I was hoping that my edit would make it before you got back.

I stand by my edited post.   You are no nearer understanding my POV then when we started.   It seems that in general both of you are open to learning, but then you screw it up by failing to actually listen to me.  It isn't even that you guys disagree with me.  You disagree with something completely OTHER then what I am saying.  To proceed on those grounds is like being forced to answer the question "When did you stop beating your wife?"  

So, I admit freely that I haven't given you what you wanted.   But see it from my POV.   If you can't even understand the preliminaries why should I move on to the substance?  To tell you the truth, I've seen it before.  A seemingly honest invitation to explain and defend your view followed by incessant cramming into a preconcieved caricature.

You don't understand me.  You don't understand my POV.   Every real attempt that I make is thwarted by 'wife beating' arguments.

BTW, I laughed uproariously to hear you suggest that you've 'backed up' your claims.

But I choked when you suggested that the multiverse is not considered a credible scientific area of inquiry, in defiance of all of your own criteria for what 'science' is.   What a hoot!  You are woefully out of touch with reality.  

So, where do you live?   You no doubt got my email and know that I'm a traveling man.  Shall we do lunch?  Maybe we'll get on better in person.

That goes for Copernicus, too.

Alright, I can't resist.

"I have unloaded piles of backing for my points. How about confronting some of it?"

I already mentioned that I snorted at that.  So moving on..

I don't know what you are snorting, but simply ignoring an argument is not a rebuttal. In debate, not answering a point is taken to mean you are conceding the point.

"Your theories on the flood have been dismantled."

As soon as we get the old posts back up, I challenged you to provide arguments that I have made about the flood with their respective 'dismantlings.'  That is to say, not things that you think I have said, or things you THINK I would say, but things that I have actually said.  If you can do it from memory, so much the better.  Good luck.

Your argument has been that the Earth's geology can be accounted for by the Biblical flood. Fossils are creatures drowned in the flood, by your theory. The geological layers were somehow deposited by the flood.

The difficulties with your theory are legion. Why are the fossils in the geological layers in a very particular order, reptiles below dinosaurs, below mammals, below humans? Why are there volcanic layers interleaved with the sedimentary layers? Why are there fossil plants buried in some layers which obviously grew in the soil layer directly below? Where did the water, which buried the Earth seven miles deep, go to? These are just a few of the implausibilities. What is your answer? You never have given me one and I suspect you will dodge again.

"Your theories on ID have been dismantled."

Ditto with above.  

When you were briefly interested in the ID concept, I listed a number of problems with this theory. Of course, the primary difficulty of ID is that it is not an effort to explain the fossil and biogical data, but an effort to explain gaps in the data. Since science can only explain existing data, ID is not science.

However, I also mentioned very specific difficulties with ID. One is the countless number of "failed designs" in the fossil record.

Another is the fact that many important genetic changes are clearly the work of viral infections. Is the Designer a virus?

Another is the enormous span of time the designer needed to do his work. Billions of years of trial and error.

We humans are already designers ourselves. We will soon be able to make simple organisms by scratch. We have identified flaws in the human genome that we can correct. We will soon surpass the supposed Designer himself. Will we be smarter than God?

"Your arguments on radioactive dating have shown no understanding of nuclear physics."

What arguments?  See above.

You never seemed to grasp the idea that we can use the known decay rate of various isotopes to analyse the age of rocks from measured decay products in those rocks. Let me try again with an analogy which uses exactly the same mathematics: interest rates.

If you know the interest rate is 5%, you will know how by much your money will increase in 100 years. Likewise, if you know how much money you started with and how much you have now, you know how many years have elapsed for a given interest rate. Radiological dating works exactly the same way except the "interest rates" are negative.

"Similarly with your arguments against the astronomical evidence for an old universe."

Again, good luck.  The only thread that I recall participating in regarding that was one with Phil, where my dear Phil presented information without realizing that the actual scientific paper his source was relying on actually did what I predicted it would do:  He was using a source that assumed the model to prove the model.  Also predictable:  Phil bailed.  Other than that, I haven't ventured any arguments so I don't know what you are smoking.  

The astronomical evidence for an old universe was part of my rebuttal to your Young Earth argument (see the first post in this thread). I showed, by simple geometrical arguments, that the distant galaxies must be billions of light years away. The method is the same as for measuring the distance to a tall building, based on it's apparent height from your current viewpoint.

"Your arguments of no transitional species have been contradicted,"

Hmmm.  Now here is one that is easy.  When we meet for lunch I'll buy for both of us if you can find any place ANYWHERE where I have said there are no transitional species.  If you can't find one, then you buy lunch.  Deal?

Quote

Heh. Well. I live in Santa Barbara, California. If you make it here for lunch, I will buy regardless.

"as have your arguments that there are no currently evolving organisms."

Organisms don't evolve, Broken.  Populations of organisms do.  lol I can feel myself evolving right now.... a third ear..... I've always wanted that....oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh

Bacteria are evolving organsms. The fact there is more than one bacteria is involved is assumed. Try harder, SntJohnny.

Sorry for the delay. It looks like you have some real rebuttals here, good for you!

"The difficulties with your theory are legion."

Says you.   Let's consider:

"Why are the fossils in the geological layers in a very particular order, reptiles below dinosaurs, below mammals, below humans?"

And this is a difficulty why?  Do you have empirical experimental evidence that suggests it should be otherwise?  If not, you are just issuing a bland challenge.   I certainly don't have to respond to your mere opinion that the observed pattern of deposit constitutes a 'very particular order' unless you had some set of experiments showing that we could expect otherwise.

As I know you do not possess such data, because so called scientific challenges to my hypothesis never go beyond speculative beliefs about what their expectations would be, this is not a difficulty at all, but rather just one interesting observed phenomena worthy of investigation if an actual experiment was formed.

