Creation SuperCamp SuperSnark Recap

[SrMaryEloquentia]

18 hours ago, CyborgKin said:

Anyone want pics of the resource/sponsor tables?

Yes please!!

I really wonder how these people finance their cargo cult science. I just looked up their website - ticket for 4 days /full paying adult is around 500 Australian dollars (360 USD / 310 €) with discounts for seniors and children. That doesn't seem like a lot,  I wonder if they can cover the costs for this event.

What's your impression of the location? Can you make an estimation about the number of attendants? Do you think it adds up? If not, who covers for the costs?

ETA: Thank you for going and snarking about it online, I would love to join you , but Australia is quite literally on the other side of world for me.

[CyborgKin]

Wow I took a lot of notes yesterday.  Too lazy to post them before going to bed

The reason the cost may seem low is because that's not including accommodation.  Some people are staying on-site, some off-site, as they can afford.

I think I mentioned that the number of people registered is about 500, which looks about right for the crowd size.

Today's the last full day.  Tomorrow (Friday) is the second q and a session.   (creation.com/2018qa )

 

Dump of my notes:

Spoiler

# Wednesday 3rd

## 9:30 astronomical evidence for recent creation - Dr Mark Harwood
intro: major work in Australia's sattelite program, the only person who can slip "and then we just ducked over to the united states to buy some new spacecraft" into a sentence

The atheistic evolutionist demands deep time: the billions of years are essential for the development of the incredible diversity we see in the univere.
There's no scentific committment to any particular age for a created universe, but we are committed to God's word and He said when he did it.

Was once asked "Do you believe the earth is old?" answer "I do believe the earth is old" ... "something that is nearly 100 times older than me is very old!"
"I prefer to call myself a Biblical creationist not a young earth creationist because young and old are relative terms"

Sattelite program work: experimental/operational science based on observable and repeatable experiments, the kind of scienence that's responsible for the amazing technology we see around us today.
The other kind of science we hear much about: historical or forensic science.  We look at evidence in the present to try to work out what happened in the past.  It's still science but with the added element what what you believe will affect how you interpret the evidence.
Pakicetus - belief about mammal to whale evolution influenced how the missing parts of the fossil were filled in.  But seven years later a complete fossil was found and it was quite different so they changed their interpretation.  (side note: pakicetus means whale found in Pakistan - scientists don't name things creatively)

Experimiental vs historical science.  Present, observable, repeatable, vs. past, unobservable, unrepeatable.

Carl Sagan's Cosmos "the cosmos is all that is, or ever, was or ever will be."
i.e. all that exists is what we observe in the space-time universe
effectively said "there is no god" but if he'd actually said that half of American viewers would have switched their tvs off.

Imagine two intelligent fleas in the back of a car (not your car)
After observing how the car works they attempt to explain its origins.
But the fleas have no knowledge of assembly lines, plastic extrusion, computer aided design, etc...
But they can observe that the processes of operation which cause the car to wear out could not have been the processes that caused its creation.
We can determine the laws of physics through observation but cannot determine how anything was made because the processes had to be quite different.
But the Bible includes God telling us what He did so we can know.
We have according to the scriptures a recent creation.

What does science actually tell us?

The Earth - Moon system.
photograph of the Earth and moon together taken by Gallileo space telescope 1992
The fission theory: early molten Earth spun so quickly the moon was flung off into orbit
but it's orbiting wrong for that, and lacks iron and Earth couldn't have spun so fast and survived.

capture theory:
moon was wantering in the solar system and was captured by the earth
but the chance of being captured in a circular orbit is extremely low
and the makeup (besides the iron) is too similar

Accretion theory:formed simultaneously from same planetisimals
but the iron is still a problem, plus too much angular momentum difference.

So all three of those theories are rejected.
Current best theory is a mars sized protoplanet hit proto-earth and the ejecta formed the moon.
But there's water ice on the moon which should have been vaporised and the impact should have formed multiple moons not just one.

If you try to use only present processes to explain its origin you get bad results.
Prof Irwin Shapiro of Harvard Uni once joked that the best explanation is the moon is illusion (laughter)

don't look in the box, look in the book.  the bible tells us when God made the moon.

Why do we see only one face of the moon?
the mechanism of tidal locking
the earth produces a gravitational gradiant across the moon
the closer part is pulled harder
so the moon is slightly stretched into an oblate spheroid
so if it tried to rotate it would produce a torque which pulls it back.
The same thing happens to the earth: it's pulled slighly out of shape because it's not entirely solid.
but the earth is spinning... so the resultant torque is causing the earth's spin to gradually slow down.
over 55 years there's been an average increase of 1.5 milliseconds per day in the length of the day.
there's annual cycles due to orbital patterns and oceanic differences.
leap seconds were introduced in 1972 to keep mean solar time in step with atomic time.  they've added 27 seconds so far and never removed any.
But that means that the earth could not have been around for 4.5 billion years in its present form.

Causes of changs to earth's spin rate:

factors that coudl speed the earth up:
gravitational tidal locking
core mantle interactions
atmospheric and oceanic freiction
incrased moment of ineration through seizmic activity
decreased moment of inertion through seizmic activity
that has happened (example an earthquate in Japan) but the increase was in microseconds.  (much smaller than milliseconds)

Solar eclipses
there's a path of totality caused by the orbital geometry
there's a recorded total solar exlips in 360BC in Babylon
but the eclipse would have missed Babylon unless the day length was significantly shorter.
we also have lunar eclipse adta going back 2700 years
no way the earth could be 4.5 billion years old due to this.

Also the moon is receding at 3.8 cms per year
that's where the angular momentum goes
we cna measure this by bouncing laser beams off the moon.
the roche limit is 5% of the moon's current orbit, would break up if closer than that
1.5 billion year limit on the age of the moon, but the moon is "known" to be 4.5 billion years old
scientists then "conclude" there must have been prolonged periods of "weak tidal dissipation" because they can't let go of deep time.  but in doing do they've abandoned uniformitarianism by inventing a difference in past conditions to bridge the gap.
They say maybe the oceans were more ocean so there wa a larger ocean resonance in the past but plate tectonics models don't support this.

Solar System:
surface of Venus was mapped by the Magellan probe (cos we can't see through its atmosphere)
surface is "astonishingly young" it must have been catastrophicly resurfaced only a few hundred million year ago with little tectonic activity since then.
the rate of venus's rotation is slowing down rapidly
6.5 minutes in the 16 years since Magellan.
if it was billions of year old it would be tidally locked by now.

Surface of Ceres
an icy mud cryovolcano
it ought to be old and cold and dead so where did the heat to drive the volcano come from?  long age scientists can't find an answer for that.

Io - Jupiter's firey moon.
a very wild place, insanely active vocanic wonderland
400km plume from the Loki eruption
would have erupted its entire mass 50 times over even if it had only been erupting at 10% of its current rate for 4.5 billion years.
so it can only be a fraction of this age.

Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn
after 4.5 billion years its icy rings should have accumulated lots of micrometeorite dust contamination.
The rings are growing dimmer and some faint rings are perturbed by the nearby moons.
So the rings have to be relatively young.

An asteroid beyond Saturn was foung with rings.
such small rings would disappear after a few million years
scientists say "something is missing in our understanding"

The moons of Uranus are doomed to collide
in only about a million years.
but how did this not happen already?

Pluto has an atmosphere
the UV light should be energising some gas atoms to escape
"the atmospheric loss must be thousands of times less than predicted" for Pluto's atmosphere to still exist after billions of years.

Pluto's chaotic moons
titally locked.
Pluto and Charon orbit each other each 6.4 days
Styx rotates every 3.24 days
Nix 1.8 days *backwards*
Kerberos 5.3 days
Hydra 10.3 hours
To be still going so fast they have to be relatively young.

The search for earth-like planets
Kepler Space Telescope
trying to find exoplanets in habitable zones of stars.

methods to detect exoplanets:
transit method - change in brightness as planet orbits
radial velocity method - planet causes star wobble
this is excellent real experimental science.

thousands of confirmed exoplanets
plotted at exoplanets.org

there's a lot of "hot jupiters"
massive planets that are bigger than jupiter but far closer to their stars than mercury.
being rapidly consumed by their violent environment.
but how could they have been there for 10 billion years??
consistent with recent creation.
"has demolished ideas about how planets form, astronomers are searching for a new theory" - astronomer A Finkbeiner

lifetime of blue stars
Alnilam - central star in Orion's belt
blue supergiant 255000 times more luminous than the sun
cannot last even one million years without running out of fuel.

globular cluster rotation
blueshifts and redships prove that their centres are still rotating but according to theory they should not be still rotating after billions of years

plug for Spike Psarris DVD series

When we look in the box we get dead ends and confusing.
When we look in the book we get true answers.
Psalm 19:1-4
Psalm 8:3-4

everywhere we look in astronomy we find evidence of recent creation that confirm's the Bible's history.

## 11:00 Creation Biology 101 - Dr Craig Russell BSc Agric Hons, PhD
agro environmental research, a bear once stole his lunchbox
will look at biogenesis and genetics,

3 key truths about the universe that are consistent with scripture:
the laws of physics do not explain the origin of the universe
chemistry does not explain the origin of life
biology does not explain the diversity of life
(they only describe and explain how they operate)

Genesis account is very clear on the historical timeline, what was created when.
6 days of creation.
everything was described as fully functional and functionally mature.
the seed was in the fruit, able to reproduce after its own kind.

the law of biogenenesis: life comes from life
the law of genetics/heredity: kind reproduces after its kind

amusing childhood reflections of biology:
plante a pack of seeds at age 5, they never germinated, weeks of disappointment
(planted under an apricot tree which never fruited)
another plant in the house: the ginger beer plant - it seemed to move but had not leaves or stems, confusing (because it's a fermentation process not actually a plant)
lead him to ask what is life.

cell is basic unit of life
all cells are basically similar.  same basic mechanisms, information storage, components, same 20 amino acids
in the days of Darwin cells were thought to be as complex as a pingpong ball: just a membrane, cos they could only just see individual cells with basic microscopes
in the absense of scientific knowledge, speculation and imagination could run wild and they did.
the idea of spontaneous generation for example.

A cell is like a city at a molecular level.
All its operations are regulated by information that exists in the DNA.

Life comes from life: famous experiment by Louis Pasteur.  "the milk man"
falsified the concept of abiogenesis.

with the discovery of recent knowledge about cell biology, what do the experts conclude?
expert Paul Davies has said we're about as in the dark about the pathway from nonlife to life as Charles Darwin was.

Information specifies living things.
It's like a sentence.  A specified sentence not a random sentence, able to be interpreted, decoded by specific machinery.
DNA for single celled baterium: like a book of information
DNA for a multicelled organism like a horse: lots of books of information.

The DNA molecule, twisted ladder, nucleotides have the code, it's a biological polymer, the most complex information storage mechanism in the universe.
Water in the cell must be highly regulated because it breaks down these polymers.  Water dissolves DNA.
Water mutates DNA.  We're told that water makes it likely for life to evolve but it's actually bad for DNA.

What is information?
aushanaS he libeo mto
She has an automobile
She has a red Porshe
all have 21 letters, but the specificity, 'meaning' is Zero, high, and higher respectively.

Do random processes produce information?
splattering ink on a page does not produce information.
need a system to encode and decode the information.

Beans on a rope can code for letters than spell out a sentence.
similarly the DNA nucleotide letters in groups encode for amino acides.
Machines called ribosomes decode the meaning of the DNA.  Information about how to make ribosomes (which are proteins) is encoded on the DNA.

A gene is a long DNA sequence that encodes for a protein.
That's not all that's on the DNA.  Also parts which switch the genes on and off and determine how they interact and relate to each other.

Mutatons:
message HELP
if you change the P to and L you get HELL, if you change the H to a K you get KELP.
Insertion: HELIP
deletion: HEP
insertion and deletion mutations are particuarly dangerous because they change the reading frame of nucleotide triplets.
In english we use spaces to determine how letter are grouped into words.
In DNA it's every three letters is a word so inserting or deleting a letter changes all the words.

Mutations destroy information.
There is no naturalistic origin of meaningful information.

The law of heredity of genetics is obvious to a small child.
Plants and animals reporduce after their kinds.
There is variation within kinds, even new species.
But there are strict limits.  Variety is bounded.

Gregor Mendel, father of genetics.
observed that the units of heredity, genes, are constant.

Genetics and evolution have been enemies from the beginning of both concepts.  Gregor Mendel and Darwin were contempories...
Darwin's ideas were based on erroneous and untested ideas about inheritance, Mendel's concludes on careful experimentations.  Only by ignoring the total implications of modern genetics has it been possible to maintain the fiction.
(summarising the quote, see official notes)

The Creationist Orchard:
each created kind is a tree, branching into different varieties and species within the one kind.
contrasts drastically with the evolutionary tree, the theory of single common ancestry.
Also there's the false lawn caricature, people claiming creationists believe in utter genetic fixity (straight lines rather than trees)

Biological classification system, kingdom, phylum class order family genus species.
The biblical kinds largely correspond to the family and genus level of classification

Variety within a kind: look at dogs and cats
they have characteristics true to their kinds
you generally don't confuse a dog for a cat
but they have a lot of variety within the kinds.

Evolution's proposed mechanisms:
Mutations, natural selection.

Mutations always reduce the meaning of the information.
the effects of a mutation can be neutral at best
can confer a beneficial trait though.

We are accumulating mutations passed on from one generation to the next.
bodes poorly for human health into the future.

