After over 150 years, why has evolution still not answered

[EarthScienceguy]

After over 150 years, why has evolution still not answered the most basic questions of theist?

Charles Hodge Systematic theology copywrite 1870.

Although Strauss greatly exaggerates when he says that men of science in our day are unanimous
in supporting the doctrine of spontaneous generation, it is undoubtedly true that a large class of
naturalists, especially on the continent of Europe, are in favour of that doctrine. Professor Huxley,
in his discourse on the “Physical Basis of Life,� lends to it the whole weight of his authority. He
does not indeed expressly teach that dead matter becomes active without being subject to the
influence of previous living matter; but his whole paper is designed to show that life is the result
of the peculiar arrangement of the molecules of matter. His doctrine is that “the matter of life is
composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are
aggregated.�2 “If the properties of water,� he says, “may be properly said to result from the nature
and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say
that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules.�3 In his
address before the British Association, he says that if he could look back far enough into the past
he should expect to see “the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter.� And although
that address is devoted to showing that spontaneous generation, or Abiogenesis, as it is called, has
never been proved, he says, “I must carefully guard myself against the supposition that I intend to
suggest that no such thing as Abiogenesis has ever taken place in the past or ever will take place
in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and
every day making prodigious strides, I think it would be the height of presumption for any man to
say that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties we call ‘vital,’ may not some
day be artificially brought together.�4 All this supposes that life is the product of physical causes;
that all that is requisite for its production is “to bring together� the necessary conditions.

The theist argument has not changed in 150 years.

In 1870, the full problem in the fossil record of the Cambrian explosion had still not been fully realized.

In 1870 an equation to calculate rate of beneficial mutations in organisms, which makes it impossible for the cambrian explosion to happen through naturalistic means.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to post 37 by Diagoras]

Quote:
There is only one type Y chromosome 70% different than chimp's Y chromosome. How is this possible? The Bible predicts one type of Y chromosome coming from Noah.

<bolding mine>

I’d be very surprised to hear that particular bold biblical prediction coming from anyone else but you. The effort required to see something within a Bronze-Age collection of writings that wasn’t actually discovered or named until the nineteenth century is considerable; to call it a ‘stretch’ is to stretch the very meaning of interpretation beyond all reason.

On the ark there were only 4 males and all of them were from the same family. Noah was the the father and Ham, Shem and Japheth were Noah's sons, therefore there was only one type of Y chromosome on the ark. Shem Ham and Japheth all were married and each woman that they were married to would have had a different types of mitochondrial chromosomes . The Bible does not say anything about Noah's wife having another child.

So the Bible predicts that all men should have the same Y chromosome and that women should have one of three different chromosome.

Strange that the bible got it spot on regarding mitochondrial DNA, but didn’t use that knowledge in Genesis 30:37-39 when breeding distinctly coloured livestock. Our experiences and understanding of the word ‘prediction’ are clearly vastly different.

Are you trying to say that poplar, almond,chestnut or sycamore trees can not have medicinal value? All Jacob would have to do is to give these medicinal herbs to the the sheep that came from spotted parents and have them mate. He put the sticks in the troughs so that the females would be focused on the sticks while the males that he gave the medicinal sticks to (so that they were stronger than the other males) came behind them to mate.

You claim that an ice age occurred after a flood, but offer no biblical evidence to support your claim.

Why would the Bible even mention the ice age? When ice sheets did not reach the Middle East.

The ice age is a major problem for naturalistic theory. Problems like what started the ice age, why did the ice age stop, where all of the moisture come from?

There is evidence of extreme volcanic activity on the Earth. creation theory places these eruptions during and after the flood. These volcanic eruptions would cause the earth's temperature of decrease producing the ice age.

Creationist theory gives a reason for the ice age, describes where the moisture came from and a reason why it would end.

Something naturalist theories cannot do.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 58 by EarthScienceguy]

But then there was the discovery that there were a whole graveyard of tectonic plates under the pacific and Indian oceans.

