In regards to the Canards, Natural Selection is nothing and men are like trees(?)
Fake-o-raptor pictured above...Dear Readers - I know most of you who come here and read some or all of this blog rarely if ever comment. There are a few who comment and maybe you readers read some of those comments. Some may read them all. In any event, this post is directed to you more so than most commenters, for I know most of them are determined in their minds that no evidence in the world will ever convince them that God is and that Darwin was wrong. Many scientists who believe in Darwinism have deliberately faked and misrepresented evidence to promote their pet theory, which is in fact in many cases their religion. This is not a matter of history, but rather as the recent IDA farce represents, faked and misrepresented evidence is modus operandi for Darwinists. So that is in part why I am going to return to the Genesis series after this post, for rather than argue with Darwinists I am just going to continue to present truth to those who are willing to at least consider something other than the paradigm of the orthodox materialistic naturalistic atheistic mob.
By means of greater and richer sources of information at my disposal, there is no doubt that I know more about both science and theology than one Charles Darwin. That is no big deal, there are thousands and perhaps millions of people on the planet who could truly make the same claim. Darwin was increasingly hostile towards religion, did not study the Bible closely and did not have access to very sophisticated scientific equipment, nor did he have the discoveries of the last 150 years at his fingertips. I and many like me do.
John Denney said: "The separation of the scientific and the religious means, in the end, the separation of the religious and the true and this means that religion dies among true men."
Of course, one can separate religion from truth and one can separate science from truth. In this century, we have seen in so many cases that true men must abandon the scientific paradigm for the sake of truth and thereby find themselves face to face with God. There is religion that has little or nothing to do with God but for sure there is science that has little or nothing to do with truth as well, and thus we have Darwinism, a religion posing as science.
Don Patten noted in the book 15 Reasons to take Genesis as History:
"An 'evangelical' theological college in Sydney (Australia) teaches students that Genesis is merely a polemic; that it teaches us that God created things and this is a theological statement, not a scientific one. However, 'science' (i.e. the majority view of the current establishment) claims that the Universe made itself when nothing exploded in the big bang and that every form of life made itself by purely natural sources from elements created in the big bang; God is not involved or necessary. Either science is making theological claims or the Bible is making scientific claims. It is not possible to solve the problem by word games that artificially segregate knowledge. Such nonsense in the colleges should appal the churches that depend on them for pastoral training."
The League of Ordinary Gentlemen Blog included this observation:
"... For example, if someone is worried about The Bible (or Quran or whatever) having too much influence as a text of revelation, then that person can approach the text in the same way–as having been granted a deep legitimacy by a community of readers–as say playwrights read Shakespeare as a kind of canon. Again it requires some learning but just basic humanistic capacity really.
Otherwise how can we have a religion-science debate when half of that equation is not properly understood?
I mean if I participated in a religion-science debate and made some argument based on Lamarckian evolution theory I would be (rightly) ejected from the room because that’s debunked and I would have shown myself up to be an idiot on this subject. Why then is it okay to make equivalently (or in fact much worse) mistakes in terms of theological understanding and get away with it?
Once a person enters the domain of theological/religious argumentation–as a humanistic discipline–then they no longer get to play the science card as trump. "Funny thing, reading through the comments section of my last post. There are plenty of the same old arguments that I previously addressed. Some people believe if you repeat the same fiction over and over it may not be true but it will be believed. So my commenters continually rehash previously falsified assertions.
Darwinists make fake claims and fake evidence often, as we know from experience.
I have done the due diligence to understand the basics of Darwinism, although I now disagree with the concept. I have studied hopeful monsters, punctuated equilibrium, phylogenitic trees and bushes, natural selection in conjunction with mutation, the whole big mess. In fact, I was once a believer in it, and that is one reason why I know it pretty well and also why the absurdity of the concept is so obvious to me now.
One commenter admitted his prejudices up front, at least, although he himself is blind to his own handicap:
"Naturalistic materialism is of course the default setting for scientific work, regardless of whether it's carried out by an atheist or a member of any religion you care to name."