You are arguing that the placement of fossils within the geological layers is compatible with a "great flood" which covered the entire Earth. Evidently, this flood neatly sorted things so that only primitive creatures appear at the lowest depths and complex creatures, such as us humans, only appear at the very top.

Now, SntJohnny, you must realize this is statistically much less likely than throwing a deck of cards in the air and having them land exactly in Ace-King order, neatly sorted by suit. What could possibly explain this sorting? Some species, for example T-Rex, appear only in a very narrow band of layers, about 1% of the total.

The fact that fossils are ordered by geological layer was one of the principle phenomena that drove Darwin to propose evolution in the first place. Floods may indeed cause erosion, and may indeed drown animals, but floods are not capable of sorting out Trilobytes from whales from saber-tooth tigers and neatly placing each in their own layers of sediment.

That you think there is a 'very particular order' begs the question.

There is no question to be begged: the fossils are found in a very particular order. Trilobytes appear in the Cambrian layers and disappear after the Permian layers. There are literally billions of fossil trilobytes. They only appear in very particular layers. Likewise humans. No creature even remotely human appears in any but the topmost layers.

You are importing your own hypothesis.   What you use to build a huge and convoluted theory of all biological life on this planet of billions of years- and 'huge' is an understatement- may simply be, and by application of Occam's razor might be the most reasonable interpretation at anyrate- the mere result of hydrological sorting on a planetary scale.

The natural history of the Earth is huge and convoluted, not the theory of evolution. The basic order of this natural history had been resolved before Darwin. Darwin's theory is, by far, the simplest and best-tested explanation for the Earth's natural history.

Darwin concluded that that the creatures in the lower geological layers had to be the ancestors of the creatures in the upper layers. Since the creatures gradually changed from layer to layer, he concluded that the forms of creatures gradually change over time in response to selection and environment. This simple theory is Occam's razor at it's finest.

Your theory, of "hydrological sorting" of fossils, has no observational basis whatsoever. What would make one drowned species settle in a layer different from another species? Why would fish, whales, or oysters drown? How could there be volcanic layers between the sediment layers deposited by your flood? Why are all ancient cities only found in the topmost layers? Certainly, you don't believe they all floated there.

If there was a great flood today, ignoring the fact that the water necessary to cover the Earth cannot be found on this planet, the Earth's surface would not be buried under thousands of feet of sediment. Where would this sediment come from? If you washed every bit of topsoil from all the mountains, it would add only a few feet to the average height of the lowlands.

What's the more simple interpretation?

A simple theory is not enough. A theory must also fit the existing data in a plausible way. So far, no one has produced a theory which fits the data as well as evolution. Not even close.

"Why are there volcanic layers interleaved with the sedimentary layers?"

This is a problem why?  A global catastrophic flood is inconsistent with volcanic action why?  how?  You know this how?

I will give just a couple examples. There are millions of volcanic events recorded in the geological record. By your theory, these all occured in the same flood year- since they are interwoven with the sediment layers.

Now, imagine if millions of Mt. Saint Helens, Mt Etnas, and so forth were all going off at the same time. Yet somehow this cataclysm escapes the notice of Noah. Despite the fact that the air would be fatally toxic.

Lava deposited on dry land has a different structure than that deposited underwater. How did this lava get deposited during your great flood? How did these layers get buried by later sedimentary layers, which in turn were buried by yet more dry-land lava?

I'm afraid I'm unimpressed by the issuance of questions that have no experimental data behind them.

You are saying the science of Geology has no data to back it? The oil industry could save a lot of money by firing all their geologists and replacing them with the geological knowledge found in Genesis.

"Why are there fossil plants buried in some layers which obviously grew in the soil layer directly below?"

Again, where is your experimental data demonstrating we should expect otherwise?

You are proposing that these trees grew on flood sediment, to full size, underwater, in a single year, while being buried by the sediment deposited in higher layers. Do you really believe this is possible? Would you also need an experiment to show that pigs can't fly?

"Where did the water, which buried the Earth seven miles deep, go to?"

An interesting but not insurmountable question.  Since you acknowledge, apparently, that the entire earth is indeed composed of sedimentary rock which is the result of water action, you need to provide your own mechanism for explaining how the water got so high to explain the existence of that sedimentary rock at those altitudes and where it went.

No. You need to educate yourself on some basic geology. Only a fraction of the Earth's crust is sedimentary rock. The crust is only a small fraction of the Earth. The crust is buckled, warped, expelled, and consumed by the underlying mantle of the Earth. Sedimentary rock, as well as metamorphic and igneous rock, is lifted to higher altitudes by these actions.

  So, whatever mechanism you use to explain 'where the water went' I will simply adopt.   I might perhaps suggest that the process moved faster than you will allege, but if its good for you in general I see no reason why it wouldn't be good for me.

There is no explanation for where enough water to cover the Earth to 30,000 feet "went". That is several times as much water as currently exists on this planet. Yet, this mysterious water came and went in less than a year.

"When you were briefly interested in the ID concept, I listed a number of problems with this theory."

My only interest on these forums with the ID concept at this point has consisted in pointing out that if one is going to make the argument that biological data is the result of processes that are not guided, and therefore undesigned, then the obvious falsification of that premise would be to show that they are guided and undesigned.  So, if you wish to say that ID is not science, that is telling me- and this is what I've always said- that evolution itself is not science in the sense of being open to Popperian standards of falsification.   To falsify undesign would be to show design.  If scientists dismiss falsification at that level as discussing things that are not 'scientific'  that is tantamount to admitting that the claim that biology is the result of undesigned process is also not scientific.

That has been the extent of my interest in ID.