Where do you get this from? The paper describes trajectories they calculate from their models where they inject density anomalies at certain depths below subduction zones, then follow those "slab tracers" southward:

"However, slab sinking trajectories are complicated through their interaction with phase transitions, particularly the spinel-perovskitetransition at 660 km depth, where some slabs may lay flat for a while before they sink further."

They are not claiming that the subducted material stays in a solid state as a "plate" one it subducts into the mantle and sinks. What they call "slab tracers" are the density anomalies they have injected into their model, and follow over time as they sink. Various phase transition regions can influence the rate at which the slab tracer "blobs" descend, as well as their lateral movement. But they are not claiming that the plate sections that subduct and break off stay as solid crustal "plates" all the way down to the core-mantle boundary (CMB). They are modeling the subducted plate sections as density anomalies, and those are followed with the model and referred to as "slab tracers."

But how does any of this relate to a young Earth scenario? Everything in the paper's model describes millions and hundreds of millions of years, which you don't believe is possible. It isn't at all clear what you see in this paper that makes you think it supports a young Earth scenario. If anything, it is completely inconsistent with any such idea.

Earth is the only planet in the solar system in which there are crustal plates moving on the surface of the planet.

And? What has that got to do with the paper, or a young Earth scenario? If you accept tectonic plate theory and use the observed rates that the various crustal plates move, it is obvious that a 6000 year old Earth is not even remotely possible. That is completely inconsistent with tectonic plate theory.

But plates were found at the core mantle boundary. https://www.solid-earth.net/3/415/2012/ ... 5-2012.pdf

No ... what the model calls "slab tracers" were found at the CMB. These are the remnants of the density anomalies they injected into their model to represent a chunk of subducted slab material. I don't see anywhere in the paper where they claim the crustal plate sections remained "plates" all the way down to the CMB.

Colleges like Yale and Harvard they have a pantheistic view of creation, they believe that the universe created itself.

They don't have any view of "creation." They teach the current scientific understanding of various subjects, which often includes "we don't know the answer yet." But instead of doing what ancient humans did and attributing things not known, or things that could not be explained, to the actions of deities, they present current scientific understanding as it is and don't make up answers when there are none (yet).

Open scientific problems prompt research that attempts to find the correct explanations, that are consistent with what is known from prior work within the various scientific disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. etc.). And one reason creation myths aren't included in this process is because none of them (and there are many) have any evidence to support them, and plenty to disprove them.

[Purple Knight]

[Replying to post 56 by Purple Knight]

What does what I asked have to do with a bottleneck? You think bad mutations that express (like one that makes a fish go 50% slower) getting selected out is an assumption?

I do not understand what your are trying to express here.

You say I was making an assumption, I ask what it was, and you said I was assuming a bottleneck. I don't see how.

All I said is that fish produced by gynogenesis should be homozygous for every trait. In other words, they carry no recessive genetic baggage. They express every trait that they have.

I said that this should lead selection for good traits to proceed faster.

You said I was assuming a bottleneck.

I'm asking about pure masturbation: A sexual act that (presumably) gives the animal the pleasure of sex, but without the chance to pass on its genes. Do you think animals do this on a regular basis?

My point was that it does not matter what animals do.

Good, then it doesn't matter what the Amazon Molly does. Checkmate.

[Diagoras]

I’ll have to jump around a bit to respond to several points across multiple posts. As usual, there’s an eclectic mix of topics I need to address, often only tangentially related to the opening post. Such is the lot of the person who steps up to the plate in another round of YEC theory whack-a-mole.

From post 60:

Take for example when the topic turns to creation to the fine tuning of the universe. A common naturist response is if there constants were not what they are then we would not be here to debating this.

<snip>

The universe does exist. We are all individual entities in this universe. The universe is fine tuned for life. Life in all of its complexities does exist.

<bolding mine>

Your tactic of ascribing to your opponents the flawed tactics of your own position needs to be called out. The ‘fine-tuning argument’ is one used by Creationists, not Scientific Naturalists. Here’s a typical refutation of that argument.

If a naturalist does not know what created the universe but does not believe that God created the universe then...

