Summations Only

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Are you just unable to entertain my completely different point of view or are you refusing?

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If you can’t support your point of view why should anyone believe it. At least the mainstream view has evidence and makes sense.And we might ask you the same. Do you unable to entertain the mainstream view or just refusing ? It’s not as if you have any real evidence against it.

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Because having to keep answering this sort of total adherence to the status quo point of view is depressing in the extreme and makes me feel Why bother?

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That is why you need real evidence and real argument. Just posting a daft opinion without considering the rival view - or even the real evidence - is hardly a winning strategy.

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Are you unable to picture the great slabs of rock that make up the geologic column, or if you prefer, any given stratigraphic column?

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In fact I can. With the many surface features at unconformities, with the interleaved deposits, with the lenses of differing materials reported at many places. Picturing them as massive featureless slabs is a gross oversimplification and misrepresentation.But that seems to be one of your standard tricks. I don’t know why you are surprised it doesn’t work on others, when it has failed so often before. You should be ashamed that you let yourself fall for it.

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You want evidence. Wow. All I can do is try to make you see what is really there, that's the only evidence. You really have no evidence at all Percy. The fossils? They are better evidence for the Flood. The Geologic Timescale is the Emperor's New Clothes. I realize I have the advantage of being outside the charmed circle of what you all like to call Science, so I can see stuff you can't see, but I would think that by now it would at least be a little bit familiar.

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Oh dear. Still trying to pretend that fossils are evidence of the Flood? We KNOW that isn’t true. And the rest is simply a wilfully ignorant opinion.You certainly are wasting your time, but it certainly isn’t our fault. Get real evidence and a real case instead of whining that nobody worships you.

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This is such a piece of nutty confusion. I'd think a moderately intelligent person could at least grasp that evidence can have different interpretations. All you are doing is asserting your favorite interpretation, because the evidence itself of the great abundance of fossils does indeed support the Flood.

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The fact that evidence may have different interpretations hardly means that it favours your interpretation over any other.Selecting one aspect of that evidence and claiming that it is consistent with your view is not even enough to show that your interpretation is valid. And we know that another aspect - the order in the fossil record - cannot be explained by the Flood.Moreover you have yet to show that the actual abundance of fossils is consistent with the Flood story. From past discussion it seems that the mainstream view does better even there.

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The Flood was intended to kill all land life, the huge numbers of fossils are certainly good evidence for such an event.

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There is nothing in the fossil record that indicates it was formed in a single event. Indeed, the evidence points the other way. Not to mention the fossils that were buried in sandstorms, which hardly indicates a flood. The mainstream view better explains this evidence.

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The conditions of a worldwide Flood, the soaking of the entire planet, would have been optimal for the burial and fossilization of a huge number of dead things.

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Which might be sensible if fossils were found at the bottom of the geological column rather than being spread through it. Again, the mainstream view does better.

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I'm not at this point even making any further claims that are also supportive of the Flood or against the conventional interpretation. These two ought to make the point. You can still prefer your own interpretation but it's just biased stubbornness, willful ignorance for sure, that has a closed mind to the obvious fact that the existence of the fossils fits the Flood model very well.

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Since the order of the fossil record doesn’t fit the Flood model at all - and you know it - this is hardly an honest assessment. Even your above arguments are obvious examples of confirmation bias which fail to provide any analysis or consider the details (wilful ignorance for sure!). So this is just that standard Creationist trick of attributing your flaws to your opponents.

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Everyone will now want to argue all the points in favor of the other model. That's what always happens but it's the wrong thing to do. The fossils ARE good evidence for the Flood. It's time to get a grip and recognize that simple fact.

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The simple fact is that there is no aspect of the fossil record that favours the Flood explanation over the conventional view. On the other hand the order of the fossil record convincingly refutes the Flood view. In the face of that, to call the fossil record good evidence of the Flood is simply a lie.

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I was VERY careful not to claim the evidence "favors" my interpretation

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If it doesn’t it’s hardly good evidence for the Flood. You need to be more careful in your weasel-wording.

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just want it acknowledged that it is as much evidence for my interpretation as for yours.

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That obviously isn’t true for the reasons I gave.

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As I expected, you won't deal with the simple topic, you have to change the subject

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And that’s an outright lie. As expected. Really, Faith falsely accusing me of acting like you is hardly going to work.

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I'm calling you on your dismissal of my argument about the two different trilobites. That argument is nothing less than brilliant and I refuse to accept your dismissal. I argued it from the point of view of the basic genetics of the creature

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You neglected to include any information about the genetics. Perhaps that is why your argument wasn’t accepted as brilliant.

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The only way you could answer it is by finding a trilobite example that I can't explain in the same way

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I think that pointing out that by the same standard a human and a chimp are the same species was actually a telling answer.Before we have to play by your rules for identifying species (by morphology) you need to show that your rules are correct. And at present you’re just assuming that - you can’t show that they are better than the rules used by taxonomists.

The problem is one of paradigms.We are concerned with honesty and truth.You are concerned with your pride and the doctrines of your anti-Christian cult,But the question is why should we put your ego or false doctrines before the conclusions of science ? You find it absurd that we should but the real absurdity is that you should expect us to,You parade your sins before us as if we are supposed to find them reasons to agree with you. And of course it doesn’t work. Why should it ?

A white swan is technically evidence that all swans are white.The abundance of fossils - even if it were shown to be broadly consistent with the Flood story is little better.If it were to be shown that the Flood were the best explanation of the abundance Faith would have a point. Unfortunately for her, a large number of fossils is expected given an old Earth (for reasons that should be obvious). And that is all she has.If Faith had good evidence she wouldn’t bother with something so worthless. The fact that she puts it forward as her best example shows that she has no real case.

