Re: Making money from Java


Judson McClendon wrote:
> "Alistair" <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Judson McClendon wrote:
> > With inbreeding there would have been plenty of birth defects.
> > Inbreeding doesn't just produce six fingers on each hand. Given a
> > lifespan of 930 years then they could have had huge numbers of
> > children.
>
> Only if there were genetic defects to begin with. If the Bible account is
> accurate, Adam and Eve would have had none.

Genetic mutations occur naturally over time in all populations (plant
or animal). This allows scientists to track population migrations
through history. It would not be inconceivable for Adam and Eve to be
subject to one or more spontaneously generated
mutations during their lifetime (one is possible albeit highly
improbable). Such mutations would have probably resulted in cancers.

A more interesting point would be that after 100 years of life the
human chromosomes run a little short of telomeres (the non-coding
fragments of DNA which tie off the ends of the chromatids). Any
lifespan beyond (say) 200 years requires a miracle to extend the length
of the telomeres, otherwise the body would not be able to sustain
itself through mitosis (cell division).

>
> > However, genetic defects in
> > children are more likely to have been caused by the particular abnormal
> > genes becoming more common and more likely to be paired in foetuses due
> > to matings amongst siblings and close relatives in closed communities
> > rather than to a Biblical flood exposing people to radiation.
>
> I'll just mention this briefly, it is far to involved to get into here, but
> the original language descriptions of creation and the flood can be
> interpreted as saying that there was a kind of crystaline covering that
> covered and protected the earth, and that this covering was destroyed at the
> time of the flood. If this is true, it could explain a lack of radiation
> caused defects prior to the flood. Also it could explain a higher
> atmospheric pressure. Some scientists have surmised that the flying
> dinosaurs could not have made it off the ground, and that the larger
> dinosaurs could not have even lived, in today's atmosphere.

Aside from the Bible, what evidence do we have for the crystalline
cover, or its' nature? The height of the cover would be important as if
it were at the radius of the asteroid belt, there would be no change in
pressure nor would it provide any radiation protection.

I remember watching a documentary about the flying pterosaurs (I
presume that they are the ones to which you are referring) and the use
of a flying model which proved that the pterosaurs were capable of
flapping flight (as are bats) although they were primarily gliding and
soaring reptiles. I hesitate calling them dinosaurs as that name
applies to a small subset of reptiles that may not include pterosaurs.
BTW, recent investigations have been able to show how it is that bumble
bees can fly.

>
> >> But we know there are fossils of sea creatures
> >> even on mountain tops.
> >
> > Most of which pre-date 4000 BC, give or take a few years.
>
> By current theory. However, it is my understanding that radiological dating
> methonds can be extremely unreliable, and they rely on a number of
> assumptions that cannot be proved for ancient times. However, I am no
> expert.

Clearly. I would trust the veracity of radiological dating before I
believed any of the contents of the Bible. When performing dating,
scientists calculate margins of error which allow for ranges of dates.
450 million years ago +/- 10 million years is more than accurate enough
for most people. The performance of radiological decay is well and
accurately documented.

>
> >> The Noah Flood did not happen simply by lots of rain,

snip

> >
> > I would suggest that this has to be read in the context of the time.
> > These people did not understand the structure of the earth nor could
> > they have conceived of the geological processes of which we are aware.
>
> Perhaps not, but the Bible clearly describes the process of water
> evaporating from the seas, being carried by winds, and coming down as rain
> on the mountains, it says God sits above the sphere (or circle, same Hebrew
> word) of the earth, and says the earth is "hung upon nothing". Pretty
> accurate concepts for such ancient times. :-)

And the ancients, even thereafter, believed in the flat world floating
in an ocean held within a bowl on the back of a giant turtle. That does
not require hanging the earth on anything. Other ancients believed the
earth was spherical and carried on the shoulders of Atlas (who was
standing on what?). One wild guess does not make for advanced science
and understanding.

> > And what of the (lack of) resemblance of the deposition features? The
> > mud, the poisoned lakes, the accumulation of dead trees? Are these to
> > be found in the Grand Canyon too? I would put it that 6000 years of
> > geological processes are insufficient to have swept that evidence away.
>
> Well, I don't know of any non-petrified wood exposed to the weather lasting
> 6000 years,

Have you ever heard of the worked wooden trees that have survived,
often submerged, as part of neolithic features (wood henges, roof
supports and even boats). None of these were petrified.

> >> You also see soil layering
> >> in Engineer's Canyon, just as in the Grand Canyon, on a smaller scale.
> >> The
> >> layering was created by laminar flow (air flow in Engineer's Canyon,
> >> probably water flow in the Grand Canyon).
> >
> > I can not comment on any similarities as I am unfamiliar with
> > Engineer's Canyon and have no desire to rectify that deficiency. But
> > one tiny point, it is not flow that creates laminar deposits but rather
> > a lack of flow (hence the fact that deposits deposit).
> >
> > I would agree that air and liquid flows do normally produce similar
> > effects as they are both examples of fluid flows. However, better
> > geologists than myself would be able to discourse at length about the
> > differences.
>
> Civil engineers know much more about erosion and such effects than
> geologists, because they deal with it in a practical sense every day, and
> can get immediate experimental feedback. I think you would enjoy reading a
> book by two men, a PhD in theology and PhD in civil engineering, named "The
> Genesis Flood". The book was written a while back and needs updating, but
> there is a lot of good stuff in there.

