How to Ruin a Trip to the Museum

Oh, the irony. “Evolution is a fairy tale, not science.”, “evolution is circular reasoning”, “evolution is a religion”. Wow. Too bad, if one person there had read “Your Inner Fish”, they could have educated that idiot on how teeth were formed. Best part of the video, “Well, there are some problems for creationists.” You think?

sad sad sad

I really hope these guys aren’t profiting from this nonsense.

This YouTube user has a great series of videos taking apart creationist claims:

http://youtube.com/user/Thunderf00t

There are 21 parts so far. I liked this one (but they are all good):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lmUGJ3Jh7fc

My boyfriend was once that kid from early in the video, except his mom told him that dinosaurs weren’t in the Bible and the fossils were put there by Satan to confuse us. He thought about it…dinosaurs v. Jesus…and he chose the dinosaurs.

Gah.

Let me be frank here. I’m a Christ follower, and I believe in creation. Not creation-ism, but creation. I absolutely believe that in creation, there is plenty of room for evolution. How much? I don’t know. I probably won’t ever know, and I’m ok with that. I find it interesting to study though.

I mean, come on, if they take it so literally, I wonder this: in the days of creation, the sun and moon weren’t made until the 4th day. so how were the first 3 days literal 24 hour days, if the objects that make the 24 hour clock not created yet?

Oh no! That’s my museum!

Truly depressing. I wonder where they get their information, because this all sounds an awful lot like the bs that fills my copy of Answers in Genesis’ museum guide. Actually, that guide tells kids to (in a polite manner) heckle their tour guide. The guide even says that creationists should use museums to spread their lies. Being th avid museum goer that I am, I do the best i can to not vomit in disgust.

Okay, that’s sad enough. But what about the parallel scenario of taking a group to the Creation Museum and explaining exactly why every bit of their ‘science’ is in fact wrong? It’s not something I’d bother doing, but I could see an argument for why doing so might be a beneficial thing. The problem I see isn’t with going to a museum and pointing out what’s wrong; rather, it’s using horrendous logic to force-fit the facts. As Ingersoll is attributed to have said (although I’ve never found the primary source), “Creationists use facts the same way a drunk uses a lightpost: for support instead of illumination.”

March 23, 2008

Representative Barney Frank said he plans to file a bill to legalize “small amounts” of marijuana. “I’m going to file a bill as soon as we go back to remove all federal penalties for the possession or use of small amounts of marijuana,” Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said late Friday on the HBO show “Real Time,” hosted by Bill Maher. Frank said he’d filed a similar bill in the Legislature in the 1970s, but hasn’t tried since he was elected to Congress. “I finally got to the point where I think I can get away with it,” he said.(AP

WE NEED TO STOP THIS war on people….!

Support Representative Barney Frank………

Congressional Email Directory

tell your reps. to support the Franks bill…

http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-…

I feel such sympathy for those children, not just because I think they’re being taught something I strongly disagree with, but particularly because they’re being taught to never question their own beliefs, never challenge themselves, and are being encouraged to have closed-minds. This can happen no matter what you believe (or disbelieve) and children especially need these skills! Instead, they’re being taught to put aside their ability to reason, question and explore, which is a great tragedy.

Hard to believe now, but I dreamed of living in America when I was a kid! Amazing how you guys manage to live with all the insanity going on around you on so many levels.

Very best wishes from Germany and please vote for someone at least semi-intelligent this time around . . .

Wow. As an evolutionist and yet perfectly orthodox Christian, this makes me sad. Any Bible 101 course at a reasonably liberal Christian college will tell you that the Biblical authors never intended their works to be taken as science. Certainly there are some literal accounts in the old testament, such as the histories of the Israelites and such, but the Genesis account? Come on! It even contradicts itself if you’re trying to interpret it literally, instead of as a cosmology (which it is). You have to take genre and historical context into account when interpreting Scriptures, or else you won’t be learning what the author was trying to say, you’ll just be injecting your own prejudices into the text. I guess that’s the whole foundation for the “Christian” Right’s perversion of real Christianity.

Any “christian” who tries to tell you that the Bible and “Macroevolution” are incompatible is a fool.
Try reading “Biology through the eyes of faith” for some interesting discussion.

p.s. sorry for my shit-awful writing skills. hopefully I made sense anyway.

Tragic. You can see how uncomfortable the two guys look when asked about things that their own beliefs dont explain ( and that in fact contradict them directly ), like radiocarbon dating. Do they know deep down that they are lying, or are they just so good at ignoring the inexplicable that in their own minds everything is clear, consistent and non-contradictory?

Thats the thing with scientific theory and reasoning, it explains everything. You cant just pick some things that disprove your theory and chose to ignore them. Thats not science, its fraud.

Isn’t it sad that whole generations of new people suffer through this de-education and falsehood? I blame the parents, its one thing to mislead and deceive children, its another thing entirely for what should be rational, intelligent and mature adults to be so intellect-deprived that this farce seems more real to them than the evidence of their own senses and experiences.

How do you know god exists? The bible tells us!

How do you know what the bible says is true? God tells us!

What do we call that kids?

Circular reasoning!

I’d love to see a real science class go to the creationist museum and think “scientifically”.

Great example of one of the most disturbing reasons why the USA is slipping. People used to think: the world was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth too and its shocking that some still think that the universe is 6000-10000 years old, and that life doesnt change over time, etc. We are still living in an age of mythology, just like the Greeks and all their gods.

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

Hi, this whole thing about people starting to push creationism in the US is pretty strange. I really wonder what kind of adults these children are going to become. The education system seems to be seriously broken in the states. The worst thing is that these people leading the tour don’t seem like they’re being intellectually dishonest on purpose. On a related subject of faith vs. facts, I recommend the follwing link: http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879
(see at 8:25 if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing)

Wow, that sure was painful to watch

Poor children.

