Native Creationists - How has creationism changed? (Wood v. Duff/MacMillan)

[David_MacMillan]

@BenKissling

I find it incredibly annoying that this is the only forum I’ve ever been on that doesn’t allow me to program my own block quotes.

Select the text you want to quote. A hover link will appear that allows you to quote it. It pastes in below your existing text.

Repeat.

@BenKissling

@David_MacMillan

Everything above the lowest Paleozoic layers, they argued, was post-flood deposition. They would reject as flawed virtually all the arguments for rapid deposition championed by flood geologists before them.

So in other words exactly the sort of debate that in fact does occur over where the post-Flood boundary is.

No, not anywhere close to the debate that in fact does occur over where the post-flood boundary is.

There are some that place the flood boundary at the Great Uncomformity and some that place it at K-T. And of course there is bitter disagreement over those and a dozen other options. What we do not see, however, is a growing consensus among multiple creationist organizations which places the flood boundary at the very lowest fossil-bearing rock, relegating virtually all of the geologic column to post-flood processes. And there certainly is not any tendency to use actual, valid arguments to push back against catastrophism as the accepted origin of most strata.

If multiple creationist organizations began arguing that the clear evidence of lengthy deposition period meant that the entirety of the geologic column had to be post-flood, THAT would be geologic postcreationism, just as the hyperspeciation of Jeanson and Wood and Wise is biological postcreationism.

@BenKissling

Who among YECs say that seals and bears share a common ancestor? Giraffes and sheep?

Wise suggests that bears and seals could have a common ancestor. He also speculated (if I recall correctly) that cetaceans all evolved from a terrestrial Ark kind, presumably to solve the problem of why no whales exist in strata along with prehistoric marine reptiles.

But the ones proposing a common ancestor for all ruminants? That’s Answers In Genesis. Seriously. They’ve already said that all cattle are definitely a single kind and that all capris are definitely a single kind. Then they argued that giraffes and okapis share a common ancestor, even though their own website still insists that giraffes could not have evolved from a short-necked ancestor. And now they are suggesting that all ruminants — sheep, goats, antelopes, giraffes, cattle — could all share a common ancestor.

@BenKissling

I don’t think we have the knowledge as of yet to clearly delineate the biblical kinds. Such a research program would have to focus on limits of evolutionary processes, precisely the sort of research disfavored within the evolutionary paradigm.

No, every single aspect of evolutionary research is attuned to discontinuities. The phylogeny of viruses, for example, is replete with the analysis of independent lineages, since viruses originate outside of strict mutagenesis. If there were discontinuities in the tree of life, we would find them…mostly because low-noise signals would end up misaligned. There are no discontinuities.

@BenKissling

Variation programmed in from the beginning is totally different from variation that is generated by a subsequent mechanism, and programmed variation would be expected to occur faster than not.

Citation needed.

@BenKissling

The claim is that variation occurs faster but has absolute limits. That is completely the opposite of the evolutionary paradigm which claims that variation is slow but has no absolute limits.

First of all, the mechanism of this purported hyperevolution is a separate question from the proposed history of this purported hyperevolution. Postcreationism is the fact that hyperevolution is now proposed, not the presence or absence of a mechanism.

That being said, you have certainly proposed a mechanism here. So what kind of testable, verifiable predictions can this model make?

[John_Harshman]

This old post of mine is relevant to the discussion here. It examines some of the evidence used by Wise and others to deduce that mammal “kinds” are more inclusive than creationists have traditionally thought. And I think that evidence is valid, as far as it goes and given certain assumptions about the fossil record.

[BenKissling (YEC/ID)]

Well I had assumed we were both familiar with what Jeanson has argued on this. Apparently only one of us is.

[T.j_Runyon]

@David_MacMillan

presumably to solve the problem of why no whales exist in strata along with prehistoric marine reptiles.

I do a lot of work at the K-pg boundary in Alabama (Moscow Landing) and about ten million years below it. I find a lot of mosasaurs but never ever whales. And the basilosaurus is our state fossil. They are everywhere. But never where YECs say they should be.

