Walking with Feathers II

Yesterday, I wrote Walking with Feathers about how AiG seems inconsistent since they accept some Troodons, Dromaeosaurs, and Oviraptorosaurs had feathers, but find "no evidence" that other Troodons, Dromaeosaurs, and Oviraptorosaurs had feathers.  The definition of a "kind" is only going to grow broader and therefore the number of dinosaur "kinds" is only going to shrink.  It is hard to imagine how they count fifty.  Not only is increasing diversity going to decrease the number, but increasingly dinosaurs are being called birds by Answers in Genesis and the number is only going to grow.

Given the lack of visible feathers, the data about these ornithomimids remains inconclusive. Without definitive feathers, they may just be dinosaurs. Or they may be extinct birds, descendants of the birds God made in the beginning. God made all kinds of birds on the 5th day of Creation week and land animals such as dinosaurs on the 6th. And nothing about this study demonstrates the evolution of feathers or the evolution of birds.

To be fair, as much as some creationists seem to argue for a firm line between birds, created on Day 5, and dinosaurs, created on Day 6, there is no reason why such a distinction should exist.  God could easily create a crocoduck.

Instead of invoking a back-and-forth evolutionary process of land animals to birds and (in the case of oviraptorosaurs) back to land animals, how much more sensible it is to discard evolution altogether and to accept special creation instead! Owing to the fact that the Creator was under no obligation to use a nested hierarchy of created living things, at least in every case, it is not difficult to understand why evolutionists have such problems in their attempts to force ‘nonavian’ and ‘avian’ traits into any sort of evolutionary lineage.

Also:

If you could plot all the distinct created “kinds” of organisms on a graph, based on their features, you would see that God filled the graph with a tapestry of distinct kinds. Between these different kinds God scattered mosaics.1 For instance, between deer and antelope kinds He put pronghorns; between raccoon and bear kinds* He put pandas; and so it goes...All examples of evolutionary links that have ever been claimed, such as australopithecines**(between tree-dwelling apes and earth-dwelling humans), archaeocetes (between quadrupeds and modern whales), mammal-like reptiles (between reptiles and mammals), Archaeopteryx(between reptiles and birds), and Tiktaalik and Acanthostega (between fish and amphibians) are, in fact, mosaics, not links.

*Pandas are placed in the bear kind in the recent paper on Mammalian Ark Kinds.
**Australopithecus sediba was called an earth-dwelling human by a 2010 creationist paper.

Walking with Feathers

Ken Ham posted a blog about the movie, Walking with Dinosaurs in which he quoted from an upcoming review of the movie soon to be posted on Answers in Genesis.  

The film is set in what evolutionists call the Late Cretaceous period—and the influence of evolutionary ideas is evident in the way the dinosaurs are portrayed. The Troodon, Hesperonychus, and Chirostenotes are all feathered dinosaurs that appear in the film. On many occasions Answers in Genesis has responded to the claims that dinosaurs had feathers. One of the more recent responses can be found on our website. But there’s no evidence that dinosaurs had feathers. Such claims are just the evolutionists’ way of making the evolutionary story seem true. They so want kids to believe in evolution, this claim of dinosaurs having feathers is made very often in our day—through movies, museums, books, newspaper articles, documentaries, etc.

I saw the movie today and could not help but think that there should be evidence that any member of the ceratopsian "kind" existed with the crow "kind", elephant "kind", bear "kind"... Just look at all the types of mammalian and avian "kinds" that were supposed to be coexisting and herding with ceratopsians. The evidence for a cretaceous crow "kind" is not there.

Two members of the family Troodontidae have been found with feathers. In fact, I've found a couple of articles on AiG claiming that Anchiornis huxleyi was actually a bird. If "kinds" are generally families, then why can't other members of the Troodon "kind" have feathers or simply be considered avian "kinds" created on Day 5?

Likewise other members of the Dromaeosauridae family have been proclaimed "birds" by AiG and the evidence seems to suggest that Velociraptor might have had feathers. Why can't other members of the Dromaesauridae family/"kind" like Hesperonychus have feathers?

At least two species of the clade Oviraptorosauria are considered "flightless birds" by AiG. Why would it be so great a leap for Chirostenotes to have feathers? Typing this out, it amazes me how many members of different dinosaur clades are considered birds by AiG.

Avian "Kinds"

I have been trying to get a post about creationism and turkeys up since Thanksgiving, but I have not been able to find a good link for a definition of primates.  If I ever finish the post the connection will make more sense.  For the last year or so, whenever I see an animal in a zoo or in the wild, I have been trying to look up the creature on creationist websites to see what "kind" they think the animal belongs.

The other night, my oldest son and I braved the cold to see Magellanic and African penguins, so naturally I was searching Answers in Genesis to see if penguins were all considered the same "kind" and were transported on Noah's Ark.  I came upon Dr. Jean Lightner's recent publication, An Initial Estimate of Avian Ark Kinds.  In preparation for their life size Ark, AiG has commissioned a study into how many "kinds" there actually were.  Lightner has already published the list of Mammalian Ark Kinds which said that sea otters and honey badgers were the same "kind", but not cows and goats. Then in a surprise publication, Tom Hennigan published An Initial Estimate toward Identifying and Numbering the Frog Kinds on the Ark: Order Anura.  Growing up, I was told that Noah did not have to worry about the frogs since they could just swim through the flood.  However, Hennigan seems to think that Noah may have tended to 140 pairs of frogs without even so much as a terrarium.

"Kinds" used to mean species, but were expanded to mean genus.  Now family seems to be the most common definition.  However in Lightner's evaluation of Aves, order seems pretty common.  Remember, she thought cows and goats may have been too much diversity.  However, she did speculate that all rodents (porcupines, mice, beavers, kangaroo rats...) may all be the same "kind".    In IEAAK, she tends more towards the latter than the former.