Glad I didn’t get sucked in!

Wow… I can’t even be polite about this kind of child abuse. I hope those BC people are eaten by ravenous lizards in a sparsely attended zoo exhibit. I also feel sorry for the zoo workers who find their bones, they will be bored to tears.

jacques said,

Hi, this whole thing about people starting to push creationism in the US is pretty strange.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the US. There’s an islamic version that is so prevalent in Turkey that it has pretty much driven out any real science in the schools. This movement was originally promoted and funded by US creationists, but it’s now taken on a life of its own. So if the rest of the world thinks it’s safe, it’s a bit too soon to be letting your guard down. It’s not just American christians that can be morons, people of other faiths or in other countries can be just as half-witted.

This is like hiring a pedophile to operate an ice-cream truck.

As cold-hearted as it may sound, this is a kind of “natural selection” happening right in front of us. Evolution is driven by time and death. It is not a nice process. Organisms that adapt to to their changing environment have an advantage over those that do not adapt and they will be more likely to reproduce. The disadvantaged strains eventually perish. The kids who buy into the BC willful ignorance will be disadvantaged growing up in a world that is increasingly dependent on a constant supply of good, solid science. People who have a firm grasp of how science works and who can apply critical thinking to their life situations will have an advantage over them. These kids will not be able to compete for the best positions and niches in society and will be relegated to an underclass doing menial tasks. They are the offspring of a maladaptive strain in intellectual rather than genetic terms. In a few more generations either they or their world view will go extinct. Is it “fair” to them from the point of view of a society that wants to give opportunities to all? No, it’s not fair. Is it sad to watch? Yes, it is sad. Is it the way things change on planet Earth? ‘Fraid so.

@richard wade,
I think you’re being too generous with evolution… if anything I would suggest (without concrete statistics) that creationist families are larger than non creationist families and point out that lack of scientific rigour didn’t hinder bush getting where he did. This implies that perhaps non creationists will one day become extinct? My only question now is… if a tree falls in a forest…

“I really wonder what kind of adults these children are going to become”

The kind that are going to easily be ripped apart by simple logic.. No, really, if I had the option I’d go on one of these tours and make snide comments at the back. People are welcome to believe whatever they want, as long as they are also given a chance to doubt what they are told.. these kids really aren’t.

Just my $0.02

If they didn’t come to a museum for facts, not a fantasy, why don’t they go to a Church? This is brainwashing at it’s best; Creationism is the fantasy of the world, the theory of Evolution isn’t. I’m afraid these children are going to grow up into a world with such moronic adults around them preventing them from thinking on their own, even when the man asked them yes or no questions a fair few of them gave the “wrong” answer and the men made sure they repeated their incorrect views over and over again.

They are not trained to think like evolutionists, most people these days are trained to make their own opinions. B.C does NOT stand for biblically correct tours, it stands for Bloody Creationism Tours in a god damn museum.

If these people want to experience fantasy and science fiction, maybe they should spend more time at home reading bibles.

I used to take shelter from the elements in museums when i was a homeless rodeo clown but not anymore. Now I am a world class magician !

Very sad indeed.

hayden said,

I think you’re being too generous with evolution… if anything I would suggest (without concrete statistics) that creationist families are larger than non creationist families and point out that lack of scientific rigour didn’t hinder bush getting where he did. This implies that perhaps non creationists will one day become extinct?

Maybe. But the whole world used to be creationist before, and people still figured out how life evolved. Even if all the books are burned, it will be harder to destroy all the fossils. Assuming the loss of all scientific knowledge, the next Darwin will probably be Chinese though.

“God is dead. He has been killed by his pity for us.”

Take account of the gifts that a humanity has today, reason, science, honest discourse. When I see something like this I cannot grasp how so-called religious people just cast off the greatest gifts of the God they profess to believe in has bestowed upon them by choosing to lie (to children) about the world that He apparently created.

If you were Jesus/God or any deity wouldn’t you be overcome with disappointment and piteous shame that your zealots choose to distort your wondrous world to this degree? Didn’t lies make baby Jesus cry?

Hail the flying spaghetti monster,
Nick out.

FreshPineSent said,

Perhaps the bible is wrong, but god still exists.

Maybe, maybe not.

I just don’t know how atheists can live not knowing where they come from.

There are a lot of things I don’t know. Why should that depress me? Do you have to know the answers to everything? Sure I’d like to know. But how do we go about getting the answers to our questions? Any question can be answered with “God did it”, and I don’t find that answer very interesting or satisfying.

I’m definitely not saying that evolution didn’t occur. There is overwhelming evidence that it did, but tell me, who started evolution? Who kicked it off by creating amoebas, and then microorganisms? Did it just magically appear?

Nobody knows. There are scientific hypothesis about the first molecular replicators. It’s a work in progress. What would you do? How would you investigate this problem?

Isn’t it obvious that there’s a higher power?

No. Because then the question becomes, “what is the origin of that higher power?” Maybe a “god” did jump start life here, but where did that being come from? No matter what happened, again I ask you, how do you go about finding out what happened?

By the way, you all sound like fucking scientologists, “what child abuse”, “I hope they get eaten by lizards”

All of us?

What the fuck? How could you ridicule people for believing in something somewhat far-fetched, when you believe we came from fucking amoebas?

Actually I think amoebas reproduce asexually so they don’t do much fucking.

Wow, the tone of your comment took a sudden 180 degree turn. Did someone else start typing at your computer? What happened to the reasonable sounding person “perhaps the Bible is wrong” etc. in the first few paragraphs.

