However, around the corner they weren’t afraid to get real about the devastation of the Flood by showing a heathen teenager girl who missed the boat being eaten by a shark. I will grant that the latter is artistic license but it doesn’t violate any of the young-earth creationist predictions of what could have happened at the onset of the Flood. Showing clear blue seas, on the other hand, is a depiction of a history they believe to be false. What is this image doing? It is creating a false impression of the geological realities of the global flood in the mind of the viewer. What was the point of the “bathtub ark” room on the Ark Encounter? The point was that there is a danger is portraying the ark unrealistically lest it not be taken seriously. We are told in that room that the bathtub arks get everything wrong including the modern animals they portray on the ark. There we are presented with the 7 D’s of Deception. One of those (pictured below) is the deception of “disorienting the reader.” We learn that “presenting contradictory information confuses readers rather than properly instructing them.” But this image does nothing but cause confusion about how the Flood waters covered the earth and what effects they would have the animals living in the sea. The Ark Encounter seeks to dispel many of the “false” images of the Ark that have crept in the consciousness of Christians. Unfortunately the Ark Encounter turns right around and plants many new false images in the minds of those that will visit this attraction. One cannot expect guests at the ark to be able to parse artistic license, pure speculation, and some facts from each other any more than AiG expects children to comprehend the size of the Ark and the tremendous devastation wrought on the Earth from reading their bathtub ark books. If they wish to present as accurate portrait of the Flood as possible they can’t send mixed messages to their audience. Here is the depiction of the early stages of the flood killing off various dinosaurs that weren’t chosen to be on the Ark. Photo: Joel Duff, July 15, 2016 Share this: Facebook Reddit Twitter Email Print Tumblr Like this: Like Loading... Related Published by R. Joel Duff Natural Historian is a father of five, professor of biology, follower of reformed theology, interested in the philosophy and history of science and the origins debate among evangelicals View all posts by R. Joel Duff August 4, 2016 Age of the Earth, Answers in Genesis, Blog, Creationism, Creationism and the Church, Flood geology, Fossils ark encounter, cetacean, creationism, evolution, ken ham, plesiosaurs Post navigation The Young-Earth Hyper-evolution Hypothesis: A Collection of Critiques A Creation Museum Speaker Asks: Do Animals Evolve? 182 thoughts on “The Ark Encounter: Depicting a Real Flood with Unrealistic Images” wowfunny251 says: August 4, 2016 at 2:37 pm “Creationists all agree these rocks formed during a global Flood.” Once again, I must point out that Creationism does not imply belief in a young-earth or global flood. I am an old-earth creationist, I do not believe Noah’s flood was a global flood, and I believe the earth really is 4.5 billion years old. I just believe God created the diversity of life on earth supernaturally rather than through biological evolution, therefore I am a creationist. You really should specify “Young-earth Creationists”. LikeLike Natural Historian says: August 4, 2016 at 2:44 pm I will change to YECs but I do use YECs dozens of time in the article and it is about the Ark Encounter so I think it is pretty clear what creationists I am talking about since it is defined in the article and by the content of the article. However, I do try to be consistent and will fix that spot. LikeLiked by 1 person wowfunny251 says: August 8, 2016 at 9:26 pm Its understood by those who know the distinction between OEC and YEC. But many unbelievers do not know OEC exists, they only know YEC and TE. They simply associate “creationism” with belief in a young-earth and universe, global flood, etc. and making these statements about “creationists” only serves to grow that stigma. It would be like someone saying “All scientists reject the existence of God”, pointing out the error, and having them respond with “Well, they know I REALLY mean Secular Scientists”. An old Earth/Universe and a rejection of evolution as the explanation for the diversity of life are not mutually exclusive, just as being and scientist and being a theist are not mutually exclusive. LikeLike chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 2:14 am I agree. well put. Myself, I am a young earth/old universe creationist. Would that be a new category? LikeLike wowfunny251 says: August 10, 2016 at 1:06 am Young-Earth means Young-Earth. So I would still call you a YEC, however, I would avoid making a statement like “All YEC believe the universe was created 6000 years ago”. LikeLike chuck says: August 11, 2016 at 4:10 am gotcha, and no, I don’t think the earth is only 6000 years old. But obviously don’t believe it is billions either. Have a different idea about the universe. So I am somewhat at home in either school. thanks for the response LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 10, 2016 at 11:47 am I was a young-earth old-universe creationist for roughly 40 seconds in 2012. LikeLike chuck says: August 12, 2016 at 6:33 pm and why did you stick with it so long? LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 12, 2016 at 10:02 pm Took half a minute to look up old research and ten seconds to read it. LikeLike chuck says: August 16, 2016 at 8:00 pm you and i are evidently not talking about the exact same, or even similiar, thing. the theory i adhere to is recent in origin. There is no “old” research. But hey, i probably wouldn’t adopt an idea that only took ten seconds to read either. That’s hardly longer than you spend reading aig literature. Don’t give up old chap. The truth is out there. Best wishes. Mulder, LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 16, 2016 at 10:16 pm Oh, I’m aware that particular model is young. My point was that I came upon it myself in 2012. Only lasted long enough for me to look up some real research I remembered, apply it to my model, and watch it crumble. LikeLike chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 1:01 am which one crumbled? lol. I know. I know. But then again, david, why would you expect otherwise? Differing paradigms cannot be squeezed into each other. That’s what makes them different. What happens in the real world, and Kuhn’s book so brilliantly points this out, is that the new paradigm is mocked, ridiculed, and recused until it eventually overwhelms the previous one. New paradigms don’t blend into each other. They replace each other. But hey, at least you checked into it. Kudos for you. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 18, 2016 at 2:20 am I would have gladly accepted a young earth and old universe at that point, if the evidence had permitted it. But the dam had broken. LikeLike chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 7:53 pm that’s a dam shame. I wonder how many times the copernicus model crumbled against ptolemy’s model before it overwhelmed it from constant blows. Time will tell. Meanwhile, keep that mind open. You seem like a nice fellow. Don’t want you crushed by the next big paradigm change. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 16, 2016 at 10:16 pm Oh, and given that I have written AiG literature, I’d hardly say I haven’t spent any time reading it. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 7:48 pm I don’t want you to take this wrong David, but i’m getting a little frustrated with these type of claims. Now i’m not saying that you aren’t telling the truth. In truth, of all the claims i’ve read here yours would be the one i would most likely believe. But after realthog tells he/she has written over seventy books (still hasn’t named one for me) and christine’s sudden revelation that she is revising/editing a science textbook, I’m starting to get a little jaded. But let’s assume, as i will, that what you say is true. While important, i guess, to you, it doesn’t really mean anything to me. What i believe is not taken from aig literature at all, not a single word of it. So I’m still not sure we are talking about the same thing. Nonetheless, it appears you came from creationism (I can’t see why else you would be writing their materials) to evolution, while the process was reversed for me. I am not, however, some supposed bestselling author (70 books? Really? J.K Rowling and Stephen King would be envious), nor am i editing any science textbooks. It appears that for some here a rebuttal is something you pull out of your rear end when you run out of everything else. I don’t even want to dialogue with people who make stuff up. Just don’t tell me next week you were head of the human genome project. Lol. Hopefully you can empathize with my distrust. Best wishes. LikeLike realthog says: August 19, 2016 at 9:05 am But after realthog tells he/she has written over seventy books (still hasn’t named one for me) and christine’s sudden revelation that she is revising/editing a science textbook, You’re right. I thought King had written more than me, but a quick check reveals he’s published “only” sixty. Mind you, his books are probably on average longer than mine, and certainly they sell better. Of course, there are people who’ve written far more books than I have. You’re very naive to think that seventy’s that huge a number. Chuck, has it ever crossed your mind that, if all your argument consists of is accusing other people of being liars because they’ve done things you haven’t, it’s not much of an argument? I’m a professional writer; I mentioned the fact because back then you were making a fool of yourself by accusing everyone of not reading books; if they only read a few books, you were saying, they’d believe your baloney. Christine is well known in her field; I recognized her name immediately. The fact that you didn’t is revealing. LikeLiked by 1 person datadroid says: August 4, 2016 at 3:03 pm I have a feeling that visiting the ark encounter will actually end up converting more people away from YECism than it converts to it. I especially think this will happen when high school students who’ve been raised YEC visit and discover these inconsistencies along with the fact that AiG actually does embrace evolution, even if they don’t call it such. In fact, given the low attendance numbers you mentioned before, the fact that a good portion of those attendees are mocking atheists and the likelihood that their message will actually backfire for many, I think this will probably go down as one of the most colossal blunders ever made by a Christian ministry. LikeLiked by 1 person CK says: August 5, 2016 at 12:44 am I think you hit on something here, that a lot of mockers will come to see this expensive monument to ego and foolishness, and then have ample ammunition to attack faith. That saddens me no end. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:20 am Can I offer comfort? You are probably right, but then again, if someone is coming for the purpose of mocking, odds are they aren’t going to be impressed with anything they see anyway, nor even open to the possibility. I think those with open minds are going to be challenged to dig deeper, either to disprove the creationists or even to strengthen their own belief system. I don’t see why this is bad. Your comment about “monument to ego and foolishness” is a perfect example of what I am saying. You’ve made up your mind a priori, and I doubt there is anything you would encounter that you would allow to upset the paradigm you are comfortable with. No crime there. It’s the way we all operate. I think one should allow that this exhibit is intended to educate AND entertain. They hysterics about it are far more entertaining to me. LikeLike Paul D. says: August 5, 2016 at 5:48 am Agreed. I think a lot of casual creationists in particular will be put off by the entire idea of baraminology and hyper-evolution following the flood. Most of them have had the notion that evolution cannot happen ingrained into them since childhood, and now they are required to believe the opposite. LikeLiked by 1 person Preston Garrison says: August 4, 2016 at 6:49 pm If the flood was supposed to be turbulent and violent, wouldn’t a large unpowered ship quickly drift to a position parallel to the waves and be immediately swamped by a large wave as has happened to some modern container ships that lost power in hurricanes? (Now I have visions of animals running in large wheels to “power the ark” to avoid this.) Maybe we can invent a young earth meme. Incidentally, a paper came out today on a real ancient flood that may well have happened in China on the Yellow River 4000 years ago. In Science or Science Advances. LikeLiked by 1 person wowfunny251 says: August 4, 2016 at 7:08 pm The bible does not describe the flood as being particularly turbulent or violent. YEC invented that to explain the geological column. LikeLike Jp says: August 4, 2016 at 11:25 pm However, a global flood that left no land uncovered would give rise to monster storms. If you look at the storms around Antarctica, you see that with little land mass to dampen the storms, they rage around and around. Which also would make it extremely unlikely that a boat would be lifted and come back aground in the same region of the world. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 3:46 am excellent point Jp. As to the latter, I believe adherents to a Noahic flood more than likely assume a bit of supernatural assistance as to the final destination of the ark. LikeLike chuck says: August 4, 2016 at 11:37 pm the bible states that the fountains of the deep were opened up. Even now there is water present below the earths surface. This seems to imply there was significant surface upheaval and crust displacement. They didn’t “make it up”. Even old agers in the sciences believe there have been periods of such activity in the past. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 10, 2016 at 12:02 pm This is just a minor note, but AiG often talks about “water present below the Earth’s surface” but what they’re talking about is typically hydrous ringwoodite and other rock layers that have water molecules dissolved through them. There are no gigantic oceans under the crust. Not sure if you were referencing this or not. LikeLike chuck says: August 12, 2016 at 6:35 pm no,, but thank you for taking the time LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 12, 2016 at 10:03 pm Well then the water you’re discussing doesn’t exist. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 16, 2016 at 7:51 pm you are of course, entitled to your opinion, based as it is on the present interpreting the past. I think the most anyone can do is to make (humbly, one would hope) educated guesses on how much and exactly where quantities of water may have been below the surface of the earth. Now why would you would think it impossible when even now scientists tout the discovery of a vast ocean of water 400 miles below the surface of the earth that would fill all current oceans three times over leaves me baffled. You are a man of science, are you not? Are you unaware of this or have you just chosen to disregard it because it doesn’t conform to a certain paradigm. The link is http://www.extremetech.com › Extreme LikeLike Natural Historian says: August 16, 2016 at 8:16 pm No article at that link but I know what you are referring to. Have you read those articles about the vast ocean of water in the rocks of the earth? You do know that the water they are talking about is not in H2O form. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 17, 2016 at 4:29 am well, I’m no scientific genius, but I thought H2O was water. Nevertheless, it would not be a requirement that it be in liquid form to still play a role in the flood. And the point is, there is water (in whatever form you desire) below the surface of the earth, and as Trump would say, a REALLY REALLY REALLY lot of it. Sorry about the link screw up. I’m glad you found it, though just typing “water below the surface of the earth” would do the trick. So am I right? Almost right? Kinda right? Still totally wrong? Were you wrong? Totally? Partly? Or were we looking for love in all the wrong places. Thanks for taking the time, though. At least you do. Something I can’t claim for everyone here. That’s why we can disagree without hating each other. I appreciate your intelligence, and your diligence. Always a pleasure. LikeLike David MacMillan says: August 5, 2016 at 9:39 am To Jp — I would point out that the YEC flood model does not actually claim that the boat returned to the same region of the world where it started from. Rather, AiG’s model asserts that the preflood world was completely destroyed and effectively scrambled, with all the continents being rearranged and so forth. So in their view, the “original location” of the Ark would have been meaningless. LikeLike Paul D. says: August 6, 2016 at 1:02 am And yet, Genesis 2 insists that rivers known in the audience’s own day, i.e. the Tigris and Euphrates, were also present before the Flood and in fact had their headwaters located in Eden. LikeLiked by 1 person Jacob says: August 6, 2016 at 3:54 am It seems quite impossible for the continents to have moved any great amount during a supposed global flood. Think of the tremendous energy in one large earthquake event. Imagine part of California or Japan moving a few feet. Now imagine all of the continents moving at a rate of many miles per day during this flood event. Imagine the continents having to suddenly start to move at the beginning of a global flood event (why would even a great flood make continents move?), move I don’t know how many miles per day during this event and then the continents slow down to something close to their current rate of movement. I cannot help but imagine that if the great land masses were somehow (again, how?) forced to move so much in such a short period of time, that the energy involved would have melted the earth’s crust. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 5:30 am excellent point and questions. In the last couple of decades scientists have been able to measure and verify drops and raises of hundereds to thousands of feet on the ocean floor, not to mention what is observable on land. If these can happen now because of earthquakes, often more local than the supposed ones during the flood, without wholesale “melting” taking place (though I am certainly amenable to that occurring), Again, I often wish they would rename Noah’s Flood to Noah’s Catastrophe. Virtual oceans of waters below the surface of the earth coming into contact with vast stores of magma would certainly trigger incredible high pressure events that would at least play a significant role in crustal displacement, scientists envisioning explosive events with resulting ejection of materials miles high into the atmosphere. Add countless earthquakes occurring worldwide and the resultant crustal shift. Most, or a lot, of geologists believe all the continents were basically one land map. Now you can imagine the earths crust slowly inching along for millions of years, or throw in a catastrophe involving the equivalent of low and high yield atomic bombs going off dozens or hundreds of time, and I think significant crustal movement might see a more likely outcome. But hey, we weren’t there. Which I think in part is a reason, just one of many, as to why the bible was written. To help those who weren’t there to gain some basic simple understanding of the processes envolved. I enjoy your questions and the spirit in which they are put forth. They make me think and are done kindly. Much appreciation LikeLike Jacob says: August 6, 2016 at 8:11 am Chuck, you said, “Virtual oceans of waters below the surface of the earth coming into contact with vast stores of magma would certainly trigger incredible high pressure events that would at least play a significant role in crustal displacement, scientists envisioning explosive events with resulting ejection of materials miles high into the atmosphere. Add countless earthquakes occurring worldwide and the resultant crustal shift. Most, or a lot, of geologists believe all the continents were basically one land map. Now you can imagine the earths crust slowly inching along for millions of years, or throw in a catastrophe involving the equivalent of low and high yield atomic bombs going off dozens or hundreds of time, and I think significant crustal movement might see a more likely outcome.” If everything happened like you described, how could Noah’s Ark have survived such an event? The water would be disturbed more than any tsunami or hurricane that has been observed during historical times. You have material explosively shooting up and then falling as bolders, rocks and dust/ashes – there would be molten material and jets of hot gasses shooting up that would destroy anything floating on the flood water above so the Ark would be hit with things shooting up and things falling. There would be violent crosscurrents of wind. The air would likely be full of particles (and in some places, super heated) – no creature could breathe this and survive. How hot would the water be? In some places the water would be very hot. There would be heat and shock waves throughout the water. The water would soon be full of ash particles. What would the salinity of the water be like, with the introduction of all of this flood water? Could any marine life survive assuming these conditions existed worldwide for 40 days? What would this do to plant life, from seaweed to the seeds of plants and trees? I don’t see how even a sturdy ship could survive this, or how any person, animal or sea creature or many plants could live through this. LikeLiked by 2 people chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 2:08 am I think my friend thou art guilty of over application. LOL. Notice I did not say every square foot, meter, mile, etc of earth was experiencing the worst of all worlds, I was just giving a simplified explanation of the AIG view. Because I don’t agree with everything they believe, I’m not sure I should be the one giving you their answers in depth. I am sure if you go to their site or peruse their materials they who are better qualified will explain in detail how they envision the earth during the flood and could present to you their responses to the issues you bring up. But thanks for asking. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 8, 2016 at 9:39 am The extreme tectonic rearrangement postulated to have taken place (not just once, but twice) during the supposed flood is simply and wholly impossible. It would have boiled all the oceans away, melted the entire crust, and permanently sterilized the planet. LikeLike chuck says: August 8, 2016 at 11:08 am actually California and japan have recently moved a number of feat. Crust still there. Me thinks you might be overestimating what would HAVE to occur in such a scenario, esp if extended over time. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 8, 2016 at 11:37 am Yes, a recent earthquake moved the crust under the main island of Japan by a whopping eight feet. This earthquake was an 8.9 on the Richter scale and released 1.2 exajoules of energy. Let’s do a little math, shall we? Geographic area of Honshu: ~90,000 square miles Geographic area of Earth’s continents: ~197 million square miles Ratio of the area of Honshu to the combined area of Earth’s continents: 1:2,189 Ratio of eight feet to width of Atlantic basin: 1:653,400 Ignoring the size of the continental shelves themselves, rearranging Rodinia into Pangaea and then into the modern continents would result in an energy release on the order of 3.43 billion exajoules, or about 3e27 Joules. This is roughly 12% of the kinetic energy of the moon…about a thousandth of a percent of the energy required to blow up the entire planet. The mass of the Earth’s oceans is roughly 1.33e21 kg, and the specific heat capacity of water is 4,185 J/kg*K. Releasing 3e27 Joules would raise the temperature of the oceans by about 600 degrees Kelvin. Need I go on? LikeLiked by 3 people chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 12:33 am you mentioned the moon all mixed up in there. Just wondering if something big enough hit the earth to form the moon from left over debris, but didn’t destroy the earth, why would a little crustal movement succeed where something traveling, what, ten’s of thousands of miles an hour wouldn’t. Now I wasn’t there, mind you, so I neither saw the proposed moon forming object nor the flood, but how much crustal movement, how fast, and for how long are you assuming in your equations, which were quite impressive by the way. Now I am no crust expert (tho I do like key lime pie), but is it possible you are assuming a worse case scenario, or were you being conservative, or somewhere in between (a moderate, in political terms)? And did your assumptions involve the assumption that the present interprets the past, i.e., are there parameters that, were they different, would change your equations. Thanks for taking the time. LikeLike Jacob says: August 8, 2016 at 12:34 pm David, thanks for quantifying what would have happened if the continents had moved during a global flood event the way some YEC teachers propose. When I first heard about the YEC explanation about how the continents were formed in the flood, I speculated that surely that would melt the earth’s crust but I don’t have the math skills to quantify that. Even if one could somehow explain away the thermal issue, I don’t see how the Ark could survive such a catastrophic event. It would not be as if the flood waters arose and gently lifted up the Ark, the way a toy boat would gently float if an empty swimming pool was slowly filled. Anything violent enough to quickly move the continents like that would destroy any ship, as I noted earlier. And the continental drift that we do observe happens through a very different mechanism than what I understand YEC to claim. I see a lot of that in YEC. Something improbable is proposed. To explain this improbable thing, something else maybe even more improbable is proposed, and so on. I wish some proponents of YEC would study how the Roman Catholic church deals with the difficult issues of Genesis and modern science (I am not Catholic but I think they do a good job of not distorting the Bible or science). They have some conservative scholars who take the Biblical text seriously, just like YEC proponents take the text seriously – they reach conclusions different from YEC but they also are not like liberal Protestants who more or less dismiss the text. Sorry to bring up more than one issue here. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 9, 2016 at 11:51 am chuck: Thankfully, the Theia impact did not destroy the planet; the combined gravitational wells of Theia and proto-Earth were sufficient to retain 98.8% of their combined mass inside their Roche limit. The remainder escape to form the moon by orbital accretion. The impact energy was slightly lower than the gravitational binding energy of Earth, and while it melted the majority of Earth’s crust, some portions of the crust on the other side of the planet survived partially intact. The tectonic plate motion I discussed falls shy of the gravitational binding energy of Earth by five orders of magnitude. However, the heat would be evenly distributed across the surface, and thus would be sufficient to boil the oceans dry and turn the surface into a uniform sheet of lava. The crust itself would not melt, as in the Theia impact; it would just be glassed on the surface. “how much crustal movement, how fast, and for how long are you assuming in your equations” In order for Rodinia to break apart and reform into Pangaea, you’d need an average of 500 miles of motion for each continental plate, each way. Then another 1000 miles of motion (average) for each plate after Pangaea broke up. Some plates moved shorter distances, others moved further (for example, Antarctica moved something like 2500 miles). Thankfully, the timescale doesn’t come into play for first-order approximations. Energy is force times displacement, so it takes ten times as much energy to move something ten times as far against the same amount of resistance. That being said, the timescale can make the problem worse in a better approximation. Snelling and Baumgardner propose a 150-day period of tectonic movement at the beginning of the flood, during which the plates would have to move an average of 2000 miles each, a speed of 25 cm/sec. In contrast, the Tohoku earthquake moved Honshu eight feet to the east in about six minutes, a speed of 0.7 cm/sec. The required energy would be orders of magnitude higher. Even if you allow the entire year-long duration of the flood, that’s still 10 cm/sec. “is it possible you are assuming a worse case scenario, or were you being conservative, or somewhere in between?” By not factoring in speed, I was being extraordinarily conservative. “did your assumptions involve the assumption that the present interprets the past” Man, creationists are seriously obsessed with “assumptions”! No, there aren’t any big “assumptions” that can yield dramatically different results by changing varying variables. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 11, 2016 at 4:05 am I have no problem with assumptions, though we know how they can turn out sometimes. My questions were of an inquisitive nature, nothing to do with creationism per se. I must say I enjoyed your response. Well done and thought out and calculated with precision. This is the David I prefer. Thank you for your response and taking the time. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:22 am true. and a good point. LikeLike David MacMillan says: August 5, 2016 at 9:37 am Indeed it would. AiG added the prominent sail-like protrusion to the tail because they claim that doing so would keep the Ark with its prow pointed into the wind, allowing it to breach oncoming swells perpendicularly rather than parallel. However, the size of the Ark precludes such a “wind rudder” from actually exerting sufficient torque (strong winds would simply rip it off before actually turning the gigantic barge) and ocean swells do not necessarily move in the same direction as wind travel anyway. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:24 am a calm and reasoned response. How unusual. Forgive me for admiring your responses that deal with the issues with denigrating particular groups of people. I’m not patronizing you, I just enjoy your posts. LikeLike wowfunny251 says: August 5, 2016 at 12:52 pm To JP: Perhaps all the locations listed as inhabited in the first 9 chapters of Genesis being in Mesopotamia should be an indicator that the text isn’t teaching a literally global flood… To Chuck: The “fountains of the deep” are referred too outside of genesis as well. Many scholars identify them with aquifers. Which the ancients knew quite well because of…wells. Mesopotamia (where Genesis 2 – 9 seems to take place) is indeed situated on-top of a large aquifer. When it rains or there is significant nearby snowmelt, aquifers can and do overflow causing floods. (Google: Aquifer floods) To David: “I would point out that the YEC flood model does not actually claim that the boat returned to the same region of the world where it started from. Rather, AiG’s model asserts that the preflood world was completely destroyed and effectively scrambled, with all the continents being rearranged and so forth. So in their view, the “original location” of the Ark would have been meaningless.” This is indeed their model, but it is inconsistent with the biblical text. Genesis 2 describes the garden lying at the junction of four rivers. Two of which (Tigris and Euphrates) are well known. These rivers are indeed east of Israel as the text describes. The rivers are identified with various “lands” or nations, yet Genesis 2 is describing a time when there were only 2 people on earth. So clearly these nations are place-markers for people at the time the text was written to get a geographical “feel” for the Eden narrative. Indicating strongly that these are the same rivers which flow today. The lands are the same lands that existed at the time the text was written, and the YEC model of a global, continent (and thus, river) rearranging flood is utter nonsense. LikeLiked by 2 people David MacMillan says: August 5, 2016 at 4:48 pm Oh, absolutely. There is ample evidence that the Tigris and Euphrates named in Genesis 2 are indeed intended to reference the same regions as those known today. Of course AiG just handwaves this by claiming that Noah named the modern Tigris and Euphrates after rivers he knew from before the flood based on similar appearances or somesuch. Obviously this is a ridiculous ad hoc fantasy. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:36 am it may well be, but using the terms ridiculous, ad hoc, and fantasy does not actually prove your point, or disprove the other. But you are certainly entitled to it. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 8, 2016 at 9:40 am Proof? There is no need for proof. That which can be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence; quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur. LikeLike chuck says: August 8, 2016 at 11:12 am and which is more effective disprove, your using dismissive words such as ad hoc, fantasy., and ridiculous, or aig’s handwaving. Missed that chapter on fallacious arguments. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 8, 2016 at 11:49 am Actually, it is because I am very familiar with fallacies that I am able to identify ad hoc arguments and the other fallacies employed heavily by AiG. LikeLike chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 12:38 am Ahhhh. You entered my arena. Philosophy and logic. Welcome. Good to know there are a few more out there. May I ask, in your extensive studies, have you encountered those very same things being employed in evolutionary thought? I certainly have. And lets add “just-so” stories (a fallacy named by, ironically, evolutionists criticizing explanations offered by other evolutionists). Is there just no end to it all? Keep on searching. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 9, 2016 at 10:56 am I’m deeply curious to know what exactly you think “evolutionary thought” comprises. LikeLike chuck says: August 11, 2016 at 4:02 am a syllogism for the entire evolutionary endeavor, from lab to philosophy LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 11, 2016 at 9:58 am The evolutionary endeavor is neither the creation nor the husbandry of man. It is neither the stuff of labs nor the stuff of philosophy. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:30 am excellent response. well thought and articulated. I would, though, take issue with your stance on the global flood. I think all refences to the flood in the bible, when interpreted together (as they should be. Scripture interprets scripture) point to at least the understanding(aside from the reality) of the flood being global in nature. Nonetheless, or regardless, well done. LikeLike Peter says: August 6, 2016 at 3:24 pm The biblical accoun give no justification to ‘Noah’s Catastrophe’. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 5:03 pm Didn’t quite understand your reply, or what you mean specifically by “account”. Do you mean in Genesis? The rest of scripture? And catastrophe was my word, I did not say it was used in the bible, but that what occurred could surely have been described as catastrophic in nature. LikeLike Natural Historian says: August 6, 2016 at 6:12 am Good points. I have always been partial to Dr. John Sailhamer’s thesis on this which is similar. When Moses wrote – even if using some source material – the creation account he was writing to a people leaving Egypt in need of understanding their identify. He described Eden as a physical place that existed and that the people would identify with, just as you have said. For Sailhamer Eden is the Promised land and the children of Israel are returning to Eden though not in its original state. I have several posts that review his arguments but one in particular is fun to think about. When Jacob was returning to the “land” after being away he meets an angel and has to wrestle him to gain entry to that land. That was on the East side of the promised land. Sailhamer sees that angel as those that are set there to guard the entrance to the Garden. Of course, an alternative interpretation is that that event occurred but that is only symbolically represented re-entry into Eden. Part of that series: https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2011/09/27/the-historical-creation-view-of-sailhamer-%E2%80%93-part-3/ LikeLike wowfunny251 says: August 6, 2016 at 3:22 pm I’ll check it out, but two problems I notice right away is that this assumes Genesis was written by Moses at the time of the Exodus, which is by no means a given. And also it would be very difficult to fudge the geography of Genesis 2 so that Israel is Eden. The author would have to be extremely ignorant to believe that the Tigris and Euphrates join together in Israel, let alone the other two. To me it seems that the intent of the text is that Eden no longer exists. It was a geographical place that existed at the time of Adam, but no longer exists for one reason or another. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:34 pm I’ve always enjoyed Sailhammers works. Good solid scholarship but not afraid to think outside the box, or offer an interesting take. LikeLiked by 1 person Jimmie Montgomery says: August 4, 2016 at 9:46 pm I have had rather unpleasant encounters with some YECs. It bothers me that we are so divided over this. When i hear somebody describe YEC as cultish I have a hard time defending them as Christians. The MSM (mainstream media) portrays ALL christians as believing in this. The worst example I have seen of taking a Biblical interpretation that even out does YECs is the Flat Earthers. Go and look up flat Earth arguments on youtube. How are we supposed to make the Gospel and the Bible seem plausible with this nonsense going on. The Bill Nye types like to make big shows by hitting soft target Christians like Ham. I noticed Nye wouldn’t debate a Stephen Meyer class Christian. $100 million on something that will not help the poor except the few that work there for how long? It’s like Trump throwing the election to the devil. LikeLike chuck says: August 5, 2016 at 12:04 am I certainly applaud your desire for consistency and truth in advertising. Sort of like when Haeckel’s embryo drawings were used for over a hundred years after they were known to be fakes, with never a disclaimer in a textbook. Or perhaps similar to the peppered moth, and experiment never repeated successfully and accomplished with pinning moths to tree trunks where they DO NOT normally stay, with nary a disclaimer in a textbook. Or perhaps more like the drawings of ancient man, those incredibly hairy, slow looking hominids wearing animal skins, all of this based more often than not on a single jawbone or skull cap. Artistic license, perhaps? Or maybe more like the supposed stages of horse evolution, showing the cute little one working it’s way to todays magnificent specimens, which has become embarrassing now that we know all of these “stages” lived contemporary with each other. Or maybe i’m thinking of the vaunted “evolutionary tree”, most of which is an imaginary tree. Do we see disclaimers acknowledging the parts arbitrarily filled in or joined together where there is no fossil proof to substantiate such a move? Or perhaps when we see the “primordial soup” pictures where life first began, even though the earth’s atmosphere and even water itself would have worked against this “miracle” happening. Any paragraphs at the bottom of the page explaining that? And when we are taught that life happened by accident, are we informed that evolutionists themselves admit that the possibility of said event is one chance in ten followed by hundreds or even thousands of zeros? When evolutionists have bought into hoaxes and frauds, did we see any big announcement, newspaper ads, or highlighted acknowledgement in textbooks admitting such errors? And the vaunted fruit fly experiments. Are students informed that after millions of generations, the only thing achieved were deformed fruit flies? And this is how mutation “powers” evolutionary processes? Are they taught with emphasis that virtually all mutations are neutral at best and fatal at worse? And let’s not forget the Cambrian explosion. Are we teaching our students that life, complex and complete, suddenly appears with no apparent ancestors in the fossil record? And when the statement is made that the fossil record supports evolution, are students informed that there are numerous evolutionists who believe no such thing, and that there is no irrefutable missing link found among the 200+ million fossils found so far? Believe me, I understand your concern for accuracy and truth in advertising. Someone lock those creationists up as fast as you can. No one should be allowed to practice such deception, trickery, and outright fraud!!! Let me know when you achieve this, because right now i’m afraid to go outside whenever it rains. LikeLike realthog says: August 5, 2016 at 2:42 pm Sort of like when Haeckel’s embryo drawings were used for over a hundred years after they were known to be fakes, with never a disclaimer in a textbook. That seems to be a complete falsehood. Once Haeckel’s embryo drawings had been debunked, they vanished from textbooks . . . except those textbooks that reproduced them precisely to explain the falsehood. Ah, wait: You’re repeating a famous lie from Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution, are you not? Or maybe more like the supposed stages of horse evolution, showing the cute little one working it’s way to todays magnificent specimens, which has become embarrassing now that we know all of these “stages” lived contemporary with each other. Where did you get that from? The evolutionary history of the horse is very well established. Wells again? LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:33 am No realthog. Science. Textbooks. And leave off with the genetic fallacy. It proves nothing, least of all rebuts anything. LikeLike Bob says: August 6, 2016 at 10:13 pm Actually, those diagrams of Haeckel were in my high school biology book in the 1960s, and in a neighbor kid’s biology book in the 1990s … or at least similar drawings attributed in the books to Haeckel. I’m wondering how one could know that no cetaceans were killed in the flood. I have never heard anyone say that the fossils are a complete record of all individuals who ever lived. Some could have died without being buried, floated and rotted, etc. The hundreds of species of reptiles mentioned as never living after their layers of fossils aren’t evidence that the flood narrative in inaccurate. The ark carried air-breathing land animals only. And even then some could have survived the flood and later gone extinct. The coelacanth left no fossils, so far as is known, since those fossilized “hundreds of thousands of years ago” as commonly stated, and yet live in the ocean today. The lack of evidence of them in between is not evidence that they didn’t live through all those years (as claimed for the marine reptiles in the article) only that they have not been found among the fossils of those layers. Obviously individuals lived and died and their descendants are alive today. This author (Natural Historan) needs to take a deep breath, find out what creationists are actually saying and write the reaons he or she disagrees. This material is barely related to their real points. LikeLike Natural Historian says: August 6, 2016 at 10:39 pm Hi, I would not say that the lack of fossils in flood deposits proves there was no global flood. However, it is not consistent with YEC expectations unless they think that cetaceans rapids evolved post-flood which I have not seen in their literature. Likewise the lack of sea reptiles after flood deposits is inconsistent with what one would expect. The same shallow seas that preserved whales should also have preserved sea reptiles. There are many more pieces of evidence to consider that I did not have room to talk about here. For example, the teeth of sea reptiles are also found in Triassic/Jurassic/Cret deposits even apart from the rest of the bodies attesting to their presence but none are found in later rocks. No part of any whale is found in lower rocks. If both had been swimming around in pre-flood waters which would be the null hypothesis unless there was some reason to believe they weren’t (AiG thinks they were since they show them swimming together in the image) then the pattern of the fossil record does not support a global flood as the causative agent of the geological column. LikeLiked by 1 person realthog says: August 6, 2016 at 10:59 pm Actually, those diagrams of Haeckel were in my high school biology book in the 1960s Where did you do your