Gee, I bet Copernicus and Newton and Lord Kelvin and most of the great scientists of the last millenium would be surprised to learn that they just didn't understand science and made the awful mistake of believing that, since the Universe was created by a logical being, it would have consistent and logical laws of operation that could be discovered and used by mankind to understand and utilize nature better.
No God, no basis for even being certain that there is a real creation. Could we not be a dream within a dream? Those who do not believe that a logical God created a logical Universe, by what line of thinking do they come to the idea that natural laws exist and can be discovered? In point of fact, scientists who believed in God dominated science in the last one thousand years and it is they who came up with the scientific method and made the foundational discoveries of science that today's scientists take as givens.
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I love the parts where commenters try to explain away the Second Law of Thermodynamics, all the while knowing that the closed versus open argument has been falsified and that undirected energy does not reverse the workings of the Laws of Thermodynamics. Only directed energy can fight the direction of entropic forces. More than once it has been pointed out to commenters that there are no known violations of the 2LOT on Earth whether or not you wish to call it a closed or an open system. Go ahead and let the sun shine on that pile of bricks and wood, it won't build a house for you, it will just help the bricks and wood deteriorate.
Another funny one is about bacteria. There have been all these experiments with bacteria, which can have very short generational cycles (in minutes rather than years) and many of them have been attempts to induce macroevolution. Yet commenters laugh at the absurdity of bacteria evolving! Ho ho ho, what a ridiculous idea (I agree). But Darwinists wish bacteria would evolve so they could be held up as proof. Too bad for them, I guess.
Okay, here's one about the whale-that-wasn't, Pakicetus:
"But it turned out that the modified earbones evolved much earlier than the other whale-like features, and Pakicetus wasn't very fish-like; it looked something like a dog with hooves. It apparently spent a lot of time in the water, and the ears had started adapting for improved underwater hearing.
If you scroll further down the page, you can see more recent fossils of animals that became progressively more whale-like. Over time, the legs shorten and eventually disappear, the tail becomes more adapted for swimming, and the nostrils move backward along the snout.
Anyway, that's pretty much how science works."
So where does the "science" come in? What works? It sounds like a nighty-night story to me. What is this magic word, adapted? How, when, why, by what mechanisms? Guess what? Darwinists do not have those answers. Adapted is this magic word, like, the creature decided that it's kids ought to have longer snouts and over thousands and maybe millions of years of "IthinkIcanIthinkIcan" the creature moves the snout? Is that adaption? Or does the environment mystically move in rythmic harmony with natural beings, molding them by the moons and the tides and the stars and Neptune's harpoon?
I presented a logical set of answers to questions of origins. I presented an agent, an event, and a result. Darwinists only have the result. Their fairy tales concerning how the events occurred without cause comprise the majority of what Darwinism is, just a series of stories with no real evidence and no logical beginning point. But logic is apparently not a big part of being a Darwinist.
One comment includes this passage:
""1) The Universe has a natural cause. This is a fallacy according to the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that nothing is being either created or destroyed."
The 1st LOT states that energy can only be transformed, not created or destroyed.
Indicating that this law was in place at the beginning of the Universe means that you're fully on board with uniformitarianism (your mockery of it in the previous paragraph aside).
I think it's fair to ask why the Universe has to have had a beginning. If there was a Big Bang, was there anything before it? Was it a serial expansion and contraction, featuring transformations of energy into matter and vice versa?
And sorry, just calling something God doesn't get you a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you insist on uniformitarianism and want to invoke the 1st LOT, then God would be violating the 1st LOT by creating something out of nothing, so no go. Come up with something better."
Uniformitarianism in geology is a teaching that all natural forces and systems have been uniform throughout the history of Earth and also that the rock layers found on Earth were laid down over long ages. I say that the sedimentary rock layers were a result of catastrophic events, primarily the Noahic Flood and the aftermath scenarios after the Flood. So you are simply mistaken on that one and badly at that.
