Carl: Sean you said, â€œThe idea of a recent creation

Comment on La Sierra “outraged” over Educate Truth article by Sean Pitman.

Carl: Sean you said, â€œThe idea of a recent creation of life on this planet is consistent with the currently available weight of physical data.â€
This statement is beyond astounding. What â€œweight of physical dataâ€? In most cases, objections to current interpretations of the data do not become a â€œweightâ€ of evidence in favor of a short history.

Many of the objections to current interpretations of the data are due to the numerous evidences in favor of the very rapid, even castrophic, formation of much of the geologic record.

One of your objections to dating methods is that they lack a calibration standard. Thatâ€™s quite true, but it doesnâ€™t suggest that you can fit millions of years into about ten thousand years.

Not by itself, but with the additional evidence in support of a catastrophic model, the young-life hypothesis gains a great deal of predictive power…

Suppose that geological dates in the range of a million years are wrong by a factor of ten. That means you might compress 1,000,000 years into 100,000 years, but that doesnâ€™t create any evidence at all suggesting that life started about 10,000 years ago.

As I’ve already explained to you many times now, there is positive evidence for a catastrophic model beyond the mere questioning of radiometric dates (dates which have often proven to be off by far more than a factor of 10).

As an example of conflicting age estimates, consider the recent redating of Mather Gorge and Holtwood Gorge in Pennsylvania. These gorges were once thought to have eroded over the course of 1.8 million years based on geochronological and radiometric age calculations. However, in 2004 research measuring beryllium-10 levels (the measurement of beryllium-10 that builds up in quartz when exposed to cosmic rays) done by Luke J. Reusser, a geologist at the University of Vermont in Burlington, and other colleagues, suggests that these gorges may be as young as 13,000 years instead of 1.8 million years.

To further illustrate this problem, consider that 3H dating has been used to establish the theory that the driest desert on Earth, Coastal Range of the Atacama desert in northern Chile (which is 20 time drier than Death Valley) has been without any rain or significant moisture of any kind for around 25 million years. The only problem with this theory is that recently investigators have discovered fairly extensive deposits of very well preserved animal droppings associated with grasses as well as human-produced artifacts – like arrowheads and such. Radiocarbon dating of these finding indicate very active life in at least semiarid conditions within the past 11,000 years – a far cry from 25 million years.

There are reasons why the GRI site says clearly that radiometric dating methods pose a major challenge to belief in a short history. â€œThe most difficult question is probably the apparent sequence of radiometric dates, giving older dates for lower layers in the geologic column and younger dates for upper layers.â€

While there are aspects of radiometric dating that are not yet explained, radiometric dating clearly has serious calibration problems and is dramatically inconsistent with other means of producing very convincing maximum ages estimates for various geologic features.

Consider the Hawaiian Islands and the long chain of under-sea mountains that points NW and then bends to the NE where it joins the Aleutians. Thatâ€™s pretty good evidence supporting plate tectonic theory even though it canâ€™t all be explained. No matter how fast the continents might have moved, thereâ€™s no way to fit the mountain chain and the Hawaiian Islands into a history that is short enough to agree with Ussherâ€™s chronology. You canâ€™t even form the Big Island (the youngest of the group) within a short history, let alone the older islands and the mountain chain.

If you have data giving compelling support for a short history, I havenâ€™t seen it.

Upon what do you base your assertion that volcanic islands cannot be formed rapidly? You do realize, don’t you, that volcanic islands have been known to be produced practically overnight in modern times? – and to develop rapid ecosystems of both plants and animals? Just imagine how fast such islands could be built given much more rapid continental movements and crustal disturbances…

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1551407

The fact that continental drift occured is not in question. The rate at which it occured is very much in question. The significant weight of evidence clearly favors the idea that continental movements were much much faster in the past than they are today.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

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Sean Pitman Also Commented

La Sierra “outraged” over Educate Truth article

Mark Houston: So, until proven wrong by a well documented 12 foot human skeleton (not photoshopped â€œphotographsâ€ from the internet) I wonâ€™t believe in the existence of (viable and healthy) human beings twice my size.

