Commenter David just gave me a great opportunity to comment on a BioLogos article in the course of our conversation. Here's my latest reply:
David,
Did you really just cite BioLogos to me?
Why would that faze me? My position is that the Christian worldview is PRESUPPOSED, which means that God is the highest authority, and if He said how it all went down, limited men using limited methodology, limited instrumentation, limited assumptions and limited means to substantiate those assumptions, limited time, limited knowledge, and limited access don't really have much of a chance to overturn what God said. Why would it?
Here's another way of looking at it: In the case of the question of evolution, old-earth evolutionists have set out, as I have said before, to take the equivalent of a 1,000,000-year-old auto accident, to disregard completely the testimony of the 100% trustworthy eyewitness who actually even decreed that the whole thing happen, and to send a forensics (CSI) team to the scene to dig around and find scattered pieces of car and glass, 1,000,000-year-old grooves and scratches, and not reconstruct but rather construct what happened in opposition to what the witness says he decreed to happen.
Why would what the CSI team said matter to me? Why would I trust their findings and conclusions? And that's just 1 million years!
OK, to the BioLogos article. My guess is that we'll unearth a few assumptions. Just maybe.
Each winter-spring cycle produces a dark-light colored sediment couplet, or varve. In both examples, each varve represents one year.
1) Assumes God created trees with no rings. But of course, and as Al Mohler reminded us in his recent talk on "Why Does the Universe Look So Old?", God created trees and other plants mature.
2) Are there living trees that are more than 4000 yrs old?
The core contained an uninterrupted sequence of varves, with a total count in excess of 100,00
See, there's the assumption at work.
And if you complain that it's deceptive or sthg for God to have created trees with rings already in them, remember:
1) That's a philosophical, not an evidential, objection. Justify your philosophical objection.
2) God told you how it all went down, and here you're looking for evidence to overturn what He said. He's not in the wrong; you are.
What if in the distant past, multiple varves were deposited per year? More specifically, what if a massive flood with thousands of surges back and forth across the land laid down thousands of varves in a single year? Fortunately, we do not have to depend on assumptions, but can actually make measurements to determine if this happened.
Not my claim, but others' claim. It will be interesting to see how he answers it, though.
The high degree of linearity (straightness) of this data has two possible interpretations:
Let me step in and summarise his Option 1: God lied, miscommunicated, or was ignorant when He wrote the Bible.
Now back to him:
Option 2: God started with a fast rate of carbon 14 decay and dozens of diatom blooms and die-offs each year, but then intentionally and precisely slowed down each independent and unrelated process in such a way as to make it falsely look as if the data confirms the accuracy of carbon-14 and varve counting as legitimate methods of determining age.
Option 2 should be unacceptable to all Christians, for it means God manipulated his creation so that a study of it would convincingly tell a story that was not in fact true.
1) There's the assumption at work right there. If uniformitarianism is false, God lied. But why should I believe that? Where's the argument?
Do Davidson and Wolgemuth know what was happening in the world right around then, whether on their timeline or the biblical one (ie, mine)? What evidence can they give us that carbon-14 decay never did change its rate? Even that sthg natural such as a change in radiation or some other event did not transpire to speed it up for a time? Such would be to prove a universal negative, and that without a time machine. Short answer - they cannot. So why do they make such leaps? B/c they have to, else they'd have no answer and no point to make, no way to use this line of argumentation to whack the Bible and bring it down to where it's more comfortable and manageable, not as God's inerrant self-revelation.
2) As I've already stated, it's not deception when you overlook the explicit truth of God's self-revelation and bring your limited everything and unbelieving assumptions to bear on rocks, which are not, shall we say, as good communicators as is text.
We argue with great conviction that Option 2 above does not reflect the God of King David who proclaimed that the heavens declare the glory of God
1) Yes, it is clear that their conviction is very deeply emotionally invested for them. What they should do is ask God to change their emotions so that they glorify Him instead of subjugating Him to their limited reason.
2) What is their exegetical argument that "declare the glory of God" = "communicate about God with the same degree or a greater degree of understandability and informational content as His self-revelation in the Scripture"?
OK, back to David:
I'll dig a trench connecting them. The point is, if you have any doubts about the relationship of the layers, you can put them (to) rest by testing.
But I've asked for an argument twice, and here's the third time. Does your argument amount to, "Duh, it's obvious"?
If so, then I respond in the same manner: Nuh uh!