God invented all the Laws of Nature. He created all things including the Laws of Thermodynamics. He is not bound by them, he is the master of them. There is no natural instance known of any violations of the LOT but God is supernatural. Perhaps you forgot that part of it?
God created the Universe. Actor, action, result. Christians have a logical viewpoint.
Darwinists say that nothing somehow resulted in the Universe. The structured, ordered Universe. THAT is what they call science!!! Nothing made everything by no means that can be discerned.
This same commenter suggested that God could not have created all life because He is life and could not have created all information because He requires information. Stunning. Since God created all existence, which includes life and information, then He is greater than these temporal material concepts and in fact invented them. A rudimentary study of philosophy and theology would dissuade you from ever using these arguments again. IF you want anyone to take you seriously you have to stay logical, yes? Amazing.
How about this? A commenter complains about my claim that God created all animal life on Earth and says this:
"But if you want to insist on it, then please demonstrate how God did it, if not by evolution. The who that you're proposing here is not enough, and frankly makes as much sense as any other hypothetical being.
How did God do it? By what mechanism? If God is going to dabble outside of the supernatural and in the natural world, then his/her/its work becomes subject to scientific investigation."
It is easier for me to explain life than it is for you. God actually put a designer tag on every living creature. We call it DNA. It identifies the designer (you find it in all life forms) and also serves as a blueprint for the production and reproduction of that life form.
When Noah's Ark came to rest and released the animals within, there would have been various kinds of animals, also called baramin. We can see that dogs and wolves and coyotes all come from common ancestry. These animals all came from the dog-kind or baramin that was released from the Ark.
God is a great designer. He built all sorts of redundancies and solutions for contingencies within every living creature. As they scattered and settled into various climates and circumstances, the rich gene pool within these creatures produced wide varieties of animals and the ones best able to survive carried on their sets of genes. This is called variation within kind. What happens is that the information within the creature within the genome itself is reduced as some variations of animal become prominent and some extinct. Thus, we have African Elephants and Indian Elephants with us today but no Mammoths or Mastedons. But some animal gene pools have not had to make much adjustment to conditions, such as the Coelecanth, and look like the same creatures found trapped in the sedimentary rock layers. There have been dozens of recent discoveries of "living fossils" but all those animals are simply kinds that have not varied within kind to any appreciable degree.
Natural Selection is not a force, it has no intelligence, it doesn't plan or design anything nor does it have a will. Indeed, Natural Selection is not a being nor is it a system, it is merely a description of microevolution, or variation in kind, happening. It offers no explanation for how this variation occurs. You see, within a mutt there may be the genetic information needed to produce both a Poodle and a Beagle, but the mutt is a mix of all sorts of genes and, when mutts have puppies, all sorts of features that are unlike the mother may appear. That is because a dog that is a mixture of several breeds (the mutt) has more available genetic material available and the pups may have lots of differing characteristics. Breed a Poodle with a Poodle and you will have Poodle puppies who will all be very similar. Why? They have been bred down to eliminate other genetic material and leave only those traits desired by the breeder!
I presented a post a couple of years ago based on documentation of very rapid speciation that happened in the wild. This was a post called Speciation: Class is now in session
Here is a small excerpt: Researchers in Trinidad relocated guppies (Poecilia reticulata) from a waterfall pool teeming with predators to previously guppy-free pools above the falls where there was only one known possible predator (of small guppies only, therefore large guppies would be safe).1 The descendants of the transplanted guppies adjusted to their new circumstances by growing bigger, maturing later, and having fewer and bigger offspring.
The speed of these changes bewildered evolutionists, because their standard millions-of-years view is that the guppies would require long periods of time to adapt. One evolutionist said, ‘The guppies adapted to their new environment in a mere four years–a rate of change some 10,000 to 10 million times faster than the average rates determined from the fossil record.
I would also like to call your attention to Variation and Natural Selection versus Evolution
which is a treatise by Dr. Sarfati that explains in great detail the differences between microevolution or variation in kind, which does occur in nature, and macroevolution or Darwinism, which never happens. When you see a commenter accuse me of not understanding the subject, call his attention to these two posts and ask him if he understands it?