Natural selection is a mechanism of conservation not development.
errors can cause fatal defects are typically removed from the population - not viable
individuals that can't survive do not pass on their information, it's lost from the population.
over time the net result of natural selection is loss of information from the population

Beneficial mutations.
Wingless beetles on a windy island.
In specific circumstances having wings is a detriment.
So the mutation is a benefit.  But it's a loss of information, no new information was produced.

Genetic entropy - devolution
affecting everyone, male and female.
the DNA of organisms is wearing out over generations, natural selection cannot keep up to remove all the errors because all individuals have some.

Natural selection: galapagos finches
size and types of beaks
each variety in its own unique environment.
climate on galapagos islands is very unstable.
the populations are thus very unstable as their environments come and go
some conditions favour birds with one type of beak, others tend to perish.
has nothing to do with evolution but just distribution of available genetic information across the entire population.
if you lose all the birds with one kind of beaks, natural selection has removed the information for the other type completely due to unfavourable conditions

When a scientist says "I see evolution happening in my lab, it's a fact," that's misleading and evivocation, as the hearers think they mean changes that prove common ancestry when they just mean changes in population levels for various traits.

Evolution is not needed to understand or do science:
Over the last 100 years almost all biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself.  Molecular biology, biochemistry, pysiology, have not taken evolution into account at all. - P Dizkies

announcer resource plug: Evolution's Achilles Heels DVD is great for youth groups, show one field of science section per month.

## 11:45 Dr Martin Williams - How Evolutionary Theory Destroys Everything
theology - effect of evolutionary and long age views on the gospel, important for all Christians.

"the topic is rather ambitious, not one I chose, but I like it"
evolutionary theory destroys the gospel and once the gospel is destroyed, it's effectively destroyed everything.
Mark 8:36 what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
The creation evolution debate is often relegated to a secondary or side issue.

The gospel should be of first importance, yes.  1 Corinthians 15:3-4

The doctrine of creation is a primary issue because:
it's clearly taught in scripture
it's foundational to the Christian worldview
it's crucial to a correct understandign of the saving significance of Jesus' death
rejecting the biblical account of creation radically changes teh anwer to the question "why did Jesus die?"

First we ask "Why do people die?"

when Darwin wrote that there are many imperfections in the geological record, he also wrote that death was a natural, permanent, and necessary part of the world.
Carl Sagan: the secrets of evolution are time and death. (Cosmos part 2)

We are taught that death, disease, aging, have always been present in living things, that it's natural and unavoidable.
But this is not the truth and is not at all consistent with the teaching of scripture.  This is not the normal pattern ordained by God as some people erroneously conclude.
The clear teaching of scripture uniformly asserts that death is a result of sin, and not creation as God intended.

if physical death had previously existed for thousands of years for humans as uniformlitarian "dating" of human fossils says, Adam could have said "So what God, I'm going to die anyway" to God.
Romans 5:12 sin came into the world through one man and death through sin and so death spread to all because all sinned.
1 corinthians 15:26 the last enemy to be destroyed is death

for as by a man came death so by a man has come also the recurrection of the dead for as in adam all die so in Christ all shall be made alive. 1 corinthians 15:21-22

so why do people die?  because of sin not because of how they were made
why then did Jesus die?
(1)to bear our sins
1 peter 2:24
he suffered the punishment for our sins as our substitute
1 peter 3:18 he sufferd once for sins... being put to death in the flesh
romans 4:25
The bodily physical nature of his suffering was specifically the punishment for sin.
He suffered our penalty, that our sins merited, which was physical death.

So if death was not a penalty but a natural and necessary part of the world, as evolution teaches and requires, then this does not make sense.

evolution says death is normal, necessary, natural, good. so the sentence for sin had to only be spiritual death
biblical creation says death is abnormal, conditional, unnatural, bad, the penalty for sin is both spiritual and physical death.

But if the penalty for sin is only spiritual death, then Jesus's physical death on the cross and physical resurrection is both redundant and absolutely senseless.  It pays no debt because physical death is not a penalty.
The bible says Jesus died physically and rose physically.
The ancient heresy of gnosticism was that redeption is purely spiritual and involved the escape from this material creation to go to a better (spiritual) place.  In gnosticism people are saved from nature.  Physical creation is not redeemed, it is replaced.  It denies that Jesus' atoning work extended to all of creation.

(2) Jesus died to bear our sickness.
Matthew 8:16-17
Pain illness and death were rooted in sin, and redemption from sin ultimately results in the redemption of the body and the end of pain.
Jesus healings and exorcisms were evidence of God's reign and linked to his death which brough redemption.

But if evolution and long ages is correct then we've always had illnesses and diseases, they're normal, natural, and necessary parts of how God made the world.
Did Jesus die because of how God made the world?  Is Jesus saving us from nature?  Did Jesus die because we are evolving?  Is he saving us from a process that God ordained that created us?

If we understand illness and diseases to be a part of God's judgement of sinful humanity then we can understand why Jesus died to talke our illnesses and bear our diseases.

Loophole: maybe only people didn't die until the fall?
That's a pretty bleak world if everything was dying and corrupted and diseased besides Adam, does not fit with what happened and what God said.  And... :

(3) Jesus died to redeem creation.
Hosea 4:2-3 :
the connection between man's moral response to God and the state of all of creation.  Our moral actions have consequences for the entire world.  Human sin affects animal life.
Genesis 3:14 the serpent was cursed *more than* all the cattle and every beast of the field.  Therefore the other creatures were cursed an amount, as a result of sin.
Romans 8:19-21 creation was subjected to futility.  The cosmic scope of the Fall.  And the cosmic scope of Christ's redemptive work the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption.
We are redeemed and nature is redeemed along with us.  We are not saved from nature but with it.

But if evolution or long ages is correct... why did Jesus suffer to redeem all of creation?  If as evolutionary dating of fossils claims, sin had no real effect on the cosmos.
Colossians 1:19-20 "to reconcile all things"

We can see that young earth creation and old earth evolution understand the cross and its significance and what it achieved very differently.

Long ages: source of death = God's creation, source of disease = God's creation, source of decay of cosmos = God's creation.  Young earth: source of death = our sin, source of disease = our sin, source of decay of cosmos = our sin.
Long ages: Jesus died because of the consequences of God's creation.  Young earth: Jesus died because of the consequnces of our sin.

So the problem is if death and disease are a normal natural and ncessary part of creation as God ordained it, then Jesus died to redeem us from creation.  creation is not good but bad, and sin is not the reason Jesus died but a side issue.

teh solution:
young earth bibilical creation acknowledges that Jesus died to redeem us from sin and its effects.  it acknowledges the goodness of creation, the intrusiveness of sin and its disastrous effects on God's good creation and the glory of the cross which redeems us and all creation from its bondage to sin and its effects.