Then... he or she has to honestly state that the answer is not known. Simple as that. Hypotheses can of course be made, but with the difficulty of testing them against observation, it’s consistent with good scientific practice to leave the creation of the universe as ‘unknown’. No need nor evidence for one or more gods.

Post 61:

So the Bible predicts that all men should have the same Y chromosome

Incorrect. The bible doesn’t say anything about chromosomes. All you are doing is retrospectively interpreting some particular verse in the light of modern scientific knowledge. We see this time and time again from apologists.

He put the sticks in the troughs so that the females would be focused on the sticks

From Bibleref, we get a more honest christian interpretation:

�How he executes this plan may sound like some kind of folk magic, but it is the process by which God supernaturally blesses Jacob's efforts to get more black sheep and mixed-color animals.�

The response from Clownboat in post 52 deserves to be re-used here:

�To debate against this position would be to give it credit it doesn't deserve. The ancients obviously knew no better.�

Moving on...

Why would the Bible even mention the ice age? When ice sheets did not reach the Middle East.

Could I have been mistaken when I said (in post 37):

You claim that an ice age occurred after a flood, but offer no biblical evidence to support your claim.

That was after my post 28, when you’d decided that a wolf puppy had lived in an Ice Age after the flood, but offered no evidence for it. Then your Post 32 says:

What the biblical view of the world does have is a mechanism for an ice age unlike the naturalist view of the world.

So, according to you, the Ice Age didn’t reach the Middle East (maybe you could research ‘snowball earth’ before making that claim), therefore it wasn’t required to be written about in the bible. Then in almost the same breath, the same bible miraculously contains a ‘mechanism’ for an Ice Age. Did you not remember what you wrote about the puppy? Rather than vacillating between the bible mentioning nothing and the bible describing Ice Age mechanisms, why not admit a lack of evidence for your claims? ‘A lack of evidence’ is after all, what you criticise many of your debate opponents of having.

There is problem (sic) when the the plates are in the mantle.

The ice age is a major problem for naturalistic theory.

Why am I not surprised? Every single branch of science that finds evidence of an earth older than about six thousand years is going to have exactly the same ‘problem’ for you. Whatever method, however many independent studies and observations, whichever initial hypotheses are challenged, science since around the time of Nicolas Steno has only moved further and further from James Ussher’s claim of God’s creation of the earth in 4,004BC.

You’re clinging to that date (or certainly one within the same order of magnitude) in the face of every conceivable piece of evidence. You’re even proud of the fact, as my signature (quoting you directly) shows. One Irish archbishop in 1654 who counted up the generations in a collection of Bronze-Age tribal histories and believed that to be proof of the age of the earth - that’s good enough for you!

That’s 366 years ago, just to be clear. Before such things as thermometers (Gabriel Fahrenheit), chronometers, (John Harrison), smallpox vaccine (Edward Jenner) and the Leyden Jar - the first ever electrical capacitor (E.G. Von Kleist). Archbishop Ussher’s world didn’t have hot air balloons or even flushing toilets.

And yet, to you and other YEC’s, his biblical extrapolations carry more weight than every single honest scientist’s since. And you have the temerity to say this:

Creationist do not deny the laws of nature.

Oh, but they do. They most certainly do. They will change the speed of light if they believe it doesn’t fit with a young earth.

Creationists are in denial.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods]

Where do you get this from? The paper describes trajectories they calculate from their models where they inject density anomalies at certain depths below subduction zones, then follow those "slab tracers" southward:

"However, slab sinking trajectories are complicated through their interaction with phase transitions, particularly the spinel-perovskitetransition at 660 km depth, where some slabs may lay flat for a while before they sink further."

They are not claiming that the subducted material stays in a solid state as a "plate" one it subducts into the mantle and sinks. What they call "slab tracers" are the density anomalies they have injected into their model, and follow over time as they sink. Various phase transition regions can influence the rate at which the slab tracer "blobs" descend, as well as their lateral movement. But they are not claiming that the plate sections that subduct and break off stay as solid crustal "plates" all the way down to the core-mantle boundary (CMB). They are modeling the subducted plate sections as density anomalies, and those are followed with the model and referred to as "slab tracers."