The animal and plant world we see today descended from those animals taken on the Ark plus those organisms God deemed could survive the Flood in sufficient quantities without aid. Therefore aquatic life was not taken on the Ark, nor most and maybe all forms of insects and plant life and microbial life forms and so on. A very specific word meaning a vertebrate who moves upon the ground is used in Genesis to describe what animals were taken upon the Ark.
Studies of variation within kind show that animals can change in appearance and attributes very quickly because these features are already in the genetic pool for the animal. Speciation is another way of saying information LOSS rather than gain. You do not go from microbe to man by losing information, it would require vast gains of information. But all natural selection does is cull out genetic information that doesn't work as well for the environment from the gene pool of the organism within that particular environment.
Kinds of animals can only reproduce with their own kind. If a certain portion of a kind is segregated from the rest for long enough and the amount of information within their respective genes shrinks enough, two descendents of the same kind may no longer be able to mate or at least have offspring that are fertile. E.G. the Liger and the Jackass. (puns and jokes to yourselves, please). Any zoologist is aware of this.
Basic mendelian genetics involves the manipulation of the gene pool of an organism. I think there are about 12 major exceptions to Mendelian Laws of Inheritance that we have discovered as we make sheep with better wool, chickens with bigger eggs, cattle with more meat and cows that yield more milk. In fact, we do not make them, we simply cull out less favorable genetic information until that which is left is favorable. But anyone can see that this is speciation, this is loss of information and it is running directly backwards from the direction Darwinism needs to go.
Speciation is NOT evolution in action. Here is where the Darwinist rubber meets the road. It took a monk (Mendel) to put pen to paper and explain basic genetic inheritance. A Christian named Linnaeus tried to group animals into kinds by families and so on and was the father of the classification system used to classify animals and plants by type to this day. But scientists cannot even agree entirely upon the concept of what a species is, and while Linnaeus intended to classify an animal and plant kingdom he saw as being creation, there is definitely no family tree in respect to Darwinism, because the way Darwinists attempt to find links of inheritance winds up turning one tree of a simple life form becoming life today into a forest of unlinked ancestors.
Here is where a commenter does not tell the truth. Macroevolution is the process by which one kind of animal becomes another. He is amazed that I would even begin to think that bacteria could become anything other than bacteria, which of course would be the definition of evolution. He asks in shock if I think bacteria could "jump domain"?! As if! No, I do not believe bacteria will become anything other than bacteria. But the commenter professes to believe in macroevolution, which means that simple life became more complex and began jumping domains left and right. How many domain jumps are there between a protozoan and a horse?
Microevolution, or speciation, is the process that describes variation within a kind of organism. As Randall Niles capably explains,
Nobody disputes micro-evolution. It is universally agreed that wolves, coyotes, dingoes, jackals, foxes, and the hundreds of different domestic dog breeds probably all came from an original pair of “dogs.” This is variation/adaptation within a kind of creature, NOT upward evolution from simplicity into complexity as supposed by Darwinian Evolutionary Theory. The variations are always in a downward trend and are constrained by the genetic code (the dogs do not grow wings and learn to fly). No new genetic information is added — genetic information is always lost. The original pair of “dogs” would have had all of the potential characteristics of all of their various progeny, while the descendants themselves have lost that same potential.
Here’s a basic illustration:
Say the mother “dog” had AaBb genes and the father “dog” also had AaBb genes.
The possible egg gene combinations = AB, Ab, aB, ab
The possible sperm gene combinations = AB, Ab, aB, ab
The possible gene combinations overall:
] AB Ab aB ab
—]—————————————————–
AB ] ABAB AbAB aBAB abAB
]
Ab ] ABAb AbAb aBAb abAb
]
aB ] ABaB AbaB aBaB abaB
]
ab ] ABab Abab aBab abab
The possible offspring:
ABAB
AbAB
aBAB
abAB
ABAb
AbAb
aBAb
abAb
ABaB
AbaB
aBaB
abaB
ABab
Abab
aBab
abab
Therefore, if two “abab”s become isolated and mate, their offspring will not exhibit the traits represented by A and B (because they simply won’t have those genes). Likewise, if two “ABAB”s become isolated, they will lose the potential for a and b.
