Darwinian Doubts

NOTE: Don't forget; since evolution is just the imagination of scientists, the elephants of Thailand, India and Africa are different.

Hey, why are you asking so many questions about my relatively straightforward account?

By your description, I would have said that its traces would have decayed within decades, if not years. Why do you think Michael Denton "rightly" points out what he pointed out?

To the best of my knowledge, God is not in the business of writing or selling books.

I am not an atheist; nonetheless my own beliefs differ in some areas from what you are probably used to.

Near as I can tell, there are something like four separate kinds of miracles in the bible:

There are stories such as the flood or of the long day of Joshua and the meteorite storm which accompanied it which amount to descriptions of physical events beyond our own experience.

There are what I would call "just-so stories", i.e. things like the virgin birth or changing water to wine which might be true stories and might as easily be things added in by later writers, we have no way of knowing. The thing to keep in mind regarding all such stories is that they have absolutely no bearing on the message which Christ brought to this Earth or on whether or not that message rings true to the human spirit.

There are paranormal things, such as visions, and prophecy. These kinds of things were common in the ancient world apparently; they occur here and there in our ages, but it's very rare. Joan of Arc might be the last such case which was well-documented.

There is at least one paranormal thing with some sort of a logical nexus involved, i.e. the story of Paul and his vision, and of Ananias. These two guys did not know eachother, and they meet in some place in which each has been instructed to meet the other in visions. Either this entire story is fiction, which strikes me as less than one chance in a thousand given the historical accuracy of the bible in telling historical tales, or it has to be real.

I believe our physical world and the world of spirit which God presides over are orthoganal to eachother, and that for whatever reason God does not intervene physically in our world. The good news is that we spend 60 - 80 years here, and the rest of time there. I'd not want it the other way around.

The most major thing to be found in the new testament is the basic message of morality and of man's relationship to God which Christ brought to the Earth, which is the foundation of Christianity. This message absolutely rings true with the human spirit and the religion has endured for 2000 years, more than twice as long as any empire ever lasted, for that reason.

The message of Islam by way of contrast does not ring true with the human spirit. A muslim has to be in substantial violation of the basic tenets of his religion in order to be a decent person.

I think Denton's more of an expert on that sort of thing than you or I are. The fact that he describes the situation the way he does indicates that such traces would still be there.

Maybe so, but as far as this thread is concerned, you have not yet established that Denton has any expertise on this issue at all. More importantly, you have not established that his assertions are based on any expertise he might have. As I understand Brandon's posts, he has asked you several times for links that might support these claims. You have not been forthcoming.

GUNGA WROTE

This is the only worldwide "calamity" that has not left a single trace in stratigraphy. If there has been such a flood as the most recent event in a worldwide series of events. why doesnt it show up as he most surficial deposits in say Iowa, or Italy, or Australia, Canada. China Russsia. There are deposits of glacial moraines that cover about 1/6 of europeand most of Canada butall these are deposits that are terrestrial rather than marine.
Try to find some evidence. Bill Ryans book showed that there was a local flooding event around the Caspian during the late Neolithic, hardly a "worldwide event".

Thats untrue. Isotopic data shows that the organic seds of the Isua Formation are superaccumulated with C12 v C13. That , plus the presence of long chained C's gives indirect suggestions of life.
Gungs, some science is often unavailable to many people who are untrained in the nuance. The protopaleo of the Isua is not an argument that can be understood by "download". Its good that youve got some authority that you wish to follow , but, just as the Mathemeticians who post that they are devout Creationists , I say So What? Authority in one discipline does not confer any credibility in another. Just because Stephen Hawking sez it ,or Fred Hoyle, I say,
"these scientists just havent availed themselves of recent findings" as far as Hoyle, were he alive, I think hed have revised his thinking, he was of another age entirely.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moon-dust.html

This pretty much puts to rest that silly argument.

Gunga doesnt believe talkorigins parados. He dug up some site which claimed "it debunked talkorigins" when in actuallity they jsut pointed out biases no actually debunking.

Just for points of equality,talk origins is "pop" Evolution just as Answers in Genesis is "pop" creationism. Neither are very well peered. Ive caught a number of errors in data that appear in in T/O and major ones in AIG.
The contributors write and have their work quickly scanned for content and the ed board, such as there is, often misses some goofups in data.
Mostly though, T/O is fairly good and , at least, it tries to be as objective as someones grant allows them. Many times T/O preents some post docs first works and , just like a thesis, the committeee isnt responsible for the data, they often just accept it/

Just a mnor disclaimer from one whose busted chops on T/O about peer review because I had some students write papers from data on T/O and it was crappy data that wouldnt have made it past line 1 editing in GSA.