1 Corinthains 15:3
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scrptures

"please no not be embarassed by the foolishness of the cross"

## 14:00 the world's smallest electical motor: atp synthase - professor Steve Taylor, university of liverpool (been on staff for 40 years)

Comes from a good home in the UK, church of England, was an atheist for a bit when he was young and thought he knew everything, got out of that when his brother was converted.
His brother said that there cannot be matter before mind.
There must be a mind behind and before the universe.
The mind behind not just creation but also redemption.
But being a non-atheist doesn't make you a Christian.
some southern baptists from the US helped sort him out as a teen
but the next day the creation/orgins questions came to his mind.
as a young Christian he had a lot of questions about evolution (and there were't a lot of materials with answers back in the 70s) but he decided to trust God and put his questions aside for the time being.
on a beach mission asked a really bright guy from Oxford how he reconciled the two and he said have you looked at the evidence against evolution.
looked into it and found the facts of science are on the side of the Bible every time.
went to Speaker's Corner
never found a question that didn't have an eventual answer.  There's always answers for the world's questions.
Can anyone produce one fact - not opinion - that goes against the Bible?  No one's come back to him with one.

Have you ever heard:
"Scientists don't belive in God"
"Science has all the answers to man's questions"
"science is based on evidence, but Christianity is based on faith."
this is the message the media put out regularly, what our young people get in school.
in the UK, from age 5, evolution is mandaded, creation forbidden to be taught.

Great scientists who were Christians.
greatest experimental physicist of the 19th century: Michael Faraday.
Faraday gave us the foundations for electrochemistry and electromagetic motors
"it's all very interesting Mister Faraday but what use is it?"
"it may not be of much use now but one day you will be able to tax it"
Maxwell's equations
Flemming's diode, left hand rule and right hand rule
he founded the first creationist movement in the world, protested evolution.

Maxwell's equations, Faraday's laws, Flemming's rules, all still widely taught.
All were Bible believing Christians.

Lord Kelvin
John Dalton
James Joule
those three and Faraday make 4 Christians with units/scales named for them.

Samuel Morse what hath God wrought first telegraph message.

More recent than the 19th century,,,.
Andrews, Burgess, Lennox, McIntosh, Nevin, etc

Science grew out of a Christian worldview and owes its existence to Christians.

If we teach our young people the truth of the Bible, the truth of Genesis, the will make tremendous progress in every field.

So "scientists don't believe in God" is shown to be false.
Stuart Burgess - cutting edge bike chain winning the british cyclists olympic gold.

The limitations of science
"we've clothed the scientst with the mantle of infallability"
science doesn't give all the answers because it doesn't ask all the questions.
purpose and destiny are excluded from the scientific view
If there's a cake on the table when you get home, science can answer some questions about the cake but not why it was made.

William McLennan's motor - 1960
size 1/64 of an inch, 0.4mm, 400,000nm.  spins at 2000rpm
(challenge by Richard Feynman)

Feynman pointed people to the nano world, the molecular world.  Is second challenge was to write the encyclopedia britanica on the head of a pin which wasn't done until 1965.

Electron micrograph of the world's smallest motor
ATP synthase.
200,000 times smaller than McLellan's motor.
1000 times smaller than a human hair in width

Looking into the nano world:
ATP synthase is called that because it synthesises ATP
ATP is adenoside triphosphate.
It is the form of energy that keeps us going, it's what powers our cells.
ATP is like a tiny battery molecule that is made by this tiny motor.
Energy is released for cell metabolism.
The used ATP (ADP) comes back and is regenerated.
nanoscale recycling!

Three's a triple phosphate bond.
When the bond is broken, energy is released to do useful work.
A phosphate group breaks off leaving adenosineDIphosphate
ADP is like a used up battery.

ATP synthase is the machine that makes ATP from ADP
produces our body weight in ATP each day
speed 7000 rpm, efficiency over 99%
makes one ATP molecule per third of a rotation.

Not powered by electromagnetics but by a flux of hydrogen ions through a membrane.
steps:
1. loads ADP + Pi
2. changes ADP to ATP
3. Relase of ATP
This is happening now, trillions of times

Hydroelectric power station in the Snowy Mountains in Australia
turbuns run 80 to 1000rpm
the efficiency is very high for turbines, typically 90%

ATP synthase is like the power station for our bodies, keeping the lights on.  But over 99% efficient.

ATP in action:
kinesis is a linear motor used in the cell to transport packaged proteins around the cell.
looks like a man walking.
each step of the kinesin protein uses an ATP molecule.
this is happening constantly in all of us right from conception until death.

Psalm 139:14

Science has no answer, no naturalistic explanation, for how this came to be.
This is one such case that Darwin spoke of being unable to find, that would absolutely break down his theory.

Accident or design?
objective indicators of design:
specified complexity
order, interdependence, and purpose
it all works or nothing works, "irreducible complexity"
ATP has it all

J.B.S. Haldane 1949
"that is why no one finds no example of various mechanisms such as the wheel and magnet which would be useless til fairly perfect"
ATP synthase is such an example now.

Considering the nanoscale was how Antony Flew became a theist, formerly the world's most famous atheist.
honest enough to admit he was wrong.

So "science has all the answers" is quite false, it does not even ask all the questions, and it does not have answrs on the nanoscale.

A wrong view of faith: a Dawkins quote I missed
A right view of faith:
judgement based on reasonable evidence.
We all do this.  look at the evidence and put our faith in pilot and doctors.
trust in a reliable person.
We exercise faith every day.
God has given us a wealth of testable examinable evidence.
Christianity has more evidence for it than anything else, any science or history.

1. the evidence of creation.  Where did everything come form?
We live in a finely tuned universe.
Where did the natural laws come from?
Any small alteration of fundamental constants would result in only hydrogen existing, or not even protons.
How did life begin?
Design everywhere. e.g. ATB synthase.
Romans 1:20
God is not part of creation, is separate from the things he has made.

