Comment on New NAD president: ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean we won’t deal with issues by Sean Pitman.
Sean, you crack me up. Are you suggesting that geologists err in their claims that a frozen landscape slows rates of erosion? Are you suggesting the summit of Mt. Everest is not frozen?
Freezing alone does not significantly reduce granitic erosion rates. Covering the rocks with deep snow or ice that is not moving does significantly reduce erosion rates – as would be expected.
In your references glaciers that are not moving are described as being “frozen to their beds”. However, those glaciers that are moving produce enhanced erosion – as would be expected.
You need to read up a bit on a theory called “glacial buzzsaw”. As it turns out, mountain tops that are above the line were snow does not melt are rapidly eroded by moving snow and ice in a “buzzsaw” effect. There are a few exceptions to this rule – usually regarding mountains in the South Pole. The suggested reason for these exceptions, as your own references point out, is that it is so cold at the South Pole that the glaciers are frozen in place and therefore do not move and therefore do not cause erosion.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1737061/climate_change_causes_mountains_to_downsize/
Faster rock uplift rates lead to more terrain at higher elevations thus allowing for more ice and snow accumulation. Steeper slopes (higher relief) at higher elevations result in greater movement of both snow and ice in a downhill direction (except in some places at the South Pole of course). Such movement of snow and/or ice, along with the many landslides in the Himalayas (the primary mechanism of very high erosion rates in the Himalayas), drive erosion rates that can match and sometimes exceed the mountain uplift rates. Of course, because landslides are primarily responsible for the greatest amount of erosion over time, erosion rates over short periods of time are episodic.
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~bodo/pdf/gabet08_modern_erosion_himalaya.pdf
It is for such reasons that “Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, is still growing as India continues to push into Eurasia. Average growth in the Himalayas is 3-5 mm/year total as measured using the Global Positioning System (GPS) units that have been placed on the top of Mount Everest by scientists. This growth includes the uplift from the two colliding plates (about 1 cm/year) and erosion of the mountains (approximately 3 mm/year). Not only is Mount Everest growing higher every year, it is also being pushed in the north-easterly direction about 3 cm/year as India continues to move northward into Eurasia!”
http://madsci.org/posts/archives/2003-07/1058996766.Es.r.html
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1075
This particular reference, as already noted for you before, is in fact talking about erosion affecting the top of Mt. Everest. That is why the height of Mt. Everest doesn’t increase even faster – – because it is being eroded, top down, at ~3mm/year as I’ve already explained to you several times now (ala the ‘buzzsaw’ effect). Compare this rate of mountain top and side erosion to the incision rates of the river or glacial beds which can be as high as 10-15 mm/yr. Also, sediment yield derived from the measurement of suspended load in Himalayan rivers suggests that fluvial incision drives hillslope denudation of the landscape at the scale of the whole range.
http://www.geo.tu-freiberg.de/oberseminar/os03_04/martina_b%F6hme.pdf
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2001/2001JB000359.shtml
Oh, and by the way, the tops of the Himalayan Mountains are not the only surfaces covered by thick sedimentary layers within the Himalayan region you know. The “valleys” in between the mountain peaks are also covered by sedimentary layers as well. So, either way you want to look at it, there’s a problem when it comes to explaining the continued existence of these sedimentary layers within the Himalayas…
Do you seriously believe slow-moving glaciers are absent from Mt. Everest?
That’s the problem. The snow and ice is not frozen in place in the Himalayas, but is moving. Of course, this movement results in very rapid erosion (along with the other forces of erosion in play that I’ve already mentioned).
What force at the summit is causing erosion at a rate greater than ice movement and water runoff in the valleys?
The slope angle of these high-mountain “valleys”, as you call them, is quite steep. Therefore, these very steep “valleys” are also eroding quite rapidly… as are the tops and sides of the mountains themselves…
Why can’t you provide actual estimates of erosion from the summit itself, or from other summits in the Himalayas, rather than make up your own estimates? Your calculations are derived from sediment loads in streams extrapolated over area; do you even know whether the calculations are based on 2-dimensional (flat earth) or 3-dimensional (ridges/valleys) area?
I’ve given you references discussing the erosion rates of the mountains themselves – erosion rates which significantly affect the uplift rates (rates that are known based on GPS mapping). I’ve also given you the mechanism of mountain top erosion – i.e., glacial buzzsaw:
What else do you want? I know, why don’t you tell me what you think the mountain top erosion rate of Mt. Everest is? – have any references to counter mine?