Actually, I think the IDers deserve some credit for attempting to make a scientifically plausible theory of an "interventionist" God. The IDers accept the natural history evidence of an old Earth and the fossil data. They see evolution as being driven by God's intervention.

A Deist such as myself sees the laws of nature as God's creation, with no need for further intervention. Evolution happens because God designed his laws that way. This view is compatible with all scientific evidence. Furthermore, it is compatible with the idea of God being of an intelligence far beyond our own.

Using Occam's razor, there is no need to add an "intelligent designer" to evolution. No aspect of natural history or current biology requires an ID explanation. ID brings nothing to the game. In fact, it hinders scientific progress by offering an easy way out of difficult problems without yielding any real understanding.

And, as I listed below, ID has major plausibility problems besides a complete lack of evidence.

"However, I also mentioned very specific difficulties with ID. One is the countless number of "failed designs" in the fossil record."

The only way you could know something was a failed design would be if you had a reliable way of knowing what good design was.  I see no reason to entertain your arguments that there is poor design if you simultaneously  refuse to engage in laying out criteria for detecting real and 'good' design because you think it 'unscientific.'    If recognizing good design is not science, then it obviously follows that recognizing 'failed designs' similarly is, and therefore cannot be considered any sort of argument worth responding to.

By failed design, I mean extinct species. How intelligent is this Designer if 99% of his designs go extinct? I would expect an Intelligent Designer to get it right the first time. From the fossil record, this designer appears incompetent.

"Another is the enormous span of time the designer needed to do his work. Billions of years of trial and error."

Again, worldview confusion.  This point is only a problem if we are assuming that evolution and long ages of the earth are the proper inference from the geologic record.

Since that very assumption is specifically under fire by my hypothesis, the point has no weight.  If my hypothesis is correct, there likely isn't any evolution, or designed evolution, or billions of years, so obviously we need not be worried that the designer needed billions of years 'to do his work.'

The IDers do not dispute the age of the Earth. You are mixing ID with a literal Genesis. Since the IDers want to be taken seriously by scientists, they realize that the basic findings of geology, physics, astronomy, and biology need to be incorporated in their theory.

 
This is exactly what I was talking about when cautioning about importing the conclusions of one hypothesis with its set of assumptions to oppose the conclusions of another hypothesis that has its own set of assumptions.  You would equally cry foul if I dismissed evolution with the casual dismissal:   "Evolution couldn't have happened because we know the earth is very young."

I wouldn't cry foul, I just would consider a young earth to be contrary to all evidence. Science works, SntJohnny. Name one discovery made in the last five hundred years through application of scripture. Compare that to the cornicopia of discoveries produced by the application of scientific methodology. Age of Enlightenment, dude. Get with it.

"We humans are already designers ourselves. We will soon be able to make simple organisms by scratch. We have identified flaws in the human genome that we can correct. We will soon surpass the supposed Designer himself. Will we be smarter than God?"

Well, at the very least you'd only show that design is a critical component to 'making simple organisms.'   Is that a problem?  Do organisms not tend to naturally emerge 'from scratch' ?   You'd think that'd happen so often and so easily that it wouldn't need 'smarter than God' humans to pull it off.

Side-stepping the point. It certainly won't  take us humans 3.5 billion years to duplicate and surpass any of the feats of this Designer. If this designer is indeed intelligent, what took him so pathetically long? However, 3.5 billion years makes perfect sense for an unconscious process like evolution.

Since my worldview (bigger than my hypothesis) contends that the Scriptures are accurate when they say that we are created in the image of God, such efforts only serve to corroborate that worldview.

But I doubt if you think we are smarter than God, or even remotely as intelligent. I agree with "in the image of God", but only in the sense that we are capable of conscious thought, however limited.

Quick question.  How can there be 'flaws' in the human genome?  Technically speaking, every aspect of the human genome is the result of evolutionary processes, so the idea of correcting a flaw is flawed itself.   You can only correct something if you recognize some proper ideal that you need to bring the thing in question in line with.

By flaws I mean the human genome is not optimal. This makes evolutionary sense, because we are so recently evolved. Childbirth used to kill about one woman in five, before medical science intervened. Obviously, the human birth canal has not yet adapted to our enormous heads.  We are still in the process of losing our wisdom teeth, which are no longer necessary for our softer diets.

You are right that the idea of a flaw is a human concept. Evolution is simply a game of survivors: if you survive to produce offspring you win, whether you are flawed by human standards or not. Only the survivors pass on their genomes.

What you call a 'flaw' should properly only be understood as a simple evolutionary manifestation, and the word 'flaw' only shorthand and perhaps as parochial as saying that the sun rises and sets.

Certainly. However, such flawed design is exactly what you would expect from a randomly driven design process like evolution. We are most flawed in our aspects which have evolved most recently. Aspects which evolved a long time ago, such as our eyes, are highly optimized. Evolution has had more time to "sand off the rough edges", so to speak.

If you really think there are flaws in the human genome, that assumes the existence of an ideal genome.  By what mechanism do you arrive at an 'ideal genome' or recognizing such a thing as such if evolution is true?

Not true. There are flaws in my Windows OS, but I do not assume the existence of an ideal Windows.

We humans could stand to have some bugs fixed. Such as a tendency to bad backs and bad knees (we have only been walking upright for a few million years). Also, a tendency to get overweight with our recent high calorie diets. Maybe aging slower would be a good thing, too.

We ought not feel sorry for those with Down's Syndrome, for example.   They are just one evolutionary expression of the genome.  Perhaps we ought not even consider them human, right?  Or, perhaps DS is just one evolutionary stage of human development.

Down's Syndrome is caused by a chromosomal deformity. Perhaps it is due to some genetic remnant from an earlier era, perhaps not. However, it would be nice to prevent such suffering in the future, as well as other genetic disorders.  