That one's real simple.

No honest person who knew what he was talking about would cite talk.origins for anything.

On the subject of dust on the earth and moon. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moon-dust.html

As I understand his posts, he basically lacks any real qualifications to be making such arguments and is trying to substitute attitude for the lack of knowledge.

Denton does not cite anything on the question of "dawn rocks" and so I assume he believes this one to be common knowledge, at least amongst people who study such things.

One other site I notice which discusses the topic without exclusive reference to Denton is this:

http://www.thedarwinpapers.com/oldsite/Number8/Darwin8.htm



which, again, seems to indicate that the thing about signs of a "primordial soup" being conspicuously missing in ancient rock formations is fairly well known.

Just a couple of quick questions Gungasnake. Why is it that you would expect deposits to still exist on rocks that have undergone billions of years of weathering? Wouldn't it make sense that whatever deposits may have been there would have long ago worn away?

One, they haven't undergone "billions of years of weathering".

Two, when you take a pick axe and dig into rocks, what you see has not been weathered, i.e. weathering takes place only on the surface.

Three, why would you expect the bituminous elements of coal to still be in the coal after "billions (or even hundreds of millions) of years"? Shouldn't such elements have "weathered away" leaving only ancient wood?

The rocks in Greenland that you are talking about have lain exposed to the weather for a very long time Gunga. Probably not for billions of years but almost certainly long enough for any "carbonaceous deposits" to be worn away.

There is also the point that abiogenesis may have occurred anywhere on the planet. Not finding evidence for it on a small group of rocks in one certain area proves nothing.

You're calling a number of very capable scientists idiots. What reason is there for me to take your word on something like that?

What we call "weathering or climate change" is described in the following link.
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The Big Chill
by Kirk A. Maasch

During the past billion years, the Earth's climate has fluctuated between warm periods - sometimes even completely ice-free - and cold periods, when glaciers scoured the continents. The cold periods - or ice ages - are times when the entire Earth experiences notably colder climatic conditions. During an ice age, the polar regions are cold, there are large differences in temperature from the equator to the pole, and large, continental-size glaciers can cover enormous regions of the earth.

Ever since the Pre-Cambrian (600 million years ago), ice ages have occurred at widely spaced intervals of geologic time - approximately 200 million years - lasting for millions, or even tens of millions of years. For the Cenozoic period, which began about 70 million years ago and continues today, evidence derived from marine sediments provide a detailed, and fairly continuous, record for climate change. This record indicates decreasing deep-water temperature, along with the build-up of continental ice sheets. Much of this deep-water cooling occurred in three major steps about 36, 15 and 3 million years ago - the most recent of which continues today. During the present ice age, glaciers have advanced and retreated over 20 times, often blanketing North America with ice. Our climate today is actually a warm interval between these many periods of glaciation. The most recent period of glaciation, which many people think of as the "Ice Age", was at its height approximately 20,000 years ago.

Although the exact causes for ice ages, and the glacial cycles within them, have not been proven, they are most likely the result of a complicated dynamic interaction between such things as solar output, distance of the Earth from the sun, position and height of the continents, ocean circulation, and the composition of the atmosphere.


Climatic Cooling from 60 million years ago to present day
Between 52 and 57 million years ago, the Earth was relatively warm. Tropical conditions actually extended all the way into the mid-latitudes (around northern Spain or the central United States for example), polar regions experienced temperate climates, and the difference in temperature between the equator and pole was much smaller than it is today. Indeed it was so warm that trees grew in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and alligators lived in Ellesmere Island at 78 degrees North.

But this warm period, called the Eocene, was followed by a long cooling trend. Between 52 and 36 million years ago, ice caps developed in East Antarctica, reaching down to sea level in some places. Close to Antarctica, the temperature of the water near the surface dropped to between 5 and 8 degrees Celsius. Between 36 and 20 million years ago the earth experienced the first of three major cooling steps. At this time a continental-scale temperate ice sheet emerged in East Antarctica. Meanwhile, in North America, the mean annual air temperature dropped by approximately 12 degrees Celsius.

Between 20 and 16 million years ago, there was a brief respite from the big chill, but this was followed by a second major cooling period so intense that by 7 million years ago southeastern Greenland was completely covered with glaciers, and by 5-6 million years ago, the glaciers were creeping into Scandinavia and the northern Pacific region. The Earth was once more released from the grip of the big chill between 5 and 3 million years ago, when the sea was much warmer around North America and the Antarctic than it is today. Warm-weather plants grew in Northern Europe where today they cannot survive, and trees grew in Iceland, Greenland, and Canada as far north as 82 degrees North.