Personally I don’t ridicule those people, I just feel sorry for them.

You’re right evolution is pretty far fetched, but you know what, the whole universe is far fetched. But all these crazy far fetched scientific theories have a whole lot of crazy evidence supporting them. So on a scale of far-fetchedness the literal story of creation in Genesis is still a billion times more far fetched than evolution, because it has no evidence. Just a book.

Of course evolution sounds silly if you just describe it as “we came from amoebas”. But you can make anything sound silly. Oh yeah, babies come from a little tadpole swimming to an egg in mommies tummy. Absurd! Oh sure, the Earth is a ball of rock just floating in space with nothing holding it up. Crazy! Right, solid matter is made of tiny little balls that are mostly empty space. Sure! Disease is caused by little invisible animals called “germs”. Maybe it’s your opinion that these germs are real, but I believe demons cause disease and they are just as invisible so we are both believing it on faith.

And all those crazy ideas have been shown to be true because of scientific research and irrefutable evidence. Evolution is no different, except for the fact that it has been the target of a century long marketing campaign by religious organizations.

I’m not sure if these kids are being abused, but if a child was kept isolated and never taught language that would be called abuse. At what point is the withholding of knowledge from a child considered abuse? If a child is raised in the middle east and taught that America is the great Satan, and the greatest goal in life is to die for Islam, is that abuse? Is teaching a child that blood transfusions are evil and they should never take medicine abuse?

Personally I don’t know how to classify what is and isn’t abuse. But it definitely seems wrong to lie to children. And these men are definitely lying. I think in their system of morality, they are breaking one of their ten commandments.

Did anyone notice that these goons have Jesus creating the Heavens and the earth?
Not God….Jesus! Jeebus

What is written in the book of genesis and other parts of the bible I believe are merely a representation of what happened. I have two explinations as to why is is written like such. There were thousands of years between this happening and it being written down, and people back then couldn’t comprehend evolution so they made their own story.

I am catholic and this is just rediculous.

fkn hilarious.

one point thou.
7 generations of people who live about 800 years doesn’t necessary equal ~5600 years.

It depends on at which point of their live they would be able to have descendants.

Respectfully, I support what these guys are doing. All responsible parents teach their children what they understand to be true. We don’t tell our children that 2+2 is whatever they are led to believe. Since no one alive today was alive during the time of the dinosaurs, we all must draw conclusions based on reasonable evidence. There is substantial evidence for a literal Creation. The kids in the video were very young, therefore the information covered looked to be targeted toward their age. As to why dinosaur fossils are not found with human remains, the human population was likely quite small, especially compared to the number of animals. Also, to form a fossil, the carcass would have to be covered quickly by mud, etc. Light human bodies tend to float (global Flood). Regarding, vegetarian dinosaurs with sharp teeth, consider the hippopotamus, or the bear. Dinosaurs likely changed their diet over time. Evolution is unquestionably true as it applies to change over time (adaptation), not as it applies to the origins of life. The Bible addresses the origins of life on Earth, not the timing around when the Earth itself was created. It is possible that the Earth structure has been in existence for millions of years, but life on Earth is relatively short.

“Banded”?

It is frustrating to me to see the argument presented as diametrically opposed; you’re either a materialistic atheist and we evolved from primordial soup through the ape to current, or that the world is 6k years old and made by a dude named Jesus.

Both are scientifically unsound, and ignore significant amount data and evidence. At best our current lineage model of evolution (as its pushed by the majority of scientists, it seems), is a 3% fit. Now, this is a better fit than any other model presented, and it does seem to be a logical option. However we are indeed making a leap of faith in trusting our entire scientific paradigm on a 3% fit.

An unsettling trend that seems to be popular now is that “creationism” is necessarily tied with the fantasy of the 5-6,000 year old Earth. There is absolutely no evidence of this (the 3% fit of the “oppositional” model seems like divine light in comparison to this belief), either in material science or in the Bible. This seems to be not even a leap of faith, just plain blind laziness.

Evolution itself is an absolute fact, it has been proven, and even demonstrated several times, as has devolution and atrophy. But the idea we’ve evolved via mutation/adaption from primordial soup and into apes and then humans is a rather large assumption to be pushing as “fact.” In fact, most, if not all of what we deem mutation that we experience in the natural world is completely deleterious to the organism if not the entire species. Evolution is fact – but there are more models than just the 3% fit.

What science in general seems to forget is that it is the pursuit of “facts”, spirituality is the search for “truth.” I’d ask you to really think about that one for a bit; what is fact versus truth. It is a fact that you have a father – that is a necessary requisite to explain yourself. This is provable by empirical data. The spiritual steps in with the question: “did you love him?” And if you did, “Prove it.” (A great metaphorical application of this intersection of truth/fact from the film/story “Contact”)

I would very much like to see a paradigmatic shift in the direction of cooperation. Science can take care of the physically observable universe, and spirituality can take care of our personal relationship to it. Both can feed into each other, and keep the other in check.

That was unreal, in my eyes it was child abuse. I almost passed out when the children started stating “their” views at the end. I am so glad as a child I had a mind of MY own and thought through the differences of Religion and Science.

All this from the most powerful nation of our time , scary stuff…

Oh this type of crap irks me to no end. In the face of evidence these idiots will hold up their Bible as their belief system.

I wonder, the woman who said she believes in what the Bible says would be so keen to sell her spawn into slavery.

THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF BULL, so they think that by brain washing the young could make some difference!!! INTERNET IS OUT AND IT WILL REACH YOUR CHILDREN!! EVOLUTION IS BEAUTIFUL!! and EVERYTHING AROUND IT!!! SCIENCE IS REAL AND LIFE IS NATURAL!! quit believing a book and follow your gut!

