John C. Sanford: Young Earth Creationist Loon

[Kotatsu]

If you read the scientific papers on both sides of the fence, the creationists side holds more water.

Well, there's your problem, then: standing water stagnates and grows tepid.

 

[Wowbagger]

Klem might never return, but there will always be lurkers.

 

[Third Eye Open]

We're never going to see Klem again are we

Just working on those credits for his class.

 

[quarky]

I can almost see my ancestors plowing their gardens atop a triceratops. I never wanted to believe in the young Earth stuff before I thought about the dinosaur thing, and now I'm ready to sign up.

I wonder what other dinosaurs might have been useful to humans back then?
Imagine the meat on a brontosaurus!
Religion is cool.

Does God mention what happened to the dinos?
Christ, I hope it had nothing to do with sin.
Sin sucks.

 

[duras]

Your first reason above is exactly what evolutionists have been doing for the last 150 years....they've made the model before the evidence....so that reasoning lacks any foundation what so ever.

That's not true at all. We can start right at the beginning to know that's not true: Darwin went to the Galapagos not knowing what to expect or what he'd find. It wasn't until he looked at the data and observations recorded on his voyages that he realized what he was seeing. And it took many years after that for the whole scientific community to agree as the evidence accumulated. Any number of experiments or discoveries could have proven Darwin wrong over the past 150 years, but every one has contributed and molded the theory.

His point (if you were listening instead of getting a chip on your shoulder) about fitness equaling 1 was just a basis and starting point. Let's call it Adam if you will. Adam's genetic makeup was "more pure" than what we see today. What was so hard to understand about that? From what I see, his research is more accurate than anything any evolutionist can show. You even admit above that true beneficial mutations are rare.

He's starting with the assumption that humans used to be perfect. There's no such thing and he has no evidence of this perfection. The idea that ancient humans were perfect because Neandertals could run faster than modern humans is pure nonsense. By that logic chimps must be more perfect than humans today because they're stronger and faster.

Today, there's still much more evidence of a young earth and flood account on the earth than any sort of "millions/billions of years of evolution". Take a drive down rt. 90...those aren't millions of years of layers...those are sedimentary layers. It's not the simple or feeble minded that can understand what Dr. Sanford or any other creation scientist is talking about. It's the ones with common sense. If you read the scientific papers on both sides of the fence, the creationists side holds more water.

There are no scientific papers from creationists. They do no scientific experimentation, and they do not get published in real scientific journals. However, they do write poorly reasoned reviews and get them published in their own magazines. All evidence creationists claim to have for creationism falls apart when you consider most of the evidence we have does NOT support creationism. For example, the fossil record is very clear: simple to complex and ancestors always coming before. There are no exceptions and no ambiguities. If evolution was wrong somewhere we'd find a modern human stuck in the precambrian (as one example).

Let me ask you a simple question....how long (or how many generations) did it take for the process of blood clotting to get it right? We would have bled to death long before that process evolved into the correct genetic sequence. Oh...that's right...genetic sequences are digital code and instruction. Where do you suppose those instructions came from? Oh yeah....first there was nothing....then BANG...everything. NOT.

You seem to be making the very strange assumption that the cascade evolved in humans. That when humans first came about they didn't have the cascade, so they had to wait while generation after generation bled to death. That's obviously impossible. You also make the assumption that this complex blood clotting cascade had to all be in place for it to work (which is certainly not true, but it IS true in modern humans with the modern blood clotting cascade).

Anyway, the tiny ancestors we had that had a circulatory system but a non-existent clotting system wouldn't really need one. They would die quickly and reproduce quickly. But the first animal population that had even the poorest of clotting systems would have had a huge survival advantage. The animal population with a slightly less poor clotting system would have had an even better advantage, and so on. The clotting system could have been "built" in pieces just like any other body system.

Ken Miller actually has a nice webpage about the clotting system: http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/clot/Clotting.html

We have some idea of how it happened, and that the clotting system isn't unexplainable by using science. Also, no we don't believe that "BANG... everything". It took a lot longer than that and it was extremely complex.

You call Dr. Sanford a lunatic...yet even Darwin wrote, "“The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find
intermediate varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory.”....150 years later, with over 250,000 discovered fossils, the fossil record shows more now than ever...there's still no evidence for evolution. Therefore, we "rightly regect" Darwins theroies.

