Ark Park as obstacle to scientific understanding among religious public

I listened to the youtube talk. so these evangelical Christians are credible scientists because they have the right conclusions ?
is there methodology different then YEC folks?
I know people here in Canada planning on going to he museums there. so they are getting Canadian money!
originally i thought these things were wasting money and a wrong idea.
I was wrong. Having a spatial representation of creationism, invisible to most people for many reasons, has been a great idea.
its truly grabbed attention of YEC popularity and ability. its more famous then most origin museums already.
Its the same impact of a moderately successful movie if one was done exalting YEC.
the criticisms in it are old school. They are not interesting.
however one could say the creation things have forced a reply and so even this is important.
parents should ask their schools for trips to these museums to give balance.

Robert Byers said: parents should ask their schools for trips to these museums

The DI would be saying what the video does even if what they thought was simply that the appearance of caring about the truth matters. It might seem that they would reject blatantly ridiculous pseudoscience even if it was from their religious allies (or former allies, as the case may be).

When you don't really care about what the evidence indicates, you get ID (and YECism). Even if Ham's tripe is too much for them to take up, they're not going to denounce it as the mindless BS that it is. Nor does it interest them that we have the vestiges of a tail, or that birds and bats only have the homologies that they also share with terrestrial vertebrates, with no homologies with respect to flight per se. What the evidence indicates isn't important to IDists, while similar theology and politics matter greatly.

Glen Davidson

I noticed that the Bible texts presented deviated from the King James Bible.

And there are ideas presented which have no Scriptural basis. An Ice Age, micro-evolution within "kinds" after the Flood, ...

What, really, is the difference between Noah's Ark and Darwin's Beagle? Both men kept wonderful specimens on board their own scientific research vessels. Ken Ham's park is a celebration of zoology and children can learn a lot from it.

Maybe the fact that Darwin sent back thousands of specimens, some of which are available for study even today?

What similarity is there between a building for tourists and a floating refuge for large numbers of animals?

TomS said: What similarity is there between a building for tourists and a floating refuge for large numbers of animals?

Ravi said: What, really, is the difference between Noah's Ark and Darwin's Beagle? Both men kept wonderful specimens on board their own scientific research vessels. Ken Ham's park is a celebration of zoology and children can learn a lot from it.

What, really, is the difference between Noah’s Ark and Darwin’s Beagle?

Rikki_Tikki_Taalik said: One actually existed. The other was mythological and never existed and apparently (according to the myth) never did any research even if it had. Ken Ham's park is a celebration of the mythological genocidal adventures of a Jewish War God who once hailed from a Jewish pantheon until the warrior class seized power over the tribes, forcing the others to ditch the other imaginary deities and made Yahweh the mono-theistic center of their tales.

One actually existed. The other was mythological and never existed and apparently (according to the myth) never did any research even if it had. Ken Ham's park is a celebration of the mythological genocidal adventures of a Jewish War God who once hailed from a Jewish pantheon until the warrior class seized power over the tribes, forcing the others to ditch the other imaginary deities and made Yahweh the mono-theistic center of their tales. It's a great story though, kinda like the fruit loops today that claim Yahweh sent hurricane Matt (which, among other things, killed some 800 Haitians) in order to stop a gay pride parade in Florida. The only thing that outclasses the power of human apes to make up bullshit to try and make others behave as they wish them to is the lack of critical thinking skills and gullibility of the apes who believe them. HTH.

Ravi said: So too is the story of how biodiversity was generated by natural selection for which there is hardly any evidence whatsoever. Still doesn't stop many scientists and educators from believing in Darwin's tall tale as gospel truth.

Ravi said:

Rikki_Tikki_Taalik said: One actually existed. The other was mythological and never existed and apparently (according to the myth) never did any research even if it had. Ken Ham's park is a celebration of the mythological genocidal adventures of a Jewish War God who once hailed from a Jewish pantheon until the warrior class seized power over the tribes, forcing the others to ditch the other imaginary deities and made Yahweh the mono-theistic center of their tales.

Your robust anti-semitism is duly noted. It is, however, hardly surprising.

One actually existed. The other was mythological and never existed and apparently (according to the myth) never did any research even if it had. Ken Ham's park is a celebration of the mythological genocidal adventures of a Jewish War God who once hailed from a Jewish pantheon until the warrior class seized power over the tribes, forcing the others to ditch the other imaginary deities and made Yahweh the mono-theistic center of their tales. It's a great story though, kinda like the fruit loops today that claim Yahweh sent hurricane Matt (which, among other things, killed some 800 Haitians) in order to stop a gay pride parade in Florida. The only thing that outclasses the power of human apes to make up bullshit to try and make others behave as they wish them to is the lack of critical thinking skills and gullibility of the apes who believe them. HTH.

So too is the story of how biodiversity was generated by natural selection for which there is hardly any evidence whatsoever. Still doesn't stop many scientists and educators from believing in Darwin's tall tale as gospel truth.

Joe Felsenstein said: Sorry Ravi, the ArkPark people disagree with you. As the highly informative video makes clear, the ArkPark promotes a theory under which far fewer species of animals are saved than now exist. In their view, the difference is made up by a massive burst of hyperevolution that involves lots of different adaptations arising (a process which is not mentioned in any Bible). I doubt that they say whether natural selection was involved there -- they wouldn't want to admit that, because someone might ask whether that might also explain how all the species got to have their different adaptations, even the ones on the Ark.

Raving Mad said: ... most creationists accept that Darwin's theory may explain some some of the diversity evident within the created kinds but that it completely fails to explain molecules-to-man macroevolution.

Robert Byers said: so these evangelical Christians are credible scientists because they have the right conclusions ? is there methodology different then YEC folks?

Yardbird said: So, do you accept what you call microevolution? If so, what are the barriers that prevent microevolution processes from producing the changes necessary for macroevolution? Also, if the current types of animals are descended from created kinds, it should be possible to determine from genetics the characteristics of those kinds and which animals are descended from each of them. When do you think we can expect creationists to do that science? You could answer these questions or you could STFU.

Rikki_Tikki_Taalik said: LMAO Yes, stating a plain fact by correctly naming the population who is responsible for creating the mythology is "racism". Let me find a couch for your dramatic faint whilst I fan you and humbly apologize for disturbing your delicate sensibilities.

Robert Byers said: the criticisms in it are old school. They are not interesting.

Ravi said: The definition of a created "kind" is perfectly straight forward. If two organisms can mate and have an offspring, fertile or sterile, then they are the same kind.

Ravi said: If you're locating kind at the species level, then you're going to have a problem with a football field-sized boat holding all the species we know about. There are, for example, currently between 6-10 million non-interbreeding species of insects alone.

eric said:

Ravi said: The definition of a created "kind" is perfectly straight forward. If two organisms can mate and have an offspring, fertile or sterile, then they are the same kind.

If you're locating kind at the species level, then you're going to have a problem with a football field-sized boat holding all the species we know about. There are, for example, currently between 6-10 million non-interbreeding species of insects alone.

Ravi said: Your robust anti-semitism is duly noted. It is, however, hardly surprising.

Just Bob said: Hey, Joe! Is it true that you were kicked off of Uncommon Descent for Holocaust denial? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!

Ravi said:

Just Bob said: Hey, Joe! Is it true that you were kicked off of Uncommon Descent for Holocaust denial? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!

Are you addressing me or Joe Felsenstein? Anyway, it helps to have an open mind and question everything.

eric said: Creationists like you [Joe] and AIG vehemently disagree on what a kind is. That's because the bible doesn't define it, and it isn't clear. And this one single example shows to everyone that interpreting the Bible is (often) neither clear nor straight forward.

eric said: Creationists like you and AIG vehemently disagree on what a kind is. That's because the bible doesn't define it, and it isn't clear. And this one single example shows to everyone that interpreting the Bible is (often) neither clear nor straight forward.

He already calls Ham and the AIG darwinists because, unlike himself (and you), they are not species immutabilists.

He already calls Ham and the AIG darwinists because, unlike himself, they (and you) are not species immutabilists.

Ravi said:

eric said: Creationists like you and AIG vehemently disagree on what a kind is. That's because the bible doesn't define it, and it isn't clear. And this one single example shows to everyone that interpreting the Bible is (often) neither clear nor straight forward.

