Dispatches from the Culture Wars

1

Nice work TFN! Not that this is really news to those of us who follow the issues, but it's nice to see it laid out so clearly when the inevitable lawsuit comes along.

Posted by: FastLane | December 18, 2008 9:37 AM

3

Free Market Foundation, the Texas chapter of Focus on the Family,

Am I parsing that right? The local chapter of Focus on the Family is called the Free Market Foundation? They know family!= market, right?

Posted by: Matt Heath | December 18, 2008 10:34 AM

5

The comment section at TFN was trolled by none other than Larry Fafarman :)

Posted by: Johnny Clamboat | December 18, 2008 12:32 PM

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Keep digging yourselves in deeper evolutionists. While you are fighting a political battle against students expanding their minds other countries are moving into synthetic biology and gaining marketshare in the field.

The blood is on your hands if we lose the nanotech race because your bringing politics into the class room is removing the engineering part of the equation from evolution.

Throwing things together to see how they get along and letting the strongest survive is great and all. But teaching kids that faith in random mutations, which we can't even explain how they are provoked, is more useful then engineering biology is not really helping matters.

Posted by: Johnrap | December 18, 2008 2:30 PM

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I'm going to call Poe on Johnrap. I mean, there's stupid and then there's what he wrote, laughably, no one could be that stupid, stupid. Come on man, tell me I'm right.

Posted by: MyPetSlug | December 18, 2008 2:44 PM

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Don't you mean "The Creation Of Evolutionist Rhetoric", as in: "evolutionism" (the religious belief), to "evolution" (the pseudoscience); or: "creation science" (which is real science), to "creationism", to "religion"? I have noticed that evolutionists always talk about "creationism" or "religion", never about "creation science", because they don't want to admit that creation science is real science and that creationist scientists do real science (such as the RATE project) that refutes the evolutionists' pagan religious belief called evolutionism. The truth is that teaching "evolution" (which is really evolutionism) in schools is teaching religion in schools under the pretense of science by just dressing up the religion with some bad science and pseudoscience. I'm honest about my religious beliefs, however, as are most creationists, so I will end this comment with this: Evolutionism is a deluded pagan religious belief no matter how much evolutionists try to dress it up in bad science and pseudoscience, and every evolutionist is deceived, because the God of the Bible (in the person of Jesus Christ) created the universe, Earth and life just as He has told us in the Bible, and REAL science backs that up. Receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior by faith, and you will also receive God's gift of eternal life. Reject God's offer of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and you will perish in your sins and be lost forever. I hope for your sake that you will see through the false origins religion of evolution and instead choose eternal life through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of all who receive Him by faith. Best wishes, KL :)

Posted by: Kenneth Lawrence | December 18, 2008 3:25 PM

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Thank you for best wishes, KL.

My mind was clouded with facts and evidence.

Now I see how irrelevant evidence can be.

Posted by: kamaka | December 18, 2008 3:39 PM

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While you are fighting a political battle against students expanding their minds other countries are moving into synthetic biology and gaining marketshare in the field.

The blood is on your hands if we lose the nanotech race

I think you're over-reacting. It doesn't matter which country develops the first hyperintelligent nanites. Nanites are above petty human games like "nationalism" and they'll be more than happy to cross over into other countries and use the materials there to create more hyperintelligent nanites of identical quality.

No one will have blood on his hands for longer than the few microseconds that the nanites need to complete the decomposition process.

Posted by: chaos_engineer | December 18, 2008 3:48 PM

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Yeah, we have no idea what we're doing when it comes to understanding radioactive decay rates. All those nuclear reactors--FAKED!

Posted by: Josh | December 18, 2008 4:02 PM

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MartinM, you have just admitted that you have no clue what the RATE project was about or what its findings were. I don't time have to detail all it here...

Or, indeed, any of it. If you're not willing to defend it, you shouldn't have bothered bringing it up. But then, you're not here to discuss. You're here to preach.

Posted by: MartinM | December 18, 2008 4:04 PM

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KL - wishing for the good old days when science had to pass the religious orthodoxy test.

Posted by: Taz | December 18, 2008 4:18 PM

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Josh, I'm glad you want to look at evidence and not just go back and forth without evidence being discussed. So here goes: Look at the geomorphology of the Earth's surface. For want of time, I'll give you two examples here, but I suggest you Google a book called "Flood by Design" for a really good (and readable) look at the vast amount of geomorphological evidence of a recent global flood. I also deal with it in my book "The evolution Delusion", but not to the extent that Mike Oard does in "Flood by Design".
Anyway: Start with planation surfaces, which are large horizontally sheared off surfaces, often on tilted sedimentary rock consisting of strata having different hardnesses, as if the hardness differences were not present. Often these planation surfaces are covered with rounded boulders that have obviously been transported to the surface from locations miles away, in areas of the world that have not been glaciated. The only possible explanation is that moving water covered the area AFTER the sedimentary rock was uplifted and tilted (thus shearing it off horizontally) and then transported the boulders to their current locations. An example of this is just south of Lander, Wyoming, but there are many more around the world. If you Google Oard's book you might be able to see a picture of this one, which is in his book. There is simply no uniformitarian explanation for these surfaces. Only a global flood can account for them logically. Another feature of geomorpholgy that has proven elusive to unifarmitarian explanation is that of inselbergs, which are islolated rocks projecting up from planation surfaces, an example being Devil's tower (of fame from the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") in Wyoming. If the area around Devil's Tower eroded away at a snail's pace as standard geology claims, Devil's Tower would have largely or completely eroded away with it, and would not exist today as we see it. But if a global flood quickly eroded the surrounding area away, Devil's Tower would exist as we see it today, because its hardness would have preserved it. So there are two examples of evidence for a global flood such as the Bible describes. But if you really want to get into the evidence for the flood, I recommend Oard's book, because he does a better job than I can here of detailing the reasons why the flood explains these phenomena and why uniformitarian geologists have been unable to do so. KL :)

Posted by: Kenneth Lawrence | December 18, 2008 4:35 PM

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Wyoming under water

Posted by: Taz | December 18, 2008 4:58 PM

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Mr. Lawrence - Prior to spending my time and energy on wild goose chases, I'd like to know the following:

Are you a practicing and publishing (peer-reviewed publications) geologist or biologist in the field relevant to your book? Is there a webpage with your CV so we can see where you were educated and who you studied under to provide some level of confidence you have the relevant functional knowledge to even make an argument?

What functional areas do you cover in the post-doctoral portion of your career?

Reading books is nice, but real science in this day and age is merely reported and explained in books after having gone through the peer-review and acceptance process. A non-scientist like myself is not well-served reading books by tinfoil hat types, and therefore I try to make more productive use of my time by reading science-related books which base their content on peer-reviewed and accepted findings. This has been validated given I've yet to meet one honest Creationist who isn't easily fisked by those with even an elementary level understanding of scientific methodology and biology or geology (say 100 level at a decent university).

Therefore have your claims been peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal prior to your publishing your book and if so, please point us to the articles and journals. I'd also appreciate knowing whether anyone has published any falsification efforts against your work, also in a peer-reviewed publication.

Are your falsification efforts against your own work and the best of those that were published in peer-reviewed journals reported in the books you are pointing us to including your own?

Also, why would I trust someone like you versus, say Neil Shubin, who has made a number of major discoveries based on evidence that was predictive? How do you refute Shubin's most recent discoveries, especially regarding his discovery of Tiktaalik, its location, and his lab work in evo devo that validates his and others' fossil discoveries CROSS-FUNCTIONALLY, both in terms of function and timing (e.g., gill arch to upper jaw bone to middle ear being one of many examples - validated in both the fossil record and in the lab using the necessary genes).

Posted by: Michael Heath | December 18, 2008 5:05 PM

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Hey Kenneth,
Okay, I'd like to address planation surfaces seperately because we need to make sure we're talking about the same features.

Regarding Devil's Tower, I don't know why there is a question regarding this structure. There's no problem with Devil's Tower with respect to uniformitarism (although to say that all weathering takes place at a snail's pace is far too oversimplistic). The porphyritic phonolite that makes up the "tower" itself is a silica-rich igneous rock that's substantially more resistant to weathering than the sedimentary rocks into which the magma intruded. The Sundance Formation is an Upper Jurassic limestone and clastic sequence, which tends to weather much more slowly in the semi-arid Wyoming climate (because of the limestones) than it would in Pittsburgh, say, but it's still far less resistant than a phonolite. The other sedimentary unit which was intruded is the Triassic-aged Spearfish Formation (overlain by the very thin Gypsum Springs). These are clastic sedimentary rocks (sandstones, shales, and the evaporites of the Gypsum Springs). These also are significantly less resistant to weathering than the phonolite.

We (the geologists) have very good understandings of the resistivities of rocks; we've been studying that for several hundred years. Regardless of the climate, the clastics and carbonates are going to weather more quickly than the igneous rock of the "tower." If you bury a granite boulder in mud and then walk out every day with a watering can and water that mud, the mud is going to weather away faster than the granite boulder. It's the same process.

Posted by: Josh | December 18, 2008 5:12 PM

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I don't have time to detail it all here, but the unifarmitarians understand the geologic history of Devil's Tower quite well. It's an igneous intrusive body that cooled at shallow depth in the crust. Since it is a fine-grained granitic, it is very resistant to erosion. Yes, it takes a very long time for all the surrounding rock to erode away, but erode away it did.

It makes sense if you give it enough time. The process takes a bit more than 6,000 years, I'd wager.

But the only thing you're trying to make sense of is a fairy tale.

Stop already with your scientific pretentions.

Posted by: kamaka | December 18, 2008 5:29 PM

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I ran for State Board of Education in Texas this year, and I was inundated with these sorts of voter 'guides.' It's interesting that you point out this particular one, because I had noticed the discrepancy and refused to answer because of it. One of the Free Market Foundation's reps and I had a lively discussion. They called multiple times to get me to respond to the survey, and I finally spoke to someone about this inconsistency. Their rather lame excuse was that you can post comments online, but you still have to answer a dishonest question to have your extended thoughts included on the web.

