The Biblical Flood and its Nature

@farmerman,

Quote:

ANY SPECIES SO FINELY ADAPTED TO A SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENT< IS ALSO HELD PRISONER BY IT

I wonder if this is why some species become "living fossils"; the environment they are finely adapted to is large and stable. Maybe their longevity has little to do with their genetics and more to do with the stability of their niche.

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@rosborne979,

The large fossil "lobe finned fish" like the coelecanth were made up of several species in the genus LATEMERIA. These fish were all deep pelagic fish that were apparently confined to the lee sides of opening continental masses. So where there exist deep waters in a shelf that is defined by acontinental spreading center we would find these fish. Several spwecies went extinct when their species were put upside a dynamic center of seafloor spreading and became unable to evolve fast enough in turbulent water environmnetas. While the Only living species LAtimeria chalumnidae (not sure of te species name) was dicovered in deep waters near the East African coasts in quiet deeps that are up to 1000 m. The fish has the ability to vary its vertical range for that entire range and is adapted to the sessile lifestyle (sans alcoholic beverages). It is indeed trapped by its environment .

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@farmerman,

Quote:

2The "unambiguous lack of intermediate fossils" is pure bullshit and all you Cretinists are well aware of it. The fossil record is loaded with "intermediate forms" that you know in your hearts if you were to acknowledge , youre worldview would crumble.

On that one, I'm simply willing to take the experts' words, while you and many evolutionites are not. E.G.

Quote:

"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of 'seeing'
evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the
most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record.
Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them ..."

David B. Kitts, PhD (Zoology)
Head Curator, Dept of Geology, Stoval Museum
Evolution, vol 28, Sep 1974, p 467

"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps;
the fossils are missing in all the important places."

Francis Hitching
The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong
Penguin Books, 1982, p.19

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major
transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our
imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been
a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Is a new general theory of evolution emerging?"
Paleobiology, vol 6, January 1980, p. 127

"...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when
they say there are no transitional fossils ... I will lay it on the line,
there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight
argument."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist,
British Museum of Natural History, London
As quoted by: L. D. Sunderland
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 89

"We do not have any available fossil group which can categorically be
claimed to be the ancestor of any other group. We do not have in the fossil
record any specific point of divergence of one life form for another, and
generally each of the major life groups has retained its fundamental
structural and physiological characteristics throughout its life history
and has been conservative in habitat."

G. S. Carter, Professor & author
Fellow of Corpus Christi College
Cambridge, England
Structure and Habit in Vertebrate Evolution
University of Washington Press, 1967

"The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent with
gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during
their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the
same as when they disappear ... 2. Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a
species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its
ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
Natural History, 86(5):13, 1977

"But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed,
why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the
earth?" (p. 206)

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely
graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest
objection which can be urged against my theory (of evolution)." (p. 292)

Charles Robert Darwin
The Origin of Species, 1st edition reprint
Avenel Books, 1979

"Darwin... was embarrassed by the fossil record... we are now about
120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been
greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the
situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still
surprisingly jerky and, ironically, ... some of the classic cases of
Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse
in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more
detailed information."

David M. Raup, Curator of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
"Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology"
Field Museum of Natural History
Vol. 50, No. 1, (Jan, 1979), p. 25

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological
exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely
more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been
discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are
filled with over 100-million fossils of 250,000 different species. The
availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit
objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What
is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major
groups of organisms have been growing even wide and more undeniable. They
can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection
of the fossil record."

Luther D. Sunderland (Creationist)
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems,
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 9

"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more
than 40 years have completely failed. ... The fossil material is now so
complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack
of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of
material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."

Prof N. Heribert Nilsson
Lund University, Sweden
Famous botanist and evolutionist
As quoted in: The Earth Before Man, p. 51

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

That might explain the coelacanth.

For years, at least while i was in university, and when my sister was a biology major in university, people described the human being as a specialist species. I have never agreed with that assessment. We have forward facing eyes, as do predators, but we have a range of peripheral vision equivalent to that of prey species, and although we have forward facing eyes, we have a supple neck which allows members of the species to quickly survey their surroundings. We have the depth perception which allows predators to pursue and take down prey, but which also allows our simian cousins to move confidently in tree tops. We have color vision, which is important to herbivores and fructivores. The strongest argument for specialization comes from our hands, but it is only the opposable thumb which is a candidate for that, as other species use their "hands" to manipulate their environments, and birds use their beaks quite adroitly in nest-building, while octopi in the Mediterranean build "houses" on the sea floor.

