So...how were things "created"?

[Scotracer]

Since there's a certain sector of religious faith that believes everything was "created" rather than forming over billions of years due to natural processes, I feel the need to pose a question:

How were these things created?

Science is used to increase the sum of knowledge of mankind. Simply stating something was created doesn't really help, does it? So, please tell me and everyone else just how these things were created.

[Scotracer]

This thread has just fallen into the biggest elephant trap I ever saw!

Why assume things need to be created? That is where so many of us go wrong in looking for a 'creator', there is nothing to suggest we were ever created. In fact the fundamental laws of physics state the no matter or energy can be created or destroyed. We as conscious beings on this planet have never seen anything created or destroyed, only changed. When a baby is born, life isn't created, but food that the mother has been eating takes on the form of a baby. When A bomb goes off all the atoms and particles and energy is preserved, they just move about quite a bit.

Creation and destruction are human constructs to describe CHNAGE in the world around us, there is absolutely NO creation or destruction in nature, only change.

So errr, in answer to the original question, they weren't created.... yup.

I know they weren't but that's not what I'm after. I am assuming their position is correct and asking them to explain it. Since it ends up being a convoluted way to say "magic" it reveals Creationism for what it really is. Not that was really necessary anyway...

[Elvis Trout]

This thread has just fallen into the biggest elephant trap I ever saw!

Why assume things need to be created? That is where so many of us go wrong in looking for a 'creator', there is nothing to suggest we were ever created. In fact the fundamental laws of physics state the no matter or energy can be created or destroyed. We as conscious beings on this planet have never seen anything created or destroyed, only changed. When a baby is born, life isn't created, but food that the mother has been eating takes on the form of a baby. When A bomb goes off all the atoms and particles and energy is preserved, they just move about quite a bit.

Creation and destruction are human constructs to describe CHNAGE in the world around us, there is absolutely NO creation or destruction in nature, only change.

So errr, in answer to the original question, they weren't created.... yup.

I know they weren't but that's not what I'm after. I am assuming their position is correct and asking them to explain it. Since it ends up being a convoluted way to say "magic" it reveals Creationism for what it really is. Not that was really necessary anyway...

Therein lies the problem, they believe in 'magic', they believe in 'poof' a universe! and you can't argue with them because it's a belief, instead of thinking that they have to prove it's right they think it's up to us to prove them wrong otherwise WE are wrong.

[micatala]

Moderator Warning

Alan Clarke

Bible Babble...

This practice of not only snipping out the actual quote, but making a pejorative comment about it in the same breath is a form of incivility. In quoting another poster, one should quote accurately as well as avoid deliberately truncating a quote to give the wrong impression of the person's actual statements and position.

[micatala]

To address these questions you are looking at the wrong chart. The scale is set to look at total population not population growth. For that a Log scale is more appropriate. As you can see, there is a reasonably constant growth rate up to about 5000 BC.

You are getting ahead of yourself by not answering the original question. We’ll deal with controversies concerning “growth rate� later. The first chart that YOU supplied was one of TOTAL POPULATION. Did you make a mistake by sharing the wrong information? If you did, then that mistake can be forgiven, but now that the cat is out of the bag, why don’t we discuss the implications of what has been revealed.

McCulloch can certainly clarify himself as he wishes, but I believe Alan Clarke is misunderstanding that the second graph gives the same information as the first, only in a different form which makes it easier to see both the smaller population numbers and the larger.

Based on McCulloch's second graph, the population in 2400 BC would be roughly 20 million. The population in 10,000 BC was approximately 4 million. Unless McCulloch corrects me, I think it is safe to assume these are the same numbers represented on the first graph, but with a linear scale instead of a log scale, these numbers are dwarfed so as to be indistinguishable from 0. This is understandable as 20 million out of 6 billion is the same as 1 out of 300.

Please locate 2400 B.C. (date of Biblical Flood) on your excellent graph, endorsed by you as "what we know", and tell me what the population is.

See above. The graph gives the value as roughly 20 million. Just a few more than were present on the hypothetical ark.