I know that you know that we can relate the layer in one locality to the layers in another locality
We can relate them, sure. Telling that they're the same is another thing.
Look, I don't care much about the relation of layers to other layers. What I'm trying to get you to see is how big a role your unprovable assumptions play in your position. Your view is NOT based on "merely the evidence", however much you may think it is. It's based on mostly assumptions, unbiblical ones.
"I can think of a way that a layer might be deposited and then dragged up, messed around by surging water movement, and then mixed with other stuff, then redeposited."
I'd love to here you expand on this thought. Could we have some details, please?
If water is surging out of the sky and primarily out of the "floodgates of the deep", and swirling around all the topography, some higher, some lower, of the Earth, there might be a little bit of upward and downward, sideways, diagonal currents. It's not a difficult concept to understand. And it doesn't have to happen at just one time, either - the Flood was in effect for months.
Can we agree that we can use relative dating in this manner?
I'm interested in seeing where this goes, so for the sake of argument I will agree that we can use relative dating to date the layers with respect to each other.
DAVID: Even a YEC geologist wouldn’t argue the way in which you are arguing.
RHO: OK, but that doesn't concern me very much.
Well, it ought to. 'Cause if even a YEC geologist wouldn't argue in this way, you know that we must be talking about a really bad argument here.
You should know that my fragile ego, to say nothing of Answers in Genesis' egos, is hemorrhaging now.
"I'm here and I wasn't produced ex nihilo."
How do you know this? Don't assume. Prove that you weren't produced ex nihilo. Ya see? Anyone can play this game, and it gets us precisely nowhere.
1) My parents were present at my birth.
2) Were you present when these organisms died?
3) Again you persist with your category error. I'm not talking about whether the fossilised organisms had PARENTS, but whether they had CHILDREN. Deal with my argument.
4) I have to note that, again, you've failed to show us any reason to accept your fossil record storyline. Just guesses, based on your apparent heroes, Dick Dawk and Chuck Darwin.
That's what we're doing here with fossil species. Making reasonable presumptions
A frank admission, and one I appreciate. Thank you. We may now dispense with the fossil record "argument". It is an assumption. Whether it is reasonable is precisely what is in question - you seem to think that sometimes assumptions based on no evidence are reasonable, and yet others (as you'd say the YEC position is) are not. Why the special pleading? What is behind this selectivity?
What is the fossil record good for? It's really good for testing hypotheses.
Like what? Please be specific how a fossil record-based hypothesis helps evol and "destroys YEC", especially when anyone is justified, as you just admitted, in pointing out that such arguments are based on bare assumptions. Thanks!
27 comments:
And on that very post's combox - this guy quotes AiG saying more or less the same thing as I've said here. Well done AiG.
The commenter dismisses it as "junk science", but
1) no argument is given, and
2) this isn't science at all, but logic as well as philosophy of science. So the commenter commits a common but ignorant category error.
I need to give serious thought to how much time I wish to waste here. But I’ll waste just a little bit more.
“Did you really just cite BioLogos to me?”
The source is irrelevant. The important thing is not the particular source. The important thing is the data presented.
“Why would that faze me? My position is that the Christian worldview is PRESUPPOSED…
What’s another word for “presupposed”? Assumption.
Yes, I understand that you start with a conclusion and you refuse to acknowledge that possibility that you might be wrong. Problem is, you’re one of those “limited men”. And that means that you’re just as fallible and just as likely to be wrong as the “limited men”. So, if it happens that you’re wrong, how would you know that you’re wrong? How can you operate under that assumption that you are infallible in your conclusions about the history of life on Earth?
“Disregard completely the testimony of the 100% trustworthy eyewitness…”
How do you KNOW that you have the testimony of a 100 % trustworthy eyewitness? You don’t. PROVE that you have the testimony of 100 % truthworth eyewitness? Don’t assume it, prove it. Otherwise, everything in this paragraph is totally irrelevant.
“Assumes God created trees with no rings.”
The assumption here can be tested by the totally independent method of C-14 dating. Given that we have two totally independent methods, there is no reason whatsoever to expect these methods to give the same date.
“Are there living trees that are more than 4000 yrs old? “
Don’t know how old the oldest living tree is, but you can daisy-chain your way back to 11,000 years using wood from dead trees.
“See, there's the assumption at work (with varves).”
