Evidence for Creationism and Against Evolution

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by samwise of the shire
That's probably not enough...hold on.
Let's see I think my former post falls under the misplaced strata topic? http://www.cornerstonechurchonline.c...cedfossils.htm
Polystratic Trees, fossilized trees which extend through several layers of strata, have been found in Saint-Etienne, France and other places. For a fossil to form it must be buried quickly, otherwise it would have decomposed while waiting for the strata to slowly accumulate around it. This is an anomaly which can't be explained by the normal process of fossil formation. In some cases polystratic trees bridge a presumed evolutionary time span of millions of years. Polystratic trees are evidence that sedimentary strata were not laid down gradually over millions of years. (R. L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, Inquiry Press, Midland, MI, 1981, p. 300-301.) http://www.usi.edu/science/geology/j...mythology.html
That has a debate with a Creationist and an Evolutionist, and the former mentions it lower on the page (and yes the latter says give specifics, but I think that maybe the above quote, and URL above it would work...and don't nag me about perfect specifics please.)
Gotta go,
CHeers,
Sam.
ps. ditto on rians second post about me.

The first url leads to a site so silly that I'm surprised you would link to it

Human skulls, gold chains, and an iron pot have been found in coal. In the coal collection in the Mining Academy in Freiberg, there is a human skull composed of brown coal and manganiferous and phosphatie limonite. This skull was described by Karsten and Dechen in 1842. (Otto Stutzer, Geology of Coal, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1940, p. 271). In 1889 a Mrs S.W. Culp broke open a chunk of coal and found a 10 inch, eight-carat gold chain embedded within. ("A Necklace of a Prehistoric God", Morrisonville Times, Illinois, June 11, 1891).

Lord forbid we should question the authority of "a Mrs S. W. Culp"

the second one has a geologist totally demolishing the nonsense presented on the Creationist side.

These are supposed to be helping your cause?

[Lief Erikson]

I don't really want to get up to my throat in this topic again, particularly during one of my two vacation days. I have taken two days off of school, and have been enjoying the immensely . However, I saw your plight, RÃ*an, and would like to take some time to give some information to support the Bible's early creation stories.

Evidences for Recent Catastrophe

Desert formation of Gobi-Sahara in 4000 BC via RC dating
Early settlements in South America and eastern North America
Coalification: peat bog + limestone + ocean fossils + peat bog . . . (60 times in one spot) Full size trees found in coal reserves, intact 10m iguanadon skeletons,
Rapid mountain formations: Alps (human settlements: 4900 ft, 8000 ft), Andes (city 12,500 ft.)
Huge single lava field (Oregon, Washington, Idaho), 200K miles squared x 5000 ft deep (similar in India)
Fossil fields indicating sudden mass extinctions (measured in billions in several selected spots - Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, U.S., etc.); whale skeletons above glacial deposits, above sea level (440 ft-600 ft: North of Lake Ontario, Vermont, Montreal; formation of large sediments with terrestrial animals at foothills of Himalayas; large deposits of animals in Swialik hills of central Burma sandstone sediments; along with fossilized wood; scores of dinosaur skeletons in New Mexico and Wyoming;
Indo-European Languages spread throughout the world and originating from one place
Globa pyramid constructions

Creationist Sources:

Magnetic moment decrease over past 170 years (small change now, greater changes then)
Natural Gas fields have gas escaping at fast rate
Oil pressure of oil fields imply less than 7K to 10K years old
Average depth of topsoil is 8 inches. It takes 300-1000 years to form one inch of topsoil.
Niagara Falls: the cliffs erode at 7 feet per year. The length of the gorge is 7 miles, implying about 5 to 10 thousand years age
Mississippi River dumps 300M cubic yards of mud into the gulf every year, but delta not large. Indicates delta forming for past 4000 years.
Miss. Delta = 40ft. deep, Nile is 30-45 ft deep, Rhine 180 ft, Rhone > 300 ft, Ganges 60 feet. Ur was seaport, now 200 miles from sea.
Absence of ocean erosion on cliffs, etc.
Ocean sediments: Recent past, rate was 10x to 100x as fast as now.
Rate of coral growth implies 3500 years old.
Max age of redwoods and other trees around 4000 years to 4600 years.
Mutation age of redwoods and other trees around 4000 years to 4600 years.
Mutation load (natural tendency is for gene pool to decrease).
Human history to 3000 BC (or 2400 BC?)
Indo-European language similarities throughout world (even North and South America).
Population growth (typically, throughout history, it is exponential growth, also in Bible)