[T.j_Runyon]

@BenKissling

precisely the sort of research disfavored within the evolutionary paradigm.

I suggest plugging “evolutionary limits” into google scholar.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@r_speir

And this angelic breeding of animals would completely change everything in regard to rapid speciation.

If this is acceptable, there is no basis by which to object to The GAE .

[David_MacMillan]

@BenKissling

I had assumed we were both familiar with what Jeanson has argued on this. Apparently only one of us is.

Not sure which of us you are suggesting is more familiar, haha.

@John_Harshman

This old post of mine is relevant to the discussion here. It examines some of the evidence used by Wise and others to deduce that mammal “kinds” are more inclusive than creationists have traditionally thought. And I think that evidence is valid, as far as it goes and given certain assumptions about the fossil record.

Yep. One of the things that jumps out about this is the way he uses actual evidence and reasoned deduction to arrive at these conclusions. Looking at the strata where certain fossils are found and drawing conclusions based on those patterns is what real scientists have been doing since before Darwin. This is exactly what @Joel_Duff and I were describing as a “rediscovery” of evolutionary biology. They’re using real science to open up the boundaries of common ancestry in a really obvious way.

[John_Harshman]

@David_MacMillan

They’re using real science to open up the boundaries of common ancestry in a really obvious way.

Well, sort of. Note that the method requires the assumptions that 1) the Paleocene and Lower Eocene were only 20 years or so long and 2) the mammal fossil record of that 20 years is approximately complete at the level of “kind”, though the Cretaceous and earlier periods are almost entirely missing those “kinds”.

[David_MacMillan]

Yes, it’s still fundamentally flawed. They are moving in the right direction, in a sense, but their boundary lines won’t allow them to go all the way.

It’s still a lot more like actual science than the alternative.

[r_speir]

@David_MacMillan

You know, I predicted an exit strategy like this a few years ago, but I never thought I would actually see it.

Genesis 6 says, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.”

This pronouncement included mankind as well as the animal kingdom. God ended violence with the Flood and started over. He overthrew the old world and in a sense recreated a new one, stripped of violence. Some species, of dreadful proportion and violent disposition, would have been deliberately exterminated, permanently. That means that the kinds he placed on the Ark would have been specially bred – anywhere from 120 years to perhaps several hundreds of years prior – as they were “in the beginning” – namely, non-violent, healthy, fruitful. Of course, you can guess the result. Wildly rapid proliferation and speciation running full speed, spreading across vast geographic regions of complete safety.

And it certainly follows that since no one knows created kinds like the Creator, he would have given detailed breeding instructions to no doubt achieve again many of the original created kinds in the Garden. After all, the Creator was re-creating here. Any guess as to the beauty and variety and genetically charged, front-loaded attributes of this group that entered the Ark? Genetic engineering at its finest. It would blow our minds.

I think the truth is that you really do not have an argument at all.

[John_Harshman]

@r_speir

God ended violence with the Flood and started over.

How did that work out for him, then? How long did that end to violence last?

[Timothy_Horton]

@r_speir

I think the truth is that you really do not have an argument at all.

The real truth is you seem to have an extremely overactive imagination with no scientific evidence for your remarkable claims in sight.

[David_MacMillan]

Todd posted a lengthy response, having dredged this forum for quotes (though far more charitably than Jeanson).

Created kinds are not new

[BenKissling (YEC/ID)]

@David_MacMillan

@John_Harshman

This old post of mine …

This is exactly what @Joel_Duff and I were describing as a “rediscovery” of evolutionary biology. They’re using real science to open up the boundaries of common ancestry in a really obvious way.

Well in case you forgot, I don’t agree with Wise about the location of the post-Flood boundary. As Tim Clarey has argued convincingly, the post-Flood boundary is likely at “at or near the top of the Neogene (Upper Cenozoic) at about the Pliocene level.”