Again, the assumption can be tested with the independent method of C-14 dating. The posting demonstrated what we’d find with C-14 and varves if YOUR assumptions were correct. In fact, that’s the key point of this post. We can test YOUR assumptions, and we can figure out what we’d see if any of your scenarios is correct. And we DON’T see ANY results that match what your rationalizations would predict. That’s what I wanted you to see at the linked site. You see, Rho, that’s the difference between you and a scientist. Scientists test their assumptions.
“And if you complain that it's deceptive or sthg for God to have created trees with rings already in them…”
I don’t claim this. I don’t think that this is what happened.
“What evidence can they give us that carbon-14 decay never did change its rate?”
Independent testing with tree rings, varves, historic documentation, etc. They even dated the Dead Sea Scrolls with C-14. What more do you want?
“Even that sthg natural such as a change in radiation or some other event did not transpire to speed it up for a time? Such would be to prove a universal negative, and that without a time machine. Short answer - they cannot. “
I’m not sure what you are saying here, but as I said before, if you make all of the assumptions that you must make to save YEC, and if you actually TEST these assumptions, you can see that your assumptions about changing rates of decay are not valid.
“ As I've already stated, it's not deception when you overlook the explicit truth of God's self-revelation.”
You ASSUME that you have God’s revelation. Prove it.
“But I've asked for an argument twice, and here's the third time. Does your argument amount to, "Duh, it's obvious"?
Yeah, it’s obvious. You’ve chosen blindness. I can’t help you.
“We can relate (the layer in one locality to the layers in another locality), sure. Telling that they're the same is another thing.”
I don’t know what you mean here. What does "same thing" refer to? The point of the layers being the same is that all of the material is deposited around the same time in the same event. It also means that layers above or below the shared layer from two different sites can also be placed in an overall chronological sequence, even if one site is missing one or more layers. You are rejecting this conclusion or possibility? No geologist would reject this, not even YEC geologists.
“What I'm trying to get you to see is how big a role your unprovable assumptions play in your position.”
And you can’t prove that weren’t created last Thursday. Do you really want to keep playing this game? It’s not a matter of proving assumptions, it’s a matter of being able to test assumptions. It’s a matter of being able to tell of the assumptions are wrong.
“If water is surging out of the sky and primarily out of the "floodgates of the deep"….
Since you acknowledge that we can determine relative dates by superposition (see below), this actually becomes moot at this point, so I won’t waste any time on it.
“I'm interested in seeing where this goes, so for the sake of argument I will agree that we can use relative dating to date the layers with respect to each other.”
Good. So, fossils deposited in the lower layers were deposited first and fossils deposited in the upper layers were deposited last. Yes?
“You should know that my fragile ego, to say nothing of Answers in Genesis' egos, is hemorrhaging now.”
It’s not a matter of ego. It’s a matter of the quality of the argument. High quality arguments are adopted by others. Low quality arguments are orphaned.
"I'm here and I wasn't produced ex nihilo."
“My parents were present at my birth. “
You’re assuming that your parents are honest, and you’re assuming that both you and your parents weren’t all created ex nihilo last Thursday. Or maybe you were created ex nihilo, and your parents adopted you, and didn’t tell you so that you wouldn’t feel different. Sorry, but you still haven’t proven that you were not created ex nihilo. All you have is assumptions.
“Were you present when these organisms died?”
Not relevant to the question of your ex nihilo creation.
“Again you persist with your category error. I'm not talking about whether the fossilised organisms had PARENTS, but whether they had CHILDREN. Deal with my argument. “
I believe that you missed one of my previous comments. Look again. I said, “Prove that your great, great, etc., grandfather had children. Prove it.” I AM talking about whether or not a given organism had children.
“I have to note that, again, you've failed to show us any reason to accept your fossil record storyline. Just guesses, based on your apparent heroes, Dick Dawk and Chuck Darwin.”
No, you failed to open your eyes. I can’t help you there.
“We can relate (the layer in one locality to the layers in another locality), sure. Telling that they're the same is another thing.”
I don’t know what you mean here. What does same thing refer to? The point of the layers being the same is that all of the material is deposited around the same time in the same event. It also means that layers above or below the shared layer from two different sites can also be placed in an overall chronological sequence, even if one site is missing one or more layers. You are rejecting this conclusion or possibility? No geologist would reject this, not even YEC geologists.
“What I'm trying to get you to see is how big a role your unprovable assumptions play in your position.”
