Re: Young Earth Evidence: was Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
- Original Message - From: Harry Veeder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 1:55 AM Subject: Re: Young Earth Evidence: was Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005 The age of the Earth debate began with much shorter time scales. Although Niagara Falls was not featured in the initial debate I think it is good to consider because the history of the falls is only about twice as old as biblical creation. The river flows over an escapement with harder rock on top and a softer rock underneath. The water erodes the softer rock collapsing the top rock, so the edge of the falls gradually moves up stream. Geologists estimate the falls started 7 miles downstream, 12,000 years ago. I suspect that the estimate is based on an assumption that the flow rate over the falls has been historically equal to what is is now. If the flow rate was higher, then the erosion rate would be faster. Furthermore, erosion rates are not proportional to flow rates. To figure erosion rates to be proportional to the square of the flow rate is probably a more accurate assessment. With this proportionality, erosion rates based on a continuous average flow rate would be way less than what it would be with alternating periods of extreme drought and extreme flood. High flood rates beyond our paltry 250 yr historical records of observation for Niagra could be a major factor in over estimating the required time. Jeff
Re: Young Earth Evidence: was Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
revtec at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Harry Veeder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 1:55 AM Subject: Re: Young Earth Evidence: was Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005 The age of the Earth debate began with much shorter time scales. Although Niagara Falls was not featured in the initial debate I think it is good to consider because the history of the falls is only about twice as old as biblical creation. The river flows over an escapement with harder rock on top and a softer rock underneath. The water erodes the softer rock collapsing the top rock, so the edge of the falls gradually moves up stream. Geologists estimate the falls started 7 miles downstream, 12,000 years ago. I suspect that the estimate is based on an assumption that the flow rate over the falls has been historically equal to what is is now. If the flow rate was higher, then the erosion rate would be faster. Furthermore, erosion rates are not proportional to flow rates. To figure erosion rates to be proportional to the square of the flow rate is probably a more accurate assessment. With this proportionality, erosion rates based on a continuous average flow rate would be way less than what it would be with alternating periods of extreme drought and extreme flood. High flood rates beyond our paltry 250 yr historical records of observation for Niagra could be a major factor in over estimating the required time. Jeff I do not know how the figure of 12000 years was calculated, but it seems I was wrong about Niagara Falls not being featured in the initial debate: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i4/niagara_falls.asp Harry
Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
On Sunday 16 January 2005 07:27, Mark Jordan wrote: On 15 Jan 2005 at 21:41, revtec wrote: If the first part of the Bible is a fairy tale, then, how far into it does the truth start? If the first part is a lie, then, the rest can't be trusted either. The whole thing should be dumped in the trash and one should sleep in on a Sunday morning. The Bible is either the word of God or it isn't. It's all or nothing for me. Anything else is hypocritical. My bottom line is that the Bible makes more sense to me than Darwinism. Jeff I think you would like reading Zecharia Sitchin's books. He did a very interesting Genesis analysis based on ancient Sumerian legacy. Take a look at http://www.sitchin.com Mark Jordan Hello All, Ahhh! Now here's some red meat! I has long been cliched that most tales handed down through the generations by voice or in books, no matter how fantastic, have some basis however tenuous in facts. The first chapters of the Bible bear much in common with many creation myths of many cultures. The same thread runs in them. Now comes Mr Sitchin with a story about a rogue planet captured by our solar system billions of years ago. He names this planet 'Niburu' and claims in a book that it has an elliptical orbit taking thousands if not tens of thousands of years. Such a 'planet' could have been taken from a passing star system that came too close to ours. Our Oort cloud seems to have a sharp boundary according to some accounts, and such a sharp boundary could have been due to our system being gravitationally 'shaved' as if by a giant lathe by the gravitational forces of a passing system that came within less than a light year of our central star. Supposedly this captured planet became a kind of rogue in our system and sometime after becoming one of our celestial family took part in the destruction of a planet that occupied the space between Mars and Jupiter. The 'evidence' of that event supposedly is the Asteroid Belt. All this took place allegedly billions of years ago. There is a long yarn in Sitchin's book and others in this vein about an alien race called the Annunaki, who are supposed to have bioengineered us from primitive species