The fossil layers are not representative of evolutionary development, but rather order of burial during the Flood, which in turn is representative of pre-Flood biogeography. Clarey’s position is based on Baumgardner’s CPT flood model. I don’t know what Flood model Wise is using, but I’ve often found evolutionists who criticize YEC often intentionally attack the weakest position and ignore the strongest, acting as if YEC is some kind of monolithic organization of people who always agree on everything because the Bible says so. That is just not the case. So giving a single example of one guy who is weirdly claiming all these layers were laid down in tens of years after the Flood is not an appropriate criticism of the emerging YEC consensus on “hyper-evolution”, as you call it. These kinds (haha?) of answers are not going to be forthcoming from the fossil record, which is chaotic and not reflective of any sort of timetable of evolutionary development. The relevant question is demonstrations of actual, real, observed evolution of populations in existence today, or lack thereof.

[David_MacMillan]

@BenKissling

So giving a single example of one guy who is weirdly claiming all these layers were laid down in tens of years after the Flood is not an appropriate criticism of the emerging YEC consensus on “hyper-evolution”, as you call it.

Did you miss that this was a hypothetical?

IF the YECs all started to say that, then THAT would be geological postcreationism.

[John_Harshman]

@David_MacMillan

Did you miss that this was a hypothetical?

But it isn’t. There is a significant portion of YECs, including Kurt Wise, who do take that position.

[John_Harshman]

@BenKissling

As Tim Clarey has argued convincingly, the post-Flood boundary is likely at “at or near the top of the Neogene (Upper Cenozoic) at about the Pliocene level.”

That just makes it worse. Kinds are smaller units, mostly genera and species, and most kinds became extinct in or shortly after the flood. What a waste.

@BenKissling

The fossil layers are not representative of evolutionary development, but rather order of burial during the Flood

Yeah, that’s just nonsense. You can’t make that rationalization work at all. Marine organisms are found at all levels, and unless biogeography of ocean basins was somehow neatly sorted into piles that covered the world, none of that can happen. Ocean basins are also interspersed with land in this record. How would that even work?

@BenKissling

Clarey’s position is based on Baumgardner’s CPT flood model.

But that model makes no sense from a biogeographical or geophysical or any other perspective. That’s a problem.

@BenKissling

So giving a single example of one guy who is weirdly claiming all these layers were laid down in tens of years after the Flood is not an appropriate criticism of the emerging YEC consensus on “hyper-evolution”, as you call it.

But that’s actually less weird than claiming they were all laid down in one year during the flood, so it’s an attack on a stronger position, not a weaker one.

@BenKissling

These kinds (haha?) of answers are not going to be forthcoming from the fossil record, which is chaotic and not reflective of any sort of timetable of evolutionary development.

Then explain the fossil succession: why do strata closer together in time (or vertical position) have more similar biotas than those widely separated? Why do fossils look less and less like extant species the farther down you go?

@BenKissling

The relevant question is demonstrations of actual, real, observed evolution of populations in existence today, or lack thereof.

Ah, yes, denial that historical science can tell us anything. Typical.

[T_aquaticus]

@BenKissling

The fossil layers are not representative of evolutionary development, but rather order of burial during the Flood, which in turn is representative of pre-Flood biogeography.

That explanation has never worked. It fails to explain the correlation between species groups and the ratio of isotopes in the igneous rock layers above and below them. Floods don’t sort species so they correlate with small changes in potassium, argon, uranium, and lead in the rocks around them.

[Timothy_Horton]

@BenKissling

The fossil layers are not representative of evolutionary development, but rather order of burial during the Flood, which in turn is representative of pre-Flood biogeography.

Really? Tell me the YEC explanation for trilobites. Trilobite fossils are found all over the world, on all 7 continents. They represent ten different orders and over 20,000 documented species. They existed for 300 million years since the Cambrian but are NEVER found in strata later than the Permian of 252 million years ago. The Flood created that distribution exactly…how?

[David_MacMillan]

My hypothetical was the idea that all layers after the early Paleozoic (basically anything above the Cambrian and Ordovician) are post-flood. Wise doesn’t claim THAT, does he?