One more comment on the argument that such a massive creatures would be realtively wimpy:

Fossil ape remains are known from creatures that were up to 10 feet tall and weighed over 1200 lbs – dubbed “Gigantophithecus”. These creatures were no “wimps”.

Also, as far as muscle strength goes, it isn’t simply a matter of size. It is also a matter of muscle structure. Pound for pound, chimp muscle is about twice as strong as human muscle.

A chimpanzee’s skeletal muscle has longer fibers than the human equivalent and can generate twice the work output over a wider range of motion.

In the past few years, geneticists have identified the loci for some of these anatomical differences. One gene, for example, called MYH16, contributes to the development of large jaw muscles in other apes. In humans, MYH16 has been deactivated… Many people have also lost another muscle-related gene called ACTN3. People with two working versions of this gene are overrepresented among elite sprinters while those with the nonworking version are overrepresented among endurance runners. Chimpanzees and all other nonhuman primates have only the working version; in other words, they’re on the powerful, “sprinter” end of the spectrum.

http://www.slate.com/id/2212232/

Something to consider anyway before simply dismissing the idea of the plausibility of 12 ft. humans ever existing out of hand. The concept is at least plausible.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

La Sierra “outraged” over Educate Truth article

Mark Houston: Iâ€™m 6 feet tall. My double-sized twin would be 12 feet tall (no surprise there), 4 times stronger, because strength scales with length scale squared, since it essentially depends on the musclesâ€™ cross sectional area, *but* 8(!) times heavier (since body mass scales with length scale cubed). So though vastly stronger than me, my big twin brother would be a weakling measured by his ratio of strength to body mass. He would also need 8 times more food and break his bones much more easily.

The only way out would be a totally different body plan or some trick like Kevlar bones. An elephant sized mouse would most probably be crushed by itâ€™s own weight.

This argument doesn’t really hold true very well when one considers that there are people living today that are less than half the size of other people (to include proportional dwarfism). Yet, the taller proportional people are not relative wimps in comparison. And, human bones can be made to be surprisingly stronger, with very little added weight, as the size of a person increases – no need for Kevlar bones to produce a viable 12 footer.

Of course, there is a limit because of the inverse square law, but a 12 foot giant isn’t unreasonable.

The same thing is true of many types of post-Flood animals that were much much larger than modern-day counterparts. They really weren’t that wimpy because of their increased size…

As far as the lack of discovery of such fossil human remains, it could be due to the fact that finding a hominid fossil is very difficult to begin with. They are very rare relatively speaking. And, if Mrs. White is to be believed at all, she says that the pre-flood peoples were largely buried under vast mountain ranges and obliterated completely from the face of the Earth. Still, it would be very intersting to find one though…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

La Sierra “outraged” over Educate Truth article

Mark Huston:
Sean, I wanted to thank you again for your patience in answering my
questions. However, there are some more.
1) Do you also (like David C. Read and possibly many SDA) believe that
Adam (and antediluvians)in general) were 12 feet tall? After all, EGW wrote so.

Yes – but only based on the reliability of the inspiration of Mrs. White and my understanding that many creatures that lived right after the Flood where much much bigger than their modern day counterparts. So, it only seems to reason that humans would also be bigger to an equivalent degree…

2) You seem to believe in the authority of EGW. Do you believe that
indulgence in the solitary vice makes people dumb, sick and blind? EGW
wrote so. On the other hand it has been proven experimentally probably
countless billions of times that indulgence in the solitary vice has
no adverse effects on the physical health.

Not everything Mrs. White wrote about was under Divine guidance. Her ideas on masterbation were reflections of the opinions of her day. She never said that she was shown this bit of advice in vision or under divine inspiration.

In short, you have to read Mrs. White in context and understand what was and was not simply her personal opinion vs. what was shown to her by God.