variousely 300,000 years ago and then again 20,000 years ago. This is from the writings of Sitchin and others who take as evidence the similarity of Sumerian creation myths and those of other peoples who were able to write them down. The Hindu God 'Kali' is even mentioned. Unfortunately, reading some of this material seems to me better suited for sale to Paramount Studios for ideas behind the popular series 'Star Gate'. Substitute Ga' ould for Annunaki and it would all read the same. Reading some of it makes me want to find the StarGate here on Earth. Maybe it is buried under the Sphinx or the Great Pyramid. I do suspect that the Great Pyramids were built like the Russian KGB said, by others for thier own reasons unrelated to simply a headstone. No one in the time of the ancient Egyptians would have really stayed around in such numbers to be enslaved for such a foolish project. It was too easy to flee into the desert and freedom. Now to the kernel of it. Sitchin claimes that a close encounter with this rogue planet about 10,900 years ago caused the great flood by causing the destabilizaion of the Antarctic ice sheet. This was to have caused a massive tidal wave of several thousand feet in height. Such a wave would have destroyed virtually all life; and there would have been evidence for this somewhere. I doubt that the Antarctic sheet would have slid off the continent. It would not have held together. More likely in case of a real rogue planet near fly by would be massive tidal forces on both planets that would have carried much of the water of the oceans in a single massive wave of destruction. Such would have also affected our crustal plates and stimulated massive vulcanism. The cratered scablands of eastern Washington State in the United States are the result of a kind of 'sheet volcano' that can occur with the opening of a crack in the world as it were. This is exactly the kind of thing that could be caused globally by such an event. The resulting devastation and subsequent planetary winter and glaciation would have certainly left a record somewhere. However, if the flyby was a bit more distant and the tidal forces less, it is possible some could have survived and a smaller record of destruction left in the fossil record. Now there was recently discovered a new body of the size and orbit predicted by Sitchin and others. It is called 'Sedna' by our astronomers. Maybe some smart guy with a computer and more free time than most of us will figure this out and track its orbit back, say about 10,900 years or so and similarly over lay this plot with Earth's orbit in the same time period. Of course the time
RE: Young Earth Evidence: was Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
Hi Jeff. You write: When I was fifteen years old, a local business backfilled an area to extend a parking lot. They used ash from a coal fired power station to fill the area to over 10 ft deep. At some time later, a 20 minute thunderstorm cut an 8 ft deep gully through the semi-stable ash. I walked through the gully an hour after the storm. By that time, the storm runoff had slowed to a trickle. What I saw was astounding! All of the features that make the Grand Canyon instantly recognizable, to anyone who had merely seen pictures of it, were laid out before my eyes in miniature with walls as high as I could reach. I wish I had gone back with a camera. Here the world was demonstrating something for you, a gift of knowledge as it were. The Grand Canyon is truly an awe inspiring creation, human artists spend their lives trying to emulate the great majesty and mystery of that landscape. And before your eyes, that landscape was created in microform, in the space of 20 minutes, by the agency of precipitation. Had you taken some pictures, I'm sure you could fool many people into believing it was the Grand Canyon itself, so long as the scale in the pic was unclear. This is a very profound, Jeff. Please think hard on this, a great thing was revealed to you. Having seen that for yourself, can you still assert the impossibility of the creation of life by similar means? Is a single cell organism more complex really than the Grand Canyon? Some of you may find this a sterile idea, but please think further. You might find God not to be hiding in a 2000 year old book, but right beneath your feet. Life is not an artificial creation; it came from the rocks themselves. Are you a bird that has landed on the apple tree, or an apple grown from the tree itself? I disagree with Harry that we shouldn't ask origin questions, although his general point ( the origin of the universe itself ) may prove to be an impossible question to answer. In the case of life on Earth, that seems to be a very reasonable question to answer, and we're making some good new progress with that in our current space exploration. I encourage you to question Evolutionary Theory, it's what science is all about. No serious scientist will say to you, believe this or leave. I wish you had better motives, but that's irrelevant and my own prejudice. It really doesn't matter what your motives are, just like the rain I mention above, it cuts away the dross and leaves behind a beautiful work of art. All that's required for us to come up with the correct theory is for enough of us to keep questioning and randomly banging away. Doesn't matter who or why. I can at least guarantee you that the end result won't be Darwin ( nor God for that matter ) but some new, more beautiful and perfect thing. K.
Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
revtec wrote: and Harry Veeder replied; Not necessarily. If the bible is the word of God, then the meaning of the bible is almost as mysterious as God. I don't see anything mysterious about it. It's a straight forward account of a battle between good and evil.
Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
revtec wrote: Harry Veeder If you want to be considered a scientist today, and you imagine a different origin of man, you dare not express it or you will be branded a simpleton or a quack. Are you saying that the scientific establishment allows a scientist to attend church so long as he/she does not believe the first chapters of the Bible? Believe it, but don't express it. I'm thankful that I am not beholden to the scientific community. They don't sign my pay check and they never will. If the first part of the Bible is a fairy tale, then, how far into it does the truth start? If the first part is a lie, then, the rest can't be trusted either. The whole thing should be dumped in the trash and one should sleep in on a Sunday morning. The Bible is either the word of God or it isn't. It's all or nothing for me. Anything else is hypocritical. Not necessarily. If the bible is the word of God, then the meaning of the bible is almost as mysterious as God. Harry
Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
On 15 Jan 2005 at 21:41, revtec wrote: If the first part of the Bible is a fairy tale, then, how far into it does the truth start? If the first part is a lie, then, the rest can't be trusted either. The whole thing should be dumped in the trash and one should sleep in on a Sunday morning. The Bible is either the word of God or it isn't. It's all or nothing for me. Anything else is hypocritical. My bottom line is that the Bible makes more sense to me than Darwinism. Jeff I think you would like reading Zecharia Sitchin's books. He did a very interesting Genesis analysis based on ancient Sumerian legacy. Take a look at http://www.sitchin.com Mark Jordan
Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
I believe in variation and natural selection within the constraints that we see it happen. I am quite content to have someone label biblical creation as also a theory since no one seems able to prove that scientificly either. Biblical creation requires almost as much faith as evolution. Darwin never touched the question of origin. He left that extrapolation entirely to our imaginations! Jeff - Original Message - From: Harry Veeder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 3:54 PM Subject: Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005 The idea of evolution predates Darwin by several decades, if not more. Darwin provided a particular _explanation_ of evolution: descent through variation and natural selection. There are alternative non-biblical explanations of evolution. Darwin's explanation currently dominates science and science education, but I doubt it is sufficient. It is fair to portray Darwin's explanation of evolution as a theory, but I think it invites the closure of minds to portray evolution as just a theory. Should we say biblical creationism is just a theory? Harry revtec at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Akira Kawasaki [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 4:30 PM Subject: FW: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005 3. CREATIONISM: COURT ORDERS WARNING STICKERS REMOVED IMMEDIATELY. While I am not suprised by this ruling, I am certainly dismayed. Darwin himself referred to his work as theory on pages 205, 206, 209, 211, 218, 219, 229, 230, 233, 292, 313, 309, 316, 323, 339, 341 and 343 of the paper back as well as other places. It has been called the theory of evolution for over 100 years! Until the last decade or so the word theory was prominently connected to the word evolution. This forces me to ask What blazing discovery of the past ten years has propelled the theory of evolution into the relm of indisputable fact?. On the contrary, recent discoveries, and the lack thereof, have, if anything, cast more doubt than confirmation on the theory! On page 222 Darwin admits to grave cases of difficulty, some of which will be discussed in my future work. He never produced a future work! Jeff Fink The constitutionality of a creationist message got a court test. You will recall that in Cobb County, GA, stickers were placed on high school biology texts warning that evolution is a theory, not a fact http://www.aps.org/WN/WN04/wn111204.cfm. Yesterday, in ordering the stickers removed, a federal judge said the stickers convey an impermissible message of endorsement.
Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
- Original Message - From: Harry Veeder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 6:35 PM Subject: Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005 revtec at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I believe in variation and natural selection within the constraints that we see it happen. I am quite content to have someone label biblical creation as also a theory since no one seems able to prove that scientificly either. Biblical creation requires almost as much faith as evolution. Darwin never touched the question of origin. He left that extrapolation entirely to our imaginations! Agreed, but what do you mean by the question of origin? Darwin did touch on the ancestry of man and many other animals. In particular he argued man and ape evolved from a common ancestor. Hence the title of his work -- The Origin of Species. Darwin quit at postulating common ancestry without addressing the origin of life in its most basic form. In a previous thread, we hit on the difficulties of having matter mixtures within the universe self oganizing to the fantastic degree of forming a living cell, which implies the necessity of intelligent design input to make it happen. At another level we have what is termed the Cambrian explosion where a myriad of strange creatures come into existance at once with no trace of ancestors in the underlying rock strata. This is one of the great difficulties Darwin wrestled with. He tries to explain this problem away, but it sure resembles an act of creation to me. And, then you have the career ending level of origin, where God told Moses how he did it and Moses wrote it down as the first chapters of Genesis. If you want to be considered a scientist today, and you imagine a different origin of man, you dare not express it or you will be branded a simpleton or a quack. Are you saying that the scientific establishment allows a scientist to attend church so long as he/she does not believe the first chapters of the Bible? I'm thankful that I am not beholden to the scientific community. They don't sign my pay check and they never will. If the first part of the Bible is a fairy tale, then, how far into it does the truth start? If the first part is a lie, then, the rest can't be trusted either. The whole thing should be dumped in the trash and one should sleep in on a Sunday morning. The Bible is either the word of God or it isn't. It's all or nothing for me. Anything else is hypocritical. My bottom line is that the Bible makes more sense to me than Darwinism. Jeff
Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005
At 09:41 pm 15-01-05 -0500, you wrote: - Original Message - From: Harry Veeder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 6:35 PM Subject: Re: WHAT'S NEW Friday, January 14, 2005 revtec at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I believe in variation and natural selection within the constraints that we see it happen. I am quite content to have someone label biblical creation as also a theory since no one seems able to prove that scientificly either. Biblical creation requires almost as much faith as evolution. Darwin never touched the question of origin. He left that extrapolation entirely to our imaginations! Agreed, but what do you mean by the question of origin? Darwin did touch on the ancestry of man and many other animals. In particular he argued man and ape evolved from a common ancestor. Hence the title of his work -- The Origin of Species. Darwin quit at postulating common ancestry without addressing the origin of life in its most basic form. In a previous thread, we hit on the difficulties of having matter mixtures within the universe self oganizing to the fantastic degree of forming a living cell, which implies the necessity of intelligent design input to make it happen. At another level we have what is termed the Cambrian explosion where a myriad of strange creatures come into existance at once with no trace of ancestors in the underlying rock strata. This is one of the great difficulties Darwin wrestled with. He tries to explain this problem away, but it sure resembles an act of creation to me. And, then you have the career ending level of origin, where God told Moses how he did it and Moses wrote it down as the first chapters of Genesis. If you want to be considered a scientist today, and you imagine a different origin of man, you dare not express it or you will be branded a simpleton or a quack. Are you saying that the scientific establishment allows a scientist to attend church so long as he/she does not believe the first chapters of the Bible? I'm thankful that I am not beholden to the scientific community. They don't sign my pay check and they never will. If the first part of the Bible is a fairy tale, then, how far into it does the truth start? If the first part is a lie, then, the rest can't be trusted either. The whole thing should be dumped in the trash and one should sleep in on a Sunday morning. The Bible is either the word of God or it isn't. It's all or nothing for me. Anything else is hypocritical. My bottom line is that the Bible makes more sense to me than Darwinism. Jeff Well said Jeff. 8-) Cheers Grimer