This brings up the question, do we evolve ourselves from now on? Are we humans the peak of evolution or merely a step along the way? A big lesson of natural history is that all species alive today have morphed through many forms, and presumably will continue to do so. Not survival of the fittest, but survival of the most adaptable.

The problem with radiometric dating is that it relies on the observation over the last century of constant decay rates but ignores the fact that in order for the radioactive material to have ever existed in the first place some sort of exception, or singularity, must have existed in order for the substance to be around in order to decay.

This is usually resolved by invoking nucleosynthesis, which only pushes the issue back to yet another set of assumptions.

Actually, there is no need to know where the radio-isotope came from. If the material was heated, and cooled to form a crystal, the source is irrelevent. The crystalization process rids the material of impurities, including decay products of the radio-isotope; resets the clock, so to speak. All dating is from the time of crystalization. That is why many dating techniques utilize volcanic rock. The date is measured from the time the lava cooled and crystalized.

At anyrate, I don't have much of a beef with people like you deciding that the radiometric data is substantially solid, but I reserve the right, and invoke it, to remain entirely noncommittal until a better explanation of how the 'money' was first deposited in the first place, and better than 100 years of observation to verify that the interest rate never goes up or down, ever, ever, ever, for billions of years.

Extrapolating from 100 years of observation to 5,000,000,000 years is not, in my view, a reasonable thing to do.

As I explained above, how the "money" was deposited is not a factor when dating crystaline substances.

In terms of the interest rate going up or down, we have very good evidence that they have not changed by much over the last 6 billion years. The physical constants measured from the light of distance galaxies agree with our measurements here on Earth within 1 part in 100,000. Now, some physicists find even this small discrepancy big news, but the age of the Earth is not in jeopardy.

"The astronomical evidence for an old universe was part of my rebuttal to your Young Earth argument"

"that the distant galaxies must be billions of light years away. The method is the same as for measuring the distance to a tall building, based on it's apparent height from your current viewpoint."

That they might be, or even are, billions of light years away only matters if you think that somehow vast distances are indicative of old ages.  If building A is 10 feet taller than building B, does it follow that building A is older?   There are other ways of examining the question, but it strikes me as obvious that merely pointing out that things far away, or taller, than others, does not mean you are speaking about their ages.  You have to get there somehow, and it is exactly there where my model has a different point of view.

Capiche?

Vast distances are indicative of great age simply because of the time it takes light to travel across such a gulf. A billion light years means a distance so great that light takes a billion years to cross it. The light you are seeing left the star a billion years ago.

I have read some on this board postulating that the light from distant galaxies was created "in-flight" when the universe was created. However, this galactic light is not like some distant light bulb, but more like a movie. Supernovas go off, gamma-ray bursters burst, pulsars blink, etc., all recorded in this stream of billion year-old light.

"Heh. Well. I live in Santa Barbara, California. If you make it here for lunch, I will buy regardless."

Let me leave the tip, then.  Private message me your phone number, and if I get out to California (which is possible), I will give you a ring.  It will be fun, no?

It's a deal.
/edited by sntjohnny

"You are arguing that the placement of fossils within the geological layers is compatible with a "great flood" which covered the entire Earth."

Almost.  That is my hypothesis.  My point is that there is no experimental data in hand, or even attempted by people you would consider credible, to confirm or corroborate the point.

"Evidently, this flood neatly sorted things so that only primitive creatures appear at the lowest depths and complex creatures, such as us humans, only appear at the very top."

That is not a very compelling argument, as scientists are very careful nowadays not to use 'primitive' in the sense that you are using it.   For example, consider this passage out of Ernst Mayr's "What Evolution Is"

"At one time the idea was almost universally held that man was the culmination of Creation and that anything was progressive that led in the direction of man's perfection.

Doesn't the series from bacterium to man indeed document progress?  If so, how can such seemingly progressive change be explained? ....... The terms "higher" and "lower" have also been criticized.  For the modern Darwinian it is not a value judgment, but "higher" means more recent in geological time or higher on the phylogenetic tree.  But is any organism "better" by being higher up on the phylogenetic tree?  Progress, it is claimed, is indicated by greater complexity, more advanced division of labor among organs, better utilization of the resources of the environment, and better all-around adaptation.  This may be true to some extent, but he skull of a mammal or bird is not nearly as complex as that of their early fish ancestors.

Critics of the concept of progress have pointed out that in some ways bacteria are at least as successful as vertebrates or insects, and therefore why should vertebrates be considered progressive over prokaryotes?  The decision as to who is right depends largely on what one considers to be progress."  pg 214

"Evolution means directional change.  Since the beginning of life on Earth and the rise of the first prokaryotes (bacteria) 3,5000 million years ago, organisms have become far more diversified and complex.   A whale, a chimpanzee, and a giant sequoia are surely very different from a bacterium.  How can this change be characterized?

The answer most frequently given is that current life is simply more complex.  On the whole this is indeed true, but it is not universally true." pg 212.

Finally, from page 219-220:

"Many early evolutionists were convinced that evolution advanced steadily toward ever greater complexity.  Indeed, the prokaryotes, which represented life on Earth for more than 1 billion years, are far less complex than the eukaryotes, which evolved subsequently.  But among the prokaryotes there is no indication of ever increasing complexity in the long period of their existence.  Nor does one find any evidence for such a trend among the eukaryotes.  ....  The skull of a mammal, for instance, is far less complex than that of its placoderm ancestors.  Wherever we look, we find simplifying trends as well as trends toward greater complexity.... There is no justification in considering greater complexity to be an indication of evolutionary progress.

Consequently, attempting to argue that things moved from 'primitive to advanced' (specifically rejected on page 75 in regards to 'finalism', a view he said retarded understanding of evolution) is untenable, even according to evolutionists themselves.