If the actual summit of Mt. Everest is truly eroding at the rate you indicate (3-4 mm/year, which I believe is based on your totally flawed understanding of geology), you’ve got a much bigger problem. In 1924, George Mallory perished on the summit. Yet 75 years later, his frozen body was rediscovered, exposed on the surface but remarkably intact. Can you please explain how, in 75 years, 225-300 mm (8.9-11.8 inches!!!) of rock eroded all around Mr. Mallory’s body, when his frozen flesh did not erode at all? Not even the papers in his wallet were degraded! My understanding of geology is rudimentary, but I was under the impression that human flesh, leather, and paper would degrade more readily than rock.
Come on now…
Exposed granitic rock has an average erosion rate that is much faster than the rate you would assume based only on chemical erosion or in comparison to a frozen corps. This is, of course, because of landslide erosion due to cracking of the granitic rock as it is exposed to changing weather conditions over time and because of the “buzzsaw” effect of moving snow and ice down the granitic slopes.
I think you have an outstanding opportunity to make an earth-shaking contribution to our understanding of geology: that high elevation rock is far more brittle than human skin. If your science and reasoning are as solid as frozen human flesh, you should have little difficulty publishing in one of the world’s premier journals: either Science of Nature.
These rates and mechanisms of mountain erosion have already been published Professor. They aren’t anything new…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
New NAD president: ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean we won’t deal with issues
@Ken:
Is there any empirical evidence to indicate that surface water can move tectonic plates?
The water didn’t move the plates. The sudden energy release that produced the massive Flood moved the plates – possibly, perhaps even likely, something like a large meteor impact…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
New NAD president: ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean we won’t deal with issues
@Ken:
Dear Sean
Of course this raises the issue of theodicy and a designer that planned for death and destruction. Not a pretty concept is it?
According to the Bible, God never intended for there to be any death or the suffering of sentient creatures in His universe. The death and suffering that now exists on this planet in the direct result of our own rebellion against God and His original plan.
As you have often acknowledged if biological life is indicative of design this does not necessarily mean, ipso facto, that biblical God is the designer of our universe. Based on what we see it could be a haphazard designer who built in catastrophe and death into the equation. It could be a dice thrower who if It threw the celestial dice often enough in enough metauniverses would eventually, randomly hit upon a design that would render evolutionary evolving life upon certain planets with the right physical properties.
Given the physical laws of the universe and of statistical probability in play in this universe that are known so far, it really doesn’t matter how many times the dice are thrown, evolution via the Darwinian mechanism would still be untenable.
Also, when it comes to the responsibility for suffering and death, you forget about the concept of the freedom of choice that God has given to higher level intelligences throughout His universe.
You earlier noted that EGW saw life on other planets. Why isn’t there life on all planets or only one planet if there is a design to the universe? Bit haphazard of a design isn’t it? I do not see a pattern there, unless it is one of random natural selection – life adapting to harsh environments where it is able.
Just because you might now have done it the way it is does not mean that there isn’t very good evidence of deliberate design. Also, what may appear to you to be poor design at first approximation may turn out to have been very good design once you learn more information.
Design flaw arguments have been around a very long time. Most of them end up becoming resolved once more information is discovered about the workings of the phenomenon in question. For example, the tonsils and appendix used to be routinely removed without any thought. No longer as it has since been discovered that tonsils and the appendix are functional parts of the body’s immune system. The same thing is true of the inverted human retina. It was once thought that the inverted retina was poor design; that no intelligent designer would have wired the human eye “backward”. This is no longer the case as many important functional features have been discovered for the inverted nature of the inverted retina that are ideally suited for the human condition.
So, I would recommend that design flaw assumptions regarding the nature of the universe are also just a bit hasty. Why not have planets and moons and even entire solar systems or galaxies that serve other functions besides to host living things on their own surfaces?
With respect, I think you are taking one of those ‘leaps of faith’ when you leap from the notion of design to the transcendent biblical God. Trite to say that all designers do not see the same design. Behe of the irreducible complexity argument clearly does not support young life on earth. He just sees life evolving from a later point than chemical soup.
Actually, Behe does not believe in any kind of evolution beyond very low levels of functional complexity. He clearly believes in an “edge” to evolutionary progress beyond which the mechanism of RM/NS cannot go. He is therefore a theistic evolutionist in that he believes that intelligent input was required to produce all higher level functional differences within the biosphere…
Look at the beginning of human life from a zygote. Clearly a repetitive design. Is human embryonics part of the evolutionary ‘design’ of simple celled organisms evolving to more complex ones? Arguable isn’t it? If God made Adam and Eve instantly in a day, why don’t we see a full formed miniature human formed on the day of conception?
