Read it like a book

So few creationists will look at geological features and just read it like a book.

   So I'll try to give a reading lesson starting simple with a tree ring cross-section. 

 

 Let Us Read Tree Rings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  There is much to meet the eye.

Read the Early Growth rings. They are mixed but mostly wide and regularly spaced. That is healthy. 

 

Two big changes happen about 30 years on. Drought, and Fire. The fire scars are obvious. The drought is seen mostly by the strong reduction in the growth ring width.

Between the second and third fires beetles start to infest the tree. That promoted the high resin production seen as a red stain to the wood. There are several infestations.

The resin makes the tree more fire vulnerable as we see in fire scars  #4 through #7.

The fires actually helped against the beetles, with no new burrows, and no high resin production after Fire #7. 

 

And, the growth rings are getting wider again after decades.

Not long after Fire #8 the tree was dropped as part of a road widening project, and the record was preserved.  The nearly 300 years of this tree's existence are studied in greater detail by; 

"Fire regimes of kipuka forests in El Malpais
National Monument, New Mexico"
Daniel B. Lewis, Master's Thesis, University of
Tennessee, 2003, Pg 72.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268811082.pdf

Now Let Us Read Rocks 

Why I particularly like this is that it is from the base of the Grand Canyon. Better yet, it eliminates any Noah's Flood claims.

  There is much to meet the eye.

What an interesting read.

We have a build of sedimentary layers with many kinds of size, and composition changes.

That takes time.

Then there is a large stream that cut a deep channel through to older deposits. This channel is deep rather than wide. This teaches that the cut was made in firm sediment. 

 

That takes time.

The stream then fills with two major sediment changes. The first is coarse layers. The top fill is fine grains. Those are low energy deposits. More like a drought than a flood.

That takes time.

Then there are thousands of feet of later soild sedimentary layers. Thousands.

That takes a lot of time.

Now we see those thousands of feet of rock are down cut and eroded by the Colorado River enabled by Ice Ages, and Continental Shaping.

That takes a lot of time.

 

That takes MILLIONS OF YEARS. 


I have often recommend readers to,

Carol Hill, Gregg Davidson, Wayne Ranney, Tim Helble
2016 "The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah's Flood Explain the Grand Canyon?" Kregel Publications.

I do again.

I'll watch it

                                       I GIVE UP!                                     

I was writing a freaking book about this "debate" !!!

And, the science is advancing faster than I am writing. For example, James Tour hyped homochiral proteins, and nucleic acids.

This was in my Email today;
"‘Breakthrough’ could explain why life molecules are left- or right-handed Experiments suggest magnetic materials skewed early biomolecules"
https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-could-explain-why-life-molecules-are-left-or-right-handed?

Does it? Then my paper on this is going to get rejected. I at minimum need a rewrite on it.

**********************

James Tour will be hosting "professor" Dave Farina on May 19, 2023 to debate the origin of life.
https://www.youtube.com/live/pxEWXGSIpAI?

I watched it twice. And I also watched

"Tour vs. Dave Debate EXPLAINED (Origin of Life)" This was from "Capturing Christianity" by Cameron Bertuzzi. He proposed exposing us to the intellectual side of Christian belief. His expert guest was Dr. Paul Rimmer currently at Cambridge University.

https://www.youtube.com/live/COpdFWgXcek?

And I have now watched Dave Farina's re-edited version I will call "The Way Farina Wished It Happened." 



I watched.

I'll post.

It sucked.

I have been stuck on three prongs.

1) Critique Tour 2) Critique Farina 3) "What I would have done instead"

This will take longer than I thought.

Here are my raw notes from a first pass view of Tour's remarks.

1) homochrial

2) Five criteria for life (slide)
    1) Polypeptides, proteins and enzymes
    2) Polynucleotides, RNA
    3) Polysaccharides, charbohydrates
    4) The origin of specified information in the above polymers
    5) Assembly of the above compounds into an integrated functional living system, namely a cell

3) OOL haves a "Time of the gaps appeal." "Over millions of years such and such happened" "Those bedtime stories, they are devoid of any precise Chemistry, may as well start Once upon a time."  

4) "I address Mr. Farina as a Graduate Student"

5) Criteria of Life: response to environment, growth and change, ability to reproduce, metabolism, homeostasis, cells, passing traits on to offspring

6) A valid hypothesis is one in which there is experimental evidence substantiating the proposed science. An invalid hypothesis is one in which there is NO Way to substantiate the proposed science.