2. the evidence of the Bible
Claims to be the word of God
teachings unsurpassed, raises men and women everywhere it is taught
never proven wrong
predictive prophecy
e.g. Psalm 22 written 1000 years before Christ and 300 years before crucifixion was invented

3. Christ
central figure of human history, how we write dates
four eyewitness accounts
Claimed to be God
rose from the dead as she said.
Luke wrote in Acts 1:1-3 that Jesus showed himself alive by many infallible proofs.  Evidence based!
No serious scholar denies Christ lived and died.
Agreement among scholars that the tomb was empty
The empty tomb is the bases for the whole of Christianity
Res predicted by the OT and Christ himself
seen alive by hundreds of witesses
seen alive by doubters and enemies
Seen alive on 12 occasions, more than 520 witnesses over 40 days
Seen by Paul and turned his life around

Lord Lyndhurst
Lord Chancellor 3 times
higher than the PM in legal terms
"I know pretty well what evidence is, and I tel lyou such evidence as that for the resurrectio has never broken down yet"
Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris will not engage with the evidence

Skeptic Frank Morison tried to write a book against the resurrection but failed and wrote "who moved the stone"

4. The evidence of changed lives
Peter the denier, Thomas the doubter, Paul the persecuter, Mary Magdalene, Lydia the merchant...
Augustine the immoral
Elizabeth Fry the prison refrmer
John Newton the slave trader turned to abolition

Questions to the athesist:
Where did everthing come from?
how did a fine tuened system like ATP arrive by chance?
how did live arise spontaneously from dead matter?
where did my mind come from?
How do you explain the Bible, the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

God the creator can be personally known through Jesus Christ.
Revelation 3:20

## 3:30 Made in Whose Image? - Jim Whitehall
Biology, geology, paleobiology, MBA, Engineering, working in I.T. Solutions Integration

Piraha Tribe in the Amazon
believed by researchers to have no art, no concept of time, no belief regarding their origns
this was somewhat remarkable.
in 1859 a new unique theory of origins begain to gain popularity, claiming objective scientific measurement, not faith or tradition or belief.
Evolutionary common descent. Illustrations: the primate family tree, Darwin's tree of life.
Darwin predicted a continuum of life and expected to fossils to show this, each form of life blurring into the next
Scientists certain that humans and chimpansees have common ancestry. evidence being fossils and the genetic similarity.
Yes there are lots of fossils and there is great similarity, perhaps 85-95%
But the whole tree of common descent of rotting driftwood.

All the animals in the animal kingdome fit into distinct phyla.
Each phylum is grouped into classes orders into families etc.
The species are what we're told evolves, the tiny changes adding up over time.
As the changes add up things move into a different genus, different family, etc.
eventually after millions of years we get species of a different order
after many more millions, something in a different class.
eventually after tens to hundreds of millions of years of tiny changes a new phyla appears.
Darwin expected the fossils to show and embody this continuum.
But the fossil record is now well established and it shows the opposite.
Repreentatives of each phyla appear abruptly without connection to any previous form.
Then after the new phyla, diversivication into class, then order, then family, etc.
This is the exact opposite to what Darwin expected, predicted, and needed for his thoery.
Instead of gradual changs on teh species level we get sudden appearance of phyla followed by diversification.
The fossils show sudden appearance of distinct differentiated forms.
Also the sudden appearance of the flowering plants (angiosperms) which Darwin called abominamble because it doesn't fit his theory at all.

Phylogenetic Tree
looking at the tree based on genetic similarity
was expected to confirm Darwin's tree.
But no, Darwin's tree collapsed.
"we just annihilated the tree of life, what would DArwin hae made of that" - Michael Syvanen New Scietist 2009

The fossils and the genetics are both against Darwin's tree and against each other!

Imagine a puzzle
There's only one way in which this puzzle can be solved.
Your belief no matter how strong cannot alter how this puzzle is solved.
There is only one solution.
The puzzle is objective and perfectly perspective.  Free from belief and motive.
Imagine if the edges of a puzzle became a bit worn.  Wiggle room, a loss of specificity.
Eventually with enough wear a puzzle might be able to be solved two or even more differnt ways.
But we know the wrong ways are wrong because of the picture.
The more and more it gets worn the more we have to infer what the picture was.
And as pices are lost, more and more belief has a say in reassembling the puzzle.
In human origins, belief and ambition have everthing to do with how the remaining worn pieces are assembled.

Hominin family tree
H floresiensis, H sapien, H heidelbergensis H neanderthalensis, H erectus, H rudolfensis, H naledi, H habilis.
("I would argue all of these are variations of humans, ecept H habilis which didn't actually exist")
Then there's Australopethecines, ape-like.
Below those are Ardipithecus, last known human-chimp common ancestor

The tree is rotten:
The fossil record is fragmented
so fragmentary and disconnected that no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor - Richard Lewontin 1995
You could put them all in a small shoe box and still have room for a good pair of shoes - Nat Geo 2015
Fossils not complete
endless speculation and storytelling about fracments and scraps of jaws and skulls
The field is fragmented:
human evolutionary studies are plagued by debate and controversy, diverse interpretations
human ancestor finds are glamorous, the stakes are high: front pages and funding.  envy and contempt result.
quotes:
"difficult to separate teh personal from the scientific disputes raging in the field"
"each paleontoligist I interviewed thought the previous one was an idiot"

Ardipethecus ramidus
rosetta stone of human origins - 15 years after discovery
the plevis is a vital part for understanding a fossil.
a lot of the pelvis was crushed, also the skull
Nat Geo said she was possibly trampled by hippos and other passing herbivores.
bones spread over wide area
they went with the 24th version of the reconstruction which looked very human.
but any reconstruction could have been argued as "equivocal" because the hip was so damaged.
the fossil is like a "psychological ink blot test" - you can see what you want to see

Australopithecus anamensis
"the most complete chain of human evolution so far - AP 2006" - a few teeth!

Australopithecus afarensis - Lucy.  the most famous.
only 40% of Lucy's skeleton was found
so many crucial parts still missing
scattered across a hillside
just one more rainstom might have washed her bnoes away never to be found
(but they've been buried and eroded and buried and eroded for 3 million years allegedly)
could other skeletons be mixed in her closet?
discoverer described the site as a mixture of creatures orginally.  including baboons.

comparison and contrast of human and chimp skeletons, animated
they're very different and work differently to achieve different things
the pelvis is very critical to this.
Lucy's was crushed into 40 pieces and reconstructed to seem very humanlike.
Lucy is a "poster child" of human origins but virtually every measurment has been called into question from one side or another, which you won't read about in the museums and textbooks

You end up with the apelike australopithecine group, and the humanlike homo group which arose abruptly.
Homo sapiens combination of features never appear earlier
a genetic revolution.
earliest fossils of homo are spearated from australopithecines by an unbridged gap
without having any fossils that an serve as a missing link we must fall back on the time honoured practice of historical narrative
i.e. fill the gaps with a story.
illustration: a tube of "No more gaps"

Video: Falcon V rocket landing on platform in the ocean.
Secret of engineers: the beauty of that isn't in what you saw but in what happens inside to make it work
3D linear motion three positions, three velocities, three acceleratons.  three angular positions, three angular velocities, three angular accelerations.
So there's 18 variables to keep track of at every moment.
Done with three accelerometers
At every instant the rocket must determine it's true motion and formulate its next actoin
Systems Control Theory

Homo Erectus: standing man, the genetic revolution
Huma semi-circular ear canals
They do what those accelerometers do but so much better than Space X
absolutely extraordinary systems control technology that will knock your socks off.
Video: Olympic acrobatics, etc.
All that unintelligable math, we are all masters of it and are appplying all those complex systems control algorithms.