There are over 400,000 species of beetle but only ONE KIND of beetle. Anyway, to return to the issue of microevolution v macroevolution, I will let the late SJ Gould prove my point: "My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life’s major transformations can be explained by adding up, through the immensity of geological time, the successive tiny changes produced generation after generation by natural selection."

Just Bob said:

Ravi said: Your robust anti-semitism is duly noted. It is, however, hardly surprising.

Hey, Joe! Is it true that you were kicked off of Uncommon Descent for Holocaust denial? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!

Ravi said:

Rikki_Tikki_Taalik said: LMAO Yes, stating a plain fact by correctly naming the population who is responsible for creating the mythology is "racism". Let me find a couch for your dramatic faint whilst I fan you and humbly apologize for disturbing your delicate sensibilities.

Underlying all of this anti-biblicism is a profound and thinly veiled anti-semitism which blames the Jews for holding back the progress of Western civilization. It is no surprise that some of the most enthusiastic adherents of Darwinism were the Nazis who even referred to natural selection among the innmates of the concentration camps.

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

Ravi said:

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

No, I haven't taken his words out of their proper context. Gould believed that many major changes in biological history occurred relatively quickly and suddenly in contrast to the model of Darwinian gradualism.

Pls let me know when you get tired of the Ravi troll.

Matt Young said: Pls let me know when you get tired of the Ravi troll.

Tired. So very, very tired.

eric said:

Robert Byers said: the criticisms in it are old school. They are not interesting.

I disagree; Prof. Ratajesski's Eden argument is one I'd never heard before and, AFAIK, is one never mentioned on PT before. I'll repeat it for lurkers: Fact: the bible mentions Eden as having four rivers. Two of them are well known: the Tigris and Euphrates. Fact: these rivers sit on top of a whole bunch of flood layers that YECers claim were laid down all at once, in the Noachian flood. You dig down, you see flood layers below these rivers. Conclusion 1: If you are a literalist, Eden cannot be sitting on top of flood layers laid down by the Noachian flood, because in the Bible the rivers precede the flood, they don't form after it. Conclusion 2: Either the story of Eden is not literally true, or the flood layers sitting under the Tigris and Euphrates are the result of multiple, geologically spaced local floods that occurred before Eden existed. Thus such observations cannot be used as evidence for the Noachian flood, and possibly more importantly, show a pre-Edenic active geological record.

Raving Ravi said:

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

No, I haven't taken his words out of their proper context. Gould believed that many major changes in biological history occurred relatively quickly and suddenly in contrast to the model of Darwinian gradualism.

I've recently been watching The Bible Skeptic on YouTube, and I recommend his excellent two-parter on the location of Eden and the identity of the four rivers.

What Genesis Got Wrong: The Garden Of Eden (Part 1)

What Genesis Got Wrong: The Garden Of Eden (Part 2)

You may wish to see my two recent comments here at the British Centre for Science Education community forum (Conversations with Creationists)
http://www.forums.bcseweb.org.uk/
(your site is refusing the full link for some reason)

"This was covered recently in a Acts/facts iCR article. The rivers of eden are not the ones today. The flood did change everything and its implied in the account. thats why the writer must direct the reader.. Layers were put on top. Yet the rivers are prersented, the main one, as a continuing river depsite the layering and direction change. It seems God scores rivers a little different . It works though."

Yet two of the river names in the Bible are still used today. Perhaps that's because they are the SAME rivers in the SAME places today - as when Genesis was written several thousand years ago.

Unless you or the ICR (what article are you alluding to) can demonstrate that Genesis 2 indicates that the location or direction of flow of the Tigris and the Euphrates were much different then to what they are today?

Ravi said:

If you're locating kind at the species level, then you're going to have a problem with a football field-sized boat holding all the species we know about. There are, for example, currently between 6-10 million non-interbreeding species of insects alone.

Are you sure they can't have offspring, even if they may be sterile? Like I say, horses and zebras are different species but they are both equids.

Ravi said: There are over 400,000 species of beetle but only ONE KIND of beetle.

eric said: I disagree; Prof. Ratajesski's Eden argument is one I'd never heard before and, AFAIK, is one never mentioned on PT before. I'll repeat it for lurkers: Fact: the bible mentions Eden as having four rivers. Two of them are well known: the Tigris and Euphrates. Fact: these rivers sit on top of a whole bunch of flood layers that YECers claim were laid down all at once, in the Noachian flood. You dig down, you see flood layers below these rivers.

Joe Felsenstein said:

Ravi said:

If you're locating kind at the species level, then you're going to have a problem with a football field-sized boat holding all the species we know about. There are, for example, currently between 6-10 million non-interbreeding species of insects alone.

Are you sure they can't have offspring, even if they may be sterile? Like I say, horses and zebras are different species but they are both equids.

The ArkPark exhibit claims that there was only one dog "kind", one weasel "kind", one bear "kind", only one cat "kind". From these all their relatives developed. Are you so sure that Lions can mate with Fennec Foxes? Giant Amazon Otters with the Least Weasel? And what's this about them being the same "kind" as long as they can mate, even if the offspring is sterile? How does that help? Ridiculous.

Ravi said: There are over 400,000 species of beetle but only ONE KIND of beetle.

Totally absurd.

Ravi said: The definition of a created "kind" is perfectly straight forward. If two organisms can mate and have an offspring, fertile or sterile, then they are the same kind.

There are over 400,000 species of beetle but only ONE KIND of beetle.

Joe Felsenstein said: The ArkPark exhibit claims that there was only one dog "kind", one weasel "kind", one bear "kind", only one cat "kind". From these all their relatives developed. Are you so sure that Lions can mate with Fennec Foxes? Giant Amazon Otters with the Least Weasel? And what's this about them being the same "kind" as long as they can mate, even if the offspring is sterile? How does that help?

Ravi said:

eric said: Are you claiming all 400,000 species of beetles can interbreed with each other? AFAIK this will be startling news to entomologists. It would probably even be worth a Nobel if you could show your claim to be true.If you're not saying that, then it appears you're contradicting yourself.

Pay attention, pal. I defined a "kind" as a group of organisms which can interbreed although not always successfully. Horses and zebras will produce sterile "zorses" because of chromosomal rearrangements that underly the genetic difference between both species. So, when I say that there are 400,000 species of Coleoptera but only one kind, I means that all beetles are descended from a common ancestor who was a beetle (on board the Ark).

Ravi said:

TomS said: Nothing in the Bible says anything about whether sheep are related to goats, dogs to wolves. The concept of species is an anachronism to Biblical times.

Actually, the Bible does refer to sheep and goats being of the same kind and uses the same word (צֹא) to describe both animals.

How many "kinds" of cattle were on the Ark?

If you are defining cattle as "bovinae", then probably only one.

Ravi said: Pay attention, pal. I defined a "kind" as a group of organisms which can interbreed although not always successfully.

When I say that there are 400,000 species of Coleoptera but only one kind, I means that all beetles are descended from a common ancestor who was a beetle (on board the Ark).

Ravi said:

eric said: Are you claiming all 400,000 species of beetles can interbreed with each other? AFAIK this will be startling news to entomologists. It would probably even be worth a Nobel if you could show your claim to be true.If you're not saying that, then it appears you're contradicting yourself.

Pay attention, pal. I defined a "kind" as a group of organisms which can interbreed although not always successfully. Horses and zebras will produce sterile "zorses" because of chromosomal rearrangements that underly the genetic difference between both species. So, when I say that there are 400,000 species of Coleoptera but only one kind, I means that all beetles are descended from a common ancestor who was a beetle (on board the Ark).

Ravi said: Here is a pic of a "zorse" for all you "kind"-deniers out there: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/6e/a0/6a/6ea06a9ec92f735634eac1066fd19e86.jpg Zebras and horses are both of the same equid kind. Deal with it, atheists.

Ravi said: So, when I say that there are 400,000 species of Coleoptera but only one kind, I means that all beetles are descended from a common ancestor who was a beetle (on board the Ark).

The Goliath beetle can be over 10 cm long. The fungus beetle is less than 0.25 mm long. Do you really want to claim that they could mate, sometimes successfully? Really?

Ravi said: Wait up. Are you telling me that you know for a fact that if two beetles from different species mate that embryogenesis will not occur, that it will be aborted at some point or that sperm and egg will not fuse to begin with? Be precise, please.

