Hello JR...
To use an example [of near identical DNA] to make the point: Neandertals are closer genetically to modern day humans than a chimp is to another chimp.
It's obvious that I could take as an example a pair of chimp twins (they do have them) which are literally genetically identical and compare that to the fact that people who have their DNA tested by some genealogy companies are given a 'percentage Neanderthal' figure for their genome, which is something like 1-4%. This 'Neanderthal DNA' is not in the DNA of modern Africans.
On the other hand, we could compare the diversity across the sub-species of chimpanzee, the Eastern chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), the Western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus), the Central chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes troglodytes),the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti)and compare all of them with the bonobo (Pan paniscus). My understanding is that the relationship between Neanderthal and human is similar genetically to the relationship between bonobos and the other chimpanzees. Interbreeding is possible across these animals, just as it was with humans and Neanderthals.
All of the above species have genomes so close that the differences in base pairs are tiny compared to the size of the whole genome. Of course the localised differences are important to us, like the rapid changes since the divergence of chimps and humans in the so-called FOXP2 gene, which is important in the development of speech.
You don't have any evidence. Not because we say so, but because most of the evidence you put forth either doesn't support your position like you say it does and/or causes your position problems, and the rest has an alternate explanation that better fits the data and our position.
I would agree that you can say you have evidence of a creation process in the existence of everything around us. But there are three important differences, I think.
Firstly, many creationists don't appreciate the depth of explanation demanded by modern science now our techniques are this good. To be a better explanation for the evidence, you really need to be able to describe mechanisms in at least as much detail as modern science. What is the mechanism for the release of this trapped variation in a kind? I've asked, and no one has explained that. Meantime I am one of a few here who have explained in quite a bit of detail about how natural selection works on variation to produce speciation. With a scripture full of talking snakes and donkeys, humans from dirt, impossible boats floating on impossible floods, it is a Young Earth Creationist who still has all the details to actually
explain. I appreciate some have made an effort, but frankly ideas like hydroplates are a joke given how much of the evidence they wilfully ignore.
Secondly, many creationists apparently fail to understand the concept contained in the word
unambiguous. The existence of the universe and its contents is evidence for creation, but as you correctly say, that is not the only story to tell. It is ambiguous evidence. DNA is common to all life forms that we know. What is that evidence for? Is it unambiguous evidence for a creator? No, because it could be that there was a common ancestor of all things live today that was the first to have DNA. So, thinking about what is most likely, is it a fantastic coincidence that, independently, endogenous retroviruses, fossil morphology and molecular clock data each give the same tree of common ancestry? Or is it that we have inherited genomes, virus remains and anatomy through common ancestry across all life? This is unambiguous evidence for common ancestry. Creationists would need to explain the spectacular coincidences. I have never see this done. But let's go with the creationist model for a bit. I have been told that it is a matter of reusing code in different species, because that is good design. But then, why is it only some of the time that the same way is used, but not others? Science is about patterns, but there is no pattern in this description, nothing on which you could hang a theory or make a prediction. On this topic, I would say the creationist model loses easily on your criterion of a better explanation.
Thirdly, why don't scientists mine religious texts for new insights? I'd say the reason is that the religious texts have no predictive power yet discovered. In fact they contain nothing really surprising at all. If there was a passage in the Jewish bible that said something like 'wash your hands because there are things too small to see that can cause you to be sick' then I would have to seriously rethink. There are certainly hand-washing rituals in there, but they do not match what you would specifically do to avoid contamination. Perhaps it is ancient scientific observation that showed washing helps, but with no understanding of why. You can take modern science and reinterpret the bible, but you can't take the bible and create any new science. That's what 'creation scientists' should do for the general good, isn't it? But they never have been able to do that.
Genesis was pretty specific, and doesn't leave much room for interpretation (barring willful ignorance).
I have been insulted for not, maybe wilfully, understanding '
spreading out the heavens' (which occurs in several different places in scripture). Can you tell me what predictive power this statement has? If I was an ancient Jew, what should I have been able to know about modern scientific understanding from this phrase?
Do you know what the law of conservation of angular momentum does to the planetary accretion disk model? It disproves it.
If we take into account the mass of the entire solar system, the sun has about 99% of the mass. According to the above law, the sun should also have, if the planetary accretion model is correct, 99% of the spin.
But it doesn't. The sun has 99% of the mass, but only about 1% of the spin of the solar system, whereas the reverse is true about the rest of the solar system, which has about 1% of the mass, but 99% of the spin. COMPLETELY OPPOSITE of what physics dictates. That means that the theory is falsified, and should be discarded.
Can you please show me, perhaps in a formula, how 'spin' (I'm not sure what you mean by that) is related to angular momentum? Or give me a formula that relates the concept of 'spin' to other fundamental quantities?
But you can't even get that far, because basic physics dictates that when a gas is compressed, it heats up, causing it to expand.
You would NEVER (because of the laws of physics) get a cloud of dust to condense into a planet, because it would expand (especially in the vacuum of space) LONG before it ever condensed enough for gravity to have enough of an effect on surrounding particles.