Posted by: Kim B. Stroman | December 18, 2008 5:32 PM

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I'm not going to try and hold an active debate on a forum like this, but any and all creationists are invited to show up at the DebunkCreation group over at groups.yahoo.com where we'll be glad to treat all the arguments of scientific creationism with the respect they so richly deserve.

Posted by: Michael Suttkus, II | December 18, 2008 5:48 PM

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Unguided evolution tells kids, "No you can't." Guided evolution tells them, "Yes we can."

Do what, exactly?

Honest science, when competently taught by honest people who know the material, empowers us to do LOTS of things when organized religion tells us to stay in our place, never talk to outsiders, and never stand up to make our lives better.

Strict adherence to unguided evolution, without time spent on the things that would disprove unguided evolution, is a thought limiting position that teaches children they don't have control over our planet.

And teaching them to obey (your interpretation of) the Bible, on pain of eternal damnation by an all-powerful God, gives them MORE control?

Did you so-called Christians just find a new motherlode of non-sequiturs?

Posted by: Raging Bee | December 18, 2008 6:06 PM

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I think some stupid splashed on me, better go take a shower.

Posted by: kamaka | December 18, 2008 6:16 PM

41

"I am not a scientist, and my book is essentially an asemblage of evidence and conclusions that others who are scientists have produced. So in my book, I am acting as a reporter, not a scientist."

In other words, you're an Evangelist.

Posted by: Rick R | December 18, 2008 6:20 PM

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These people really think they're being cute, don't they? After losing one court case after another, they think changing terminology and tactics will let them prevail. From "Creationism" to the oxymoronic "Creation Science" to "Intelligent Design" to the alleged weakness of evolution, they have shifted constantly in their strategies, but, make no mistake, their goal has always been to teach religion in science class. Indeed, a smoking gun was found in the Dover, Pa. case, where the link between Creationism and I.D. was found to be just the altering of a couple of words in the literature that could not be coincidence. You are quite right, our adversaries are "evolving". We'll just have to do it right along with them.

Posted by: Raymond Minton | December 18, 2008 6:53 PM

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I am a thinker. That's someone who thinks, as opposed to slavishly believing anything written in a peer-reviewed journal.

Translation: I'm wayyyy too stupid to even understand the arguments, let alone attempt to refute them.

Far from saying that you're a thinker, you're pretty much saying you're intellectually lazy. I doubt that you've read any of the peer reviewed literature you're turning your nose up at.

Posted by: gwangung | December 18, 2008 7:20 PM

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Mr. Lawrence - to pile on Rick R's post prior to your last post - embrace the paragraph. Your readership will skyrocket on that action alone.

I also see you are dishonest. Getting published, reading, and considering a peer-reviewed article is a far cry from "slavishly believing anything published in a peer-reviewed article". In fact, such an effort is most often the beginning of discovery for those that study such findings, not its conclusion. I don't think you are at all ready for prime time given your lack of functional knowledge which is so evident in your last post, including scientific methodology in general.

If you want to get taken seriously, get some scientists with serious credentials in the relevant fields to validate your findings and confront the falsification evidence that's looking pretty impressive to the mere notions you presented to date in this thread.

Posted by: Michael Heath | December 18, 2008 7:31 PM

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Kenneth Lawrence in reference to the RATE Project:

And by the way, to be sure to avoid creationist bias in the results, they had the research work done at standard labs run by (you guessed it) evolutionists

Well there's your problem right there. They should have tried geologists. But seriously, RATE? You're citing RATE as a credible source? Even Don DeYoung, author of Thousands...Not Billions, admits the RATE project has serious flaws. But you hold it up as compelling evidence. What you lack in knowledge you make up for in brass, I'll give you that.

Posted by: Abby Normal | December 18, 2008 8:27 PM

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Re Malcolm

Not to mention the Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere.

Posted by: SLC | December 18, 2008 8:44 PM

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SLC,
Maybe they were all just really good swimmers with really bad amnesia.

Posted by: Malcolm | December 18, 2008 9:04 PM

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To Kenneth and Johnrap:

For your perusal (entirely at your leisure, of course), one of a multitude of sites that expose the many flaws of the RATE project. If you're interested in more, please feel free to google. TL;DR Most creationist science has already been debunked.

Posted by: Bradley Emery | December 18, 2008 9:17 PM

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Dear KL,

Please provide a link about the Washington State badlands example. I googled "Washington State badlands" and got tourist sites...

And national park visitor studies...

Oh, by the way, I just looked at a picture of the "Devil's Tower", and dang, it sure does look eroded to me, especially with those cracks down the side. But, then again I don't happen to have much beyond a (American) 10th grade education in geology.

I have yet to find a site about the 'controversy' you are talking about. I did find one controversy: Did or did not the igneous material break the surface of the earth when it intruded or not? I don't think that's the one you are talking about...

Oh, and two tips:
One: use paragraphs, please. A huge block of text on a screen is nearly unreadable.
Two: ALL CAPS makes you seem like one of those annoying infomercials. Evidence works better on skeptics.

Just sayin'

Nightshadequeen

Posted by: nightshadequeen | December 18, 2008 9:34 PM

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"I see no one took up my "water gap" challenge. Not surprising since it is such irrefutable evidence for the Biblcal flood (being found all over the world) and has no uniformitarian explanation."

I can throw one very plausible explanation at you without much trouble at all: earthquakes. For that matter, how is any OTHER tunnel formed? What's happening here? In some cases, water may have originally been around the mountain, but it will still erode at any soft spots it can find, unless it's standing, stagnant water. The idea that no other plausible uniformitarian explanations exist is merely laughable. The idea that the laws of physics or properties of matter at the molecular level just suddenly changed at some point is rather absurd, though, don't you think? They either experience some sort of measurable fluctuation, or a measurable process from one state to another, or they don't change at all. I'm not a scientist myself (just plain-jane helpdesk tech here), but I HAVE noticed that a great amount of Creationist rhetoric relies on repeated, drilled ideas, concepts, and arguments, and on breaking one's intellectual curiosity to the point that such obvious alternate explanations aren't even considered. End rant, sorry for the multipost. Getting tired, here.

Posted by: Bradley Emery | December 18, 2008 9:39 PM

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tfagan -

First of all, what is it you creationists have against paragraphs? Give 'em a try sometime - you might like it.

Second, I'm not sure there's one statement in your screed that's factually correct. But you know what? It doesn't matter. Scientists will continue to advance scientific knowledge despite your delusions.

Posted by: Taz | December 18, 2008 10:01 PM

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Nightshadequeen - I think what KL is trying for is the fact the Badlands eroded rapidly. This doesn't fit with a gradualist theory of erosion. When this was floated as a hypothesis (way back when) it was dismissed. As more evidence was collected to support it, opinion shifted, and the gradualist theory was replaced by punctuated equilibrium. (An ice plug, acting as a dam for a vast lake, melted and burst, sending a raging flood down these particular river valleys. Yep, localised flooding can occur - therefore the entire surface of the Earth, to a depth of over 6Km, was covered by mysteriously appearing and disappearing water, in 2348BCE. QED. That's fundie 'logic' for you.)
Golly gee whiz, KL! Science actually evolves as more data is collected! How amazing!
Just Fundies projecting their fear of change and the unknown, along with the need for monolithic, unquestioning belief onto others. Nothing to see here, move along. -DJ

Posted by: DingoJack | December 18, 2008 10:02 PM

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Shorter Ken Lawrence: "There's LOTS of evidence, but it's super secret so YOU CAN'T SEE IT SO NYAH!"

Give me a break.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 18, 2008 10:22 PM

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tfagan - two articles for you to read: Amblocetus and Tiktaalic. Enjoy! -DJ

Posted by: DingoJack | December 18, 2008 10:45 PM

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If the area around Devil's Tower eroded away at a snail's pace as standard geology claims, Devil's Tower would have largely or completely eroded away with it, and would not exist today as we see it. But if a global flood quickly eroded the surrounding area away, Devil's Tower would exist as we see it today, because its hardness would have preserved it.

So The Flood didn't erode the tower away because the tower is harder than the surrounding stone...but slower erosion would have eroded the tower away too. Because well, just because it would. Yeah, that's some "thinking" there alright. Maybe the tower didn't erode away in the mainstream model because, surprise, it's an intrusive igneous rock, and much more resistant to mechanical weathering than the surrounding shales/sandstones, which break apart more readily where the grains are cemented together. You know, for the same reason it apparently didn't erode due to this amazing Flood. And the tower itself is eroding too...you can see rounded rubble at the base and a rounding of the tower edges themselves. And the columnar jointing...more evidence of very old age, as these form on slow cooling. And its not at all a given that this is a volcanic plug. If it is, where is the volcanic ash and lava from the volcano? Its more likely to be an intrusion that never reached the surface until it solidified and the surrounding material eroded.

Oh, and which mesas are you talking about that are exactly the same material as the surrounding stone? The mesas I'm thinking of in Mesa Verde consist of weaker and more eroded shales capped by more resistant sandstones. It's pretty standard mainstream geology. The sandstone caps protect the material underlying from rain and flash floods, and so they erode slower than the surrounding material and hence appear as raised flattened forms. There are also various volcanic dikes and sills that can be raised relative to the surrounding rock for the exact same reason, it doesn't erode as quickly.

How does the Flood explain them anyway? The Flood eroded where it eroded and didn't where it didn't seems to be the take home message. And where did all the sediment come from to make the sandstones and shales that was eroded away by the Flood in the first place? Obviously the Flood didn't both lay down the sediment and erode it away. Or did it? Seems like a very magical Flood.

Posted by: Dave S. | December 18, 2008 11:28 PM

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DingoJack:

I think what KL is trying for is the fact the Badlands eroded rapidly. This doesn't fit with a gradualist theory of erosion. When this was floated as a hypothesis (way back when) it was dismissed.