Embryologic recapitulation has been falsified. There really is no such thing. If you care to study embrylology in just a bit of detail you will soon realize the extreme intricacy of what is required to get all of the developing cells to interact and fold properly to end up with the final product. It is the height of magnificent design and mechanical engineering – absolutely amazing.
Again, just because you might have done it differently does not mean that the evidence for design is therefore unrecognizable. Also, just because you may make a cake differently one day vs. the next doesn’t mean that the various methods of making a cake aren’t equally apparent as being the result of deliberate design.
Sorry Sean, but for me at least, there are a lot of gaps to fill before I can make the leap of faith you advocate. I have to slowly and methodically build those rational bridges across the gaps to make progress down the ontological brick road.
You cannot be more than you are. All I’m saying is that you’re missing out. You’ll only realize how much you’ve missed out once you get to the end of your yellow brick road and actually make the rational leap of faith to put your trust in God and start to develop a personal relationship with Him…
Your comments on my fence sitting are very apt and I appreciate your concern for my salvation. That is a far more kinder, humanitarian appeal than fire and brimstone- the ‘hard sell’! But you see I am not looking for personal salvation as a pre cursor for investigation of reality. In fact, with the greatest respect for all my Adventist friends, I see that need as something that would cloud my objective judgement. Just as I see an atheist bias doing the same as well. If my agnosticism comes at the price of my mortal ‘soul’ I accept that as the price of relentless objectivity. Sean, in that I hope you can trust in my absolute sincerity.
I do trust your absolute sincerity. In fact, I believe that if you really are absolutely sincere, that God will accept that sincerity and you will be saved in Heaven someday. However, in the mean time, you are missing out big time on the relationship and happiness that you could have had here and now. I realize that you cannot be more than you are, but you must also realize that this is no small issue for you personally. It might not mean a loss of your soul, but it certainly means a loss of what you could have had in this life regarding your own conscious realization of hope and happiness.
What concerns me about faith is the cart driving the horse when it corms to scientific investigation. My life long study suggests that all religions are social constructs of Man. That does not mean that I disparage faith or your faith. I find it quite remarkable and forth moreover a tool of moral and social order. I am especially interested in how religions schism over doctrinal differences and In I think Adventism is on the brink of that now, fueled by the debate of crescent creationism vs. theistic evolutionism.
You cannot escape the exercise of “faith”. Atheists and even agnostics make leaps of faith when they come to their conclusions regarding the nature of reality or the lack thereof. There is simply no escaping it. Science itself is based on making educated leaps of faith. All that matters is what faith you choose as most rational. Your agnosticism is your faith of choice – – that’s all.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
New NAD president: ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean we won’t deal with issues
@Professor Kent:
You and other readers can Google “ancient DNA contamination” for a good start on this issue. There are so many articles describing the problem that I’m not going to bother educating you with quotes from the literature. The unbiased, objective readers can read for themselves and judge your claims.
DNA contamination isn’t the same thing as radiocarbon contamination. There’s a big difference. Besides, there are ways to control for both DNA and radiocarbon contamination. These controls haven’t worked for radiocarbon in fossils, coal, or oil that is supposed to be many tens of millions of years old. The contamination argument might be reasonable if the problem were limited to only a few instances. However, explaining why every such sample that is actually analyzed has way too much radiocarbon in it is quite a problem for mainstream science.
You’ve chosen to base a major part of your theology on one literal interpretation of “all” while admittedly dismissing many comparable usages–even within the same narrow portion of Genesis–as non-literal. That’s just plain and simple wrong. And you are too obtuse to see your arbitrary and capricious interpretation.
The author of Genesis is very clear to the candid mind who is actually able to follow the concept of qualifications of “all” as in “all the land” or “all land-dwelling animals”… etc. Certainly the majority of Hebrew scholars are not confused by the author’s intended meaning here. This isn’t some private SDA interpretation of the intended meaning of the author of Genesis you know. You’re just making yourself look rather foolish is all… in your claims that the author of Genesis was obviously inconsistent. Your interpretations of the meaning of the Genesis narrative are not remotely obvious to most Biblical scholars…
Where does the Bible mention anything about “tectonic forces” creating mountains? You write as if you know this as fact. But you obviously made this up because you require observations from “science” to explain what your faith is too weak to accept. If God can form the earth at his spoken command (if you can still believe this absent any confirmatory science), why does he require “tectonic forces?”
I didn’t make anything up. My reference to a lack of the existence, before the Flood, of the massive jagged mountains we have today is from the writings of Mrs. White – from her book, Patriarchs and Prophets:
As the earth came forth from the hand of its Maker, it was exceedingly beautiful. Its surface was diversified with mountains, hills, and plains, interspersed with noble rivers and lovely lakes; but the hills and mountains were not abrupt and rugged, abounding in terrific steeps and frightful chasms, as they now do; the sharp, ragged edges of earth’s rocky framework were buried beneath the fruitful soil, which everywhere produced a luxuriant growth of verdure.