Science Writer Richard Milton

Long Earth inconsistencies:
4.6 billion year earth, but 3.8 billion year fossils.
Lava dates 465,000 years, that was less than one thousand years old. Some modern lava (hawaii, 1801) dates from 160M to 3B years old using potassium-argon dating. New Zealand (1000-year lava field [radiocarbon]) dated 465,000 years by potassium-argon. Dinosaur skeletal fossils require tens of meters of sediment (not a few millimeters).

Young Earth sources:

Uranium decay dating in atmosphere implies few hundred thousand years.
Salt in ocean from land erosion should take 100M years (if assume run-off constant).
Radiogenic (lead-produced) helium in atmosphere: 1.5M years.
Helium 4 in atmosphere: 175,000 years old.

[Lief Erikson]

Evidences for rapid change of radiocarbon:

Unbalanced RC equation permits changes in RC levels.
Large deviations in radiocarbon dates in individual ancient sites:
Tarim mummies: 4000 yr mummy and neighbor 6000 yr mummy
Jericho: nomadic hunters remain in the same spot from 10,000 BC to 4,000 BC
European cave art: unchanged between 30,000 BC and 5,000 BC.

Gobi-Sahara desert formation
Sphinx water damage at base (unlike "contemporary 4th dynasty monuments")
Sphinx: 2076-2085 BC, so how did it get so wet?
Khufu pyramic RC samples: 3809BC+or- 160, 3101BC, 3090-2855BC+or- 104,
Khafre pyramid: 3196-2723BC; Menkaure pyramid: 3076-2067BC
All of the above pyramids are now known to date after 2300 BC.
Other pyramids (compare with Babel), some significant sumberged indicating significant water depth changed through water levels not significantly altered:
6 pyramids of Aspero, Peru (3500BC-2700BC), ziggurats of Sumer, stupas of India, Shang Dynasty pyramids (1300BC-1100BC), Aztec Teotihuacan: Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon, (around 250 AD), Mayan pyramids (550AD-950AD), Peru (1900BC-1400BC), Irish burial ground Newgrange, Silbury Hill in England (2660BC), Yonaguni Monument off Japan's Ryuku Island in East China Sea (under water), 2200 ft down in water off west coast of Cuba see pyramids, road, and buildings - but water levels not substantially changed over past 10,000 years. Pyramid at Mahabalipuram sea port, under 15-21 ft of water in India.
Core steppe pyramid at core of most great Egyptian pyramids. Sumer: corners face eastwest, Egypt: sides face east-west.
Babel (apocrypha - work of Nimrod)
Similar religious significance, and similar myths (Old and New Worlds)
Sumer text (2000 BC) and (and Bible) say mountain rose out of the sea to form land.

Debate: (Independent Inventionists or Diffusionists)

Settlement of America over Bering Strait supposedly 11,500BC-11,000BC (9500BC RC date)
Monte Verdi, Chile settlement 12,700BC to 10500BC (11000BC-9000BC)
Luzia skull in Brazil matches African skulls (not Asian)
Oldest North American Indians, Clovis hunters fall b/w broad-faced Indians and narrow faced Europeans, also used European identical stone-age technology (Solutrean - France and Spain). Solutrean ended in Europe 14000BC, showed up North America full blown 11500 years ago.
Most North American Indians show origin from Siberia, but not oldest North Americans from Europe, Middle East, and Africa (Haplogroup X). (Sioux and Ojibway Indians). Evidence of Homo Erectus travel to New World (more than 1 million years ago).