The only reason why we know that the earth is billions of years old is through radiometric dating,

Ah, but there are several different lines of evidence which give this figure.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

Heck, even the spin down rate of pulsars gives an age which is consistent with our understanding of the age of the universe.

siddharth, the link you cite only discusses radiometric dating, and the age of pulsars has nothing to do with the age of the earth.

That said, I in no way doubt the evidence that says our planet is billions of years old, and as my whole post made clear, I think that people who deny it are in a very odd form of self-denial. Why would someone not want their genetic ancestors to have lived billions of years ago?

I’m hoping Geoff gives me feedback on his website about this 3% fit idea. I had no idea that the fossil record (or something) was completely known, and that evolutionary models only …fit the trendline for 3% of the data? I in no way understand WTF 3% fit means.

cautious,

The age of pulsars give one estimate (lower bound) of the age of the universe of which the earth is a part of. My point was, there are diverse sources of scientific evidence on the age of the earth, solar system and universe which are all consistent, and which are definitely more than the 6000 years the fundies quote. So, them harping about one form of evidence while ignoring others is especially stupid.

All responsible parents teach their children what they understand to be true. We don’t tell our children that 2+2 is whatever they are led to believe.

I will teach my daughter that 2 + 2 = 4. When she asks me why, I won’t say because I said so or because it is written in and old book, I will explain to her why the answer is 4. Just having the answer is not the complete picture. I will then ask her what is 2 + 3? I will let her try and reach the answers by herself.

Great summary Richard. Another point left out of the hydrological sorting idea of young earth creationists is the fact that the stone tools used by people before the Flood would be found at the deepest layers. They would certainly sink faster than the little sea creatures that are claimed to sink the fastest. No stone tools are ever found in such layers.

HappyNat,

I agree, we should teach our children to learn, explore, and discover for themselves. However, helping them to understand “how” addition works is different than explaining “why” 2 + 2 = 4 (something my 2 y/o actually asked me). At some point we have to simply say, it is because it is. In other words, truth is self sufficient. Truth is true, not because I want it or don’t want it to be. Something is true regardless of how popular or unpopular it is, or whether anyone even knows it’s true. Truth just is. Our goal is to discover what is true. Just because the Bible is old, doesn’t make it untrue. But, I also agree with what sounds to be your point, we shouldn’t believe something just because a book says so if there is no basis for that book to be true. I have come to believe that the there is a significant basis for the Bible to be true.

Man, why do some people believe that evolution and the christian story are diametrically opposed? They are both explainations, except one is older and more simplistic. Like watch, (note, i’m not even a christian at all but if I were here’s how I’d spin it.) Basically the Bible is supposed to be an explanation to people from God about who he is and what he’s done, right? So lets forget all the translation discrepancies, and the romans cutting stuff out and adding stuff in for the followers to be passive and streamlining its message and also forget the timeline discrepancies of it’s writing after the historical Jesus, lets just forget that stuff. And start at the beginning of man, Adam was made from dust, and clay and moisture god breathed life into him more or less. Cool, humans are made of elemental particles atoms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen etc. bonded by discrete electrical charges and chemical bonds, now how are you gonna explain that to all types of people? Dust. not contrary, just the most basic term, understandable for illiterate Bedouins. Jesus or Moses couldn’t tell their followers “ya the earth is 6.5 Billion years old, one day we will have radiometric dating and you can check.” because that would be beyond comprehension, what’s 6.5 billion in roman numerals? So they say a very large number that is within the grasp of illiterate Bedouins to IMPROVE upon ignorant people’s knowledge and answer questions. To take that stuff and pit it against current science as somehow equal is moronic and dangerous, as people’s “faith” is gonna get bruised when they go and use wikipedia for school, and find out evolution is a rational tested explanation of biology. Also that argument is not respectful of the splendor of nature that we can more fully perceive with science now.

Nick out.

It is unclear what causes red tides, but not entirely unknown, their occurrence in some locations appears to be entirely natural, while in others they appear to be a result of human activities. Its an algae overgrowth in the water, the frequency and severity of algal blooms in some parts of the world have been linked to increased nutrient loading from human activities. There are also concerns that iron fertilization may be causing these harmful algal blooms, which is a method of Geoengineering. In other areas, algal blooms are a seasonal occurrence resulting from coastal upwelling, a natural result of the movement of certain ocean currents[3]. The growth of marine phytoplankton is generally limited by the availability of nitrates and phosphates, which can be abundant in agricultural run-off as well as coastal upwelling zones. Coastal water pollution produced by humans and systematic increase in sea water temperature have also been implicated as contributing factors in red tides. Other factors such as iron-rich dust influx from large desert areas such as the Saharan desert are thought to play a major role in causing red tides[4]. Some algal blooms on the Pacific coast have also been linked to occurrences of large-scale climatic oscillations such as El Niño events. While red tides in the Gulf of Mexico have been occurring since the time of early explorers such as Cabeza de Vaca[5]. It is unclear what initiates these blooms, and how large a role anthropogenic and natural factors play in their development. It is also debated whether the apparent increase in frequency and severity of algal blooms in various parts of the world is in fact a real increase or is due to increased observation effort and advances in species identification methods [6] [7]. The dinoflagella is a symbiont with many coral species. Biologist Tyler Campbell hypothesizes that they may be “moving”, or leaving their mutualistic host coral population, either seasonally, or for more favorable living conditions.

Just because we cannot explain everything does not mean it is inexplicable or that Yahweh did it. That is what science does finds things out, it is incomplete and malleable, that is what it is. These creationists believe that the bible is complete and not malleable, but rather that explanations need to be made up to fit the conclusion, not the conclusion drawn from evidence. its sad to see humans do that.