And you can’t prove that weren’t created last Thursday. Do you really want to keep playing this game? It’s not a matter of proving assumptions, it’s a matter of being able to test assumptions. It’s a matter of being able to tell of the assumptions are wrong.
“If water is surging out of the sky and primarily out of the "floodgates of the deep"….
Since you acknowledge that we can determine relative dates by superposition (see below), this actually becomes moot at this point, so I won’t waste any time on it.
“I'm interested in seeing where this goes, so for the sake of argument I will agree that we can use relative dating to date the layers with respect to each other.”
Good. So, fossils deposited in the lower layers were deposited first and fossils deposited in the upper layers were deposited last. Yes?
“You should know that my fragile ego, to say nothing of Answers in Genesis' egos, is hemorrhaging now.”
It’s not a matter of ego. It’s a matter of the quality of the argument. High quality arguments are adopted by others. Low quality arguments are orphaned.
"I'm here and I wasn't produced ex nihilo."
“My parents were present at my birth. “
You’re assuming that your parents are honest, and you’re assuming that both you and your parents weren’t all created ex nihilo last Thursday. Or maybe you were created ex nihilo, and your parents adopted you, and didn’t tell you so that you wouldn’t feel different. Sorry, but you still haven’t proven that you were not created ex nihilo. All you have is assumptions.
“Were you present when these organisms died?”
Not relevant to the question of your ex nihilo creation.
“Again you persist with your category error. I'm not talking about whether the fossilised organisms had PARENTS, but whether they had CHILDREN. Deal with my argument. “
I believe that you missed one of my previous comments. Look again. I said, “Prove that your great, great, etc., grandfather had children. Prove it.” I AM talking about whether or not a given organism had children.
Hmm, something is going wrong with my posted comments. Probably putting too many characters in one comment. I've have to get back to this later.
We noticed problems yesterday with Blogger over at the other blog where I participate. I don't know why, and I don't moderate comments. I have them all in my Gmail thread, though, so I'll post them and you can let me know whether I missed anythg.
David said:
I need to give serious thought to how much time I wish to waste here. But I’ll waste just a little bit more.
“Did you really just cite BioLogos to me?”
The source is irrelevant. The important thing is not the particular source. The important thing is the data presented.
“Why would that faze me? My position is that the Christian worldview is PRESUPPOSED…
What’s another word for “presupposed”? Assumption.
Yes, I understand that you start with a conclusion and you refuse to acknowledge that possibility that you might be wrong. Problem is, you’re one of those “limited men”. And that means that you’re just as fallible and just as likely to be wrong as the “limited men”. So, if it happens that you’re wrong, how would you know that you’re wrong? How can you operate under that assumption that you are infallible in your conclusions about the history of life on Earth?
“Disregard completely the testimony of the 100% trustworthy eyewitness…”
How do you KNOW that you have the testimony of a 100 % trustworthy eyewitness? You don’t. PROVE that you have the testimony of 100 % truthworth eyewitness? Don’t assume it, prove it. Otherwise, everything in this paragraph is totally irrelevant.
“Assumes God created trees with no rings.”
The assumption here can be tested by the totally independent method of C-14 dating. Given that we have two totally independent methods, there is no reason whatsoever to expect these methods to give the same date.
“Are there living trees that are more than 4000 yrs old? “
Don’t know how old the oldest living tree is, but you can daisy-chain your way back to 11,000 years using wood from dead trees.
“See, there's the assumption at work (with varves).”
Again, the assumption can be tested with the independent method of C-14 dating. The posting demonstrated what we’d find with C-14 and varves if YOUR assumptions were correct. In fact, that’s the key point of this post. We can test YOUR assumptions, and we can figure out what we’d see if any of your scenarios is correct. And we DON’T see ANY results that match what your rationalizations would predict. That’s what I wanted you to see at the linked site. You see, Rho, that’s the difference between you and a scientist. Scientists test their assumptions.
“And if you complain that it's deceptive or sthg for God to have created trees with rings already in them…”
I don’t claim this. I don’t think that this is what happened.
“What evidence can they give us that carbon-14 decay never did change its rate?”
Independent testing with tree rings, varves, historic documentation, etc. They even dated the Dead Sea Scrolls with C-14. What more do you want?
