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.