– Ellen White, PP, p.44
Notice that Mrs. White claims that the rugged rocky mountains we see on Earth today were the result of the energy released during the Noachian catastrophe. Such a catastrophic release of energy is quite consistent with the breaking up of continental plates and their initially rapid collisions with each other…
But, of course, I’ve been “brainwashed by the SDA Church” according to you. You, on the other hand, have somehow avoided the Church’s brainwashing techniques? Yet still claim to believe all of the Church’s doctrines? How does this make any sense? One can only believe in the SDA Church’s doctrines if he/she has been “brainwashed”? – and you haven’t been brainwashed in your beliefs? Interesting…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Recent Comments by Sean Pitman
Science and Methodological Naturalism
Very interesting passage. After all, if scientists are honest with themselves, scientific methodologies are well-able to detect the existence of intelligent design behind various artifacts found in nature. It’s just the personal philosophy of scientists that makes them put living things and the origin of the fine-tuned universe “out of bounds” when it comes to the detection of intelligent design. This conclusion simply isn’t dictated by science itself, but by a philosophical position, a type of religion actually, that strives to block the Divine Foot from getting into the door…
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:
Why is it that creationists are afraid to acknowledge the validity of Darwinism in these settings? I don’t see that these threaten a belief in God in any way whatsoever.
The threat is when you see no limitations to natural mindless mechanisms – where you attribute everything to the creative power of nature instead of to the God of nature.
God has created natural laws that can do some pretty amazing things. However, these natural laws are not infinite in creative potential. Their abilities are finite while only God is truly infinite.
The detection of these limitations allows us to recognize the need for the input of higher-level intelligence and creative power that goes well beyond what nature alone can achieve. It is here that the Signature of God is detectable.
For those who only hold a naturalistic view of the universe, everything is attributed to the mindless laws of nature… so that the Signature of God is obscured. Nothing is left that tells them, “Only God or some God-like intelligent mind could have done this.”
That’s the problem when you do not recognize any specific limitations to the tools that God has created – when you do not recognize the limits of nature and what natural laws can achieve all by themselves.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Bill Sorensen:
Since the fall of Adam, Sean, all babies are born in sin and they are sinners. God created them. Even if it was by way of cooperation of natural law as human beings also participated in the creation process.
God did not create the broken condition of any human baby – neither the physical or moral brokenness of any human being. God is responsible for every good thing, to include the spark or breath of life within each one of us. However, He did not and does not create those things within us that are broken or bad.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?'” Matthew 13:27-28
Of course, all humans are indeed born broken and are in a natural state of rebellion against God. However, God is not the one who created this condition nor is God responsible for any baby being born with any kind of defect in character, personality, moral tendency, or physical or genetic abnormality. God did not create anyone with such brokenness. Such were the natural result of rebellion against God and heading the temptations of the “enemy”… the natural result of a separation from God with the inevitable decay in physical, mental, and moral strength.
Of course, the ones who are born broken are not responsible for their broken condition either. However, all of us are morally responsible for choosing to reject the gift of Divine Grace once it is appreciated… and for choosing to go against what we all have been given to know, internally, of moral truth. In other words, we are responsible for rebelling against the Royal Law written on the hearts of all mankind.
This is because God has maintained in us the power to be truly free moral agents in that we maintain the Power to choose, as a gift of God (Genesis 3:15). We can choose to accept or reject the call of the Royal Law, as the Holy Spirit speaks to all of our hearts…
Remember the statement by Mrs. White that God is in no wise responsible for sin in anyone at any time. God is working to fix our broken condition. He did not and does not create our broken condition. Just as He does not cause Babies to be born with painful and lethal genetic defects, such as those that result in childhood leukemia, He does not cause Babies to be born with defects of moral character either. God is only directly responsible for the good, never the evil, of this life.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:
Again, your all-or-nothing approach to the claims of scientists isn’t very scientific. Even the best and most famous of scientists has had numerous hair-brained ideas that were completely off base. This fact does not undermine the good discoveries and inventions that were produced.
Scientific credibility isn’t based on the person making the argument, but upon the merits of the argument itself – the ability of the hypothesis to gain predictive value when tested. That’s it.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Don’t be so obtuse here. We’re not talking about publishing just anything in mainstream journals. I’ve published several articles myself. We’re talking about publishing the conclusion that intelligent design was clearly involved with the origin of various artifactual features of living things on this planet. Try getting a paper that mentions such a conclusion published…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