Nick out

Is it possible that a violent, cataclysmic event(global Flood) destroying most vegetation and all animal and human life, churning and flushing rock formations (visualizing Utah’s columns and spires), create sedimentary layers containing organic matter and sand such as what we see today? As water receded, various deposits could result in logical and random collections.

I don’t think so. How could churning flood waters create millions of layers each showing fluctuations of pollen deposits which correspond perfectly with the cycle of the seasons. This pollen can also be matched to different plant species that change over time as the local environment changes. If it was a complete random mixing of all pollen you would expect the distribution of plant species to be random.

If there was a global flood, where are the stone tools in the deep layers?

A global flood would have created a complete mish mash of dead animals and plants. There would certainly be rabbits down in the pre-cambrian layers, along with apes, dinosaurs, chickens, and any other modern animal. Yet there are none.

All of these observations are just a tiny part of the huge amount of fossil and geological evidence out there, not to mention radiological dating. A wide range of scientific disciplines point to a Earth that is billions of years old.

I have to wonder though, what piece of evidence would convince you that a global flood never happened?

If geologists started to find random animals and stone tools distributed throughout the geological column it would certainly disprove the current model. What would disprove the flood model?

I say this out of love for the potential inside each human being.

Dispel your fears, science is an attempt to understand reality, delve into it grasp concepts and ideas, debate and be willing to be wrong, be open to change, be flexible and bend with the refreshing winds of differing opinions and notions. It is this type of video that reminds me that flexibility is a property of life, while inflexibility is a property of death. Growth is a property of life, progress is a property of life. Stagnation, indignance and blind adherance to doctrine is a property of death, not strength or faith.

Knowledge knocks on the door of everyman, only a few will answer her. (That’s in proverbs somewhere)
Today, knowledge is at the fingertips of the smallest child, and they are answering, it’s a beautiful and hopeful age for man. This video makes me see darkness and misinformation, disinformation and straight ignorance.

The sins of the father will visit these children. Just as a theif’s son will likely steal, these children will ignore facts and feel secretly inadequate, different and servile. And for what?

The scriptures have value, they are a grand part, perhaps the central part of the Western Tradition. They simply aren’t very informative about paleoanthropology, cellular metabolism or physics. and these people are abusing the “good book” for promotion of ignorance.

I think Jesus would be pissed.

Nick Out

Tom, I congratulate you for continuing to try in the face of a great deal of disagreement. It’s a heroic if doomed effort. Your response to my comment did not address my main point, that the sedimentary layers are distinctly differentiated and reflect a complex series of highly different terrains and corresponding life forms. What you did do was the very thing I said is required by an attempt to reconcile Genesis with the strata, that was to try to invent natural processes that could account for what we see, but processes that no one has ever seen. The volcanic eruption idea for example. Eruptions can quickly produce layers many meters deep, but as others here pointed out they are very distinct and are unique to each local area. Volcanic ash and other ejecta has a chemical “fingerprint” that can be traced back to the particular volcano from which it came. It tends to lie thick close around the volcano and taper off to thinner layers with greater distance. Even when it settles on the sea floor if it is just a few millimeters thick it leaves a layer that can be traced back to its source. Your idea of a multi-causal worldwide cataclysm including floods and widespread volcanism has left no trace in the rocks, and still would not account for the differentiated strata. We have seen the remains of historically known floods and historically known volcanic eruptions. They are very identifiable. They are all local features; none have ever been found as a common world-wide feature.

Imagine a room filled to the ceiling with books stacked lying flat, one on top of another. You notice that the books on the floor have the oldest publishing dates. As you sample the books in higher parts of the piles the publishing dates steadily become more recent, and at the top are the most recently published books. Studying the books more carefully you also notice that the nature of the writing in the books also changes from primitive, simple writing in the lowest levels gradually to complex literature in the highest levels. This pattern of steady change as you go higher is the same everywhere in the room.

How did this room get to be filled in this way?

There are two competing explanations that are being discussed on this thread. One is that the books were placed there as they were published over a long period of time, the oldest being laid down first and the later ones being piled on top of those as time slowly progressed. The other explanation is that the books were all published at the same time, that the publishing dates are false, that they were all put in the room at the same time arranged randomly, but then there was a terrible earthquake or upheaval and somehow all those books got stacked up so neatly in those layers with consistently more complex books on top of simpler ones.

Which explanation would you find easier to believe?

In this admittedly imperfect analogy of sedimentary layers, the publishing dates represent the radiometric dating and the progressive change from primitive writing near the floor to complex literature near the ceiling represents the way fossils show that life has changed again and again over billions of years. The point is that the first explanation is a simple one and can be easily understood, while the other one requires bizarre and inexplicable things like false dates and extremely unlikely occurrences such as a very meticulous earthquake. In other words it requires that there was a deliberate and elaborate deception and magic involved. It requires child-like thinking.

Tom, by talking about volcanoes and other implausible explanations you are grasping at straws. Relax for a moment and consider the idea that your Christian-ness is not diminished if Genesis is seen as the metaphor it was intended to be. Remember Aesop’s Fables? If you were to take Aesop’s wonderful stories as literal truth, thinking that they were true stories about actual talking rabbits, talking tortoises, foxes and crows who spoke to each other and did very un-animal things, then you would be completely missing the meaning and the value of the stories. They are metaphors for how people may be wise or foolish in life. Just so, some things in Scripture are not actual, true-to-life histories. To try to see them as such is to miss the point and the value.