Lost genetic information = lost potential traits.
This is a basic illustration, but this is what we see happen with every kind of creature, including dogs, cats, horses, and yes, monkeys. They can give birth to new species over time, but this is the result of isolating a gene pool — this is not “upward evolution.” The original parents have all of the potential traits expressed in all of their various offspring. This is all science has ever observed. Upward evolution beyond mom and dad’s original pool of genetic traits is pure conjecture.
Again, there is no known process by which genetic information can be added. Thus, “lemur-monkeys” stay “lemur-monkeys” or isolate further into segmented species of “lemurish” or “monkeyish” creatures (just like my dog example above). Genetic code is always lost through generations of isolated breeding.
Think of the original organisms as created by God as a man on vacation in Michigan at a lakeside resort for a six month stay. He would bring suitcases with clothing to handle all aspects of a stay in Michigan from July to January. This is like the original animal kinds created by God. On a hot and sunny July day, the man puts on swim trunks under his shorts, slips into flip-flops, puts on a t-shirt and grabs a towel and a beach blanket so he can take a swim and then lay out on the beach. Probably he brings a clean shirt and maybe some undies to put on after he is done swimming to replace his swim trunks and probably a cooler with some drinks and a lunch and probably he brings some sunscreen. If the temperature dropped suddenly 90 degrees the man would be coming out of the water and be in danger of hypothermia and death. He would be putting on every piece of clothing he could get, wrapping himself in his beach blanket and at the very least very uncomfortable.
Going out during a January blizzard at about ten degrees with high winds, he would put on undies and then probably long underwear and pants and a second shirt or sweatshirt, a hooded parka, double socks, double gloves and heavy high snowboots. Maybe he would bring a thermos with hot coffee and some beef jerky and maybe one of those chemically-charged hand warmers. If the temperature raised suddenly 90 degrees he would be stripping off clothing like mad and end up looking like a real weird character standing around in his underwear surrounded by a pile of inappropriate clothing.
In both cases, if the man is close to his room he just takes his uncomfortable self back to his room and gets the appropriate clothing. If he is very far away from shelter he may die of either exposure to great heat or great cold.
In a large gene pool of organisms, the information within the genetic code of the organisms has already coded in traits that can adapt to hot and cold and dry and wet and so on. If the organisms get isolated from others and continually find themselves in similar conditions then only the genetic information that works best in that specific situation will be passed on. Should the environment change radically those creatures will not have the information within the genes to adapt to the changes and they will die out. When a kind of animal dies out we call it extinction, however, often so-called extinct species are simply one of the variations within a kind of animal that was selected by circumstances at one time and then no longer became viable.
Did you know that Grizzly Bears and Black Bears and Brown Bears and Polar Bears can all mate and produce young? They are all bears but speciation has separated out certain portions of the gene pool as these populations separated and took over different environments and territories.
Fin Whales and Blue Whales and Minke Whales can all mate. Dogs and wolves can mate. Lions and Tigers can mate. Naturally you understand that Poodles and Bloodhounds can mate. But you also need to understand that both Bloodhounds and Poodles were bred for specific traits, which required a loss of genetic information in the breeding of these animals to be Bloodhounds and Poodles.
Much of Darwinism today consists of finding a few fragments of bone, finding a very good and creative artist to make a nice illustration based largely on whimsy and then working hard on marketing your new find as a breakthrough of some sort. Pakicetus was just one of a long line of fakes and Ida falls in line in that way of thinking.
Another commenter mentioned the "the phylogenetic tree" in their comment. There is no such thing. The last look I took at the lines of evolution proposed by the lastest evolutionist thinking is a row of shrubs! Evolutionists no longer claim a single line of inheritance and feature development branching off and out, the evidence chased them away from that long ago. Now they are claiming multiple little shrubs, apart from each other, and hoping no new information comes in to make them break their shrubs into single-stemmed plants.