Scooped! No matter. :)

Ravi said:

eric said: I'm telling you that there are beetles that will not mate with each other, period, because their species differences make it impossible. The adult fringed ant beetle weighs 0.4mg, the adult goliath beetle can weigh 100 grams; a 250,000x size difference. Literally the same size difference between a fully grown blue whale and a 1.6 pound animal.

Well, some humans probably would have difficulty mating due to differences in size and other factors. I said before that some physiological differences might preclude successfuly mating - as between tigers and domestic cats (members of the same kind). However, I would expect that, in most cases, sperm and egg could fuse and an embryo develop if the process were artifically assisted.

Well, when the atheists seem to be losing the argument they move my posts to the Wall.

Ravi said: I am certain that cats cannot interbreed with dogs because they are two different kinds . I accept that a tiger may not be able to breed with a domestic cat because of the sheer difference in size between the two animals but, for the most part, canids should be able to breed with other canids and felids with felids. Now, unless they are the same species, or at least genus, the offspring is likely to be sterile. The point I make is that animals of the same kind share the same essential morphology and physiology and that is why embryogenesis is likely to proceed even if its results in an infertile offspring. I accept, however, that in some cases, the sperm may not fuse with the egg but that this is not the rule.

W. H. Heydt said: Sticking strictly within domesticated dogs...how are you going to breed a Chihuahua with an Irish Wolfhound? I mean...physically, not concerned with the potenial consequences of actual gestation.

DS said: Speciation occurs due to the evolution of sexual incompatibility and reproductive isolation. That is what produces the genetic discontinuities between species. this is well documented. Your species idea is specious.

Let's keep in mind the scientific reason that Ravi is arguing, though without evidence, that all 400,000 beetles are able to interbreed and are thus one "kind". Which is that if that is true then one only needs to carry one medium-sized easy-to-rear beetle on the Ark.

Because if you can do that, then because they are all one "kind", after the Ark lands, all that needs to happen is ...

... what?

Someone needs to establish that because of this, we can get the 400,000 species, in a way which we couldn't if they weren't able-to-interbreed.

This is interesting, and very very strange.

Sorry -- I am getting behind in my e-mail. Mr. Phelps has sent us the abstracts of his session, Bringing the Horse to Water and Getting It to Drink: Obstacles and Innovative Ways of Getting the Religious Public to Consider Scientific Evidence. The link leads you to an even dozen long abstracts. I have not read them all, but those I looked over were complete enough to be useful on their own.

... one only needs to carry one medium-sized easy-to-rear beetle on the Ark.

Matt Young said:

... one only needs to carry one medium-sized easy-to-rear beetle on the Ark.

How can you tell whether she is pregnant? Come to think of it, why didn't Noah load the Ark with pregnant females of all species and reduce the volume by half? I do not suppose the inbreeding problem would be appreciably worse.

Henry J said:

Matt Young said:

... one only needs to carry one medium-sized easy-to-rear beetle on the Ark.

How can you tell whether she is pregnant? Come to think of it, why didn't Noah load the Ark with pregnant females of all species and reduce the volume by half? I do not suppose the inbreeding problem would be appreciably worse.

What if some species have an instinct against that degree of inbreeding? Also the age difference could be a factor.

Joe Felsenstein said: Someone needs to establish that because of this, we can get the 400,000 species, in a way which we couldn't if they weren't able-to-interbreed.This is interesting, and very very strange.

Yardbird said: I can't get past the absurdity of the Ark. Surely an omnipotent God could just kill all the bad people without destroying everything else. What about it, Ravi/Joe? Why did God need an ark and flood? Was Yahweh someway limited? Was he really pissed off, or did he just want to go swimming and needed a big pool? If he was omnipotent, couldn't he shrink himself and swim in a puddle?

OK, I should have known better: further comments from the Ravi troll will be sent to the Bathroom Wall as soon as I see them.

When did the "kinds" quit hyper-evolving and turbo-speciating? Surely there's a biblical answer. Was it still going on in Abraham's time? Did Moses' goats give birth to sheep? How about in Jesus'time? Did the ass he rode on have an ass mother, or some other equid?

WHEN did it stop? WHY did it stop? Or is it still happening? Is there an Answer in Genesis?

Raving Mad said:

Yardbird said: I can't get past the absurdity of the Ark. Surely an omnipotent God could just kill all the bad people without destroying everything else. What about it, Ravi/Joe? Why did God need an ark and flood? Was Yahweh someway limited? Was he really pissed off, or did he just want to go swimming and needed a big pool? If he was omnipotent, couldn't he shrink himself and swim in a puddle?

I don't see it as absurd. Noah was a conservationist zoologist who saved all of these animals from a global catastrophe. You lot love to mock him, but I think he deserves praise.

Ravi said:

W. H. Heydt said: Sticking strictly within domesticated dogs...how are you going to breed a Chihuahua with an Irish Wolfhound? I mean...physically, not concerned with the potenial consequences of actual gestation.

I said before that some physical extremities within a species or kind can preclude successful mating. This is true for some humans. But if sperm and egg fuse, then I have no doubt that an Irish wolfhound can give birth to the child of a male chihuahua. Gestation is what matters.

I am certain that cats cannot interbreed with dogs because they are two different kinds . I accept that a tiger may not be able to breed with a domestic cat because of the sheer difference in size between the two animals but, for the most part, canids should be able to breed with other canids and felids with felids.

Ravi said: So, when I say that there are 400,000 species of Coleoptera but only one kind, I means that all beetles are descended from a common ancestor who was a beetle (on board the Ark).

Daniel said: This comes up to a new species of beetle every 3.8 days... let's make it a nice round 4. So Ravi, are you claiming this? A new beetle species every 4 days? One new beetle species every 96 hours? Actually every 91 hrs, because it is really every 3.8 days. Do I understand you correctly?

Update: I just saw you used 4200 rather than 4000 for the years since the flood. No problem. For 4,200 years, k = 0.003071, the number of beetle species per year this year should be 1,230, and the time to double the original 1400 species after the flood (i.e. each species produces a second species) is 226 years.

So to find out how many days went by before a new species of beetle popped up, we divide those 1.5 million days by 400,000 species.

Missed it by eight minutes...

eric said: Nah, don't do it linearly, that makes even less sense than creationism. The number of new species being produced is going to be proportional to the number of species existing at any given time, which means its an exponential function. A = A0*e^kt, where A=400,000, A0=1, t=4,000. Solve for k. Then plug in A0 = 400,000, k, and t = 4,001 to solve for A, the number of species we expect next year. Don't worry, I did it for you. k = 0.003225, and the number of new beetle species we should expect per year at the present time is 1,292. Which is 3.5 species per day, not one per 3.8 days. Which to be honest, I don't have a problem with...however, this constant exponential rate would mean there was no more than the original 1,400 species for the first 215 years of post-flood recorded history; it would take about that long for each original species to go through one speciation event. Even after 1,000 years, the number of species would have been only 30k or so. You'd think that the Greeks might have noticed. Or that the Australian natives might have noticed there were no marsupials for the first several hundred years after the flood. IOW the problem with the exponential-increase-since flood model is not that it predicts too much speciation now, its that it predicts an unbelievably low number of species in the bronze age.

Yardbird said:

Raving Ravi said:

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

No, I haven't taken his words out of their proper context. Gould believed that many major changes in biological history occurred relatively quickly and suddenly in contrast to the model of Darwinian gradualism.

Show where it says that Gould believed that major changes in biological history could not be made by Darwinian gradualism and why, or STFUYSA!

Robert Byers said:

Yardbird said:

Raving Ravi said:

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

No, I haven't taken his words out of their proper context. Gould believed that many major changes in biological history occurred relatively quickly and suddenly in contrast to the model of Darwinian gradualism.

Show where it says that Gould believed that major changes in biological history could not be made by Darwinian gradualism and why, or STFUYSA!

I made a thread about this on another forum. stephen Gould did reject gradualism and replaced it with Punctuated equilibrium. He allowed a little gradualism being shown in the fossil record., However pE was the knockdown blow against gradualism and as a major error of Darwin. Its beside the point if gradualism could do the deed. It didn't . Thats PE.