Note from Lief: I found this next piece especially interesting
Myth:

Maya records indicate they came from other side of the sea, where the sun rises.
Mayans have Garden of Eden type myth.
Aztecs have Noah's flood account: Only two people, Coxcox and his wife, survived flood floating in a boat that came to rest on a mountain; Aztec inscription shows dove offering to children of Coxcox, born mute. Neighboring Mexican tribe adds details of animals and birds in boat. Tehzi replaces Coxcox, sent out raven that did not return, then dove that returned, then hummingbird that returned with a twig. Aztec: giants built pyramid of Cholula, destroyed by fire because gods angry at men.
Aztec: trace origins to goddess Cioacoati, first goddess & mother of all, brought suffering in childbirth and sin into the world, called Serpent woman and depicted with snake near her. MesoAmerica (Maya) and Egypt/Sudan have snake as symbol of wisdom. "Shipwrecked Sailor" story of Egyptian washed ashore on an island, carried by a snake to its favorite lair, told by the snake he would return into another Egyptian ship when it returned, but then no longer return because the land would be covered with water. (Atlantis type myth).

[Lief Erikson]

I can provide back-up information on some of these items, but not very much. They are notes my Dad took when he was researching a class he was going to lead on science and faith. I hope they are found interesting. There are more I have, but those really delve into the Bible and require a shift in chronology, and I hesitate from changing the subject at this point. RÃ*an, a quite good creationist site for you to get information from would be this one: http://evolution-facts.org/1 evich06b.htm

Just a little bit more I'd like to give, an especially flashy one :

Originally written in Evolution Encyclopedia Vol. 1 Chapter 6, the age of the earth, Part 2
[B]Ur of the Chaldees was a seaport several thousand years ago. Today it is almost 200 miles from the Persian Gulf. That 200 miles was filled in as delta formation by fill from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Archaeologist date the seaport of Ur at 3500 BC. Accepting it at that date the delta formed at 35 miles for every 1,000 years.

According to evolutionary theory, everything occurs at a uniform rate and the earth is billions of years old. But then 80,000 years ago, the Persian Gulf would have reached to Paris! At the same rate of delta formation, 120,000 years ago the Gulf of Mexico would have extended up through the Mississippi River-to the North Pole!

Actually, I will post a little bit more:

46-SEA OOZE- As fish and plants in the occeans die, they drop to the bottom and gradually form an ooze, or very soft mud, that is built up on the ocean floors. This occurs at the rate of about one inch [2.54 cm] every 1-5,000 years. Measuring the depth of this ooze, it is clear that the earth is quite young.

47-EROSION IN THE OCEAN-If erosion has been occuring for millions of years, why, below sea level in the oceans, do we find ragged cliffs, mountains not leveled, oceans unfiled by sediments, and continents still above sea level?

An excellent example of this is the topology of Monterrey Bay, California. It is filled with steep underwater canyons- so steep that small avalanches occur on them quite frequently. (See "Between Monterrey Tides" in National Geographic, February 1990, pp.2-43; especially note map on pp. 10-11.) If the earth were as old as the evolutionists claim, all this would long ago have been flattened out.

48-THICKNESS OF OCEAN SEDIMENTS-About 29 billion tons [26.3 billion mt] of sediment is added to the ocean each and every year. If the earth were billions of years old, the ocean floor would be covered by sediments from land measuring 60 to 100 miles [96.5 to 160.9 kim] thic k, and all the continents would be eroded away. But, instead, we find only a few thousand feet of sediment in the ocean, and no indication that the continents have eroded away even once. Calculations on the thickness of ocean sediments yield only a few thousand years on our planet.

"The thickness of unconsolidated sediments on the ocean floor is much less than was anticipated in view of the probable great age and permanence of the great ocean basins. Why this is so is an unsolved problem at the present time." -"E.L. Hamilton, "The Last Geographic Frontier: the Sea Floor," in Scientific Monthly, Vol. 85, December 1957, p.296.

The average depth of sediments on the ocean floor is only a little over 1/2 mile [.804 km]. But if the oceans were billions of years old, the rate of sediment deposit from the continents would have resulted in a minimum of 60 miles [96.6 km] of sediments on the ocean floors, and closer to 1000 miles [160.9 km].

"Stuart Nevins, an oceanographer, has calculated that there is 8.2 x 10 to the 17th tons of sediment on the ocean floors. The present sediment deposit rate of the continents is about 2.75 x 10 to the 10th tons per year. Recent data from deep sea drilling in ocean sediments indicates that sedimentation rates in the recent past were 10 to 100 times greater than they are now. IF to this is added the vast quantities of sediments dumped into the oceans at the time of the Flood, the present 1/2 mile [.804 km] sediment depth is understood.