We are still in the midst of the third major cooling period that began around 3 million years ago, and its effect can be seen around the world, perhaps even in the development of our own species. Around 2 and a half million years ago, tundra-like conditions took over north-central Europe. Soon thereafter, the once-humid environment of Central China was replaced by harsh continental steppe. And in sub-Saharan Africa, arid and open grasslands expanded, replacing more wooded, wetter environments. Many paleontologists believe that this environmental change is linked to the evolution of humankind.


Possible Explanations for the Past 60 Million Years of Cooling
Climate change on ultra-long time scales (tens of millions of years) are more than likely connected to plate tectonics. Plate motions lead to cycles of ocean basin growth and destruction, known as Wilson cycles, involving continental rifting, seafloor-spreading, subduction, and collision. Several explanations of the latest cooling trend that involve a climate-tectonic connection are summarized below.


Geographic Distribution and Size of Continents
Through the course of a Wilson cycle continents collide and split apart, mountains are uplifted and eroded, and ocean basins open and close. The re-distribution and changing size and elevation of continental land masses may have caused climate change on long time scales. Computer climate models have shown that the climate is very sensitive to changing geography. It is unlikely, however, that these large variations in the Earth's geography were the primary cause of the latest long-term cooling trend as they fail to decrease temperatures on a global scale.

Likewise, changing topography cannot, by itself, explain this cooling trend. Computer model experiments performed to test the climate's sensitivity to mountains and high plateaus show that plateau uplift in Tibet and western North America has a small effect on global temperature but cannot explain the magnitude of the cooling trend. Plateau uplift does, however, have a significant impact on climate, including the diversion of North Hemisphere westerly winds and intensification of monsoonal circulation.


Geometry of Ocean Basins
Another theory explaining these changes in climate involves the opening and closing of gateways for the flow of ocean currents. This theory suggests that the redistribution of heat on the planet by changing ocean circulation can isolate polar regions, cause the growth of ice sheets and sea ice, and increase temperature differences between the equator and the poles.

Ocean modeling experiments suggest that the ocean could not have carried enough heat to the poles to maintain the early warm climates. But atmospheric climate modeling experiments show that even if the ocean did transport enough heat up to the coast of Antarctica to maintain sea surface temperatures at 10 to 15 degrees Celsius, the interior conditions would still be much colder - and this is contrary to the geologic record. It is possible, however, that changes in heat transport caused by variations in ocean gateways may have played a significant role in cooling trends over the last 60 million years, and, in particular, may help explain some of the relatively sudden cooling events.


Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
Changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a strong candidate to explain the overall pattern of climatic change. Carbon dioxide influences the mean global temperature through the greenhouse effect. The globally averaged surface temperature for the Earth is approximately 15 degrees Celsius, and this is due largely to the greenhouse effect. Solar radiation entering earth's atmosphere is predominantly short wave, while heat radiated from the Earth's surface is long wave. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and other trace gases in the Earth's atmosphere absorb this long wave radiation. Because the Earth does not allow this long wave radiation to leave, the solar energy is trapped and the net effect is to warm the Earth. If not for the presence of an atmosphere, the surface temperature on earth would be well below the freezing point of water.

Through a million year period, the average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is affected by four fluxes: flux of carbon due to (1) metamorphic degassing, (2) weathering of organic carbon, (3) weathering of silicates, (4) burial of organic carbon. Degassing reactions associated with volcanic activity and the combining of organic carbon with oxygen release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Conversely, the burial of organic matter removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Plate collisions disrupt these carbon fluxes in a variety of ways, some tending to elevate and some tending to lower the atmospheric carbon dioxide level. It has been suggested that the Eocene, the early warm trend 55 million years ago, was caused by elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide and that a subsequent decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide led to the cooling trend over the past 52 million years. One mechanism proposed as a cause of this decrease in carbon dioxide is that mountain uplift lead to enhanced weathering of silicate rocks, and thus removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In addition, the collision of India and Asia led to the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas. While topography may not be enough to explain the cooling trends, another mechanism may account for changing climate. The uplift may have caused both an increase in the global rate of chemical erosion, as well as erode fresh minerals that are rapidly transported to lower elevations, which are warmer and moister and allow chemical weathering to happen more efficiently. Through these mechanisms, then, it has been hypothesized that the tectonically driven uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas is the prime cause of the post-Eocene cooling trend.

Kirk A. Maasch is a professor at the University of Maine, in the Department of Geological Sciences.

You have no reason to believe me if that's your choice.

Do you have anything to say about the second part of my post;



I would also add that it disproves nothing.