The model of planetary accretion does not involve a 'condensing' mechanism. It is a particle collision and accumulation mechanism. May I ask who is feeding you misinformation like this?
Compression of quartz causes a piezo-electric effect, which can, surprise surprise, strip electrons from elements, which can increase decay rates of radioactive elements a billion-fold.
I hope you understand that my attitude is not to patronise (although I'm sure it comes across that way at times) but to make sure creationists have good information. So, I'm sorry to tell you that, again, you have been lied to. It is true that scientists have managed to use a very large particle accelerator to strip all 75 electrons off a rhenium atom to find out what effect that would have on beta decay rates.
And because beta emission involves the nucleus spitting out an electron, the energy (and therefore the likelihood of success for any ambitious nuclear electron) depends somewhat on what electrons in the shells on the outside are repelling that electron back into the nucleus. If there are no electrons orbiting at all, then a low-energy orbit is vacant for that electron to jump into easily. If all 75 electrons are present, then the electron has to climb past six shells of repulsion to escape. There are two different beta decay mechanisms, which are slightly different, which I could explain if you wish me to try.
Pick any heavy radionuclide you like: it has
not been in a severely ionising high-energy particle accelerator just prior to having its isotope ratios measured. To continue with rhenium as the example, when considering electrons being lost, it is the chemistry of the rhenium and its compounds that is relevant. Do you know how many electrons are lost by rhenium in the most extreme examples? Seven. Not 75. No piezoelectric or chemically ionising effect will remove more than seven electrons from rhenium.
Next, as a beta emitter, rhenium is an exception among radioisotopes used in dating as it has an extremely low beta decay energy. This makes it a bit of a freak of an example.
So, the science of this involves understanding that beta decay rates change somewhat with ionic charge in rhenium. In general, ionic charge differences cause less than a 1% difference in decay rates. The creationist version has a billions of times different claim based on a freak form of a freak example that never exists anywhere, except in a laboratory. Further, that version paints scientists as idiots, as if they don't know to calibrate for the ionic charge on the ions being measured.
Compression of the earth's crust (on a massive scale) is exactly what happened (according to the HPT) during the Flood. There's more to it than that, but that's the gist of the HPT explanation of the origin of radioactive elements. You should study up on the HPT, because you're sorely lacking in knowledge of your opponents' position.
That would be a fair criticism, and one I apply myself to creationists quite often. I have read some material about what you call hydroplates, and it failed to explain how the Himalayas stay up, as one example. But tell me what book or online resource you think I should be familiar with. The last creationist book I read (a while ago, now) was
Bones of Contention by Marvin Lubenow, about human fossil remains and his interpretation of them. The first chapter was quite good, a kind of expose of international intrigue concerning scientific tribalism. The rest was quite bad. I'm no kind of expert in palaeontology but even I could have shown him which evidence he was intentionally ignoring that contradicted his case. So, not all plain sailing, but you see I am willing to try!
Stuu: John Woodmorappe
Indeed! Who?! Right Divider swears by Answers in Genesis, and it is their writer, John Woodmorappe under whose (not real) name the rhenium decay rate paper is turned into a massive lie.
No. You should not take my word for anything.
To reiterate:
ALL meteorites/meteors, asteroids, planetoids (eg Ceres, Pluto, Charon, etc), were launched from earth during the flood described in Genesis 7-8.
I'll just interrupt to comment that none of these interplanetary bodies, or their types, are mentioned in Genesis 7 or 8. It does not mention, as far as I can see, any launching of anything solid, apart from one boat. So should I assume that you have deduced this claim? In which case I would ask if you have evidence to support it. I would suggest data that compares isotope ratios, but you seem to have discounted the reliability of that sort of thing, which seems to be a case of shooting yourself in the foot.
Stuu: but we have meteorites that are from the surface of Mars, too.
Which (if I remember correctly) are simply impact debris launched from the surface of Mars from meteorites which were launched from Earth during the Flood.
It wasn't just the Moon that got beat up from the Flood...
Well the moon is a great deal closer than Mars. Once you have reached the orbit of the space station you have about half the energy needed to escape earth's gravity field altogether, so if a rock can make it that far it's not an energy problem. But you can see it is an inverse square problem: if you have ejecta from earth spreading out through space, the percentage of the moon's load equivalent that would hit Mars would be tiny. And if we are judging the damage to the moon by its crater markings, I'd say there would be pretty much nothing landing on Mars from earth by any direct launch like that. Mars rocks can't realistically have got here because of blasting by earth rocks.
You will appreciate, of course, that the point of knowing your opponent's arguments runs both ways this time, too. Have you an opinion about the calculations that show that this much material being launched into space would, by Newton's and others' laws, cause life on earth to be boiled to death?
Side note: Mars's two moons, Phobos and Deimos, are BOTH asteroids that were captured by Mars after being launched from Earth during the Flood. (I ran a simulation using Universe Sandbox 2 and Solar System Simulator (or whatever it's called, both are on Steam), and as far as I can tell, one of them achieved Mars orbit some time this side of Christ's birth, death, burial, and resurrection. Don't remember exact dates, but I remember seeing it fly out of orbit of Mars while going backwards in time in the simulation) The Flood, by the way, happened around 3290 B.C., give or take about 100 years.
