My First Question for Brian Tweed, his reponse and my reply.

The following is my first question to Brian (in Green) with his response (in Blue) and my reply (Bold Green).

Hi SP,
I will try to respond to your statements and question(s), but please bear in mind that I am not an expert, nor a spokesperson for YECs, though I will speak only as someone that accepts the bible as the word of God, and also accepts as accurate the interpretation of the bible that places the creation of the Earth as less than 10,000 years ago.

SP writes
“Being that you are a Young Earth Creationist, I am intrigued by the alternate explanations you have for a variety of concepts that are explained currently by scientific theories. To me, YEC means that you accept that all existence is no older than 10,000 years old and at some after the creation event the Earth was covered by water for a year which destroyed all life except that which was brought aboard a ship with eight humans. According to the Ussher Chronology, accepted by most YEC organizations the creation event was in 4004 BCE and the Flood occurred between 2349-2348 BCE, 6016 & 4361 years ago respectively.”

This is mostly true, but I do not stick firmly to particular dates such as those given by Ussher, but I am happy to use them as a template as a ‘rough guide’ to the timeframe. I do not though believe that the Flood “destroyed all life except that which wasbrought aboard a ship with eight humans” as it was only the ‘land dwelling animals with breath in their nostrils’ that needed to be saved, as those plants and organisms that could survive a flood did not need to be taken onboard the Ark.

Brian: Which is why I asked about a list of land dwelling animals that do not currently exist being on the Ark.

SP writes
“The Noachian Flood event is one that I’ve always been interested in as the claims made by creationists about his occurrence are easily tested by the scientific method. One claim that I’d like you to explain is the following. In Genesis 6 & 7 it is claimed that the Ark contained 2 of every beast and foul of the Earth (7 of the clean types) including “every thing that creepeth upon the earth”.

I will simply repeat that this gives the false impression that Noah needed to take every ‘species’ of organism onto the Ark, but this is incorrect as I have intimated above. Noah did not need to bring representatives of ‘every species’ as it was only representatives of the bird ‘kinds’ and the land dwelling creatures that breathed through their nostrils that needed to be taken unto the ark. This means that he only needed to take representatives of the amphibian, reptile, mammal and bird kinds unto the ark. If you check out the number of these ‘species’ living on Earth now there are only about 30000 ‘species’ of these, and many of these, such as bats, have many variations on the same kind of animal. So it has been estimated that there would only have need to be between 2-10000 animals on the ark. Perhaps you are aware that they are building a full size ark in the US at the moment to answer some of the sceptical questions that have been raised about it’s feasibility.

Brian: So then what is a “kind” are all carnivores a “kind”, what about all animals in the same genus???  What is a scientifically testable definition of the word that would apply to all instances?

SP writes
“Creationists also claim that all geological layers of the Earth were formed during this yearlong flood and therefore all the fossils in these layers were animals that existed before the flood.”

As I say, I am not an expert on this, but I would not say that it is necessary for ‘every’ fossil we find to have been laid down during the Flood, as there may have been local floods that created some of the fossil assemblages both before and after the Flood, but it is likely than these types are in the minority, and that most of the fossils are from the great Flood.

Brian: So if we take your statement as is, how would we know the sedimentary rocks that were formed before the flood?  Would we rely on the Law of Superposition only or is there another way to date these pre-flood fossil beds?  The ones formed after the flood would be easy, again Law of Superposition, but they would only contain modern animals I assume?  Would you agree??? Since you are claiming that one Flood that lasted only a year created all these (besides the aforementioned pre&post deposits), how do you explain Aeolian layers (some are so delicate as to contain spider footprints) mixed in with all the other layers?  How does this occur when the whole Earth is completely covered by water?

SP writes
“Taking these claims together means that if you can find an animal in the fossil record, it was part of the menagerie on the Ark and would have included: Dinosaurs, Pleistocene Megafauna (like Glyptodons, Megatherium, Mammoths/Mastodons), Acanthostegians, Ichthyostegians, Temnospondyls, Diadectomorphas, Captorhinids, Gorganopsia, Dicynodontia, Dimetrodons, Anthracosaurs, Cynodonts, & Pterosaurs to name a few.”

Yes I do believe that some dinosaurs were on the Ark, but as we don’t know how many different types there were, I can’t list them, but there may have been 100-500 different kinds of them. As for the other creatures on your list, if we assume that each of them were land living creatures that needed to be on the Ark, then yes, I do believe that representatives of their kinds needed to be on the Ark. I would suspect though that some of them will need to be discussed for other reasons as I am sure that you will want to use them to ‘prove’ evolution, but we can leave that discussion until another time. 

Brian: Actually the short list I gave you was of currently extinct land animal groups which I brought up as they (and the others I did not list) apply directly to my question below: “…why it is that we ONLY find animals alive today that are the most recent in the fossil record and NOT any of the other millions of species…” .  This is the real crux of the question, why would a worldwide flood lead worldwide fossil deposits that contain modern organisms at the top layers only?