The population increases and decreases due to factors like availibility [sic] of food, virulence of disease, war, hardships of life and many other factors.

I really hate to take a downward spiral into the manifold distractions that Grumpy alludes to above, which interject so many variables that virtually nothing can be known with reasonable certainty, so for the love of science, why don’t we zero in on the best and simplest evidences concerning TOTAL POPULATION? The reason for our concerted effort is obvious: If there are 100 million people on the Earth near the time 2200 B.C. then my model is somewhat in trouble.

According to the graph, your model is in serious trouble. However, it was in much more serious trouble already based on the geological evidence we have, without even considering the human population.

[McCulloch]

Please locate 2400 B.C. (date of Biblical Flood) on your excellent graph, endorsed by you as "what we know", and tell me what the population is.

According to Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, 1978, "Atlas of World Population History," Facts on File, New York, ISBN 0-7139-1031-3. the world population at 3000 BC was 14 million and at 2000 BC it was 27 million. So at the time of the alleged flood, 2400 BC it would have been somewhere between 14 and 27 million.
According to Population Reference Bureau: Carl Haub, 2008, "2008 World Population Data Sheet." the world population at 8000 BC (5600 years before the alleged flood and even prior to the creation week), the population of the world was about 5 million humans.

[Cathar1950]

Please locate 2400 B.C. (date of Biblical Flood) on your excellent graph, endorsed by you as "what we know", and tell me what the population is.

According to Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, 1978, "Atlas of World Population History," Facts on File, New York, ISBN 0-7139-1031-3. the world population at 3000 BC was 14 million and at 2000 BC it was 27 million. So at the time of the alleged flood, 2400 BC it would have been somewhere between 14 and 27 million.
According to Population Reference Bureau: Carl Haub, 2008, "2008 World Population Data Sheet." the world population at 8000 BC (5600 years before the alleged flood and even prior to the creation week), the population of the world was about 5 million humans.

And evidence of undisturbed settlements going all the way back.
Then the population was down to maybe a few thousand sometime between 75 and 65 thousand years ago.
I think it is so cool to see all these paths humans have taken.
The 19th century Biblical Christianity with its fight against liberalism within has been extended for consumption in our consumer market where this stuff sells.
But it hardly even makes sense as myth when it is taken literally.

[Grumpy]

Alan Clarke

Why are we not then up to our keesters in____(rabbits, rats, cockroaches, bacteria...)??? Genetic data indicates a bottleneck about 70,000 years ago(based on the DNA in mitochondria, which is inherited only from the maternal line).

"The "Weak Garden of Eden" model for the origin and dispersal of modern humans posits a spread around 100,000 years ago followed by population bottlenecks. Then, around 50,000 years ago, a dramatic growth occurred in genetically isolated, small populations. In a 1998 article, Stanley Ambrose proposed an alternative hypothesis—a volcanic winter scenario—to explain recent human differentiation. The bottleneck was caused by a volcanic winter resulting from the super-eruption of Toba in Sumatra. If Ambrose's hypothesis is correct, modern human variations differentiated abruptly through founder effect, genetic drift, and adaptation to local environments after around 70,000 years ago.

Ambrose points out that the Out of Africa dispersal date of around 100,000 years ago fits the generally warm, humid last interglacial period, 130 -74,000 years ago. An impressive body of paleontological evidence shows an Afro-Arabian biotic community expanded northward during this period. Several such multi-species dispersals out of Africa have occurred during previous interglacial phases. He considers the variants of the Replacement model to be more accurate and realistic than the Multiregional models.

The number of DNA mutations within a population increases temporally. When a population has passed through a bottleneck, the mutation distribution evidences the bottleneck. DNA studies have identified a significant bottleneck (or bottlenecks) during the last glacial period.

The Multiple Dispersals model proposes a population bottleneck occurred when cold, dry climates isolated populations in Africa. Additional bottlenecks occurred through physical bottlenecks such as the Sinai Peninsula. The first dispersal of anatomically modern humans, to the Levant around 100,000 year ago, is evidenced by early modern human skeletons in the Near East. According to Ambrose, this first dispersal apparently failed to permanently establish modern humans outside of Africa. Genetic evidence shows that non-African populations can be divided into southern Australasian and northern Eurasian populations that divided 50-75,000 years ago.