I can only conclude that the adaptability and success of the hominids is a product of being generalists in relation to their interaction with their environments, and not specialists.

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Gunga Dim is again quoting his quote mining source at Free Republic. It is really hilarious to see him going to the Freepers for arguments against evolution. Politically, the creationist live happily cheek-by-jowl with the reactionaries.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

SO do you accept that rapid speciation (not saltation as you seem to try to befuddle us with) does occur?

No, and there is a difference between saltation and speciation...

I try to make a dividing line or wall of sorts between things which are knowable and things which you'd need a time machine to knoiw for sure, i.e. between facts and theories.

I view the non-workability of evolution (any version) as a fact and knowable, and this is from our present understanding of mathematics, probability, genetics and the like.

How the saltations of past ages actually worked are less knowable. I could offer theories and reasons for thinking that my own versions of such theories are likely better than what you've read, but that would be about it.

Nobody else has anything better at present and most of what you read is much worse. Ever see that magazine cover talking about the Cambrian explosion as the "Big Bang of Evolution" (kind of like the big orgy of chastity or some such) as if the word 'oxymoroni' was not part of their vocabulary?

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

I view the non-workability of evolution (any version) as a fact and knowable, and this is from our present understanding of mathematics, probability, genetics and the like.

I always get a kick out of that one from gunga.

Our present understanding of mathematics and probability have little to do with what gunga uses for his arguments.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

I view the non-workability of evolution (any version) as a fact and knowable, and this is from our present understanding of mathematics, probability, genetics and the like.

This is an incorrect assumption. Everything you draw from that assumption will be incorrect. Garbage in, garbage out.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

I view the non-workability of evolution (any version) as a fact and knowable, and this is from our present understanding of mathematics, probability, genetics and the like. How clever of you. Your very understanding of genetics isnt quite up to snuff when you argue against the solid evidence within the genome

How the saltations of past ages actually worked are less knowable. I could offer theories and reasons for thinking that my own versions of such theories are likely better than what you've read, but that would be about it. Yet your own "explanation" of punctuated Equilibrium is merely Goldsteins saltation theory and NOT PE. Thats a fact Jack. You are either quite confused or else you have been hard trying to befuddle the audience with verbal fraud

Nobody else has anything better at present and most of what you read is much worse. Ever see that magazine cover talking about the Cambrian explosion as the "Big Bang of Evolution" (kind of like the big orgy of chastity or some such) as if the word 'oxymoroni' was not part of their vocabulary?
Quote:
MAgazine covers like Discover, are merely pop science where the actual details are elimanated for the story. The actual length of time for the Cambrian explosion was a few tens of millions of years. Plenty of time to develop enough "hard parts that will fossilize. All the CAmbrian Explosion was , wass a party of fossilizationof animals with hard parts. ALl the plants were already there, and several major orders of animals didnt even develop until later in tbe Ordovician and SIlurian. So arent you willing to consider that lifes emergence was actually over 200 million years long

I get a kick out of how you like to adapt OEC terms and ID terms and then quickly assure your audience that , in your studied opinion, the earth is less than 100000 years old. How do you even keep your feet on the ground?

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@gungasnake,

Your frequent quote mining of several scientists like Dave RAup , Hitchins, Gould, etc are shamelessly pulled out of context and arent even close to the way you dsiplay them.
For example, your comments from Gould are quite salient because Gould was pimping his Punctuated Equilibrium when he produced that quote. He and Eldrege didnt admit that their were universal discontinuitioes in the foissil record , only special ones ferom which they developed PE. Its kind of interesting that , with Gould's last book " The Structure of Evolutionary Theory he devotes tens of concerned and a few angry pages at the duplicity of Creationists and their "quoting his and Eldredge's writings out of context" to amke it appear that there were NO intermeidate fossils, when , in his own words (2002, p 960-974) Gould reminds us that the TExas Texbook Hearings of 1984 was the birth place and time of the YEC (GABLER argument) that "no intermediate forms are in the fossil record". Gould and Eldredge testified how that was entirely misquoted and was a fraudulent statement. The results of which were the sound defeat of the Texas Creationist Texbook laws. Creationism was found to be full of **** and made up of fraudulent statements. This was all adjudicated and is on record, I do tire of you bringing it up every few months as if you have any idea of what you speak.

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On a historical note: nearly all cultures have a flood myth: Atlantis etc

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@farmerman,

Quote:

"...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when
they say there are no transitional fossils ... I will lay it on the line,
there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight
argument."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist,
British Museum of Natural History, London
As quoted by: L. D. Sunderland
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 89

I'd be curious as to how anybody could even think about claiming I was reversing the sense of that one by quoting out of context...

