tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19936712.post4476668965099571467..comments2024-02-14T23:28:11.026-08:00Comments on FORGOTTEN PROPHETS: Tohu va BohuJack Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04599425185005999225noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19936712.post-8339643369470891572008-04-12T13:37:00.000-07:002008-04-12T13:37:00.000-07:00Well I see a number of typos, but who could be bot...Well I see a number of typos, but who could be bothered to correct them. I'm not as anal as all that. Relax, is what I say.<BR/><BR/>And somebody has sent me a link to a message board, where my little effort here is called "snide" and "snearing." Well. I can hardly deny it. Did you take it personally, John? That would be because you have insufficiently acquainted yourself with the ethos of this blog. And maybe because you think a tad too much of yourself? I will leave some other interpretation to your imagination. Insert snide response below.<BR/><BR/>Or can we just move past this? Let's talk about how handsome I am, instead.<BR/><BR/>On second thought, maybe I'm not ready for that. Cuz y'said I'm not only snide and sneering, but "ill informed." That's just hurtful. I await your apology.<BR/><BR/>And *you're* "ill informed." And fat.Jack Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04599425185005999225noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19936712.post-30585911670092270312008-04-11T00:02:00.000-07:002008-04-11T00:02:00.000-07:00Your first fallacy is a vague appeal to authority....Your first fallacy is a vague appeal to authority. Most scientists, and all affiliated with mainstream secular institutions, share the belief that you state. You assert this is not a religious belief. I beg to differ. Anything that deals with the origin and meaning of life is religious. That it as primarily an atheistic religion is irrelevant. The question is, is it correct. This depends on evidence, not on assertion. Your reference to predictions and verifiability indicates that you respect scientific method. You have failed to refine your definitions, however. Since virtually all of the issues we’re dealing with here are unreproducible, and all experiments must deal with inferential conclusions, modesty is the most appropriate emotion with which we should advance our cases -- my silly and sarcastic tone notwithstanding. <BR/><BR/>You state the standard rational of Evolutionism well. The argument falls when we bring information theory into the picture. It’s a bootstraps situation. You assume startup conditions that are impossible in a naturalistic universe. That is, nature must somehow generally move toward greater and greater complexity. If information could be generated randomly, or simply because it was needed, than gamblers would never lose. For your scenario to work, you need a preexisting complex system, in which such terms as “selective pressures” and “environmental changes” might have meaning. The fallacy is, how did you ever break out of the nothingness, the lifelessness, the formlessness, the non-intelligence that randomness presupposes? <BR/><BR/>You presume genetic variation, without explaining genetics. You cite mutations, without explaining the high order of organization that mutations damage. We all agree that change within the system is possible. How did the system come to be? Microevolution will not do the trick. It has to be macroevolution, which is nothing other than alchemy -- one thing becoming another, of a higher order, via some power not of a higher order -- a change of the very nature of a thing, no mater how gradual the process is said to be. <BR/><BR/>The grand old men you cite had their virtues and their faults. Let’s see … ah here: <BR/>http://forgottenprophets.blogspot.com/2006/02/natalday.html<BR/><BR/>But that’s neither here nor there. A case is decided on its merit, not on the character of those who argue for it. <BR/><BR/>We shall not argue translations. I cite Gesenius, and leave interpretations to those who depend on them. But to suppose that the ancient Hebrews anticipated Linnaeus is rather a silly proposition. <BR/><BR/>It is naïve to suppose that by the time of Moses, distinctions would not have been made between various breeds, eg aurochs. My tools are packed away -- I hazard to be so bold as to say that the word MIN is not used in these passages. Your point is not supported by the awareness of breeds. I have said here that virtually all species are in fact breeds -- species, as I have somewhere pointed out, is a virtually meaningless taxonomic term, that depends, as its root implies, on appearance. Eg: <BR/><BR/>http://www.pigeoncenter.org/pigeonbreeds.html<BR/><BR/>These are called breeds simply because they were bred -- if found in the wild, they would be called species.