SP writes
“the Law of Superposition & Radiometric Dating are used to determine the relative and absolute ages of life we find in the fossil record, which brings me to my question.”

As I am sure you are aware, I will dispute the accuracy of these dating methods, but since this is not part of your present question, I will leave this for the moment.

Brian: I hope when you “…dispute the accuracy of these dating methods…” you also will explain why alternative geochronological techniques using different materials all converge on the same dates. 

SP writes
“Given that there has been a HUGE variety of life that has existed on the Earth (as evident from the fossil record), that YEC’s claim that all the fossil bearing rock (even all strata) were produced during the Noachian Flood event, and that at least two of all beasts and foul were carried on the Ark that existed before the flood, why is it that we only find animals alive today that are the most recent in the fossil record and NOT any of the other millions of species that, according to modern science, date to the end of the last ice age?”

Perhaps the best way to start my reply to this question would be to clear up some common misunderstandings / misconceptions which are promoted in the books of most of the evolutionary biologists that I have read.
I am not aware of any YEC that believes that the life-forms which are with us today are in the exact forms as the ones that were created by God in the beginning. Any YEC that I know of, accept a limited form or ‘evolution’ if you define the word as ‘change over time’. This seems to be one of the roots of the misconceptions which are perpetuated by many evolutionists.
YEC accept both natural selection and mutations as real processes that can explain some of the variations of the different kinds of creatures that we observe. So we do believe that the original kinds of creatures that God created have ‘changed over time’ and therefore we do not deny every type of ‘evolution’ if this is how you define it. Maybe you should define what you mean by ‘evolution’ as maybe I accept a lot more of it than you think ;-)

To further address your question above, I only believe that a few thousand kinds of land animals needed to be on the Ark. I would also believe that after the animals left the Ark many of them had to adapt to new and unfamiliar environments.

Brian: Ok, so your opinion is that only a few “kinds” needed to be on the Ark, but I still would like to know why the most recent fossil species are the ones found current living and why we do not find species deeper in the fossil record/radiometricly  dated to be older currently alive?

 This would have meant that genetic variability, natural selection and mutations, lead to variations and adaptations in the populations of these kinds of animals.
I am not sure that there were ‘millions’ of species in the past, but many that are now called separate species, were perhaps just numerous variations on the kinds of animals that left the ark. When you mention ‘millions’ of species you are probably referring to the vast majority of organisms that did not need to be on the Ark, such as plants, insects and aquatic life.
Even within the 30,000 or so land living, air breathing creatures on the Earth at the moment that are many different variations of the same type of animals. Apparently about 1/5 of all mammals on the Earth at the moment are bats! When you also consider the many different ‘breeds’ of dogs there are, it is quite easy to understand that many of what are described as ‘new species’ in the fossil record, are really only variations of already ‘discovered’ creatures.
As for when the last ice age was, many YEC believe that the Flood may have started an ice age which lasted for a 1000 years or so, and this means that many of the creatures that are alive today are only the survivors of both the Flood and the different climate that ensued after the Flood. Not all of the creatures would have adapted equally well to the new conditions, and no doubt many of them have gone extinct since the Flood due to a number of different reasons, including predation by man.

Brian: So I’m still waiting for you to explain why only the most recent animals in the fossil record are the ones alive today and why we do not see those recent organisms distributed throughout the fossil record?

SP Writes
“Concurrently, why are none of the species that currently exist found in any of the other layers of sediments if they were all laid down during one event, the Noachian Flood, and, as claimed by YEC’s, all organisms found all sedimentary layers must have existed together before the flood?”

This is again a misconception, though we believe that the ‘ancestors’ of all living kinds of animals were on the Ark, we do not claim that they have all survived to this time, nor that they have not changed. We accept that many of the descendants of those that were on the Ark have not survived to this day, for a number of different reasons, so we do not believe that the animals that live today existed in the same form back on the Ark or before it. If you want to narrow down your enquiry to something more specific I will be happy to reply, but this is just a general reply to a general question.

Brian: I refer again to my question directly above. You must have some type of explanation for why only the top most layers of the fossil record represent the current flora/fauna existing today and why, if a worldwide flood caused all (or nearly all) the sedimentary layers we do not find any recent organisms mixed into the older/deeper layers or any organisms of those older/deeper layers alive today.  This seems like a question that YEC’s like yourself would have to answer to be taken seriously when denying modern evolutionary biology’s explanation for the same facts.

I have attempted to answer your question and I await your response to my last post before we move on.

Brian: I’m sorry, but I don’t see an answer to my question. Can you please try again.

SP

Q & A with Brian Tweed. His first question(s) & my response.

Instead of trying to keep up with an exponentially growing thread, I asked Brian if we could restart out conversation asking one question.  He agreed and both his question(s) along with my response is below...

Hi SP
Thank you for informing me that you are now ready to resume our discussion, and I hope that it will be beneficial to us both.

