ScienceWhopper:Natural History According to Jeffrey Holland

[_keithb]

I'm gonna go ahead and call it.


Frank is a puppet here to troll us, and I lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of EAllusion. Some things are just too good to be true.

You may be right. That piece he posted on the erosion of the Mississippi Basin is, by itself, a true masterpiece of merde-ification.

Actually no. If it's the same guy (and I have every reason to believe that it is), then he is a very active poster on the MAD board (with almost the exact same kind of content that he has posted here). So, no, not a troll. He's for real.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Actually no. If it's the same guy (and I have every reason to believe that it is), then he is a very active poster on the MAD board (with almost the exact same kind of content that he has posted here). So, no, not a troll. He's for real.

Cool, is FrankTalk his name at MAD? If so, I retract and offer Frank my apologies (None will be offered to EA on the other hand).

[_MrStakhanovite]

How the hell did you get the Laminin protein? Damn, you're good.

I've seen it often enough in Christian Literature.

[Guest]

It does not supply truth so don't look for it there.

LOL

If science doesn't provide truth, nothing does.

I'm not saying science is infallible; I'm just saying it's the best reality determining mechanism we've got... by a mile... actually, more like a light year. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Thank you for this wonderful post. You are right that within the bounds set by science which will not allow supernatural events it is the best we have for this reality. But just how much of it is solid and how much is built upon a murky swamp? That is the real issue. Let us say that we are thrown into a different reality than this one. When we start to investigate it we have to start with some kind of framework in our mind and then test our ideas. We observe and test. Over time we should make progress in defining this new reality. But what if the new reality had forces and relationships vastly different than the reality we came from. We might not even think of test dealing with those new items unless they became obvious to us. I think the same is true in this reality. I think that the set of things that science observes is but a small subset of a much greater reality. And what we perceive as the world is connected to a place we can't observe.

2 Kings 6:17

King James Version (KJV)

17And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

I believe we are in fact surrounded by a spiritual world. I believe that my essence is a spirit. These are things in which science does not have the ability to observe. But from my perspective they exist just as much as the observable universe. Also:

Romans 1:20

King James Version (KJV)

20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

So it is a matter of seeing clearly that is the issue. But how can we see clearly?

Ephesians 4:22-24

King James Version (KJV)

22That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
23And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

We are getting closer. So how can we discern matters so we can know the truth?

1 Corinthians 2:14

King James Version (KJV)

14But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Now we can go back to Rom 1:20 and see it takes spiritual eyes to see clearly. This then allows us to see the creation in the light of the power of God. Without spiritual eyes we can't see the creation as made by God. It requires spiritual eyes to see God in the creation. So the natural man will only see the surface of the creation not what is behind it.

And as for truth.

1 John 5:6

King James Version (KJV)

6This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.

Walking in the spirit leads to truth. Avoiding the spirit leads to believing in the world alone.

[_Franktalk]

I suppose there will be no answer to my question ...

I get the feeling ol' Frank here isn't big on matching content to conclusions.

Back in physics we could answer a question based on inspection. One did not have to show the work but if you got it wrong you received no partial credit. My statement that the entire United States would erode away in less than 20 million years on inspection causes problems with geology. If you can't see this obvious conclusion then please take a geology course. I can't be everything to everyone.

[_Franktalk]

Actually no. If it's the same guy (and I have every reason to believe that it is), then he is a very active poster on the MAD board (with almost the exact same kind of content that he has posted here). So, no, not a troll. He's for real.

Cool, is FrankTalk his name at MAD? If so, I retract and offer Frank my apologies (None will be offered to EA on the other hand).

I enjoy people of character. I have been on God and Science, theology web, Mormon dialogue and other sites as well.

Who is EA?

[_Sethbag]

Walking in the spirit leads to truth. Avoiding the spirit leads to believing in the world alone.

Walking in "the spirit" leads to you believing in your own made-up version of reality, cobbled together in your mind to try to make sense of the bronze-age mythology you accept as the Word of God, in light of the things we've learned in the last few thousand years since it was written.