<BR/><BR/>You missed my point, in your owl example. There is a single owl-kind, from which many kinds of owls evolved. Yes, microevolved. As with oxen and goats and whatnot. The Greek and Latin are irrelevant, as you will know from μονογενή, only begotten. <BR/><BR/>I don’t imagine any Evolution after the Flood, or before it. I imagine quite a bit of differentiation and natural selection, but nothing magical -- just along the lines of what we might see in any isolated and stressed population -- as with Darwin’s finches, which, it turns out, evolve with the seasons -- a recent drought back-bred one species into a smaller-beaked variety. Rather embarrassing to Darwin, eh? <BR/><BR/>I make no dogmatic assertions regarding taxonomy. The labels are awkward, and the criteria is arbitrary. My working standard must always resort to the ability to produce fertile offspring. If you scan what I wrote here on that, you’ll see I am consistent. I’m very flexible. Point is, sometimes it will be our modern level of species, sometimes genus, sometimes family, sometimes order. I gave examples. In my longer work on this subject, from which I took much of this information, I give examples -- memory does not serve at the moment -- of seemingly distinct birds that are interfertile. This is interesting enough for me to think about looking up again. We’ll see. <BR/><BR/>The scout raven didn’t come back, but that doesn’t mean it died. It found a place to roost, ferial, and waited for its mate. Fair? One is aware of Equus infertility. But it is you who depend so greatly on mutations. This is an example of the true effect of mutation: lost information. Think about it.<BR/><BR/>I did not cite the order Proboscides, but the elephant kind. I did not say they were the same species. I made no reference to genera in this passage. It is meaningless to conflate the two systems. As for your assertion regarding geologic and Evolutionary time, I beg to differ. <BR/><BR/>As for my underestimation of genera, we’ll simply disagree. I am a practically-minded man, and prefer the concrete over assertions of faith. That paleontologists elect to inflate the number of genera in their system is as it may be. They will do so, generally, on the evidence of a few unique bones. You present the impression of someone not unfamiliar with how science is done. Do we establish firm rules on slight evidence? Well, actually, yes, we do. Should we? I think not. Consider the breeds of dogs, which are all dogs. Now imagine a paleontologist in epochs to come, assigning wienerdogs and great danes and terriers to different species or genera, depending on a tooth or a femur. You see my point. <BR/><BR/>Citing general of dinosaur is begging the question. I maintain that differentiation within breeding populations is not proper grounds for supposing membership in distinct categories. I can’t be any clearer than that. A label is not the same as reality. Africans and Asians and Europeans are all human, no matter what racists maintain, or once did. Get it? Jus as skin color or the texture of hair is a meaningless difference, so would the difference be that give us these endless sorts of dinosaur. Let the brontosaurus be a watchword. Ain’t no such animal. <BR/><BR/>Your supposition that hundreds of sauropods are yet to be found is an appeal to faith, and a begging of the question. You’ve seen my reasoning. Of course it is flawed, as I cheerfully aver. The principle I adhere to is to reason from the known to the unknown, rather than from an article of faith to another article of faith. We know a lot about living mammals. We know hardly anything about extinct classes. More and more, but that amounts to very little. Am I too rigorous? How could that be possible, what with me so arguing for something so obviously wrong. <BR/><BR/>As I said, no matter how large the largest land animals grew to, they started small. The old man could have dealt with lizards. As for the Paleozoic and Mezosoic and Cenozoic, I may post my work on this topic. My conclusion, simply asserted here, without the thousands of reference I make in the original, is that these epochs are fictions. I know, ridiculous -- I’m right and everyone else is wrong. Rather than be vague on the matter, I’ll be silent. But your estimates, too, could be off by orders of magnitude. I’ll agree if you will.