I disagree with the whole of the above. I would not enjoy reading the
book, I suspect that I would spend much of my time picking holes in it.

>
> >> Try this: half fill a large box with sand and
> >> gravel, level it, fill the box with water, then knock a hole in the side,
> >> and you see the exact same patterns formed on a smaller scale as the
> >> water
> >> runs off.
> >
> > I don't have the facility to conduct t his experiment. You will have to
> > enlighten me. Are you referring to the fact that outwas sands carry
> > further than boulders or are you referring to terminal morraines formed
> > by retreating glaciers. Perhaps you mean conglomerates and breccias (at
> > last I have been able to put my "O" level Geology to some use!)
>
> I'm saying that if you take an ariel photograph of the Grand Canyon area and
> compare it to what the water leaves behind in that box, the similarity is
> stunning.
>

Stunning or not, this is not proof.

> >> Fossils don't form under normal circumstances.
> >
> > Fossils are an inevitability of happenstance. True, you do need the
> > right conditions to exist but given the size of the earth's surface and
> > the length of geologic time periods then they are inevitable. A great
> > proof of God's existance would have been if there were no fossils at
> > all. BTW, the oldest fossils date to around 3.8 billion years ago.
>
> That dating is by extremely indirect means, I think you will have to admit.

Actually, no.

> For nearly 200 years scientists have been working under an a-priori
> assumption of a no-creation, no-flood situation, and all current theories,
> including theories about dating, came out of this situation. Had the same
> evidence been examined with a mindset toward creation and worldwide flood, I
> believe you would be very surprised at how well the evidence would fit.

And there is the nub of it all: the starting point. My mind was
poisoned for 11 years as a child while the (UK) state-sanctioned
schools fed me a diet of religion. Then I opened my eyes and started to
think for myself. After some 37 years I have concluded that the only
valid starting point for an enquiring mind is: I. From this it is
possible to come to know the universe as it currently stands. If you
start with the Bible as your knowledge base then your understanding can
not exceed that of Julius Caesar without that you discard substantial
chunks of the Bible. For the record, I suspect that a fundamentalist
belief in the Koran would be similarly debilitating.

>
> >> Animals die or are
> >> killed, and scavengers scatter the bones. For a fossil to form, the
> >> remains
> >> must be covered almost immediately.
> >
> > Not true. There is evidence on some (partial) fossil skeletons to show
> > that they have been subject to animal predation and that parts have
> > been scattered. Such evidence includes claw and tooth marks.
> >
> > If the remains are covered immediately (or sooner rather than never)
> > then the corpse may be saved from predators/scavengers but the tendency
> > of a fossil to be formed is unrelated to how long after death that
> > sedimentation covers it.
>
> For an individual bone, perhaps, but not for the entire skeleton. :-)

No, this also covers full skeletons.

>
> >> If you imagine a Great Flood where the ocean floors
> >> rapidly rise, there would be incredibly huge waves flooding over the
> >> continents, sweeping everything in their path up against hills and
> >> mountains, and into valley floors. This process would leave vast piles of
> >> vegetation and animal remains, which would be rapidly covered with silt.
> >
> > And these vast piles would have been discovered by now. Unless, of
> > course, you mean the Burgess Shales?
>
> They have been discovered. We've been mining them as coal for centuries, and
> pumping them up as oil for decades. :-)

My understanding is that coal derives from two sources: peat bogs and
swamps. As for oil, that is the accumulation of oilaceous residues from
decomposing animal and plant remains accumulating over millennia.

>
> >> My point here is that the actual
> >> evidence we see can be interpreted as consistent with the Bible without
> >> doing damage to more than man's theories.

Only with some serious suspension of disbelief. Otherwise you wouldn't
still need the Holy Inquisition ("Nobody expects the Spanish
Inquisition").

> However, there is significant evidence that the earth was created
> instantaneously, or nearly so. Have you studied the ubiquitous occurrence
> and condition of the Polonium residues in granite, and thought about how
> they got there? I find the secular explanations for this extremely
> contrived.

Polonium is a product of irradiating Bismuth which yields Bi-210. This
subsequently decays to give Polonium. Hydrogen and Helium are formed in
the early stages of the formation of the universe. They subsequently
form stars where nuclear fusion forms heavier elements (initially
Lithium, Beryllium....) up to and including Uranium. Such heavy
elements are found on earth as a result of stars going super-nova and
spreading their heavy elements throughout the universe. One such heavy
element, Uranium, readily decays readily into other heavy metals which
in turn decay. This leads to the creation of Bismuth which is then
irradiated thereby forming Polonium. How more contrived is that as an
explanation than that some unseeable, unknowable, unfathomable
super-being put it there?

.

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