But how does any of this relate to a young Earth scenario? Everything in the paper's model describes millions and hundreds of millions of years, which you don't believe is possible. It isn't at all clear what you see in this paper that makes you think it supports a young Earth scenario. If anything, it is completely inconsistent with any such idea.

What do you think slab tracers are referring to? They can only call them tracer because some sort of theory has to be made to describe how slabs could be in the lower mantle, because the lower mantle is considered to be solid with little or no convection current.

Here is another paper that makes the point even clearer.

Slab thickening enhances buoyancy (volume times density) and thereby Stokes sinking velocity, thus facilitating fast lower-mantle penetration. Such an interpretation is consistent with seismic images of the distribution of subducted material in upper and lower mantle. Thus we identify a direct expression of time-dependent flow between the upper and lower mantle.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... te_motions

And? What has that got to do with the paper, or a young Earth scenario? If you accept tectonic plate theory and use the observed rates that the various crustal plates move, it is obvious that a 6000 year old Earth is not even remotely possible. That is completely inconsistent with tectonic plate theory.

Are you trying to say that plates sinking for 50 million years in the mantle would not reach thermal equilibrium with the rest of the mantle? How is that even possible why would the convection currents in the mantle not pull the plate apart if the mantle is such a dynamic environment?

Quote:
Colleges like Yale and Harvard they have a pantheistic view of creation, they believe that the universe created itself.

They don't have any view of "creation." They teach the current scientific understanding of various subjects, which often includes "we don't know the answer yet." But instead of doing what ancient humans did and attributing things not known, or things that could not be explained, to the actions of deities, they present current scientific understanding as it is and don't make up answers when there are none (yet).

Open scientific problems prompt research that attempts to find the correct explanations, that are consistent with what is known from prior work within the various scientific disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. etc.). And one reason creation myths aren't included in this process is because none of them (and there are many) have any evidence to support them, and plenty to disprove them.

Well, since you do not know, you are saying that you BELIEVE that God did not create the universe and you BELIEVE that science will eventually find how the UNIVERSE made everything we see and experience.

In the end you are still saying that their is only the universe and that the UNIVERSE made everything. Naturalist have to believe that the UNIVERSE set the values of the natural constants to such values life. You can have some anthropic belief that life would have just been different and you are free to BELIEVE that, but it is simply a BELIEF that you have.

People are free to BELIEVE anyway the wish to BELIEVE.

By definition the BELIEF that the universe made everything we see is by definition pantheism.

Naturalist have to believe that the universe created life. They may BELIEVE that science may come up with the answer one day. But there are people that they were abducted by space aliens or that space aliens seeded this planet for life.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to post 63 by Purple Knight]

All I said is that fish produced by gynogenesis should be homozygous for every trait. In other words, they carry no recessive genetic baggage. They express every trait that they have.

This statement a correct statement. They do carry recessive genetic baggage. What surprised biologist was the low amount of deleterious mutations not that there was no deleterious mutations.

So there are two ways that this could have happen either either a perfect genetic storm and selection or these fish are not millions of years old.

So you are believing that there was a perfect genetic storm that created these fish and that somehow the genetic mutations were selectected out. People are free to believe anything they wish but people's belief's are not facts.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 65 by EarthScienceguy]

What do you think slab tracers are referring to? They can only call them tracer because some sort of theory has to be made to describe how slabs could be in the lower mantle, because the lower mantle is considered to be solid with little or no convection current.

They use the term "slab tracer" to represent the density anomaly their mathematical model injects below subduction zones (this is how they represent a section of subducted crustal plate material that then breaks off, with subsequent descent through the mantle). They don't claim that this density anomaly remains an intact crustal plate all the way to the CMB and that there are bunch of plate sections sitting at the lower mantle all stacked up as intact crustal plate sections as you seem to suggest.