Chimps have some of that but you can't just drastically change the skeleton and expect upright walkng to work.
There's necessarily simultaneous rewrites of the complex control software too.

Homo erectus is really part of the same species as homo sapiens
could interbreed, had all the same anatomy, unique humand esigns and made human arterfects.
Neanderthal man: we have their DNA markers.  They were behavourally and socially humans just a bit stockier with heavier brows.
H floresiensis: "the hobbit" may be just a congenitally abnormal individual from a small population.
is drawn to look inhuman but facial reconstruction looks very human.
likely pygmies, founder effect on an island on which are also found fossil pygmy elephants.
Also actual modern pygmy humans live in the place where floresiensis were found.  duh

Soo what about that 95% genetic similarity trump card?
If that still sounds convincing...

The invention of Danish play well "leg godt" or "lego" for short.
bricks than can be assembled into all sort of shapes and designs.

Video: We can make lego bricks in a 3d printer
precise instructions to correctly orchestrate the print head.

Biological organisms are also built from highly specific bricks.
each protein brick is unique and complements all the otheres to click together to form highly complex machines.
e.g. ATP synthase is made of 18 major componets that are made of protein "bricks"

example of code for 3d printing lego bricks.
the code for producing proteins is similarly written on DNA
it controls the print head for the extraordinary biological printer that printed you
video: animation of the formation and folding of a polypeptide chain into a 3d protein

If something goes wrong: pictures of weird distorted lego bricks which would not click together.
just one error can drastially reduce the functionality of the brick.
same for DNA

If we keep mutating that lego brick instuctions will we get some novel new useful brick?
if we keep mutation the DNA will we get some novel new useful protein brick?  (biological evolution requres it)

Lego Space:
within the 3D real of the LEGO print head, it can be at 128 x, y, z locations, so 2.1 million unique locations.
Suppose we can have up to 150 unique steps.
picture: weird blob of plastic made of 150 random locations in the space.
What if you print every possible combination of steps to get every unique plastic blob?
You just more than filled the known universe with unique plastic blobs.
(almos worse than the floor of his car filled with plastic Happy Meal toys)
Lego estimates 20,000 possible functional bricks.  This is "lego space"
that's 20,000 functional bricks in the known universe.
beween each functional brick is millions of galaxies of nonfuctional bricks.

Protein space:
if you print all the combinations of amino acids, you'll fill the known universe with nonfunctional protein blobs.
betwen each functional protein is millions of galaxies of nonfuctional proteins.
But... to evolve new functional proteins we need a step by step path from functional protein to a more functional (nore fit) protein.
If we step on a a nonfunctional protein the organism is sick and natural selection deletes it
we need a step by step path but the nearest functional protein is millions of galaxies away.
And random mutations mean this is traversed randomly.
And each step takes a generation.
the primates can take one step per generation.

Human genome has 3 billion base pairs.
5% differnce is still millions of difference, which are made one per generation...
Not enough time to do them one at a time.
And we need to jump multiple mutations simultaneously to get so something functional.
To randomly jump 8 mutations at the same time...
Until that randomly happens you'll have to wait 100 million billion times longer than the age of the universe
And that's just 8.

Evolution is marketed to the public on similarities
similarity of morphology
similarity of genetics "95%"
similarity proves nothing though.
similarity can be explained by common designer.
But the differences that's where the game trully begins.
evolution must explain the differences.
it must provide pathways in protein space to novel functions
but no path exists and there's not enough time to traverse a path.

"one day Siri may claim she has no designer"

We only looked at one thing: the difference in skeleton and the control system to enable walking upright.

There are so many more major differences
long list far too fast to catch anything
swimming, opposable thumbs, long distance running, planning, hospitality, write books, domesticate animals, agriculture and trade, measure time, play sports, bury the dead.
it is we who are here considering our creator and not the chimps
we have empathy for animals
"If I continue I may be insulting the chimps.  I hope they take it on the chin.  Not that they have one."

## 16:45 Q and A session

Have about 70 questions to answer in 45 minutes.

Q: What is the best answer to who created God?
A: "I don't believe in a created God", "God is eternal" "It's like asking to who is a batchelor married" "see the Creation Answers book, it's free online"

Q: What one question could you ask anyone about evolution to challenge them?
A: "Have you seen Creation magazine, would you like a copy?"

Q: Something about how medieval people depicted dragons as serpents, did they actually see them?
A:The guy who promotes that idea is wrong.  Not all depections of dragons are actually dinosaurs, some dragons actually are mythological questions.  It's not hard to tell the differnce by looking at the morphological characteristics of the creature depicted and comparing it to allegedly extinct reptiles.

Q: What do you think of Canada attempting to legislate away differences between men and women, given the biological differences?
A: I don't like discrimination against people, but a) the government quite rightly discriminates against smokers, that's an example of a necessary discrimination and b) I don't want to lose my own rights of expression

Q: Something to do with biblical history and chrono-geneologies
A: We can allow for some gaps but can't go much beyond 7 thousand years

Q: those that are fit to live, live.  Isn't this a tautology?
A: kinda but the defintion of fitness is to produce viable offspring, just because an organism lives it may not be able to produce viable offspring so its information is removed from the population, so it's not a complete tautology

Q: the old how can we see distant starlight question
A: chapter 5 of the answers book
So how can we see things like a supernova many thousands or millions of lightyears away?  Are they real?
Not a simple answer.  Time is not constant throughout the universe.  Gravity will distort time.  Movement will distort time.  Expending space will distort time.  Three methods of distorting time.
God stretched out the heavens on day 4.
a clock at the edge of the universe could run many times (like a trillion) faster than one on earth, and the time in the Bible is given according to the passage of time on the earth.
so there's actually enough time for the light to reach us.
there's plausible explanations for light to reach us
different creationist cosmologists have different competing models, there's a lot of ongoing work and discussion.
the big bang model has its own similar problem: the horizon problem.
that's "solved" by cosmic inflation which involved gravitig working backwards for no reason and is a very "fantastic" and "incredible" explanation

Q: do sea creatures count as living things?  If so what did they eat before carnivory?
A: the Bible is clear death and suffering came after the fall so the food chain of animals arose after the fall, partly because after the fall it was difficult to get enough food.  there were physical changes though the bible does not spell out how it all applies and how all the details work and how it was enacted so we don't know for sure (look in the answers book).
"Nephesh chaya" living thing - creature aware of its existence and pain, capable of suffering, these were not subject to death before the fall.  But bacteria are not nephesh chaya so that does not apply to them.
So what about fish, where is the line drawn?  Are worms sentient life?  Probably not.  Ants probably not so God probably didn't stop Adam from stepping on ants.
(didn't answer one way or another for fish though)

Q: When did the majority of dragons die out and why?  What to you say to the recent creation.com article that says dinosaurs are almost certainly extinct (didn't really read it)?  There were legends and sightings up to 500 years or so ago so how did they all go extinct just before we got the ability definitely record their existence?
A: I look for artwork that doesn't move around because as we move through history it becomes exceedingly unlikely for us to find these creatures.
The reason for this: looking in Europe's depictions of dinosaurs and extinct reptiles: the accurate ones dwindle in the 1600s and are basically gone in the 1700s.  Seems to parallel the
Little Ice Age from 1550 to 1700.  (they were likely mesothermic) regardless, the little ice age may have knocked out a lot of them in europe.  we don't have so much historical documentation from artwork in other parts of the worlds to draw solid conclusions there.