The first thing that sticks out is that all the ratites (ostriches, rheas, emus, kiwis, cassowaries) are divided into separate "kinds".  There is some debate over whether or not the ratites all evolved from a flightless ancestor of they evolved separately from a flighted ancestor.  The flightless hypothesis has one major flaw.  How do flightless birds transverse large oceans?  The flighted hypothesis posits that a flighted ancestor flew across the oceans and the ratites developed their similar design through convergent evolution.  Given that every ratite has a separate order and hybridization only has been observed within orders, Lightner tentatively keeps them as five separate "kinds". (Elsewhere, AiG has put emus and cassowaries into the same created "kind".)

Next, we come to our turkeys.  The entire order of Galliformes (peacocks, chickens, turkeys, pheasants...) is one "kind".  So there were no peacocks on Noah's Ark and Darwin was right about peacock evolution.

The "duck kind" is placed at the family level, family Anatidae (ducks, geese, swans...).  Weeks ago, I wrote about ICR and lovebirds, well, she places the entire parrot order, Psittaciformes (parrots, lorikeets, cockatoos...) as one "kind".  So everything from Fischer's lovebirds to Macaws came from a pair on Noah's Ark?  The "crow kind" encompasses the family, Corvidae (blue jays, ravens, magpies, crows...).

Two more things stick out.  Under the "New World Vulture Kind", family Cathartidae (vultures and condors), there is an interesting discussion about the nature of "kinds".  Some taxonomists think that Cathartidae descended from storks.  What would this mean for Avian "kinds"?

This brings up an important point, both the cognitum and statistical baraminology assume that kinds have retained their distinctiveness as creatures have reproduced and filled the earth. There is no biblical basis for asserting that this must be true. Convergent evolution can be a reasonable explanation for similarities in the creation model. It involves similar adaptive changes to a particular environmental niche, either within a kind (as different populations adapted in the same basic way) or between members of different kinds. In fact, convergent evolution fits a bit better in the creation model. Evolution (in the molecules-to-man sense) is supposed to be the result of chance processes, so there is no reason to suspect that creatures would adapt in the same ways. This would be especially true as they diverged, since previous changes should limit future options for change. With a Creator who intends for the earth to be inhabited, it is not unreasonable to postulate that creatures were designed to be able to change. This provides a logical basis for why the same types of changes can occur, whether two creatures belong to the same kind or not.

 So according to Lightner, creatures can possibly look very different and be part of the same "kind" like possibly a stork and a vulture.  Like she mentioned, this seems to fly in the face of much of creationism that assumes by appearance they can determine the original kind.  Kent Hovind famously said that any five year old could tell if something was the same "kind".  Further, Lightner seems to have a slight misunderstanding about evolution.  Mutations are random, natural selection is not.  If you put different animals under the same selective pressures, the same type of mutations will likely be selected.

Finally, Darwin thought that Galapagos finches adapting to the different flora on each of the islands provided evidence for evolution through natural selection.  As a response, creationists generally postulate that the entire family of finches, Fringillidae, is one created "kind".  However, Lightner has gone a step further than that.  She places the entire super-family of Passeroidea which includes Fringillidae as one created "kind".  She bases this on the ability of different families to hybridize.

However, perhaps the most astounding group identified based on interspecific hybrid data is Passeroidea. Encompassing Old and New World sparrows, various finches and related birds, this represents an amazing amount of variety in the nearly 1500 species. It is clear that this diversity didn’t arise since the Flood by the standard naturalistic explanations of neo-Darwinism, that is, chance mutations and natural selection (Lightner 2013)!

 Even for Lightner who could potentially see two rodents come off the Ark and produce all rodents, this amount of variation in such a short time is too much for "the standard naturalistic explanations of neo-Darwinism".  According to Lightner, perhaps these birds were clean animals and Noah brought fourteen of them instead of two, giving them a head start.  Also perhaps, this diversity was predestined as some form of design like in theistic evolution.

Lightner notes a couple of times that convergent evolution is a problem for the Theory of Evolution.  Evolution is a theory that is based on observation and convergent evolution has been observed since the start.  This brings me to her next criticism.  Sometimes the predictions made
by morphologic, physiologic, and molecular traits do not always line up exactly.  With the advent of molecular evidence, taxonomists can now more finely tune their phylogeny and identify analogous traits among other homologous ones.

I'll leave you with this.

The idea that the family is the typical level of the kind is challenged by some of the findings here. Perhaps it is higher in even more cases than the hybrid data indicates.

The definition of "kind" is only going to grow broader as taxonomists provide more and more evidence that animals share a common ancestor.   The problem creationists will continue to run into is trying to justify why chickens and peacocks can be the same "kind", but not humans and chimpanzees.

Rebecca Brown MD

I don't want demons running around my home...no Annabelle stop NOOOO! 



She also posted this in one of her recent facebook posts. 

"The meeting lasted 4 hours and was absolutely fascinating as the various doctors described their experiences with demonic wounds, inserts, and demonic problems in their patients. One doctor from Switzerland even brought a copy of an abdominal ultrasound that clearly showed a demonic serpent in a patient's abdomen. He gave me a copy. He wisely did not take the patient to surgery, but referred her to a church that works in deliverance."

According to the Warrens, Annabelle is supposed to kill you if you mock her.  So far, I am still kicking.  According to Brown, if you cleanse an unclean object inside your house the demon will run in your house.  Why would a demon run around your house?  Can't it get out?  Can't it get in, even if you cleanse the object outside of the house?

Noel Ignatiev largely agrees with Ken Ham...at least on race

First, the video up above is utter crap.  The video is fifty-one seconds of a few small clips edited together in a ridiculously misleading way.  There might be some saving grace if there was a link to the original source, but alas the video producer could not bother giving us unedited video to  check his video.

I am apparently late to the ball.  Yesterday, I decided to look into the article about the subject of the above video, Noel Ignatiev.  A day earlier, Noel Sheppard (ironic, no?) had published an article using a satirical website as his primary source.  In Sheppard's defense, by the time I read the article he had updated the article with a note that he had probably been hoaxed.  However, he ended on this note: "If that's the case, I sincerely apologize for furthering the hoax, but not for putting sunlight on this man's well-documented vile beliefs."  By last night, even the Blaze was reporting that Ignatiev was receiving death threats as a result of this hoax.