Talk to other Christians who have no problem with an old Earth covered with a constantly changing layer of life. I am sure you will find them to be good, upstanding people with all the virtues and commitments that make a Christian a Christian. It’s still an amazing and beautiful universe in which we live. I find my understanding of it far more amazing and beautiful than that of a Bronze Age desert nomad.

NYCatheist,

I don’t have an adequate answer to your pollen question, but I did read where in the Grand Canyon, fossil pollen grains have been found in “Precambrian” rock which is supposed to be a time before seed plants evolved.

Your question: “If there was a global flood, where are the stone tools in the deep layers?”
We simply may not have found stone tools in the deeper layers. The human population was likely sparse prior to the Flood, and tools more prevalent following the Flood.

Your question: “~Why no modern-type animal fossils in the pre-cambrian layers?~”
Fossils themselves are rare. ~99% of all fossils are shallow marine organisms, plants, and invertebrates. Of the ~1% of other fossils, some are of modern-type animals, though not likely in “pre-cambrian” layers:
-Ape: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g-BDjcKrIh9YFbsqsJiky6m2g6Nw
-Chicken/duck: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4187287.stm
-Many types of fossils including rabbit, dog, geese, etc at Red Rock Canyon State Park in CA: http://members.aol.com/Waucoba7/redrock/redrockfossils.html
Given the rare circumstances for a fossil to occur(dead animals typically rot or get eaten), the animal examples you gave being small in size/weight compared to dinosaurs likely floated and rotted.

Your question: “~What would convince me that a global flood never happened?~”
I would have to deny the God I have come to know personally and discredit His Word I have come to rely on as authoritative. The more I see of nature, the more it attests to his workmanship.

All,

I am puzzled about something that maybe some of you can answer. What drives the atheist? What keeps your interest in being “non-something”(a-theist)? Why the devotion, even to this blog? Why not just believe in nothing and move on. Where is the struggle?

I ran across an interesting phrase on this site: “God of the gaps” which refers to an objection to the assumption that if a phenomenon cannot be explained naturally, then God must have been involved. This same objection could be made to a “nature-faith between the gaps” which would be an objection to an assumption that if a phenomenon cannot be explained by some manner in which God may have done it, then it must have happened naturally(without God). This reasoning in and of itself is flawed on both sides.

Even though there have been famous, well-respected scientists on both sides of this issue, there are still undeniably inexplicable issues for both the creationist and the evolutionist. God’s existence cannot proven or disproved according to a man made scientific model. Nor can it be proven or disproved that life and matter came from nothing. Neither can be tested. We can merely compile evidence based on a theory. Fortunately there is a mountain of evidence for God’s creative work in many forms: historical, prophetic, archaeological, geological, philosophical, physiological, sociological, etc.

If a person wants to believe that God does not exist, he either only considers evidence in support of his desired view ignoring the evidence in support of God’s existence, or he amasses(overwhelms himself with) information to the contrary in support of his case. Lawyers do this everyday to “prove” a case. If someone doesn’t want to believe something, regardless of the evidence, they won’t. Common examples:
-Man landing on the moon
-The authenticity of Shakespeare’s attributed manuscripts(no originals exist today)
-A blatantly cheating spouse

We are all faced with answering the fundamental challenges of life:
-Where do we come from?
-Why are we here?
-Where do we go from here(what happens to us after we die)?
Some choose not answer these questions. I commend all who genuinely take up the challenge.

Claire,

You and I share a common interest in keeping religion out of government.

Sorry to have misrepresented your “non-theism”. Maybe a post should be started toward the selection of another means of identification.

Ultimately science is the study of God’s creation. Religion and science aren’t comfortable with anything. It’s people who are in the “figuring out” business. I’m not comfortable with religion and have no interest in ‘religion’. Our understanding of God’s creation is always evolving based on the understanding that we will never know everything.

As I said, some choose to not answer the fundamental questions of life. The atheist seems to often devote quite a bit of attention to the question of where we come from(or don’t come from).

Tom,

You addressed your comment to Richard, but I’m going to butt in a little bit. I’m sure Richard will have a much more thorough and eloquent reply than mine.

The collapse of an atmospheric firmament

I’m not familiar with this idea. Could you elaborate? I’ve heard of YEC models which assume a shell of water above the Earth but I’m not sure what they mean. What do you mean by firmament?

I think the firmament described in Genesis is the solid bowl of the sky over a flat Earth as ancient people thought it was. Above this solid bowl were the endless waters of proto-creation.

these events are presented as fact in the Bible and remain a conceptually valid explanation for the formation of the structures, layers, continents, and oceans we see today.

I think the facts about the structures of these layers that Richard and I have brought up show that those events are not conceptually valid explanations for the layers.

I agree, that if only geological factors are considered, it could be easier to assume that all things developed in the same manner and rate as they appear to be developing today, unless there is significant reason to believe otherwise.

It’s not just geological factors. Other areas of science such as physics, astronomy, genetics all mesh with each other. If evolution said life needs a trillion years to evolve we would have a problem. If physics said the sun was only 10,000 years old there would be a problem.

As was commented above everyone used to assume the Earth was much younger, and that assumption was being questioned before Darwin by geologists looking at the natural evidence. Imagine you knew nothing. What conclusions would you draw from the natural evidence around you? Science can’t work with anything but natural evidence.

The same thing happens with forensic science, for example if there is a murder scene, with a bloody knife and bloody footprints. Maybe the victim has someone’s skin cells under her fingernails which match the DNA of an angry ex-boyfriend. Maybe this guy’s credit card shows a purchase of a knife from the day before. All these bits of evidence point to this guy as the murderer. Has it been proven? No, we can never go back in time to check for sure. Is it possible that demons killed the woman and copied DNA magically to put under her fingernails, and the boyfriend just happened to buy a knife for a camping trip? Well, I can’t prove the demons didn’t do that…

That was an extreme example but it demonstrates that once you bring supernatural elements into a historical model anything goes.

