"The Origin of Specious Nonsense"

J C wrote: »

The definitive test is that two species are interfertile or they are interfertile with another common species. i.e. we can be certain that species a and b are the same Baramin if a and b can interbreed to any extent ... or if a and b can't interbreed with each other ... but both a and b can interbreed with species c.

But there's the problem with your list JC. You can't make such determinations about interfertility with such scant evidence. I think a little lesson in combinatorics will help resolve this.

There are 42 members in the baramin Felidae which you posted the other day. Given the potentially different outcomes of converse pairings (i.e. male tiger x female lion vs. male lion x female tiger), we must consider each pairing individually. Thus the total number of pairings is given by:



where X is the number of members and N is the number of pairings. Therefore the number of possible pairings in the Felidae Baramin is 1722. However, we only have evidence of successful pairings in 67 of these cases. So you, or more correctly, the BSG are determining interfertility on the basis of a 3.8% success rate. Smells like bull**** to me. Of course, the BSG, like many other creationists aren't really engaged in serious work, all they've done is lift the established taxonomic system and twisted it slightly to suit their own purposes.

J C wrote: »

There are also many species that we provisionally believe to be within the same Baramin (for physical or genetic reasons) that don't interbreed.

Oh, shifting the goalposts, I see. Well that's not going to help you this time. Even someone with a basic knowledge of biology can realise that physical reasons are not a sufficient guide to connect two animals. I mean if that were true then dlofnep's example here would mean that these two share the same baramin.

J C wrote: »

Please note that viable offspring don't have to be produced ... as long as offspring are produced (even if they are sterile or die at birth) ... they are the same Baramin.
If fertile offspring are produced, they are not only the same Baramin ... they probably are the same species.

But that's the thing isn't it. Viable offspring is important because it's the dividing line of species. Species is the only distinction of importance in biology since this is the line at which speciation occurs and macroevolution kicks in. The other higher levels of taxonomic classification are very helpful but that's all they are, a means to organise and categorise the vast number of species alive today and the evolutionary path they have taken over the last 3.8 billion years.

J C wrote: »

All Felidae aren't interfertile ... so we cannot be definitive that they are all one Baramin on this basis ... but we can be definitive about the Cat species that are interfertile ... and we can also provisionally include other species on the basis of a very high degree of anatomical similarity.

Hold on a second, you're completely contradicting yourself. What cat species are you talking about, lynx, panthera, uncia which?

J C wrote: »

Apes and Humans aren't interfertile ... and they don't have a very high degree of anatomical similarity ... so they are neither definitivley nor provisionally the same Baramin.

I've already explained this to you JC. You're making the determination that the members of the Felidae baramin all belong together despite very little corroborating evidence to support such a conclusion and yet you drawing the opposite conclusion about humans and apes based on the same lack of evidence. That makes no sense whatsoever.


In any event, this baramin horse**** is just a smokescreen on JC's part and a bad one at that. The idea of baramins doesn't stand or fall on the basis of interfertility (even though its nonsense in and of itself). The real problem with baraminology is best described graphically.

The familiar picture of the evolutionary tree of life looks something like this:




whereas the baraminic tree or the "creationist orchard" as some have called it looks like this:



In fact, Kurt Wise, one of the creationists responsible for the early work in baraminology stated:

"I intend to replace the evolutionary tree with the creationist orchard, separately created, separately planted by God."

So, the only thing necessary to completely undermine this view of life is to show where any two of these groups share a common ancestor and this has been found again and again.

To best illustrate this I'm going to reuse an example I posted in the other evolution thread.

This is an image of human chromosome 2 next to chimp chromosomes 12 and 13.



This image depicts a chromosomal fusion event in our past. Our common ancestor with chimps had 24 chromosomes. At some point, the two chromosomes on the right became fused in us to create our chromosome 2 but remained unchanged (more or less) in other apes. I won't go into the details of how this was confirmed again (read the other thread if you want, or the original research) but needless to say that this is a powerful indication of common ancestry. The cliched creationist response of "oh, no that's common design" just doesn't work. We're not talking about a shared trait among humans and chimps. We're talking about an ancestral trait which diverged due to a chromosomal fusion event. Common design does not explain this.

Getting back to the point, we have found repeated evidence of common ancestry among diverse groups of creatures such as a common ancestor of whales and hippos which again occupy two separate baramins according to creationists. This idea of kinds is fundamentally flawed and no amount of linguistic intrepidity is going to change that.