While true that Ignatiev wants to see the white race abolished, he really does not think that the white race exists.  Created about four centuries ago, the white race, to Ignatiev, is a social construct with no genetic or biological basis.  According to Ignatiev and others, races do not scientifically exist and have been created by cultures.  Do not believe me?  Watch this unedited lecture.

You may be wondering who else believes such "well-documented vile beliefs."  Well, Answers in Genesis and Ken Ham have been teaching this for well over a decade.  AiG believes that there is only one race, the human race which arose from Adam and Eve.  Everything else was created by culture and has no scientific basis:

• Are there really different races?
• One Race
• One Race One Blood

If the white race does not really exist, then why perpetuate it?  I really see no harm in abolishing a social construct.  

Thankful this is wrong

Liberal Logic

I tried making this work about a year ago. This Thanksgiving I can thank God that this is wrong.

Bible in schools

"Bible's aren't allowed in schools anymore but are encouraged in prisons.  If kids were allowed to read it at school, they may not end up in prison."

 Grammatical errors aside, this meme is not accurate.  ""Bible's aren't allowed in schools anymore".  Bibles are actually allowed in schools and protected by the First Amendment.  Even the ACLU agrees.  Now, I have heard individual anecdotes about individual schools making a blanket ban on the Bible.  A friend of mine said that the Bible was banned in his school from book bags and lockers for being too controversial.  However, this is the exception not the rule.


By the way, it should read: Bibles aren't allowed in schools anymore, but are encouraged in prisons.  If kids were allowed to read it at school; they may not end up in prison.

Is the fossil record complete?

A couple of years ago, someone gave me some magazines from the Institute of Creation Research.  I was amazed to read that the fossil record was considered by creation science to be nearly complete.  Fossilization is a chance process by which some of a creature is preserved by replacing organic matter with rock.  The general model assumes that natural forces destroy most carcasses before they would even have a chance to fossilize.   The fossils that are preserved are a small minority that survived until fossilization, during fossilization, and after fossilization.  These fossils are accumulated over a billion years. 

Obviously the creation model assumes that fossilization is far more likely.  Instead of a billion years, the creation model advocates that all fossils were formed in a matter of thousands of years.   Fewer creatures lived and died and a much larger proportion were preserved.   However were about 100% preserved?  I would like to propose a few reasons why I do not think the Creation model is completely amicable to fossil formation.

Meteors

Then the third angel blew his trumpet, and a huge star burning like a torch fell from the sky; it landed on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. 8:11 (Now the name of the star is Wormwood.) So a third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from these waters because they were poisoned. ~ Revelation 8:10-11

The Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater 

 There are about 178 known fossil craters buried in different layers of strata.[Earth Impact Database]  The Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater, the largest crater in the United States, is close to home.  A meteor more than two miles wide slammed into the earth with more force than all the nuclear weapons on earth combined.  The general model puts the impact at around 35 million years ago during the Eocene [Bolide] According to Creation Scientist John R. Baumgardner, PhD, the Eocene occurred after the Flood, so the meteor struck sometime four thousand years ago. 

Answers in Genesis proposes that all 178 or more collided with the earth mostly during the flood year or close afterwards.  Most of the craters were buried in sediment at the level in the newly deposited geologic column they struck.  Therefore meteors with the forces of atomic weapons collided with the earth at a basic rate of one every few days.  These impacts would seem to me to destroy large amounts of fossils around the globe. [A Biblically-Based Cratering Theory]

Also another point about the meteors, Meteors follow trajectories governed by gravity.  These meteors would have been destined to hit the Earth for millennia. 

God saw all that he had made – and it was very good! There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. ~ Genesis 1:31

 So God created the Solar System with swarms of meteors that were going to hit the earth during the flood year.  He called this “very good”.  The flood seems almost like an act of mercy for drowning the people before they could die in an apocalypse from the sky.  During the tribulation only one meteor fell, but the Flood event had over a hundred.  God clearly sent missiles with nuclear equivalent power to earth from week one dedicated with wiping out mankind on an appointed date. 

Water Velocities of Ocean Currents

Most creationists believe that Noah’s Flood both deposited the sediments and then carved the terrain into canyons and hills.  So in order to deposit the sediment, the flood first had to create or find the sediment.  Considering that it is unlikely that a mile of sediment was just lying around, in 1994, some researchers at the Institute of Creation Research constructed a computer model that estimated the water velocity of Noah’s Flood.  According to them the currents were moving at about 40-80 meters per second.  Water at these speeds would erode large amounts of rock and distribute it over extensive areas in the short amount of time provided by the flood year. [Patterns of Ocean Circulation over the Continents during the Flood]

In 2010, scientists discovered the fastest ocean current moving around Antarctica.  They clocked it at 7.9 inches per second or 0.20066 meters per second. These creation scientists are postulating that the currents during Noah’s flood would have been 200 to 400 times faster than the currents today. These currents do not seem amicable to fossil preservation. Bones could have easily been washed away with skeletons separated from each other. I am not a geologist, but if these things are grinding up rock it does not seem like the carcasses have much of a chance. Anything that can do it to a rock …can likely do it to you. [Fastest Ocean Current Flows Beneath Antartica]

Weight loss

Current Weight: 213
Weight Goal: 180
Difference: 33 pounds

Running goal: Virginia Ten Miler - September 26-27, 2014
Recent run: 1 1/2 miles

Who is Larry Klayman?

I first remember hearing Larry Klayman in this youtube video from a Washington rally.

“I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up."

Now, I posted yesterday about Klayman "killing Americans".  Historically the Declaration of Independence was a just war document and our Founders knew they would have to shed their fellow citizens' blood.  However, everything that I have found about Klayman, has him advocating for a nonviolent revolution.  Perhaps that is what he meant by this.

"For if these grievances are not satisfied in short order, not only will the people call for the resignation of President Obama and Republican leaders like House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but, if this does not occur, we will consider alternative legal courses of action – as did our Founding Fathers with the divine guidance of our Lord."

