Rebuttle To Highdesert

In my recent post Angkor Saw A Stegosaur? a fellow blogger member (Highdesert) has replied with a comment that I believe deserves a rebuttal. It is not my usual practice to productively argue in circles. However, I have chosen to break the threaded format in the comments under that posting and am making a completely new and separate post of it because I want to make known what I believe is to be several notions of ignorance, assumptions, presuppositions and closed mindedness in this great debate. If anyone thinks the format is unfair, I will just have to say sorry and make note that this is one of the major benefits of being the blog manager :)

Highdesert's original comment

Moving forward, I would like to address various statements of highdesert's and expose the aforementioned attributes of her comments. I would also like to note that Highdesert has my/our full respect as a consistent follower of various topics on the blog, so I want to be very clear that no disrespect is implied in this rebuttal, on the contrary highdesert has our full respect.
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Hd;

Here's the problem. The evidence for an old earth, and for evolution, and for the idea that all current life forms came from some original ancestral type, and the idea that all (or virtually all) dinosaurs (except for birds) were gone millions of years before humans appeared, that evidence has been overwhelmingly convincing to the scientific community. For science, the argument is essentially over.

J7;

It's obvious here that you are jumping the gun in speaking for the "scientific community". I wonder if they saw your comment, would they agree with you? You are guilty of falling under the category of people who say "well since all scientist believe in evolution, then it must be true". Not all scientist (even secular scientist) believe in the theory of evolution. Your are clearly making an assumption as we will see in most of your comments. Rather than reinvent the wheel, here is an excerpt right off the bat in regards to your thought process (presupposition and your "interpretation of the evidence").

Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the
same evidence—the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same earth, the
same fossil layers, the same animals and plants, the same stars—the facts are
all the same.
The difference is in the way we all interpret the facts. And
why do we interpret facts differently? Because we start with different
presuppositions. These are things that are assumed to be true, without being
able to prove them. These then become the basis for other conclusions. All
reasoning is based on presuppositions (also called axioms). This becomes
especially relevant when dealing with past events.

So for science the argument is not over, but nearly getting started, and in fact just heating up. A recent poll in June of '08 showed that 92% of the American people believed in God. Do you suppose that there are some scientist in that group? Of course. To assume that most scientist are "overwhelmingly convinced" is absolutely absurd. Obviously the poll shows otherwise. Washington Post

Furthermore, another study showed in Sept of "08 that most Americans "do not" accept the theory of evolution; Article So again, where does your assumption come from? I want to suggest that it comes from your presuppositional thought pattern.

Hd;

That's not to say that new, strong, evidence wouldn't change that. But there is so much evidence that would have to be reasonably countered that the chance of that happening is very remote. So all the things you bring up from creationist sites as evidence are likely to be unconvincing. For instance the earth IS old, according to the evidence, so there can't be evidence that points to a young earth.

J7;

What evidence do you have that the earth is billions of years old? I can show you "overwhelming" evidence that the earth is rather young and consistent with the biblical record of Genesis. I can point to men of tenured position who have been fired or suddenly lost their funding because their research was in great support of a young earth (or against a big bang or old earth) The fact of the matter is that you are going to see what you want to see no matter what I present or what the evidence shows (hence the reason I do not argue in circles with someone) A good friend of mine from an old company stated the simple and obvious once "people are going to see whatever they want to see". You allow your facts to be mixed up with your interpretation.

However, I will point to a few things; You believe the earth is old because you believe in uniformitarianism, which is that the earth you see today and the way it is functioning today is how it has always been or gradually/slowly formed. This is another one of your presuppositions. There is much evidence showing that our earth underwent a significant catastrophic change. Our oxygen content was significantly different but a few short years ago. Your geologic column doesn't even exist and we have yet to hear rebuttals from evolutionist regarding the findings of full tree trunks running through your supposed millions of millions of years of layers in your geologic column. And where are the erosion patterns? If we saw winter, spring, summer and fall, why do we not see the erosion patterns? Instead we see sedimentary rock being layed down pretty quickly and for a stretch of miles and miles on, showing the sediment was carried for long distances (shunning millions of "local" floods). What about the extreme inaccuracy of the Carbon C14 dating? This is how you are claiming that the earth is millions of years old amongst numerous other dating methods right? I can list a number of examples of rocks and fossils brought for C14 testing (and they were not told that they were dinosaur bones) and they came out to be thousands not millions or billions of years old. Why have you not commented on my post about T-Rex fresh blood cells being found in Alaska in 1991 in which the bone was still elastic and none of it was fossilized? Are you just waiting for the controversial posts to come out or are you one who thinks that T-Rex blood cells can survive for millions of years. Take off your evolutionary goggles for a minute will you? Regarding the C14 testing, what do the evolutionary minded say when the bones date only a few thousand years old? "oh sorry that can't be right, we didn't know it was a dinosaur bone, we need to use a different test, ahh see there we go, here it is, this bone is 65 million years old, not 3,000 years. Sorry about that" and please disregard the 400% error rate. In addition C14, since it's only barely good for thousands of years not billions, has produced some seriously and embarrassingly results for your evolutionists, placing the whole method in question.