J C wrote: »

The Flood is depicted in the Bible as having two sources of water ... rain falling from above ... and (by far the greater) underground water bursting forth from below (the fountains of the great deep)!!!

Gen 7:10-12
10And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

11In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

12And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Fair enough, but if you're trying to convince us that the Noachian flood actually happened then some physical evidence not quotes would be more helpful.

J C wrote: »

The Flood was primarily a tectonic event ... with the break-up of the surface of the earth and the explosive release of vast quantities of underground water laiden with sediment from the rock breakup and saturated with hot Calcium Carbonate that acted as a cementing agent to form sedimentary rocks and entomb dead creatures that rapidly dissolved and fossilised over a matter of weeks.
Your rainfall stats are irrelevant because the primary water source wasn't rain ... but underground oceans!!!
The large artesian basins all over the world are the feint remnants of the pre-flood underground oceans.

Oh, so you're arguing in favour of the hydroplate theory then. This, for those unfamiliar,was developed by creationist Walt Brown and outlined in his book "In the beginning: compelling evidence for creation and the flood". I think that the problem with this theory is best summed up in three words: Rock doesn't float.

The first problem is that unless the earth's crust were a solid shell with no cracks or fissures prior, to the flood, the water would have escaped instantly. The density of water is 1 g/cm^3 while the density of those rocks which make up the crust such as granite, basalt etc. lie in the range 2.5 - 3.0 g/cm^3. Any crack in the crust would have resulted in the water escaping long before Noah's flood.

Even assuming a solid crust, this doesn't solve the problem of a layer of water ten miles below the surface. First of all, the water at that depth would be well in excess of 100°C. This would create tremendous pressure given that steam occupies about 1700 times more volume than the water which produced it. So for the amount of water that you're suggesting, say 1.6 miles worth, the pressure created by maintaining that water at that temperature would be immense. That create's a problem since the rocks making up the crust, like all ceramic materials have very poor tensile strength. That volume of water at that depth would have easily shattered any hard ceramic shell encasing it.

Also, there is the problem of temperature. The temperature of the crust at the boundary where it meets the mantle ranges from 200° - 400°C. Any eruption of water from that depth into the atmosphere would have killed Noah and anyone else unfortunate enough to be on the surface of the planet.

Finally, like all of your contentions, JC we don't see any evidence of this. The escaping water as it broke through the crust would also have carried basaltic deposits with it, meaning we should find unusual deposits of such materials but we don't.

J C wrote: »

... so tree roots were buried under thousands of feet of sedimentary rock ... sounds like the result of one almighty flood of worldwide proportions to me!!!

Less, of the histrionics please JC. It really doesn't help. But maybe that's all you've got to contribute to this conversation. I, on the other hand have evidence, like this:

A 50-million-year-old fossil forest from Strathcona Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Arctic Canada: evidence for a warm polar climate

Fossil forests from the lower Cretaceous of Alexander Island, Antarctica

Vegetation-induced sedimentary structures from fossil forests in the Pennsylvanian Joggins Formation, Nova Scotia

J C wrote: »

Perfectly preserved by instant deposition of water-based mud and sediment ... sounds very Flood-like to me ... and certainly wasn't preserved by some process requiring millions of years to accomplish ... like Evolutionists would have us believe!!!

Again with the waffle. Evidence really would be more helpful. You know, like this:

Fossil nest of sweat bees from a miocene paleosol, Rusinga Island, Western Kenya

Trace fossils and bioturbation: the other fossil record

Upper paleozoic trace fossils from the Gilf Kebir-Abu Ras area in southwestern Egypt

J C wrote: »

OK ... so a piece of land had dessication cracks ... was instantly preserved by deposition of water-based sediment ... again not in line with millions of years deposition.


river channels are to be expected in the aftermath of a Flood!!!
Meterorite impact may have been the trigger for the worldwide tectonic event that was the Flood!!!
Preserved Dinosaur (and Human footprints) are indicative of instant inundation ... and not gradualist processes measured in millimeters over millions of years.
Coral reefs were preserved instantly where they stood by inundation with millions of tonnes of sediment ... and not grams of material per year over millions of years, as Evolutionists would have us believe!!

OK, I'm getting mighty tired of dealing with this ****. Put up or shut up JC. Either back up your ridiculous assertions with proper peer-reviewed evidence or admit that you're talking through your arse.

J C wrote: »

Do you have a reference for your assertion?

As it happens, I do.

The original creationist claim was made by Whitcomb & Morris in their book "The Genesis Flood", 1961, p. 160.