Plate tectonics theory (see the chapter on Paleomagnetism) declares that gradually subducting plates bury themselves deep into the earth, carrying with them the sediments on top of them. But, according to that theory, this would only remove about 2.75 x 109 tons per year, or merely 1/10th of the annual new sediments being added from the continents!

The 60 miles [96.6 km] of ocean sediments needed by evolutionists for their theory are hopelessly missing

[Cirdan]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Lief Erikson
[B]

Desert formation of Gobi-Sahara in 4000 BC via RC dating

Desertification is occuring right now in the Sahara. This is proof of what?

Early settlements in South America and eastern North America

unclear point

Coalification: peat bog + limestone + ocean fossils + peat bog . . . (60 times in one spot) Full size trees found in coal reserves, intact 10m iguanadon skeletons,

This disproves the flood. Bogs are growing in the ocean during the flood? Or could it be happening over a very long period with the land subsiding periodically? And what place are you talking about?

Rapid mountain formations: Alps (human settlements: 4900 ft, 8000 ft), Andes (city 12,500 ft.)

I guess we need to tell the Tibetans they can't be living where they are now.

Huge single lava field (Oregon, Washington, Idaho), 200K miles squared x 5000 ft deep (similar in India)

Just not true.

Fossil fields indicating sudden mass extinctions (measured in billions in several selected spots - Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, U.S., etc.); whale skeletons above glacial deposits, above sea level (440 ft-600 ft: North of Lake Ontario, Vermont, Montreal; formation of large sediments with terrestrial animals at foothills of Himalayas; large deposits of animals in Swialik hills of central Burma sandstone sediments; along with fossilized wood; scores of dinosaur skeletons in New Mexico and Wyoming;

Mass extinctions are interesting. What is your point? There are fossils on the highest mountains. They didn't float up there( ie mollusks would be at the bottom of the original sea and would not float to the top of a mountain)

Indo-European Languages spread throughout the world and originating from one place

...and the other languages came from... other places and spread. If this were proof wouldn't everyone speak Hebrew?

Globa pyramid constructions

mmmm.... square and pointy

Magnetic moment decrease over past 170 years (small change now, greater changes then)

Look and the complete history of magnetic moment and no trend imerges.

Natural Gas fields have gas escaping at fast rate
Oil pressure of oil fields imply less than 7K to 10K years old

You will need to explain why this is significant.

Average depth of topsoil is 8 inches. It takes 300-1000 years to form one inch of topsoil.

One word: erosion.

Niagara Falls: the cliffs erode at 7 feet per year. The length of the gorge is 7 miles, implying about 5 to 10 thousand years age
Mississippi River dumps 300M cubic yards of mud into the gulf every year, but delta not large. Indicates delta forming for past 4000 years.

Was the gorge always the same configuration? Has the boundary of the gorge eroded at all in the last 10,000 years? What about the glaciers?

Miss. Delta = 40ft. deep, Nile is 30-45 ft deep, Rhine 180 ft, Rhone > 300 ft, Ganges 60 feet. Ur was seaport, now 200 miles from sea.

Huge lie. Mississippi delta is much, much larger than you describe here(>600 feet). Same with others. Check a better source.

Absence of ocean erosion on cliffs, etc.

Everywhere? I don't think so.

Ocean sediments: Recent past, rate was 10x to 100x as fast as now.

based on what? No one has ever shown sediments can be deposited outside depositional velocities based on size, weight, shape, and chemical properties. Only land slides, decollements, and suboceanic sloughing account for localized rapid deposits. Riverine sediments and aeolian deposits follow well defined parameters.

Rate of coral growth implies 3500 years old.

What coral? What about fossil corals? This makes no sense.

Max age of redwoods and other trees around 4000 years to 4600 years.

Yes. Some of them are pretty old.

Mutation load (natural tendency is for gene pool to decrease).

Under all circumstances? What about the Cambrian, the Triassic, the Paleocene? Many periods of both expanding and contracting diversity have been identified.

Population growth (typically, throughout history, it is exponential growth, also in Bible)

go forth and multiply exponentially?
...continued

[Cirdan]

[Cirdan]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson


Long Earth inconsistencies:
4.6 billion year earth, but 3.8 billion year fossils.

Doesn't the earth need to be there before the fossils? And it needed some time to cool and for the rudimentary forms of life to populate before fossils could develop.