high school biology? LikeLike chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 2:01 am in high school. LikeLike chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 2:02 am LOL. Just teasin’ ya. LikeLike Jimmie Montgomery says: August 9, 2016 at 1:44 am My High school Biology in Norwalk Ca. and those drawings were in my textbook, back in the sixties. Even Stephen J. Gould talked about them still being used in one of his books when he was a college student, though I can’t remember the book, but P. Johnson quotes it in Darwin On Trial if I’m not mistaken. LikeLike chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 2:19 am Strangely enough, scientist Futuyama (think that’s right) world renown(even if not correctly spelled) did not realize they were fraudulent until around 2001 I think when he reissued a biology textbook. So even very bright people in the sciences are not all up to snuff. I too remember seeing them in my textbooks back in the 60’s and 70’s, and my sons’ in the 80’s and 90’s. LikeLike chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 1:48 am Hi Rob. Read your post. Thanks for a clear and rational one. Seems to be a trend here lately. I can only applaud it. I do believe, and I might be wrong, that there were (are) fossils of the coelacanth, which is why it was thought to be extinct and thus the surprise upon discovery of a living specimen. Without such fossils, it would just have been identified as a now living new species. But it was not. Declared extinct because of no known current specimans (at that time) and with the imprint of one in rock believed to be at least tens of millions of years old, it truly was a startling (and humerous) to me that science, and we ourselves, need to keep a dash of humility nearby when making proclamations. This is not to deride science. I love it. But we can, at any time, be wrong. I think that improves the scientific endeavor. I do agree with your final point. Emotions get running high and everyone’s defense mechanisms kick in and friendly sites can turn into ad hominem attack factories. Sometimes people don’t answer valid questions because they can’t. Then the impulse is to “prove” a point that’s not in question in order to salvage the situation somewhat. AIG is a big target here, unjustly so, and much of what it is criticized for often turns out to have little or no truth to it. For example, based on another post I went and read and AIG article about the peppered moth experiment, and the blogger claimed that AIG “attacked” said article. Well, if you read it, it’s just a calm and rational assessment of said topic with no attack verbiage, no name calling, no innuendo, etc. just an opinion. When I experience things like that (and here it often happens) I just need to remember that someone is letting their heart take control of their head. It also explains why dialogue between creationists and evolutionists is near impossible. Both sides can be and are guilty of fallacious arguments. But I do notice the bile content tends to come from the anti-AIG crowd. I’m just saying. I agree with your beginning statements. But don’t worry, someone here will probably attack them. LOL LikeLike realthog says: August 5, 2016 at 2:48 pm Oh, and Bernard Kettlewell’s work on the peppered moth has now been vindicated: LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:34 am again, by whom, when, and where. Peer reviewed? LikeLike Peter says: August 6, 2016 at 5:13 am Chuck says August 5, 2016 at 12:04 am “Or perhaps similar to the peppered moth, and experiment never repeated successfully and accomplished with pinning moths to tree trunks where they DO NOT normally stay,” Chuck says August 6, 2016 at 4:34 am “again, by whom, when, and where. Peer reviewed?” The Biston betularia experiments have been extensively replicated by Michael Majerus. The publication is Open Access : http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/01/27/rsbl.2011.1136 Cook, L. M.; Grant, B. S.; Saccheri, I. J.; et al. 2012. Selective bird predation on the peppered moth: the last experiment of Michael Majerus . BIOLOGY LETTERS 8: 609-612 “Experiments and observations were accordingly carried out by Michael Majerus to address perceived weaknesses of earlier work. Unfortunately, he did not live to publish the results, which are analysed and presented here by the authors. Majerus released 4864 moths in his six-year experiment, the largest ever attempted for any similar study. There was strong differential bird predation against melanic peppered moths. Daily selection against melanics (s ≃ 0.1) was sufficient in magnitude and direction to explain the recent rapid decline of melanism in post-industrial Britain. These data provide the most direct evidence yet to implicate camouflage and bird predation as the overriding explanation for the rise and fall of melanism in moths.” LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 6, 2016 at 6:43 pm Peter I’d forgotten about that 2012 paper (which postdates the AiG article I mentioned just now). There’s also this from 2016 (which the ICR have recently falsely attacked) about a mutation for melanism within the peppered moth population that took place in the 19 th century in England: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27251284 Ashley LikeLike chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 1:09 am I don’t know why they would attack it. nothing controversial there. Just microevolution and natural selection, neither of which substantiate the Darwinian evolutionary viewpoint LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 6, 2016 at 6:52 pm Peter and Chuck (1 of 2) Although I do not appear to be on pre-moderation, for clarity I now see that my preceding comment has failed to appear yet – presumably because it contained several links. I referred to footnotes 13, 15 and 16 here (the same link): https://answersingenesis.org/natural-selection/much-ado-about-moths/ cont’d LikeLike chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 1:26 am read the aig article. It was anything but an attack job. Well reasoned, calm, even sympathetic towards Kettlewell. It notes the deficiencies in his experiment, deficiencies first noted by evolutionists, not creationists, and mentions both Majerus’s role in exposing Kettlewell’s mistakes and the formers own experiment, a supposed retry on the latter’s work. (I might point out that it was not a “repeat” of Kettlewells work. It corrected and changed a number of parameters, so it in no way vindicates the previous work). Then aig concludes with the obvious, the experiment shows natural selection and microevolution, two processes they accept. Again, I brought these up not to scandalize the poor souls who do science or produce books, but merely to point out mistakes are made (regardless of motivation) but often, and almost always very slowly, acknowledged with hesitancy. Not always, and only, just sometimes. This was responding to the original post about artistic license and consistency, criticism I felt was incredible nit-picking, seeing as how aig clearly stated the example mentioned was just that. I wondered if those concerned with artistic license and consistency, and clear truth in advertising, are willing to apply the same measures to scientific endeavors. This has triggered a rash of replies all attempting to validate my list of mistakes made by the evolution community, entirely missing the point that it’s not that mistakes were made (as aig would say, we all make mistakes), but the occasional hypocrisy of scientists in criticizing their “opponents” for violations they frequently make themselves. Just pointing out the double standard that’s all. Perhaps it points to the dearth of current studies validating Darwin that explains why people will rush to salvage a study done a hundred years ago. Just saying LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 6, 2016 at 6:54 pm Peter and Chuck (2 of 2) Mitchell’s footnote was incorrect about the title of the (pay to view) New Scientist article. THIS appears to be what he was actually meaning: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626330-500-reclaiming-the-peppered-moth-for-science/ And NOT this: https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg19726411-600-moths-of-war/ Ashley LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 6, 2016 at 6:56 pm Still having technical problems so it’s now 2 of 3 NOT 2 of 2: Peter and Chuck Mitchell’s footnote was incorrect about the title of the (pay to view) New Scientist article. THIS appears to be what he was actually meaning: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626330-500-reclaiming-the-peppered-moth-for-science/ cont’d LikeLike chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 1:28 am read the first one Ashley, but too cheap to pay to read the second one. Thank you though for taking the time. Appreciate it. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 6, 2016 at 6:56 pm Peter and Chuck (3 of 3) And NOT this: https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg19726411-600-moths-of-war/ Ashley LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 7:42 pm interesting article. You’re right, it’s sad he didn’t live to release and interpret his work. It would be interesting to see if his conclusions would match those of his interpreters, though I wouldn’t imagine they would be far apart or in complete disagreement. And i certainly realize the use of words like fraud or hoax or emotionally charged. Perhaps Kettlewell was guilty moreso of ignorance rather than malicious intention to deceive. It certainly wasn’t creationists alone who noticed the problem areas of his experiment. Many different proponents of evolution voiced their concerns, including Majerus, which of course led him to further the work and attempt to resolve these issues. Putting aside the several assumptions made by the reviewers, one particular item stuck out to me. The moths resting on the tree trunks. I didn’t see any serious attempt made to explain why, in at least part of his experiment, a significantly larger number of moths were found to be resting on tree trunks, when virtually every other review or observation of the moths noticed few if any moths resting on tree trunks, unless of course, pinned there. Why the huge discrepancy? Usually anomalies like this are critiqued, or, of course, if helpful, retained. If harmful, discarded. Were there other factors involved here that could have also affected other outcomes. I see that there was an attempt to deal with the creation of higher moth density than would otherwise be found, but not convinced that the experiment showed other than the propensity for moths to land higher up on trees, in spite of the previous noted anomaly, which i think begs for explanation. I am not sure the issue of geographical correlation has been fully addressed. Admittedly had Majerus lived, this might have been done. All this aside, I don’t care if one sees Kettlewell as fully vindicated. It is and was obvious that there were weaknesses in, “mistakes” if you will. All noted by his peers, thus the motivation of Majerus. Incomplete and incorrect conclusions contained that remained “in the vest” by Kettlewells’ fellow scientists. My objection, in response, once again, to the objection that aig were using artistic license, even though they were fully upfront that they were doing so. My response was that science and scientists do the same thing all the time, the difference being it is rarely acknowledged unless after the fact. Hey, if everyone wants to do it, fine. Just be honest about. “Full disclosure, so to speak”. LikeLike David MacMillan says: August 5, 2016 at 5:01 pm “[are we informed about] the drawings of ancient man, those incredibly hairy, slow looking hominids wearing animal skins, all of this based more often than not on a single jawbone or skull cap.” No, because that would be false. It’s based on mountains of evidence and artifacts left by hominids. Besides, who said they are slow? “maybe i’m thinking of the vaunted ‘evolutionary tree’, most of which is an imaginary tree. Do we see disclaimers acknowledging the parts arbitrarily filled in or joined together where there is no fossil proof to substantiate such a move?” No, because that would be false. I’m guessing you’ve never heard of phylogenetic analysis. “‘the “primordial soup’ pictures where life first began, even though the earth’s atmosphere and even water itself would have worked against this ‘miracle’ happening.” No, because that would be false. Let me guess: a creationist talking head told you the chemistry doesn’t work? “are we informed that evolutionists themselves admit that the possibility of said event is one chance in ten followed by hundreds or even thousands of zeros?” No, because that would be false. Adding statistics and quote mining to the list of things you’ve never heard of. “When evolutionists have bought into hoaxes and frauds, did we see any big announcement, newspaper ads, or highlighted acknowledgement in textbooks admitting such errors?” Yes. You just haven’t seen them lately because it has been a long, long time since anything like that has happened. “Are students informed that after millions of generations, the only thing achieved were deformed fruit flies?” No, because that would be false. “Are they taught with emphasis that virtually all mutations are neutral at best and fatal at worse?” No, because that would be false. *cough*digesting nylon*snrk* “Are we teaching our students that life, complex and complete, suddenly appears with no apparent ancestors in the fossil record?” No, because that would be false. “And when the statement is made that the fossil record supports evolution, are students informed that there are numerous evolutionists who believe no such thing” No, because that would be false. “there is no irrefutable missing link found among the 200+ million fossils found so far” No, because that would be false. LikeLiked by 2 people realthog says: August 5, 2016 at 5:49 pm Thanks, David. I ran out of steam/patience after three. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:11 am Sorry to hear you tire so easily. perhaps lifting a book would build some muscle. Reading it wouldn’t hurt either. And no, the work on the moth hasn’t been vindicated. Unless it was repeated the exact same way. Here’s a hint for you: saying “nyah nyah” doesn’t count as an effective response. If the experiment has supposedly been vindicated, when was that done and by whom? Not that being successful proves anything about evolution, at least to creationists, most of whom are fine with natural selection and microevolution. My point was the original experiment was designed to give a predetermined result, which is why doing it in a natural, actual, non a priori manner has not returned the purported results. And again, my whole point here is a response to the post about “artistic license’ and consistency. Which is why I reference Haeckels embryos, which continued to be used for almost a century in spite of their fraudulent nature, one of the reasons being no effort made to remove them from books, which begs the question, why? Was it useful even if untrue or inaccurate? Did it continue to propagate a paradigm hardly anyone wanted questioned? You can do better, I know you can. LikeLike realthog says: August 6, 2016 at 7:58 am Sorry to hear you tire so easily. perhaps lifting a book would build some muscle. Reading it wouldn’t hurt either. I have written over seventy, including several on science denial, etc., so I’m kind of familiar with your arguments — and, more importantly, your method of argumentation. Here’s a hint for you: saying “nyah nyah” doesn’t count as an effective response. But you’ve just done exactly that yourself. The peppered-moth work was vindicated through the experimental work of Michael Majerus, confirmed after his death by others. There are peer-reviewed articles galore on the subject. You, of course, are getting your information from Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution. You should be aware that in biological circles this book is a laughing stock. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:41 pm And you need to know that attempted psychic readings are fraught with danger. I can say with all honesty that I have never read any of Well’s work. There are far more sources out there than just his. I will research the information you’ve just given, anticipating the significance of the results validates the hope that went into it. And perhaps you’d be kind enough to refer a couple of your books to me. I’m always up for new reads. The one on science denial sounds interesting, though irrelevant to our discussion. Still, I will give it a try. LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 16, 2016 at 5:09 pm “Which is why I reference Haeckels embryos, which continued to be used for almost a century in spite of their fraudulent nature, one of the reasons being no effort made to remove them from books, which begs the question, why? ” Because the embryo pictures that he shows are essentially correct. Vertebrate embryos do indeed resemble each other at the phylotypic/pharyngula stage of development, and that is indeed a powerful argument for evolution. What was “fradulent” about Haeckel’s embryos was that they were a little embroided to look a bit more similar to each other than they really were. They’ve now been replaced in textbooks by photographs of real embryos showing essentially the same thing. And, of course, the entire field of embryology has been revitalized by combination with molecular biology and genomics to form the field of EvoDevo —- an incredibly important area of science today showing correlations between development and evolution only dreamed of by people like Haeckel. But Jonathan Wells doesn’t write books about that —– Also, you should bear in mind that the “fraud” that Haeckel was accused of originally wasn’t over that series of pictures, but of a set of three embryos at a much more primitive stage (neurulation) where he did indeed repeat the same picture three time to illustrate three different types of vertebrates. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 17, 2016 at 4:22 am so there was fraud and deceit, but we now chose to call it “adjusting”. And I’m not sure why, if the similarities are as obvious as you claim them to be, this would not be an incredible argument for design. To continuously, as evolutionist do, claim accidents, random events, improbabilities, impossibilities, apparent but not real design, coincidental similarities, offer “scientific” proof of evolution when nothing about it is empirical or “scientific” continues to astound me. It’s like Dawkins said, microbiologists have to constantly remind themselves “It’s not designed. It’s not designed”, in spite of the obvious conclusion to the contrary. Perhaps one day all biologists, Dawkins included, will go missing, only to all being found standing in their driveways, staring at their cars saying “It won’t drive. It won’t drive”. Amazing where facts and logic halt, and fantasy begins. And again I say, it only shows the dearth of current scientific evidences for evolution when science is busily dusting off old disproven claims, or trying to salvage discredited examples, and representing them as something new, or a discovery decades ahead of it’s time. Strikes me as vacuous and banal, but hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:00 am Well David, I am not sure what if any part of your post you considered an adequate response, but let me assure you, all sarcasm and coughing aside, you answered nothing. “That would be false”, other than being your own opinion, carries an appropriate amount of weight, it’s only as considerable as YOU think it is. Every point I made can be documented, as even evolutionists know and have admitted themselves. Perhaps if you have been invested in this area of science for over forty years you might have, somewhere in your reading, stumbled across these issues, Perhaps reading a book will help. And not just reading “how to answer objections to evolution”, though I don’t think you would take long to do so. After all, there’s just one line in it. “That would be false”. I try to be nice, but your response was just pathetic. Try not to be so lazy next time and actually do some research. Just one example, Haeckel’s embryos. Just pick up any evolutionary biology book from the 1900’s up until as recently as ten years ago or so and odds are you will find Haeckel’s embryos in it, either a picture (the most ususal) or at least reference. And apparently you object to statistics (do you actually understand science) or quote mining (ever read a book or scientific study paper). You obviously can’t even offer a rudimentary defense of what you believe. I can only hope you can do better. But that would be false. LikeLike Peter says: August 6, 2016 at 5:22 am “Every point I made can be documented, as even evolutionists know and have admitted themselves” No, the documentation of all your points is erroneous and biased. And I have some forty years years of experience in reading evolution. Take Haeckel’s embryos. Similar figures comparing embryos are found in all textbooks, usually as drawings to make the relevant features clear. The figures compring embryos are there, for the simple reason that embryos of vertebrates are very similar, as can be seen from good photographs too. It takes some time to collect good photographs from the diverse literature on embryological studies on vertebrates – one at a time – but it is totally against fact to deny embryo similarity. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 4:58 pm no one’s claiming no similarity. The point was the similarity was significantly exaggerated, often by altering the drawings. This is no longer disputed, nor is it disputed that homology no longer carries the weight it once did and never should have. Similarity does not prove descent or necessary linkage. Again, the points being made, in response to posters’ comment about artistic license and consistency, that the sciences are often quite slow (and in this case, a century slow) acknowledging error or fraud, at least in a public sense. I understand the embarrassment hoaxes and fraud can bring, so I am sympathetic. The point at hand was the ark exhibit made it clear that artistic license was involved. Seemed trite to me to then make big issue of it’s usage. Thus the insinuation that one should remove the log from one’s own eye before making a big issue of a splinter in someone elses. So the point you make about current drawings is anachronistic to the point at hand. I was not commenting on last years science textbooks. And your statement about “all” points was a pure case of dictis simplicitor. I’ve tried to make people understand that simply saying something is wrong does not make it wrong. I’m glad you have read for over 40 years. Unless you have been reading nothing but pro-Darwinian literature, you should be aware of the points I made, and aware that there are and have been evolutionists who did and do acknowledge these things. I only try to get people to think outside the box and urge them to question everything, be skeptical, and stay current. I personally don’t care what anyone believes until they try to enlist me in their cause. At that point I will have lot’s of questions and expect reasonable, rational, tested answers, with difficulties acknowledge, not brushed aside. Thanks for your response LikeLike Bob says: August 6, 2016 at 10:17 pm Similarity, however, is not recaptitulation of evolution; it is similarity. The varioius creatures are not known to be related, only similar and different is certain ways. LikeLike chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 1:59 am Well Bob, let me say again, though to you for the first time I think, that my intention was not even to comment on the actual veracity of any of the issues I brought up. It was to point out error, whatever the intent, and the hesitancy to admit it. Thus Haeckels embryos were used (and perhaps still are) for over a century after the realization that they did not represent reality, at least none outside of Haeckel’s own head. Whether he did so with malice or juuuuuussssssttttttt a bit too much artistic license no one knows. And you know, if he had put a disclaimer there saying “artist has used some license here in the reconstruction”, well then, I have no problem, Perhaps the fact that he, and the others who immediately latched onto it, did so because they believed it validated Darwins theory. We now know (or shame on us if we don’t) that homology is not the best trail to travel if scientific validity for Darwinism is what you seek. It’s not that the community (evolutionary) didn’t catch on quickly, because they did. It’s just that no one seemed to think it significant enough to remove it from textbooks. Seeing as how it was offered as a mainstay of evolutionary argument and explanation for so long, one can only wonder how far some are willing to go down that road. Isn’t “truth” relevant in the sciences? Honesty? Or do the ends justify the means. I’m just asking. Thanks for your kind post. LikeLike Peter says: August 7, 2016 at 6:51 am ” nor is it disputed that homology no longer carries the weight it once did and never should have.” Actually, homology now carries the weight it had , of main argument in favour of evolution. Chuck’s statement here shows how ignorant of evolutionary biology he is. In general, his comments show only dire prejudice. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 8, 2016 at 4:33 am well, being a generous man, I will cut you some slack as to your own level of ignorance. Any cursory reading will reveal that the old “strengths” supposedly found in homological studies have become weak at best and non-existent at worse. Those a hundred, hundred fifty years ago can be forgiven, their studies only in the beginning stages. Surely you don’t believe similarities in embryos, early bone structure development without exception “proof” common descent or even similar outcome. Might as well as being used to prove descent with modification could it not also indicate design, an archtype of some sort? Merely having a series of successive forms does not provide it’s own explanation. Similar genes aren’t a slam dunk, because different sort of genes in similar animals can product quite different features, or similar genes can produce quite different results. A some frogs and some birds can be quite similar in appearance in earlier embryonic stages yet enter the world looking radically different. To give an example, a very similar gene produces the eyes of fruit flies, the octopus, and mice. Similarity does not equal replication. There are scores of land animals that appear homologically similar at early stages that turn out to almost totally dissimilar upon full growth. To simplify, homological studies, while interesting and informative, are no longer, except for the still desperate, the “slam dunk” they were once thought to be for explaining, or part of, Darwinian processes. I am not saying it isn’t a fruitful area of study, nor despite it’s proven weakness as to explanatory power, that it is still appealed to. But it, by the field at large, is no longer felt to be or expected to be the critical part of the engine. Studies in the field of genes has emasculated it of it’s imagined power. Certainly Peter, you can find a book or two, assuming you ever read outside the Big Brother’s paradigm. If you look closely, you might find a few in the box where you dwell. But try not to comment on other peoples intelligence. I don’t think you are qualified. LikeLike Peter says: August 8, 2016 at 12:13 pm I’m not convinced Chuck knows the meaning of the word homology or has done any sort of cursory reading about the topic.”To give an example, a very similar gene produces the eyes of fruit flies, the octopus, and mice”. Yes, that gene is homologous over the metazoa. That sor of this, widely recognized. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 2:08 am and yes, that was my point. If that was key point re homology, then all things creatures would be descendants of ALL creatures. I hope we can agree at least that that is not the case. And are you so insecure that you must stick somewhere in your answers that whoever you are answering must not be “as intelligent as you are” (cursory reading). Seriously, first try to understand what someone says. Then remember that no matter how stupid they may be, that doesn’t make your answer any more intelligent. As to homology, I am quite familiar with it and it’s involvement in cladistics and phylogenetic trees, and the inherent weakness of it. Cladistics cannot do what some claim it can, explain the absence of ancestors, primarily because it presupposes the very thing it attempts to prove. Also, if cladistics analysis is interpreted as a series of historical events, then evolutionary biologists are forced to draw lengthy lines of ancestry (those gaps and lines I referred to in an earlier post) that are then “ghost lineages”, which, rather than solving why fossils are missing simply creates more fossils that need to be found. Plus, any given group of scientist may use competing histories of life, some of which are bound to conform to one of the various cladograms. Therefore cladistics cannot establish, in principle, any particular evolutionary history. As to continued claims for fossil missing links, “the fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be place, with room to spare, inside a single coffin'(Dr lyall Watson, Science Digest.) Even Stephen Gould, who was no friend to creationists, stated that transitional forms were “extremely rare”. I disagree of course, as to macroevolution, I think they are non existant. So I am sorry you missed the tree but saw the forest. I wasn’t attacking evolution per se, but scientific methods, their subjective nature, and hypocrisy. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 8, 2016 at 9:51 am Chuck, if you’ll take a moment to scroll up to your original post, you’ll notice that it was a series of questions. “Do we tell people about this? What about that? Do we explain such-and-such?” I merely answered those questions. In most every case, the answer was extraordinarily simple. Now, of course, you reveal your true colors. You react quite energetically to my answers to your questions because your questions were never the point; rather, they were merely intended to conceal a series of claims. This is probably learned behavior, given your obvious familiarity with a great deal of creationist material; creationists frequently suggest the use of loaded questions, ostensibly to “make people think”. Asking an extremely loaded question is a clever way to appear curious and interested when really you’re only trying to front as many claims as you possibly can. If you want to be honest and lead with your claims, then fine, do so. But remember that claims asserted without evidence may be dismissed without rebuttal. Asking loaded questions and then demanding evidence when the fallacies and false premises are called out…well that’s not going to win you any sympathy. LikeLike chuck says: August 8, 2016 at 11:26 am good advice, if you had followed. And may I remind you that answering questions with lots of verbiage containing no facts or proofs does not constitue a question answered. And all you psychoanalyzing aside (just another attempt to pretend you are answering someing), if you had read to the beginning you would know my response was to initial posters obsession with artwork and consistency when said party clearly stated they would be using these methods. My reaction was to test posters reaction to instances where science had used “artistic license” (I am being kind here), incorrect information, even fraud and hoaxes in their textbooks, et.al. I merely wanted to see if the outrage was commensurate with the crime. Everyone could have just said, yea, you’re right. We’ve made some humdingers, and sure, we’ve been a bit slow sometimes (a century?), decades, but we eventually get around to it. I was just curious if the outrage was based on that noble desire of evolutionists to obsessively find error in others work while tripping over their own. That’s all. And I see you are a fan favorite of the genetic fallacy, the poisoned well. Always, in every accusation, include as many identifiers and negative connotation with creationists as possible. And if you will, if there any kindness left in you, could you just point out one fallacy or false premise of mine. And I do mean don’t just state it (a thumb-less monkey could do that). Actually include some proof with it. Remember, claims asserted without evidence may be dismissed without debuttal. Almost breathelessly awaiting your response LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 8, 2016 at 12:00 pm Accusations of psychoanalysis and genetic fallacy, ironically, illustrate the things I’m talking about. It’s not a genetic fallacy to point out loaded questions and explain similarities to creationist apologetics. I hypothesized that you learned this demonstrably fallacious argumentation tactic by exposure to creationists, not that it was wrong simply because it is similar to creationist arguments. I’m well aware that you claim you were just trying to talk about uses of artistic license, but most of the “questions” you asked had nothing to do with that, so pardon me if i’m unconvinced. What you don’t understand is that a loaded question IS a fallacy. You repeatedly made claims by concealing them in the direct object noun phrase of a question. Let me know what a debuttal is. It sounds exciting! LikeLike chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 12:59 am it’s a cure for that problem you’re having. keep it on the down low. LikeLike chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 1:35 am what the questions had to do with, David, mein freund, is they were examples of science error and fraud, that unlike AIG’s upfront announcement of artistic license, were slowly revealed only after considerable delay, whether 40-50 years (moths) or over a hundred(embryos). I gave those examples knowing full and well how this community would respond, defensively and vociferously. I knew there would be explaining away, justifications, and, sadly, downright endorsement. I guess it’s okay if they are on “your side”. AIG, which committed no fraud or error, but announced what it was doing, is, of course, condemned. I guess it’s not okay if they aren’t “on your side”. Just pointing out a slight double standard, which with a simple admission could have ended the conversation there. I never held out much hope, but miracles do happen. (as you can see, I am not a materialist). But it does go to show why there will never be any productive conversation between the two camps. And that is sad. There are brilliant men and women in all the various schools on origins. It’s too bad poor philosophy crowds out good science, and I aim that statement at all camps. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 9, 2016 at 10:49 am “what the questions had to do with…is they were examples of science error and fraud that…were slowly revealed only after considerable delay” See, this is your claim. This is the thing you need to be providing evidence for. Concealing this claim within a loaded question is either disingenuous or fallacious…I’ll let you decide which. “I guess it’s okay if they are on ‘your side’. AIG, which committed no fraud or error, but announced what it was doing, is, of course, condemned. I guess it’s not okay if they aren’t ‘on your side'” As I said before, science does not care whether an older version of an experiment had methodological flaws once the hypothesis has been independently validated. Your argument has all the usefulness of insisting that smoking doesn’t actually cause cancer because some study back in the 70s made a mistake. Also, it’s apparent that you didn’t actually pay much attention to Joel’s post. Joel didn’t accuse AiG of fraud; he’s pointing out that their artwork is inconsistent with the requirements of their model…not because they are trying to mislead, but because they probably don’t understand their own models well enough to fix it. “As to continued claims for fossil missing links, ‘the fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be place, with room to spare, inside a single coffin’ (Dr lyall Watson, Science Digest.)” How tiresome you are. This was a stretch when he said it…in 1982. It is 2016, and we have over 1000 full or partial hominid skeletons more than a million years old. “any given group of scientist may use competing histories of life, some of which are bound to conform to one of the various cladograms. Therefore cladistics cannot establish, in principle, any particular evolutionary history.” False. Your claim betrays your staggering lack of familiarity with the fields of cladistics and phylogenetics. For a phylogenetic tree with N terminal branches, there are (2N – 5)!! different possible branching trees. So…no. A randomly-chosen “history of life” is assuredly NOT “bound to conform to one of the various cladograms”, because the chances of genetic evidence just happening to match is far too miniscule. “none of your references deal with indisputable (either by creationists and/or evolutionists). And can we have some actual transitional fossils. PLEASE. It’s ALL you need. It’s AALLLLLLLL you need. But there aren’t any” What, pray tell, do you imagine would constitute an “actual transitional fossil”? Be very specific. LikeLike chuck says: August 11, 2016 at 4:00 am phylogenetic methods as they now exist can only rigorously detect sister-group relationships, not direct ancestry-(Matzke, Meyers hopeless monster pt. 2)….”the typical question is which tree is the best one, not whether there is a tree in the first place” (philosopher of biology Elliot Sober),…”cladistics can run into difficulties in its’ application because not all character states are necessarily holologous…certain resemblances are convergent….we cannot always detect the convergences immediately, and their presence may contradict other similarities….thus we are obliged to ASSUME that, for each character, similar states are homologous…(Lecointre and Le Guyader, The Tree of Life, 16)…..Arthropod phylogeny is sometimes presented as an almost hopeless puzzle wherein all possible competing hypotheses have support..(Edgecombe)….”cladograms depict sister groups-taxa that are thought to be each other’s closest relative-but do NOT show ancestors and descendants…..in other words, the very goal of systematics-the determination of ancestor-descendant relationships, is on the cladistics method not just unattained but unattainable.” (Brysse “From Weird Wonders to Stem Lineages, ” 36) And as I stated, it assumes that which it sets out to prove. Stephen Gould, avid evolutionist that he was, was often “criticized” for verbalizing his concerns over the weakness of the fossil record. He died fairly recently. Are his words more powerful because he live more recently even though he is expressing the same think as others (and you and I both know there are others, now and all through Darwinian evolution). Fact is Darwin himself was quite worried about the paucity of fossil evidence. 150+ years and 200+ million fossils later, the paucity remains. Again, and again, you miss my point on cladigrams. Seeing as how one can change the algorithms to suit one’s purpose, thus explaining the proliferation of differing trees, the point is that any system using arbitrary criteria along with innumerable hypothetical trees will certainly result in finding a “tree” to one’s satisfaction. Any method that proves everything proves nothing. While interesting to note we have 1000 full or partial hominoid skeletons by itself says little more than me saying we have millions of dinosaur bones and skeletons. That only proves they live, not that they evolved. Same for the hominoid evidence. And honestly, I need to ask you what you believe a transitional fossil would present. Some here seem to think that every small change or variation is proof of macroevolution. At least that’s what everybody keeps pointing me to in references. I’m not reading about transitions. I guess to put it in layman’s terms, or for the progressive creationists, where is there evidence of one “kind” evolving into another, or say fossil proof of a creature both reptile/amphibian/mammal, however you want to mix and match. That would be proof of macroevolution, which is what Darwin was hypothesizing without a doubt. Macroevolution. He would of course assume microevolution as part of that process, but he needed, and evolutionists need both. I find this prevalent among evolutionists. They get a little hazy on definitions, then belittle those unable to pinpoint them on it. What is your example or proof, if you will, of macroevolution? And feel free to go zoom back and forth through the time zone, because terms tend to take on new or somewhat different meanings. And for your info, Peter seems to want to accuse me of beginning the use of sexual innuendo in these posts. I must kindly remind you, as I reminded him, that it was your post of Aug 8 when the “M” word was first used, though you may have been quoting someone else. And lastly, if you tire, david, just quit. No one is forcing you to respond to me. It would probably be best for you. Apparently the stress is too much, seeing as how you’ve resorted to the typical insults concerning intelligence so prevalent on these sites. I was sorry to see that. Your posts tended to be among the more mature. I’ll assume you desire no further dialogue if you don’t respond. No hard feelings. I never doubted that you are an intelligent fellow, as my friends and family know me to be. I’m not proud about it, and would never think about speaking down to someone as you did. It’s quite immature. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 12, 2016 at 4:33 pm I’ll unpack these one by one. “Phylogenetic methods as they now exist can only rigorously detect sister-group relationships, not direct ancestry. The typical question is which tree is the best one, not whether there is a tree in the first place.” I don’t want to appear condescending, but quoting this and thinking it somehow calls phylogenetic evidence into question is the clearest possible evidence that you don’t understand the first thing about phylogenetic evidence. That’s okay; I wouldn’t expect you to understand it without having access to clear explanations. But it’ll require that I lay some ground work. Phylogenetic trees, by definition, cannot represent ancestral nodes because we do not have the DNA of our direct ancestors. By and large, we only have the DNA of living species, so we use comparative analyses of DNA differences to establish the most likely branching tree that led to present distributions. Similarly, it cannot tell us whether there is a tree in the first place, because that is not its job. Its job is to sort through the similarities in sets of data to determine what order those sets most likely branched out from each other in. These are not defects in phylogenetic analysis. This is what phylogenetic analysis is. Scientists do not expect every different analysis to yield the exact same tree. Here’s an example. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas share a common ancestor, with gorillas splitting off first and the chimp and human lines dividing later on. Then, consider a segment of DNA code common to all of them. At each locus on the DNA code, there are several possibilities on what matches what: All three sources can match if the locus was conserved in all three lineages. The chimpanzee and human sources can match each other but not the gorilla source. This is possible if the gorilla source changed at that locus and the human-chimp line conserved that locus, or if the human-chimp line changed before it divided and the gorilla source was conserved. The chimpanzee and gorilla sources can match each other but not the human source. This is possible if the locus was conserved in gorillas, in the human-chimp line, and in chimpanzees, but not in humans. The human and gorilla sources can match each other but not the chimpanzee source. This is possible if the locus was conserved in gorillas, in the human-chimp line, and in humans, but not in chimpanzees. All three sources can be different if the locus was conserved in only one (or none) of the lines. All these possibilities are entirely consistent with the hypothesis that the human-chimpanzee line split off from gorillas first, then split into humans and chimpanzees, with no homology or anything like that. What the hypothesis predicts, however, is that when ALL possible sequences are compared, the vast majority of branching trees will match predictions on the vast majority of branches. And that is what we see. “Seeing as how one can change the algorithms to suit one’s purpose, thus explaining the proliferation of differing trees, the point is that any system using arbitrary criteria along with innumerable hypothetical trees will certainly result in finding a ‘tree’ to one’s satisfaction.” No, it will not. This is where you are absolutely, completely, totally wrong. The “proliferation” of different trees is the result of taking different subsets of the genome. This is necessary because some segments of the genome mutate more rapidly than other segments and thus have a lot of noise. Other segments are better conserved. Phylogenetic evidence does not rest on a single tree. Rather, you take numerous DNA sections, you run them all using the exact same algorithm, and you compare the resulting trees to each other. If a plurality of branching patterns cluster around the same overall shape over and over, then you know that you have a match. If they don’t, then you have garbage. What we see is that we are able to find matches over and over again that are not only statistically significant, but statistically certain. “1000 full or partial hominoid skeletons by itself says little more than me saying we have millions of dinosaur bones and skeletons. That only proves they live, not that they evolved” No, it proves that your quote-mined claim was categorically false. “I need to ask you what you believe a transitional fossil would present. Some here seem to think that every small change or variation is proof of macroevolution. At least that’s what everybody keeps pointing me to in references. I’m not reading about transitions.” Remember those branching trees? Well, when we have a particularly broad gap in the tree, we can hypothesize that there should have been some species bridging that gap. We’ll be able to describe what the species must have looked like, what its morphology was, where it lived geographically, and the strata layer in which it should be found. Scientists write papers about it. Then someone goes out to the geographical region the scientists wrote about, and digs down to the strata layer the scientists referenced, and pokes around. And what they find looks exactly how the scientists said it would look, and has the correct morphology. That’s a transitional fossil. Transitional fossils have nothing to do with some arbitrary level of “betweenness” or “different-kind-ness”. They are successful predictions of the theory of macroevolutionary common descent. And each time we find a new one, we prove that common descent is a robust theory capable of accurately predicting new discoveries. We also observe speciation, and we observe mutagenically-driven adaptation to new environments. So that’s the other part of the proof. Because that’s all you need. “Peter seems to want to accuse me of beginning the use of sexual innuendo in these posts. I must kindly remind you, as I reminded him, that it was your post of Aug 8 when the ‘M’ word was first used” Do you know what “masturbatory” means, chuck? Hint: it needn’t have anything to do with the, erm, size of your hands. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 12, 2016 at 8:19 pm yes David, and for the sake of a hominoid brain, does anyone one this site have any concept of humor? And seriously, next time you’re out to dinner with your significant other hominoid, just spontaneously say loudly “masturbatory” and see if your fellow diners say “It’s okay, he’s just a bit self absorbed at the moment. C’mon, lighten up. And thank you for the voluminous tome. Lot’s of good information. But, seeing as how were close now an all, can i take a leap and point out to you, and not just to you, but to others here as well, how there seems to be an assumption made by most who post that whatever viewpoint they adhere to or espouse is, by default, THE correct version one should adhere to. In other words, it’s kind of a, ‘well, as we ALL know,……etc.etc. I guess this would explain the apparent astonishment different posters express when someone disagrees with their position. Now i do appreciate how this makes life easier, as if the last 30 seconds, days, years, etc. never happened so all erroneous believes, abhorrent practices, and so one weren’t real. All that’s real or important is right now. This is perhaps a malady of so-called postmodern thought. It all becomes irrelevant unless it pertains to right now. Such a porous memory can be convenient but the historical starvation that results is a mind killer. For instance, while i truly appreciate the significant amount of information relating to phylogenetic trees, if one were to read only your post, one could easily assume that what you state concerning them is what everyone who develops and uses them believes. I.e. everyone agrees. I know this is not the case. So do you. Now you may assume that anyone who understands them properly would of course offer consent to all you claim for them, we both also know this isn’t true. To briefly recap, where you state that as you develop lineages and gaps occur, you can thereby develop or theorize what those occupying said gaps would comprise. Then the science adventurers voyage out, and , amazingly (my word) find these gap fillers right where one would expect to find them. I know you are quite intelligent David, but this is one of those by now famous “just-so” stories. Science is seldom so tidy and neat. And what in the world are we doing with our 200 million plus fossils when we have so many gaps and ghost lineages left to fill in (and are unfortunately, or inadvertently, creating even more). As to the defining of evolution, your response is certainly evocative of our post modern era. I’ll assume your widely read re science history, and that you know that in decades past such a definition would not have been warmly embraced, and poor Darwin would be left looking askance at you. I have made the point that when a theory explains everything, it explains nothing.. you are certainly free to change the parameters of your own thinking, or the requirements of what deserves your belief. But your definitions are not universal, nor your methods for all time.. Darwinian evolution, i grant, has evolved itself, but not for good reasons. It is for lack of evidence and not the plethora of it that has sprouted all of these variations and definitions, what is now considered evidence of evolution. And apparently it is just about anything at all. This is not a good sign for the field. Many recognize this, including, of course, those who have abandoned it. Go back fifty years and you had evolutionists and creationists. Now you have deistic, theistic, atheistic, evolutionists, creationists, progressive creationist (or theistic evolutionists), and intelligent design. While one way, i guess, of looking at this is that it is a sign of healthy dissent, another way, the way i look at it, is , sorry for borrowing a phrase, evolution is a theory in crisis. Now to those who were enjoying a warm dinner or after dinner nightcap aboard the Titanic topside, there appeared to be no reason for alarm. Those below knee deep in water knew differently. And all the charts, all the assurances that all was well were not going to change the fact that the old girl was going down. Now i have never been under the illusion that anyone here, or hardly anywhere on the internet, was going to change their minds, especially about a topic people become so heavily vested in. I usually prefer to just encourage people to have open minds, to be kind to one another. My references to history are attempts to give people, especially younger more indolent ones, a little perspective on how their confidence and arrogance is no different from those who have often brought disrepute on the sciences in the past. So, i do appreciate your efforts, and respect your diligence. But you and I aren’t going to change each others minds. So, as it is become a bit tiresome (literally) responding to ten or fifteen posts every day, I think i will take a break. I do wish you well, however. And have enjoyed the dance. Take care LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 5:13 am oh yes, as an aside, do you actually have any proof that anything you said is true. Here, I’ll help you. What about the fruit fly experiment in any way established that mutations continually added new and helpful information, especially in relation to the addition or development of new organs (not counting their feet coming out of their heads, or losing their wings, you know, stuff we see as beneficial even today). Where are your statistics on the occurrence of helpful mutations, as contrasted with damaging ones. Where is your list of fossil samples that establish verified, indisputable (among evolutionists) examples of transitional life forms, you know, reptile to amphibian or vice versa, amphibian to mammal, or vice versa (I’m trying to help here). Please don’t bring up old “archie” or walking whales. If you do, I will quote you evolutionists who beg to differ. In fact, I only and always quote evolutionists. Please, by all means, after 200+ million fossils, where is this extensive list of missing links? And please, find a book on the Cambrian explosion and read it. Why do you think they call it an explosion? Sudden. Complex life forms, all or most all the phyla appearing at once, in a 8-10 million year time span (don’t try the longer time frame often reached for by the desert. There are plenty and widely scattered evolutionary scientists who refute it). As to your “you haven’t seen them lately”. How old are you? Time does go back, extending back past your birthdate. My point was, these mistakes were not widely acknowledged if at all in the past. The “corrections” just seemed to wander into the textbooks with little if any acknowledge of the previous error. And my point with this is “artistic license”. If the creationists are not allowed to embellish even when they announce they are, then maybe evolutionists should be forced to admit publically all errors made by science or put sidebars in textbooks explaining that a new explanation has replace a previous one that was in error. And no, I don’t talk to heads. Creationists or otherwise. As to your primordial soup, let me quote a science textbook “new cells always come from existing cells”(Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, Modern Biology, 2002., pg. 264). Life does not come from spontaneous generation of living matter from non-living matter, unless “someone” offers assistance. And grabbing for abiogenesis (which is supposed to only have happened once) is just renaming the problem and pushing it down the regress trail. Besides, I have been unable to locate a single example of abiogenesis produced by science. Can you help here? And whether or not the atmosphere is reducing or not critically effects the viability of amino acid production, and the very water needed for protein formation can also work towards the dissolution of molecule clustering. And when a skull cap is found, and from this an entire human is derived, with skin and hair color, amount of body hair, clothes worn, etc. what part of this do not see as speculation? And by all means, just give me one shovel full from your mountains of evidence. You see, talking science should be preceded by reading and studying science. And ideas and thoughts, proposals and speculations, theories and hypotheses should be judged as to their quality not based on “who” had the idea, or are they proper members of the “priesthood” of church of evolution, but solely on the veracity or truthfulness of what they put forth, judged on their own merits, and not whether the thought police would approve. That’s the science I grew up with and taught for decades. Real science. Free of ad hominem attacks and poisoning the well fear mongering. I hope this helps, and gives you an example of what a very very basic scientific debate might consist off. You’re welcome LikeLike Peter says: August 6, 2016 at 5:25 am “the science I grew up with and taught for decades. Real science.” Doesn’t look like it. “gives you an example of what a very very basic scientific debate might consist off.” Clearly, given the lack of knowledge on Chukj’s side, no scietnific debate is possible. LikeLike Peter says: August 7, 2016 at 7:00 am “Where is your list of fossil samples that establish verified, indisputable (among evolutionists) examples of transitional life forms, you know, reptile to amphibian or vice versa, amphibian to mammal, or vice versa (I’m trying to help here). ” Try: M.J. Benton, 2015. Vertebrate Palaeontology. 4th edition.Wiley Blackwell T.S. Kemp, 2005. The Origin and Evolution of Mammals. Oxford UP. Or Luo, 2007. Transformation and diversification in early mammal evolution. Nature 450: 1011-1019. J.A. Clack, 2012. Gaining Groound:The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods. 2nd edition. Indiana UP. LikeLike chuck says: August 8, 2016 at 4:41 am It’s great that you can list books, peter, but did you read them? What are the examples they give? Are these books available online to purchase? As much as I enjoy a challenge to my belief system, I don’t think I am going to spend2-400 dollars knowing what you think is astounding proof turns out to be nothing more then what I have already seen and found to be pure speculation with little or no support from the rest of the community. At least page numbers would have helped. At some point in our conversation I may refer you to five or six books. Are you going to go buy them and read through them. I mean, if you expect me to do so it’s only fair for you to do the same. Are we agreed. Seriously, next time just reference the supposed missing link and name of book and page number. As much as I care for you, we haven’t even gone on a date yet, so forgive my chinzeeness. Take care LikeLike Peter says: August 8, 2016 at 11:58 am Sorry to hear you tire so easily. perhaps lifting a book would build some muscle. The books I mention are on Amazon. It’s easy to check the reputation of the authors, and if you haven’t heard of them it only shows you are ignorant of the field you are loudmouthing about. You might have noticed the publishers. LikeLike chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 1:23 am And oh my goodness, Oprah, none of your references deal with indisputable (either by creationists and/or evolutionists). And can we have some actual transitional fossils. PLEASE. It’s ALL you need. It’s AALLLLLLLL you need. But there aren’t any (not like even having a few out of 200+million fossils is exactly slam dunking it) but just one. That’s shows a definite transition of mammal to amphib or vice versa, or reptile to amphib or vice versa, or reptile……..well you get it, any darn thing to any darn thing. Variation with species is not evolution. It is variety. Variation. Excuse my French, but why the hell is anyone still looking for it (them) if they have already been found. In my forty years of following this, I remember dozens of articles in papers and magazines that claimed “aha, eureka, we found the (a) missing link” only to have said find disappear into the computer file named “nada”. Now I know all of you think they have been found. You’d be idiots if you didn’t. Why else would you believe in an impossibility unless you thought it has been proven possible. So I really do empathize with you. I get it. But lot’s of scientists (and for goodness sakes, not just aig) beg to differ. And not just the ID scientists either. I have books on my shelves written by atheistic evolutionists who don’t believe evolution is how we got to where we are (isn’t that ironic……don’t you think. A little too ironic….I really do think). So you need to show some of the same kind slack to all of us that we (most of us) show you. Why should I believe in the process of evolution when there are evolutionists who don’t believe in the process of evolution? Am I being unreasonable? Listen, were are all mixed bags. There are progressive creationists who believe in Darwinian evolution. To them I ask, how do you put such an antithetical pair of feet in the same shoe? Is it to placate science? To make friends? Earn the respect of your peers? Didn’t Darwin make atheism intellectually fulfilling? So for the last time, everyone get off the list I originally posted. You reacted like I still believe they haven’t been corrected or are still believed by all. The point was that once they were, and that while they were known by some or most scientists to be false, or results falsely obtained. Yet obviously none of you are or were bothered by it. One of you even endorsed such methods. I was just asking how you could be so unaffected by such blatant or obvious deception and error, yet deride AIG for using artistic license even though they stated so up front. Is there a double standard there? If you don’t see one, then I seemed to have wandered off into an amoral multiverse. LikeLike Peter says: August 9, 2016 at 9:31 am “And can we have some actual transitional fossils. PLEASE. It’s ALL you need. It’s AALLLLLLLL you need. But there aren’t any (not like even having a few out of 200+million fossils is exactly slam dunking it) but just one. That’s shows a definite transition of mammal to amphib or vice versa, or reptile to amphib or vice versa, or reptile……..well you get it, any darn thing to any darn thing. Variation with species is not evolution. It is variety. Variation.” Any damn thing to any damn thing? For instance, Chuck into someone who has at least some tiny grasp what he is gobbling about? Chuck, do the effort. Read a book. I mentioned the books you need. Until now, all you’ve done is disqualify yourself and removing any suspicion of you having a brain. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 11, 2016 at 2:56 am great job Peter. Standard evolutionary fare. Can’t answer a question. Insult your opponent. Impressive. LikeLike Alan(UK) says: August 6, 2016 at 4:33 pm If anyone is interested in the Haeckel embryo drawing saga, I would suggest reading: Click to access Wellner_asu_0010E_13836.pdf Lessons from Embryos: Haeckel’s Embryo Drawings, Evolution, and Secondary Biology Textbooks by Karen L. Wellner Warning! It is long, scholarly, and very thorough. LikeLike chuck says: August 6, 2016 at 8:04 pm hey alan, started to read your referenced article. your right, it is lone. And i am not sure it is going to address my issue: the drawings are (purposefully) incorrect (even if well intentioned), this was recognized first by biologists and embryologists, not creationists, and thus it was their (the former) efforts that Haeckels drawings have ebbed and flowed in usage. I do have to say, though, i am already beginning to doubt any objective conclusion by this paper when i read (pg 10) about “creationist and intelligent design efforts to eliminate evolution from classroom teaching”. Seriously? While there certainly may be a microscopicly few creationists who feel this. I have never met one. The goal and desire of both groups is to open up the discussion so that various views, not just one or two, can be looked at. This is far from eliminating evolution, or any viewpoint, from the classroom. As i continue to read this thesis, is this the kind of “objective” conclusions i can anticipate reading? What simplistic tripe. And the paper won’t change the past, or the truth of it. It was his peers that rejected his work, creationists aside. And it was doctored. It was manipulated. Maybe with the best intentions. The point is, what students saw in their textbooks was and is not a true reflection of that seen in the real world. If you are going to continue to use it, why not at least acknowledge it or give a disclaimer. Or is a lie a good means to reach the truth, or will the truth reveal the lie. LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 16, 2016 at 4:59 pm “Or maybe more like the supposed stages of horse evolution, showing the cute little one working it’s way to todays magnificent specimens, which has become embarrassing now that we know all of these “stages” lived contemporary with each other.” Really? Wherever did you get this notion? LikeLike chuck says: August 16, 2016 at 8:24 pm well christine, i’m going to save us some time here, You come across as someone who only believes what she already believes, without any possible credence give to a conflicting or contrary idea. I certainly have surmised that you disagree with anything and everything written from a creationist viewpoints, so why don’t you tell me what you will believe, then i will find “that” for you and link you to it. It will save me the time of sending you research you won’t consider, and save you the time of reading something you won’t consider. There. Look at all the time saved. If you have to ask me “where in the world”, then i know at least two things. You are not widely read. And you don’t think outside of the box. I’m old enough to know that such people(and you may also be an absolutely divine human being) stopped thinking long ago, and are just into regurgitating current doctrine. Good for you. We all deserve to be comfortable. LikeLike realthog says: August 5, 2016 at 12:04 am Lock Ness Loch Ness. LikeLike Natural Historian says: August 5, 2016 at 2:18 pm Ugh, of course. Fixed. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 6, 2016 at 3:39 pm I’m just reading this blog by a YEC: http://blog.drwile.com/?p=15026#comments LikeLike chuck says: August 7, 2016 at 2:13 am what did you think of his review? Seemed quite reasoned and honest to me. What he liked and what he didn’t like. I share his fascination with old bible leafs. Have collected quite a few myself, 400-500 years old. Like holding history. Anyway, thanks for referral, and thanks for taking the time. Appreciate it. LikeLike Natural Historian says: August 7, 2016 at 7:14 am I think the review is very reasonable. Dr. Wile is a YEC but has expressed concerns about Ham in the past. He doesn’t gush over the ark but does note the positives and provides a few suggestions. Probably one of the most middle of the road reviews I’ve read. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 8, 2016 at 4:44 am and exactly more of what we desperately need, from both sides. I love those type of reviews because I can sort of put my guard down and just read for the info. He did well. And you did by sending it to me. It was truly appreciated. I will eagerly await others. Blessings LikeLike Peter says: August 7, 2016 at 1:37 pm Chuck brought up the peppered moth story (why? unconnected with Ark Encounter), so some additional material: A conference talk by Majerus preceding the publication of http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/01/27/rsbl.2011.1136 , about those data. Transcript of talk by Michael Majerus, Uppsala, 2007 http://datadryad.org/bitstream/handle/10255/dryad.35615/Swedentalk220807.pdf?sequence=1 Slides of the talk: http://datadryad.org/bitstream/handle/10255/dryad.35614/SwedenPepperedmoth2007Ppt.pdf?sequence=1 LikeLike chuck says: August 8, 2016 at 4:56 am I brought it up because it was performed using questionable methods, not fully disclaimed, and because it became a big natural selection bugaboo to creationists. As I brought up, and not fully understood, HIS results were never replicated in a way that would confirm his first experiment. Now people, propelled by hot gasses exiting the ear rather than slow thoughtful processes, jump to the rescue “shouting” “oh yes it has”, oh yes it was “. etc. But no, it wasn’t and hasn’t. What WAS done was his experiment was tried using CORRECT methods and measurements without any manipulation of the results or modification of the experiment while in process. It was THESE procedures, and not failed attempts at repeating the error filled experiments Kettlewell performed, that achieved some correct and significant results. So my statement still stands. No one has repeated his exact experiment and recapitulated his original results. And again, yes, once again, I will point out the whatever the various interpretations of what the results mean, at most they show that natural selection does work in some circumstances, an area not exactly controversial in the creationist community at this time. It merely confirms that if you don’t want to be a blatant target, blend into the background. Perhaps the GI Joe camouflage moth wings be put on sale sooner this year. LikeLike David MacMillan says: August 8, 2016 at 9:30 am Then why do you fuss about it so insistently? You don’t get it. Science doesn’t actually care whether Kettlewell made mistakes. Science cares about what CAN be observed, reproduced, and analyzed. Kettlewell’s hypothesis was correct and this has been demonstrated by more rigorous experimentation, so that’s where science stops caring. Obsessing over potential failings in Kettlewell’s methodology is a pointlessly masturbatory witch hunt exercised solely for the purpose of muddying the waters. Given that creationists don’t even dispute the validity of natural selection, continuing to whine about it is beyond pointless. LikeLike chuck says: August 8, 2016 at 11:04 am well, it’s clear you don’t care if mistakes were made, fraud was done, artitistic license was performed without notice. and you are quite right. science didn’t care. They continued to use it. knowing it wasn’t done “scientifically”, showcasing it as a wonderful proof of natural selection. In fact, they used it for a hundred years solely for the fact that it achieved what that wanted it to appear to have achieved, even if it did no such thing. And there were other errors and incomplete conclusions made as if all were fact.If you are saying the ends justifies the means, and you are a scientist, then your morals are quite defective. Again, and I’ll type loudly for the hard of reading, “my point was that the aig people aren’t different in that they don’t use artistic license, they are different in that they announce when they do it, at least far more quickly and prominently than others”. If you think their house is in a shambles, best check your own. Looks like hoarders living there” As for your masturbation problem, perhaps a gene defect left one of your thumbs ill equipped. Just wait. It will come along soon enough, I agree with the whining, which was why I was responding to the whinning going on here about their artwork. And yes, scientists often do tell on their own. Just have always wondered why an error remains in textbooks for over a century, you know, those books that are supposedly teaching our kids those empirical truths they so desperately need. Now I think you must be the last one to have missed the initial point, so happily we can move on. LikeLike Peter says: August 8, 2016 at 11:51 am “in fact, they used it for a hundred years solely for the fact that it achieved what that wanted it to appear to have achieved, even if it did no such thing. ” Perhaps Chuck has not understood that Kettlewell did his experiments in 1955 and that the experiments were the first ever on this topic. So of course his results were used for teaching purposes, until Grant’s observations on Geospiza fortis were the better example. Since when is it required that the first experiment in a field is for all eternity? And in fact, the result stands: the peppered moth morphs are undermeasurable visual selection by bird predators. I fully agree with David MacMllan: “Obsessing over potential failings in Kettlewell’s methodology is a pointlessly masturbatory witch hunt exercised solely for the purpose of muddying the waters”. Chucks remarks about the peppered moth have no content whatsoevern. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 12:49 am I was referring to Haeckel’s embryos as being used for over a hundred years. But you proved my point wonderfully, thank you. There are obviously some who do science who care not a whit about it’s integrity or honesty. Like the german scientists who used Darwinian theory to discriminate and eventually eliminate whomever they considered undesirable. But that’s okay, because such incorrect and dishonest usage “because it achieved what they wanted it to appear to have achieved, even if it didn’t”. Lordie, do you need help filling in your grave. And you all can pretend all you want to to not get my point. Here’s a shocker for you pretend postmoderns. There is truth. It is absolute. There is right and wrong. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And it is the height of and sheer hypocrisy to accuse others with negative reactions when you preform or approve of the same actions just because you like the results. And I may have mentioned moths, embryos, etc., but I just can’t remember bringing up libido. If you guys need some Viagra, you can get it from Canada. Otherwise, deal with your own impotency. LikeLike Peter says: August 9, 2016 at 9:35 am “But you proved my point wonderfully, thank you. There are obviously some who do science who care not a whit about it’s integrity or honesty.” Actually, Chuck, you not showing any honesty or integrety in your responses: about the worst trolling on this site thus far. What you do show is some obsession with sex: not the first time you start slurring about that. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 11, 2016 at 3:03 am Liars have trouble keeping track of their lies, don’t they. I believe it was you, apparently (you used quotation marks) quoting David McMillan in your Aug 8th post using the word “masturbatory witch hunt” where the first sexual innuendo was used. Try to track your lies better. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 8, 2016 at 7:08 pm Why is Chuck pretending that his objections have not already been addressed in earlier posts? (And is he an OEC or a YEC – I am not clear either way.) LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 9, 2016 at 2:12 am I am a YEC/OU. And my objections were to hypocritical criticism, not evolution per se. Just wondering why one group can live with error and fraud while criticizing someone else for an error they did not make. If you haven’t gathered that by now, don’t worry. I’m sure (sincerely) there are more important things for you to be concerned about. But thanks for trying. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 9, 2016 at 3:23 pm Chuck Even if Kettlewell made procedural errors, the conclusion reached here seems pretty clear (and it’s not all about a mutation as falsely claimed by Brian Thomas of the ICR very recently): http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/01/27/rsbl.2011.1136 Ashley LikeLike chuck says: August 11, 2016 at 4:07 am I agree, and never really thought his procedural miscues were of malice intent, but more the difficulty of observation. Agree with you on the mutation issue. Thanks for the kind response. LikeLike davidsmacmillan says: August 10, 2016 at 1:27 pm “wondering why one group can live with error and fraud while criticizing someone else for an error they did not make” Science is not living “with error and fraud”. Science does not accept fraud or error. It identifies it, learns from it, moves past it. What you seem to be employing is the argument from fallacy: that because a conclusion was once contained in a fallacious argument or flawed experiment, it is somehow now “poisoned” and must itself be wrong. This is itself a fallacy. Galileo used several patently absurd arguments in his explanations for why the world was definitely not stationary…yet his mistakes do not magically make geocentrism true. Nor, as has been pointed out to you, was Joel “criticizing [AiG] for an error they did not make”. Rather, he gave examples of how AiG propaganda is inconsistent with their models, something they themselves have repeatedly attacked other Christian organizations for. LikeLike chuck says: August 12, 2016 at 6:52 pm as to the first part of your reply, my point was to contrast the tendency, in this case of evolutionists, to look past, quickly declare irrelevant, or ignore or not respond to instances of error in scientific thought or practice while gang tackling any party with whom they disagree, in this case, creationists. My point was not to condemn science, nor to fail to acknowledge that as you say, science searches out error and fraud, and to their credit, identify and eliminate. While this is true, one would have a false impression were one to assume (as many of the innocent do) that this identification and elimination always takes place quickly and “openly”, such as caveats in textbooks. You may not see the need for this, and i don’t particularly care because i take the time to read many and various viewpoints, during which these instances tend to be made public. I understood Joel’s emphasis, though this doesn’t reduce it to little more than nitpicking, seeing what the scientific community has lived with,overlooked, ignored, or pushed out of sight during it’s long and storied history. Science at large, and evolution in particular, operates with paradigms. These tend to, over protracted periods of time, take on a quasi-religious nature, with their own commandments (though shalt not mention ID in a classroom unless with derision, thou shalt not allow for alternate approaches to origins) along with their high priests (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, et. al.). References to fallacies only reinforce my suspicion that you have not understood my original intent. Perhaps this is my fault. LikeLike realthog says: August 12, 2016 at 7:33 pm the tendency, in this case of evolutionists Chuck, who are these people whom you call “evolutionists”? You’re using this baloney term to minimize the reality that virtually ever single qualified biologist in the world, plus almost every accredited scientist, plus the vast majority of educated people, accept evolution as a fact. There are arguments about the relative importance of the various mechanisms involved, but the fact that evolution happens is not at dispute within the scientific community — even outside it, the folk at the Discovery Institute agree that evolution’s a fact. Your use of “evolutionists” as a demeaner is as if I tried to use the word “nonsociopaths” to give the impression that those of us who don’t run around committing serial murder are somehow a minority cult. My point was not to condemn science But it was, and you shouldn’t lie about this. LikeLike chuck says: August 13, 2016 at 6:23 am hey, good to hear from you. Still chompin’ at the bit to get started on one of those 70 books you have written. I’ll let you chose. Just let me know what I can get one. Certainly you know that not virtually every single “qualified” biologist in the world, nor does every “accredited ” scientist, plus the vast majority of “educated” people do not agree with the major tenets or conclusions of Darwinian evolution, unless, as I suspect, the use of qualified,accredited, and educated are just your code words for “those who agree with evolution”, in which case you are merely stating a tautology without presenting it as one. You are aware, I am sure, that for the last few decades surveys of scientists have revealed that on average 40 percent of scientists, over all fields, believe in a personal God, one you can have a relationship, thereby revealing these men and women to be Christian. This, of course, drives Dawkins crazy (or perhaps more accurately, more crazy). If these people are being truthful about their faith (and they have nothing to lose by lying), then 40 percent of scientists do not confine themselves to the evolutionary paradigm pertaining to origins. These figures do not include intelligent design adherents who may be agnostic or still atheistic, yet still dispute the claims made by Darwinian evolutionists. Nor does it include those atheists (flew,Nagel, Berlinski, etc) who are not sold on evolution. So you may feel free to interpret roughly half of all scientists having kept themselves free from the Darwinian paradigm as “baloney” and if so, i’d stay away from “baloney” sandwiches. Some baloney is just pure b.s. This your claim truly qualifies for. Leaving yourself an escape route from truth by loaded up on code words doesn’t change the truth. There is vast disagreement out there concerning evolution, and with all viewpoints. You must break away from the “official” publications of the united evolutionary front and try reading a different and challenging viewpoint, else you will remain nothing but a puppet for official channels. There are thousands and thousands of members of creationist science organizations that reject evolution, as do ID and even evolutionists (Crick and Hoyle among them, who reach for panspermia, which only regresses the question, but at least they acknowledge the obvious and inherent reasons in the theory they want to embrace fully but can’t). And not all average people who don’t have three degrees are intellectual retards just because they don’t buy into what you’ve bought into. Roughly 80 percent of americans believe in God, and a significant portion of them haven’t found the comfort zone enabling them to incorporate their belief in a deity with an accidental meaningless universe and the life that goes with it. So yes, realthog, if you only count people who believe in evolution, then yes, by all means, all people believe in evolution. As to “evolutionists” coming across to you as a “demeanor” word, well I’m sorry you feel that way. Perhaps you should call yourself something else. I simply use the word according to it’s recognized definition “one who believes in evolution”. As for imply psychopathic behavior, I sincerely recommend counselling sessions. I used no such words nor remotely replied any such thing. I do not agree with evolutionists, but, except for the ever present percentage of jerks you can find in any belief system, I believe they are sincere, intelligent people. I also believe they are wrong, This does not for me, as it apparently does for you, require me to define them as some aberration sneakily hiding out among an otherwise normal population. Your usage of qualifiers above was meant to imply exactly what you accuse me of “if their accredited, educated, qualified”, in other words, Darwinian sycophants, then they will toe the line. All others, and perhaps you would chose to use Dawkins words here, are stupid, insane, ignorant and evil (or wicked). I believe it’s called “transfer” , realthog. You might want to look in a mirror. And I don’t like being called a liar, especially by one as unqualified as you to make judgements. I have always expressed a love for science since I was a kid, dressed up all Charlie Brown like on cold winter nights tracking the moons of Jupiter or crater hopping over the mood. As a Christian I believe God not only created this universe but did so with the intent that it would begin to be understood by us, made in his image, and I believe that in eternity we will indulge in exploration that make Star Trek and Star Wars pale in comparison. If you’ll do some reading (I know, I know, you’re churning out books, but take a break) in science history you’ll fine many, and i’ll hazard most, of the most famous names in the history of scientific endeavors have been men and women who believed in God and saw no conflict between their faith and their science. When I do speak negatively about science it’s about the arrogance, judgement, condescending , attitudes so sadly prevalent in so many, but certainly not all or even most, scientist. I find sites like this objectionable not because they are evolutionary in nature, but because of the arrogance and hostile natures prevalent here, more concerned about insults and caricatures than in any actual dialogue with other parties that think differently. I think it is hypocritical to have a site to do and comment on science, and have it devolve into a condemn-o-rama, high fiving over who can come up with the “dumbest” post or response by a creationists. And all do respect to all here, and I have grown fond of a few of you, and concerned about some others, in my 40+ years of study and teaching, I don’t find any of you any smarter than any of the creationist I come into contact with, especially scientists. Don’t seek false comfort from caricaturizing your opponent and assuming this somehow elevates your abilities. One thing I do notice, and again, this quite contrary to what is claimed, that on creationists sites I visited, I do not witness wholesale category slaughter like that practiced here and other evo sites. I do not see them hurling the insults, degrading evolutionists IQ”s, or obsessively twisting every possible word into some dark and insidious implication of evil portent. That’s what I don’t like about scientists, Realthog. Science is just fine. Couldn’t love it more. I believe God gave us two books. God’s word. And God’s works. Never found them to be in conflict, when both are properly understood. I am just saddened when I see such potential here wasted on vitriol and contests with no more relevance that a pissing contest by ants.Develop some pride. In what you do and what difference you can make in others lives. And if your life is about other’s lives, try building them up, not tearing them down. You can be right but an insulted psyche will be deaf to your efforts. Still waiting on the book reference realthog. Don’t leave me hanging you big tease. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 10, 2016 at 2:34 pm http://www.christianpost.com/news/ken-ham-takes-on-evolutionists-claims-ark-encounter-promotes-obliteration-of-all-humans-167744/ “In reply to Rosenau’s claim that the Ark promotes “scientifically impossible ideas”, Ham said “it is easily proved to be a false statement””. It is a true statement – like Rosenau I know that even though I have not visited it – and Ken Ham is a liar. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 10, 2016 at 3:02 pm More Ham lying (strong word I know) at his blog post dated 10 August. In the New Scientist piece Rosenau wrote (I believe correctly): “What’s more, everything in the park is designed to promote scientifically impossible ideas that contradict everything that scientists know. From astrophysics to zookeeping, the visitor is deluged with misinformation. It may be impossible to find a single sign in the park that is free of scientific errors.” In his propaganda blog Ham counters (I mean he quote-mines and then blusters and also moves the goal posts): “Under the heading “Flood of Misinformation” in the New Scientist article, we read: “What’s more, everything in the park is designed to promote scientifically impossible ideas that contradict everything that scientists know.” This statement is easily proved to be false. Certainly someone like this author, who does not agree with the creationist position, won’t agree with many statements on signage or in videos at the Ark Encounter. However, there is a lot of basic scientific information that everyone agrees on regardless of whether one is a creationist or evolutionist.” No doubt the Ark Encounter presents some real data/evidence. And then distorts what the data and evidence tell us about the past. The write spoke the truth. But Ham won’t have that. Instead he must demonise him as being unscientific and ‘not’ speaking the truth but ‘falsehoods’. No. Ham is a liar. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 10, 2016 at 3:10 pm Also known as wilfully misconstruing and over-simplifying the words of the Ark Encounter critic and in order to launch a cheap counter-attack: https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2016/08/10/new-scientist-needs-new-scientist/ LikeLike chuck says: August 12, 2016 at 6:57 pm Truly your life could be more positive and perhaps happier if you just avoided all posts about AIG. You obviously don’t desire conversation with them. So why are you so obssessed with them? I sincerely want to know? Not that you have to answer, I am just asking? Oh, as an aside, I’ve never known anyone who wasn’t a liar. It’s like calling Ham a human. I lie. You lie. Everyone lies. Some more than others. Is the vitriol you endure welling up within you worth it, seeing as how your feelings or opinions have absolutely zero affect on what they think? LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 17, 2016 at 11:42 am “You obviously don’t desire conversation with them [AiG]” (Chuck at 6.57 pm on 12 August). As I attempted to reply to Chuck a couple of days ago – but (unlike other recent comments) my comment addressed to him has still failed to appear: Au contraire. It’s abundantly clear that AiG don’t desire conversation with me. They totally ignore scientific questions I pose to them, about their claims, at their own website. They also ignore questions about their claims that I post at the British Centre for Science Education community forum (at the Ken Ham thread in ‘Conversations with creationists’). And I am given to understand that they also block my emails – presumably refusing point blank even to view their contents, LikeLike chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 1:08 am well, I am certainly not blocking anything from you. Are you sure they are? Again, as I have often tried to encourage you, music soothes the savage beast. Normal people in normal life don’t want to be yelled at or accused, especially on something as time consuming as blogs, where what passes for truth is……well……anything. Read your old posts. Perhaps slight modifications can open clogged channels. Good luck. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 18, 2016 at 4:49 pm Chuck I was told by YEC blogger Tim Gilleand that AiG were blocking my emails. If he is right, they have never bothered to tell me themselves (it may be that they do in fact read my emails but want me to believe that they are not being read and therefore I should stop sending them; either way they never address their contents). LikeLike Jim Kidder says: August 11, 2016 at 8:14 am You write: “Am I making a mountain out of a molehill here?” No, you are not. It is part and parcel of a world view that hasn’t been thought through very well. For example, how did the ark land on top of an active volcano? LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 11, 2016 at 6:54 pm Online press article as flagged at Sensuous Curmudgeon: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-full-scale-ark-adrift-on-a-flood-of-speculation-1470777841 (Nothing especially stands out for me but others might disagree. Ham might decide to ignore the article though SC hopes otherwise!) LikeLike jon says: August 14, 2016 at 11:43 pm Chuck, “, I don’t think the earth is only 6000 years old. But obviously don’t believe it is billions either. Have a different idea about the universe. So I am somewhat at home in either school.’ So chuck, How old do you think the earth is and Why? LikeLike chuck says: August 16, 2016 at 8:14 pm sorry for delay in reply. Out of town and touch. I find myself having a difficult time trying to pin down an exact time frame. While i believe the bible gives us a good framework, i am not convinced it intends to give us a comprehensive one. I have no problem with 8-10,000 years, yet don’t find myself resistant to tens of thousands. My view of young earth/ old universe (comparatively) actually has more to do with time dilation and Einsteins relativity laws. They would probably not be considered mainstream christian concepts, though a number of cosmologists (christian) are beginning to consider the possibility, as so often is the case, that christian and secular viewpoints aren’t always right or wrong but complementary, that is, if either or both parties are willing to stretch their science guy minds and consider possibilities. What is believe includes concepts of both big bang (as it now stands, which is, all over the place), singularity, and the effects of gravity on time. Seeing as how science would readily admit that while a million years is “passing” in one part of the universe, mere seconds or minutes may be expiring in another, i dont see any inherent problem in six days occuring in one “location” while millions or billions of years of time are occuring in another. I’m sure our evolutionist friends will scoff, not because they can disprove it, but it may not accord with their interpretive worldview. As to exact times, i sincerely have no idea. There is no way for any of us to know without doubt. I’m just saying i don’t see an “old” universe and a particular six day period specified in Genesis has “having” to be in conflict, especially considering what we now know, and don’t know, about time itself. Sorry to be so wordy. Still working through it. Thanks for the question. LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 15, 2016 at 10:10 am (1 of 2) I submitted the following comment under a new ‘Proslogion’ blog post: ” http://blog.drwile.com/?p=15075 OK then, let’s question the sciencey claims (dogmatic claims) made by young earth creationists – including at the Ark Encounter. cont’d LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 15, 2016 at 10:12 am (2 of 2) submitted the following comment under a new ‘Proslogion’ blog post: ” https://www.newscientist.com/article/2100109-school-field-trips-to-creationist-ark-sink-that-idea-right-now/ “Everything in the park is designed to promote scientifically impossible ideas that contradict everything that scientists know. From astrophysics to zookeeping, the visitor is deluged with misinformation. It may be impossible to find a single sign in the park that is free of scientific errors.” I would like to know what valid science is taught at the Ark Encounter. Of course you will censor this post (I am posting it at Naturalis Historia too).” LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 16, 2016 at 5:20 pm OK, so now I definitely challenge Chuck to explain to us why scientists now think that all of those fossil horses were contemporaneous. Come on, Chuck, you think you can destroy all of evolutionary history with little soundbites from creationist sites? Take on this one. LikeLike chuck says: August 17, 2016 at 4:11 am well, Christine, one of the skills in issuing a rebuttal challenge is to actually address the issue at hand. You state, “explain to us why scientists now think”……. Now I never claimed all scientists think anything, which would be a safe bet no matter the topic at hand. There are some who do. But in order for you to consider this, you would have to be willing to adjust your current interpretive parameters. As you obviously interpret everything through a paradigm that requires hundreds of millions of years, all evidence presented to you will have to be, on your part, put into that paradigm. In other words, your interpretive paradigm does not even ALLOW for an interpretation that does not involve millions of years. There are no other options for you. To do so would violate, not science, but your paradigm. So any information that would intimate the analogous homologies, even among different genus, suggests that perhaps this overlap is because they may have lived simultaneously would, of course, not even be up for consideration. Again, not because of science, but specific evolutionary paradigms in current use. Fossil interpretation has always been, and still is, a dicey piece of business. They get moved around, up and down, left and right, adjusted because of interpretations that change, or are discarded entirely. One need only look at the history of phylogenetic trees over the decades to see just this tendency. Now I am not against adjusting interpretations based on new knowledge. That is done all the time. But you’d have to admit that in the evolutionary school EVERYTHING must be interpreted according to one school of thought. You may reply that this is good science. I would respond it is constricted science. Imagine where we would, or wouldn’t be, today if paradigms were never adjusted or even discarded. If you were not even allowed to consider the possibility. Time does win out though, and I don’t have the slightest doubt that if this conversation was taking place fifty years from now much of what is adamantly claimed to be irrefutable fact will have been adjusted or discarded. So as I posted earlier, you, by choice, have eliminated many things from possible consideration. This is your right. It does, however, render useless and futile any attempts at addressing anything outside of your “box”, as it were. What you are doing is demanding that any information being offered automatically be preadjusted to conform to your interpretive scheme. To paraphrase the Borg, presentation is futile. Thus my sarcastic request in the previous post that you let me know what you can believe up front and I will try to conform all evidence to fit within your parameters. Of course, I won’t do any such thing. But were I, for even the briefest moment, convinced you would open your mind to anything outside of YOUR mind, I would gladly post such information. Am I mis-remembering, or were you the one a couple of weeks ago that labeled “absurd” that scientists had ever thought or considered a hippo to whale evolutionary scheme, stating no scientists have ever thought such a thing. I then referred you to a textbook, and two articles in science magazines and journals that referenced exactly that, and in positive terms. Was that you? Because I never received a response or acknowledgement, or even better, an adjustment in your position. These weren’t creationist papers, but evolutionary. I would be the first to agree with you as to the absurdity of such thinking, but again, it wasn’t from my school of thought, but yours (meaning evolutionary). I’m pretty sure it was you, although I don’t feel like going through hundreds of posts to find it. If it was you, then you already know it to be true. And whether it was you or not, it just shows how fluid and meaningless many statements made here actually are. Someone declares something to be true or false, or absurd, and when shown to be wrong, simply don’t respond and just continue on with the next proclamation, as if nothing had happened. Never an acknowledgement of error. Such juvenile fear of being wrong about something. But all too human. So in closing, there is nothing I can do to rebut your points, because if they actually offer a rebuttal, you won’t even consider them possible. Or you can proclaim “that’s absurd”, or, “no scientist ever thought that before”, knowing that even if you are wrong, no one here, other than me apparently, will ever hold you accountable. So I choose not to waste my time. At least with you. There are others here who will apparently at least consider the possibility of something even though it doesn’t currently agree with their beliefs. But that number is ever diminishing. I hope no one gets offended by this. That’s not my intent. But if the shoe fits…….. LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 17, 2016 at 12:32 pm “There are some who do.” Fine. So tell us which scientists do, indeed, think that all of the fossil horses species are contemporaneous. (Even Todd Wood, YEC, doesn’t believe this.) Or is this just a long-winded way of saying “not gonna touch this one with a barge pole”? I’m sure that somebody, whether or not it was me, informed you that no scientist had ever said that hippos evolved into whales. But if you think that scientists had actually made such a claim, then that really does show a complete inability to comprehend what is being said in textbooks, scientific magazines, etc. But if anybody here wants some good info on horse evolution (that also tackles many creationist claims), googling my name plus “horse series” will give you a free PDF. What that article doesn’t contain is the answer to the absurd claim that Hyracotherium and Equus have been found in the same strata, but somebody has indeed tracked down that claim, as can be found here. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/eohippus_equus.html I thought I’d have a little fun before revealing that source but, frankly, your knowledge and comprehension of science is too poor for me to bother. And I’m busy revising a science textbook for those who want to know the real science. But, a parting comment. Your challenge to show an example of a mammal turning into an amphibian. Silly boy, don’t you know that frogs only turn into princes, not vice versa? LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 12:54 am Yes Christine, I’ve heard that one. along with the one where you take a frog, add millions of years, and get a prince. But I think that’s called science now. And I have to give it to you, you are by far the most disingenuous person I have ever met on the web. It was you that challenged the hippo-whale thesis, and you obviously checked none of the references I gave you. You merely state that the problem is with my ability to read and comprehend. What a facile and childish, not to mention empty response. That’s just your way of refusing to admit you were wrong. And YOU are revising a textbook. God help us. You who can’t even check a reference, admit a mistake, or recognize scientific error or fraud when you see it. You must be friends with realthog, you know, the person who’s written over 70 books but can’t name one for me to check out. You are an embarrassment to the entire scientific enterprise, with your juvenile responses. Let me give you a glaring example why you should never be allowed near a science textbook: your defense of Haeckel’s embryo’s. You seem to think he just made a few adjustments, nothing major, a tweak here or there. Then you justify his actions by applauding the supposed results he got, then make a completely erroneous claim about embryonic similarities, the so-called recapitulation theory. Here’s what Haeckel did (this all comes from evolutionary texts, articles, or quotes) 1) The stage that Haeckel labels “first” are actually midway through development. 2) In some cases, he used the same woodcut to print embryos that he claimed were from different classes. 3) In other cases, he doctored his drawings to make embryos appear more alike than they actually were. 4) By artificially making early stages of embryos appear similar, he hid the vast differences that actually do appear in the early stages of invertebrate embryos. 5) Haeckels contemporaries accused him of scientific falsification more than once, William His being one of the prominent ones. 6) Stephen Jay Gould (heard of him?) states in Nature, March 2000, that “Haeckel had-in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent-simply copies the same figure over and over again”. 7) In Science, 1997, Michael Richardson (after he and his colleagues published the results of comparing Haeckels embryos with actual embryos), states “It looks like it’s turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology”. 8) In 1922, British embryologists Walter Garstang criticized Haeckel’s law as “demonstrably unsound” because “ontogenetic stages afford not the slightest evidence of the specially adult features of the ancestry”. 9) From 1940 to 1958 British embryologist Gavin de Beer published three editions of a book on embryology and evolution in which he criticized Haeckel’s biogenetic law. He writes ” Recaptitulation…does not take place” and that “variations of evolutionary significance can and do arise at the earliest stages of development.” Now it was Haeckel’s supposed evidence of recapitulation that played a large role in Darwin’s development of his own theory of evolution, stating (based on Haeckel’s “observations” and drawings) “The (human) embryo itself at a very early period can hardly be distinguished from that of the other members of the vertebrate kingdom”. So we have one hypothesis heavily influenced and developed in large part on fraudulent research. But you, of course, see nothing here. Move on now, everyone go back home. Nothing to see here. You don’t even represent the views of your own school of thought. Only the desperate try to resuscitate Haeckel’s work. The entire evolutionary web, all branches, admit and know that Haeckel’s work was fraudulent. But you want to revive it because, well, it did show the truth, early vertebrate embryos are remarkably similar. That would be wonderful if it was true. When the early embryos from vetebrates that he used (fish, salamander, tortoise, chick, hog, calf, rabbit, and human) are compared as they REALLY in early stages, they show significant, sometimes vast differences between them. (Haeckel only represented five of the seven vertebrate classes and half the embryos were mammal). So far from being a full representation, it was a fraudulent one. Now I know some of you will say this is old news, and I will reply that that is not true, seeing as how these drawings were used up into the 21st century in science textbooks, and some altered versions of it are still used today. That’s not OLD news. As for the horses, as I clearly pointed out to you, there are plenty of scientists that think the horse variations we find were contemporaneous, they are just not evolutionists. Which thereby disqualifies them from your consideration. In fact, you “can’t” consider them. You are locked in. And I don’t know who the heck Todd whoever is, but if he thinks all the fossil variations are from different stages of evolution, then perhaps you might ask him, seeing as how you say he is a YEC, just how did this evolution take place over a six thousand year period? Either he isn’t YEC, or doesn’t know what YEC scientists believe, or you don’t know what Todd really thinks. Seriously, a yec who believes in millions of years of evolution. But I believe this presents no problem for you. You can’t acknowledge scientific fraud when it screams at you, so I doubt scientific error would even register. Again, and one last time, if you actually had bothered to check out the references I gave you, you will clearly see (and having been alive, and paying attention at the time) that hippo to whale was at one time being considered as part of an explanation for whale evolution. Don’t even pretend you tried to find them or read them. I’ve already identified you as someone who can’t consider anything outside the box you have put yourself in. But please, have some dignity and respect for yourself. Instead of lying about it or blaming someone elses reading and comprehension abilities, just admit you didn’t read them. Even better, admit you wouldn’t read them if you could. Lies lies lies. Everywhere. What a shame. A shameful waste of a useful brain and shameful representation of science. You and I are done. I have no interest in any further dialogue. You never were. If all you can do is ignore evidence, or lie about it, I find you a waste of time. I’ve got better things to do. Maybe i’ll go draw some embryos. I would be interested in what textbook you are revising. Or is that even true. Never mind. I’ll ask realthog. LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 18, 2016 at 2:44 am For all of your extensive ranting about Haeckel, and the fact that his drawings were “fraudulent”, it remains true that vertebrate embryos resemble each other at the phylotypic stage, and those pictures were a representation of a fact that was not in itself, a lie. I agree that the illustrations should not be in textbooks now that we have better representations, and most textbooks have not used them for year (my textbook never did). That is irrelevant to the fact that their use served an illustrative purpose that represented something that we know to be true (note that the biogenetic law has not been taught for 100 years, but it remains broadly true that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, and with evodevo we are now understanding that at the molecular level). Creationists seize on Haeckel as if the actions of a single personality means that the entire science of developmental biology is fraudulent. It’s just Darwin = Hitler all over again: it’s pathetic and absurd. “As for the horses, as I clearly pointed out to you, there are plenty of scientists that think the horse variations we find were contemporaneous,” Again, no citations. Funny that. Just the claim that you are right. Like I said, not even YEC Todd Wood, who has written on horse evolution, thinks that the horse fossils were contemporaneous (being found in different strata), even if he does want to cram the entire sequence into 4000 years. (The fact that you don’t know who a prominent YEC author is shows that you know nothing about the creationist literature, ether.) There is no scientific paper out there that says that those horses were contemporaneous. Not one. And, rather than engage in discussion, or provide a reference, you tell me that I’m “unwilling to look at the evidence”. There is no evidence — you just made that one up, and now rather than support your contention you throw it back on me as my problem, along with adolescent snark that you imagine gives you some bonus points. [Such as: “Stephen Jay Gould (heard of him?)”. I learned evolutionary biology from him. He and I were colleagues for many years. I recall that he had little time for creationists, too.] If you can find me a single scientific citation that says that whales evolved from hippos I will eat an entire hippo. There is not one such article, popular or otherwise, and if you want to prove me wrong on this, find the actual citation, don’t simply bluster and throw around insults —- provide the article again. You are conflating in your head the fact that hippos are, among extant mammals, the closest relatives to whales with the notion that scientists have said that whales evolved from hippos. You clearly don’t read scientific (or popular science) carefully —- you skim it for outrage you can expostulate on later. All you are doing here is presenting your own cartoon version of evolution (amphibians evolving from mammals, indeed!), criticizing that, and then saying “look here, folks, evolution is absurd, and if you don’t agree with me it’s because you’re a materialist who can’t think outside of the box or look at the evidence from real scientists”. But I must admit that you have a fine talent for indignant outrage, and for hurling insults at those who attempt to call you on your bluster, because they have the knowledge of the science that you ham-fistedly caricature. “And YOU are revising a textbook. God help us.” Yes. I am revising “Vertebrate Life”, commonly acknowledged as one of the best college-level textbooks in this area, and on which I have written about 40% for the past 5 editions. This is because I know the science in this area, not merely as a spectator, but also as a contributor to the body of scientific knowledge. You’re quite wise to refuse to engage in further dialogue with me. LikeLiked by 1 person chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 8:08 pm Oh yes christine, mere mortals cower at your immensity. Are you too lazy to look up the references i already provided. You are deluded. You have your own little belief world where only the reckless and foolish would dare invade. I don’t give a rat’s butt about Todd. And the fact that you would reference someone who believes you could cram millions of years of evolution into 4000 years only makes me wonder how desperate you are. You quote someone you don’t agree with to support your argument as if he agrees with you. But please, let me hinder you no longer. Your arrogance is a bit off putting, perhaps like an unpleasant smell. You answer none of the points i make. You just deny, deny, and deny. Your conclusions are fallacious, as in, if i don’t know todd, well then, I haven’t read anything. How stupid. You can’t sanely believe my bluster out does yours. I can see your chest puffing up like an alpha male gorilla, roaring loudly, beating wildly upon your chest. Impressive. Also simplistic. Oh yes, remember, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Exactly how should I admire him? All kind of drivel is written everyday. Am i to be impressed by it all. It doesn’t take much talent to mimic and repeat what you are fed. And for your benefit, i will inform you that you don’t have the slightest idea what i am thinking or if i am conflating anything. I regret that your own lack of knowledge of your own field leads you to assume that others are equally ignorant of theirs. And little lady, I would gladly take you on anywhere and anytime, if i could actually get you to acknowledge reality and remove you from your protective “dome of delusion”. Obviously neither of us has anything beneficial to say to the other, so again, go away. I don’t suffer fools gladly. LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 18, 2016 at 3:38 am If anybody happens to remember which of the posts here it was where Chuck cited papers saying that whales came from hippos, please let me know. I don’t have time to go back through all the posts, but I will deal with this issue if somebody can alert me to it. If I have time later today I’ll tackle this with some real science. (Of course, Haeckel published his work after the first edition of The Origin, but I won’t even deal with that piece of deception, I’ll provide some details about embryonic similarities.) ‘Now it was Haeckel’s supposed evidence of recapitulation that played a large role in Darwin’s development of his own theory of evolution, stating (based on Haeckel’s “observations” and drawings) “The (human) embryo itself at a very early period can hardly be distinguished from that of the other members of the vertebrate kingdom”. So we have one hypothesis heavily influenced and developed in large part on fraudulent research.’ LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 18, 2016 at 2:59 pm Oh, now I seem to recall some of that “dialog” with Chuck —- he was the person who thought that “artiodactyl” was some sort of imaginary transitional fossil. tee hee LikeLike Ashley Haworth-roberts says: August 18, 2016 at 5:33 pm In his post at 4.11 am on 17 August Chuck wrote: “Am I mis-remembering, or were you the one a couple of weeks ago that labeled “absurd” that scientists had ever thought or considered a hippo to whale evolutionary scheme, stating no scientists have ever thought such a thing. I then referred you to a textbook, and two articles in science magazines and journals that referenced exactly that, and in positive terms. Was that you? Because I never received a response or acknowledgement, or even better, an adjustment in your position. These weren’t creationist papers, but evolutionary.” I have not been able to find such a post by Chuck in this thread (if I spot it in another NH thread I’ll flag it). Or perhaps Chuck can locate the post in question? LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 18, 2016 at 6:01 pm “Because I never received a response or acknowledgement, or even better, an adjustment in your position ——–” Too funny. If you can find that let me know. Bullies need to be dealt with. LikeLike chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 8:56 pm blah and blah, and, finally, blah. Bullies? Sorry you find questions so frightening. LikeLike chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 8:54 pm i really don’t have the desire or energy to exchange insults with christine any longer. I think they may have been on another thread. If i find the time, i will try and track them down and refer them to whomever is interested. I shouldn’t have to, of course. If she had addressed it at that time we wouldn’t have to go on a manhunt for information. LikeLike chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 8:48 pm no christine, I didn’t. Why must you lie. the point there was an initial misidentification. It was not imaginary, it was real. It was wrongly attributed as some sort of missing link. Why on earth do you feel such a need to lie all the time. How childish and embarrassing. tee hee. LikeLike chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 8:24 pm oh lordy, it never ends. Okay, I’ll make a correction. I was not implying that Darwin derived his theory of evolution from Haeckel’s drawings, but he make clear references to such drawings of Haeckel’s and other contemporaries as substantiating his own theory. Others before Haeckel had made drawings, but Haeckels became the most well known. There. Feel better. Find the forest christine, find the forest. LikeLike chuck says: August 18, 2016 at 8:46 pm Indohyus is part of a large group of mammals known as artiodactyls, which includes pigs, sheep, hippos, and giraffes. Several recent fossil studies suggest that artiodactyls gave rise to whales, and that the hippopotamus is their closest living relative. Now we know that the hippos show up later in the fossil record than whales. The whole point i was making, was, not, of course, that i believed whales evolved from hippos, but that in the past they were thought to be possible ancestors, or of the family of ariodactyls which includes hippos which was seen to be ancestral. We know now that newer studies have changed that around a bit. My purpose in pointing it out was that adamantly holding on to what is believed to be true can often turn out to be partially, or even, totally wrong. The above quote was from the national geographic site. It was this, and the textbook and science magazine articles that i was referring to. It’s not my fault if science has been wrong before. I merely point it out to the interested viewer. Why. Just to encourage a little humility. You’ll have to reread your posts to find the other references if you care. But don’t bother. I don’t care. LikeLike chuck says: August 19, 2016 at 1:56 am For those unfamiliar with the current Christine – Chuck controversy, I will give a brief background. In the process of exchanging posts, as one of my points about the need for humility in science, I listed, at different times, errors or frauds that had occurred in science. My intent was not to condemn science at large, but was to issue a warning about being adamant about one’s current beliefs or the mocking of others. As part of those posts, I listed, as an example, proposed ancestors of whales. Included were ancient artiodactyls and Pakicetus, ambulocetus and Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus and Dorudon (which are already whales) and two suborders of modern whales, mysticeti (baleen whales) and Odontoceti( toothed whales. I also mentioned bears (Charles Darwin himself. Proposed them, I mean, not that he was a bear), and hippos. The list of six above were from Miller and Levine’s biology textbook “Biology, pp. 466-467. Also mentioned were two articles discussing hippos being in the evolutionary lineage of whales. One was from the University of Michigan titled ” New Fossil Finds suggest Whales and Hippos are close kin” (Science daily, sept. 20, 2001) and one from the University of California titled “UC Berkely, French Scientists find Missing Link Between the Whale and it’s closest relative, The Hippo”, (Science Daily, Feb. 7, 2005). I could have thrown in an article by Patricia Reaney, “Fossil finds show whales related to early pigs” but chose not to. Greenspun:http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=006Qv1. For those who know their science history, this was referred to as “whippo” hypothesis. It was embraced originally by molecular biologists, who based on their studies, decided that the closest living relatives of whales are hippos. Now many paleontologists frowned upon this, because on morphological grounds hippos seemed more closely related to other even-toed hoofed mammals, such as pigs and camels. But the whippo hypothesis claimed, on molecular grounds, that hippos are more closely related to whales than other land mammals.(Dennis Normile, “New Views of the origins of Mammals,” Science 281, 1998. 774-775) also Richard Monastersky, “The Whales Tale, Research on Whale Evolution,” Science News, November 6, 1999. So we had evolutionist looking at fossil evidence concluding that hippos were more closely related to land mammals such as pigs and camels and molecular biologists looking at molecular evidence and concluding that hippos were more closely related to whales. Now remember, my whole intent of the evidence I was showing was merely to highlight disagreements that scientists can have with each other, a development I heartily approve of. I think it makes for good science. Christine, in responding, ignored most of the evidence (there was more), eventually accused me of labeling artiodactyls as “imaginary fossils”, which is totally incorrect. I labeled them as imaginary “missing links”, which of course acknowledges their existence. She then labeled as “absurd” the possibility that any scientist has “ever” considered whales and hippos as ancestors or descendants of each other. This is irrefutably untrue. Remember, I did not say that I believed it, or any scientist should believe it. I myself, being a creationist, also find it “absurd”. That is not the same thing as saying that someone else may have believed or endorsed it. They obviously did. Was there disagreement? Certainly, and for good reason, Nonetheless, there were those who were amiable to this hypothesis ( I have not mentioned the research by Gingerich and Thewissen et. al. which concluded that it was “plausible” that hippos “may be the closest living relatives of whales” with accompanying commentary by French biologist Christian de Muizon stating that the new results “contradict the previous hypothesis of both paleontologists and molecular biologists”, He is referring to the previous belief that whales were more closely related to pigs and camels. Not everyone was as enthusiastic. This was in 2001. The Whippo hypothesis took off in the later years of the twentieth century). So I rest my case. I don’t think you can have a disagreement among scientists unless they actually believe something contrary to one another. The fact that there was research, teams, reports, commentaries would imply, I think, that this was a hypothesis that was under serious consideration, and disagreement. Anyone can find this information if they are willing to look. Information for links has been given, and articles and magazines named. Just based on this alone, how could someone claim that it is “absurd” that any scientist ever believed whales and hippos are on the same evolutionary branch? I rest my case. Christine has offered to eat a hippo if I could give her proof that this hypothesis was ever considered by scientists. I’m sure she will find a way to escape the noose. My only remaining question is “How would you like your Hippo cooked?”. LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 19, 2016 at 11:51 am There is no “current Christine–Chuck controversy”. Earlier in this thread you said the following “Am I mis-remembering, or were you the one a couple of weeks ago that labeled “absurd” that scientists had ever thought or considered a hippo to whale evolutionary scheme, stating no scientists have ever thought such a thing. ” To which I replied that, indeed, no scientist had ever said such a thing, that whales evolved from hippos. The links you posted above merely confirm that no scientist ever said such a thing. For a nice, concise little summary about whale evolution, you might try this source. LikeLiked by 1 person Natural Historian says: August 19, 2016 at 10:11 am One more day and then I’m going to close comments on this post. Time to move on. There is nothing about this discourse that is productive. It is wasting the time any any reader that would dare tread down this far. LikeLiked by 1 person Christine Janis says: August 19, 2016 at 11:54 am OK, but I’m composing (off line) something informative about Haeckel and vertebrate development. Will post later today. LikeLike Christine Janis says: August 19, 2016 at 1:07 pm Haeckel was basically right. Vertebrate embryos do indeed resemble each other during development. This is nothing to do with “recapitulation theory” (explained below), which has rightly been dead for well over 100 years. I’m going to justify that statement below, and also explain a little bit about the scientific facts about vertebrate development. I know that many of you on here are YECs, and that’s just fine —– I don’t care what people believe, I only care if they distort the science to justify those beliefs, and when people do that I will call them on it and correct them. Because if, as a creationist, you want to challenge science, you have to at least know what the science is, and the way that scientists have interpreted the data. That is, even if you disagree with the interpretation, you have to know the facts. It does no good at all to muddle the facts up and then present them (especially to a scientist who both reads and writes the primary literature) as some sort of “look how absurd evolution is” claim, as Chuck so graciously mansplained to me the other day about scientists saying that whales evolved from hippos. Back to Haeckel: Creationists use Haeckel as a scapegoat to discredit the entire field of developmental biology, and its use by evolutionary biologists. This would have been absurd enough 100 years after his death, when developmental biology hadn’t really progressed all that much, but it’s particularly absurd today when the discipline has merged with molecular biology and genomics to form “evo-devo”, and all of the morphological evidence is being supported and extended by information at the molecular level. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve tried to give creationists some information from this area of science, only to be told that I’m simply out of date because I apparently don’t realize that Haeckel was disproved. Did Haeckel’s drawings contain errors? Yes. Was he accused of fraud in his time? Yes, but not for those embryo drawings (for the woodcuts that Chuck mentioned — which were also the ones that Gould was talking about). Did Gould/Garstang/de Beer decry some of Haeckel’s ideas? Of course — but note that they’re decrying recapitulation theory, not the notion of developmental similarities. Should those drawings have been removed from the textbooks? Yes, and they mostly were after the Richardson pointed out the errors. Of course, some creationists still maintain that any pictures of embryos at all are now verboten. In the bigger picture, none of this matters. Text books are full of inaccurate drawings that get repeated from copy to copy, either because the writers haven’t spotted the errors, or because the publishers don’t want to pay for a new figure (you’d be surprised at how common that is). As time goes on, those figures get replaced by better representations, or photographs. Haeckel’s embryos haven’t been used to justify recapitulation (the notion that vertebrates, in their development, go through the adult stages of the phylogenetic tree —- i.e., that a human is first a fish, then a reptile, then chicken, then a pig, etc.) for over 100 years. They’re used to illustrate the notion that we share developmental processes with other vertebrates. So, the drawings had some serious errors and they got replaced. End of story. But not to the creationists, who still insist on using Haeckel as a justification for dismissing all of developmental biology. I am going to present some very basic, undergraduate level, facts about what we know about developmental biology in terms of what scientists think constitutes evidence for common descent. (Note that these nested interrelationships are backed up by other evidence: genomic DNA, mitochondrial DNA, etc.) Again, these are the facts. If you differ with the interpretations, then fine. Just get the facts straight. All animals develop from a ball of cells. In all animals except sponges, that ball of cells invaginates during development (a process called gastrulation) to produce an inner layer of endoderm, and outer layer of ectoderm, and an internal gut cavity (different from the original hollow in the middle of the ball of cells). In all animals except sponges, coelenterates (sea anemones/jelly fish) and cnidarians (comb jellies) that development proceeds further. A third layer of cells, mesoderm, forms between the ectoderm and endoderm, and forms many complex body organs (heart, kidneys, etc.), as well as muscle tissue. These animals are now mobile as adults. Their gut also breaks through to the other end, so that they have both a mouth and an anus. These animals are called “bilaterians”, and they are the phyla that radiate in the Cambrian. In most bilaterians, the original hole that formed from gastrulation gives rise to the gut. They are called “protostomes” (= mouth first). In a few phyla, the original hole forms the anus, and the mouth breaks through later. These are the deuterotomes (= mouth second), and they include our own phylum, Chordata, the Echinodermata (starfish, sea urchins, etc.) and a couple more obscure phyla. Some sort of gill slits in the pharynx for filter feeding in water are also a general feature of deuterostomes, although they have been secondarily lost in modern echinoderms. All chordates are distinguished by a further stage of development. A portion of the mesoderm differentiates early and forms a stiff cord running along the length of the body, the notochord (seen in us in embryos, and remaining in the adults as the intervertebral discs). The line of ectoderm along the top of the animal infolds and then buds off along its length, making a hollow tube of ectodermal cells that will go on to form the nerve chord. All vertebrates are distinguished by a further developmental stage, in which they derive a fourth layer of basic tissue called “neural crest”. This makes a number of unique features in all vertebrates, including most of the front part of the head, and the cartilaginous bars that make up the skeleton supporting the gill slits (i.e, the pharyngeal arches). There are many, many other similarities between all vertebrates, including a trunk region in the embryo where the mesoderm is segmented on the top portion (somites) and unsegmented on the bottom portion (lateral plate). The various fates of the different portions of the portions of the mesoderm is the same in all vertebrates. E.g., the somites make the striated muscle, dermis of the skin, and the backbone. The lateral plate makes the smooth muscle of the gut, the heart muscle, and the limb bones. So now we are at that dreaded “pharyngula” stage, where we get to consider the similarities in the developing pharynx. “Humans never have gill slits” the creationists will cry, and they are largely correct, but see one exception below. In the pharyngeal region a series of six pouches form (no, they are not just folds in the skin, as some creationists claim). Each pouch contains a cartilaginous pharyngeal arch (which in fish later develops into supports for the gills), and a set of developing nerves, blood vessels, and muscles which have an extraordinary specificity to each pouch and which are homologous among all vertebrates. The clefts between the pouches are what will form the gill slits in fishes. Pouch 1 is innervated by cranial nerve 5, pouch 2 by cranial nerve 7, pouch 3 by cranial nerve 9, and the rest by cranial nerve 10. In jawed fish, the cartilaginous arch goes to form the jaws. It goes to form our own embryonic jaws, which are later replaced by dermal bone except for the back ends of the jaw halves, which end up as bones in our middle ears. These homologies between vertebrates have been known about for many years. The middle ear bone homologies were figured out by Reichart in 1837, years before either Darwin or Haeckel. There is no room here to explain the extraordinary similarities in the developing pharynx of all vertebrates, but I will refer to Troy Brittain’s blog on this, which is a truly magnificent piece of work (and tackles many of the creationist misrepresentations). But wait —- I said that we do retain a gill slit as adults. The first embryonic gill cleft in forms the spiracle in many fish today (mainly cartilaginous fish such as rays, that use it to inhale water while they rest on the bottom of the sea — most bony fish lose the structure as adults). In us (and all other tetrapods) it forms the Eustachian tube and the middle ear cavity. So, if you puncture your eardrum, there you have a fully-functional gill slit leading from the outside into the back of your throat. So — Haeckel’s drawings called fraudulent, and now there’s no evidence for profound similarities between vertebrate embryos? I don’t think so, although those drawings were indeed a little iffy and it’s a good thing that they have now been replaced. He was, after all, basically correct about vertebrate embryos sharing a similarities, even if wrong about the notion of recapitulation. LikeLiked by 2 people Christine Janis says: August 19, 2016 at 1:13 pm And, one final comment to Chuck. You have spent the last few days calling a senior academic scientist, an internationally-renowned expert in vertebrate paleontology, all kinds of names under the sun, including “an embarrassment to the entire scientific enterprise”, somebody who “should never be allowed near a scientific textbook”, somebody who “wouldn’t read scientific references even if they could”, “puffing up her chest like an alpha male gorilla”, and basically announcing on a public forum that I was fabricating the notion that I had written a best-selling textbook on vertebrate biology. All because the “little lady” had the temerity to point out some major errors in what you claimed scientists had said. Yes, I will admit that my style can be a little snarky, but I think if I had come down on you hard as an expert right away your reaction would have been even worse. You are completely out of line, and the only person who you have discredited here is yourself. LikeLiked by 1 person Bible & Science Forum: Professor Tertius says: August 19, 2016 at 5:31 pm Chuck, if you ACTUALLY care about a sense of humility, you would decry the constant hubris of anti-evolution creationists spewing nonsense while claiming that they know more about science than the entire science academy of PhD scientists who have devoted lifetimes to their fields of specialization. As a born-again evangelical Christ-follower who spent my share of years as a Young Earth Creationist speaker/debater back in the Gish-Morris-Whitcomb era, your lame and ancient script is truly groan-worthy. Worse yet, the antics of anti-evolution YEC loons is producing far more atheists than Richard Dawkins ever will. I would urge you to adopt the appropriate (and Biblical) humility of one who badly needs to learn the basics of the science before presuming to correct the real scientists who have graciously taken the time to tutor you. Proverbs 14:6-8 well describes your foolish behavior on this thread. LikeLiked by 2 people Comments are closed. Untraced Lineages Reveal Rosetta Stone Flaws in Traced: Human DNA’s Big Surprise Are Species Created with Hidden Information Pre-adapted for Future Environments? 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