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The conditions for fossilization are not fulfilled by the Old Earth scenarios, you have to do a lot of piecemeal speculating to make it fit together.

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No, we just have to assume that floods and rivers and swamps and volcanoes and sandstorms and so on were pretty much the same in the past as they are now. And with hundreds of millions of years worth of all those things, of course there are a lot of fossils.Your point is just silly nonsense.

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To believe this accounts for all the fossils requires believing that local "floods and rivers and swamps and volcanoes and sandstorms and so on" are what is seen in the geologic/stratigraphic column and it is obvious that they are not.

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According to your uninformed opinion. In reality they are found. We’ve seen pictures of river channels, read reports of fossils produced by being covered in volcanic ash, I’ve even seen fossils buried in sandstorms, in a museum.

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Most of the strata extend across vast areas which is not the case with any of the phenomena you refer to, and they do NOT produce flat sedimentary rocks over all that area

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Geological formations are not simply flat and featureless slabs of a single type of rock. We know this. If you don’t by now then the problem is entirely yours.

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Where you find fossils today has absolutely nothing to do with the fossils in the stratigraphic/geologic column, which are clearly NOT found in such local places, as I explained.

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Ignorantly asserting falsehoods hardly helps your case.For example:volcanic burial - an article I have previously cited so it should not be a surprise.

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I didn't read the article but volcanic burial is too local to apply to the fossils in the stratigraphic/gologic column where the Flood deposited tem.

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Perhaps you should rewrite that so it makes sense.None the less, the article describes a large collection of fossils buried by volcanic ash, not by a flood of any sort.In reality the fossil record is a collection of things that have been buried by different means, by different events, in different times and different places.

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Sorry, the genetics was implied, as it was for Darwin's pigeons with the exaggerated features. The argument is that the same features are possessed by all the trilobites, not more, not less, and that is what makes them all members of the same Kind, and any given specimens best called "subspecies" for the sake of clarity.

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The actual genetics are unknown. You may assume that the process was the same, but that is assumption not actual information. However in reality it takes selective breeding to produce rapid and extreme divergence, and trilobites have diverged far more than even the selectively bred pigeons. Some trilobites had eyes on stalks, for instance. Good luck finding that feature on a pigeon.I note that you do not even attempt to give an objective criteria based on morphology - which is all the evidence gives you. All you have is opinion, lacking any solid basis. If you are wasting your time it is not because we are being unreasonable, it is because your arguments are at best shallow and lacking a real understanding of the evidence.

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There is no reason to think DNA operates differently in different Kinds. Many genes governing each trait for instance. What would differ is the traits governed by the various genes.

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Indeed, there is no reason to assume that what you suggest is even possible - at least in practical terms - without a truly massive program of selective breeding.

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All it takes in nature to produce all degrees of divergence from subspecies to subspecies is reproductive isolation of some portion of the original gene pool. Selective breeding may or may not be faster, depends on how many individuals make up the founding members of the evolving population.

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In principle, perhaps. In reality splitting the population up so many ways, subjecting the sub-populations to very strong and different selective pressures and ensuring that enough of the sub-populations manage to survive and escape their little region seems more than a little unlikely. Not to mention the fact that reproductive isolation does not seem to generally occur in selective breeding. Your timescale allows only a couple of thousand years from creation to Flood. That’s not long if you leave it to nature.

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It appears that each population has its own set of genetic possibilities that bring out the various traits we see in the different species or subspecies. Pigeons are probably the result of many divergences in the past, each of which would restrict the genetic diversity of each new population. That would explain why they can't vary as much as the trilobite subspecies obviously did.

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In your opinion. But it is just an opinion, and since we know that trilobite variation evolved over long periods of time - there really is no good reason for us to agree with you.

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Gosh, I thought I did a pretty good job by identifying the various trilobite features that had to vary to produce the different types discussed. Having all the same features is part of the definition I gave for the Kind.

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Just like chimpanzees and humans. It’s all just variations in size and shape. The basic bits are all there.

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I pointed out objective features. Seems like a rather solid basis for my opinion to me.

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But it obviously is not. There is no objective connection between the features and your idea of kind. When the evidence shows that trilobites evolved over a long period of time why should we accept your assumption that they are all varieties of a single species? You haven’t shown that at all.

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I don't feel I'm wasting my time on this topic. The discussion has become rather fascinating recently.

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Well don’t expect anyone else to think that simply assuming that you are right is a brilliant argument. At least we got a nice example of you complaining about one of your arguments being treated fairly.

Of course I didn’t twist your words at all. I simply pointed out a truth you didn’t like.In reality wolves are still wolves. Rock doves are still rock doves. The diversification produced by selective breeding did not occur in nature. Even though those species have existed for far longer than the human breeding programs. You have no example of such a thing happening in nature, no reason to think that the circumstances that would be required could occur in such profusion.In reality you have no information that would let you know that the variations seen in trilobites were all present in the original genome. You don’t even know that for dogs or pigeons. That’s just an assumption without evidence - and almost certainly false.

Assuming that you are right barely qualifies as an argument at all.So I guess I can understand why you would rather it was ignored instead of being given the treatment it deserved.

George MacReady Price really started it, about one hundred years ago.However, I don’t see a good reason to discount the efforts of early geologists to explain the evidence in terms of a Young Earth and a global Flood. The fact that they chose different explanations doesn’t change what they were trying to do. Or the fact that they were unable to do so. It’s not as if modern YECs have any real success either.