Lava dates 465,000 years, that was less than one thousand years old. Some modern lava (hawaii, 1801) dates from 160M to 3B years old using potassium-argon dating. New Zealand (1000-year lava field [radiocarbon]) dated 465,000 years by potassium-argon.

Are you quoting 1801 radiometric data? These are some wild and unfounded numbers. And who tests lava with carbon dating?

Dinosaur skeletal fossils require tens of meters of sediment (not a few millimeters).

What is the point? This is just an explanation, I think, for the relative scarcity of terrestial fossils.

Uranium decay dating in atmosphere implies few hundred thousand years.

There are three different isotopes of uranium. They are:
uranium-234: half life = 244 thousand years, 0.0055% of all uranium.
uranium-235: half life = 704 million years, 0.72% of all uranium.
uranium-238: half life = 4.5 billion years, 99.28% of all uranium.

Salt in ocean from land erosion should take 100M years (if assume run-off constant).

...and assuming no loss of salt from the seas. Check into evaporite formations, seawater ivasion of sediments, subduction zone hydration, etc. The are many mechanisms for removing seawater.

Radiogenic (lead-produced) helium in atmosphere: 1.5M years.
Helium 4 in atmosphere: 175,000 years old.

Helium does escape the atmospere.

[Cirdan]

Regarding the "delta" theory, please note the actual movement of the mississippi delta in the diagram. Notice also the deltas subside after time due to de-watering of sediments and sediment loss due to coastal erosion. Also note the period covered is 5000 years. Little or no southward movement. Extrapolating sediment rates based on whether Ur was a seaport or not in very unscientific.

[Giroth]

go rian!wOot!

[Cirdan]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
46-SEA OOZE- As fish and plants in the occeans die, they drop to the bottom and gradually form an ooze, or very soft mud, that is built up on the ocean floors. This occurs at the rate of about one inch [2.54 cm] every 1-5,000 years. Measuring the depth of this ooze, it is clear that the earth is quite young.

A fascinating choice of examples. That the pelagic sediments from the deepest oceans and lithify them and you get chalk, Now remember the White Cliffs of Dover? All chalk. So now we have hundreds of feet of dehydrated "ooze". Do the math with your rate if you like. And that is just one formation.

47-EROSION IN THE OCEAN-If erosion has been occuring for millions of years, why, below sea level in the oceans, do we find ragged cliffs, mountains not leveled, oceans unfiled by sediments, and continents still above sea level?

One word: Tectonics

The earth is not a static place.

48-THICKNESS OF OCEAN SEDIMENTS-About 29 billion tons [26.3 billion mt] of sediment is added to the ocean each and every year. If the earth were billions of years old, the ocean floor would be co...(blah, blah, blah)...
Plate tectonics theory (see the chapter on Paleomagnetism) declares that gradually subducting plates bury themselves deep into the earth, carrying with them the sediments on top of them. But, according to that theory, this would only remove about 2.75 x 109 tons per year, or merely 1/10th of the annual new sediments being added from the continents!

The 60 miles [96.6 km] of ocean sediments needed by evolutionists for their theory are hopelessly missing

Where did all the sedimentary rocks come from then, eh? Again this assumes a static earth, which is clearly not the case. Plate tectonics does NOT declare that plates carry ALL the sediment down. In fact, it clearly shows the mechanism by which the sedimentary rocks on top of Mt. Everest got 30,000 feet above where they were deposited. Oceans are not permenent. The entire US midwest was once an ocean.


A bunch of quotes by individuals with more agenda than brains. Were are the actual facts? All on the evolution side of the aisle.

[samwise of the shire]

Are you trying to tell me Grey Mouser that sediment formed over those trees planted in bogs over long periods of time? Just answer my question and I'll get back to you.
Baby-K

Most animal skulls have hollows for various purposes. None of these hollows, in living things, are used to store chemicals that belch fire and smoke.

What is a Bombardier beetle? How does it protect itself? And what does it store that protection in?

Real science isn't that easy.

Actually it is. Evolution is NOT real science. Real science is PROVABLE by OBSERVATION.

Belief in a religion requires a degree of arrogance and pride (that you are right and the rest of the world is wrong and will perish because of that), but Hovind is an extremist even in this regard.

