Internet Creationists

[Absurd Atheist]

Quick post here on internet creationists and confirmation bias that I frequently run across. Usually I ignore it but this person seemed reasonable until they started trying to prove the flood covers millions of years of prehistoric animals that apparently faced recent extinction. This is only a piece of the conversation but essentially this person is trying to form a conclusion on the stratification layers of sediment and fossils. The discussion is the role of the Flood in the creationist mass death of prehistoric creatures.

"He also mentions birds as coming later, and evolutionist get this from the fossil record, which could have been laid down in the flood. There is ample evidence to this with the events like Mt St Helen going off.

It is strange that the smaller animals in the fossil record are at the bottom, and the bigger animal that would survive longer swimming in a flood are at the top. The birds can only fly above the flood for so long, but they would outlast a lot of the animals he referred to, which would put them higher in the fossil record.

So all this organized mass death in the fossil record isn't from evolution at all; it is just survival of the fittest." ~ Anonymous

Thoughts?

[Hydra009]

The whole Flood mythology has plagued with numerous problems and honestly, it's hard to believe that anyone older than 10 seriously believes that this is stuff is scientifically accurate.

1) The Sumerians and other cultures are suspiciously unaffected by the end of the world.
2) The logistics of gathering the animals (according to creationists, penguins journeyed to the Middle East and waddled up the ramp to the ark)
3) Caring for the animals
4) The physics of the Flood (there's not enough water, that sort of flood it would flatten the hell out of the Earth's surface, and where the water went)
5) The animals returning to their habitats and diversifying at breakneck speed (creationists argue that evolution can't even happen slowly over millions of years, yet they propose that modern species diverged from a few "kinds" over the course of a few thousand years)
6) An impossibly enormous food web prior to the Flood that apparently recovered just fine after 99.99% of species were wiped out literally overnight.
7) A fossil record that doesn't match flood geology at all.

And that's just from the top of my head.

[Absurd Atheist]

The whole Flood mythology has plagued with numerous problems and honestly, it's hard to believe that anyone older than 10 seriously believes that this is stuff is scientifically accurate.

...

Yes, at this point in the conversation I was in a state of shock. There's just so much wrong with this I can't even begin. But I mentioned the animal population point twice and was ignored both times. Later someone threw out the whole "Mars flood" = Earth flood argument.

[Baruch]

The Catastrophism of Velikovsky ... might be useful to Creationists, but not really.  Might as well believe that the gods were Sumerian astronauts ;-)

[Blackleaf]

Ready for the Flood!

[SGOS]

Creationists come up with some hilarious explanations for things.  This was a new one for me. 

The JWs put out a hardback explanation with pictures pointing out how the Earth is placed so perfectly to sustain life, the right distance from the sun, the temperature variations conducive to life, all scientific facts, but they spin it so that all the life requirements could not have been a coincidence.  I might even be tempted to agree, if there were only 20 planets in the whole universe.  But with billions and trillions of planets, life had to happen somewhere.

But the great Jehovah Witness comeback to the numerical probability is, "Yeah, but WHY is our Earth the one that was perfect?"  This would be funny as hell, if it weren't so pitiful.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Creationists come up with some hilarious explanations for things.  This was a new one for me. 

The JWs put out a hardback explanation with pictures pointing out how the Earth is placed so perfectly to sustain life, the right distance from the sun, the temperature variations conducive to life, all scientific facts, but they spin it so that all the life requirements could not have been a coincidence.  I might even be tempted to agree, if there were only 20 planets in the whole universe.  But with billions and trillions of planets, life had to happen somewhere.

But the great Jehovah Witness comeback to the numerical probability is, "Yeah, but WHY is our Earth the one that was perfect?"  This would be funny as hell, if it weren't so pitiful.

Earth "perfect"? They've never been to Utah.

[Absurd Atheist]

Creationists come up with some hilarious explanations for things.  This was a new one for me. 

The JWs put out a hardback explanation with pictures pointing out how the Earth is placed so perfectly to sustain life, the right distance from the sun, the temperature variations conducive to life, all scientific facts, but they spin it so that all the life requirements could not have been a coincidence.  I might even be tempted to agree, if there were only 20 planets in the whole universe.  But with billions and trillions of planets, life had to happen somewhere.

But the great Jehovah Witness comeback to the numerical probability is, "Yeah, but WHY is our Earth the one that was perfect?"  This would be funny as hell, if it weren't so pitiful.