I find it easier to believe an omniscient God that I know and trust, rather than accept an ever changing modern theory contrived by fallible mankind.

But religions do change over time, as do mankind’s conception of gods. How do you know your conception is right? Scientific theories change because new information is found. Don’t you want mistakes to be corrected? If a medical test showed you had cancer, but then new tests showed the first test is incorrect, isn’t that important? Science is about answering questions. Maybe the scientific method can’t answer all questions, but nobody every claimed it could.

Maybe evolution is too far fetched for you, so let’s look at another historical fact. Do you believe George Washington existed? Do you find it easier to believe in Washington than to believe in God? For me the answer is yes, because of all the specific, hard evidence that Washington existed. For most god concepts in the major religions I see no evidence.

Or from another angle, isn’t it easier to believe a god created the universe 20 minutes ago, including all of us with false memories of longer lives, than the literal story of creation in Genesis? Now we don’t have to explain any of the geological evidence, (layers and so on) because everything is the way it is, because that’s the way God made it 20 minutes ago. Maybe this sounds silly, but I’m being serious. I really think it’s easier to believe that than the literal Genesis.

Personally I think the idea of a god that created a universe billions of years old with trillions upon trillions of stars is a much more interesting god than a god the created a 6000 year old Earth with some stars as decoration. (As a young Earth creationist, what do you think is the point of the billions of stars in our galaxy, and the billions of other galaxies out there?)

OK, now to address your next comment:

What drives the atheist? What keeps your interest in being “non-something”(a-theist)? Why the devotion, even to this blog? Why not just believe in nothing and move on. Where is the struggle?

Good question. First of all if you’re interested in surveying the average atheist this might not be the best forum since you are getting a small slice of the atheist population, and a biased one at that because the fact that we are posting here shows we are not completely apathetic. There are plenty of atheists like you describe, people who have “moved on.” I have many friends like that. They just aren’t interested in these topics.

Personally I have an interest in science and philosophy. I prefer to believe in true things and disbelieve in false things, so if there is some kind of god I want to know about it. I enjoy discussing these issues and learning how other people think about them.

Another point of all this activity is political. You’ll see many of the posts on this blog dealing with the civil rights of atheists. There is a still a lot of discrimination against atheists so that is something not to be apathetic about.

Finally I should reiterate, atheism is just about god beliefs. Atheists believe lots of other things, so it’s not accurate to say we “believe in nothing.”

This same objection could be made to a “nature-faith between the gaps”

I don’t think this works symmetrically. If a phenomenon can’t be explained the ideal scientist assumes nothing. However, science can’t work with non-natural evidence so by definition they will look for a natural explanation.
Here’s an example: astronomers don’t know why galaxies are rotating as fast as they are, because the speed of rotation doesn’t correspond with the amount of visible matter. That is why they propose there must be “dark matter” to explain the extra mass they can’t see. What exactly is this dark matter? Nobody knows. Is it useful to be open to the possibility that it’s some kind of supernatural matter? Well, we can’t prove it isn’t, but what methods would we use to answer the question? We only have our natural tools to investigate.

Fortunately there is a mountain of evidence for God’s creative work in many forms: historical, prophetic, archaeological, geological, philosophical, physiological, sociological, etc.

I would have to disagree here. Could you give a specific example of one piece of evidence?

If a person wants to believe that God does not exist, he either only considers evidence in support of his desired view ignoring the evidence in support of God’s existence, or he amasses(overwhelms himself with) information to the contrary in support of his case.

I don’t want to believe anything. I only want to believe in true things. I do my best to judge all evidence without bias. I’m not perfect, but I try to look at all sides. If a god does exist, then that is a true fact, so of course I want to believe it. That goes for any claim, not just supernatural ones.

If someone doesn’t want to believe something, regardless of the evidence, they won’t.

Yes, that is an excellent point. Which is why I do my best to remove emotion from my judgments. I try not to want to believe things.

On a side note, don’t assume atheists have the same kind of emotional attachment to scientific theories that many religious folks have to their creation stories. If the Big Bang was disproved tomorrow I wouldn’t cry. If Darwin’s theory, quantum theory, or the Big Bang theory were shown to be incorrect in next month’s Scientific American it wouldn’t bother me a bit. In fact I would love for some interesting scientific revolution to happen in my lifetime. If it was solid good science with good evidence, it would be very exciting.

We are all faced with answering the fundamental challenges of life:
-Where do we come from?
-Why are we here?
-Where do we go from here(what happens to us after we die)?
Some choose not answer these questions. I commend all who genuinely take up the challenge.

As for the first question, I think we have good answers where we (humans) have come from. It’s a very interesting story and exciting research is being done all the time to enrich it. The deeper questions of where did everything come from (ie. the origin of all matter and energy) is much harder to answer. Nobody knows the answer, but that doesn’t stop physicists from looking. (String theories, branes, etc.) Maybe they’ll figure it out, and maybe they won’t. Isn’t it worth trying?

The second question assumes there is a purpose or intention. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. If I’m at the beach and I see a rock, can I ask “Why is that rock there?” Maybe a wave pushed it there. Does that answer my question? Why did the wave do that? I’m not sure why questions are useful in regard to things that we don’t know for sure had a purpose.

The answer to the third question might be “nothing”. All we know about consciousness is that it arises from our brains. If brains die, consciousness dies. Therefore being dead is like not having a brain. So all those years that happened before you were born are exactly like all the years that happen after you die. Some people find this idea of oblivion to be scary. Personally I think the idea of oblivion to be less scary than an eternity of consciousness, but I’m not a fan of either option.