A sad thing, this last commenter: "The jump from bacteria to single celled eukaryotes is indeed greater than the difference between a human and a tree. After all, both humans and trees are in the same domain, while bacteria are not. This isn't even close to controversial unless you want to tear down the entire classification system as well."
Oh, really? The entire classification system? The system first proposed by a Christian, Linnaeus? Darwinists have made changes and contorted the system in order to make the latest evidence fit their theories rather than allow for the obvious that Linnaeus sought for in the first place. The fact that some Darwinist has decided that a human is in any sense closely related to a tree should make you readers rethink everything you have ever heard a Darwinist assert, ever.
Whereas you will find DNA, that designer label that says "God" on every creature including man and tree, you will not find that man has a domain name stamped on his spinal column somewhere. The classification system was a means to try to understand the kind of animals and plants God had created. In no way does the classification system control or have any effect on the biosphere of Earth.
Furthermore, if this Darwinist cannot imagine a bacteria evolving, how does he conceive of a man evolving from a single-celled simple creature?
Those of you who willfully deny that there is a Creator God might wish to read Romans 1:18 all the way to 1:32. For those of you who want to see information that has not been filtered, censored and approved by the Paradigm Police (like Eugenie Scott, for instance) might wish to visit these websites for more information:
The Access Research Network
Creation Ministries International
Institute for Creation Research
The Discovery Institute
Answers in Genesis
True Origins Archive
Apologetics Press
Creation Research Society
Creation Superlibrary
Revolution Against Evolution
I suppose that is kind of a top ten, although there are a few more that I could easily put up there that have excellent content.
There are brilliant scientists numbering in the thousands around the world who doubt or disbelieve Darwinism and a larger number that simply have no reason to incorporate the idea into their research. In fact, unless your research is an effort to prove Darwinism your research is not likely to need it. You would be hard-pressed to find any operational science that has any use for it. Even those studying DNA find that Darwinian theory has no application to gene mapping and in fact trying to make gene sequencing fit in with Darwinian theory has more likely slowed the process.
I have a 55-gallon fish tank. Within the tank's population are four fish that are over ten years old. Two of them are a kind of Plecostomus, a native of South America and two of them are African upside-down catfish, Synodontus I believe they are named. My wife and I feed them, we procured the tank, provided the water and filters and plants and got the natural system of waste conversion going so that the tank provides an ecosystem appropriate for freshwater tropical fish. The fish are bound by the walls of the tank and the hood so that they cannot leave. They do not have the intellect to comprehend the world outside of their tank even if they could willingly escape. If by some means they left that world they would die. Although they are confined to the walls of their tank, I am not. I have been over half the globe away from those fish at one time and have flown 50,000 feet above their location. I have dived to at least 1,000 feet below their present location in terms of relationship to sea level. I am greater and have far more powers and abilities than the fish.
God is far greater in comparison to me than I am to my fish. The fish and I are bound by temporal and material means and confined to four dimensions. The fish can see me through the tank to some extent, but I am unable to see God with my eyes. He is above and beyond the natural world. But He is also great enough to be able to communicate with me far better than I communicate with my fish. Sure, my plecos have learned that if I come right up to the tank, I am probably going to feed them so they turn upside down and tread water with their mouths right at the surface, kind of like Manatees, wishing to get all the fish food they can eat immediately.
But God has given us the Bible. The Bible is, as I said, not a science book but it is a history book. As a reliable historical account, every observation it makes concerning the sciences is true. The Bible revealed that light was made before the sources of light, that the Universe was made in six days, that there was no death before Adam and Eve sinned, that the Earth is spherical in shape, that the Sun is suspended in space and that a world wide flood remade the entire planet. You don't want to believe that? Fine, go back to nothing made everything by no means. Don't forget to glue those peppered moths back on the trees!