Their claim was subsequently and thoroughly dissected by Robert Schwadewald in his work "Six 'Flood arguments' creationists can't answer", published in Creation/Evolution, 1982.

J C wrote: »

The minimum depth was 15 Cubits ... or about 20 feet ... so light penetration wouldn't be an issue over vast areas.

Hold on, you've previously claimed that the Earth was covered to a depth of 1.6 miles. So low lying areas would have been under several hundred meters of water, plenty of pressure and lack of light to extinguish all plant life.

J C wrote: »

... and 99.9% of them are plants, fungi and insects ... none of which were on the Ark ... only the air breathing land animals were on the Ark ... less than 20,000 species today ... and far less before the post-flood speciation event.
For example, the global number of species of mammals, according to Schipper et al. (2008; Science 322:225-230), is only 5,487.

THere are about 5,500 Mammal species, 9,000 Reptile species and 5,300 Amphibians ... so we're maxing out at 20,000 land based air-breathing species of animal.

Are you completely dense or is it just some kind of unfortunate accident that you keep spewing such crap.

I draw your attention to the highlighted portion of your quote above. What exactly about air-breathing land animals excludes insects. Insects do in fact, breathe in that they rely on oxygen and perform gas exchange within their bodies. It's called a tracheal system FYI. I mean there are 22,000 species of ants and 400,000 species of beetles alone. What about them? Oh and by the way, the Bible says to gather creatures which have the "breath of life" in them meaning alive, not meaning breathing. There's a big difference, but since you're only familiar with the KJV, I can understand the confusion.

J C wrote: »

All describing the same event ... some more accurately than others.

Yes, and some written down thousands of years before the one you're advancing.

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I've learned more about evolution from reading your posts than I did at Uni

There obviously isn't much real stuff to learn in the first place!!:)

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

The infuriating thing is he's going to take the evidence you put up and somehow bastardise it in an attempt to claim it supports creationism.

The bastardisation of the evidence is on the W2M Evolutionist side of the house ... I'm just 'un-bastardising' it!!!:)

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

Can I also point out once more that this notion that every bit of sedimentary rock on earth came from one flood should be obviously untrue to anyone who's studied any large sedimentary formation in any detail whatsoever. There is nothing, nothing to suggest these rocks were deposited in one flood. We just wouldn't see the kind of layering that we see.

This is what happened after the Mount St Helens Volcanic and water explosion ...
Quote:- "the bottom layer formed in 6 hours on 18th May 1980, the middle layer was formed on 12th June 1980 and the top layer by mud flow in March 1982,
Please note the scale of the deposition ... and the evidence of layers ... that would be called varves ... but for the fact that everybody saw them forming!!!

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

We wouldn't see everything organised chronologically, that's for sure. It's horseshit of the highest order and anyone claiming nonsense like this is true should be ashamed of themselves.

We don't see this ... except in out imaginations ... we see billions of dead things buried catastrophically in rock layers laid down by water all over the Earth ... how we choose to interpret this ... is largely down to our worldview!!

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

J C, it's also pretty laughable that you claim 'Microbe to man' (as you like to call it) evolution over millions of years is a ridiculous theory, while claiming the amount of speciation required in the few thousand years required to support this 'Baramin' rubbish is a plausible scientific theory. Do you realise how much you're contradicting yourself here? Do you even think before you post?

I've upgraded it to Worm to Man Evolution in deference to the 'discovery' of out supposed worm ancestor!!!:)
... and the difference is that Creationists postulate that speciation occurred rapidly using pre-existing intelligently designed CFSI ... which is entirely possible (because of the intelligent input) ... while Evolutionists postulate that speciation occurred via a series of 'happy accidents' ... which is completely implausible.
... and how do ye explain polystrate fossils ... like this tree fossil extending through supposed millions of years of rock layers??

Love ye all ... (i.e. I wish you all the very best that this life ... and eternal life can give).;):)

koth wrote: »

Hold on. you claim that you were an evolutionary scientist and you didn't know you weren't an ape??

... I know I'm not an Ape ...
... the point I'm making is that when I was an Evolutionist I believed that I was an Ape ...
... a belief that most other Evolutionists also subscribe to!!!:)

koth wrote: »

How the hell did you get any accrediation if you didn't know that basic fact (that Humans aren't Apes)?