I think you might mean the channeled scablands here, not the badlands. And yes, those were formed by a very large (several large) floods. This is not inconsistent with the modern uniformitarian model of geology at all, which does not assume uniform slow rates for everything, and does not deny the occasional catastrophic event (e.g. KT impacter or moon formation theory). It only denies that these are largely responsible for the overall global geologic record. Like any bold hypothesis that veered far from the norm, it was strongly challenged. The proponents did the hard work of making testable hypotheses and testing them, demonstrating the soundness of the theory. That's just the way its supposed to work.

Posted by: Dave S. | December 18, 2008 11:54 PM

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Sheesh. I don't know how right you are, Mr. Lawrence, but judging by your writing, I would say you need some solid skills in grammar and spelling, because your current skill set is terrible.

If you have indeed written a book that was not just published online or through a vanity press, you should know that communication at the lowest rung of the ladder is crucial, and when an editor can't even read a simple letter for all its grammatical and spelling errors, chances are that that writer's work will be relegated to the circular file. Try to learn English if it isn't your native language (which it appears it might not be), or don't try to write commentary until you have a dictionary and a thesaurus close at hand. (Spell checks don't always work, so it requires a human being to know the difference between homophones, for example)

Do you know how many books were excluded from the final rendition of the current bible, or how many authors contributed to it, or how many years passed between different versions of it? Did you know that it wasn't until the third century that books of the "sacred texts" were actuallly pulled together by Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, for the emperor Constantine, who wanted 50 copies of the texts?

There is much that most Christians don't even know about their religious beginnings, and how many of those beginnings were the result of lies from a third century bishop trying to make an emperor happy.

Posted by: Mary | December 19, 2008 12:52 AM

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...but if you look at the history of science and the gargantuan mistakes that have been made by many peer-reviewed published scientists over the years...

Hmm, let me think - which of the two following groups of people do I think would have been responsible for discovering the 'mistakes' of scientists in the past:
a) other scientists, following the principles of science pertaining to validity,
b) earnest theologians who found the correct answer in the bible or a related religious text, or
c) fervent believers who prayed to god to reveal the truth to them?

I'm going to have to go with a) - because I'm not a moron.

Posted by: Wowbagger | December 19, 2008 1:07 AM

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Someone wanted a link to Washington Badlands. Google on some of the following. Glacial-outburst waters that crossed the Channeled Scablands during the Missoula Flood of 15000-12000. I did not look at any sites but I don't think they are biblical flood sites. I thought NOVA had a program on this but I could not find it. Someone on PBS did have a very good show telling how it was created in a several great floods but not "the flood".

Posted by: bjohnson | December 19, 2008 5:22 AM

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Do they think that geologists are so clueless that they believe that no catastrophic event has ever happened in the entire history of the world? Uniformitarianism does not mean that every single event in the history of the world happened at a snail's pace; it means that the processes we observe today and whose effects we can observe -- including a whole range of catastrophic events like floods, earthquakes, meteor impacts, etc. -- were also at work in the past and had the same effects then as they do now.

Exactly. Modern geologists even recognize that the world may have been quite different in the distant past than it is today, and that processes may have happened that were once of major importance, but now either do not happen or are trivial in comparison. We've seen this uniformitarianism straw-man zombie of 'constant slow changes only' many times.

Way back in 1820's, two British geologists, William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick looked at the evidence and rejected the idea of a single world-wide flood. Both were Reverends, and both had believed before, but were swayed by the evidence. That was almost 190 years ago. Flood geology hasn't gotten any better, but the purveyors has gotten more dishonest.

It was Sedgwick who said in a speech to the Geological Society in 1831:

Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having more than once been quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation....

There is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established -- that the vast masses of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period....

We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic flood....

In classing together distant unknown formations under one name; in giving them a simultaneous origin, and in determining their date, not by the organic remains we had discovered, but by those we expected hypothetically hereafter to discover, in them; we have given one more example of the passion with which the mind fastens upon general conclusions, and of the readiness with which it leaves the consideration of unconnected truths.

Now there was a man who wisely heeded the words of St. Augustine.

That one provoked a spit-take. Yeah Kenneth, evolutionists never talk about "creation science." Never mind the innumerable books written on the subject, like Science and Creationism and Scientists Confront Creationism. Never mind sites like TalkOrigins, which systematically debunks hundreds of arguments from "creation science." Stick those fingers in your ears and yell really loud, maybe all that bad evidence will magically go away.

Yeah, reminds me of those ID advocates (21st century creationists) who wonder why nobody ever considers their ideas.

Now someone who is a creationist can do science (although his example of RATE is not one), 'creation science' is not science. It's an oxymoron, and we've known that for decades.

Posted by: Dave S. | December 19, 2008 8:08 AM

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If I was to write longer irrational comments would it garner for me the sort of attention that Mr. Lawrence gets? I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm as irrational as he is, just not so long winded.

Posted by: democommie | December 19, 2008 8:29 AM

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P.S. DingoJack -

I wasn't disagreeing with you after my first sentence, but re-iterating in my own words. My bad for not making that clear.

Posted by: Dave S. | December 19, 2008 8:36 AM

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Evolutionism truly is a strange beast, but it's the scientific establishment's best card for creating for itself the "religion-free" ideal. Don't worry about it's faith basis, you can fully trust the complete interity of all its highly acclaimed advocates! And just look at all the wealth of evidence that they present. Adaptation, er evolution is everywhere! Equilibrium gets punctuated all the time! Just like magic...

TalkOrigins, ah yes! the great bastion of evolutionary rationalisation. Give it a try folks, you can explain anything and everything in darwinian catchall logic. We really are all mutant yeast, or something similar!

Do you actually have an argument to make? Some evidence to present?

Don't talk to me about reversion to wilds, the second law- did i overstep myself and call it a law?

Are you referring to the Second Law of Thermodynamics? By all means, please give me a concise statement of the second law, in your own words.

Posted by: DaveL | December 19, 2008 8:58 AM

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I mentiond St. Augustine before. To refresh our memories.

De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, translated by J. H. Taylor)

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]

Given many of today's specimens, Augustine may as well been peeing into the wind.

Posted by: Dave S. | December 19, 2008 9:27 AM

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To Kenneth and Johnrap:

For your perusal (entirely at your leisure, of course), one of a multitude of sites that expose the many flaws of the RATE project. If you're interested in more, please feel free to google. TL;DR Most creationist science has already been debunked.

Thanks for the quote.

Tell me, has synthetic biology been debunked too?

Because assuming it hasn't. Than your dismissal of intelligent design is equivalent to Gutenberg telling the creator of the Phaistos Disk that he is not an inventor but a religious zealot.

Posted by: Johnrap | December 19, 2008 12:53 PM

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Johnrap,

No, synthetic biology has not been debunked. I'm also not familiar with how it supports a creationist perspective, so perhaps you could enlighten me. To my knowledge, it's simply the study of ways of altering and applying biological mechanisms and objects to engineering. Not entirely sure how it supports your argument.
As to the Phaistos Disk, a quick Google search tells me a lot about it, but mainly that there has not yet been a definite translation, that there is no consensus on exactly who made it, where it was created, or when it was created, and what, specifically, it is FOR. To say that the creator of it was an inventor OR a religious zealot seems rather useless, as there appears to be no real idea of its purpose. Furthermore, as the best dating that HAS been provided puts it somewhere in the area of 2000 BCE, it seems unlikely that Gutenberg would have had much to say about it at all, considering the 2-4000 or more years between the two persons. Unless you know something about it that I didn't catch in the 2-3 minutes I spent on debunking your claim, I'm not sure where you're coming from. Please elaborate.

Posted by: Bradley Emery | December 19, 2008 5:15 PM

97

I'm still amazed that Kenneth Lawrence said - several times, no less - that the Bible has been "scientifically proven" to be true. I'd just love to hear the explanations for how Cain and Abel had children with no women around but their mother, or how the sun stood still in the sky for a full day.

Then again, maybe he meant the Jefferson Bible.

Posted by: Sean | December 19, 2008 5:36 PM

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Johnrap,
Your premise that evolution will not explain all life in the future is both true AND false, from a purely philisophical standpoint. When we talk about synthetic bio, we're still talking about mutations and genome manipulation, simply with artificial selection instead of natural selection. Also, while semantically, Intelligent design might be a good LABEL for this, it HAS no real scientific model. To even call it a model is a falsehood. Furthermore, while you might not consider your brand of Intelligent Design creationism, it smacks of the c-word due to the fact that the proponents of the original idea (I hesitate to even call it a hypothesis) have all been proven current or former creationists.
Lastly, while it might work semantically as a label for synth bio, science tends to stick to original terms unless there is an excellent reason for altering them. Why would Intelligent Design be any better a term than Synthetic Biology?

Posted by: Bradley Emery | December 19, 2008 5:59 PM

101

Johnrap, saying "teach synthetic biology instead of evolution" makes about as much sense as saying "teach synthetic chemistry instead of the periodic table." The idea that engineering applications overturn the basic science their founded in is so ridiculous it's barely worth bothering to debunk. I won't do so anymore beyond this comment.

Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | December 19, 2008 6:23 PM

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Eariler I posted:

Either you're having difficulty with comprehension, or I'm not explaining myself clearly. Obviously I'd prefer the former theory to the latter. :)

December 19, 2008 12:22 AM
Having read the responses by others here, sadly, I am now inclining toward the latter theory.
Johnrap - If, in the far future, we look back on an era of synthetic biology, we certainly will be able to see differences between artificial and natural life.
Firstly artificial life will have fewer redundancies, errors and sub-optimal sequences. Secondly the 'evolution' will be too rapid to be natural. Thirdly, the artificial life might be chemically different from natural life, having, for example, dextro- instead of laevo-, arseno- instead of phospho-, silico- instead carbo- and so on. All would be dead giveaways to future scientists even if this artificial life's humans creators had long gone.
Unfortunately these 'tells' are not present in natural life (so far, but keep looking), therefore I'm inclined to go with the 'naturally formed' theory as being the most logically simple answer. A 'Chariots of the Gods' theory just doesn't fit the evidence available. - DJ

Posted by: DingoJack | December 19, 2008 8:33 PM

105

I just happened across this discussion through some random surfing, and I don't pretend to understand much of what I just read, but it reminded me of something. Ten or fifteen years ago I bought a CD-ROM which was a compilation of various creation myths told through animation and narration. Someone above commented that it was funny that the Chinese and Australian Aborigines didn't notice this flood, and then someone else said the same about the American Indians. The thing is... there actually ARE Great Flood stories in many ancient cultures, but the stories surrounding the flood and it's cause are obviously very different. I know this is not exactly on topic, but I wonder how the Bible=Truth types explain that. How were these other cultures saved by their various gods? Was God playing dress-up?

Posted by: Strummer69 | December 20, 2008 8:58 PM

107

Oh, and by the way, you do realize that the Catholic Church - that bastion of Godless people - officially accepts evolution, right?

Posted by: Luca | December 20, 2008 10:25 PM

109

Should be:

If only about 7000 years of artificial selection can produce that, what can 3.5 billion years of natural selection produce?

Arg...

Posted by: Nightshadequeen | December 20, 2008 11:40 PM

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Nightshadequeen - Sorry if I gave you that impression, I was just amazed at the some of the fundie commenters' ignorance. But I guess beginning by addressing you muddied the waters. Sorry 'bout that.
Basically I was trying to warn you not to try to see logic in the intrinsically illogical.
Perhaps I shouldn't say anything though as it seems you can't understand what I am trying to say. [Must be the accent ;) ].
Well played against the johnrap BTW, you were polite, calm and logical, exactly the correct response. [gives Nightshadequeen a big hand] -DJ

Posted by: DingoJack | December 21, 2008 1:08 AM

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I do think that ID is in our future. Creation, be it chaotically or otherwise, is in our past. I think that Intelligent Design, as it has been offered in the courts should not be in schools. Since we really need to focus on the elements that make up our world, chemistry, biology, physics, information theory, etc. and not so much obsess over some all encompassing theory of everything.

Thanks to everyone who explained my errors politelly. WTF to those who insulted me. I mean, sheesh, is a person allowed to be wrong or not. It's kind of unfair to get on my case for being stupid. That's like, if you were an Olympic Sprinter, and I was a tubby nobody, which I am, then you turned around in races and started making fun of me while beating me.

It wasn't fun when jocks made fun of you in high school. Please don't make fun of us now that we are at least trying to learn something, even if not succeeding. Anyway, even though I was a jock in high school I never made fun of nerds.

Posted by: Johnrap | December 22, 2008 4:26 PM

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HI Josh, I'm back from shovelling snow and commenting on other websites. I appreciate your more extensive comments on Devils Tower and your general tone of conversation, which is a refreshing change from a lot of what I read from from some other responders. I get the sense that you are interested in having a polite and intelligent conversation, which also appeals to me. Please excuse my lack of use of paragraphs in this venue. I assure my web correspondents that there are plenty of them in my book, but in this venue I just prefer to write nonstop, because I'm in a hurry to get finished and get the latest snow cleared out of my driveway. Anyway, before I start on Devils Tower, I want to just answer your comment about radioactivity decay rates and nuclear reactors. Today's reactors are based on the science of radioactivity rates as they are today. This has no direct bearing on The RATE project, which is concerned with the question of radioactivity rates in the past and whether they have been constant through time or have either fluctuated in the past or have been steadily (perhaps exponentially) decreasing. RATE's research proved that they can be changed in the lab and provided strong evidence that they have at least been different in the past, which if true, renders radiometric dating worthless as a scientific technique for determining the age of rocks. I think that you, as an Earth scientist, would find the material on this project fascinating, even if, as a believer in long geologic ages, you only desire to disprove it. So I recommend you go to icr.org and get a copy of the results book (I believe there are two versions, one written for scientists and one for science lay readers) and the DVD, which will give you a good overview of the research and results in about two hours. I would be interested to get your thoughts on it after you have reviewed it carefully.
Okay, as to Devils Tower: I have it on good authority that most geologists believe the tower is indeed a volcanic plug, i.e. the hardened throat or conduit of a volcano (Blackstone, 1988, p.42; Lageson and Spearing, 1988, p. 98-100). It is composed of essentially vertical basalt columns (which twist outward at its base) and is believed by uniformitarian geologists to have formed at least 40 million years ago. In fact, there is a sign erected near the tower giving the uniformitarian explanation for its formation and showing its summit standing well above the surrounding land, indicating an even older age for the tower. But let's just take 40 million years as our benchmark. How likely is it that even if it was twice the diameter originally that it is now (very unlikely given that the basalt columns curve outward at its base today, indicating the outward edge of the base of the plug), that it would still be standing today, expecially as vertical columns tend to weather much more easily and quickly than horizontal strata? And especially where annual ice is involved? Given its location and the weathering it would have been sujected to, I suspect that you would have a very difficult case to make as a geologist that Devils Tower could have survived for one million years, let alone 40! But I can certainly see its present condition being consistent with the Biblical flood scenario, with some erosion from flood drainage and the rest over the last several thousand years of water, wind and ice weathering on those vertical basalt columns. (I know you know this but I'll just state for the others reading this that water penetrates the cracks between the columns and freezes in winter, thereby "ice-jacking" the columns apart quite efficiently over a relatively short time). By the way Josh, have you considered the planation surfaces that I mentioned earlier on? Flat as pancakes on tilted sedimentary rock, often covered with rounded boulders of different rock type, transported from miles away, all over the world in areas never glaciated. What do you think would be the most likely formational agent or process to explain them? Only a global flood makes any sense to me. Same thing for pediments. There is simply no uniformitarian explanation that scientifically satisfies. Note Strudley and colleagues (2006, p.805): "The curious amd ubiquitous nature of this landform suite...has baffled geologists for over a century". Baffled! That is to say, to uniformitarian geology, even taking into account local catastrophes. But again, consistent with processes that would have occurred in a global flood. Only a global hydraulic catastrophe on this planet a few thousand years ago can explain these features. Uniformitarian geologists admit that planation surfaces and pediments are not being formed on Earth now. Crickmay (1974, p.127): "There is no reason to suppose that any kind of wasting ever planes an area to flatness: decrepitation always roughens; rain-wash, even on ground already flat and smooth, tends to furrow it." What is the classic definition of uniformitarian geology? The present is the key to the past. Present-day process expain the past. Not so, as these formations (and Crickmay and others) make clear. Some other process, acting planet-wide in the past, formed planation surfaces, pediments, and, I still maintain, inselbergs. And don't even get me started on submarine canyons (just kidding, you can if you like). I have quoted uniformitarian geologists who candidly admit that they cannot explain these formations by their standard geological paradigm of uniformitarianism, including local catastrophes. Josh, there is only one possible geological process that can explain them all: a recent global flood. And, unlike uniformitarian geology, it does explain them! Anyway, nice chatting again, I look forward to reading your comments on RATE after you have watched the DVD put out by the RATE team. Apologies for typos, typing too fast. KL :)

Posted by: Kenneth Lawrence | December 23, 2008 4:18 PM

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Johnrap said: "While your at it teach artificial intelligence in schools. Because it strikes me as odd that random mutations can create a better intellect than professional computer programmers."

You might be surprised to know that what strikes one as odd is not relevant in science, especially in light of evidence to the contrary. Evolutionary algorithms are used by working engineers right now to produce such results, which often confound the programmers themselves. You guys really need to catch up, this issue is not even debatable any more.

Posted by: Science Avenger | December 24, 2008 5:44 PM

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Kenneth Lawrence wrote:

"One last thing: As for "junk science": did you know that before the mid-twentieth century, almost any peer reviewed paper that discussed the Earth's surface would have maintained that the continents were fixed in place and had never moved in relation to one another? But there was a guy named Alfred Wegner, ... Who were the "junk scientists"? ... They were. ...it does mean that university training is no guarantee of intelligence or insight, and often people with pedigrees overlook valid thinking ...and not on the basis of science."

KL,

That's an interesting example for you to cite.
The hypothesis that continental drift was a better description of the world than the then conventional view had to survive the best attempts of the established orthodoxy to discredit it, whose supporters went out of their way to find evidence to contracdict it, yet the evidence accumulating over time only supported it and so it became the new orthodoxy as people accepted the evidence and so best available explanation.

This is a good example of scientific debate leading to a new consensus.
Maybe there were die-hard supporters of a static Earth, but they became fewer as time passed as more and more scientists considered the evidence and sided with the Theory of Continental Drift.

Do you think any new scientific idea just gets accepted by other scientists without fuss or discussion?
Yes, a new idea will have a fight on it's hands before it is accepted.
Yes, people who have spent their careers pursuing an idea of their own or supporting a competing model will seek out any weakness.
That is their role, and the ensuing debate is the better for their contribution and the proposed hypothesis must be able to handle their critisms or be capable of adaptation to meet them. (i.e to better 'fit' the 'environment'.)
Naturally, all such counter arguments must be rational and not specious.

Your basic theme constantly appears to iterate that there is no evidence for evolution.
That given any starting population, those individuals with some probabilistic advantage of reproducing in the environment they live in will be more likely to pass their genes on to the next generation.
Those genes that bestow some such advantage will be more likely to spread within the population than those which don't.

In the post immediately previous to yours Science Avenger described how working engineers use evolutionary algorithms in their work.
Do you accept that evolution can be demonstrated in a lab or factory?
Or are you saying that evolution is just a form of the emperor's clothes that everyone pretends to believe in just because everybody else expresses belief in it?