Evolution is not provable...you cannot go back through time to witness Evolution...therefore, if it is not provable and you cannot witness it with your own two eyes, you have to BELIEVE it took place, and belief is the essence of FAITH, and FAITH is the center of RELEGION. Therefore Evolution is a RELEGION, and not science. And according to evolution we DO perish when we die...ALL of us. At least with Christianity there's a chance.
I think that's enough...moving on.

...and the other languages came from... other places and spread. If this were proof wouldn't everyone speak Hebrew?

Not nessecarily.
People get tired of each other, they kill each other, families move to different locations, So let's say a family moved to Iceland. Their diet changes, and so their jaws begin to change, because of that they might have to change a few words in their language because their jaws are larger. As things go on, their children have to chew touch meat for survival and their jaws become stronger, and then they have to change MORE words. This can happen in a few generations. That's not what I believe, but it's not really provable at this time...so
Oh one more thing. Cirdan you mentioned that the whole of the US was under water...I wonder how that could have happened. Perhaps a WORLD WIDE FLOOD would explain that perplexing question?
Cheers,
Sam.
ps. DON'T GANG UP ON ME OR LEIF PLEASE...WE ARE ONLY 2 IN A GROUP OF WHAT...6!?

[HOBBIT]

I am not getting into this much but I can't sit by and let Samwise's post go by.
.

Evolution is NOT real science

Excuse me while I go laugh my arse off at the most funny and most ignorant thing said so far in this topic.

And according to evolution we DO perish when we die...ALL of us. At least with Christianity there's a chance.

Do you know what evolution is?!!
The theory of evolution says NOTHING WHATSOEVER about what happens after death. AND Chrisitianity is no more special than any other religion - you just BELIEVE that Christianity is more plausible.

Maybe you should look up what evolution is?

You and Lief have just posted a bunch of Creationist lies, but thats ok.

A lot of creationists use the Grand Canyon as an example of a world wide flood - that makes no sense. It could not have been caused by a great flood - only by being carved by the river rushing through it after millions of years.

Continents being underwater can easily be explained - glaciers and ice melting so the sea level rises, shifting continents (ever hear of Pangea?).

The reason most early civilizations have flood myths is because they all lived on the banks of big rivers which often flooded.

[IronParrot]

Yawn... somebody call me when the creationists begin to pose a real challenge.

[Coney]

Originally posted by IronParrot
Yawn... somebody call me when the creationists begin to pose a real challenge.

*nods*

Or when those that believe in evolution can give concrete proof that turns the theory to fact.

Rian, sorry but I think you are flogging a dead horse here........until science or God deem otherwise, everyone is just working on (or arguing about) their own belief. :/

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by samwise of the shire
Are you trying to tell me Grey Mouser that sediment formed over those trees planted in bogs over long periods of time? Just answer my question and I'll get back to you.

No

As for Malone's "problem" with the "thousands of years" for the tree to remain upright for "slow accumulation" to occur, it is a non-problem - he is simply interpolating the average depositional rates for an entire formation down to the scale of metres. This is not the correct way to do it, because individual beds can be deposited rapidly (say, sands and mud during a levee breach), and then little deposition can occur for a long time (e.g., a soil horizon), as is observed in modern river floodplain environments where trees commonly occur. In short, he is assuming conventional geologists would interpret the occurrence the simple way he has interpolated - they do not.

From the website previously referred to...and for that matter, I've seen living trees almost buried by mud, sand and dirt, in many different locations- what's so strange about that?

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by samwise of the shire
Evolution is NOT real science. Real science is PROVABLE by OBSERVATION. Evolution is not provable...you cannot go back through time to witness Evolution...therefore, if it is not provable and you cannot witness it with your own two eyes, you have to BELIEVE it took place, and belief is the essence of FAITH, and FAITH is the center of RELEGION. Therefore Evolution is a RELEGION, and not science.

Science isn't provable by only observation. You saying that has Einstein rolling in his grave at this moment. I guess E-mc2 isn't science then. Creationism is based on PURE belief. Nothing more. I can look at the individual pieces - a single fossil, a single event - and say "everything was created". It's when you look at them on the time line that things fall into place.

And the young earth theory is ridiculous. The earth hasn't changed that much since written records for thousands of years. Now you're telling me that in the past things happened overnight and now just slowed down to a crawl. Also - why isn't "god" creating any new creatures? Did he suddenly go on strike?

[GrayMouser]

Lief, glad to see someone jumping in to help carry the load for Rian, but I don't think the scattershot approach of your first two posts is a particularly useful way to discuss these issues. In some of your comments I had no idea what you were talking about.

The third one is better; pick one or two subjects and back them up.

Since you post a lot about ancient civilisations, and since your dates for the Flood all seem to cluster around 2500 BC I'm wondering about a slight problem.

This quote from Answers in Genesis, one of the main YEC organisations:

It is relatively easy to calculate the growth rate needed to get today’s population from Noah’s three sons and their wives, after the Flood. With the Flood at about 4,500 years ago, it needs less than 0.5% per year growth.6 That’s not very much.

Of course, population growth has not been constant. There is reasonably good evidence that growth has been slow at times—such as in the Middle Ages in Europe. However, data from the Bible (Genesis 10,11) shows that the population grew quite quickly in the years immediately after the Flood. Shem had five sons, Ham had four, and Japheth had seven. If we assume that they had the same number of daughters, then they averaged 10.7 children per couple. In the next generation, Shem had 14 grandsons, Ham, 28 and Japheth, 23, or 130 children in total. That is an average of 8.1 per couple. These figures are consisent with God’s command to ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ (Genesis 9:1).

Let us take the average of all births in the first two post-Flood generations as 8.53 children per couple. The average age at which the first son was born in the seven post-Flood generations in Shem’s line ranged from 35 to 29 years (Genesis 11:10–24), with an average of 31 years,7 so a generation time of 40 years is reasonable. Hence, just four generations after the Flood would see a total population of over 3,000 people (remembering that the longevity of people was such that Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth, etc., were still alive at that time).8 This represents a population growth rate of 3.7% per year, or a doubling time of about 19 years.9

This assumes that nobody dies, of course, but that's a minor quibble

So, 160 years after the Flood , about 2350BC, we have a population of 3000 people.

The Tower of Babel happens around this time, and the population is scattered into different groups, the biggest of which would be well under a thousand people.

So, one of these groups of several hundred people wanders down to Egypt and promptly builds all the pyramids and the Sphinx.

All of the above pyramids are now known to date after 2300 BC.

(Well, actual Egyptologists date the step pyramid to 2750 BC and the Great Pyramid to 2600BC, but that's neither here nor there.)

Even with a doubling rate of 19 years (which assumes nobody dies before reproducing, i.e. requires us to assume that a Bronze Age people populating a new land would have a zero mortality rate)

Assuming that 800 people went to Egypt and they all stayed there (no-one moved out to populate the rest of Africa or Arabia)

After 100 years, using ridiculously optimistic growth rates, you still get a population of under 30,000 - and half of them will be children; the adults would be pretty busy trying to feed all those new mouths. Not much manpower available for moving a couple of million limestone blocks.

[GrayMouser]

What is a Bombardier beetle? How does it protect itself? And what does it store that protection in?

Something that does not belch fire and smoke.

The "exploding" Bombardier beetle story was exploded years ago- major YEC sites have long since dropped it from their lists.

Not nessecarily.
People get tired of each other, they kill each other, families move to different locations, So let's say a family moved to Iceland. Their diet changes, and so their jaws begin to change, because of that they might have to change a few words in their language because their jaws are larger. As things go on, their children have to chew touch meat for survival and their jaws become stronger, and then they have to change MORE words. This can happen in a few generations. That's not what I believe, but it's not really provable at this time...so

Well, that's certainly a, shall we say... unique explanation of language origins.

[Jonathan]

Not nessecarily.
People get tired of each other, they kill each other, families move to different locations, So let's say a family moved to Iceland. Their diet changes, and so their jaws begin to change, because of that they might have to change a few words in their language because their jaws are larger. As things go on, their children have to chew touch meat for survival and their jaws become stronger, and then they have to change MORE words. This can happen in a few generations. That's not what I believe, but it's not really provable at this time...so

Languages don't evolve that way.

The people in Finland generally have stronger and larger jaws than other people. That's because of their language with complicated consonants.
It's the Finnish language that has made the Finns' jaws larger. It's not their jaws that've created the language.

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by GrayMouser


Not much manpower available for moving a couple of million limestone blocks.

Aaah! Granite blocks, with limestone facing.