I don't know much about how one goes about setting up Sandbox, but if you told it that the universe is only a few thousand years old, that would do it. I do admire you running simulations though, rather than just saying goddidit, like so many others do here!
You will also be familiar with the arguments against a recent global flood. Patterns in dendrochronology, single-handedly, disprove a flood in the last 9000 years or so, and ice core annual counting confirms that back to 800,000 years of no global flooding. No isotopes required here, just the ability to recognise a seasonal layer and count it. And I would reject claims that scientists can't tell an annual layer when they see one.
That's because they came from Earth in the first place. Duh.
Stuu: And not all meteorites are from earth.
Well then?
But all ARE a result of what happened on the earth around 5300 years ago...
The only object to challenge that position is Oumuamua, but even NASA admits (and I'm still looking for the link, will update this post when I find it) the possibility that it had an elliptical orbit that was changed to a hyperbolic trajectory by the influence of a large TNO (trans-Neptunian object), which would allow even Oumuamua to fit into the HPT.
And could I derive all this for myself from reading scripture? Scripture warns you about tedious genealogies, at the same time as it lays out tedious genealogies. Is it right to be using genealogies to calculate dates?!
Seriously, if you have this written in book/website form, share the reference.
Stuu: Organic chemistry is definitely happening in space.
You've got it backwards (not surprising from someone who worships the creation rather than the Creator...).
Stuu, If the HPT is correct, it would perfectly explain why there is biological material in space.
There are organic molecules in interstellar space 27,000 light years away. How could they have got there from earth in 5300 years if the light coming from them has been traveling for 27,000 years?
Faith in unprovable and easily disproved beliefs is, especially when that faith is in something other than the Creator of the unverse.
God told His people to have evidence based faith. What YOU have, Stuart, is blind faith. That is a bad thing.
But the definition of faith in Romans is the evidence of the unseen. How do you interpret that? You still have to have faith that your one choice is the right one, before you then express faith in that one thing.
I don't think I have faith in anything. I do trust people and ideas, but trust is based on evidence, not on what Romans says faith is. You could change my view with unambiguous evidence. How would I change your view?
Cells to man is wishful thinking that is a result of man's rebellion against God.
I think that is rather a dangerous position for a god-fearing person to take. What if you are not supposed to use the book, but your god-given brain instead? What if your god is sitting there lamenting the obvious? What have you made of that talent? Why do you object, on prejudicial interpretation of ancient writing, to the honest efforts of other humans with god-given brains? Is it the contents of that book which makes you so cynical?
I don't know what a god is. But I do know what DNA differences are, and endogenous retroviruses, and isotope dating, and tree-ring counting, and ice core layer counting, and fossil morphology are. And I know what they say. But I can see that you have decided an ancient book is absolute. That leads you to believe in magical mountain ranges. I don't understand how that is science.
Since you brought up Sir Isaac, what do you have to say about the following quote:
https://kgov.com/nebular-hypothesis-...eory-decimated The Hypothesis of deriving the frame of the world by mechanical principles from matter eavenly spread through the heavens being inconsistent with my systeme, I had considered it very little before your letters put me upon it, & therefore trouble you with a line or two more about it if this come not too late for your use. In my former I {represented} that the diurnal rotations of the Planets could not be derived from gravity but required a divin{e} power to impress them. And tho gravity might give the Planets a motion of descent towards the Sun either directly or with some little obliquity, yet the transverse motions by which they revolve in their several orbs required the divine Arm to impress them according to the tangents of their orbs I would now add that the Hypothesis of matters being at first eavenly spread through the heavens is, in my opinion, inconsistent with the Hypothesis of innate gravity without a supernatural power to reconcile them, & therefore it infers a Deity. For if there be innate gravity its impossible now for the matter of the earth & all the Planets & stars to fly up from them & become eavenly spread throughout all the heavens without a supernatural power. & certainly that which can never be hereafter without a supernatural power could never be heretofore without the same power. – Isaac Newton
It is interesting to read Newton trying to use logic in the absence of good evidence. Can I take it you have also read the crazy alchemy that Newton promoted?
Stuu: Evolution has been reproduced in fast-reproducing species.
I think you know what the opposing view is on this one. But tell me if you really don't.
Because you say (or some scientist says) so?
No, Nullus In Verba, as the Royal Society's motto puts it. And indeed as Lawrence Krauss mentioned in his radio interview. Observe, construct a model (like creationist never do) and test its predictions. This is especially powerful if the model is made before the predicted evidence is discovered (like creationism never does in any useful detail).
1948: Big Bang cosmology modeled, and the Cosmic Microwave Background predicted (although a wrong temperature predicted due to a wrong Hubble constant, but the model was right)
1964: Cosmic Microwave Background accidentally discovered. Model confirmed.
Stuart
Apologies to readers who have worn out their scroll wheels reading such a long reply...