"Now, SntJohnny, you must realize this is statistically much less likely than throwing a deck of cards in the air and having them land exactly in Ace-King order, neatly sorted by suit. What could possibly explain this sorting? Some species, for example T-Rex, appear only in a very narrow band of layers, about 1% of the total."

You have two ideas combined here.   First, the idea of the 'Ace-King' order.   If you had never seen a deck of cards before and had no idea of the history of royalty involved in the jack, queen, king, and ace, you would not have any way of correctly ordering them.   You see a pattern in the fossils that justifies a whoppingly huge hypothesis and theory.  I see something that may be as easy to explain as the apparent pattern and order of sand on the seashore.

Remember the constant skeptical drum beat that humans have a tendecy to see patterns where there are none?  (Sagan makes the point explicitly)  Perhaps evolution is the biggest example, ever.

The other idea in your rebuttal there is your concern about T-rex only appearing in a narrow band of layers.  You read into this significance, but I will not be compelled by your subjective feeling of significance.   Show me experimentally why this is significant, and that'd be different.

Why should we expect something else?  Give me some objective reasons to expect something otherwise.

I have seen enough hydrological sorting that to me, the simplest inference is that that is what is going on.   It is just like looking at the layers of different sized pebbles on the beach.  Is an intelligent designer invoked?  No.  It is not simply that we can imagine that the water action is responsible for the sorting, its that we observe it.  We would have to eliminate the possibility before moving on to the larger theory.   Similarly, you need to eliminate hydrologic sorting before we go about the completely subjective business of reading patterns out of the layer.

Your subjective expectations- or anyone elses- do not qualify as rebuttals.  We are talking about science, are we not?  Therefore, give me the experimental data that eliminates the simpler possibility of hydrological sorting, and it will be a different game.

"The fact that fossils are ordered by geological layer was one of the principle phenomena that drove Darwin to propose evolution in the first place. Floods may indeed cause erosion, and may indeed drown animals, but floods are not capable of sorting out Trilobytes from whales from saber-tooth tigers and neatly placing each in their own layers of sediment."

Floods may indeed drown animals, but they are not capable of sorting out trilobytes from whales?  Again, you know this how?

Your examples are unfortunate because I'm very certain that your three examples could easily be shown to sort differently by simply pointing to the finding of Archimede's principle.  (http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0804583.html)

Given Archimede's principle, why would we expect anything OTHER than sorting based on size and mass and volume into different discrete layers?

"There is no question to be begged: the fossils are found in a very particular order. Trilobytes appear in the Cambrian layers and disappear after the Permian layers. There are literally billions of fossil trilobytes. They only appear in very particular layers. Likewise humans. No creature even remotely human appears in any but the topmost layers."

Sorry, you are still begging the question.  One can invoke Archimede's principle as a very basic and simple physical operation.   The idea that there is any other significance to the 'order' of deposit is reading into the fossil record more than what is there.  As I already pointed out in citing from Mayr, you can't even look to the fossil record for evidence of 'primitive to advanced' or as complexity as some sort of sign post of evolutionary development.

The 'order' that you see can only be taken as a brute fact depicting the history, you believe, of the development of life on this planet.   If you found an exception, for example, if a trilobyte showed up in a topmost layer, you would simply revise your believed history of the development of life on this planet, not the theory itself.

Similar examples of just such methodologies abound in the literature of the evolutionary apologists.  An easy one to see is the coelancanth, which was supposed to be extinct, but as you well know, has been found alive and identical to the fossil remains.   No one thought twice about redefining the theory based on this.  The fact that the coelecanth is completely absent from the fossil record for tens of millions of years and yet still exists today hasn't changed the theory one bit.  

Where was the coelecanth for those millions of years?  If they were able to escape fossilization for 80,000,000 years, how do we know that they hadn't already existed 80,000,000 or even 500,000,000 years before they were fossilized in the first place?

And how do we know that the same problem does not apply to each and every organism in the historical record?  Please, give me an empirical, experimentally validated remedy to this problem, and not the invocation of imagined explanations.

This particular problem disappears in a view of hydrological sorting, while I admit that perhaps other new problems might emerge by the same view.

"Darwin concluded that that the creatures in the lower geological layers had to be the ancestors of the creatures in the upper layers."

And yet the very notion that the geological layers represent long ages is one of the points specifically attacked in the global flood hypothesis.  Why can't you understand this very simple and basic fact?

Comparing the global flood hypothesis, which would necessitate a completely different view altogether of the geologic record, with the evolutionary view, which has its own view of the geologic record is, for lack of a better word asinine.  I hate to resort to such a word, but I have repeated this point so many times I am at a loss to describe it any other way.  It doesn't matter if you think your view right- we are evaluating my view, which must be considered on its own merits using its own assumptions and presuppositions.   One of the chief of which would be that the significance of the geologic column is completely different.

"Since the creatures gradually changed from layer to layer, he concluded that the forms of creatures gradually change over time in response to selection and environment. "

This is a particularly absurd assertion, as this is not what is actually observed.  If this is what was observed, there would not be a need for Gould to posit punctuated equilibria.  The fact that Dawkins whines and cries that punctuated equilibria is consistent with a gradualistic point of view (ie, PE only speaks to the speed of the changes, not the step-wise nature of it) does not change the fact that what is observed is otherwise.   The number of examples of alleged observed gradual change in the fossil record are so few, that it is no surprise that when this point is examined in various text books we have endure the same tired examples over and over again.  I know that Mayr uses the alleged lineage of the horse, as does Berra, but I think Dawkins did as well.  A biological book I saw recently did the same.  Surely there are more examples?  