Joe Felsenstein said: Let's keep in mind the scientific reason that Ravi is arguing, though without evidence, that all 400,000 beetles are able to interbreed and are thus one "kind". Which is that if that is true then one only needs to carry one medium-sized easy-to-rear beetle on the Ark. Because if you can do that, then because they are all one "kind", after the Ark lands, all that needs to happen is ... ... what? Someone needs to establish that because of this, we can get the 400,000 species, in a way which we couldn't if they weren't able-to-interbreed. This is interesting, and very very strange.

Robert Byers said:

Yardbird said:

Raving Ravi said:

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

No, I haven't taken his words out of their proper context. Gould believed that many major changes in biological history occurred relatively quickly and suddenly in contrast to the model of Darwinian gradualism.

Show where it says that Gould believed that major changes in biological history could not be made by Darwinian gradualism and why, or STFUYSA!

I made a thread about this on another forum. stephen Gould did reject gradualism and replaced it with Punctuated equilibrium. He allowed a little gradualism being shown in the fossil record., However pE was the knockdown blow against gradualism and as a major error of Darwin. Its beside the point if gradualism could do the deed. It didn't . Thats PE.

Robert Byers said:

Joe Felsenstein said: Let's keep in mind the scientific reason that Ravi is arguing, though without evidence, that all 400,000 beetles are able to interbreed and are thus one "kind". Which is that if that is true then one only needs to carry one medium-sized easy-to-rear beetle on the Ark. Because if you can do that, then because they are all one "kind", after the Ark lands, all that needs to happen is ... ... what? Someone needs to establish that because of this, we can get the 400,000 species, in a way which we couldn't if they weren't able-to-interbreed. This is interesting, and very very strange.

In Stephen Gould's wikipedia article. It says he did research on the CERION land snail and he commented on how it had 600, the most, species even though they all could interbreed. I think this is evidence of how in one area, west Indies, easily a single pair could diversify, quickly, into so many weird types yet never evolve an inability to mutually reproduce. In fact it hints that 'speciation' is not from selection but thats another point. So all snails on earth could of come from a single pair off the ark. Since we see the power of diversity in this mere type in one area. Not a big deal for the CERION.

Robert Byers said:

Joe Felsenstein said: Let's keep in mind the scientific reason that Ravi is arguing, though without evidence, that all 400,000 beetles are able to interbreed and are thus one "kind". Which is that if that is true then one only needs to carry one medium-sized easy-to-rear beetle on the Ark. Because if you can do that, then because they are all one "kind", after the Ark lands, all that needs to happen is ... ... what? Someone needs to establish that because of this, we can get the 400,000 species, in a way which we couldn't if they weren't able-to-interbreed. This is interesting, and very very strange.

In Stephen Gould's wikipedia article. It says he did research on the CERION land snail and he commented on how it had 600, the most, species even though they all could interbreed. I think this is evidence of how in one area, west Indies, easily a single pair could diversify, quickly, into so many weird types yet never evolve an inability to mutually reproduce. In fact it hints that 'speciation' is not from selection but thats another point. So all snails on earth could of come from a single pair off the ark. Since we see the power of diversity in this mere type in one area. Not a big deal for the CERION.

The controversy between Robert Byers and the rational world of science is getting pretty stale. He will continue inventing whatever arguments he need to keep his YEC-ism alive. The evidence of an earth much older than any YEC scenario allows is more than sufficient to lay any faith in YEC to rest. That is, if you are an intelligent person more interested in facts than defending a concocted, religious point of view. With all the different dating methods available, we know the earth is several orders of magnitude older than the miserable few thousand years in the mind of the YEC's.

There is also a non-trivial problem of species distribution. We have a huge amounts of fossil evidence that marsupials were specific to Australia well before the magic flood was alleged to have happened. How did they get to Noah's big box (an Arc is a box, and Noah's box only had a single window!) before the magical flood occurred and then back to Australia again after the water magically disappeared? Likewise this same problem occurs with species that have been indigenous to a relatively fixed region both pre and post the magical flood.

Zetopan said: There is also a non-trivial problem of species distribution. We have a huge amounts of fossil evidence that marsupials were specific to Australia well before the magic flood was alleged to have happened. How did they get to Noah's big box (an Arc is a box, and Noah's box only had a single window!) before the magical flood occurred and then back to Australia again after the water magically disappeared? Likewise this same problem occurs with species that have been indigenous to a relatively fixed region both pre and post the magical flood.

W. H. Heydt said: You haven't read your Gould very well. Even PuncEq is a slow--in human terms--process. Gould also accepted that evolution took place over the standard time frames, as well. He postulated a mix of "standard" evolutionary change AND comparatively rapid, but still pretty slow, evolutionary change. You need to be wary of your sources. They are almost certainly quote mining Gould and may be outright lying about what he said.

Creationists wil go to any lengths necessary in order to defend the indefensible magic flood. They will make up shit about species and interbreeding and all sorts of bullshit without any evidence whatsoever. They will assume that sister species and insipient species are representative of all species. They will ignore all genetic evidence. They will make up shit that isn't in the bible and pretend that it is. They will quote mine and lie and break every commandment just to try to fool someone into thinking that the illogical and impossible magic flood was perpetrated by god in order to murder every body and everything. But the more bullshit they shovel the more it becomes obvious that they are just plain nuts.

There was no magic flood, not one, never was. Deal with it already.

And, it isn't just the number of species, it's also the amount of genetic diversity between them, which is rather more than would be needed just to isolate them genetically from each other.

Zetopan said: There is also a non-trivial problem of species distribution. We have a huge amounts of fossil evidence that marsupials were specific to Australia well before the magic flood was alleged to have happened.

Joe Felsenstein said:

Zetopan said: There is also a non-trivial problem of species distribution. We have a huge amounts of fossil evidence that marsupials were specific to Australia well before the magic flood was alleged to have happened.

That's strange ... there are opossums around here!

Henry J said: And, it isn't just the number of species, it's also the amount of genetic diversity between them, which is rather more than would be needed just to isolate them genetically from each other.

eric said:

W. H. Heydt said: You haven't read your Gould very well. Even PuncEq is a slow--in human terms--process. Gould also accepted that evolution took place over the standard time frames, as well. He postulated a mix of "standard" evolutionary change AND comparatively rapid, but still pretty slow, evolutionary change. You need to be wary of your sources. They are almost certainly quote mining Gould and may be outright lying about what he said.

Yes. In fact Gould got publicly angry and repudiated creationists that tried to misinterpret his ideas as undermining Darwinian evolution. This is well trod territory. So not only is Byers making a mistake, he's making a 1990s mistake. PuncE still relies on random mutation to generate novel phylogenies. Still relies on natural selection to cull them. AIUI its really just taking issue with the simplistic notion of a constant tempo to evolution and saying 'no, that's wrong.'

Joe Felsenstein said: That's strange ... there are opossums around here!

If Robert Byers replied to my questions about the Tigris and Euphrates and I missed that in my quick late night skim of the continuing thread, he might wish to alert me to his response. Otherwise I will continue to assume that he made no response.

W. H. Heydt said:

Robert Byers said:

Yardbird said:

Raving Ravi said:

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

No, I haven't taken his words out of their proper context. Gould believed that many major changes in biological history occurred relatively quickly and suddenly in contrast to the model of Darwinian gradualism.

Show where it says that Gould believed that major changes in biological history could not be made by Darwinian gradualism and why, or STFUYSA!

I made a thread about this on another forum. stephen Gould did reject gradualism and replaced it with Punctuated equilibrium. He allowed a little gradualism being shown in the fossil record., However pE was the knockdown blow against gradualism and as a major error of Darwin. Its beside the point if gradualism could do the deed. It didn't . Thats PE.

You haven't read your Gould very well. Even PuncEq is a slow--in human terms--process. Gould also accepted that evolution took place over the standard time frames, as well. He postulated a mix of "standard" evolutionary change AND comparatively rapid, but still pretty slow, evolutionary change. You need to be wary of your sources. They are almost certainly quote mining Gould and may be outright lying about what he said.