But again, what in this paper has you thinking that it somehow supports a young Earth scenario? It does exactly the opposite, and you continue to employ the standard creationist's tactic of using millions or billion of years when it suits your argument, then claiming the universe was only created 6000 or so years ago and trying to twist science to be consistent with such a ridiculous age.

Are you trying to say that plates sinking for 50 million years in the mantle would not reach thermal equilibrium with the rest of the mantle?

No. I'm simply pointing out that the paper you referenced (for some unclear reason), is a mathematical model which describes the fate of a subducted crustal slab which descends into the mantle over very long periods of time (far longer than a young Earth scenario would allow). This slab section would eventually reach thermal equilibrium with its surroundings due to conduction, and nowhere in the paper do they claim otherwise. It seems you want to claim that there are intact crustal plate sections stacked up at the CMB for some reason, and referencing this paper to support that claim. How that helps your young Earth argument I have no idea, but the paper does not claim that subducted plates remain intact all the way to the CMB, and in any case the time frames their model requires are so many orders of magnitude than your young Earth age that nothing in the paper could be used by you to support anything (other than you admitting that a 6000 year old Earth is utter nonsense).

Well, since you do not know, you are saying that you BELIEVE that God did not create the universe and you BELIEVE that science will eventually find how the UNIVERSE made everything we see and experience.

No again. My position is that there is no evidence for gods of any kind, so attributing the creation of anything to these entities has no basis. There is no evidence that they exist outside of the minds of human beings who have created thousands of them in their heads. I'll BELIEVE in a god when one is ever demonstrated to exist, and so far that has not happened.

Naturalist have to believe that the UNIVERSE set the values of the natural constants to such values life.

No. Life arose in an environment that was suitable to support it. Oxygen breathing life forms do not exist on Venus or Mars because their atmospheres are primarily CO2, and O2 breathing animals couldn't survive. Earth has an atmosphere and environment suitable for the kind of life that evolved in it. So far it is the only planet (or moon) we know of with life, so if the entire universe was designed specifically to support life, your designer certainly did a very poor job of it!

People are free to believe anything they wish but people's belief's are not facts.

Then why do you keep trying to support creationism when there is virtually no evidence to support it (certainly not from science)? Having no explanation for something does not mean that the answer is a god did it, but that is the entire basis for every one of your arguments.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to post 64 by Diagoras]

Your tactic of ascribing to your opponents the flawed tactics of your own position needs to be called out. The ‘fine-tuning argument’ is one used by Creationists, not Scientific Naturalists. Here’s a typical refutation of that argument.

It is also used by those who are making a case for the multiverse theory like Brian Greene and many others. I would definitely not call Brian Greene a creationist. He even did a TED talk on it "Why is the universe fine tuned for life?
https://thesteamproject.org/resources/t ... an-greene/

Then... he or she has to honestly state that the answer is not known. Simple as that. Hypotheses can of course be made, but with the difficulty of testing them against observation, it’s consistent with good scientific practice to leave the creation of the universe as ‘unknown’. No need nor evidence for one or more gods.

Not knowing would mean that all options are on the table. That would not true of naturalist. The only option on the table would be natural options. Never mind that "they don't know" how the universe and life was created and there is no evidence of where the original energy and information for life came from.

Naturalism is nothing more than a pantheistic belief that nature found a way to produce the universe and life.

Post 61:

Incorrect. The bible doesn’t say anything about chromosomes. All you are doing is retrospectively interpreting some particular verse in the light of modern scientific knowledge. We see this time and time again from apologists.

Are you trying to communicate that the Noah narrative in the Bible would not have produced a single Y chromosome in men?

Naturalist have no answer for this. Naturalist could BELIEVE that there was a severe bottleneck, so severe in fact that it was reduced to one family in the recent past. Good thing for us that man did not become extinct during this severe bottleneck. Whew!! But wait if they did become extinct then we would not be talking now. Good thing the universe kept humanity safe and sound enough so that we could continue and not be selected out.

This Y chromosome that all men have is 30% different than the chimpy's Y chromosome which some naturalist believe to be our "closest" living relative. You know what else is has a Y chromosome 30% different than man's, a chicken. But have no fear the universe is here to take care of this problem. that is right I am sure the universe took this Y chromosome and changed it just a blink of an eye. Or at least that is what naturalist BELIEVE happen.