<BR/><BR/>Re the reasonableness of hatchling survive, that’s a fun point. But no one said life on the Ark was a guarantee. We know there were endless extinctions. There certainly could have been extinctions on the ark. Too bad. That’s life. Your point that adults would be preferred is not meaningful. A biological adult in the animal kingdom can mere weeks and months old. And there is no reason to suppose that breeding did not occur on the Ark. It is unnecessary to suppose that the ark doors opened and all the creatures were turned out to fend for themselves. That all would have been domesticated at that point. Tended, that is. Fair? As for neosauropods, you’re assuming giantism. Why do that? I didn’t. We’re not talking King Kong – we’re talking princling Kong – you know, a baby. We do, after all, find dinosaur eggs. They are not the size of buicks. Watermelons. The chicks would be not much bigger. Play fair.<BR/><BR/>As for marine life, the extinction beds in which we find hundreds of millions of catastrophically killed fossils argues rather for exactly the conditions you find outlandish. Yes, sir, the Flood was exactly as calamitous as you suppose. Just as a comet strike would have been, yet life persisted. We agree. <BR/><BR/>We do not agree about impossibly rapid mutation/Evolution. There are no trillions of, uh, species? -- genera? I actually worked out the breeding rates of mammoths, in my, uh, Dragons in the Earth. The math does not embarrass my case. We do not need eons. We need mere centuries, for even Siberia to meet its quota. I may go to the great trouble of posting this. I had a computer catastrophe a few weeks ago, and it would be a real hassle. We’ll see. <BR/><BR/>You may be conflating the pre- and post-Flood worlds -- two different kettles of fish. My reconstruction of ancient history, the first five chapters of which actually are posted -- Most Ancient Days -- has it that writing has been around for some 4000 years … but no matter. <BR/><BR/>Did you read this little effort of mine carefully? I go through the care and feeding of Ark animals. As for diffusion, another question for another time. The rest of your objections are easily dealt with, but why bother. I’ve dealt with all these questions, and many many more. Ask me nicely, and I may take the trouble. Ah, the fountains of the deep. Oh, thou juvenile springs! How great a fortress, the inchoate waters! I did refer to orogeny in the body of this post. Your observation re Ararat is interesting, but certainly no embarrassment to my case. <BR/><BR/>As for the rainbow, oh, the story I could tell. <BR/><BR/><BR/>JJack Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04599425185005999225noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19936712.post-4123305840760076362008-04-10T16:31:00.000-07:002008-04-10T16:31:00.000-07:00Scientists are convinced that creation is over ten...Scientists are convinced that creation is over ten billion years old not from religious belief but based upon all the mutually supporting physical evidence in the universe. Their conclusions are tested by making predictions which are validated by experiment or further observation of nature.<BR/><BR/>Living things don't evolve randomly, but in response to selective pressures due to environmental changes, from reproductive isolation or other natural causes. One source of the genetic variation in populations of organisms is from various kinds of mutations, some of which arise more or less randomly due to exposure to cosmic rays, mutagenic chemicals or other natural causes, but there are also lots of other sources of the genetic variation upon which evolution works.<BR/><BR/>Hutton, Lyell, Darwin & other geologists & biologists weren't prophets but scientists, making new discoveries based upon evidence & reason, just like their predecessors Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler & Newton.<BR/><BR/>Better Hebrew scholars than you or I translate "min" as "species", including those who recently completed a new English translation of the Bible for the US Council of Catholic Bishops.<BR/><BR/>In my opinion, Leviticus 11 & Deuteronomy 14 support this translation. Note that verses in these chapters list the domestic ox & goat along with the wild ox (aurochs) & goat (ibex), ancestral to their domesticated descendants. All members of the genus Capra are capable of producing fertile "hybrid" offspring, so might not be regarded as separate species.<BR/><BR/>The KJV translates Leviticus as naming three different kinds of owl, so if its rendering be accurate, then there is not a single "owl-kind". Some scholars translate one of these as "ostrich", I believe, but you might wish to check on this.<BR/><BR/>It could be that "min", as a non-technical folk classification, lies somewhere between the biological phylogenetic taxa "genus" & "species".<BR/><BR/>Greek translations of Genesis render "min" as "genos" & Latin as "genus", but those common speech words don't carry the same technical meaning as "genus" in modern biology. But if you're willing to envision rampant evolution at an unimaginable pace in the years after the Flood, go with genera on the Ark rather than species!