“Even that sthg natural such as a change in radiation or some other event did not transpire to speed it up for a time? Such would be to prove a universal negative, and that without a time machine. Short answer - they cannot. “
I’m not sure what you are saying here, but as I said before, if you make all of the assumptions that you must make to save YEC, and if you actually TEST these assumptions, you can see that your assumptions about changing rates of decay are not valid.
“ As I've already stated, it's not deception when you overlook the explicit truth of God's self-revelation.”
You ASSUME that you have God’s revelation. Prove it.
“But I've asked for an argument twice, and here's the third time. Does your argument amount to, "Duh, it's obvious"?
Yeah, it’s obvious. You’ve chosen blindness. I can’t help you.
David said:
“We can relate (the layer in one locality to the layers in another locality), sure. Telling that they're the same is another thing.”
I don’t know what you mean here. What does "same thing" refer to? The point of the layers being the same is that all of the material is deposited around the same time in the same event. It also means that layers above or below the shared layer from two different sites can also be placed in an overall chronological sequence, even if one site is missing one or more layers. You are rejecting this conclusion or possibility? No geologist would reject this, not even YEC geologists.
“What I'm trying to get you to see is how big a role your unprovable assumptions play in your position.”
And you can’t prove that weren’t created last Thursday. Do you really want to keep playing this game? It’s not a matter of proving assumptions, it’s a matter of being able to test assumptions. It’s a matter of being able to tell of the assumptions are wrong.
“If water is surging out of the sky and primarily out of the "floodgates of the deep"….
Since you acknowledge that we can determine relative dates by superposition (see below), this actually becomes moot at this point, so I won’t waste any time on it.
“I'm interested in seeing where this goes, so for the sake of argument I will agree that we can use relative dating to date the layers with respect to each other.”
Good. So, fossils deposited in the lower layers were deposited first and fossils deposited in the upper layers were deposited last. Yes?
“You should know that my fragile ego, to say nothing of Answers in Genesis' egos, is hemorrhaging now.”
It’s not a matter of ego. It’s a matter of the quality of the argument. High quality arguments are adopted by others. Low quality arguments are orphaned.
"I'm here and I wasn't produced ex nihilo."
“My parents were present at my birth. “
You’re assuming that your parents are honest, and you’re assuming that both you and your parents weren’t all created ex nihilo last Thursday. Or maybe you were created ex nihilo, and your parents adopted you, and didn’t tell you so that you wouldn’t feel different. Sorry, but you still haven’t proven that you were not created ex nihilo. All you have is assumptions.
“Were you present when these organisms died?”
Not relevant to the question of your ex nihilo creation.
“Again you persist with your category error. I'm not talking about whether the fossilised organisms had PARENTS, but whether they had CHILDREN. Deal with my argument. “
I believe that you missed one of my previous comments. Look again. I said, “Prove that your great, great, etc., grandfather had children. Prove it.” I AM talking about whether or not a given organism had children.
“I have to note that, again, you've failed to show us any reason to accept your fossil record storyline. Just guesses, based on your apparent heroes, Dick Dawk and Chuck Darwin.”
No, you failed to open your eyes. I can’t help you there.
David said:
“I have to note that, again, you've failed to show us any reason to accept your fossil record storyline. Just guesses, based on your apparent heroes, Dick Dawk and Chuck Darwin.”
No, you failed to open your eyes. I can’t help you there.
“Like what? Please be specific how a fossil record-based hypothesis helps evol and "destroys YEC". “
How? Well, evolution makes predictions about what we’ll find in the fossil record and YEC makes predictions about what we’ll find in the fossil record, and the fossil record supports evolution and destroys YEC. Two words. Taxonomic sorting.
“A frank admission, and one I appreciate. Thank you. We may now dispense with the fossil record "argument". It is an assumption. …. Such arguments are based on bare assumptions. Thanks!”
I don’t understand why the word “assumption” is sooooo important to you. EVERYTHING that you have offered in response is ALSO based on assumptions. Every moment of our lives, we are operating on the basis of assumptions. We literally cannot get out of bed without making assumptions. Saying something is an assumption tells us nothing.
Here’s what’s important about assumptions. We need to know if the assumption is reasonable, valid, logical, etc. Is the assumption testable? If it happens that the assumption is wrong, we need methods to show that it’s wrong. And we cannot start by denying the possibility that the assumption is wrong.