Were Some of the Seraphim, Pterosaurs?

The Hebrew word seraph or saraph is used 7 times in the Hebrew bible. The King James translates it as "fiery serpent" 3 times, twice as "fiery", and twice it is transliterated in Isaiah as "seraphim". [1]  Given the usage in the Old Testament, it is hard to escape the idea that the seraphim in Isaiah were winged serpents.  I remember hearing a lot about the word's relationship to the Hebrew verb saraph meaning "to burn".[2]  I do not remember hearing anything about the fact that almost everywhere, but Isaiah 6,  the word is translated fiery serpent.  Well, there is a interpretation of the Bible that the seraphim could be pterosaurs. 

"There is also mention of a flying serpent in the Bible: the “fiery flying serpent” (Isaiah 30:6). This could be a reference to one of the pterodactyls, which are popularly thought of as flying dinosaurs, such as the Pteranodon, Rhamphorhynchus, or Ornithocheirus."[3]

Larry Klayman issues a new Declaration of Independence

Well, hopefully he won't start killing Americans before Christmas. Hopefully his God will guide him at least towards that conclusion.

"For if these grievances are not satisfied in short order, not only will the people call for the resignation of President Obama and Republican leaders like House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but, if this does not occur, we will consider alternative legal courses of action – as did our Founding Fathers with the divine guidance of our Lord."[1]

Update 11/14/2013 - Historically the Declaration of Independence was a just war document and our Founders knew they would have to shed their fellow citizens' blood.  However, everything that I have found about Klayman, has him advocating for a nonviolent revolution.  Perhaps that is what he meant by this.

ICR lovebirds

Brilliant colors, like these displayed in the feathers of many birds, serve no evolutionary purpose, provide no aid for survival. #GuideToAnimals#AmazingCreation

If I understand ICR's position, Fischer's Lovebirds are a part of a created kind full of different color arrangements. Even at the genus level, there are a variety of colors. However, creationists nowadays maintain that a kind is at the family level, which would mean that all parrots, with all their color variety, came from two parrots off of Noah's Ark. So if natural selection did not give rise to these colors from a parrot kind or a lovebird kind, what did?

Natural selection only works when traits provide "aid for survival". The caption says that the colors "provide no aid for survival", so I assumed that was not the mechanism.

Noah preaching on a telephone

This is a common misconception about the Cambrian Explosion.  Obviously, the Cambrian comes after the Pre-cambrian era and is the first period in the Paleozoic era.  The period covers 53 million years beginning about 543 till about 490 million years ago.[1]  

• 543 mya - First shelled animals
• 540 mya - First arthropods
• 535 mya - First chordates
• 530-520 mya - The Cambrian Explosion - The first brachiopods, gastropods, cephalopods from the phylum, mollusca; the first sponges, the first echinoderms
• 520 mya - Cambrian mass extinction 40-50% of marine genera go extinct 
• 490 mya - By the end of the Cambrian all phyla exist in the fossil record.[2]

If one means every phyla known to man, then yes, every phyla is present in some form in the Cambrian.  However, in the Cambrian you have the phylum, chordates, and within that phylum you have the vertebrate class, fish.  That's it.  The only vertebrates are fish.  Jawed fish don't show up in the next period, the Ordovician.  It is not until, the following period, the Silurian, that jawed fishes appear in the fossil record about 47 million years after the Cambrian ended.  Fish are still the only class of vertebrates in the fossil record at this point.  However, the first land fauna appear in the fossil record also during the Silurian: millipedes, spiders, and mites. [3][4]

The Cambrian contains the fossil record of the first chordate.  True, every person anyone has ever met has had a hollow dorsal nerve cord, a notochord, a pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, and a post-anal tail sometime during their life, but so has every fish, chicken, and cow every person has eaten.

There are no chordates in the fossil record other than fish until the Devonian, 70 million years and three periods later.

Even Brian Thomas proposes a simpler explanation.

Maybe some ancient coal melded around a piece of modern machinery from Khakasis. Maybe an old explorer dropped an even older bronze bell down a well for miners to later extract from the mountains of West Virginia. And it is perhaps conceivable that coal somehow enveloped a more recently manufactured iron cup. These and other apparent human artifacts embedded in coal need more investigation.[5]

If you want to smelt an aluminum gear like that one, you need electrical power. If they could make that aluminum gear, Noah could have preached on a telephone. [6]

What do you see?

ICR recently posted the following to facebook.

Evolution necessarily implies the concept of "descent from a common ancestor or ancestors." But no ancestor-descendant relationship can be advocated with certainty based on the fossils. In fact, for every proposed transitional form, there is at least one evolutionist who has refuted it on scientific grounds.#PlanBehindTheHand #AmazingCreation

I'll bite. What evolutionist has disagreed that tree squirrels and ground hogs have a common ancestor? How about another, what evolutionist has refuted the assertion that Psittacosaurus is basal to Triceratops? Ken Ham asserts that they are part of the same "kind".

Satan Fallacy

Paul Taylor at Creation.com wrote an article alleging that Darwin plagiarized the idea of natural selection from Wallace.

However, if our presumption of plagiarism is correct, then the theory of evolution is Wallace’s, not Darwin’s. Darwin, who was practically an atheist, would not have been so open to outside manipulation of his thoughts but Wallace was not an atheist; he was a spiritualist. He always thought that the evolutionary theory had come to him from his spirit guides. Suppose he was right! The theory of evolution is a deception from the devil. Maybe it was easier to get the idea into the mind of a man already open to demonic influence, who would then be able to present it to an unimaginative, atheistic society man, for acceptance by society at large. That is why it is useful today to remember Wallace and his contribution to evolutionism, because the religion of evolution is clearly the object of much of today’s spiritual warfare.

Taylor, himself, mentions that most creationists do not think that Darwin plagiarized Wallace.  In fact, most historians do not think that he did either.  However, I want to focus on the devil.  A century later, how can Taylor demonstrate that these spirits were real and also therefore the devil.  Is it not also possible that these spirits were Wallace's fantasy?  Taylor just makes the jump.  If evolutionary theory came from spirit guides then it is a deception from the devil.  Spirit guides equal devil.