3) You are a rare exception. Most young earth creationist I ever
talked to (or who talked to me) were of a quite aggressive know-it-all
kind. Why do you believe is that so? The story I recounted in the
educatetruth forum (about the teacher stating “evolution is wrong,
there can be no plants if there are no bees” ) really happened. And
the teacher was no little old lady, she was probably in her early 20s
whe she told me that. I was 6 and somewhat dumbfounded, because this
was the first time I realized that a person of authority could speak
utter nonsense, too. Of course I did not dare to raise a protest.

There are a lot of misinformed and overzealous people on both sides of this debate. Many evolutionists are just as passionate and zealous about the theory of evolution and end up saying some pretty outlandish stuff as well. That is why you have to end up doing your own investigation for your own self. Its fine to get some ideas from others, but don’t simply rely on others for your conclusions on topic that are personally important to you.

Later on I was told (just e.g.) that before the fall, the 2nd law of
thermodynamics was not valid(repeatedly, by people knowing really nothing about physics in general and thermodynamics in particular) and that neither had there been radioactive decay.

I’ve also found this same problem with most creationists. Many creationists use the 2ndLoTD as an argument because they simply don’t understand the 2ndLoTD. However, a bit of sympathy is needed here because I’ve run into quite a number of evolutionists who don’t understand it either.

The problem with the ToE isn’t the 2ndLoTD (i.e., there is plent of energy to do the work because the Earth is not a closed system), but a related concept that I call functional/meaningful informational entropy. There are similar features to the 2ndLoTD, but it is a unique concept that is independent of the 2ndLoTD.

For more information on this topic see:

http://www.detectingdesign.com/meaningfulinformation.html

I’ve also been lectured on the obvious invalidity of the special
theory of relativity, just because I had inadvertedly stepped on
someone’s toes by explaining that exact contemporaneousness depends
on the frame of reference.

Relativity does have some interesting logical problems (twin paradox and all), but it also explains some very interesting features as well. But, its kind of irrelevant to this particular discussion as far as I can tell…

4) My next question pertains to you, too: If e.g. Richard Dawkins says
something as a scientist, you consider it wrong (in most cases, at least). If he risks stepping far off his turf and says something regarding religion, philosophy and faith (i.e., roughly, that being an evolutionist necessarily makes you an adventist) – then all of a sudden young earth creationists agree, call him as a witness and cite him over and over again. Isn’t that intellectually dishonest (at least a bit)?

I’m not sure I understand this question? It seems to me though that just because I may disagree with someone on one point doesn’t mean I can’t agree on another…

5) My last question. YECs often claim that a merciful god could not
have created to a process akin to evolution because of the endless
aeons of suffering and death. I vividly remember someone (in some
atoday forum) stating such a got “is not worth having”. Are we to
judge?

How about a god who killed (not allowed to die, actively killed)
thousands or possibly millions of necessarily innocent children
through the Genesis flood?

I like neither of those 2 ideas, but maybe my education contained too
much New Testament and too little Old Testament (too much of the Luke
6, 29 stuff).

The difference would be God’s ideal intent. If God created this planet originally with the use of an evil mechanism like RM/NS, that would be a problem given that he originally called his creation “good”.

God killing off evil people and their children was painful for God. He only did it, not because it was what he wanted in an ideal situation, but because he had no choice regarding the preservation of a semblance of a chance for future generations to be able to appreciate the beauty of holiness. It was only in mercy, even for the wicked and their children, that he removed them from existence. And who is to say that God was able to save the souls of some of these children in this way? – which would have been lost otherwise? We simply cannot know all the reasons why God acted the way he did other than to know that God was forced to do what he did not want to do and that it was very painful to the heart of a infinitely loving God.

The same will be true at the end of time. The wicked will die an eternal death, not because of some arbitrary will of God, but because they themselves will prefer death compared to eternal life with God – which would be, for them, extreme torture. Therefore, it is in God’s mercy that he gives them what they themselves would choose amoung the options open to them.