In all those billions of years, why do we have no more than a handful of observed gradual changes?  As Mayr says (I'm using Mayr because he is so well accepted as an authority and I already have the book open in front of me):

"The reason why this controversy [context: macroevolution vs. microevolution] has not been fully settled is because there seems to be an astonishing conflict between theory and observation."  

hmmmm..... didn't I just say that?  oh, yes, moving on...

"According to Darwinian theory, evolution is a populational phenomenon and should therefore be gradual and continuous.   This should be true not only for microevolution but also for macroevolution and for the transition between the two.  Alas, this seems to be in conflict with observation.  Whereever we look at the living biota, whether at the level of the higher taxa or even at that of the species, discontinuities are overwhelmingly frequent.  Among living taxa there is no intermediacy between whales and terrestrial mammals, nor between reptiles and either birds or mammals.  All 30 phyla of animals are separated from each other by a gap.  There seems to be a large gap between the flowering plants (angiosperms) and their nearest relatives.  The discontinuities are even more striking in the fossil record.  New species usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not connected with their ancestors by a series of gradually evolving species."  pg 189.

Of course, Mayr, never one to let observation and actual evidence stand in the way of the explanatory power of evolution, proceeds to ignore the evidence and treat possible solutions as the same as observed fact.

But let the record show, at the very least, attempting to pin one's hopes on the fossil record as documenting greadual evolution is pinning one's hopes to the Titanic.  Again, as Mayr says, 'discontinuities are EVEN MORE STRIKING in the fossil record.'

"Your theory, of "hydrological sorting" of fossils, has no observational basis whatsoever."

Well, it wouldn't be of fossils, would it?  It would be of living organisms that were later fossilized.  However, it is inane to say that there is no observational basis of hydrological sorting.  That is in fact exactly what happens to sand on the seashore, and you can see it for yourself any time you wanted to venture out to the Pacific.  Are you telling me that animals are exempt from the laws of matter that sand and rocks have to obey?

You demonstrate to me that animals do not have to obey the laws of physics, and we can talk.

"What would make one drowned species settle in a layer different from another species? Why would fish, whales, or oysters drown?"

Who said they drowned?

"How could there be volcanic layers between the sediment layers deposited by your flood?"

Once again you ask a question that is interesting, but raised as somehow contradictory.  Of course, you have no experimental data to support the notion that is contradictory.  Why would it be inconsistent?  Just because YOU can't imagine how it is incompatible doesn't mean that it is.  Importantly, this challenge is not derived from empirical observation, but rather your own expectations.  Sorry, that sort of argumentation is not going to move me.

Surely there must be some concrete examples you can give me that we can examine?

"Why are all ancient cities only found in the topmost layers? Certainly, you don't believe they all floated there."

Eh?  I'm not sure what you mean.  I am unaware of any ancient cities embedded in the geologic column.  Even given current evolutionary anthropological models, the move from hunter-gatherer to settlements and domestication all happened in the last 10,000 years.

"Where would this sediment come from? If you washed every bit of topsoil from all the mountains, it would add only a few feet to the average height of the lowlands."

But if you took all of the existing sedimintary rock and pulverized it, you would certainly have enough.   As my model calls for the flood itself as being the primary creative force of all the sedimentary rock in the first place, this is not a problem at all.  You are talking about flooding occurring on top of the current geologic column.  We are talking about a flood that deposited the entire geologic column.  

"A simple theory is not enough. A theory must also fit the existing data in a plausible way."

To say 'plausible' is to introduce subjectivity.   When are you going to start dealing with objective realities?

"So far, no one has produced a theory which fits the data as well as evolution. Not even close."

That is your opinion.

"I will give just a couple examples. There are millions of volcanic events recorded in the geological record."

Really.  That's a lot of volcanic events.  Give me 10 actual examples.  It should be easy.

"Now, imagine if millions of Mt. Saint Helens, Mt Etnas, and so forth were all going off at the same time. Yet somehow this cataclysm escapes the notice of Noah. Despite the fact that the air would be fatally toxic."

Hmmmm.  Now we are going to talk about Noah?  If we are going to start treating Noah's observations as real data requiring explanation (which I'm fine doing, but I did not expect YOU to do), than that certainly opens up the conversation.  Are you going to allow the hundreds of global flood stories from around the world into the field of evidence requiring explanation, and possibly offering insight on their own?

Expecting you to have your cake and eat it too (ie, invoking Noah, but then not allowing Noahian explanations later), let me venture to point out that Noah was locked inside a box.

Leaving that aside, if we are talking about lava deposits being combined with the sedimentary deposits, we are OBVIOUSLY talking about volcanic eruptions occurring under water (in order for them to be part of the deposit in the first place), and so probably wouldn't be noticeable even if Noah wasn't locked in his box.

Incidentally, why have these millions of volcanic eruptions not toxified the atmosphere even to this day?  Where did the noxious gases go, in your view?  Unlike my view where the events occur directly within an absorption medium, your view has them all happening in the open air.

"Lava deposited on dry land has a different structure than that deposited underwater. How did this lava get deposited during your great flood? How did these layers get buried by later sedimentary layers, which in turn were buried by yet more dry-land lava?"

Now that's something to work with.  Evidence, please.

"You are saying the science of Geology has no data to back it"

Saying that geology has data to back it up and actually providing it to me are entirely different things, don't you think?

As it is, I have not said anything about geology not having data to back it up.  Only YOUR expectations.  If you think your expectations are justified beyond your own subjective opinions, then by all means provide it.  Don't run and cry that I'm attacking geology.  I understand that geologists have data- I have a different interpretation of much of that data.  But that is not the point.  If you think your 'objections' have the backing of geology, it is to you to demonstrate as much.  Giving me your expectations and asserting that geology backs you up, but then refusing to give examples and saying that I'm attacking geology, is very disengenous.