Zetopan said: There is also a non-trivial problem of species distribution. We have a huge amounts of fossil evidence that marsupials were specific to Australia well before the magic flood was alleged to have happened. How did they get to Noah's big box (an Arc is a box, and Noah's box only had a single window!) before the magical flood occurred and then back to Australia again after the water magically disappeared? Likewise this same problem occurs with species that have been indigenous to a relatively fixed region both pre and post the magical flood.

wah wah wah Darwin was wrong wah wah wah saying it doesn't make it true booby your a disaster

oh and no one believes you ever read a book either you do know gould wrote more than one right

Robert Byers said:

Zetopan said: There is also a non-trivial problem of species distribution. We have a huge amounts of fossil evidence that marsupials were specific to Australia well before the magic flood was alleged to have happened. How did they get to Noah's big box (an Arc is a box, and Noah's box only had a single window!) before the magical flood occurred and then back to Australia again after the water magically disappeared? Likewise this same problem occurs with species that have been indigenous to a relatively fixed region both pre and post the magical flood.

Its a trivial complaint. I wrote an essay called "Post Flood marsupial migration Explained" by robert byers. just google. Convergent evolution is trivial analysis.

ashleyhr said: If Robert Byers replied to my questions about the Tigris and Euphrates and I missed that in my quick late night skim of the continuing thread, he might wish to alert me to his response. Otherwise I will continue to assume that he made no response.

Robert Byers said:

ashleyhr said: If Robert Byers replied to my questions about the Tigris and Euphrates and I missed that in my quick late night skim of the continuing thread, he might wish to alert me to his response. Otherwise I will continue to assume that he made no response.

the only likeness of the present rivers to the ones in genesis is the names. The author in genesis goes out of his way to explain how the rivers were different if you read it carefully. So we can conclude that the present Euphrates was only to indicte where the Eden river had been. yet not the same river relative to source of water. Just about area. or rather where the rivers formerly were. something like that.

Robert Byers said: The author in genesis goes out of his way to explain how the rivers were different if you read it carefully.

So we can conclude that the present Euphrates was only to indicte where the Eden river had been.

Just about area. or rather where the rivers formerly were. something like that.

Funny, I thought Darwin said that the rate at which anatomy changes over time could vary, and that any assumption of a constant rate of evolution was a later interpretation. IOW, "P.E." was restoring what Darwin said, not changing it.

Genesis calls the river by a name transliterated from the Hebrew as "perat", universally taken to be "Euphrates" from other usages. The important point, as Byers conceded, is that what was called in Genesis by the name of the modern river was not that river, but some other river in a part of the globe that doesn't exist now and didn't exist at the time of writing. It's as if I said that the Nile flowed through Oz. So it's misleading. Genesis is misleading.

Byers is, I believe, the second of our Bible trolls who has been forced to admit this. He didn't mean to, of course - Byers and Biggie have no idea of what words mean, and think (if they think at all) that their meanings are infinitely plastic according to their convenience. But he's done it now.

Robert Byers said: the only likeness of the present rivers to the ones in genesis is the names. The author in genesis goes out of his way to explain how the rivers were different if you read it carefully twist the words around to support your beliefs.

The fact that orangutans live in SE Asia - even though the other great apes live in Africa - should make evolutionists think again about their "theory". There are no fossils in Africa of pongids but there are some from India on the route taken by these animals as they left the Near East post-deluge on their way their new home in Sumatra. And, yes, kangaroo fossils have been found in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Most kangaroos joined the pongids on the way to Australasia (their promised land) but a few took another route.

Dave Luckett said: It's as if I said that the Nile flowed through Oz. So it's misleading. Genesis is misleading.

Joe raises an interesting point. If post-flood diversification proceeded at the necessary rate to account for today's biodiversity, then surely some mention would have been made in the Bible; if not trying to explain it, at least noting the increase in numbers of "kinds" after the Flood. Maybe the disembarking animals happened to see sticks of different colors and shapes.

Post script: IIRC, mainstream scholars also think that the Torah was originally recorded during the Babylonian captivity period. Which would line up nicely with the idea that the authors of Genesis were doing nothing more complicating than writing a couple of familiar, geopolitically important landmarks into their origin myth.

Ravi said: The fact that orangutans live in SE Asia - even though the other great apes live in Africa - should make evolutionists think again about their "theory". There are no fossils in Africa of pongids but there are some from India on the route taken by these animals as they left the Near East post-deluge on their way their new home in Sumatra. And, yes, kangaroo fossils have been found in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Most kangaroos joined the pongids on the way to Australasia (their promised land) but a few took another route.

mark said: Joe raises an interesting point. If post-flood diversification proceeded at the necessary rate to account for today's biodiversity, then surely some mention would have been made in the Bible; if not trying to explain it, at least noting the increase in numbers of "kinds" after the Flood. Maybe the disembarking animals happened to see sticks of different colors and shapes.

Yes, eric. What you say is very true if one takes Genesis as the retelling of a set of myths and legends. But that's the whole point, don't you see? If, as we both think, Genesis is mythic and legendary, then what appears there is what you'd expect, as you say. But Byers and the rest of the Bibloons think Genesis is literal fact - but, if that were the case, it would be misleading. It refers to a river as the same river that exists now, but it doesn't mean that, it means some other river that doesn't exist now. That's misleading. Which is the point.

Hey Joe, did you know that chromosome numbers in beetles range from at least 16 to 38. And that's in the few species actually investigated. Still want to claim that they are all inter fertile? Still want to claim that they all evolved in the last 4,000 years? Still denying evolution by proposing hyper evolution?

Actually, I just found a reference that shows that diploid chromosome number in beetles ranges from 4 to 70. How about it Joe? Still think they can all interbreed? Done that experiment yet? Didn't think so.

I can provide the reference if anyone is interested. I know Joe doesn't bother with evidence of any kind.

DS said:

Ravi said: The fact that orangutans live in SE Asia - even though the other great apes live in Africa - should make evolutionists think again about their "theory". There are no fossils in Africa of pongids but there are some from India on the route taken by these animals as they left the Near East post-deluge on their way their new home in Sumatra. And, yes, kangaroo fossils have been found in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Most kangaroos joined the pongids on the way to Australasia (their promised land) but a few took another route.

You really love to make shit up don"t you Joe? Well asshole, how much genetic divergence do you think there is between the different families of beetles? How much mitochondrial divergence? How much divergence in nuclear genes? In chromosome number? Still want to claim they can all interbreed? Are you going to admit that you just made that shit up as usual? How about birds Joe. Are birds all one kind? Can they all interbreed? DId they all evolve after one of them got off the magic ark? How about spiders, are they all one "kind"? Exactly how many "kinds" were there? How do you know? Too bad nobody bothered to write it all down, eh Joe. What a shame. Is there any limit to the amount of bullshit you can make up? Are you going to admit that there was no magic flood? SInce there is absolutely no evidence for this supposedly world wide event, it doesn't matter whether you admit that it was not real or not. You're screwed again.

Matt Young said: What I want to know: Are Ravi's claims true? If so, how do we account for them?

Ravi said: Most kangaroos joined the pongids on the way to Australasia (their promised land) but a few took another route.

Dave Luckett said: Yes, eric. What you say is very true if one takes Genesis as the retelling of a set of myths and legends. But that's the whole point, don't you see? If, as we both think, Genesis is mythic and legendary, then what appears there is what you'd expect, as you say. But Byers and the rest of the Bibloons think Genesis is literal fact - but, if that were the case, it would be misleading.

Robert Byers said:

W. H. Heydt said:

Robert Byers said:

Yardbird said:

Raving Ravi said:

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

No, I haven't taken his words out of their proper context. Gould believed that many major changes in biological history occurred relatively quickly and suddenly in contrast to the model of Darwinian gradualism.

Show where it says that Gould believed that major changes in biological history could not be made by Darwinian gradualism and why, or STFUYSA!

I made a thread about this on another forum. stephen Gould did reject gradualism and replaced it with Punctuated equilibrium. He allowed a little gradualism being shown in the fossil record., However pE was the knockdown blow against gradualism and as a major error of Darwin. Its beside the point if gradualism could do the deed. It didn't . Thats PE.

You haven't read your Gould very well. Even PuncEq is a slow--in human terms--process. Gould also accepted that evolution took place over the standard time frames, as well. He postulated a mix of "standard" evolutionary change AND comparatively rapid, but still pretty slow, evolutionary change. You need to be wary of your sources. They are almost certainly quote mining Gould and may be outright lying about what he said.