In contrast, Ambrose's model proposes a scenario of a globally synchronous bottleneck. If bottlenecks were caused by the cold climate, duration was approximately 10,000 years with release 60,000 years ago. If the eruption of Toba alone caused the bottleneck, then release may have followed within a few decades of the volcanic winter 71,000 years ago, or the bottleneck could have lasted 1000 years, during the coldest portion of the Ice Age following the Toba eruption. In the bottleneck scenarios, more individuals survived in the African tropical refugia, resulting in the greatest genetic diversity survival in Africa.

Ambrose concludes that bottlenecks occurred among genetically isolated human populations because of a six-year long volcanic winter and subsequent hyper-cold millennium after the cataclysmic super-eruption of Toba. This volcanic winter played a role in recent human differentiation. The resultant combination of founder effects and genetic drift may account for low human genetic diversity as well as population differences associated with so-called races. The bottleneck hypothesis offers an explanation for why humans exhibit so little genetic variation, yet superficially appear diverse. It also affords an explanation for the apparent recent coalescence of mtDNA and African origins."

http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/bottleneck.html

Populations prior to the bottlenecks(there have been several, the last ended after the last ice age 10-15 thousand years ago)are IRRELIVANT to the growth curves since then. So, the growth curves you say are because of the non-sensical flood myths have a much better scientific basis, supported by the FACT that man has been on this Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions(it depends on your definition of where human being we are now begins and the ape we were then leaves off), we have the fossils that show that to be fact, not theory.

Grumpy

PS I find it tedious and useless to quote the endless logical falacies and outright falsehoods from this poster. Every time he is corrected he waits a while and just repeats the same stuff that he posted without valid evidence in the first place, often the source for his unsubstantiated BS is the Bible, which is not a valid source for scientific information on any subject.

[Alan Clarke]

THE EVOLUTIONIST’S TOOLBOX


Where did matter come from?

1. it was spontaneously generated
2. it is eternal
3. it was created

I'll take number 2. Eternal however does not mean for an infinite length of time. Matter is eternal means that at no time was there any less matter & energy in the universe than there is now. Time (or spacetime if you like) is finite.

When you say, "at no time" do you mean during a time when there was no time, or at a later time when time began? This is important, because you end by saying "...than there is now." It is important because if "now" is not "now" then was "now" in a time before your stipulation of "at no time"? I know my question may sound confusing, but it's really not, because any "time" that you change "time", the definition of "time" takes on a new meaning every "time". I’ve been suspicious of this for a long time. At the present time, I’m going to put you at the top of the toolbox list because your definition of “eternal� smacks of the Jehovah’s Witness definition. I don’t want to insinuate a direct correlation, but the #1 reason many unwittingly fall into cults is because they embrace a new definition of an old word. “Eternal� suddenly takes on a new meaning by saying that “eternal life� or “eternal punishment� doesn’t mean “forever�, but rather the “nature� of the life or punishment is “eternal� whether it be for a short or long period of time. If you remain insistent upon your new definition, then I suggest you study this before you run out of time. These people all have something in common: They were duped. Bad science and false religion are inextricably linked as evidenced by this tampering with the normal cause/action relationship. When was the last time you "fell upward" for an appreciable distance?

THE EVOLUTIONIST'S TOOLBOX
Words Don't Mean What They Mean
The idea is best expressed here: “Eternal however does not mean for an infinite length of time.�

Infinite Time: Given enough time, anything can happen. The only limit is the human imagination. The Universe’s supposed 13.7 billion-year age is not even a limit. You can add multiple universes and time dimensions.

Bending of Laws: If non-changeable thermodynamic laws get in your way, you can easily move the system boundaries or redefine the terms to suit your needs.

