Off Topic Posts aka Rabbit Trail Thread - Mostly YEC Geology

It is not what the Bible says, but rather it is always what you say it says, your interpretation, based on your theology!Gods dammit! Get a clue!

Again, bullshit!It's all your interpretation. Simplistic, yes, but still your interpretation.Science uncovers what is. If your interpretation of the Bible says otherwise, then the problem is yours. If your interpretation of the Bible turns out to be the true one, then congratulations! You've just disproved the Bible!Reality is what reality is. You cannot wish it away, no matter how hard you try. So then, do you want to push for an interpretation of the Bible that dooms it to extinction? Or do you want to push for one that agrees with reality or at least has any hope of that? Reality is still what reality is.Are you human? Seriously, are you human? Are you infallible? Seriously, are you infallible? Do you really believe that you have everything completely and infallibly right? Bullshit!My church has a catch-phrase attached to it: To question is the answer. You are fallible. Is it not prudent to question your own beliefs?

German co-workers once tried to explain "Operation Barbarosa" to me, in particular why Hitler would launch an invasion of the Soviet Union with military forces that were woefully unprepared and under-equipped. They concluded that is was the fault of Nazi propaganda which kept proclaiming how superior the German military was to everybody else and their either Hitler had started to believe his own propaganda, or else the lies had forced him into a corner where he could not afford to not launch that ill-fated invasion.I see a similar answer to your question. The reason why creationists insist on trying to use "scientific" arguments for creation is because of the deception they had engineered for the courts, the fundamental lie of "creation science" that their objections to evolution are purely scientific and absolutely not based on religion. But then they started marketing that same deception to their followers, both to "support" their faith and to use in proselytizing. And now they're trapped in that losing strategy of having to lie about science and to carefully guard their ignorance of science, all because they had made the classic mistake of believing the lies of their own propaganda.

As I have offered more than once, analogous to the teaching of "spiritual milk" vs "spiritual meat", there is also "scientific milk" vs "scientific meat." Basically, you try to present the truth in a way and at a level where it can be understood by your audience, even if you have to use means that are not absolutely accurate. Where we see that last part back-fire on us often is when creationists "research" their arguments from the writings of science popularizers. What bothers me about that situation is that I have frequently seen them taught and they have argued vehemently with me that if their literal interpretations of Genesis are not true, then they are required to abandon the Bible and their faith and become atheists. So of course they are not going to feel any motivation to stop and think critically about it; their very faith is at stake.Now, in the question of teaching a falsehood, there are two situations: either you know that it is a falsehood, or you do not know and believe it to be true. In the first case you would be lying and in the second case you would not be technically lying. However, that is a purely moral judgement. Pragmatically, the consequences of that falsehood being taught is the same regardless of the moral question of whether that person was knowingly lying. The consequences of teaching falsehoods are the same regardless.

Faith, you missed a very important point about all these different species of shells.They occur in distinctly different strata. They are not mixed together, which is why they can be used to identify specific strata. These different strata cover very wide geographical regions.If these subtly different species existed together, why are they not buried together? Oh, you might be able to conjure up some excuse for them being separate in one locale, but over very wide geographical regions? Not just one single instance, but rather all of them?The obvious explanation is that they existed in completely different eras of time. You insist that they absolutely must have coexisted at the same time.How can you explain all that?

So why are they in different layers? If they all existed together at the same time, what magical principle would have segregated them into separate layers? No known physical process would have done that, not over such wide geographical regions, not for each and every layer. Only magic could have possibly done that.Instead of arguing for magic, shouldn't you instead try to learn something about geology?I remember hearing the then-Governor of Mississippi explaining his campaign for education reform: "We know that ignorance doesn't work, because we've tried it already." Obviously, you are still far behind the State of Mississippi.

But what places all those different species in entirely different strata?Your model says that they all existed at the same time. What would place all those different species existing at the same time into entirely different strata. Your only explanation: magic.Old-earth explanation: those different species existed at different times. The species that existed at the times that the strata were laid down are the ones that we find there.Again, your only explanation: magic.

I already have: They existed at different times. You claim that they all existed at the same time. So just how does your claim explain what we observe? All you have is magic! So please kindly own up to it!

It places those strata where we would expect them to be.Your approach would mix those index fossils together so that we would be unable to distinguish one stratum from another. Outside of the intervening action of magic.Again, learn something about geology and take the time to take with geologists.

Your "model" is pure bullshit.The only way that you can know where the strata are located is because of the work of geologists, not of creationists.The way that geologists identify a particular stratum is from the index fossils that they find therein. Just exactly how did those particular index fossils get in that particular stratum, a stratum that extends over a vast geological region? You want to claim that all those different species of index fossils existed at the exact same time, which means that you need to come up with some kind of magic explanation of how they all somehow magically managed to segregate out into entirely different strata. Of course, geologists (you know, the guys who actually know what they are talking about, as opposed to you, the bullshitter ... sorry, the bullshittess) know that those different species existed at different times, at the times that their particular strata were laid down.IOW, the age of the index fossils, AKA "things", has everything to do with finding oil.