Are you confusing the word "theory" in it's everyday meaning of hypothesis with the word "Theory" in it's technical sense of a proposed explantion that meets the facts as we currently know them?

If so, and you assume evolution to be 'just some theory' it could explain your wish that a biblical beginning be taken as seriously.

Posted by: HarryR | December 25, 2008 4:43 PM

121

Uses of the word "paradigm" = 5

New scientific results = 0

"Evolution is a religion" canard - check.

"Atheists just don't want to accountable for their behaviour" canard - check.

For that to happen, the DNA for a given life form (cats, for example) has to lengthen to incorporate more information than it can actually hold in its current form. Well, genetic mutations change the content of DNA but they don't lengthen DNA molecules. So unless evolutionists can explain how DNA gets longer so it can hold more information, their theory has hit a brick wall, because DNA comes in many different lengths, not just one. How did that happen? They can't tell us.

A rather bizarre claim, given that the first hit on a google search for "mutations" gives us this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation

Insertions add one or more extra nucleotides into the DNA. They are usually caused by transposable elements, or errors during replication of repeating elements (e.g. AT repeats). Insertions in the coding region of a gene may alter splicing of the mRNA (splice site mutation), or cause a shift in the reading frame (frameshift), both of which can significantly alter the gene product. Insertions can be reverted by excision of the transposable element.

Yes, mutations can add new nucleotides. That means increasing the length of the DNA molecule. This sort of ignorance really makes me question your objectivity. It shows that not only did you not know, but that you were never interested in knowing. You obviously never even bothered to check for yourself whether this claim was true.

But the Bible says that life was created in unique "kinds" that cannot change into other "kinds". That appears to be true because the DNA of each "kind" appears to be fixed in length. Now within that length of DNA, there certainly is mutation and genetic variation, so you get a variety of species within each "kind", an example being various types within the cat "kind".

Define "kind". Go ahead, I'll wait. Until you do, anything you or the Bible says about them is just noise. You can't say whether "kinds" can change into other "kinds", or whether gaps exist between "kinds" in the fossil record, until you can explain what exactly they are.

Posted by: DaveL | December 26, 2008 9:37 PM

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Also, for more info that I BEG you to read, Kenneth, please visit this page:

http://www.kent-hovind.com/

It might lay to rest some of your questions.

Posted by: Bradley Emery | December 26, 2008 9:54 PM

125

Boy, Kenneth, you have apparently been exposed to a great deal of disinformation, and seem to have swallowed it all at one gulp! A lot of it doesn't even make logical sense, never mind the rules of evaluation of scientific evidence. For example, if an intrusion of igneous rock, whether it be a volcanic cone or a sill or a dike or whatever, is harder than the material it intrudes into, it will wear away slower and wind up standing proud of the surrounding surface. What difference does it make if it took 40 days and 40 nights or 40 million years? Harder is harder.

Second, unless you're a bacterium, "length" of DNA molecules isn't a relevant quantity. We eukaryotes have chromosomes, consisting of a number of genes each, which mostly code for proteins. One of the most common errors in replication is for some gene to form duplicate copies. When this happens, the original copy is there to perform the original function. There is no selective pressure on the second copy to stay functional, so it's free to vary randomly. Once in a grand while, this will produce a gene coding for a protein that can perform better than the original, or even perform a whole new function.

Our hemoglobin, for example, consists of four units much like the myoglobin that stores oxygen in muscle. In the last 600 million years or so, it has duplicated twice to perform more efficiently as a blood pigment, but some of our more primitive relatives like hagfish (a chordate, but not considered a vertebrate any more) still use myoglobin as blood pigment. Gotta love those living fossils! By comparing the nucleotide sequences of myoglobin and hemoglobin in a variety of different species, we can even determine the order in which the changes took place.

As HarryR said, plate tectonics is an odd example for you to cite. Yes, it probably took longer than it should have to be accepted, but to be fair, outside the US it was widely accepted much earlier. (Alfred Wegener was a meteorologist, by the way, not a "high school teacher." I don't know if this is considered an anti-elitist dig, but also in German, Hochschule does not mean "high school" in the American sense; it's a higher-educational institution.) The thing is, since most plates spread apart about as fast as your fingernails grow, and yet have moved thousands of miles over time, obviously the earth is much older than you're willing to admit. Either that, or they moved much faster until just now and the continents reached their present positions in just 6000 years. If plate motion was really 750,000 times as fast as it is, as you need it to be, the amount of volcanic gas released into the atmosphere would make it unbreathable in a day, not 6000 years.

As far as radioactive decay rates being enormously faster in the past, that would require the entirety of Quantum Mechanics, a discipline which makes numerical predictions correct to 11 decimal places, to be competely wrong. Not just like Newtonian Mechanics is wrong in certain regimes and has been superseded by General Relativity, but absolutely out-and-out wrong in every particular.

Particularly the alpha-decay of Uranium and Thorium, which is our major evidence for the age of the earth, is dependent on the balance between the Strong Force holding the nucleus together and the Electromagnetic Force pushing it apart. Well, we can see galaxies 12 billion light years away, i.e., as they were 12 billion years ago, and their spectroscopy indicates that atoms behaved just the same way then as they do now. The Strong Force and the Electromagnetic Force were just the same then as now. The Gravitational Force must have been the same, too, or the stars that these galaxies are composed of would not work as they obviously do. But we knew that since it's possible to demonstrate from observation of the earth-moon system that the Gravitational constant hasn't varied measurably in the last 4.5 billion years, anyway.

Finally, your statement that "transitional forms" can't be found in the fossil record is an absolute crock. It's really amazing how many we find, when it's a mathematical certainty that speciation must occur in very small isolated populations, and we would expect them to fossilize very rarely compared with the very large central populations that have so much evolutionary inertia that it would take forever for a new genotype to spread through them.

Really, if this is the best ID can do, evolutionary theory, not to mention Quantum Mechanics, has nothing to worry about. You should really try reading more about real science. The Universe is a very big, very old, and very fascinating place, unlike the cramped, dingy, simplistic, boring, colorless world that creationists want to live in. Join us out here, it's really interesting!

Posted by: Lurkbot | December 27, 2008 2:28 AM

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Hi Kenneth, I'm also back (from visiting the parental units et al.). I'm eager to return to our discussion of Devil's Tower and other geological subjects (including radioactive decay). This weekend, however, is going to be an absolutely beautiful one, and given that I think I'm going to spend some of it out looking at real rocks/fossils instead of discussing them online. As such, please be patient if my responses to your last few comments do not come in the next day or so. We'll just have to see how much mud is covering the outcrops. Silence on my end doesn't mean I've lost interest in the discussion.

Just a quick note on your last comment in our Devil's Tower thread as I'm enjoying my coffee here and scanning through what I've missed. You refer to the tower as having been made of basalt. This is incorrect. As I stated in an above comment, the "tower" itself is made of a porphyritic phonolite. Rock names refer to very specific materials that have specific mineral compositions and/or formation histories. Basalt should call to mind Hawaii volcanism. Basalts are silica-poor. Phonolites are silica-rich. If we want to be kind of foolish and think of rocks in a biological sense ("species" say), then a phonolite would be placed in the same "family" as a granite, whereas a basalt would not. They are formed from very different kinds of magmas. Does this matter in our discussion here? Well, a little, considering that silica-rich rocks tend to be more resistive than silica-poor ones.

Also, as I understand it, the general thought is that the "tower" structure formed as a laccolith, not as a volcanic plug. Again, this isn't that important for our purposes. I only mention these two points in this comment as a cautionary note. Science is about precision and accuracy. Word choice matters. It just does. If the sources you're using for your information can't get the basic terminology correct, then you might be cautious about their overall conclusions.

Posted by: Josh | December 27, 2008 9:14 AM

129

...and is believed by uniformitarian geologists to have formed at least 40 million years ago. In fact, there is a sign erected near the tower giving the uniformitarian explanation for its formation and showing its summit standing well above the surrounding land, indicating an even older age for the tower.

This is a minor point in our discussion, but one that bothers me. I've been to Devil's Tower a number of times. I don't recall what the signs say, but I can tell you from experience that I tend not to read them. I don't know who the hell they get to write those signs, but the ones I've read (in various state and national parks) often have rather large errors of fact. It's probably best not to base arguments on them.

But let's just take 40 million years as our benchmark. How likely is it that even if it was twice the diameter originally that it is now (very unlikely given that the basalt columns curve outward at its base today, indicating the outward edge of the base of the plug),...

Where are you getting your information that the current outcrop morphology of the tower relates to the morphology of the original laccolith when it was buried at depth?

...that it would still be standing today, expecially as vertical columns tend to weather much more easily and quickly than horizontal strata?

I'm pretty sure this (weathering rate) is far more dependent on the material that each is made of rather than it is on the morphology of the structure.

And especially where annual ice is involved? Given its location and the weathering it would have been sujected to, I suspect that you would have a very difficult case to make as a geologist that Devils Tower could have survived for one million years, let alone 40!

Who is telling you that we (the earth science community) think it took 40 million years for the sedimentary cover around the laccolith to weather/erode into its present geomorphology? Seriously--where did you get this information? It's preposterous. Whatever source is trying to convince you that we think this--well, they're selling you a bill of goods. They are completely misrepresenting our position. The radiometric dates published for the "age of the tower" come from the phonolite (the igneous rock of the tower itself). This is the age at which the minerals were crystalizing out of the melt (i.e., the cooling age of the magma into rock). The 40 million year age you're citing (which is from kind of an old study anyway, but that's a different issue) is the age of the rocks that make up the tower. The age at which they cooled into rock. This 40 million year age has NOTHING TO DO with the subsequent weathering/erosion of the package of sediment into which the magma intruded. Period. To my knowledge, NO GEOLOGIST is arguing that it took 40 million years for the current landscape to form. Where are you getting this? As I understand it, we (the geologists) are figuring it took probably less than ONE MILLION years after uplift for the package of sediment encasing the laccolith material to weather/erode away into the current landscape configuration. To say that "40 million years" is far too long a time for the exposed tower to still be standing in the current weathering climate of Wyoming DOES NOT support your Noachian flood model. It is not a weakness if uniformitarianism that we need to explain because WE ARE NOT arguing 40 million years. That age has ZERO to do with how fast the material weathers.