Or maybe they just took modern science and "retrospectively interpreted some particular belief that naturalist have"

From Bible ref, we get a more honest christian interpretation:
Quote:
�How he executes this plan may sound like some kind of folk magic, but it is the process by which God supernaturally blesses Jacob's efforts to get more black sheep and mixed-color animals.�

Wait, a dog gone minute here. The writer of this comment does not describe how the mixed-color sheep happened. The writer obviously does not know nor did he research how this might happen. I am not opposed to God doing miraculous deeds. The stopping of the earth to produce a longer day. That is a miracle. The plagues on Egypt that was a miracle. Feeding of the 4 and 5 thousand that was a miracle. Jesus rising from the dead miracle. This could be, but I believe this one does not have to be a miracle. What makes me believe that this is not a miracle is because there is a process to produce the spotted effect that is described.

So, according to you, the Ice Age didn’t reach the Middle East (maybe you could research ‘snowball earth’ before making that claim)

,

Wow! really,

1st The snowball earth is a hypothesis. That is why it is called the snowball earth hypothesis.

2nd The rocks that were found to form this HYPOTHESIS were from the precambrian layer. So even if these rocks are form from ice. It would only mean that these rocks were formed before the flood.

The problem for naturalist with the snowball earth HYPOTHESIS, is what thawed the earth after it became a snowball?

therefore it wasn’t required to be written about in the bible. Then in almost the same breath, the same bible miraculously contains a ‘mechanism’ for an Ice Age.

Yes, a mechanism that naturalist theories do not have and I believe that I explained what the mechanism was volcanic eruptions. These volcanic eruptions were caused by the breaking up and movement of the tectonic plates and the residual moisture that would have been on the continents after the flood waters receded. The ice age is evidence of the flood event along with the mass extinction we find in the fossil record. The Bible does mention the flood but why would it mention the ice age when it had no effect on men.



I will skip the rant and move on.

Quote:
Creationist do not deny the laws of nature.

Oh, but they do. They most certainly do. They will change the speed of light if they believe it doesn’t fit with a young earth.

I thought that physicist would revisit the varying speed of light hypothesis when there was a lack of evidence for inflation. So now it seems as if a varying speed of light may be possible. Not that I really care. Creationist have other theories that also predict how light can travel faster than it does in the four dimensions that we perceive.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q87 ... eed-slowed
https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/is-th ... owing-down
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5091436

This new theory is kind of interesting I will have to read up on it.

[Diagoras]

Re: fine-tuning argument:

It is also used by those who are making a case for the multiverse theory like Brian Greene and many others.

For the record, here you have declined a refutation of the fine-tuning argument. Instead, you simply claim that ‘others do it too, not just Creationists.’ You’ll observe that I never claimed that only Creationists used the fine-tuning argument.

Re: Hypotheses (for the beginning of the universe)

Not knowing would mean that all options are on the table.

Not quite. I’m sure you’ll agree that invisible pink unicorns, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Thor, etc. are options which should rightly be discarded, yes? Why would we do that? Simply for lack of evidence. Same goes for any god, or aliens.

Naturalism is nothing more than a pantheistic belief that nature found a way to produce the universe and life.

pantheism (noun):
1. a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God.
2. the worship or tolerance of many gods.

Neither definition fits with scientific naturalism. Your claim is baseless.

Re: chromosomes

Are you trying to communicate that the Noah narrative in the Bible would not have produced a single Y chromosome in men?

No, I’m not. I’m trying to communicate that the word ‘chromosome’ is nowhere to be found in the bible, and that any ‘biblical evidence’ for predicting anything to do with genetics is only after retro-fitting modern knowledge to exaggerated interpretation of a select number of chosen verses.

Naturalist have no answer for this.