However, the devil had a particular input according to Taylor.

Darwin had, unbeknown to Wallace, been struggling with the possible mechanism for an evolutionary theory for many years. 

So according to Taylor, the devil merely provided the mechanism of natural selection.  These devil things tend to be circular.  People cannot see the truth, because Satan blinds them.  However, when you cannot see the truth or you find out the people were right in the first place, did Satan blind you?  People are wrong, because they believe Satan's lies.  Well, whose lies did you believe when you were wrong?  Satan is called the accuser of the brethren, in Revelation 12:10.  If that is all a person does all day, guess who that person is working for.  Well, did you just make an accusation?

Remember Taylor says the devil possibly gave Darwin the mechanism: natural selection.  As Taylor, himself, linked in the post he advocates using natural selection as a mechanism in creation science.

[Natural selection] is an observed, scientific phenomenon, whereas Darwinian evolution is not. Natural selection is not in the least problematic for creationists, as it is an inevitable part of the development of species within baramins. It should be noted that some creationists are working on alternative explanations as to how genetic information is selected, but most creationists are happy to use the term natural selection.

How does Taylor know that demonic influence has not provided creationism with the mechanism of natural selection?  After all, if Wallace received it from the devil, Darwin received it from Wallace, and Taylor received it from Darwin, there seems to be a clear line of demonic influence.

Personally, I think that we should adapt Godwin's law.  The first person to mention Satan loses the argument.

Higher ground sorting of Tyrannosaurs

Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell at Answers in Genesis recently published an article about the find of a Tyrannosaur, Lythronax argestes.  She also dealt with the higher ground sorting idea.  I just had  couple of thoughts.

"Such a scenario begs the question of what common ancestor these different twigs on the dinosaur family tree branched off of as well as what prompted them to evolve similar features along separate paths."

Since Answers in Genesis considers Tyrannosauroidea to all be the same "kind", don't you agree with that statement?

"But these fluctuating water levels would also have temporarily isolated sections of land where some animals could have found a brief refuge, ultimately being overwhelmed to produce more layers of fossils that evolutionary paleontologists now interpret as landmasses isolated for millions of years."

So the explanation for why Tyrannosauroidea is only found in the Jurassic and Cretaceous sediments in Europe, North America, and Asia is that they coincidentally were isolated on these refuges that would become three separate continents. Honestly what are the odds? It seems to make more sense that instead of Tyrannosaurs of all sorts of different species coincidentally being isolated on three continents during a period of weeks, that the Tyrannosaurs actually lived chronologically later than paleozoic animals.

Also where were the isolated zones? This Tyrannosaur was not buried where it died in a flood model. Beneath the fossil are tons of sediment that were all supposedly deposited in the beginning of the flood week and did not exist before the flood began.

Stealing a Saint

According to church tradition, Saint Mark founded the church in Alexandria and ultimately was buried in the church.  I should note that my source for this part of the story is satirist, Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad.   According to Twain, a fifth century Venetian priest had a dream of an angel who told him to steal the body of Saint Mark.  According to the angel, if Mark's body resided in Venice, then the city would rise in prominence among the nations.  If Mark's body ever left Venice, the city would perish from the earth.[1]  Leaving Twain, everyone seems to agree that centuries later AD 828, Venetian thieves managed to finally pull it off.  In the seventh century, the Egyptian Arabs had converted to the pork avoiding religion of Islam. Some enterprising Venetians stole the body from the church and buried it in pork products.  The Muslims came to search the ship, but shunned the halal sections which were forbidden.  The stolen body was entombed in St. Mark's Basilica.[2]

Here the Basilica has a slightly less nefarious version of events.  According to the Basilica, the Muslims were actually going to destroy the Alexandrian church for the marble.  The Venetian thieves took the body to comfort the Alexandrian Christians and save it from the Muslims.  Even in this overly amicable retelling of the story, they still have to deceive the local Christians.[3]

After the Basilica burned down, in 1094, supposedly Mark miraculously revealed his body out of solid stone.

It may seem incomprehensible today to believe that a human being can emerge from a column, from a block of stone. We are accustomed to considering stone and walls as inorganic, dead substances. But it wasn't that way in the pre-"rationalistic" ages. In the writings of Andrea Palladio (I quattro libri dell'architettura, 1570) we again find the concept of stone as being literally living, with characteristics we would now call organic. We may imagine a sort of identification between St. Mark and the structure of his burial place. The central point in the "legend" of the miracle of the column consists not only in linking the saint with the basilica which, since it contained his tomb, became a sepulchral basilica, but also in creating a direct bond between the material structure of the building and an event concerning the saint in person. An important effect of the miracle must have been intensified concrete contact with the patron saint and his relics, which is to say his body. The miracle occurred during a period of reinforced popular sensitivity about holy matters and it is legitimate to suppose that precisely this collective desire lay at the heart of the "legend".[4]

According to the Orthodox Church the thieves left the head of Mark, which the church ultimately lost over 250 years ago.  In 1968, the Catholic Church ultimately returned some of Mark's relics to Alexandria, but apparently some still remain in Venice.[5]

This feud between Venice and Alexandria should put Calvinism and Arminianism into perspective.  I follow the Coptic Pope on facebook and he recently commemorated the discovery of Mark's head.[6]  

 

James Irwin and the Genesis Rock

ICR recently posted something about Apollo 15 young earth creationist astronaut, James Irwin.   They had a quote about something he said about the "Genesis Rock".

Most of the rocks previously brought back from the moon were dark, dense basalt. Scientists knew that if the moon were composed entirely of this dense rock, it could not possibly be in its present orbit. It would be too heavy. They knew there had to be an abundance of lighter material, lighter in density and color. Our mission was to find a lighter rock from the mountains on the moon. While we were exploring…[we] found…a pure, white rock, the oldest rock brought back from the moon—part of the deep internal material which had been ejected to make the mountains—and the most important scientific discovery of our mission. The press labeled it the “Genesis” rock, for it confirmed the fact that the earth and moon were created at the same time, giving scientific proof of the creation story of Genesis 1:14-18.