Q: why did the inundatory period of the flood deposit more sediment than the recessive period?
A: this was actually surprising but there was a lot more energetic activity in the inundatory period making sediment to deposit.  In the recessive period there was a lot of sedimentation but then that quickly got eroded away again so the big

Q: would there be coal in the ground today without noah's flood?
A: wouldn't have most of it

Q: can DNA be transferred by kissing?
A: there's lots of hormonal involvement, oxytoxin, when men and women come close together even just hugging.  So a woman can become very enmeshed even with men she just kisses.
As for DNA transferred by kissing... we eat a lot of meat, what happens to that DNA? (probably just broken down)
so not an immediate answer, maybe just some hormone transfer, it's a possibility that needs research...
(also mentioned being asked questions earlier regarding oral sex)

Also a question regarding dog breeding and purebreds vs. mongrels and traits of the mongrel coming out in the offspring
Something about mating an arabian mare with a quogga that couldn't be tamed and the offspring couldn't be tamed and then mating that with an arabian stallion and the result was still quagga-like in temperament.
There aren't any studies about this in humans.
[also I feel like the asking was fishing for a scientific justification for racism or racial purity, ugh]

Q: something to do with the fall and the problem of evil
A: got is sovereign but is not the author of sin, man is.
Adam did not have a singful nature but was deceived by the serpent.  Was innocent maybe naieve and tricked.
Why did God allow it to happen?
If Adam never fell we would give praise not just to God but to Adam.
God's goal all along was to send Christ so we could glorify God and Christ not God and Adam.

Q: stuff to do with genetic editing of plants with genes from other things to make them resist bugs to require less pesticides
A: this genetic modification of cotton by intelligently designed addition seems to be a good thing for the environment.
But for edibles it might not be such a wise thing to do.  We don't eat cotton but modifying corn needs to be judged on the merits of the specific situation with a lot of wisdom and respect for God's designs in order to do it safely.
See DVD or download of "Frankenstein Foods and Fetuses"

Q: is there ice on mercury?
A: in the permanent shade some was detected, it's believed to be relatively recent due to sharp definiton between ice area and non ice area.  (recent creation evidence?)

Q: if the earth is slowing down why does it feel like time is speeding up?
A: it might have something to do with your age

Q: Something regarding the second law of thermodynamics
A: Knows who asked the question and previously asked the person to write a paper for the journal about it.
Anyhow, this isn't a great argument to use because understanding it properly is difficult and it's complicated and most listeners already glazed over.
It's a powerful argument but you need to know too much for it to be a bulletproof argument (closed system vs. open system for example.)
Easier to talk about order vs. disorder cos everyone knows randomness doesn't produce order.

Still heaps more questions "we can deal with some of these if you don't ask any more questions before Friday"

## 19:30
bored, waiting for pizza, some of the youth are discussing Miraculous Ladybug

 

I really need to go through the official online notes and fix all my incomplete quotes and quotes missing attribution.  But I can't be bothered doing that right now.  They say the notes will be up for a week.

[CyborgKin]

Figured out how to get my phone to share it's data connection with my notetaking device, so here's today's notes dump so far!

 

Spoiler

# Thursday

## 9:30 Male and Female He Made them  - Kathy Wallace
Intro: Will talk about how evolution has no explanation for the binary sex system.  Also will discuss the many differences between the sexes.

It's been a great honour to have many deep personal discussions with many of the ladies.

Illustration: photos of egg and sperm.

Let's start with Genesis.
Male and female He creatd them and HE blessed them.  And in the day they were created, He called them "man".  Man or mankind is the name for them, both male and female.
Adam named Eve because she would be the mother of all the living.
Before the flood God said be fruitful and mulitipy and fill the earth and subdue it. Gen 1:28
after the flood geneis 9:7 God said much the same thing.  the instruction to reproduce and repopulate the earth has not been revoked.

Male and female are needed for sexual reproduction.
Evoltuionary paradicms are devoid of rational explanatio nfor the sexes or sexual reprouction.
The attack on men being men and women being women and the roots of gener ideology
The determined assualt on human fertility.  Contraception causing infertility.
the removal of reproductive control
Homosexuality, sexual preference, gender disphoria.
These are scary times for everyone, a lot is happening and changing, our voices are not being heard as christians and especially as creationists.

2 timothy 1:7 we're told not to be fearful, just carry on our instructions and God will do the rest.  speak in love not fear.
to be equipped is to be empowered.
think of the power of love, look at the cross and consider the power of love to separate us from sin.
People say we don't believe in science but that's not true.
We have a sound mind and a renewing of our mind and everyone needs a renewing of their mind which is possible through God.

How did we all get here?
Through sexual reproduction.
Whatever the case, needed a sperm and egg coming together.
Video of fertilization (animated) (by Nucleus Medical Media 2015)
chromosomes unfolding, the two nuclei being pulled and drawn together by microtubules
the matching chromosomes find each other and match up
fertilized oocyte drifting down the fallopian tube
that little person already has a sex - male or female - and all the information that makes them a person
exceedingly vulnerable to external factors.

What do evolutionists say?
Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
Someone asked on his blog how gender came about.
an answer with some sweeping statements and a story which doesn't say much.
found some links to some other sites and papers on the subject
"evolutionary theories on gender and sexual reproduction" Brad Harrup Ph and Bert Thompson PhD

various quotes from experts saying that sex is a puzzle that hasn't been solved yet, and we do not know how or why sex evolved.
"the advantages of sexual reproduction are not obvious" - laughter from audience
university of adelaide: theory of the evolution of sexes tested with algae - published in journal of ecology and evolution by Dr Da Silva
It's just a mathematical model that shows that sperm end up being smaller than eggs, doesn't prove or explain anything about the origin of sex.

Diagram of classic evolutionary theory from single to multicelular organisms, and their different methods of reproduction
Isogamy, Anisogamy, Oogamy
plus and minus mating types, a separate thing to female and male sexes.
A big jump between the two things.