Is your internet connection blocked? I would have thought that searching for “origin of the Y chromosome� might yield at least one or two scholarly articles. My search for the same phrase came up with over 41 million results, which seems rather optimistic - and probably includes a few duplicated links. Here’s an example. Note how the evidence evinced from the genetic study matches the evidence from unrelated archaeological studies. Also note how well it matches the hypothesis that the earth is a lot older than 6,000 years old. So, not a problem for science, but a real problem for anyone self-constrained by a ‘Statement of Faith’.

Re: Bibleref explanation of genetics:

What makes me believe that this is not a miracle is because there is a process to produce the spotted effect that is described.

<bolding mine>

A process created from your imagination. One might call it a ‘hypothesis’ if one were being generous.

Re: Ice Ages:

The snowball earth is a hypothesis. That is why it is called the snowball earth hypothesis.

We agree on that, at least.

The problem for naturalist (sic) with the snowball earth HYPOTHESIS, is what thawed the earth after it became a snowball?

Answer: increased volcanic activity at a time when tectonic movements shifted continental land masses from low to higher latitudes.

N.B. Only 482,000 search results came up.

The Bible does mention the flood but why would it mention the ice age when it had no effect on men.

I think I’ve lost track of what your position is on this. Can you just simply point to the part(s) of the bible that support your claim that an Ice Age occurred after the supposed global flood?

Re: ‘Problems’:

I will skip the rant and move on.

As you wish. To summarise for other readers (and stripped of my hyperbole), my claim was “Creationists are in denial (of a 4.5 billion year-old earth)�. Thus far, not contested.

Concluding thoughts:

Once again, I note a tendency on your part to leap from topic to topic, with a “Well, how about your problem with...�, rather than sticking to any original point of discussion. I’ve stayed out of slab tectonics, but we’ve covered Ice Ages and genetics (biblical evidence asked for but not supplied), fine-tuning (deflected question and not answered) and pantheism (incorrectly attributed). It looks like you’re angling towards introducing the speed of light into the mix, as if that’s going to help more. I further note a self-assurance on your part when claiming scientists ‘have no answer’ to a particular problem, when it should be clear from a simple Google search that answers abound. It would surely be more intellectually honest to say either, “The opposing viewpoint appears to be self-contradictory, e.g. here and here� (and submit examples),or at least, “I’ve not studied any of the evidence from the opposing viewpoint�.

[Tiberius47]

After over 150 years, why has evolution still not answered the most basic questions of theist?

Charles Hodge Systematic theology copywrite 1870.

Although Strauss greatly exaggerates when he says that men of science in our day are unanimous
in supporting the doctrine of spontaneous generation, it is undoubtedly true that a large class of
naturalists, especially on the continent of Europe, are in favour of that doctrine. Professor Huxley,
in his discourse on the “Physical Basis of Life,� lends to it the whole weight of his authority. He
does not indeed expressly teach that dead matter becomes active without being subject to the
influence of previous living matter; but his whole paper is designed to show that life is the result
of the peculiar arrangement of the molecules of matter. His doctrine is that “the matter of life is
composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are
aggregated.�2 “If the properties of water,� he says, “may be properly said to result from the nature
and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say
that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules.�3 In his
address before the British Association, he says that if he could look back far enough into the past
he should expect to see “the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter.� And although
that address is devoted to showing that spontaneous generation, or Abiogenesis, as it is called, has
never been proved, he says, “I must carefully guard myself against the supposition that I intend to
suggest that no such thing as Abiogenesis has ever taken place in the past or ever will take place
in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and
every day making prodigious strides, I think it would be the height of presumption for any man to
say that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties we call ‘vital,’ may not some
day be artificially brought together.�4 All this supposes that life is the product of physical causes;
that all that is requisite for its production is “to bring together� the necessary conditions.

The theist argument has not changed in 150 years.

In 1870, the full problem in the fossil record of the Cambrian explosion had still not been fully realized.

In 1870 an equation to calculate rate of beneficial mutations in organisms, which makes it impossible for the cambrian explosion to happen through naturalistic means.

The Cambrian explosion happened over tens of millions of years.

And why are you relying on information from 150 years ago. Do you think evolution has not got more and better evidence in the intervening century and a half?