How did the Genesis rock confirm "the fact that the earth and moon were created at the same time, giving scientific proof of the creation story of Genesis 1:14-18"? As far as I can tell, they used dating methods that ICR finds inaccurate.

Uh no...

Even some vertebrates are capable of reproducing without sex. [1]

They know this is wrong.

They know this is wrong. All phyla are not present in the fossil record till the upper Cambrian. Also, you are ignoring the vast time frame of the Pre-Cambrian fossils.[1] [2] It is the genetic studies that push the phyla before the fossil record.[3]

Also, what does it prove to have chordates when you believe that Cambrian chordates swam with whales?

I could also note that the Theory of Evolution does make predictions about the fossil record, but not "the fossil record would start with one type of animal life, increase to two, and so on." Fossilization is a rare event. The theory assumes that the fossil record will always be incomplete. This assumption has been part of the theory for a century in a half. ICR knows this.

Remember when President Obama did this?

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Jeffress seems to have changed his position on the First Amendment

Jeffress seems to have changed his position on the 1st Amendment. Only a couple of years ago, Jeffress maintained that the 1st Amendment gave the government the right to give preference to Christianity. According to him, "religion" in the 1st Amendment only applied to Christianity. He has consistently maintained that God will judge America for any government assistance with non-Christian religions.

Build the Boat

My senior year in High School, I thought the evidence was in.  Buddy Davis had just found his unfossilized dinosaur bones and the Paluxy River footprints proved dinosaurs walked with man.  Also, there were boats much bigger than Noah's Ark in the water.  Over a decade later, no one really knows where Buddy's fossils are and  the Paluxy River footprints have been debunked.  I am ashamed to admit it, but it was only a couple of years ago that I found out that Noah's Ark was by far bigger than any wooden boat that has ever floated.  You see, all those big boats that creationist speakers pointed to had metal hulls.  Even the modern Ark recreations had metal hulls.  Why? Wood cannot handle the stress.  Where do creationists want to build a wooden Ark? Nowhere near water...in Kentucky.
A decade ago Skeptic Report proposed this experiment.

BUILD AN ACTUAL ARK! 
You should probably wait for the outcome of the Noah’s Family experiment above, but it would demonstrate your confidence in the veracity of the Bible if you forged ahead with this (surely there’s no doubt that it can be done, is there?). Here are some reasonable rules:

• Use only natural wood, but any type you want, unless you’re confident you know what “gopher” wood is.
• All wood must be obtained and dressed from timber felled by hand, using only such tools as would have been available in Noah’s day (no Husqvarna chainsaws–not even iron axes).
• All timber and other materials used in the Ark must be transported to the building site using only such means of transport as would have existed at the time (no deliveries by Home Depot) .
• Only such materials as would have been available to Noah may be used–consult with some archaeologists with serious credentials.
• After determining modern equivalents, build the Ark to the specifications given in Genesis.
• Use only tools and building methods appropriate to the time period (no CAD, etc.).
• The Ark may be built in drydock, or transported to a body of water using modern technology, since all Noah had to do was wait for the water to rise.
• Float the Ark, fill it with animals, people, food, etc. (as above) and run the experiment for the full year.

Big project? You bet, but won’t creationists heed the trumpet call and rush to tithe their money and donate their time to quash the atheists and evolutionists once and for all? Picture the lines of volunteer workers bringing their bronze adzes and copper wedges! Think of all the animals that will be collected worldwide and donated! This will be, without question, the world’s only complete zoo.

God gave us the "S" curve

I just want to point out that Australopithecus afarensis, africanus, and sediba all have "S" curves in their spines.  I will even site a creationist source for sediba.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2006/07/bipedal-body/ackerman-text
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v8/n1/sashaying-to-throne-sediba

What are the 60 dinosaur kinds?

I keep asking about these 60 or 50 dinosaur kinds.  This was one of the main questions that led me to reject Young Earth Creationism.  What are the orders of mammalia? Google it.  You will find a debate over whether there are between 19-29 orders.  Start looking for Dinosaur kinds.  What you will not find is a debate among creationist about 60 or 50 kinds of dinosaurs.  What you will find is an assertion of it's validity and one or two examples of a Dinosaur kind.  The most common example of a dinosaur kind is ceratopsia.

The sub-order ceratopsia includes both bipeds and quadrupeds.  This transition from semi-bipedal to quadrupedal is accepted by both evolutionists and creationists.  However if we accept that the sub-order ceratopsia is one dinosaur kind, how can there be half a hundred dinosaur kinds?  That level of diversity would seem to imply that Oviraptor and Tyrannosaurus Rex were the same kind or for comparison that hyenas and cats are the same kind.  That is just what Carl Kerby seems to do in his blog post, Phylogenic Charts

He gives fourteen different sub-orders and clades of dinosaurs that he terms as "one thing, stayed one thing, and never changed from, or into, anything else."

• j Deinonychosaurs. 
• h Oviraptorosaurs. 
• m Carnosaurs and Coelurosaurs. 
• n Segnosaurs. 
• o Prosauropods.
• p Sauropods. 
• q Fabrosaurids. 
• r Scelidosaurs. 
• s Stegosaurs. 
• t Ankylosaurs. 
• u Ornithopods. 
• v Heterodontosaurids. 
• w Ceratopsians. 
• x Pachycephalosaurs.

Creation.com shrinks the groups even further in their Dinosaur Fairy Tales with only eight kinds (in fairness they leave out Heterodontosaurids, Scelidosaurs, and Fabrosaurids).

• Ceratopsians
• Pachycephalosaurs
• Ornithopods
• Stegosaurs
• Ankylosaurs
• Theropods (Segnosaurs, Deinonychosaurs, Oviraptorosaurs, Carnosaurs, and Coelurosaurs)
• Prosauropods
• Sauropods

The point is that if ceraptosia is a dinosaur kind, what are the other 49?  How can there be another 49 let alone another 59?  More importantly where is the list of 50 dinosaur kinds?  In trying to find this list, I was amazed at how much evolution had been accepted by creationists as microevolution.  Also, I was amazed at how often creationists made the claim of tens of dinosaur kinds, but never backed it up.  What kind of worldview does that?  Not a worldview that I could continue to hold.  I did not only abandon young earth creationism, because of this, but it was a start.  

But it's still a frog?

Anurans are made up of an extraordinary number of species living in highly diverse habitats, and with highly diverse lifestyles, behaviors, and design features. The above descriptions were meant to provide a glimpse of the variety and taxonomic challenges inherent in the study of frogs. New molecular data is being collected every day, while new species are being identified every year. This is causing frog taxonomy to be in constant flux and highly tentative. Furthermore, seven species from the genera Crossodactylodes (3), Rupirana (1), and Zachaenus (3) have not been categorized to date. Therefore any attempt to determine the number of anuran kinds is a daunting task (Amphibiaweb 2013). With the above in mind, I tentatively place the number of extant anuran kinds on the Ark at 140. Whatever the number actually was, it is clear that frogs and toads represent the amazing diversity that is consistent with the Creator’s triune character and the creative wisdom required to build fascinating creatures with the ability to persist and thrive, in a fallen world.

Frog kinds

I really didn't like this movie...

If the Separatist Pilgrims (1620) left us a monument built in 1888, over 250 years after Plymouth, then can we say the apostles left us the church fathers?  Also, this movie seems to ignore the Great Migration (1629-1640), when about 20,000 Puritans immigrated to New England dwarfing the Separatist population.

Magic School Bus caterpillar

I saw this mimic on the Magic School Bus. It is amazing how creatures mimic things that they can't even see. (Even if they could see snakes, it wouldn't matter because you cannot will your progeny to look more like snakes.)

Ground Hogs are squirrels

On the way to church, my son was asking if Ground Hogs were beavers. I told him, I'd have to look it up, because off the top of my head I wasn't even sure both were rodents. Both are from the order, Rodentia, beavers are from the sub-order, Castorimorpha, and the family, Castoridae, which has only one non-extinct genus and two species. Ground Hogs are from the sub-order, Sciuromorpha, and the family, Sciuridae (Squirrels). Little known fact, Ground Hogs are considered part of the squirrel kind by Answers and Genesis. Like Darwin's finches are still finches, one could also say Ground Hogs are still squirrels.

Scientific Atheism to Christ

Fulwiler blogs at http://www.conversiondiary.com/jen.  She reminds me of another Atheist to Catholic convert, Leah Libresco, (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unequallyyoked/).  Libresco won a podcast debate against Hemant Mehta (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/).  Still, Mehta had one good question, how do you get from there is a God to God is a wafer?

I am happy when Atheists find Christ.  Here is the Libresco/Mehta podcast http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid=%7B8851D9D5-7AAA-4F5F-A10B-228E72E9FFD2%7D

Earliest account of Peter's death (AD 80 - 140)

But let us pass from ancient examples, and come unto those who have in the times nearest to us, wrestled for the faith. Let us take the noble examples of our own generation. Through jealousy and envy the greatest and most just pillars of the Church were persecuted, and came even unto death. Let us place before our eyes the good Apostles. Peter, through unjust envy, endured not one or two but many labours, and at last, having delivered his testimony, departed unto the place of glory due to him. Through envy Paul, too, showed by example the prize that is given to patience: seven times was he cast into chains; he was banished; he was stoned; having become a herald, both in the East and in the West, he obtained the noble renown due to his faith; and having preached righteousness to the whole world, and having come to the extremity of the West, and having borne witness before rulers, he departed at length out of the world, and went to the holy place, having become the greatest example of patience. ~ 1 Clement 5

Darwin and change of kinds

Ray has claimed in his movie, Evolution vs God, that Darwin talked about a "change of kinds".  In his interview with TBN, he admits that Darwin never talked about a "change of kinds", but he talked about a change of families.  It would be nice if Ray would just quote Darwin on this, but then again if Ray was going to do that, he would have released unedited sources or at least less choppy interviews.

While trying to find the source myself, I stumbled across this gem.

Such expressions as that famous one of Linnaeus, and which we often meet with in a more or less concealed form, that the characters do not make the genus, but that the genus gives the characters, seem to imply that something more is included in our classification, than mere resemblance. I believe that something more is included; and that propinquity of descent,--the only known cause of the similarity of organic beings,--is the bond, hidden as it is by various degrees of modification, which is partially revealed to us by our classifications.

Darwin postulates that sea otters and honey badgers do not simply look similar, but look similar, because they descended from a common ancestor.   Most evolutionists and creationists agree on that one.  However why cannot the similarities between bears, dogs, and sea otters be explained by common descent rather than a common designer?  Why stop at sea otters and honey badgers?

We already agree that the similarities in this image are not merely superficial.

Obadiah Holmes: You have struck me as with roses

In 1651, Obadiah Holmes traveled two days to visit with an elderly man who was too infirm to travel to Baptist churches anymore. He and his fellow Baptists held their own home service the following Sunday morning. The state barged in. Holmes and two others were arrested for the failure to attend the state approved church and were forced to attend an afternoon service at the local congregational church. While there, Holmes indignantly refused to remove his hat during the pastor's prayer and had to have it forcibly removed.

In Massachusetts at the time, the government did not consider themselves persecutors of Christians. One was given the choice to be whipped or pay the fine, therefore no one was whipped for their faith that did not choose to be. Were they not merciful? No one chose the whip, no one except Holmes. Holmes was convicted for not attending church, refusing to remove his hat during prayer, baptizing those who had already been baptized before, receiving sacrament, and preaching against infant baptism. He faced thirty lashes or thirty pounds.

His fellow Baptists raised the money for the trio's fines, but Holmes refused to pay his fine. This stubborn minister believed that paying the fine acknowledged that he had committed crimes and he knew that the state had no right to fine or whip him for these activities. He had committed no crime and would pay no fine.

If it was not the fine, then it was the whip and Holmes prayed for the courage to face the ribbons that his back would be sliced into. After the whipping, he said that the whip had felt as painless as being whipped with roses. Still for weeks, he was unable to find relief on his back or stomach, only able to rest while supported by his knees and elbows. [1]

This is one American that we all should be more familiar with.

Baboon

ICR

I saw this promo for an ICR conference at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.  If you don't recognize the primate on the other side, it is a baboon, probably Savannah. I have noted elsewhere that images like this seem a little disingenuous.  Ray's has a better image.

Ray Comfort

Is it easier to see the similarities between Homo erectus than say Australopithecus afarensis.  

Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve

Today I have been in a little bit of a Narnia mood.  It occurred to me that Ray considers both of these to be sons of Adam.

Facebook

Also, I have been wondering why not define "kind" as things that have a common ancestor since those within kinds cannot all interbreed?

The "Kind" of argument we are having

I just finished writing something and I wanted to write a little about the creationist concept of kind.  As I noted in my last blog post, Ray captioned a picture with this.

Prof Stanford: "There’s evidence of evolution in the Galapagos." Ray: "Could you give me one instance?" Prof Stanford: "Yes, we have an example from a group of birds called Darwin’s finches." Ray: "What have the finches become?" Prof Stanford: "They've become anatomically new and genetically new, recognizably different species." Ray: "So they’re still finches?" Prof Stanford: "Well, of course they’re still finches, yes."

In creationism, finches, the family Fringillidae with almost 20 genera and over a hundred species, have long been considered the same "kind".[1]  Ray seldom gives his criteria for a change of kind.  In the quote above, Ray says that still being a member of the family is not a change of kind. Just to give an idea of the kind of diversity that we are talking about, the family Mustelidae (wolverine, badgers, weasels, otters) is considered the same kind.[2]  So something could be as different as a wolverine from a sea otter and you could still say there has been no change in kind.   Sometimes there is more diversity than that.  The suborder Ceratopsia is almost uniformly considered considered a kind by creationists and it includes bipeds and quadrupeds.  So your parrot could become as big as a car, grow horns, and walk on all fours and still not be considered a change of kind (but dogs and seals are not part of the same kind?).

So what evidence would Ray accept?  Well, he has held out the crocoduck, a hybrid between two different classes of animals.  Sure toothed birds and feathered reptiles have been demonstrated to have existed, but there is no evidence to trace birds through crocodylia.  Which leads me to my next point, the evidence Ray wants doesn't exist, because that is not how nature works.  Creatures don't give birth to overtly different creatures.

Two things recently caught my eye.  One, the author of the Mammalian Ark Kinds had an interesting discussion when it came time to classify the family Bovidae.

There are 50 genera and 143 species in the family Bovidae (Wilson and Reeder 2005). Horns, which are characteristic of this family, consist of a bony core attached to the frontal bone and a hard keratinous sheath (Nowak 1999). There is considerable hybrid data within two subfamilies: Bovinae which includes cattle and Caprinae which includes sheep and goats. In fact, sheep and goats have been so commonly thought of together that the Bible has a single word that refers to a flock of sheep and/or goats: צאן (tsoan). While isolated reports of hybrids between the subfamilies Caprinae and Bovinae and between them and members of Cervidae exist, they are not well documented enough to be considered reliable (Lightner 2006c; Lightner 2007).

There is considerable diversity in this family. Most people would tend to think of sheep and goats as distinct from cattle. For these reasons it was decided to split the family and consider the subfamily the level of the kind. This probably over-estimates the number of kinds since antelope are found in more than one subfamily, but it is the simplest way to split until more information becomes available.

For fairly weak reasons, she can accept that sea otters and wolverines share a common ancestor, but not cows and goats.

Also, this was recently posted in an article on Answers in Genesis[3].

How many different created kinds of dinosaurs were there? If we define a “created kind” as animals that can successfully interbreed, we see that many different genera and species could descend from a “kind.” Speciation—the development of species—is not the same as evolution and only involves variation of genetic information already existing within each kind of animal.

However we have known for quite a while that as animals get genetically further apart, they lose the ability to interbreed.  Generally this phenomenon is known as "ring species".[4]  This occurs even within what creationists might call the same kind.[5] Ray responded to the evidence of ring species a few weeks ago noting that they are still the same kind.

A number of times she says that there’s "tons" and "mountains" of evidence, but all she offers as her best observable evidence for Darwinian evolution is birds changing into birds and salamanders changing in salamanders.

Ray's take on humankind

OK if you have been reading my blog, you know how this goes.  Ray shared the following two pictures on his facebook.

Neanderthal

Homo erectus

The first is an image of neanderthal woman despite Ray and other creationists captioning it as "nebraska man".  The second image is a Homo sapien with a Homo erectus.  Ray considers both to be a part of what he calls "humankind". [1][2][3]

The caption for the picture of the neanderthal:

Prof Stanford: "There’s evidence of evolution in the Galapagos." Ray: "Could you give me one instance?" Prof Stanford: "Yes, we have an example from a group of birds called Darwin’s finches." Ray: "What have the finches become?" Prof Stanford: "They've become anatomically new and genetically new, recognizably different species." Ray: "So they’re still finches?" Prof Stanford: "Well, of course they’re still finches, yes."

I wrote about something similar to this here and here. I could be wrong, but I think that Ray is playing the same bait and switch.  Ray asks for an ape man, a transitional form.  With his brow ridges, no chin, smaller skull, robust skull, smaller cheekbones, and protruding jaw, Homo erectus looks like it would fit that bill.
Even though, most creationists consider Homo erectus to be part of humankind, I don't think that most creationists consider the implications of what that means.  When you put a picture of Homo erectus next to a picture of Homo sapien, one does not look human.  This is a little less so with the neanderthal.

I cannot prove it, but I think the implication behind these two images is that only the Homo sapien is human.  Ray seems to be implying something that he doesn't actually believe.