But nobody knows the answers for sure! I need to reiterate again, science doesn’t prove anything. We get answers and create theories and our confidence in those answers and theories increases as the evidence increases but nothing is ever 100%. (I think you can only prove theories in math, but that’s because you have axioms that are assumed to be 100% true.) So I can’t prove George Washington existed anymore than I can prove God does or doesn’t exist.

OK, this was a bit long. Sorry about that. I have work to do so I’m probably procrastinating…

To call that ‘ease of understanding’ is to either completely misunderstand or completely misrepresent it.

Claire is right of course. I chose to use the phrase “easy to understand” in my too long comment above without thinking. I think you all know what I meant though. (Occam’s razor, parsimony, etc.)

Dangerously known as “common sense”

tom,

This post was addressed to nycatheist, but I’m hijacking it.

I don’t have an adequate answer to your pollen question, but I did read where in the Grand Canyon, fossil pollen grains have been found in “Precambrian” rock which is supposed to be a time before seed plants evolved.

Your quotes around Pre-Cambrian are unnecessary, the geological record is quite clear that there was a period of earth history before multicellular animals with hard, fossilized parts were common. This is the Pre-Cambrian. It’s the first ~4 billion years of the Earth’s history.

The paper that claimed that fossil angiosperm pollen was found in very old rocks in the Grand Canyon is: Burdick, C. 1966. Microflora of the Grand Canyon. Creation Research Society 1966 Annual 3(1):38-50. Burdick wrote a few more papers on the subject, during which time he seemed less and less adamant about his claim. In 1981, Chadwick re-examined the area that Burdick claimed he found pollen from, and was unable to find any pollen. Chadwick (1981) raised the possibility that Burdick’s sample was contaminated. Different creationists take different sides in the debate.

We simply may not have found stone tools in the deeper layers. The human population was likely sparse prior to the Flood, and tools more prevalent following the Flood.

Isn’t it…odd that we find the first stone tools with creatures that are more ape-like than we? And that as we get closer in time to the present, these stone tools, and the organisms found in association with them, show more complexity?

Given the rare circumstances for a fossil to occur(dead animals typically rot or get eaten), the animal examples you gave being small in size/weight compared to dinosaurs likely floated and rotted.

Indricotheres were as big as a T. rex and yet, somehow, they show up in the fossil record millions of years later. Fossil whales like Basilosaurus are as big as Mesozoic marine reptiles, and yet they don’t show up in the same fossil biochronological zones.

Size is not the reason why there is a fossil record that shows order. Temporal succession, evolution through time, extinction of old species, and the origin of new ones… these patterns, these natural patterns, explain why fossils from the Big Badlands of South Dakota are different from those of Hell Creek in Montana.

Tom, what’s your location, I could give you better more spatially-compatible samples than referring to localities from the great plains.

Tom,

Sorry, somehow I completely missed your comment here:
http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/03/23/how-to-ruin-a-trip-to-the-museum/#comment-144882

discussing fossils, etc. But I see Cautious has already addressed most of the points and he obviously knows a lot more about fossils than me so I’ll let most of it go.

A few remarks though:

Your question: “If there was a global flood, where are the stone tools in the deep layers?”
We simply may not have found stone tools in the deeper layers. The human population was likely sparse prior to the Flood, and tools more prevalent following the Flood.

But we see a progression from simple to more complex tools in upper layers. Layers no where near where the dinosaur fossils are for example. If you use the concept of hydrological sorting to explain the apparent history of life, the heavy tools should not all be in the top layers arranged in their own order.

Or if you then assume all those top layers of tools happened after the flood, you have a harder problem of explaining how so many layers formed over a span of thousands of years when it appears to be physically (and radiologically) millions of years.

Hydrological sorting can also not explain the multiple extinction events in history, or the distinctive K-T boundary where we find the unique iridium deposit suggesting an asteroid impact. Why would churning flood waters create a single layer of the element iridium? Here Occam’s razor must be applied.

Your question: “~What would convince me that a global flood never happened?~”
I would have to deny the God I have come to know personally and discredit His Word I have come to rely on as authoritative. The more I see of nature, the more it attests to his workmanship.

Not necessarily. You would only have deny your interpretation of that word. Maybe you are just mistaken? If we suppose a creator did form the universe, how do you know it wasn’t the Hindu’s god Brahman? I don’t think there is anything in nature that shows the fingerprints of one god over another. Or maybe the “true” god creator is something no religion has ever described? Supposing a “god” or “force” was the prime mover of all things still leaves you a million miles away from any specific creation story written down by a human society.

So I guess the question should be, “what would convince you that your particular interpretation of Genesis is incorrect?”

Maybe Yahweh really is a poet and not a lawyer, and his day is like a billion years. But then, that’s the problem here. Interpretation, scripture and revelation aren’t sciences. We can’t have good scientific evidence to get at the “true” meaning of a book written by unknown authors.

Personally I think if there really is a God who created all things he is more like a physicist than a poet. He would not deceive us with an Earth that seems old or stars that appear millions and billions of light-years away, yet whose light rays were “actually” created in transit to fool us. In fact I would bet that his true revelation would be found in the heart of mathematics, etched in the very fabric of reality for anyone to find and learn from, not in some dusty myths from a random desert tribe.

But I don’t believe any of that. It isn’t in my nature to believe things without good evidence. However, it would be pretty cool!

This is Criminally Irresponsible

Oh man… Truly one of the most horrifying and scary videos that I’ve seen all year. As an Atheist married to a Christian, with friends and family who seem to all be believers, their blind faith saddens me. This video turned my stomach.