Posted by: Josh | December 28, 2008 10:21 AM

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Kenneth,

To address your argument point-by-point, I will quote you directly and then rebut:

"In some instances, the columns at the base are actually MORE eroded (gone altogether, acutally) than they are toward the summit. Yet in your gradualist, uniformitarian scenario, the columns at the base would have been protected from weathering by sedimentary rock for up to a million years longer than the same columns at the upper reaches of the tower."

My first question for you is whether the columns at the base are, in fact, of the exact same composition as the tower itself. As to your argument about how they ended up being so eroded can be rebutted in two ways:
1. If they are not, in fact, of the same igneous composition as the tower (which is surrounded by sandstone, which is SIGNIFICANTLY more prone to erosion than any form of igneous rock, which is what the tower is made of) then a much quicker erosion could easily have taken place. Imagine, if you will, a pile of sand mixed in with some clay to hold it together. This is, after all, what sandstone really is. Next to it, place a chunk of most any igneous rock, perhaps obsidian. If you pour water over each at the same rate for the same amount of time (especially warm water, which would be prevalent in many periods in that particular location), you'll find that your sand/mud mixture has eroded noticeably within an hour's time. The obsidian (again, substitute most any igneous rock here) will not noticeably erode, however, through DECADES of pouring, and you will probably not see any change within your lifetime. The significance of the composition is staggeringly large in relation to how fast a sample erodes.

2. Erosion can and is effected by prolonged currents, especially if underwater. The worldwide flood, as portrayed in the Bible, covered EVERYTHING. This is specifically how it is stated. After the flood waters began to recede, the ark rested on Mt. Ararat, which is in modern-day Turkey (by the way, research that. There is a dark mass frozen into the side of the mountain that, if squinted at very carefully, might possibly slightly resemble a boat!). Your argument about the columns rests on this flood, which would have covered not only the columns, but the tower itself. Assuming the same composition, the tower would show the same vertical erosion on the columns, all the way from top to bottom, most likely. However, this is not the case. The position that these columns at the base are more eroded somewhat tends to lead more toward the idea of the shallow inland sea, which uniformitarians, as you refer to us, know once covered this entire area. As to why the tower is wider at the base, we cannot be sure at this time of what else may have surrounded the base at one time, but the position that the columns at the base are noticeably more eroded than the higher ones seems to lend itself more to shallow water than to a "Great Flood", which would likely have done just as much damage above as below. Please keep in mind that the inland sea did NOT last long, in the great scheme of things. Over billions of years, it might, timewise, be proportional to your flood, which lasted 40 days on a timeline of about 6,000 years.

In the pictures I've looked at personally, I don't really see these columns, or can't identify them outright, but none of my pictures are close. However, the tower itself IS distinctly thinner toward the top than the bottom, which would strongly suggest greater weathering on the top, and a slow removal of the sediment surrounding the intrusion.

Please, I would ask that you visit the science section on the Devil's Tower website: http://www.nps.gov/deto/naturescience/geologicformations.htm
This provides information on more than one hypothesis on the specifics of how the tower came to be. The general idea on the erosion process is not very much disputed, however.

Posted by: Bradley Emery | January 6, 2009 1:34 AM

133

Hi Bradley, I appreciate your polite input to this conversation. I have read your comments carefully and I have to start by saying that while I appreciate the degree of thought you have put into them, I think you have some misconceptions both about Devil's Tower and the Flood. First the tower: The reason the "striations" are there on the perimeter of the tower is that the outer columns have eroded away (I believe they have been "ice-jacked" off the tower) and have exposed the columnar structure of the tower, i.e. the tower is completely composed of these rock columns. It began with an intrusion of molten rock up into sedimentary rock, but cooled into a columnar structure. This would be consistent with a fairly rapid cooling due to being "water-cooled" from the top by the flood water, which would have been over it at that time and would account for the flat top, as it was being eroded laterally by debris-laden water at that level, along with the surrounding semdintary rock. Later it would have been surrounded by the flood water for a short time, which would have further water-cooled it. The tower is only slightly more eroded at the base (consisting of missing sections of SOME columns), not enough to be consistent with a long inland sea erosion, but possible with ice-jacking erosion over the last few thousand years starting from an intact vertical tower with such a columnar structure. And it is this columnar structure that would cause the tower to rapidly erode by ice-jacking sections of columns off the perimeter of the tower (look at a closeup picture) as opposed to slow erosion by wind and water on the rock material itself (which would look entirely different (much more "weathered") than the tower (i.e. the columns) looks today). I maintain that the tower as it appears today is not consistent with a million years of this type of erosion or even with a million years of gradual wind/water weathering in the scenario that the uniformitarian side has been debating in favor of here, with the surrounding sedimentary rock gradually lowering around the tower over a million year period. Under that scenario, the tower should be at the very least roughly conical today, not vertical on its perimeter. And with annual (every winter) ice-jacking of the columns as the principal erosional agent, I suspect the tower should just be gone altogether by now. Maybe a pile of rubble left. There is a definite contradiction between the tower that we see today and the uniformitarian explanation for its formation as we see it today. Only a hydraulic catastrophe resolves this condradiction. Okay, enough on that. As to the flood: You need to read both the Biblical account and creation science material on the flood because you have great miscoceptions about both. I say that not to be capricious or insulting (I intend neither) but because as I read your comments, that is the impression left on me. First, the Bible doesn't say the flood lasted 40 days. It says it rained 40 days until the Ark began to float. But if you keep reading, you will see that it says the water kept rising for 150 days and only then did it stop raining. I also want to point out that no creation scientist that I am aware of thinks that this was any normal rain, but rather an unprecedented catastrophic event generated from a vast water supply under great pressure under the Earth's crust that was released suddenly (based on the Bible's description of the event). For a general idea of the kind of catastrophe contemplated, I suggest you Google "The Hydroplate Theory" and read the first chapter of the book, "In The Beginning", by Walt Brown. Next, no creation scientist that I am aware of believes that the current mountain ranges were in existence before the flood, but rather they were pushed up by breakup of the original continent and lateral movement of the pieces (the current continents) during the flood. So neither Mt. Ararat nor for that matter Mt. Everest existed prior to the flood. Nor the Rockies nor the Andes, nor the Alps or Himalayas. It is believed that they were all pushed up during the flood. So the flood water did not have to be anywhere near as high as you might imagine to have covered the original surface of the Earth. And any comparisons of such altitude now are moot, because of the original relatively low topography of the Earth's surface and because of the fluid (no pun intended) topographical situation during the flood. Third, the Bible doesn't say the Ark landed on Mount Ararat. It says it landed on "the mountains of Ararat", i.e. in a mountainous region later known as Ararat. I personally think it was in northwestern Iran (called Arartu), not in Turkey, based on my own study of the Bible's account and other historical records. I could go on, but I think you can see that you will need to read the Biblcal account of the flood and the other material I mentioned in order to have a concept of the flood that I am advocating for here and that YEC creationist scientists believe in. I don't conceive of it as some Mickey Mouse 40 day rainstorm that just gradually came up and went down again. It was a hydraulic and tectonic catastrophe the like of which we can scarcely imagine, even by the standard of today's catastrophe movies. The entire Earth's surface was remade, laying down almost all of the fossil-bearing rock strata, and I believe the evidence is all over the Earth's suface today testifying to it. Devil's Tower is one small piece of that evidence. I have cited other such evidence but I have only scratched the surface of the geomorphological evidence that creationist scientists have presented. For an overview of that evidence, I suggest reading "Flood by Design" by Mike Oard (Master Books), which is completely devoted to this topic (and from which I have obtained much of this argument). I guarantee you it is worth the read and will cause any reader interested in geomorphology and/or the flood debate to greatly ponder the geomorpholgical surface features of this Earth. By the way, I fully well realize that Devil's Tower by itself will convince no one of the historical reality of the flood who does not already believe in the flood, even though I suspect it won't be long now before it is recognised by standard geology that its current appearance is consistent with a catastrophic hydraulic explanation and not slow and gradual uniformitarian weathering/erosion. But to those who don't believe in the flood, it will no doubt be consigned to a local catasprophe (even thought there will be no logical evidence-based scientific explanation for such a local catastrophe), since that is the uniformitarian mindset of geology today. That is at least a step forward from a few years ago, as J. Harlen Bretz would agree. But that's another story. Google "Washington Scablands" to learn more. (That was a case of local hydraulic catatrophes although they still have the time span wrong). But I digress. I know I won't convince anyone who has the current uniformitarian mindset that there was a global flood no matter how much evidence I present or the creation science community (of which I am not a part, not being a scientist) presents, because it is just too difficult a mental and emotional ajustment to make without first understanding that the Bible account of Earth history is the truth in plain language in Genesis chapters 1 to 11. And to understand that one has to be, as Jesus said, "born again" from above by believing in Him and His word. Without that, no amount of evidence, no matter how plentiful and scientifically valid, will ever convince anyone of the Bible's acount of Earth History, because the naturalist mind just can't accept it. So why am I doing this? Because I can't rule out the possiblibly that someone reading this will be born again by believing in Jesus and for that person I believe God wants me to testify to the truth. By the way, I don't claim infallibility, and I take seriously the criticism regarding my comments 'way back on DNA length. I think some valid points were made and that I should have researched that issue better. It appears I was mistaken regarding the variability of DNA length and I apologize for not doing a better research job before stating an opinion on that. I would like to thank those who pointed that out to me, and just add that, being human, I do make mistakes, and I advise everyone to scrutinize everything I say and that any other human being says carefully, because all humans are fallible with the one exception of the risen Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God who is perfect. On some other issues, I take the position as a believer in the God of the Bible and His Son Jesus Christ, that there is a God who is operating in this world according to a plan and who at times overrides, for His own purposes, the laws and forces that He created, and that therefore some historical events in Earth's ongoing saga will not be explainable by natural laws and forces alone. Examples of this would be Jesus' miracles such as the "loaves and fishes", His overcoming of gravity on the Sea of Galilee and His resurrection, all of which I believed occurred. In the case of the heat issue re accelerated radiation and other such objections by naturalist thinkers, I say that God is not restricted by His own physics, as Jesus demonstrated in front of thousands of witnesses. If He has to overrule His physics to achieve an end, He does. This is not to say that I concede the "heat issue" and other objections on a naturalist basis necessarily, but lacking enough information to make a judgement on such objections, I am not stimied because I am convinced that Divine power to overrule natural laws and forces exists and is used. Now I realize how objectionable that is to the naturalist mind, but frankly I choose God over the naturalist mind because I have sufficiently good reasons to believe in an omnipotent God, and also frankly, I have found the naturalist mind extremely wanting as a reliable explainer of both cosmic and Terrestrial history. I believe some things are only explainable by the existence and operation of God in our realm, not the least of which is our own existence. I wish anyone who has actually read all of this a great day. KL:)

Posted by: Kenneth Lawrence | January 7, 2009 10:20 PM

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Kenneth,

Thank you for your corrections as to the biblical flood account. I did, in fact, confuse "the mountains of Ararat" with Mt. Ararat itself, although there IS some controversy over a frozen shape that is, in fact, protruding from Mt. Ararat itself, and that may be worth looking into. Unfortunately, it's in a fairly unreachable area on the mountain. There is also this: http://www.arkdiscovery.com/noah%27s_ark.htm
which might interest you.

Going further on this statement:
"I maintain that the tower as it appears today is not consistent with a million years of this type of erosion or even with a million years of gradual wind/water weathering in the scenario that the uniformitarian side has been debating in favor of here, with the surrounding sedimentary rock gradually lowering around the tower over a million year period. Under that scenario, the tower should be at the very least roughly conical today, not vertical on its perimeter. And with annual (every winter) ice-jacking of the columns as the principal erosional agent, I suspect the tower should just be gone altogether by now. Maybe a pile of rubble left."

It is an interesting hypothesis, but seems as if it's only that: a hypothesis. Why should it be roughly conical? It DOES appear to be working toward that, as it's definitely smaller at the top than the bottom, and it's not actually vertical anywhere visible (more vertical than horizontal, granted, but still not vertical). However, it's igneous, which implies a crystalline formation, which tends to fall off in chunks on occasion, but is EXCEEDINGLY more resistant to gradual erosion than any form of sedimentary rock. As exemplified by differences between, say, the Himalayas and the Appalachians, it tends to take an extremely long period for igneous formations to achieve a roughly conical shape (and it often involves the settlement of sedimentary rock and topsoil to fill the rough areas). I'd certainly need to see some actual numbers on hardness and rate of erosion, but those are, indeed, only available in laboratories and would be impossible for anyone lacking a time machine and plenty of free time to procure in this case. So far as the ice-jacking goes, again, time is important here. While ice-jacking might very well be the principle form of erosion, can you provide any idea of a yearly rate at which pieces break off, and how large they are on average? For instance, is it ten large pieces per year, or one large piece every ten or 100 or 5000 years? Without some evidence that this ice-jacking is occuring at a specific, measurable rate, it doesn't seem to lend any real evidence to the young earth hypotheses at all.

Explaining the horizontal surface on the top is not too difficult at all, if it happens to be an actual plug. In this case, a horizontal, reasonably flat top would somewhat be expected, as the magma might not really have had anything above it when it began cooling, and would then be sitting as if it were in a very large cup (I think I'll take to calling this the VLC hypothesis, in honor of that). If it were a lacolith, I would suspect that it still would be roughly horizontal after so long, but it's hard to say. Much of it would depend upon the shape of the [likely sedimentary] roof above it when it began to cool. When we get into the columns themselves, again, I'd need more information. Igneous rock, of all kinds, tends to form in a crystalline structure upon cooling. Depending upon the sort of stone it is (i.e., the composition of the rock in question and whatever other minerals are interspersed in it or cementing the crystals together), those structures are not always of a totally predictable shape. Horizontal columns breaking off in hexagonal pieces doesn't really seem at all unlikely in this case. A slow cooling process might very well be what allowed it to form into the tall columns, as faster cooling tends to breed smaller crystals, NOT larger ones. I fail to see how anything really points to a single, short-term catastrophic event (short-term being something in the area of 200 years or less, going by the data you've presented).
I'll look up some info on the Flood by Design, but I will admit a great amount of scepticism and trepidation going into it, as some of the points you've already made throw up some red flags... For instance, the idea that the current fossil-bearing strata, as you put it, being laid down by a flood would be nigh-impossible. This would involve not only a great amount of very fast water, but also the idea that so much of it could be found fully intact in solid layers of homogeneous rock. Either the flood lifted entire chunks of the planet and moved them whole, or there's some other mystery here. The same would go for the formation of mountain ranges by the flood, as one would expect much greater topological uniformity due to such an event in the recent past (imagine how a beach looks after a wave hits- very flat, save for chunks of totally exposed harder objects, such as rocks and shells). It simply doesn't fit the way water works when an area is totally submerged on a large scale.
Lastly, I have to address the idea that this 'strong evidence' cannot be believed by people other than those already born again. This is not only a cop-out of the most obvious sort, but it shows much of why most creation science ISN'T accepted in the mainstream scientific community. If you look at most of these hypotheses throughout recent history, you'll most assuredly find (I've seen this myself in numerous cases) that virtually none of them have even been SUBMITTED for review by reputable scientific organizations. While you and others may claim that these ideas will only be ridiculed, it say quite a lot that they never make it even THAT far, as they're kept pretty well separate from the prospect of gaining wider acceptance by the very people that present this 'evidence'. To claim it won't be accepted is somewhat laughable, because the so-called scientists who push it REFUSE TO PRESENT IT for review. This is part of how one is kept in the dark on this, and it still goes partially back to the case of Hovind. They make the claims, they seat them in pseudo-scientific terms, but they either can't or won't back them in the face of serious inquiry. If you look at some of the history of the creation science camp, you'll see that they go out of their way to PREVENT their findings from facing serious review. If one of their claims is found to be fraudulent, they quietly shush it up, or go on pushing it in private. If one of their own gets into trouble for, say, rabble-rousing and tax evasion (read:Kent Hovind), they quickly make him their sacrificial lamb, deny all the claims he's made, and then go on and keep teaching those same claims (for evidence on this, reference Kent Hovind's teachings versus those in Answers in Genesis, then go back and see how they denied his claims, which turn INTO much of what they are currently pushing).

AAAAAAaaaaaaaand, sorry, that turned into far more of a rant than it was intended to. Seriously, though, when they push this sort of faux-scientific drivel, they're not actually even serving to draw people to Jesus. They're UNDERMINING the idea of faith; making a joke and a laughing-stock of it. The fact that this sort of thing only usually works on true believers should tell you something about it. It's a sleight-of-hand that's gone on in many forms, for many causes, but it's still no more than a cheap trick on a large scale. If they have serious evidence, they should submit it to the community-at-large for review. If they don't, it's not because they're afraid of some huge conspiracy to put God down. It's because they know it won't pass the test. Their ideas on God don't pass the test. They're trying to create a small, finite, definable God, which kills everything you seem to stand for. Please, think about it- and have a pleasant evening.

Posted by: Bradley Emery | January 8, 2009 1:03 AM

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Josh, Bradley, it appears this discussion is open again (I couldn't enter a comment for a couple of weeks). Hope you have had a nice break as I have had. Anyway, the essence of my argument is this: for the structure to appear today as we see it, the surrounding material had to have been eroded away quickly, not gradually over up to a million years. Otherwise, the columns would have been ice-jacked off the tower starting from the top level and only gradually working downward, since the lower levels would have been protected from this rapid erosion, protected by the material still surrounding the lower reaches of the tower. It's clear looking at the tower that ice-jacking is the primary erosional agent, and that weathering of the rock is essentially irrelevant. The columns could be made of diamond and would still erode off the tower at the same rate because of ice-jacking. So if it took hundreds of thousands of years for the surrounding material to erode away, the tower should either be conically shaped (and probably much shorter) or, more likely, not exist at all today. I can't see any way around that result, given that scenario. But look at the tower. It is no more eroded at the top than it is at the base (I am referring to the exposed tower itself). The same columns run from base to top all around the tower except for some which have lost sections at mid-height or at the base! What does that indicate? That the whole tower, from base to top, has been exposed for the same length of time, and not a long time, likely only a few thousand years at the most. I can't see how an objective observer who thinks it through can come to any other conclusion. Bradley, to come back to your "boulder in mud" analogy: If your boulder (I'm assuming you mean a smallish one, say a few feet in height and diameter) is vertically fractured right through like the Tower so it can be ice eroded, and if it is surrounded by half a mile of material that will take, say, ten thousand years to erode away from the tower, little by little, then I have to say that this boulder is going to disintegrate at the same rate as the surrounding material. The difference in hardness is made irrelevant by the time it will take to erode away the surrounding material due to the necessity of transporting the eroded material away from the boulder. That is the situation here. Again, look at the tower. It is eroding away pretty much uniformly from base to summit. Therefore the base has been exposed to the eroding agents (mainly ice) just as long as the top has been, no? Yes. Otherwise the top would be either gone, or at least eroded back toward the center of the tower (all around) much farther than the base. This is simple logic. The only possible point of contention is the rate of erosion, and since it is clear that ice-jacking is the principal agent of erosion here, that should be quite rapid. It is not a matter of gradual weathering of the columns. Whole column sections are jacked off the tower, and the ice reforms every winter from rain or melted snow. Now, as to your point concerning creationist science, I have to say that I do believe that, given the extremely rigid evolutionist /long age ideology (i.e. belief system)in the science establishment today and the hostile treatment that any creationist scientist can expect to receive from that now rigidly ideological establishment, I can understand that they shudder to present their work for "peer" review in that establishment, which they know will not consider them to be submitting legitimate science even before they submit it. The bias is simply too great. It is no longer a matter of "let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred thoughts content", as in the early days of modern science a few hundred years ago. Now the fix is in, so to speak. You either agree with the established belief system, or you are considered a crackpot before you are even heard. After all, the "truth" has supposedly been established now. Very few dissenters are likely to want to enter the arena on that basis. I suspect that even Sir Isaac Newton (a creationist) would have had great trepidation submitting work in such circumstances. The only exception I can think of is Robert Gentry, who did manage to successfully submit some creationist material back in the 80's, I believe, dealing with Polonium radiohalos, and his research was not taken seriously, not because he was not meticulous and accurate, but because his conclusions did not support the established evolution/long ages paradigm. Beware of paradigms based on science, they seem unassailable until they are finally bebunked, as fixed continents (the real "flat earth") finally were, and as I believe macro-evolution and long ages eventually will be. Okay 'nuff for now. Best to you and Josh, KL :)