Yes, and Darwin was writing in his time when that was true. Today we have loads and loads of transitional fossils and intermediates. These fossils show beyond all reasonable doubt that evolution did happen in the past (of course, there's loads of other evidence such as biogeography, genomic, anatomical, etc that agrees with the fossil evidence and only solidifies the historical parts of the theory more).

Maybe some day after 30 plus years of research, patents, published articles you may come to a better understanding like Dr. Sanford has.

I'm pretty sure I would only be more mystified at his position. Most scientists at the point Sanford is in his career completely disagree with him. There actually may be none. Of course, I'm sure you see this as scientists being afraid to come out creationist. The problem is, scientists who've received tenure or have retired (like Sanford) can do whatever they want without fear of repercussions, yet they do not agree with his position.

 

[shadron]

Today, there's still much more evidence of a young earth and flood account on the earth than any sort of "millions/billions of years of evolution". Take a drive down rt. 90...those aren't millions of years of layers...those are sedimentary layers.

The heck with route 90, where ever it is. Go to the Grand Canyon, or almost any canyon in the Colorado front range. You'll see igneous and metamorphic rock layers mixed in with sedimentary rock layers. Drive through Yosemite National Park and see the volcanic plutons that have hardened to tremendous boulders of solid granite. In eastern Colorado there is land that is at 4500 ft altitude, 1000 miles from the nearest ocean, on which a marine reef is fossilized, with small fossilized shells in it. Think of the time it must have taken for it to be raised from a sea bed to that altitude; not only it, but all the land around it, for hundreds of miles.

There are none so blind as will not see.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The heck with route 90, where ever it is. Go to the Grand Canyon, or almost any canyon in the Colorado front range. You'll see igneous and metamorphic rock layers mixed in with sedimentary rock layers. Drive through Yosemite National Park and see the volcanic plutons that have hardened to tremendous boulders of solid granite. In eastern Colorado there is land that is at 4500 ft altitude, 1000 miles from the nearest ocean, on which a marine reef is fossilized, with small fossilized shells in it. Think of the time it must have taken for it to be raised from a sea bed to that altitude; not only it, but all the land around it, for hundreds of miles.

There are none so blind as will not see.

I live in Missouri, which is more than a few yards from an ocean last time I looked. I collect fossils here all the time, from sea creatures. One of my cousins looked at my collection once and said, in a quiet voice, "I wonder if we're even supposed to ask why God made some critters out of stone."

I have never let her in my house since that day.

 

[Wowbagger]

There are no scientific papers from creationists. They do no scientific experimentation, and they do not get published in real scientific journals.

To be more technically accurate: There are scientific papers published by people who happen to be creationists. But, there are no papers establishing evidence for a Creator, in the biological sense.

This is important to emphasize, because some creation followers will try to brag about the fact that their favorite creation scientist has, in fact, published papers in respected journals. Sometimes, they might be correct about that (but not always: there is no shortage of phoney journals and papers, too), but for a different reason that they hoped for.

 

[duras]

He's starting with the assumption that humans used to be perfect. There's no such thing and he has no evidence of this perfection. The idea that ancient humans were perfect because Neandertals could run faster than modern humans is pure nonsense. By that logic chimps must be more perfect than humans today because they're stronger and faster.

I want to delve into this "perfection" nonsense further. Although I'm sure the user who responded has long since abandoned this topic, I still think this argument is unusual and needs to be addressed.

To set any genome's fitness equal to 1 (perfect) is to ignore the entire concept of trade-offs. A genome cannot be perfect because even in an ideal environment there would be trade-offs. An easy to understand example is tall vs short. Being tall has unique benefits, as does being short. You could argue that being in between would be most beneficial, but being in between would also give you intermediate disadvantages and intermediate benefits.

It's for this same reason that Sanford's idea of slightly negative mutations is flawed. Who's to say that a gene to make you short is bad? Who's to say that a gene to make you tall isn't bad? Who's to say what gene is good or bad at all? Applied to his model, he makes the assumption that a mutation for tallness is automatically bad. He makes the assumption that a mutation for shortness is automatically bad. Then he makes another assumption: all heights are bad in between tall and short except a very narrow and unchanging "perfect" height that God gave us.

So in his model, he incorrectly stacks the deck against evolution and then says, "it doesn't work, see?! This proves a young Earth!"