You’re a one trick pony, Rho, and it’s not a very good trick. I can take the same trick and turn it around and use it to reject, discard, ignore and dismiss everything that you have to say. I can use this trick to point out the infinitely long list of unprovable assumptions you draw from the Bible, the long list of uprovable assumptions in YEC, and the long list of assumptions behind everything that you ever thought or felt or believed. I can use this trick to show that you’re wrong about absolutely everything. In other words, it’s a boring, pointless trick which takes us to the logical conclusion that we can’t know anything ever. So, what’s its value?
Did I get them all, and in the right order?
Indeed, you did. Much obliged. And most gentlemanly of you, given our disagreements.
My pleasure. It is just a blog, after all. :-)
Are there living trees that are more than 4000 yrs old?
Yes.
Also, why is using my limited human understanding in interpreting the meaning of Genesis automatically more valid than using my limited human understanding in interpreting the meaning of tree rings or varves?
Hi David,
Please forgive the delay. Been busy, and this is all I can do today, for that matter.
“Did you really just cite BioLogos to me?”
The source is irrelevant.
True, mostly. Just know that BioLogos and I are not in common cause in virtually any manner. Their enterprise is not Christian. It's roughly theistic.
So, FWIW, I just want you to know that I don't consider them in any way "on my side".
What’s another word for “presupposed”? Assumption.
For the purposes of this discusssion, I agree. (I think there are some intricate philosophical distinctions, but I don't know what they are.)
So what I'm trying to help you see is that there are data and then there are worldviews thru which we view the data. Which worldview can acct for ALL the facts and the implications of itself? Part of my argument is that naturalism can't acct for all the data, part is that YEC can acct for the data you present just as well as can naturalism, and part is that naturalism is internally inconsistent and thus must be rejected.
I understand that you start with a conclusion
Even though I've told you numerous times that's exactly what I DON'T do? That's not very fair.
Problem is, you’re one of those “limited men”.
As are you. I'll admit it and you apparently won't.
I listen to the infallible omniscient God when He says stuff. You won't admit your limitations where it really counts.
How can you operate under that assumption that you are infallible in your conclusions about the history of life on Earth?
"Infallible" is the wrong word here. God is infallible and what He says is inerrant, and if I correctly represent what He says, I'm speaking truth. Repeating it.
How do you KNOW that you have the testimony of a 100 % trustworthy eyewitness?
B/c of the impossibility of the contrary. For one thing, your alternative is full of internal inconsistencies, which you apparently can't even recognise. That doesn't fill me with confidence.
The assumption here can be tested by the totally independent method of C-14 dating.
Stacking question-begging assertions on top of others is not the best way to discover truth.
“Are there living trees that are more than 4000 yrs old? “
Don’t know how old the oldest living tree is, but you can daisy-chain your way back to 11,000 years using wood from dead trees.
Looks like there is a tree that's been dated to older than 4k years. Interesting.
But this response is prone to the same refutations I've already offered. You're just repeating yourself at this point, when you need to be showing how my argument fails.
We can test YOUR assumptions
How?
Scientists test their assumptions.
We've already seen that they do so thru methods that beg the same questions. W/o a time machine, I don't see how they can do so in a way that avoids the problem of Deep Time. W/o omniscience or at least the ability to see all things, they cannot avoid the problem of induction. These are serious problems. David Hume recognised (and in fact formulated) the latter; why can't you?
“And if you complain that it's deceptive or sthg for God to have created trees with rings already in them…”
I don’t claim this. I don’t think that this is what happened
OK, so I trust you won't use the "but if you're right, then God is deceptive" argument like the Jolly Nihilist, ERV, and others have done and do. Cool.
They even dated the Dead Sea Scrolls with C-14.
Let me ask you: Do I have a good reason, on my position, to think that the DSS' dating might actually be accurate whereas sthg dated older than creation might be a surface-level "correct" reading but actually not tell the truth about that object's true age?
I ask b/c it doesn't seem you're following my argument, but in fact the argument is not that complex.
You ASSUME that you have God’s revelation. Prove it.
I can't prove it. I've told you that over and over again. I presuppose it and then examine reality in the light of that presupp - does it make sense of the world? Yes.
Now I check other presupps, like yours. How do you know you can examine evidence? How do you know that evidence corresponds to truth? What evidence do you have of that, w/o begging the question? (Hint: None.) What evidence do you have of other minds? That you are not a brain in a vat? That the external universe actually exists?
You can't KNOW any of that. You have to presuppose it.