<BR/><BR/>Or families, if you prefer. It wasn't orders, since there were both ravens & doves, members of the same order, on board, although Noah must have shipped a spare raven, since as an unclean animal, there should have been only two available rather than seven, but the scout raven didn't return. Maybe the ravens had already reared their young, the males of which then bred with their mom & sisters.<BR/><BR/>It is not true that all members of the genus Equus can produce fertile hybrids. Mules are very rarely fertile, almost never in fact; the same is true of horse-zebra & zebra-donkey crosses.<BR/><BR/>You are mistaken about the members of the Order Proboscidea you mention. They're not all in the same genus. African & Asian elephants belong to different genera, which, together with extinct mammoths, form the Family Elephantidae. Mastodons were in another proboscidean family altogether, which diverged from elephants over four million years ago.<BR/><BR/>You also have greatly underestimated the number of extant & extinct genera of ground & flying animals that would have needed rescuing from a global flood. Paleontologists find new extinct genera every year, as do biologists of living species & genera.<BR/><BR/>To take but two orders of Mesozic fauna, the best recent estimate of the total number of dinosaur genera is over 1800, of which less than a third have been discovered, based upon rigorous analysis & pruning of possible duplication. As you know, sauropod dinosaurs, of which dozens of genera have already been identified, with estimated hundreds yet to be found, were the largest land animals of all time. The biggest genera rivaled the blue whale in size & mass.<BR/><BR/>But there are many other genera of enormous terrestrial animals besides the 1800 dinosaurs. A conservative estimate would be several thousand from the Paleozoic (possibly tens of thousands), several thousand from the Mesozoic (possibly tens of thousands) & thousands from the Cenozoic (possibly ten thousand).<BR/><BR/>Your estimate of 2550 genera could be off by an order of magnitude, given the difficulties inherent in fossil formation & discovery.<BR/><BR/>It's easy to find references to recent scientific papers discussing these issues, simply by Googling.<BR/><BR/>It's unreasonable to expect hatchlings to survive, & with only two of each unclean animal, adults would be far preferred, in order to increase their odds of lasting through their confinement & in the grave, dangerous conditions of the post-Flood world.<BR/><BR/>Just 25 pairs or fewer of adolescent neosauropods would use up the entire 100,000 sq. ft. of Ark's floor space. I suppose you could cram some smaller animals in around them, but again at great risk to their survival.<BR/><BR/>This is quite aside from the inability of most marine species of fish & shellfish to have survived such an inundation as imagined in the mythical biblical Flood. Not to mention the plants, fungi, protists & microbes that also would have perished.<BR/><BR/>Also, as you must surely be aware, the survivors of the Flood would have had to undergo impossibly rapid evolution for large animals in order to diversify into the tens of millions of known & trillions more of unknown species in just the 4500 years or so since Noah's Flood. <BR/><BR/>During the same brief interval, over 99% of them would have had to go extinct as well! You'd think that someone would have noticed & written about the demise of so many creatures large & small every year in such a short period of time. Writing has been around for over 5000 years.<BR/><BR/>Then of course there are all the other problems of getting living things to the Ark, caring for, feeding & watering them during & after the voyage, keeping the carnivores from eating the herbivores, what the latter ate on their trips home, how non-swimming animals crosses oceans to other continents, let alone how flightless birds like the dodo got to their remote islands, inbreeding issues, how the Ark could even have been built without the iron bracing required for much smaller wooden ocean-going vessels in modern times, where all that water came from & where it went, etc. <BR/><BR/>By the way, much lower mountains aren't an option. Archaeologists have for instance found human remains & Bronze Age artifacts from the 3rd Millennium BC (4000-5000 years ago) under pyroclastic flows off Mt. Ararat itself.<BR/><BR/>You're I'm sure as familiar with these questions as I.<BR/><BR/>Then there's that rainbow...Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06240656973932505883noreply@blogger.com