Other than that as I've noted, Gould was playing a double game in which the quotes about missing intermediates came out while he was making the case against gradualsm and advocating PE and then, later with the battle to take the dead hand of Darwinism off of his own profession of palaeontology won, he was crying that creationists were misquoting him.

In real life, again as I have mentioned, there is a stunningly simple way to avoid being quoted as having said something"

DON'T SAY IT!!

1 Reply

@Fountofwisdom,

Bullshit . . . prove it.

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@Fountofwisdom,

There's a reason for that.

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At least the alleged "fount of wisdom" has brought the discussion back to the topic, and, at least temporarily, saves us from Gunga Dim's uniformed rambling attacks on a theory of evolution, which of course, has nothing to do with the bullshit flood story he has tried to peddle.

But FoW has several problems. The first, and most obvious is the term used--myth; not truth, not evidence, but myth. The next problems would be in the "proof" aspect. I've seen the web sites which list flood stories. They list, at the most, several dozens. There are, however, at the least, several hundred distinct cultures throughout history. So the incidence and prevalence of flood stories is not significant. Using those stories to allege evidence of a world wide flood is the equivalent of using a "where there's smoke, there's fire" argument, when it hasn't even been established that there is smoke, never mind fire. Another of the proof problems is that many of these flood stories (this is notable among the Amerindians) are not actually flood stories--they are cosmogonies which allege land to have arisen from the sea. They are not stories of dry land being inundated. Finally, of course, even if it could be shown (as no one has yet ever done) that flood stories are sufficiently common to be statistically significant, there is no good reason to assume that all the stories refer to the same flood, or to a world-wide flood.

Poor marks to FoW for introducing this red herring.

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@gungasnake,

You are not quoting Gould, you are quoting someone who is paraphrasing what he thinks Gould said in a soundbyte. Ive posted the very argumentas shown in Goulds last book. Why go around the horn to quote miners when the original source is available to you (Invest some time in visiting the SJ Gould memorial website.
PS , Again, I have no idea who this Sunderland is. He quotes PAtterson and Im supposed to believe the quote with no context. WHY ARE YOU AFRAID TO POST THE PARAGRAPHS LEADING UP TO AND FOLLOWING YOUR "QUOTES".

Dont be pathetic, try point by point debate. Im not going to wste time with these cherry picked quotes that Im sure you havent vetted (or if you have youre being furtive in trying to defraud.

GOULD never abandoned PE. He was accurately annoyed at the CREATIONISTS who tried to misrepresent almost everything he evidenced.Your attempt at justifying his position is laughable and is rather a series of untruths.

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I was taught as part of geology that all cultures have flood Myths: I'm not an expert in this field: the Romans ,Greeks and Vikings certainly did.Plus Atalntis, and Australian aboriginees.
The point is that there may have been an actual flood in recent (by geological times) I.e. the last 10,000 years or so.
If you except folk tales represent some form of history, then this would be so. I thought I was stating a fact: there are certainly a lot of tales about flood.

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Setanta you are obviously not an academic: I merely pointed out there were a lot of flood myths: I made no logical assertions from this fact.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

There's a reason for that.

There is NO EVIDENCE< NOWHERE. of a worldwide flood. NOPLACE. The evidence is quite clear that some places were inundated beneath shallow seas, some areas were covered by rivers and lakes, some areas were covered by ice. BUT NOWHERE, did this occur all at once. When some ancients beliefs in the scope of his own world were limited by how far a man could walk in a day, we would have legends that could be used for fireside lessons. A flood mythy has often grown from the Indo European stories of the CAspian or even, from genetic memory, the MEditerranean desert inundation some 5 or 6 my BP. However , all the time, similar age people were living high and dry else where because men seemed to appear at roughly the same times and were limited by their migration speeds.

NO FLOODS OF ANY LARGE CONSEQIUENCE< NOT A DAMN BIT OF EVIDENCE IN THE GEOLOGIC RECORD. BELIEVE ME , I GIVE CLIENTS ADVICE AS TO WHERE TO DRILL , and I havent been wrong about not finding any worldwide flood horizons. (If I did, Id be laughed out of the Geological SOciety of AMerica and AGU).

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@Fountofwisdom,

Quote:

Setanta you are obviously not an academic:

More like an idiot; I have the shitbird on ignore, suggest you do likewise.

1 Reply

The Biblical Flood and its Nature

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