So I ask you: Why not presuppose the God of the Bible? He makes more sense of the universe than your naturalistic presupps, which lead to solipsism.
The answer is: B/c you are a sinner and do not want to repent of your sin.
EVERYTHING that you have offered in response is ALSO based on assumptions.
And the same for you. What's so ironic is that I realise it and go from there, whereas you still won't admit it.
You’ve chosen blindness. I can’t help you.
Oh noes!!!!1 Blindness!!!!
And that means...what on your worldview? So what?
Isn't the response most properly: "Meh"? So what if I'm wrong, if atheism is correct? Don't get all pious and moralistic on me now, David.
The point of the layers being the same is that all of the material is deposited around the same time in the same event.
How could anyone possibly prove this? It's just assumption.
It also means that layers above or below the shared layer from two different sites can also be placed in an overall chronological sequence, even if one site is missing one or more layers.
Again, how could you prove this?
No geologist would reject this, not even YEC geologists.
So what? Do they ask the same questions I'm asking and answer them logically, or are these questions too inconvenient and too expensive?
And you can’t prove that weren’t created last Thursday.
Haha, that's a much bigger problem for you than for me, my friend.
So, fossils deposited in the lower layers were deposited first and fossils deposited in the upper layers were deposited last. Yes?
Not necessarily. The Bible gives no indication about that. Perhaps some or all of the fossils were created along with the rest of creation, perhaps some or all or none were stirred up by the Flood and redeposited.
Most ironically, you have no way to access whether that happened. Zero. But it's a measure of your position's snide arrogance to tell me that my position is certainly wrong. But when I ask you to prove it, you throw assumptions at me.
You’re assuming that your parents are honest,
This is just getting silly, and since the question is whether the fossilised organisms had CHILDREN, not PARENTS, it is 100% irrelevant. Have fun talking to yourself about it.
Two words. Taxonomic sorting.
And w/o giving good reason for sorting them the way you do, like telling which organisms died first AND were part of the progression of evolution, your sorting is 100% assumed. Am I supposed to be impressed?
I can take the same trick and turn it around and use it to reject, discard, ignore and dismiss everything that you have to say.
With your own assumptions? Show me.
jft,
Thanks for that link about the tree. Very interesting.
To answer - text is meant to communicate to minds. Neither on your worldview nor on mine are varves and tree rings intended to communicate information to minds.
Further, as I've said, trees can be created with rings and varves already in place.
So, after all the waiting, you reply boils down to "everyone makes assumptions". I don't believe that I have ever argued otherwise. Yes, everyone makes assumptions. No kidding. As I said, we can't get out of bed in the morning without making assumptions.
I don't understand how you came to the conclusion that I won't admit that I'm limited or that I won't admit that I make assumptions, too. As I clearly stated, what matters is the quality of the assumption, that is, how likely is it that the assumption is valid.
And then there's the time machine argument. You can always deny a given version of past events by saying that those promoting that version of events can't know anything without a time machine. Yes, you can always parrot Ken Ham and say "you weren't there". So what? Without a time machine, we can't tell if ANYTHING in the past really happened and we can't tell if ANY version of past events is accurate. Without a time machine, I can't be certain that I wasn't created a nanosecond ago. So, what's the point of the argument?
Now, let's get to something that is practical and applied.
I said: So, fossils deposited in the lower layers were deposited first and fossils deposited in the upper layers were deposited last. Yes?
You said: Not necessarily. The Bible gives no indication about that. Perhaps some or all of the fossils were created along with the rest of creation, perhaps some or all or none were stirred up by the Flood and redeposited.
Well, first, I thought that you agreed that we could use the geological record to do relative dating. Have you changed your mind? Are you backing away from this now?
Second, if fossils were created along with creation and/or stirred up from lower levels by the Flood, what kind of pattern would that generate? Would it account for the complete absence of numerous large taxonomic groups from the lowest layers of the geological record?
All that your "perhaps" has done is make it more obvious that that the Flood didn't happen. If your "perhaps" occurred, then there shouldn't be ANY taxonomic sorting. If you are correct, then all taxonomic groups should be mixed together when the fossils from the lower level are stirred up and mixed with fossils from the upper level. This is NOT what we observe, and your "perhaps" is clearly wrong.
David,
As I said, we can't get out of bed in the morning without making assumptions.
Correct. So stop bringing fwd your "evidence" to back up your assumptions - that's putting the cart before the horse.