"You are proposing that these trees grew on flood sediment, to full size, underwater, in a single year, while being buried by the sediment deposited in higher layers. Do you really believe this is possible? Would you also need an experiment to show that pigs can't fly?"

You answered my request for specific examples with yet another reflection of your expectations, this time clouded up with your perception of my model (which is obviously a flawed strawman representation).  Are you going to give me concrete examples, or not?

"No. You need to educate yourself on some basic geology."

Ah, yes, the appeal to ignorance.  "You don't agree with me, therefore you must be ignorant."  Classic.  No, YOU need to educate yourself on some basic geology.

Wow, did we get anywhere?

"Only a fraction of the Earth's crust is sedimentary rock."

Narrowing it down to the 'crust' is an interesting tactic.  Without looking deeper, I recall that the 'crust' includes the rock going down about as far as we can dig- a pretty disengenous clarification and not consistent with the context of what we are talking about.

"Sedimentary rock, as well as metamorphic and igneous rock, is lifted to higher altitudes by these actions."

Then I invoke these same actions in reference to the deposit of sedimentary rock at the higher altitudes, and also the notion that the mountains (for example) were not always at the height as they are now.   Thank you for providing the resolution to your own challenge.

"There is no explanation for where enough water to cover the Earth to 30,000 feet "went"."

But we both agree that there is no need to believe that the mountains were always 30,000 feet.  That's got to suck, eh?

"Actually, I think the IDers deserve some credit for attempting to make a scientifically plausible theory of an "interventionist" God."

I agree, though that is not my area of interest.  I find it ironic that skeptics told the Christians to go back and come up with a more empirical theory and when they did (and not all Christians or creationists at that), they were slammed.

"Using Occam's razor, there is no need to add an "intelligent designer" to evolution."

Occam's razor is only a guideline.  It is not an iron clad view at all.  Set aside your belief for a moment that evolution is the true explanation for biological organisms on our planet (because that begs the question) and pretend you are examining, say, a frog for the first time.  You will be impressed with a need to explain this, upon ever deeper and ever deeper examination, complex creature.  You will know that it will need a very extensive explanation.   The only thing that you have to compare it with is the ingenious creative powers of human agents, and you know that the frog exceeds them.  Simple and apparent deduction (aka Paley, re-iterated by Dawkins) is design.  

Please consult my essay here:  http://sntjohnny.com/index/essays/occamsrazor.html for the proper use of Occam's razor.

The simplest inference is design.   It becomes fantastically difficult to explain apparently and obviously designed things using undesigning mechanisms.  That's not to say that human imagination can't pull it off.  I've come up with some compelling arguments for why we might want to believe that computers are not actually designed.  it can be done.  But it is not 'simpler' by any means.

"By failed design, I mean extinct species. How intelligent is this Designer if 99% of his designs go extinct?"

Mayr says 99.9%.   My model includes the fact that there was an entirely different climate before and after the flood.  Obviously, the ID folks may have to respond to your challenge, but my model evades the problem.

"From the fossil record, this designer appears incompetent."

Assuming, once again, that the fossil record is a reliable record of the origin and development of life on this planet.

"The IDers do not dispute the age of the Earth. You are mixing ID with a literal Genesis"

Fair enough, but I'm not the one that brought up ID.   I was under the illusion we were talking about my POV, not the IDers.   You are mixing up the one area where I have an interest in ID, about which I have already clarified repeatedly, and imposing on me other attitudes about IDers that I don't necessarily care about.

Don't raise your objections against ID with me in the first place if they do not relate to the evaluation of the model that I *thought* was under discussion.

"I wouldn't cry foul, I just would consider a young earth to be contrary to all evidence. Science works, SntJohnny. Name one discovery made in the last five hundred years through application of scripture."

People are sinful by nature.  See:  Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, King Richard the Lion Hearted.

"Compare that to the cornicopia of discoveries produced by the application of scientific methodology. Age of Enlightenment, dude. Get with it."

And yet other than the behavior of virii and vaccines, you have nothing other than a historical point of view about the earth's history to offer me in the context of what we are talking about in this thread.  Einstein allowed us to crash a satellite into a comet.  The best evolution can do for us in terms of 'working' is making sure we take our full course of antibiotics.

Can you predict the next steps of human evolution based on evolutionary theory out 100 years, 1,000 years, 10,000 years, or 1 million?  Or does it only work backwards?   Newton 'works' forward so reliably we don't mind extrapolating it backwards.  Evolution does not qualify as something that 'works.'  If it is agreed that science 'works' then I further clarify then that evolution must not be science, since it doesn't 'work.'

It adds nothing.

"Side-stepping the point. It certainly won't take us humans 3.5 billion years to duplicate and surpass any of the feats of this Designer. If this designer is indeed intelligent, what took him so pathetically long? However, 3.5 billion years makes perfect sense for an unconscious process like evolution."

Again, you are imposing your worldview, and perhaps the opinions of ID people.   As I hold to the notion that God created the world that we know in only six days, not 3.5 billion years, I am not at all moved by the apparent lapse in actual intelligence illustrated by a long delay in designing, am I?  Save your point for an IDer that doesn't think that a 6 day creation is the more likely to be true scenario of our planet's history.

So, returning to my point, if it takes intelligence to create organisms of interesting complexity, then the only thing that will be proved if humans are able to do such work is that it takes intelligence to pull it off.

Since scientists out there are already assuming that they are right and interpreting things as though there is no real design (only 'apparent' design) they naturally won't be doing experiments that specifically control for design/undesign will they?

But I want it demonstrated, not assumed.

"By flaws I mean the human genome is not optimal."

You just said the same thing with new words.

"Obviously, the human birth canal has not yet adapted to our enormous heads."