A few examples of wild dates by radiometric dating:

Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old. Science vol. 224, 1984, pp.58-61

Living mollusk shells were dated up to 2300 years old. Science vol. 141, 1963, pp.634-637

A freshly killed seal was carbon dated as having died 1300 years ago! Antarctic Journal vol. 6, Sept-Oct. 1971, p211

So they can't even be trusted for things that are living or just died, how can they be trusted for things that have been dead and supposedly millions of years old? You know one thing when you see a dinosaur bone in the ground and that is "it died" that's it! There is no birth certificate, you cannot prove it had children, and you cannot certainly prove that it had completely different species of children. Once again your presuppositions shine through. Shall we also note that your theory totally goes against the 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics? These are established "laws" mind you, not theories. The First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation) states that energy is always conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed. In essence, energy can be converted from one form into another. So how did energy and matter evolve? The very existence of matter in and of itself is proof that God exist. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the universe tends toward high entropy. Meaning everything we see moves towards breaking down, getting older, falling apart etc... But evolution teaches that everything gets better and more complex and advanced, yet this is not observed. What is observed is that everything gets old and dies.

"The implications of these two laws are profound. The first law states clearly that no matter or energy is currently being added to our universe, and the second law states that, given infinite time, the universe will come to final equilibrium, where no processes can occur. That final state has been described as a heat-death of the universe. Since that condition has not yet been reached, the universe must have a beginning. These conclusions are perfectly compatible with the biblical declaration that all things were created in six days, and then God ceased doing the labor of physical creation (first law) (Gen. 2:1–2).

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/Area/isd/walter.asp

Creationist Duane Gish comments:
"Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd… The operation of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin of the immense biological order required for the origin of life." (Duane Gish, Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of California at Berkeley)

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermodynamics.html

You also claim that that new traits come about by chance, by random changes in genes called “mutations" - Your own Julian Huxley stated; "Mutation provides the raw material of evolution." Again he said, "mutation is the ultimate sources of all...heritable variation." Evolution in Action, p.38

Professor Ernst Mayr, another leader of the evolutionists, made this statement; "Yet it must not be forgotten that mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation found in natural populations and the only raw material available for natural selection to work on" Animal Species and Evolution, p. 170

That is very interesting. Here are some facts that evolutionist will not argue with because they themselves agree with it as well, ultimately showing their faith in the theory;

Please keep this clearly in mind: Evolutionists say that mutation is
absolutely essential to provide the inexorable upgrading of species that
changed the simpler forms into more complex forms. BUT—the scientific fact
is that mutation could NEVER accomplish what evolution demands of it, for
several reasons. As all scientists agree, mutations are very rare. Huxley
guesses that only about one in a hundred thousand is a mutant. Secondly,
when they do occur, they are almost certain to be harmful or deadly to the
organism. In other words, the vast majority of such mutations lead toward
extinction instead of evolution; they make the organism worse instead of
better. Huxley admits: "The great majority of mutant genes are harmful in
their effect on the organism" (Ibid. p. 39). Other scientists, including
Darwin himself, conceded that most mutants are recessive and degenerative;
therefore, they would actually be eliminated by natural selection rather
than effect any significant improvement in the organism. Professor G. G.
Simpson, one of the elite spokesmen for evolution, writes about multiple,
simultaneous mutations and reports that the mathematical likelihood of
getting good evolutionary results would occur only once in 274 billion
years! And that would be assuming 100 million individuals reproducing a new
generation every day! He concludes by saying: "Obviously … such a
process has played no part whatever in evolution" (The Major Features of
Evolution, p. 96).

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/cfol/ch2-mutations.asp

This is a bit confusing isn't it? Your saying mutation is necessary for the changes to be made as per your theory but they have to confess that it's impossible for multiple mutations to make the changes. What's going on here? Amazing facts ministry's Joe Cruz says "Mutations, of course, do effect minor changes within the basic kinds, but those changes are limited, never producing a new family. Now that is science, why? Because this is what can be observed and demonstrated as well as repeated time and time again, that is science unlike your speculation. Christians are by no means against science, we love it because God created it and it most certainly is in harmony with God's creation because he sustains it.