I agree with the point about billions of planets leading to life on one (that we know so far). Especially if we all except the notion of Earth over a billion years old. I think it's hard for people to let go of the idea that they could be relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

[SGOS]

I agree with the point about billions of planets leading to life on one (that we know so far). Especially if we all except the notion of Earth over a billion years old. I think it's hard for people to let go of the idea that they could be relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Even life, I doubt is that significant.  It's just chemical combinations with some unique properties, just as rocks and minerals have their unique properties.  Throw in some carbon, and more unique compounds form, and the basics of life are found in abundance all over the Earth, and apparently, throughout the universe.  I think we see life as something super-special, probably because we are life.  But life is just the product of natural laws and natural occurring substances; Complex to be sure, but inevitable in the right conditions as chemicals combine in a near infinite number of combinations for no other reason than that's what chemicals made of elements naturally do.  Introduce DNA, which is just another natural byproduct of natural processes, and things start to get amazing.  Life is amazing, but so is the universe.  And life is but one amazing thing that can happen is such a roomy environment like the universe, where all sorts of things, some which we haven't even thought of, are happening all the time.

And then someone has to come along and ask, "Yeah, but why did it happen on the planet we live on?  Can that be a coincidence?"  You know right there, that you won't get that person to understand when you explain it to them.  Well, some will, but some aren't there yet and never will be.

[widdershins]

I seem to remember that they always mention Mt Saint Helens for some reason, though I can't for the life of me remember why.  I think it might have something to do with carbon dating and usually in the conversation a fossilized foot in a boot tends to come up.  I remember these arguments from the '90s.

The thing is, we know how strata are formed in rocks.  We know how long it takes.  We know you can't create diverse, thick strata in 40 days and 40 nights.  And the idea that literally EVERY SINGLE fossil would be in its personalized layer depending on how long it was LIKELY to survive is ludicrous.  Even if that did make sense you would still have the occasional fossil out of place.  You'd have the rat that found a log to hold onto and ended up starving to death rather than drowning, for instance.  This assumes that it is essentially guaranteed that larger animals will, without exception, live longer and that all like species will die virtually simultaneously in inexplicably precise waves.  That is just stupid.

And, finally, using evolution as a guide scientists have been able to locate exact unknown species they predicted to be in a certain place.  In the case of Tiktaalik scientists predicted that they would find a fossil in a certain place at a certain depth showing a transition from fish to land animal.  They went to that place, dug to that depth and, lo and behold, found a new species for which there was no evidence before, a fish with bones in its fins which equate bone-for-bone with modern day wrist bones.

And that's the difference between science and flood nonsense.  The flood nonsensers start with a conclusion and then look at the evidence to see how they can force it to fit and they're done.  Scientists look at the evidence, THEN draw a conclusion.  But at no point to they actually declare themselves to be "done".  Instead they keep testing it, over an over, saying, "If this is right then we should find X at point Y.  Let's see if we do!"

[SGOS]

I seem to remember that they always mention Mt Saint Helens for some reason, though I can't for the life of me remember why.  I think it might have something to do with carbon dating and usually in the conversation a fossilized foot in a boot tends to come up.  I remember these arguments from the '90s.

The thing is, we know how strata are formed in rocks.  We know how long it takes.  We know you can't create diverse, thick strata in 40 days and 40 nights.  And the idea that literally EVERY SINGLE fossil would be in its personalized layer depending on how long it was LIKELY to survive is ludicrous.  Even if that did make sense you would still have the occasional fossil out of place.  You'd have the rat that found a log to hold onto and ended up starving to death rather than drowning, for instance.  This assumes that it is essentially guaranteed that larger animals will, without exception, live longer and that all like species will die virtually simultaneously in inexplicably precise waves.  That is just stupid.

And, finally, using evolution as a guide scientists have been able to locate exact unknown species they predicted to be in a certain place.  In the case of Tiktaalik scientists predicted that they would find a fossil in a certain place at a certain depth showing a transition from fish to land animal.  They went to that place, dug to that depth and, lo and behold, found a new species for which there was no evidence before, a fish with bones in its fins which equate bone-for-bone with modern day wrist bones.

And that's the difference between science and flood nonsense.  The flood nonsensers start with a conclusion and then look at the evidence to see how they can force it to fit and they're done.  Scientists look at the evidence, THEN draw a conclusion.  But at no point to they actually declare themselves to be "done".  Instead they keep testing it, over an over, saying, "If this is right then we should find X at point Y.  Let's see if we do!"

Creationism doesn't do science.  It doesn't even do field work.  They just sit around and try to shoot holes in science.  Big Whoop!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Creationism doesn't do science.  It doesn't even do field work.  They just sit around and try to shoot holes in science.  Big Whoop!

I call it "Science by Gotcha".

[Blackleaf]

Creationism doesn't do science.  It doesn't even do field work.  They just sit around and try to shoot holes in science.  Big Whoop!

I'd almost call it philosophy, except that doing so would be an insult to real philosophers who put genuine effort into trying to prove things they know nothing about.

[Duncle]

I'd almost call it philosophy, except that doing so would be an insult to real philosophers who put genuine effort into trying to prove things they know nothing about.

Creationism isn't Philosophy, really it isn't. Nor, of course, is it any sort of Science. Its Religion, pure and simple, and this applies to all of the various versions of creationism- from the Young Earth stuff to ID.

[SGOS]

Creationism isn't Philosophy,

Why not?