I read his book myself . it doesn't matter about timelines. the point was Darwin was very wrong and gradualism was untrue. Saying this is a big deal and more then that. Its a disaster.

eric said: "...creationists think that the flood rearranged continents from Pangaea to the modern distribution of land." Do they really? Are they so ignorant of geology and physics to believe a water flood was the driving force for plate tectonics? How do they explain Rodinia, Gondwana, and other continental configurations? Nor have I ever seen a rational creationist explanation for paleosoils interbedded within what they claim to be flood deposits. In order to fit their myth to geological observations, their reasoning becomes so convoluted that may as well have come from a drug-induced hallucination.

Perhaps (IANAS) this 2010 paper is relevant to the pongids split from that which we associate as the great ape lineage circa 15.7-19.3* mya:

Unresolved molecular phylogenies of gibbons and siamangs (Family: Hylobatidae) based on mitochondrial, Y-linked, and X-linked loci indicate a rapid Miocene radiation or sudden vicariance event
H. Israfil, S. M. Zehr, A. R. Mootnick, M. Ruvolo, and M. E. Steiper
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3046308/

*https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3046308/figure/F4/

Ravi said: The fact that orangutans live in SE Asia - even though the other great apes live in Africa - should make evolutionists think again about their "theory". There are no fossils in Africa of pongids but there are some from India on the route taken by these animals as they left the Near East post-deluge on their way their new home in Sumatra. And, yes, kangaroo fossils have been found in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Most kangaroos joined the pongids on the way to Australasia (their promised land) but a few took another route.

Of course the kangaroo bullshit is just standard creationist crap. Here is one site debunking that nonsense:

https://ageofrocks.org/2015/06/19/dear-ken-ham-about-those-kangaroo-fossils/

For shame Joe, for shame. You screwed the pooch again. You shouldn't be so desperate and gullible.

As for the Kangaroos in Egypt bullshit:

https://secretvisitors.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/kangaroos-in-egypt/

So, no magic flood. No magic migrations. No kangaroos in Egypt. Strike three. You're out Joe.

Hey, thanks, Joe! Now I have yet another example of creationist "scholarship": promoting easily debunked bullshit because it said something you liked.

Reminds me of our gun-fetishist occasional poster, who found the "fact", on a gun-fetishist site, that the murder rate vastly increased in Australia after they enacted strict gun control.

If something says EXACTLY what you want to hear... be suspicious.

Just Bob, is that what they're saying? Murder rates up in Australia?

Dave Luckett said: Just Bob, is that what they're saying? Murder rates up in Australia?

Let me phrase this delicately: Ravi is either lying or bullshitting. I will try my best to send further excrescences to the Bathroom Wall, whether or not someone has already responded to them.

"The only likeness of the present rivers to the ones in genesis is the names. The author in genesis goes out of his way to explain how the rivers were different if you read it carefully. So we can conclude that the present Euphrates was only to indicte where the Eden river had been. yet not the same river relative to source of water. Just about area. or rather where the rivers formerly were. something like that." (Robert Byers.)

You are making up own 'facts', Robert. Genesis 2:14 (NIV) simply says: "The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates." Other versions refer not to Ashur (or Asshur) but to Assyria. According to Wikipedia Assyria was "centred on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia (modern northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and the northwestern fringes of Iran)". And guess what, the Tigris is (still) mostly just to the east of Syria - running into Iraq. Nothing to see there.

(This suggests the location of Upper Mesopotamia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Mesopotamia#/media/File:Jazira.png)

And you largely ignored the rest of my previous comment. "Unless you or the ICR (what article are you alluding to) can demonstrate that Genesis 2 indicates that the location or direction of flow of the Tigris and the Euphrates were much different then to what they are today?". Clearly Robert could NOT do this and knew it - which is why he originally ignored my first query.

Young earth creationism - lie upon lie upon lie (some of those don't know that what they say is lies they just don't bother to check because they don't care). These people even post garbled nonsense about the BIBLE!

Some think Eden, of it existed, was in southern Iraq (where the Tigris - and the Euphrates) enter the sea today. And Genesis 2: 10-14 reads: "A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[d] and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates." The headwaters would be upstream of 'Eden' thus towards northern Iraq and eastern Syria. So it looks like Bible correct on geography, location and direction of flow of the Tigris still the same today just a few thousands years later, and young earth creationists lying through their teeth. Which latter point I see several other contributors have picked up on...

Matt Young said: Let me phrase this delicately: Ravi is either lying or bullshitting. I will try my best to send further excrescences to the Bathroom Wall, whether or not someone has already responded to them.

mark said: eric said: "...creationists think that the flood rearranged continents from Pangaea to the modern distribution of land." Do they really? Are they so ignorant of geology and physics to believe a water flood was the driving force for plate tectonics?

W. H. Heydt said:

Robert Byers said:

W. H. Heydt said:

Robert Byers said:

Yardbird said:

Raving Ravi said:

Just Bob said: And yet, mirabile dictu, Gould was NOT a creationist. Do you know what a quote mine is? Do you recognize that it is fundamentally dishonest?

No, I haven't taken his words out of their proper context. Gould believed that many major changes in biological history occurred relatively quickly and suddenly in contrast to the model of Darwinian gradualism.

Show where it says that Gould believed that major changes in biological history could not be made by Darwinian gradualism and why, or STFUYSA!

I made a thread about this on another forum. stephen Gould did reject gradualism and replaced it with Punctuated equilibrium. He allowed a little gradualism being shown in the fossil record., However pE was the knockdown blow against gradualism and as a major error of Darwin. Its beside the point if gradualism could do the deed. It didn't . Thats PE.

You haven't read your Gould very well. Even PuncEq is a slow--in human terms--process. Gould also accepted that evolution took place over the standard time frames, as well. He postulated a mix of "standard" evolutionary change AND comparatively rapid, but still pretty slow, evolutionary change. You need to be wary of your sources. They are almost certainly quote mining Gould and may be outright lying about what he said.

I read his book myself . it doesn't matter about timelines. the point was Darwin was very wrong and gradualism was untrue. Saying this is a big deal and more then that. Its a disaster.

You may have read it (which one? He wrote several.), but you clearly failed to understand it. Even PuncEq is gradual. It just goes faster than the basic theory expects. Also, Darwin is not a god or a prophet. People who accept evolution do not worship Darwin and do not take his writings as gospel. As has been told to you time and again, science progresses by refining (and, very occasionally, replacing in whole) existing ideas with better ones. Darwin wrote up a good first cut proposing evolution by natural selection, but it is *not* the final word by a long shot. Darwin was right in the general outlines, but wrong about many details. This is a major difference between science and religion.

ashleyhr said: Some think Eden, of it existed, was in southern Iraq (where the Tigris - and the Euphrates) enter the sea today. And Genesis 2: 10-14 reads: "A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin[d] and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates." The headwaters would be upstream of 'Eden' thus towards northern Iraq and eastern Syria. So it looks like Bible correct on geography, location and direction of flow of the Tigris still the same today just a few thousands years later, and young earth creationists lying through their teeth. Which latter point I see several other contributors have picked up on...

Robert Byers said: I understood it. its not difficult but too wordy. i mean 'structures of evolutionary ,,," forget the rest. It was a summery highlighting PE. PE is not gradualism. it is the very rejection of it. Thats Gould's insight he hoped would make him the Einstein correcting newton as I see it. its a complete rejection of Darwins conclusion of evolution constantly selecting biology with results. PE is about quick events only happening and then stasis. Nothing happening . It was saying the fossil record proved evolution never happened as Darwin said. Not a failure of finding fossils as needed. Its a admittance the fossil record failed Darwin and Gould retreats back to a last trench to save it all. The geology/fossils hurts and even threatens the whole story.

The Byers troll is starting to loop himself. Its lies and misrepresentations aren't contributing any more to the discussion, even as cautionary examples of poor thinking. Time for the BW.

Robert Byers said: I understood it. its not difficult but too wordy. i mean 'structures of evolutionary ,,," forget the rest. It was a summery highlighting PE. PE is not gradualism. it is the very rejection of it. Thats Gould's insight he hoped would make him the Einstein correcting newton as I see it. its a complete rejection of Darwins conclusion of evolution constantly selecting biology with results. PE is about quick events only happening and then stasis. Nothing happening . It was saying the fossil record proved evolution never happened as Darwin said. Not a failure of finding fossils as needed. Its a admittance the fossil record failed Darwin and Gould retreats back to a last trench to save it all. The geology/fossils hurts and even threatens the whole story.

Actually, I think Byers did read a REAL YEC article before making his wild-sounding Tigris claims.

I have just sent a wide-circulation and lengthy email to various recipients (including Kent Ratajeski and Joel Duff). It reads as follows (apologies for length):

[I deleted this comment since the author resubmitted it with correct formatting, several comments below here. -- Matt]

Robert Byers said: PE is not gradualism. it is the very rejection of it. Thats Gould's insight he hoped would make him the Einstein correcting newton as I see it. its a complete rejection of Darwins conclusion of evolution constantly selecting biology with results...

Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am -- for I have become a major target of these practices. I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record -- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond... Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

"Why the accusation of lying?" Robert and co - please see my later comment, just now (following in-depth investigations).

I see this website has mucked up my paragraphs.

Another go:

Riddle of the River Tigris.

I understand that river bifurcation is fairly uncommon and mostly occurs in deltas. More common is tributaries which flow into a large river which meets the sea as a single large river. Today the Tigris, after merging with the Euphrates, enters the Persian Gulf from southern Iraq (where some say the biblical Garden of Eden might have been located) as a single large river known as the Shatt al-Arab - and I know of no evidence that things were much different when YEC Christians say Noah’s Flood happened, around 4,500 years ago.

What’s this all about? It’s about the meaning of Genesis 2:10-14 and about associated claims made by some young earth creationists.
[Genesis 2 King James Version]
https://www.biblegateway.com/passag[…]ch=Genesis+2
For the purposes of this message, I am assuming that Genesis 2 is geographically accurate and meant to be taken as such. When I read these two translations, the NIV in particular which uses the word ‘headwaters’, I thought that the Bible was saying that Eden’s unnamed river was formed from the meeting of four different tributaries at various points upstream (not that it divided downstream into four distributaries at one (very unlikely indeed) or more than one location).

Genesis 2:14 (NIV) says: “The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” Other versions refer not to Ashur (or Asshur) but to Assyria. According to Wikipedia Assyria was “centred on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia (modern northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and the northwestern fringes of Iran)”. And the River Tigris is (still) mostly just to the east of Syria - running into Iraq. Some experts think that Eden, if it existed, was in southern Iraq (where the Shatt al-Arab enters the sea today). From the wording at Genesis 2: 10-14 in the NIV I assume that the ‘headwaters’ would be upstream of Eden and thus towards northern Iraq and north-eastern Syria. So it looks like the Bible may have been correct on this river’s geography, location and direction of flow (and perhaps likewise for the Euphrates which (today and in recent millennia) mostly flows further to the west through Syria and then Iraq (the Tigris keeps just to the east of modern Syria).

All that said, experts seem to think the other two rivers named (the modern equivalents have not been clearly identified) had their sources and main geographical presence in Ethiopia and in the Sinai peninsula rather than around Upper Mesopotamia (around north-eastern Syria).

However, it seems that John Calvin may have disagreed (but it’s not clear to me from the quotation shown at the link below what he meant by ‘heads’, because he then says that the ‘fountains’ of the Tigris and Euphrates were ‘far distant’ from each other - if you assume Eden was just north of where they merge, the two rivers mostly flow quite far apart from each other upstream but a short distance downstream they MERGE).

Ken Ham (who has an agenda) CERTAINLY disagrees:
https://answersingenesis.org/genesi[…]den-located/
He seems to think, or want to think, that the ‘headwaters’ refers to what happens downstream of the unnamed river flowing through Eden (which might of course explain why the river is unnamed ie it’s a mere tributary flowing into the four greater named rivers). “Calvin recognized that the description given in Genesis 2 concerning the location of the Garden of Eden does not fit with what is observed regarding the present Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. God’s Word makes it clear that the Garden of Eden was located where there were four rivers coming from one head.”

But it really suggests that Eden was located where there was one river which then (in one direction either upstream or downstream; Ken Ham thinks the latter) parted/separated to become FOUR ‘heads’/’headwaters’ - the Tigris, Euphrates, Pishon and Gihon.

But from what verse 10 actually says (which he garbles) and from a ‘difficulty’ referred to by Calvin, Ham seeks to argue that: “The earth’s surface totally changed as a result of the Flood. Not only this, but underneath the region where the present Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are located there exists hundreds of feet of sedimentary strata—a significant amount of which is fossiliferous. Such fossil-bearing strata had to be laid down at the time of the Flood. Therefore, no one can logically suggest that the area where the present Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are today is the location of the Garden of Eden, for this area is sitting on Flood strata containing billions of dead things (fossils).”

Apparently, the real Eden was ‘somewhere else’ other than southern Iraq, and “when Noah and his family came out of the ark after it landed in the area we today call the Middle East (the region of the Mountains of Ararat), it would not have been surprising for them to use names they were familiar with from the pre-Flood world (e.g., Tigris and Euphrates), to name places and rivers, etc., in the world after the Flood.”

So is Ken Ham saying that Genesis 2 was only written (inspired by God) AFTER the Flood? Correct?

Which brings me to Panda’s Thumb and this message by non-YEC Christian Dr Kent Ratajeski (who I have copied in for the first time):
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/201[…]-as-obs.html
[the YouTube video flagged in this blog]
At just after 7 minutes 30 seconds, when discussing his visit to the ‘Ark Encounter’, he quotes Genesis 2:10-14 and observes that Genesis describes a modern landscape (‘modern’ would also include that of 4,500 years ago). His argument being ‘how could Eden have been on top of ‘flood deposits’?’ But Ken Ham appears to outwitted geologists! Eden was ‘somewhere else’.

I guess the ‘destroyed’ location must have been somewhere in today’s world where no fossils or virtually no fossils have been found - since fossils/fossil-bearing layers are almost entirely ‘flood deposits’ … Or, if this argument is deemed inapplicable by Ham (because the pre-Flood world was totally ‘destroyed’) why can the location of Eden ‘not’ after all be the very location that is seemingly described in Genesis 2?

Eden must have been somewhere (if it existed) and presumably somewhere that is land today (since the Bible does not imply that the waters only receded to higher than pre-Flood levels afterwards). I think we need a flood geologist …

With me so far? Good - because you have reached the end.

Any comments welcome.

This is that Ham link (he seems to ignore the strong similarity of location between today's Tigris and the Genesis 2 Tigris (whenever Genesis 2 was written it describes a PRE-Flood 'garden'):
https://answersingenesis.org/genesis/garden-of-eden/where-was-the-garden-of-eden-located/

"Do not take Genesis 2: 10-14 at face value. You will be misled. Instead listen to me. I have the Answers! Except that I cannot possibly tell you where the Garden of Eden really was. I just know that I cannot have been where the Bible appears to suggest it was."

Ken Ham.

Robert Byers said: PE is not gradualism. it is the very rejection of it. Thats Gould's insight he hoped would make him the Einstein correcting newton as I see it. its a complete rejection of Darwins conclusion of evolution constantly selecting biology with results...

Ashleyhr is quite correct--we need a geologist to explain drainage evolution in this region. I recall a frontispiece in "Understanding the Old Testament" by Bernhard Anderson showing the ancient Persian Gulf shoreline farther inland than it is at present (above the joining of the Tigris and Euphrates), but that map did not cite geological references. Just for starters, in what geologic units have the present-day rivers formed? How do Creationists explain the sequence of older geologic units far below these rivers? If they wish to explain away the underlying Paleozoic and/or Mesozoic marine units as "Flood deposits," then the present-day rivers can have no relation to the Biblical rivers in the vicinity of Eden. I'm sure there is a lot of discussion in the geologic literature; perhaps someone is familiar with it.

ashleyhr said: Eden must have been somewhere (if it existed) and presumably somewhere that is land today (since the Bible does not imply that the waters only receded to higher than pre-Flood levels afterwards). I think we need a flood geologist …

Robert Byers said: ....so the author understands the reader would misunderstand where Eden was. it was not in places that now exist.

ashleyhr then asked: So is Ken Ham saying that Genesis 2 was only written (inspired by God) AFTER the Flood? Correct?