Speak for yourself.    seriously now, I beg to differ.  It does the job extremely well.   Any bigger, and it would probably necessitate changes that would impact on MY sexual enjoyment.   Optimized with only child birth in mind?  Perhaps not.  Optimized with other factors in mind- childbirth, my sexual gratification, hips that still fit in a size 8 pair of jeans, etc.... yea.

"You are right"

I am going to throw a party just out of sheer surprise at hearing those words.  :)

"that the idea of a flaw is a human concept."

But then, as I pointed out, so too would 'optimization.'

"Evolution is simply a game of survivors: if you survive to produce offspring you win, whether you are flawed by human standards or not. Only the survivors pass on their genomes."

But why not take this all the way?  By this same reckoning, we might take religious belief as a function of survival of the human race.  You could say that you can't hold my creationist beliefs against me- they are as much a part of my whole being as my ears- and you wouldn't hold it against me that I had ears.   Similarly, your own views might simply be products geared towards passing on your genomes.  No true, no false, just survival.

In that view- and I'm just taking your own description to some of its logical ends- the Roman Catholic religion is hands down the best example of a 'true' religion:  opposed to birth control, opposed to abortion, supportive of  having many, many babies.

Why limit your consideration of traits dealing with our survival and our reproduction only to the genome and our physical traits?

"Certainly. However, such flawed design is exactly what you would expect from a randomly driven design process like evolution."

My model has a perfect creation followed by a fall:  the perfect becomes corrupted.  We have our wisdom teeth not because there exists some bizarre undetectable relation between the kind of food that we eat and our sexual choices, but rather because there is a degradation of the genetic code over time.

My model makes both the idea of 'perfection' and 'flaw' into concepts that actually have meat, and are not just arbitrary constructs.

"Not true. There are flaws in my Windows OS, but I do not assume the existence of an ideal Windows."

Sure you do.  Maybe not neccesarily that the actual specimen exists, but you affirm that there is a real 'ideal' by virtue of claiming flaws.  We both know that Microsoft is working hard to achieve that ideal.

"We humans could stand to have some bugs fixed. Such as a tendency to bad backs and bad knees (we have only been walking upright for a few million years)."

And boy are my legs tired!

"Also, a tendency to get overweight with our recent high calorie diets."

Both this and the bad backs thing could be explained in the context of behavior that is inconsistent with our design.   If a car is designed for a certain grade oil, but another grade is given to it, we don't point to the consequences of that behavior as evidence of 'flawed design.'  We point to those consequences as darn good reasons to put in the right kind of oil the next time.

I know in my case that my back pain goes back to poor stretching habits when I was a young wrestling warrior.  They TOLD me what the right way to stretch was, but I hardly ever did.  Who's to blame here?  My designer?  Or me?

"Down's Syndrome is caused by a chromosomal deformity. Perhaps it is due to some genetic remnant from an earlier era, perhaps not. However, it would be nice to prevent such suffering in the future, as well as other genetic disorders."

I think that it is the next step in human evolution.  Who are you to stand in the way of evolutionary progress!

"This brings up the question, do we evolve ourselves from now on?"

Yes, exactly the question.  And who decides?

"Actually, there is no need to know where the radio-isotope came from."

That is your opinion.  I have a need to know before I will even begin to give my provisional consent.  This is a right I retain.  Such rights are often retained by skeptics in regards to revelation or theism in general.  I similarly refuse to build a huge worldview based on information that is completely outside the 'chain of custody.'

"As I explained above, how the "money" was deposited is not a factor when dating crystaline substances."

I don't think you demonstrated that at all.  If anything, I feel like you undermined the whole venture.  Would you like to try explaining it again?

"In terms of the interest rate going up or down, we have very good evidence that they have not changed by much over the last 6 billion years."

This is no doubt because we were there 5 billion years ago to check it, eh?

"Vast distances are indicative of great age simply because of the time it takes light to travel across such a gulf."

Yes, I know.  It hasn't occurred to you that my model would necessarily have an entirely different point of view?

"I have read some on this board postulating that the light from distant galaxies was created "in-flight" when the universe was created. However, this galactic light is not like some distant light bulb, but more like a movie."

DUDE.  The idea that it is like a movie is part of your interpretation!

"Supernovas go off, gamma-ray bursters burst, pulsars blink, etc., all recorded in this stream of billion year-old light."

This conversation is spiraling into way too many tangents.

Let me address the question this way.  I want you to pretend for a moment that you were considering a 6 day creation within 10,000 years or so.  Just pretend.  On day 4, God creates the sun and moon, and the stars.

With this in mind, do you really think that God's creation of the stars would necessitate Adam and Eve waiting billions of years before they see them?  God is powerful enough to create the universe, the stars in it, but he is not able to make it so that they could be seen immediately?

Not all creation models require the stars to be seen immediately, but any notion of 'starting from scratch' is a blow to the idea of using things as reliable constants, especially in this case, light.   Here is a banal example:

Adam and Eve were obviously not created from embryos.  They were obviously created 'in flight.'  Could you take modern methods of determining the age of a human from their developmental stages and apply these methods to them?  You could, but it wouldn't yield a correct answer.

Adam and Eve are not exactly the singular examples.   Our methods of deriving the ages of humans from developmental clues is not always sure fire for a lot of reasons.  That is why in our country we have birth certificates signed by witnesses, etc.  Attempts to derive ages apart from such records require statsitical evaluation of large samples, and there are very often many exceptions.

It follows from the Genesis creation model that light MUST have been created in-flight.  As such, according to this model, calculations based on the speed of light about the age and distances of the stars, cannot be trusted.

What remains then is whether or not there are some objective ways to decide between the two models.  What won't work is taking distance measurements derived from one model that completely rejects the starting assumptions of another model, and employing them within that other model.