As you are well aware, reading discussions between atheists and theists of any sort on the internet is not always an uplifting way to spend your day, mainly, but not only, because rarely do you find that the two parties have much courteous or respect for the oppositions point of view. Whilst it is certain that we shall disagree vehemently on the subject matters, hopefully we can approach the debate in a manner that acknowledges that our opponent has the right to disagree, and we will not need to portray them as ignorant or foolish for seeing things differently than we do ourselves.

I know that your preference is to have a discussion solely about the validity of the evolutionary biological version of the ‘creation story’ as opposed to the biblical view of the origin of life that I hold, and I am more than happy to discuss the details of that shortly. I would though like to lay out some of my objections to your viewpoint before I ask you my first question.

I am off the opinion that the universe as a whole requires an explanation, as there is an astronomical amount of matter out there, (pun intended ;-) the simple fact that the universe exists at all seems to require some sort of explanation.

In my view, before this universe began, there existed a very powerful, intelligent Being, (whom I believe is now known as the God of the bible) that chose to create the universe, and at the same time, created laws to govern the universe, so that it can be understood by you and I, creatures that this Being also created. So, my view postulates that before this universe or any of the matter that it contains ever existed, there was a Being capable of creating all of it, and endowing it with the properties that we see in the here and now. Since the appearance of the universe from nothing requires an explanation, the bible I believes gives me a plausible one, in that God, who existed before all of time, space and matter, used His power to create it all that we can see.

You would agree, I will assume, (and await any corrections to any errors I may make in presenting your view) that the origin of the universe requires an explanation, but as an atheist, you reject the view that God exists, and therefore you reject this explanation of why time, space and matter came into being. In your view, (if you agree with the majority of atheists that I have heard give there explanation of why there is a universe at all) all of the matter that we can observe in the universe appeared suddenly, for some unknown reason, out of nothing. Apparently, at this time, again for no known reason, all of the laws that govern the universe began to guide the formation of our present observable universe. Since the beginning, which you believe was about 13.7 billion years ago, the matter in the universe has simply followed ‘laws’ (for which you have no explanation of), and the combination of these ‘laws’ working on the matter, over extremely long periods of time, have ‘created’ stars, planets, and the inhabitants of the planets. In your view, you and I are simply the product of unguided processes that have worked over immense periods of time to ‘create’ the complex systems such as the ‘fine tuned’ universe and of course the human brain, by which we can learn about, and make sense of it all.

In short, you believe that order came from disorder, laws came from lawlessness, and intelligibility came from unintelligibility. I don’t know if you think that this sounds reasonable and logical to you, but to me it seems like a gigantic stretch of credibility, and I don’t have enough faith to believe it ;-). But if this is what you want to believe, I am open to hear your logic in coming to this position.

I find it far more logical and reasonable to believe that the ‘fine tuning’ that we observe in the universe indicates a ‘Fine-tuner’, the order in the universe was the product of a Planner, and the complexity of life and life processes, is the result of a Grand Designer, which is real and not just illusory.

So, with that background for why I find your position illogical and against common reason, I will focus down on the area of evolutionary biology that I would like to discuss first. I will start with a simple question, which can be answered by you by a simple yes or no. I will then hope that you will follow up this simple answer with further details of why you agree or disagree with the statement.

Here are some quotes from the book ‘Why evolution is true’ by Jerry A. Coyne.

“For the process of evolution- natural selection, the mechanism that drove the first naked, replicating molecule into the diversity of millions of fossil and living forms- is a mechanism of staggering simplicity and beauty.” (Introduction xvii)

“The truth - that we, like lions, redwoods and frogs, all resulted from the slow replacement of one gene by another, each step conferring a tiny reproductive advantage – is surely more satisfying than the myth that we were suddenly called into being from nothing.” (Introduction xxi)

“Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species - perhaps a self-replicating molecule- that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.” (P3)

So, after reading these statements my question to you is:
Do you believe that natural selection, “the mechanism that drove the first naked, replicating molecule” through the “slow replacement of one gene by another”, is the process by which “a self-replicating molecule” has been transformed into mankind?

Brian 

 My response follows...

Brian,

I’ll leave your opinion on Cosmology and instead address the end of your post about Biology, but will say that I view your description of the scientific explanation for physical cosmology as a straw-man of the actual facts that the Big Bang theory explains. I think that before I can address this statement I will need to see you give a synopsis of what the majority of  physicists articulate as Big Band theory compared to what I perceive as your misrepresentation of that scientific theory.

As for your question about natural selection, no I do not believe that natural selection is responsible for humanity.  I know that Natural Selection is the best scientific explanation (along with Genetic Drift from Founder Effect & Bottle Necks, Gene Flow, Sexual Selection, Biased Mutations, among other mechanisms) for the fact of the diversity of life found today and in the fossil record. I do not accept upon faith (believe) what others have told me about how life on this planet has changed over time, but instead I have researched the facts and explanations of those facts and understand that Evolutionary Biology is the best account for the fact of common descent with modification. 

Yours,

SP