Give me logical reasons to accept your assumptions. Start with solving the problem of induction, of solipsism, and of the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.
Without a time machine, I can't be certain that I wasn't created a nanosecond ago. So, what's the point of the argument?
Exactly - without a time machine, you don't know what happened in the past. Yet you act like you do, all the time. Stop feeding us a line of horsedooky that you know that evolution happened. Or that it's the best explanation or the most reasonable explanation. You don't know any of that. The most honest thing to say would be "we're ignorant of the past, given our naturalistic assumptions". And certainly not to teach it in schools!
I thought that you agreed that we could use the geological record to do relative dating. Have you changed your mind? Are you backing away from this now?
I thought that you agreed that we can't tell what happened in the past if we don't have a time machine. Have you changed your mind? Are you backing away from this now?
Would it account for the complete absence of numerous large taxonomic groups from the lowest layers of the geological record?
It's not a "record" of anything if you can't reconstruct what happened in the past. Remember?
Rho,
So we can't reconstruct what happened even a second ago. Great. So now what? Do we just conclude that your guess is as good as mine? Ok with me, but I have to say, I didn't figure you for a relativist.
David,
If you have any desire to be consistent and to seek truth, you'll now realise that you have nothing. Your worldview can give you no reason to think that anything is real, except (and even this is arguable) yourself and your own thoughts.
This is precisely why you need God to inform you about reality. Your obstinacy has so far kept you far from Him, but He is ready at a moment's notice to take you in, transform you from an enemy into an adopted son, forgive your sin, and give you eternal life.
Not only is this offer a great deal for you, but also as a bonus you gain epistemologically solid reasons to think that the world you think you experience is actually real, that the past actually happened, that the future will be like the past in most respects, and that your reason is actually meaningful. God grounds all of this, whereas a godless worldview grounds and can justify none of it.
So no, extreme relativism is the self-defeating and yet logical conclusion of a godless worldview. My own worldview does not try to ground it all in me or in human reason but rather in the transcendent God. I know God exists b/c of the impossibility of the contrary. B/c without Him, there is no reason to think that reason has any meaning.
"I know God exists b/c of the impossibility of the contrary."
So, you have an argument for deism. That's nice. But that's all this is.
Still doesn't solve the problem of what humans can know about the past. As far as I can tell, taking your "no evidence for an old earth, you don't have a time machine" argument to its logical conclusions, we still can't reconstruct what happened even a second ago, regardless of the possible existence of a god-like entity. You've eliminated the possibility of knowing anything about the past. It's still your opinion versus my opinion. With respect to the past, your line of argument still essentially leads to relativism. No one has any evidence, no one knows anything, no one can draw any conclusions about the past. Well, ok, your choice.
I know on the surface it can seem like an argument for deism only, but not if you start thinking about how much is at stake in the question of communication and revelation. If God doesn't tell you what the deal is, how do you know that that God even exists, what He does, what He has already done, what He's going to do, to what extent reality is constant, etc.
As for the time machine thing, I bring it up to show you that the naturalistic godless framework can't provide the knowledge and evidence it says it can provide. I don't need a time machine in any way since God is infallible and has told me already how it went down. The time machine is irrelevant to my position. It's not your opinion vs mine - that's if YOUR position is true. In my position, it's your sinful and pathetically-limited opinion vs the vast and unlimited knowledge of the God Who actually brought it all to pass. It's totally different.
"I don't need a time machine in any way since God is infallible and has told me already how it went down. The time machine is irrelevant to my position."
Ah, I think I see your problem. You assume that if God somehow tells you that She exists, then She must also tell you other things as well. Who are you to say what God must tell you? You assume that God is infallible, and more importantly, you assume that God has told you about the past. But these are just assumptions, not arguments. It's just your opinion. You can declare you have Truth, but that's just your arrogant, relativistic opinion.
You still need a time machine.
That made no sense. You still have yet to understand how absurd both your own position and also the strange positions you are trying to ascribe to me really are.
But there's only so much I can do to help you.
"That made no sense."
Really? What part of "you assume that God has told you about the past, but these are just assumptions, not arguments" don't you understand?
You still need a time machine. If you don't have a time machine, then you must stop feeding us a line of horsedooky that you know that a global flood happened. You have yet to offer a single argument for why I should think that there was such a flood. All you've offered are your assumptions and opinions.
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