One might think that the fact of the millions and millions of other religious believers all having their own, unique vision of "truth", by the same methods you claim to be effective, might serve as a red flag that your underlying epistemology is gravely suspect. One would be mistaken, apparently.

[_Sethbag]

Frank, I am not a geologist, however I will attempt to show you that your claim that sediment transport rates in the Mississipi river casts serious doubt on the validity of Geology is full of holes.

1. The Mississipi River carries the amount of sediment that it does because it is a large river, with many tributaries feeding in to it. Large rivers typically develop from small rivers, and small rivers don't carry as much sediment as they may eventually do. Your argument seems to assume that the Mississippi was always as big and carried as much water and sediment over the last 20 or 30 million years as it does today. On what do you base this assumption?

2. Plate tectonics assumes that plates are moving, that some plates are rising while others are driven down underneath their neighbors and into the earth's mantle. The Rocky Mountains, for instance, were formed from 55 million or so years ago to around 80 million years ago (according to Wikipedia) as a result of tectonic plates west of North America subducting under the plates North America is made of.

This demonstrates that A) the American landmass experienced dramatic change in the last few tens of millions of years, and that consequently B) North America wasn't the way it is now, back then, with a Mississippi River carving it away at the same rate it's carrying sediments today. Thus the factual premises your argument rests on are demonstrably false.

3. As an adjunct to 2), I should point out that there is no good reason to believe that the dramatic changes in all of the Earth's landmasses as a consequence of plate tectonics could not change the face of the earth, if you will, faster than the rivers that form as a consequence can erode it back down. Rivers run downhill. If the earth were worn down smooth, there would be no rivers at all. Plate tectonics creates mountains, which in turn results in streams and rivers flowing down them, wearing them gradually away. While this is happening, plate tectonics hasn't stopped. The two processes are in constant operation, and the net result of this competition after 4.5 billion years is the Earth as we see it.

[_Franktalk]

Sethbag,

If indeed my erosion post is as wrong as you imply then it should be a no brainer to point out exactly where the error is. Did I err in picking the raw data? Did I reference some data but actually used some other data? Did I form the equations properly and use standard logic in arriving at a conclusion? Did I perform the math correctly? Please point out the error of my work. If you do so I will be happy to correct any error I have made. But if you can not show I used the wrong data, or show I used the wrong logic, or show I drew the wrong conclusions from the data, then I will ignore your post.

As for plate tectonics. There are many features on the ocean floors which plate movement describes well. But there are many features where the theory does not supply answers. But I am not an expert on the theory. But I read books written by people who spend their whole life studying these things. The book I am reading now is (Wandering Continents and Spreading Sea Floors on an Expanding Earth) by Lester King. In his analysis of the data on the sea floor he states on page 63:

"So both the concept of sea-floor spreading and the geomagnetic chronology here create, rather than solve problems."

So in some sense the theory works and in others it does not seem to fit what we see. This probably means it is more complex than we know. If we look at the mid-Atlantic ridge we see what appears to be a spreading zone. But if we then say that this spreading zone caused the continents to drift apart then why is the zone in the center of a flat sea floor? It seems that the zone is recent and may be caused by a combination of lift and spreading but not all the way to the continent margins. Lester had a lot to say about rift valleys and vertical lift. A good read if you are into it.

[_huckelberry]

franktalk,
I think Sethbag has pointed out the difficulty in your argumemt. To make it simpler try the statement, rock is being added to the continent in pace with erosion.

I few posts by people have suggested that the dating information about the earth is so simple everybody should see it. I have reservations. It may not be the most difficult of science to understand but plotting the age of the earth does involve some care in combining many observations. I think a lot people live completely unaware of reasons to think the world is old except for,"science says".

Well I do think if you spend a little time looking at the world in real life then an old earth become difficult not to see.

the canyon outside of my home clearly shows some 9 to 15 million years erosion. That opens a door. It is more interestion to observe reasons to see the rock and land that canyon is cut in is young compared to land to the east.