Here is what one of your fellow Evolutionists has to say about Humans supposedly being Apes:-
Quote:-
"All apes and humans are desceneded from a single proto-ape species that lived millions of years ago and no longer exists. Thus humans can be said to be closely related to the other apes, but we are certainly not descended from them. Actually, we are apes, no less so than chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons. Whether or not you choose to subscribe to evolutionary theory, there is no doubt that all human beings, including Jesus Christ himself, are classified, both genetically and morphologically as an ape species.
Despite many arguments by people to the contrary, I'd never seriously questioned the fact that humans are apes. After all, I acquired that particular tidbit of knowledge from my father, who is an anthropologist and therefore should know."

It would seem that it is ye guys who have the question mark hanging over your Evolutionist credentials ... and not me ... on the issue of Humans supposedly being 'Naked Apes'!!!:D

koth wrote: »

I seriously doubt that actual evolutionists believe they are apes. Even a 5 year old can tell the difference between an ape and a human. It really is shocking that primary, secondary and a college education was needed before you had that realisation.:eek:

It's even more shocking that guys with third level education believe Humans are Apes!!!

koth wrote: »

More distorting of what people say.
I've distorted nothing!!
for anyone who is interested, here's the complete quote that JC dishonestly presented in edited form:
Humans did not come from apes. No qualified person in the scientific community has ever made that claim, including Darwin. All apes and humans are desceneded from a single proto-ape species that lived millions of years ago and no longer exists. Thus humans can be said to be closely related to the other apes, but we are certainly not descended from them. Actually, we are apes, no less so than chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons. Whether or not you choose to subscribe to evolutionary theory, there is no doubt that all human beings, including Jesus Christ himself, are classified, both genetically and morphologically as an ape species.


Truly shameful stuff, JC.

Nothing shameful about it ... the quote clearly states that Humans didn't come from Apes ... but that they are Apes.
If you recall, that was my original point (that I believed myself to be an Ape when I was an Evolutionist.

J C wrote:

You guys are starting to learn Creation Science ... slowly ... and against your wills ... but ye are learning it nontheless!!!
I was a bit like that myself, when I first discovered that I wasn't an Ape with a large Cranium ... I went into denial and had a personal faith crisis ... in W2M Evolution.

As ye are now saying that ye don't believe yourselves to be Apes ... this is another indication that ye are moving in the direction of Creationism ... and away from Evolutionism.:)
That was also my first step towards Creationism ... when I stopped believing that I was an Ape!!!
Welcome to the world of Creation Science ... but don't say anything to your fellow Evolutionists ... they tend to get very emotional if they are told that somebody is rejecting W2M Evolution.:eek:

koth wrote: »

and btw, you still have to explain why you dismissed the article about the worm being an ancestor to modern man.

Missing CFSI !!!!:D

koth wrote: »

Descended from a common ancestor, and not a silver-back in a suit.

It says that we're descended from a common ancestor.

It also says that we are Apes!!!

... but it's nice to see that ye don't believe that ye are Apes ... progress in the direction of Creation Science at last!!!!:)

koth wrote: »

Sorry, I'm not Christian and I've no plans to convert.

You have the freedom to choose to be Saved ... or lost.

koth wrote: »

well first you best define what CFSI is, and I don't mean what each word means. I mean what the actual term means. And then you can explain what exactly is missing that backs up your claim.

CFSI is the stuff that causes the difference between a worm and a Human!!!:)
Happy now???:eek::)

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

I'll take my third level education over the inane ramblings of cretinist nutjobs anyway, thanks.

No argument ... just an unfounded Ad Hominem.

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

But J C, surely even from a creationist viewpoint there must be some evidence that humans and apes are related. If all big cats (which can look quite different while sharing genetic and physical traits) came from the 'big cat baramin' or whatever the fuck you called it, then surely to be consistent you must also believe that humans and apes (which look quite different while sharing genetic and physical traits) are also related. Either that or you're just being inconsistant and picking and choosing when you want to bring any form of science into the debate.
Wait, actually, im starting to see a pattern here....

Many of the Cat species are interfertile to some degree and they all share an almost identical anatomy and body proprtions. Humans and Apes aren't interfertile to any degree ... and their anatomy and body proportions are distinctly different.
So the Creation Science position is objectively correct and consistent.

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

All this word twisting is getting a bit tiresome.
I'd say it's more likely your first step to creationism was when you got a blow to the head.




Which, as any sane person knows, isn't even a real thing.

No argument ... just two more unfounded Ad Hominems.

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

Straight from the Richie Kavanagh school of comedy.

... ye don't have a focail at all !!! :eek: