How do you determine the age of a rock?

How is the age of a rock determined? Look into it.

I read an anecdote once about a university professor explaining radioactive dating methods in detail. He said something like "It's a good thing there are no creationists around [to witness the inherent flaws in the methods]". The fact is that the determined age is largely dependant on the supposed age.

I recommend the book "The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods" by by John Woodmorappe.

Another book that I recommend, which is not related to geology, but biology is "Darwin's Black Box" by Dr. Michael J. Behe.

The Phenomenon of Evolution

At some point in the development of Science, The Theory of Evolution became the accepted model of the origin of life. Not all scientists accept it, but most do. And the theory has become sacred to this majority of scientists - they will immediately discredit any who disagrees with it. And all analysis of collected data, fossils, geology, etc. is bent to fit Evolution - questioning Evolution is never considered or tolerated.

In my opinion, Evolution is more like fashion than science. One style goes out of favor to be replaced by another. It's a dynamic, emergent phenomenon - there is no central organization that decides what is fashionable - fashions vary from community to community. One radioactive dating method is embraced over another because it is supposedly much more accurate for some reason. The accepted dates of an event or ages of a set of fossils are pushed back a few million years in light of new evidence. New models of Natural Selection and mutation are devised in order to address flaws with the previously accepted models. New theories are devised in order to explain logical difficulties with these models. Like a girl wearing white after Labor Day, a researcher would be ridiculed for using the accepted models of 15 years ago. Why will today's models be accepted 15 years from now?

I do not believe that there is any major organized conspiracy involving Evolution - it is simply an emergent phenomenon like a cattle stampede or traffic jams.

Fossils

I have a few problems with the Evolutionist's interpretation of fossils.

Fossils can form quickly - in fact, they must form quickly or the subject will decompose before it can be fossilized. The only exceptions are creatures that leave a shell that does not decompose - in which case, only this shell is fossilized.

If adjacent strata are separated by millions (or thousands) of years, how do you explain polystrate fossils? Did the upper portions remain undisturbed until the upper strata were deposited?

There are fossilized footprints (and other surface features) between stratum. I've seen this used as an argument for both the Old-Earth and Young-Earth theories. As far as a Young-Earth view (which I agree with), the strata weren't necessarily laid down all at the exact same time - days, months, years, decades, etc. could have passed between their formations. It seems logical that if footprints and other surface features were left in one stratum, then that stratum was still soft when the next was laid down.

Evolutionists are constantly amazed by the discovery of "Living Fossils" - the Coelecanth, the Ginko, Sharks, Crocodiles, etc - whose fossils are supposedly millions of years old. They also like to state that no modern creature is more or less evolved than another - they have been evolving at the same rate - today's crocodiles are more evolved versions of the ancient fossilized crocs. However, by all observations, the living fossils are identical to the ancient fossils.

You misunderstand the analogy

"The problem with your buldozer analogy is that it has no way to keep beneficial mutations and discard harmful ones."

The bulldozer is not an analogy of a complete organism. It is an analogy of the simplest biological mechanisms for life to exist and reproduce - step 1 on the evolutionary ladder. If Evolution is Scientific fact with piles of concrete evidence, show me how we reached this first step. I've read all the theories - they are equivalent to my bulldozer analogy.

"Living creatures did not just evolve to maintain our atmosphere as it is. They made it the way it is."

Did they form a committee and vote on how it should be and who's job it is to maintain it?

Kepler's Laws:
1. The orbit of a planet about a star is an ellipse with the star at one focus.

2. A line joining a planet and its star sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. This is also known as the law of equal areas.

3. The squares of the orbital periods of planets are directly proportional to the cubes of the semi-major axis of the orbits.

There's nothing there about the rate of orbital decay.

However, at it's current location, the temperature of the Earth would be around 0 deg Fahrenheit without the atmosphere's greenhouse gases to warm it up.

Plate Tectonics shows that Mountains can form quickly. I have no problem with this. Erosion rates as observed within relatively recent history (since the settling of America) show that geological structures existing today can't be millions of years old - unless erosion has somehow increased drastically in recent history.

Here's a link relating to some present day erosion

Polyploidy

Chromosomes do not always exist in pairs. Follow the link and read up on Polyploidy.

If you read far enough, you will notice that hybridation of some polyploid flowers has resulted in the generation of a new species. Someone may point to this and say "See, here is proof of evolution because a new species was created". This does not prove Evolution. This proves that we can take part of one plant, part of another plant, and create a create a new type of plant. There is no new information, only a mixture of information from two different sources.

Be sure to read about the tetraploid rat found in Argentina - it seems, by the way that it is worded, that this rat was found in the wild rather than bred in a lab. That idea is rather interesting - how many undiscovered polyploid mammals are running around in the wild?

infinite monkeys

An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters would not produce Shakespear, but an infinite pile of monkey-gibberish. That's because typing monkeys aren't truly random - as no physical process is.

A truly infinite, truly random process would theoretically produce the complete works of Shakespear, etc. Of course it would, in theory produce every possible combination of letters, numbers, punctuation, etc - so it would produce any book ever written or that will ever be written - but the concentration of meaningful combinations would be extremely low. The vast majority would be meaningless garbage. Not only would it produce Hamlet - it would produce a version of Hamlet with every conceivable combination of every conceivable typo. It would produce the very product of taking a copy of Hamlet and a copy of "A Tale of Two Cities", putting them in a blender and arranging the shreds in any arbitrary order.

You don't believe in Evolution, You must be an idiot.

Most people think that if someone is a Christian and doesn't believe in Evolution that it's because they are blinded by their faith and ignore the facts of Evolution.

It's actually the opposite for me.

I used to accept Evolution as the way things became the way they are. I started reading books about Dinosaurs in the first grade. I can still remeber specific moments doing just that. I went all through Elementary School, Junior High, and High School accepting Evolution as the way it happened and not giving it any more thought than that. But I also accepted the existence of God and Jesus as Savior. For a while I believed what I now know of as "the gap theory" which postulates that the 6 days of Creation were not literal days but symbolic of eras in which evolution would take place, etc. I went through stages of other beliefs - most of which I thought up on my own, but were in no way original or extraordinary. At this point I could have gone either way - giving up Christianity and accepting Atheistic Evolution or giving up Evolution and accepting Christianity.

Then I saw some preacher who gave a talk about Creationism. I didn't buy it right out. I thought about it for a long time.

Here are a few of the problems that I have with Evolution:

A Million years is a very long time. Just think about it. If you are totaly indoctrinated in evolutionary thinking, you'll say "Yes, it is a very long time. What of it? It takes a very long time for stuff to evolve." In order to make the Millions and Millions of years model work, Mountains must form at the same rate or faster than they erode. The atmosphere must remain mostly consistant (at least starting from a certain point in the evolutionary time scale). In order for this to happen, the Earth must remain at a constant distance from the Sun, etc. 3.5 Billion years seems like a very long time for a planet to maintain the exact same orbit.

Mountains and such can and do erode very quickly - such that without regular catastrophic events to form new mountains or build up existing ones, there wouldn't be any left after a few million years.

The atmosphere is in a delicate state of balance. A student of Evolution must reason that it is pure chance that biological mechanisms have co-developed and remained in effect to maintain this balance with out any Creator to design them.

I'm going to approach this from another angle. Forget the above. Forget Entropy (which I agree is misused and misunderstood by Creationist zealots). Forget information theory (for now). Forget all of the arguments that you've ever heard for Creationism or "Intelligent Design" or whatever you want to call it.

Here's the main problem that I have with Evolution:

Lifeforms are machinery - they are actual physical machines. They are extremely complicated at all scales - from limbs, bones, and muscle down through the cellular level and on down to the molecular level. Even the most simple forms of life are extremely complicated at the molecular level. There are protien "machines" that cause things to happen that are the direct opposite of what would normally happen by normal chemical means (a molecule moves from an area of lower saturation into an area of greater saturation, etc). These protien machines are just as complicated as any machinery invented by man. And even the simplest life forms requires the coordination of many different types of molecular machinery. I can not accept that they could have developed and started working in harmony purely by chance.

To say that they did develop entirely through random chemical changes is like saying that a Bulldozer was formed over millions of years by random geological events. Not only that this Bulldozer was formed - That it formed underground as these geological events depositied Iron, Carbon, etc which congealed in the shape of a bulldozer complete with a full fuel tank. Then the engine somehow started and now the bulldozer is operating itself, has unburied itself, and is busy leveling some spot of ground all without the benefit of an operator - purely by the random movement of the controls caused by environmental factors.

Not only did this bulldozer form by chance, but it is also able to create an approximate replica of itself and any mistakes that it makes in such replication will, over time, result in a much better, much more sophisticated bulldozer.

I'll have to stop there for now. I have much more to say on this.

Jesus was just a good guy.

There are many items in my list of beliefs on which I would like to expound. I don't know how long it'll take me to get to all of them, but this is one that I would like to address right away - especially because I've heard this statement quite often: "I think that Jesus was a really good guy and a good teacher, but I don't believe that he was Divine or that he came back from the dead." - or something along those lines.

This is total nonsense. If Jesus is not the literal son of God, if He is not the Jewish Messiah, if He did not die on the cross and rise from the dead, then He was a total lunatic - worse than David Koresh.

If He was such a great teacher, what great teachings did He give us - obviously disreguarding His teaching that He is the Son of God and the sacrifice for the sins of man.

There are those who are much better at giving this argument than me. You can search it out for yourself. I'd try Ravi Zacharias. I don't know of any internet resources - I've heard it a number of times and read it in print from various preachers. (If you think that Christians are just a bunch of gullible idiots, listen to Ravi Zacharias for a while.)

John said...

[me](I don't like any form of chemical body/mind manipulation including most pharmaceuticals)

[john]but apparently (judging by your sidebar) non-chemical means of body/mind manipulation are OK.


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Hey, the fact that I have a link to the site doesn't mean that I condone the practices promoted by that site.

All the lucid dreaming sites are all about increasing dream recall and achieving lucid dreaming, which some may find to be controversial for some reasons unknown to me. But I would not consider it to be mind manipulation - I see it as similar to performing exercises to increase memory and stuff like that.

The wetware hacking site has some devices which I would place in the same category as drugs - the flashing light goggles. I wouldn't use or promote those things - I just linked it because I thought it was interresting and if anyone ever decides to build such a device and try it, I'd like to hear how it goes.

My beliefs.

My personal beliefs of reality may slowly reveal themselves through this blog. They may be shocking to some and potentially offensive to others. I don't think that I'm ready to just list them all out right here.

This is just a warning for all of you.

First I'll list some things that I don't believe and leave it at that for now. One of these in particular may raise some eyebrows.

I don't believe:

• in Space Aliens


• that the moon landings were staged (so I do believe that we actually went to the moon)


• that the Holocaust never happened (It most certainly did)


• that drugs are harmless (I don't like any form of chemical body/mind manipulation including most pharmaceuticals)


• that violence, pornography, and vulgarity on tv, in movies, and in music is harmless (it has a major impact on behavior - and I don't just mean for kids - it affects all people)


• that promiscuity can be safe and harmless


• that abortion is different than murder


• that everything is all well and good with the world


• that technology makes our world a safer/cleaner/better place


• that people are basically good (perhaps more on this later)


• that Satan is not real


• that Demons and Angels aren't real (perhaps more on this later)


• that Jesus was a good teacher, but not the Messiah and not Divine (definitely more on this later)


• in Buddha


• that Muslims worship the same God as Christians - or that Islam is another path to the same God


• that there is any path to God/salvation other than through Jesus Christ


• that the medieval Crusaders had God's blessing


• that God advocates violence towards non-christians today


• that Islam does not advocate violence or that it is a peaceful religion


• that "the experts" know what they're talking about


• that being published in a magazine or writing a best selling book means that you are right


• that you are right because any number of other people agree with you


• that non-experts must be wrong if they disagree with the experts


• that there is any living person who does not make mistakes


• in the theory of Evolution (more specifically biological Macroevolution)


• that the Earth could have maintained a habitable environment for millions or billions of years

There's a lot more, but I'm tired and I have to work tomorrow, so I'll stop there.

Cook your brain with two cell phones

Follow the title link - read the page and try it. I haven't tried it yet (cooking an egg with two unmodified cell phones (in case you didn't read the title yet.))

Now remember that when you are talking on the phone, your brain is like 1/2 inch from the antenna. Yum, yum - gimme some more scrambled brains with cheese.

David Icke

This guy is nuts. Go to his page and read some of the junk on there. And then read the page at this link about him if you still don't understand how nuts he is.

But maybe he's right. How do you know that he's not?

Seriously, I think that this sort of stuff is good for making people think. I'm pretty sure that this guy has got it wrong, but I think that his ideas are based on some crazy stuff that really is happening. I may get more into this later.

Crazy Braddock

follow this link to Braddock's blog. You can just skip the first half which isn't very crazy. Go about half way down where he says "...I believe in both Evolution and Creationism." Read the rest of the post from then on and a seletion of the comments.

What do you do in there?

Some people pester me on the amount of time that I spend in the bathroom.

I'm not reading, and I'm not doing anything inappropriate.

This is what happens. I go into the bathroom in order to GO to the bathroom, but in order to do that (number 2), I gotta be relaxed. So this just naturally happens when I sit down - I don't think about relaxing.

My mind unfocuses from the immediate surroundings and immediate issues and enters a kind of meditative state. In this state I focus on the larger issues in my life - problems and potential solutions, happy memories, sad memories, etc. There's no real goal or focus, my mind is just free to wander where it will.

In this state, I loose all conscious track of time. My "business" may only take half a minute or so, but I may end up sitting there in this sort of meditative state for five minutes or longer depending on the circumstances and what pressing matters exist to pull me out of this state.

I think that it may also have to do with the psychological privacy of the bathroom which allows me to detach from the immediate world.

So there it is. Now you know.

Rarely I do read in the bathroom - which usually means that I'll be in there even longer.