Posted by: Kenneth Lawrence | January 23, 2009 10:56 PM

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It's clear looking at the tower that ice-jacking is the primary erosional agent, and that weathering of the rock is essentially irrelevant.

I'm not sure what "ice-jacking" is. It's not a term we use. Are you talking about freeze-thaw weathering (water flows into a crack, freezes and expands, widening the crack)?

It's clear looking at the tower that ice-jacking is the primary erosional agent, and that weathering of the rock is essentially irrelevant.

Weathering and erosion are different processes, and since this is a discussion about the weathering of a topographic feature, the distinction is important. Weathering includes those processes that actually break down the rock (e.g., water freezing and expanding). Erosion is the removal of the material after it has been weathered (e.g., rain water flushing away bits of rock that have been fractured off the main body by the expansion of ice).

The line between the two often blurs, but in this case, it's the weathering agents that we're really talking about. Erosion is fairly secondary.

Why are you saying that it's clear that ice-jacking is the principle weathering mechanism for the tower? I'm not arguing with you per se, but am just curious as to the basis for the assertion.

The columns could be made of diamond and would still erode off the tower at the same rate because of ice-jacking.

That's not true at all. That might be an accurate statement if the columns were falling away from the tower as complete units (i.e., the ice expansion process was only acting on the planes of weakness between the various columns). That isn't what's happening. Day/night and seasonal temperature fluctuations act on the phonolite that makes up the feature, causing contraction/expansion stress in the rock. Ice expanding in cracks does the same thing. There are fractures all through the structure and the individual columns are falling away in pieces. This is clear from even a casual glance at a photo of the tower structure.

http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/nativelands/pineridge/geology3.html

The type of material, as I have argued previously, making up the tower structure, is extremely important to this discussion. It's key, actually. Phonolite is going to respond very differently to the temperature fluctuations and ice expansion stress than a tower of diamond would. Granite is going to respond differently than phonolite. Sandstone is going to respond differently than granite. This is basically why different materials weather at different rates; the materials respond differently to the same climate variables acting on them. This is demonstrated science. We've been studying these processes as they act on materials, in real time, for hundreds of years and we have been doing experiments related to them for about a hundred. It's also well demonstrated in the study of how buildings respond to weathering. Buildings made from concrete weather more quickly than those made of limestone. Limestone carvings and details on buildings weather more quickly (depending on climate) than those same carvings do when built from sandstone. Limestone blocks weathering more quickly than do granite ones. These are demonstrated observations; and we're only talking about several hundred years of time or less in most cases. If you're going to assert that the processes acting on the tower are different, then you need to back that statement up. It flies in the face of all of the accumulated evidence.

So if it took hundreds of thousands of years for the surrounding material to erode away, the tower should either be conically shaped (and probably much shorter) or, more likely, not exist at all today. I can't see any way around that result, given that scenario.

You don't really have anything upon which to base that assertion, except opinion. You're again missing the extreme differences in resistance to weathering that exist between some igneous rocks and things like siltstone. There is an extensive literature on this. Heck, there is an entire discipline (geomorphology). The boulder buried in mud analogy was mine, not Bradley's. And we should revisit it here. The reason that I brought it up was exactly this point: that the difference between how the boulder responds to the water from the hose, and how the mud responds, is extreme. The point was that, with rocks like phonolite and the sediments that crop out around the tower, we're dealing with a similar type of difference in resistance to weathering. The "tower" is the boulder and the sediments around it are the mud.

But look at the tower. It is no more eroded at the top than it is at the base (I am referring to the exposed tower itself).

I don't know how you know this (I presume you mean more "weathered"). What criteria are you using for "more" or "less" weathered? You have samples from the top of the tower that you've compared with the bottom?

The same columns run from base to top all around the tower except for some which have lost sections at mid-height or at the base! What does that indicate? That the whole tower, from base to top, has been exposed for the same length of time, and not a long time, likely only a few thousand years at the most.

That might indicate what you're asserting, if it weren't for the major problem of the missing sections (and the problem that you seem to be throwing out the "few thousand years" tag because it's an a priori assumption). Again, you've operated on the assumption that the columns are falling away from the rest of the tower as whole units. That isn't what's happening (demonstrated by the simple observation that there are missing sections to many of the columns). Not only that, but you say that "the same columns run from base to top all around the tower except for some which have lost sections at mid-height or at the base." I can falsify that statement by a casual look at various photos, including the rather stinky one in that link I included above. There are a number of columns where only the base is preserved. The top has been lost. It would be a bit of a pain, but we should count the number of columns, around the tower, where the base has been lost versus those where the top has been lost versus those which are complete. I haven't done this. Have you? That would provide us with some meat to chew on regarding at least one measure of how weathered the tower's top or bottom is. Actually, that's a cool little project. We should totally do that if it hasn't already been done!

And, the tower actually is slightly conical.

Anyway, more later, as this is already long. But a major point that you keep not including in your thoughts regarding the tower is that different materials respond to weathering stress differently, which results in different materials weathering at different rates. This is a demonstrated fact (today, in real time) which needs to be included in your thoughts regarding the tower's evolution.

Posted by: Josh | March 1, 2009 8:14 AM

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gaaaaa......

"It puts the paragrah in its text, or else it gets the hose again." DO IT!

Oh, and by the way, you do realize that the Catholic Church - that bastion of Godless people - officially accepts evolution, right? Posted by: Luca | December 20, 2008 10:25 PM

you do realize that the Catholic Church are pagan fishhead-god worshippers who molest little boys, right?

that proves evolution is EVIL!!!!

Posted by: Kevin | March 1, 2009 11:46 PM

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Dave, thanks for your comment and your polite tone. I have to say, though, that I think the origin of the universe has everything to do with evolution, because of the requirement for a very long time span for evolution to have occurred, assuming that it was possible biologically, an assumption that I also would challenge. If a long age for the universe is falsified, then evolution becomes also automatically falsified. Also, if it can be logically shown that the universe is possibly (or likely) the result of a creative act by an intelligent Supreme Being (i.e. God) and not the result of a non-intelligent process, then the investigation of the possibility of an intelligent design of life by that God must also be considered a legitimate area of scientific research, and intelligent design of life must be considered a legitimate scientific hypothesis worthy of investigation. So that is why I deal with that subject in my book. I have to defend logic here. Even given our limitations, if we don't subject all evidence gathered, all observation, and the scientific method to the most rigorous logic we can, then on what basis are we operating the enterprise of science? And can we trust what it will tell us on any basis other than that rigorous logic? I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable accepting scientific "results" on a basis that doesn't put rigorous logic at the forefront of the process. Now, with respect to your irreverent (I would even say blasphemous) comment concerning God, angels, etc., I have to agree with you that evidence is absolutely necessary to believe in any claim vis-a-vis reality or to have a solid belief in anything we can't sense with our normal senses. I can tell you that that test has been met and then some for me as a believer in God and Jesus Christ, and I very much doubt that I would be a Christian today if it had not. I would challenge you to investigate the evidence for the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ because a very long line of prophets (whose words are recorded in the Old Testament and are consistent with one another over more than a thousand years) and Jesus Christ said that your eternal destiny will be determined by your response to the Word of God and His claims in the scriptures. Can you say that you have made an honest and thorough investigation of those claims? It's your destiny that's hanging in the balance, so if I were you I wouldn't take lightly the faith of many millions of people over the centuries. They didn't know science, you say? Has science proven to you that there is no God to whom your life will be held accountable? If so, then you have a faith, but I would suggest that it is a very dangerous one. I grew up an atheist and I have some knowledge of the world's religions, and I can tell you that knowing what I know not only of science, but of the transcendent words of the God of the Bible through the prophets of Israel (who God groomed to speak through) and of Jesus Christ, God's human manifestation, that I would never abandon my faith in the Creator of the universe and my Savior for eternity for a sheerly materialist existence with no ultimate answer to life's biggest questions and no hope of surviving this life. I hope you will take these words seriously because your eternal destiny is hanging in the balance, and I can tell you that God wants you to make the right decision and live forever with Him and His son Jesus Christ and everyone else who made that right decision (to humbly receive Jesus in prayer as their Lord and Savior) because "eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for those who love Him" (1 Corinthians 2:9). Do you really want to miss out on that just because you didn't care to really check it out? I wouldn't take a chance like that with my eternal destiny and I would advise anyone I meet not to either. Best, Ken

Posted by: Kenneth Lawrence | March 19, 2009 2:26 AM

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Hi Josh, that's okay, We all have busy lives. I'll check from time to time to catch your next comment. Best, Ken

Posted by: Kenneth Lawrence | April 11, 2009 5:55 PM