Curves of Choice: You can turn any non-favorable evidence for your theory, such as a human population with too few people for an old Earth, to a favorable interpretation by simply choosing a curve of choice to suit your needs. Magnetic fields, population growths, erosion rates, genetic loads, ocean salinities, etc., can all be interpreted to suit your needs.

Ad Hoc Explanations are those given after the fact without any other justification than the express purpose of explaining that fact. When your theory fails to predict, you can fix it on the fly with an Oort cloud, dark matter, or some punctuated equilibrium.

Play the Joker: In some card games, the Joker exceeds every other card in power. You must use this card sparingly though. If you play it too early, you may loose the benefit of having it when you are about to loose. Here is your “Joker�: While the concept of a universe being created from nothing sounds improbable, it is perfectly consistent with the laws of conservation of energy because its total energy value is zero... The ultimate conclusion was that, on the contrary to popular belief, it was possible for the universe to suddenly appear from nothing. (source)

While on the subject of “time� dimensions, the Bible is second to none when it comes to describing principles that modern science is just now catching up to. Wouldn’t modern cosmologists be embarrassed if they discovered that their prowess as a visionary lagged behind by about 2000 years?

Rev 10:6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer.

Is the idea of “time no longer� really that difficult of a concept to grasp? Anybody can say the phrase, but being able to mathematically construct a cosmologic model using multiple dimensions is another story. Being able to combine that idea with “expansion� or matter and energy entities is monumental. Someone would have to be near genius to figure it all out. If the prevailing culture of mathematics isn’t "up to par", then that person might have to invent new concepts if his theory is to advance. I’ve often wondered, “Where do these geniuses get their ideas?�

I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding. This most beautiful system [the Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

In a way, Newton was like a Prophet to the world of science. Prophets are not always received because they upset the “status quo� of acceptable beliefs. The very foundation of science is controversial today. Some contend that “natural causes� are the only acceptable answer for articulating cause and effect relationships. Other’s, not satisfied with a definition that pre-supposes an answer, want to look further than the current dimensions. Many cosmologists transgress this partition frequently and are not rejected by the science community, even though their discoveries have “never been observed�. In the same fashion, many have taken a literal rendering of the Bible in order to “see� what has not been observed. Whether or not those individuals have actually contributed to science is arguable.

"About the Time of the End, a body of men will be raised up who will turn their attention to the Prophecies, and insist upon their literal interpretation, in the midst of much clamor and opposition." - Isaac Newton

If you don't believe in prophecy and literal fulfillment, then how do you account for this:

1) I am one in the "body of men".

2) I wasn't empowered to debate against you by my own actions but by another who "raised" me up.

3) I "turned my attention" to the prophecies of the Bible for my ultimate source of truth, rather than myself as the ultimate source of truth, which would have been "natural causes".

4) I "insist upon a literal interpretation".

5) I am in the "midst of much clamor and opposition".

Did Newton despair of those who "insist upon a literal interpretation"?
Who will consider natural causes?
Who will ONLY consider natural causes?
Who posits an eternal mind followed by contingent matter?
Who posits matter followed by contingent minds?

[Cathar1950]

If you don't believe in prophecy and literal fulfillment, then how do you account for this:

1) I am one in the "body of men".

2) I wasn't empowered to debate against you by my own actions but by another who "raised" me up.

3) I "turned my attention" to the prophecies of the Bible for my ultimate source of truth, rather than myself as the ultimate source of truth, which would have been "natural causes".

4) I "insist upon a literal interpretation".

5) I am in the "midst of much clamor and opposition".

Did Newton despair of those who "insist upon a literal interpretation"?
Who will consider natural causes?
Who will ONLY consider natural causes?
Who posits an eternal mind followed by contingent matter?
Who posits matter followed by contingent minds?

I can see why Grumpy writes some things that are looking more and more like observations.
How is biological evolution related to where matter can from?
How come you don't take literally where God kills or subdues the Sea monster in Job and Psalms?
How you prattle on.

[Scotracer]

This thread was about your concepts not attacking the current ones.

This is the common Creationist tactic and thinking - if I can disprove Evolution, Creationism must be true!!