Darwin himself said this; "There are two or three million species on earth, A sufficient field one might think for observation; but it must be said today that in spite of all the evidence of trained observers, not one change of the species to another is on record" Life and Letters, Vol. 3 p. 25

So why are you insisting that mutations had to occur, where are the mutant fossils? I can go all day on mutations.

How about the fossil record? Though I don't agree with there being a "fossil record" they are just bones, it would seem as though the record in and of itself shuns the evolutionary theory. Most fossils are found abruptly and standing in upward posistions showing they died quickly. Some fossils show animals giving birth. Tell me Highdesert, can an animal give birth for millions of years? How about the fossils (marine life) 1000 feat above sea level on Mt Everest? How come there are fossils of clams on everest? In addition, they are closed! When clams die they open, this shows that they died quickly as in a flood. How do the evolutionist say they got there? A local flood? Right...

Darwin; "Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?"

"And we find many of them (major invertebrate groups) already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. - Richard Dawkins.

"The fossil record--in defiance of Darwin's whole idea of gradual change--often makes great leaps from one form to the next....." -Steve Jones, Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated (London: Doubleday, 1999), p. 252

"Darwin goes on in the next paragraph to say that he believes the transitional forms ("missing links") are missing because the fossil record is "incomplete" Yet here we are almost 150 years later, and all the missing links are still missing. Animals always show up in the fossil record fully formed. There are no undisputed transitional forms"

"The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multi cellular life. Within just a (supposed) few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time...The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash" Stephen Jay Gould, "An Asteroid to Die for," Discover, October 1989, p. 65

And what about Trilobites? These are supposed to be some of the first organisms to have evolved and they are already extremely complex? "The details in the technical section below show us that this trilobite eye, far from being ‘primitive,’ was constructed on the basis of precise optical engineering principles which people only discovered a few centuries ago."

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i1/trilobite.asp

And these are supposed to be the first "simple" life forms? The truth of the matter is that there is no such thing as simple life forms. Even bacteria is extremely complex. Your God is your faith in the chance of evolution ever occurring. Speaking of simple life forms, lets take the common housefly shall we? Let me ask you a question that Ray Comfort asked an atheist once, because I think it deserves a good explanation since evolution is a fact or the evidence is overwhelmingly convincing as you say. This should be a simple one for you highdesert;

Let's think for a moment about a simple form of life. The fly. The "simple", common, everyday household fly. Let's say that there was no Creator. Let's believe that (what you say) "the chemicals on the cooled bodies possibly forming into life, and the balance and adaptation of that life to sustain and thrive and evolve into what we have now" is true. There was nothing, I would now like to say that suddenly a big bang happened, but there is nothing to make a big bang, bang. Therefore we will we have to think in terms of a mysterious something before the big bang, making the big bang happen. Let's reenact the Genesis of the evolutionary theory: "Bang!" or should I say "BANG!" After the big bang, we have the necessary (potential) raw materials (DNA) to make a fly. There are (potentially) two flaky very lightweight plastic membranes for the wings. There is also close at hand (potential) material that is able to form itself (over time) into two compound eyes. This will take some time (millions of years) because these are very complex (hundreds of tiny television screens, each with multiple nerve-endings). The eyes and the wings are living material, so they will need to be quickly connected (over millions of years) to the heart or they will frizzle and die. But wait. There is no blood yet. Some (potential) blood has fortunately come from the big bang. We will also need blood vessels to carry the blood to the wings. Once these are connected, they will be able to grow into a mouth, brain (to flap the wings, etc..), tongue, legs, skin, etc. Suddenly, it all comes together into a male fly. Evolution has completed her work. The fly is finished. It will now need food and water to stay alive, but that's another theory. Now we just have to hope that a female fly has evolved at the same time over millions of years (with the necessary female reproductive parts), or there won't be any more flies. But you say "It didn't happen like that!" The beginning of what we know now as a fly began as a simple maggot like form, then evolved into a fly that took millions of years. How then does a maggot do it in a couple of days? Just one evolutionist has more faith than every Christian combined.

No need to answer it, the entry is there to denote the silly notion that even the common house fly could have came about by evolution.

I have not even touched on:

The Big Bang and all the evidence agianst it, and how all the heavier elements came to be from Hydorgen and Helium? You think Creationist to be silly and irational while you believe that a large quanitity of nothing decided to pack tightly into a dot the size of the period at the end of this sentence and then exploded.

We didn't talk on how the earth couldn't of evolved or formed from a molten state. (which means you teach we all came from a rock)

We didn't touch on the age of the earth as nearly as I would have liked to. Though the bible has been the same since God inspired man to write it your evolutionary theory and the age of the earth has changed so many times to better fit your theory.

Gamow: 3-5 Billion years. Peebles and Wilkinson: 7 billion years Ashford: 10-15 billion years. Shklovski: 70 billions years Alfven: trillions of years. Hoyle: infinite time. Our God has never changed, he is the same yesterday today and will be forever. So should we trust Gods word which is infallable and has triumphed over serious scrutinity or should we trust your science text books and theories which will be different yet again next year?

We have not even touched DNA and Protien and the "chances" of even a single protien forming by chance. A Swiss mathematician, Chalrs Eugene Guye, actually computes the odds against such an occurence at only one chance in 10(160). that means 10 multiplied by itself 160 times, a number too large even to articulate, Another scientis expressed it this way: The amount of matter to be shaken together to produce a single molecule of protein would be millions of times greater than that in the whole universe. For it to occur on earth alone would require many, almost endless, billions of years." The Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe, p. 23

We don't have time to talk about Natural Selection and how it can only select, it cannot be a mechanism for evolution.

How do you even begin to explain the evolution of plants? Why can't officials offer a single example of a transitional series of fosilized organisms that document the transformation of one kind of plant into another?

I don't even have time to show you the validity of the bible by Archeological finds. No archeological find has EVER disproved the bible, in fact what we do find proves the bible was right all along when referring to times, people and places.

I haven't shown you the accuracy in the bible when it touches on Science, no other book in any of the world's religions (Vedas, Bhagavad-Gita, Koran, Book of Mormon, etc.) contains scientific truth in it. (feel free to ask me for a list of these) I hope that you don't think Christians just trash their brains and believe every single aspect by faith alone do you? That's the beauty of it, we just need to tell the truth and it shows for itself. Ahh forget it while Im at it, here are few of those scientific facts when God's word touches on it;

1. THE BIBLE: The earth is a sphere (Isaiah 40:22). SCIENCE NOW: The earth is a sphere. SCIENCE THEN: The earth was a flat disk.

2. THE BIBLE: Incalculable number of stars (Jeremiah 33:22). SCIENCE NOW: Incalculable number of stars. SCIENCE THEN: Only 1,100 stars.

3. THE BIBLE: Free float of earth in space (Job 26:7). SCIENCE NOW: Free float of earth in space. SCIENCE THEN: Earth sat on a large animal.

4. THE BIBLE: Creation made of invisible elements (Hebrews 11:3). SCIENCE NOW: Creation made of invisible elements (atoms). SCIENCE THEN: Science was mostly ignorant on the subject.

5. THE BIBLE: Each star is different (1 Corinthians 15:41). SCIENCE NOW: Each star is different. SCIENCE THEN: All stars were the same.

6. THE BIBLE: Light moves (Job 38:19,20). SCIENCE NOW: Light moves. SCIENCE THEN: Light was fixed in place.

7. THE BIBLE: Air has weight (Job 28:25). SCIENCE NOW: Air has weight. SCIENCE THEN: Air was weightless.

8. THE BIBLE: Winds blow in cyclones (Ecclesiastes 1:6). SCIENCE NOW: Winds blow in cyclones. SCIENCE THEN: Winds blew straight.

9. THE BIBLE: Blood is the source of life and health (Leviticus 17:11). SCIENCE NOW: Blood is the source of life and health. SCIENCE THEN: Sick people must be bled.

10. THE BIBLE: Ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains (2 Samuel 22:16; Jonah 2:6). SCIENCE NOW: Ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains. SCIENCE THEN: The ocean floor was flat.

11. THE BIBLE: Ocean contains springs (Job 38:16). SCIENCE NOW: Ocean contains springs. SCIENCE THEN: Ocean fed only by rivers and rain.

12. THE BIBLE: When dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water (Leviticus 15:13). SCIENCE NOW: When dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water. SCIENCE THEN: Hands washed in still water. (Dr. Semmelweis '1845' insisted that the doctors under his supervision wash their hands vigorously in water and chlorinated lime prior to examining their patients. Immediately, the mortality rate caused by infection among the expectant mothers fell to less than 2 percent (from 15%-20%)dying due to these infections. Despite these fantastic improvements the senior hospital staff despised Dr. Semmelweis's medical innovations and eventually fired him. Most of his medical colleagues rejected his new techniques and ridiculed his demands that they wash their hands because they could not believe infections could be caused by something invisible to the naked eye. )

Man I can go on and on, there is so much that we don't have time to go over.