7) BS about air travel

8) "Nobody was present at life's origin so we will never really know how life originated."

9) "Show the data"

10) "2021 Journal of Pragmatics "Hyperbally in Scientific Publications." 

11) OOL research is extreme "takes the cake"

12) Lee Krowin 2011 "create lab life in 2 years."  

13) Jack Szostak 2014 "create lab life in 3 to 5 years"

14) repeat his Life Criteria, "Prove all 5 or We are clueless."

15) "Show even one."

16) Slams Szostak, "autocatalytic sets were never chemically realistic." 

17) Lee Crowin "admits OOL is a scam" (Twitter remark March 2022. See https://youtube.be/vWjEb7Z1K18 ) "I have no data on that. It is right now a belief. I want to turn that belief into more than a belief by experimentation." 

I was asked by AAAS for my opinion.

So, I was asked today (April 10, 2023) by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, for my opinion. I doubt they will publish it. So, here it is; 

My mother frequently admonished me to "Play nice with the other children."

AAAS should not. 

Science is not playing games. Our environment, and civilization are at threat of failure. This is not a game. There are political organizations actively denying basic science. AAAS must oppose them. 

The March 30 Science editorial "Fix the backlash against public health" is an example of failure by AAAS. In that editorial there is no mention of the politicization of Covid-19 from the first reported case in the USA. The "backlash" is political. The response must be political. Now contrast that with the excellent editorial March 31 in JAMA, "The Supreme Court Is Harming Public Health and the Environment." 

In 1981 I listened to 3 days of talks about "Climate Change" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting. Scientists didn't then think that anybody would be so damn stupid as to ignore the problem. 

We were wrong. 

Some reading;

Oreskes, Naomi, Erik M. Conway 2010 "Merchants of Doubt" Bloomsbury Press. 

Michaels, David 2019 "The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception" Oxford University. 

Mooney, Chris 2005 "The Republican War on Science" New York: Basic Press. 

Oreskes, and Conway document that the "American Tobacco Institute" was a fraud from the start with bogus "studies" that "proved" nicotine was not addictive, and did not cause cancer. The fossil fuel industry used the American Petroleum Institute on the same scheme (even some of the same "experts"). That gang originally set out to prove there was no medical threat from leaded gasoline, or smog. It was in the late 1970s and early '80s that climate change was added to the list of disasters that burning coal and petroleum "didn't cause." 

 David Michaels has focused more on the "what did they know, and when did they know it" aspects of climate destruction. His professional experience as an MD epidemiologist, and a Federal official are very important. Finally, as Chris Mooney showed 18 years ago, Republican politicians are just cheaper to buy.

For anyone unaware of the threat creationism is to science and civilization, I recommend reading; Scott, Eugenie C., 2005 Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction University of California Press 

Numbers, Ronald L. 2006 "The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism" Berkeley: University of California Press 

Barbara Carroll Forrest, Paul R. Gross 2004 "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design" Oxford University Press 

Matt Young, Taner Edis (Contributing Editors), 2004 "Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism" Rutgers University Press (My contribution, Chapter 8 "The explanatory filter, Archaeology, and Forensics" was used in the 2005 Dover Intelligent Design federal trial). 

Here is a single quote from a Christian creationist I found to summarize their entire issue, "I was taught in school that acres of rain forest were being destroyed by the second, and yet we still have rain forests. Honestly, I don't believe them. And if they are right, I'm not too worried about it anyway. The Bible says that this earth will be destroyed by God anyway. We can take care of what we've got now, but I'm not going to let what some scientist thinks is going to happen worry me." Rapture Ready BB, 2003. 

And yet... 

Science published an editorial by Agustín Fuentes, "The Descent of Man," 150 years on," 21 May 2021. My first encounter with the Agustin Fuentes' editorial was "Congratulations to Science Magazine for an Honest Portrayal of Darwin's Descent of Man" by Michael Flannery, Center for Science and Culture. This "center" is central to the Intelligent Design creationism movement.

In his editorial Fuentes insists that Charles Darwin "...baselessly asserted evolutionary differences between races. ... offering justification of empire and colonialism, and genocide, through "survival of the fittest." That could only be written by someone who had not read Darwin's work, or is incompetent.

Here is Darwin's summary on human races; "It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant." The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (John Murray, London, 1871).

A YEC converts

Dr. Stephen C. Meyers - no, not that one, the other one. The president of the Institute for Biblical and Scientific Studies.