I thought Eden was right there when Earth was created. Now we're talking about the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that were in the vicinity of Eden? These rivers cut into Quaternary sediments. But those sediments are on top of a thick sequence of mostly marine deposits of Ordovician through Pliocene age. There are about half a dozen unconformities in this sequence. There are folds and faults in the region. It is absurd to contemplate that there was a place in this region, at the dawn of time, so to speak, inhabited by humans. Unless, of course, all geology, physics, chemistry, and biology are in error.

Critics of Gods word are not making their case well here.
What is written about Eden and the garden(a different place) and the rivers was meant to show Eden/garden no longer was tyo be found. The readers could not visit or have vistors tell them about these places. They were gone.
This from the flood. The writer expects this to be understood by listing vrivers that in no way could be today connected.
nor could they be connected to a single river and not that becoming four rivers. They never would know of such a thing in their own world. rivers connect to a final trunk. Not the other way around.
Eden/garden river was a special river or showing the pre flood world was special.
The writer expects this to be understood.
Indeed layers of sediment were laid and squeezed into rock abve the whole area where eDen and the peoples lived before the flood.
So it must be the authors directions to look at rivers means only where they formerly had been.
Nothing to do with the modern rivers but just that area.
If Cush/Ethiopia was meant as one river this would be incredible for any readers.
Not even the nile was mentioned but why more southern rivers.?
The list of rivers is to show eden is gone and not to be found.
Its proving a pre flood world was changed.
by the way the bible never has been found to have made a geographical error.
Despite it covering lots of geography.
God knows his geography.

Robert Byers said: Critics of Gods word are not making their case well here.

"rivers connect to a final trunk. Not the other way around...". I expect that means what Robert wants it to mean.

How is he defining 'trunk'?

DS said: How about horses on their way to North Americas?

Robert Byers said: ... showing the pre flood world was special.

I had shared some of the following in private correspondence with Ashley Haworth-Roberts as we both reacted to the latest AIG website amusements, so perhaps others will find this of interest. I don't specialize in Ancient Near Eastern etymologies and lexicography--although I do work in closely related fields within the academy--and I'll just throw in some of my 2cents.

The word EUPHRATES, as the two morphemes "EU" and "PHRATES" in Old Persian (?) would suggest, may have meant a "good ford" (as in a good crossing place during certain seasons of the years.) Thus, it MAY have been a geographical term which came to be applied to a number of different rivers by migrating peoples/cultures in the ancient world. Perhaps it became a preferred name for the largest or most conveniently navigable waterway in a region.

Likewise, the Tigris River also could have been a recycled descriptive name. TIGRIS meant "straight" or "arrow-like" in Old Persian (if memory serves) and perhaps the river was so named because it was not a meandering river like the Euphrates but generally took a fairly direct route to its eventual merger with the Euphrates River, where its water would have continued a rather straight route to the sea. (Of course, in this case I'm speculating that Iraq was the original location of the original rivers where the naming convention began.)

I could be completely wrong, but what I've described etymologically illustrates the ways in which a naming convention can get started (i.e., a meandering river taking a complex and circuitous route versus a more straight and direct-route river) and perhaps the resulting names even get passed down for many centuries through numerous cultures and languages.

Indeed, just as American colonists began to name their cities, counties, and states by recycling geographic place names from the old country ("New York", "New Bedford", or even without the "New": "Worcester", "Oxford", "Portland", "Cambridge"), so did ancient peoples. And I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same with rivers which reminded them of those waterways which they had known before their migrations. Thus, I have no reason to take for granted any direct relationship between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers in modern day Iraq with the same-named rivers in Genesis 2---even though most Young Earth Creationists and other fundamentalists are routinely prone to consider them in a singular location and an "obvious evidence" of the Bible's timeless accuracy.

I often have to remind Young Earth Creationists that there is no mention of a "Mt. Ararat" in the Bible. Noah's ark came to rest in the hill country of the Ararat region. (YECs prefer to say "the mountains of Ararat", but the Hebrew word could just as easily be translated "hill" as "mountain", so I tend to play contrarian just to remind everyone that we shouldn't let ourselves be driven by entrenched traditions just because they are the most familiar.) Yet, we have no idea where the Ararat region was located in the ancient world and there is virtually no reason to assume it was in modern day Turkey. There are probably a half dozen "traditional" locations for the ark's final destination, yet YEC like to focus on just Turkey, and I have my suspicions why that is the case.

So likewise, the four rivers of Eden, despite the familiarity of the Euphrates River and the Tigris River, could have been almost anywhere in the Ancient Near East, perhaps in the Nile Delta, or north in what were once the dry "Mediterranean Plains" (before the Atlantic Ocean waters spilled over the natural dam at what we know as the Straits of Gibraltar and filled the Mediterranean Sea), or in the Arabian Peninsula, or in the Fertile Crescent, or perhaps even somewhere in India.

So when ever the Young Earth Creationist get cocky about the "obvious" location of the ark's landing site or the location of Eden, the above can be useful for prescribing a few doses of reality.

Thank you, Robert, for explaining things. You've heard of tributaries; now look up "distributary" and "anastomosing" and "braided" streams. But okay, let's ignore present-day drainage in Mesopotamia. You are arguing that people lived in Eden prior to the Ordovician Period. Were they Precambrian People? If Eden was wiped out by the Flood which left sediments that were later squeezed to become the stratigraphic column in that region, how do you explain the unconformities? Were there half a dozen such floods over a span of about half a billion years? If the stratigraphic sequence here is the result of Flood deposits, please explain why various units are characteristic of a range of depositional environments, and explain any differences in diagenic histories of the different formations. My point is, if one thinks of the area as underlain by just a bunch of rocks, it's easy to make up any kind of story about it; but if one looks at the details, the geologic history can be unravelled and a coherent, logically consistent explanation can be made.

tomh said:

DS said: How about horses on their way to North Americas?

Irrelevant to the topic, but I was taught that horses originated in North America, 3-4 mya, then spread to Eurasia and beyond. But perhaps I'm out of date on this as on so many things.

booby already completely rejected the bible so hes got no leg left to stand on bye bye booby wah wah

mark said: .My point is, if one thinks of the area as underlain by just a bunch of rocks, it's easy to make up any kind of story about it; but if one looks at the details, the geologic history can be unravelled and a coherent, logically consistent explanation can be made.

Or maybe he does look at the details because that's where the devil is?

Henry J said: Or maybe he does look at the details because that's where the devil is?

Genesis 9:11 (NIV) reads:
""I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.""

Massive waters drowning all life. But NOT - unless you choose to read things into the texts that aren't there - massive 'catastrophic plate tectonics' re-shaping the surface of the planet including the garden in Eden (or part of the planet if you believe this was an account of a huge devastating but local flood). Enormous floods cause destruction today; (aside from limited coastal erosion) they don't shift whole continents or parts of continents to new geographical locations. Why should the waters from above and below in Genesis have done this? Only if you have an agenda of undermining awkward science I suggest.

Given that the resident physicist here likes to point out that the waters of Genesis would have boiled the oceans, maybe the continents were just trying to get out of the way?

No, see, the Earth was flat in those days, just READ YOUR BIBLE!

So that let continents and land masses and such kind of float around beneath the Flood waters. Hell, they might have even floated to the surface at times... just out of the sight of Noah. Then as the waters drained away to, uhh, somewhere, then the continents lost their buoyancy and became firmly stuck to the bottom in more or less their present distribution. Then some time later -- after Bible Times -- the sinful Earth fell off its pillars, lost all four corners, and blobbed up into a ball!

Oh, and God took the firmament away, so that now we can be hit by meteors and asteroids and things as Wake-Up Calls!

Really, now, the Truth of the Flat Earth explains perfectly where the Flood waters went: they just fell off the edges. See, the firmament held them in around the edges of the Earth, like a giant inverted fishbowl, until God took the firmament away. There went the waters!

But on the bright side, now we have rainbows to look at!

Dr Ratajeski has replied to an email I sent and flagged this past article:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3-00Hill.html

TomS said:

Henry J said: And, it isn't just the number of species, it's also the amount of genetic diversity between them, which is rather more than would be needed just to isolate them genetically from each other.

And there is the number of individuals. For example, the Bible tells us that there were about 600,000 Israeli fighting men at the time of the Exodus. Try to fit that with a reasonable population growth from the 8 on the Ark.