Moving forward,

Hd;

New evidence such as genomics has agreed with and strengthened the evolutionary theory.

J7:

Im not even going to go much into this one other than to say no one has ever shown the genome to add any new information to it thus creating a new species or gain new attributes. What your supposing is that we can produce chinese books using the english alphabet alone. "Because of the barrier of the multi-billion DNA code, not only was it impossible for life to form by accident --it could never therafter evolve into new and different species! Each successive speciation change would require a totally new and different--but highly exacting code to be in place on the very first day of it's existence as a unique new species." Lets see what Dawkins had to say when he was asked if he could give an example of their being "an adding to the genome"

Hmmm..... Notice how he evades the question and expounds on something completely different and doesn't even answer the question?

Moving on......

Hd;

If you must believe in a literal Genesis, okay, but you are stuck with the fact that it is unsupported by science and is in conflict with the findings of science. Your only choice is to either assume that God made the world such that it appears to be old and animals appeared to have evolved, even though they were actually created recently and separately or you can accept the conflict between Genesis and science as a mystery.

J7;

I accept niether, becasue Science and the bible are 100% compatible as anyone who does an investigative study will find. The reason you cannot see it was told by Paul in 1st Cor 2:14 "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." As I mentioned before, you will see only what you want to see, you didn't come to your conclusions by sitting down, opening up Genesis 1 and take each aspect of God's word and his creation account and bring it under scientific scrutinity, you just assume much.

Hd;

Do you take that Bishop Bell's Behemoths site seriously? Funny how they gave the lengths of the brass carving but not the width. You can't tell from that site how thick that line of carving is, but it looks pretty skinny. Too bad there was a glare in the photo of the heads so it's hard to see clearly. But medieval artists, and artists in general, sometimes do contort their animal figures in order to make them fit into limiting spaces

J7;


Here again, your bias shows.


"Bishop Bell’s tomb shows the clear signs of heavy wear and tear after several centuries of shuffling feet. Skeletons of dinosaurs have been accurately reconstructed only in the last 100 years or so. Prior to this, scientists classifying these reptiles incorrectly pieced together their bones making the first artistic representations wildly inaccurate. It seems highly improbable that an artist in the 15th century accurately portrayed a creature which he had never seen. Rather, it is more likely that these renditions were all creatures which had been observed. Clearly, the only reason modern researchers would fail to identify them as dinosaurs is their antibiblical bias that humans and dinosaurs did not co-exist."

Will you explain away all the accounts like this? How about the bushmen of Zimbabwe?"

A fantastic mystery has developed over a set of cave paintings found in the Gorozomi Hills, 25 miles from Salisbury [in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe]. For the paintings include a brontosaurus-the 67 foot, 30 ton creature scientists believed became extinct millions of years before man appeared on earth.Yet the bushmen who did the paintings ruled Rhodesia from only 1500 BC until a couple of hundred years ago. And the experts agree that the bushmen always painted from life. This belief is borne out by other Gorozomi Hills cave paintings-accurate representations of the elephant, hippo, buck and giraffe.""Bushmen's Paintings Baffling to Scientists" Los Angeles Herald Examiner, January 7 1970.

when they meant to draw a Stegosaurus, they drew it.

Just as when they wanted to draw humans they accurately drew humans

when they wanted to depict a swan they did so.

Another swan

when they wanted to draw two parrots they did so.

When they drew a monky, it was a monkey

Beautifully illistruated lizards, when they wanted to depict lizards.

A deer when they wanted a deer.

and last but not least, a water buffulo when they wanted to draw a water buffulo.

With this kind of accuracy why would you assume they meant to draw any other thing other than a Stegosaurus, which is what they meant to draw.

Open your mind and stop shutting out the God of the universe. On the day of judgement God says all the wicked will have their place in the lake of fire. Hell and the lake of fire was meant for the devil and his angels not for humankind. But for all of those who reject salvation, this is what awaits. Forget all this stuff about creation vs evolution and use the moral concious God implanted in you and stop ignoring it. If you die in your sins, that's it. This is what keeps me up at night and keeps this blog going. I would rather offend you by telling you the truth than sugar coat anything to make you feel better. Don't you understand when you stand before the Lord when you die (and we will all die) you will have no excuse before him? Behold he stands and knocks at the door, will you let him in? Will you receive the salvation he gives or will you reject Him again and again?  You are being recklace and foolish with your eternity.

Thomas Edision said "we do not know one millionth of one percent about anything"

If we don't know one millionth of one percent about anything in the Universe, is it possible that God exist in the other 99% of what you don't know? YES.

Joe