You'll find in the literature that:
Change is evolution
no change is evoltuion
fast change is evolution
slow change  is evolution
convergent eolution is evolution
divergent is evolution
homoplasy is evolution
etc etc

More explanation of the paradigm of how in evolutionary theory the transition from asexual to sexual reproduction happened
(can't really put diagrams into notes, need to look at the official notes)

Two similar algae species with similar colonies, one with mating types vs one with actual sexual reproduction
but a study of the chromosomes showed that the relevant area of the chromosomes which was predicted to be expanded and more complex was in fact the reverse
the study showed the opposite of what the evolutionary theory predicted, punching a hole in the paradigm
frequently cited examples of nw gene evolution are frequently/regularly a loss, which isn't widely reported

Males and Sperm
A lot of chemicals in our environment causing cellular and subcellualar damage and ill health in men and women
Sperm rates are down more than half from teh 1970s and IVF rates are up.
the people who should be worried about this don't even know.
Post war birthrate was increasing, baby boom, then the pill hit and boom it went down.

spermageddon: why the human race coudl be infertile in 50 years
pesticides are damaging testosterone in humans
Paper: Atrazine weedkiller causing demascularization.
Frogs having both testes and ovaries and more testes and more ovaries

Endorine-Disrupting Chemicals
endocrine society scientific statement
Effects of various chemicals on the male reproductive system.
BPA, DDT, DES, etc etc
Trangenrational effects: these chemicals and their effects could be transmitted down 5 genererations.
DNA methylation and histone acetylation change DNA expression

The pill may be one such chemical
But don't panic.  But you ought to know about this.
the pill (COCP) elevates SHBG can bind to and mop up testosterone
can cause depression and low libidity
the germline is particularly vulnerable
DES exposure can effect male reproductive development in sons.
DES was prescribed in 1940s to 70s to prevent miscarriages
led to high incidence of reproductive disorders and cancers
ATZ also causes disruptions and can be transferred multipe generations.
reproductive development issues caused the these chemicals associated with gender identity problems

Hormonal contraceptives are associated with
bone health problems, migrane cancer, weight gain, obesity, gastrointestinal issues

the COCP has persistent effects of reducing libido
effects of oral contraceptives on breast cancer cells and increases breast cancer risk

prenatal progesterone exposure affects sexual orientation in humans.
fewer exposed males and females identifies as hetrosexual, more reported same-sex behaviours, attracted to the same or both
regardless of ses, progestorone exposure is associated in higher rates of bisexuality

male homosexuality linked to a protein in the brain
homosexual men have a higher number of older bothers
study of male brain deveopment
anti-NLGN4Y levels higher in mothers of gay sons
having more sons (or male miscarriages) resulting in immune response and these antibodies which then affect subsequent male baby brain development
diagram of antibodies blocking critical synaptic membranes in parts of the brain responsible for sexual preferences
testosterone exposure does not affect sexual preference as gay and straight men are exposed to the same amounts of testosterone in utero

journal artical: homosexuality as a consequnce of epigenetically canalized sexual development
(the importance of a pregnant woman's diet because epigentic factors have major effects on development of the child)
During early development there is nearly global erasure of epi-marks, DNA methylation and histone tali modification
but some escape erasure and linger on.
Mother's diet and chemical exposure can cause genome-wide de nove epimarks

XX and XY embroys differ epigenetically at the earliest stages of mammalia deveopment
sex specific differences in DNA methyloation on the promotoers of specific loci.

communication between the X and Y chromosomes
some parts of X chromosome transcription controlled by the Y
sex is not assigned at birth but long before that

potential for epi-marks laid down early affecting androgen signalling later in life.
women hare born with all their eggs.  (don't put your laptops or mobile phones in you laps ladies)

More and more fertility centres opening up
Cis woman whose husband is a trans man, they made two babies

quote from the 1997 scifi film Gattaca was almost prophetic

the push for "three-person IVF" - 3-parent embroys
destruction of hundreds of embryos in the process

how far should we go?  taking reproduction into our own hands.

Feminims:
women and men are equal (but women are better)
Pitting women against men as enemies is not good
men and women need one another.  God's plan.
Feminism does not have all the answers.  The results of feminism are with us today.
maybe much of transgenderism today is the result of the behaviours we've engaged in (use of contraceptives and other chemicals damaging reproductive development)

Chart of male vs female grip strength
there are clear physiological differences.

now we're told men and women can choose to be either or nothing.

pediatric endocrinology
Gender ideology, transgender science fraud?

Alfred Kinsey
fraudulent and horrendous data

Dr Paul McHuge was part of the gender clinic
working with transgender patients, said it was not successful at truly transitioning people into what they want to be, the promise of transitioning is a fraud

the alternative view is not tolerated
same recipe as used against creationist
list of tactics used, didn't catch them

doctors getting thousands of dollars performing mascectomies on teenage girls
institutionalised child abuse
3 year old patients in transgender clinic

but 80% of children grow out of gender dysphoria
(children change their minds all the time)

this is something people struggle with deeply and we need to understand

Woman with limb dysphoria wants to become a paraplegic but can't afford having her spinal cord severed

link between body integrity disorder and genter dysphoria
xenomelia
People with the desire to be blind
we need to understand these conditions

Christians are said to be hateful and are silenced though we are trying to warn and help and understand people.

## 11:00 Evidence of a Flood Scarred Earth -  Dr Ron Neller
fluvial geomorphologist, researcher, was confronted with the evidence for a global flood and became a creationist and then subsequently a Christian in his early 50s

While we're here one of the worlds best beaches is across the road and the wind is perfect.

The foundation laid by Tas Walker for interpreting and understanding landscapes in a biblical flood model.
Need to understand the connectivity between landscapes and the connectedness of the expanations for them.

Travelled the world to understand landscapes.  Visited unique countries, went to remote locations, had interesting experiences.
Been shot at, got mixed up in a terrorist incident, accidentally boarded a troop train in Russia.

a very powerful moment:
Realised most of his work was observational but he had to place an interpretation on it.
Travelling the globe he realised the bigger picture, couldn't just come up with one interpretation for one element, saw the commonality

structure of talk:
summary of landscapes that are identified globally, particularly the significant ones, looking at the scope and depth of the landscape evidence regarding Noah's Flood
Outline an unusual water gap case study from central Australia (something no one has heard about before today)

Common features describes in creation literature:
plateux, sedimentary layers, discontinuous boundaries, boulder fields, mega valleys, a few more I missed

slidehow
Plateau (tableland)
Caynonland National Park Utah

How are so many of the highest features of the landscape ones which were laid down by water?
45% of sedimentary structures on the planet are essentially flat surfaces
after millions of years there should be significantly more erosion
unexplainable steep slopes and cliff faces

South Island, New Zealand
grey sandstone
said to be 100-300 million years old, but argued the landscape only rose here 5 million years ago because it's still upright so they had to shorten the timescale

Port Arthur Sedimentary Beds
in classical evolutionary theory each bed is said to be a separate depositional event
but in the present a flood event can tear away a floodplain and rebuild it in one event.
these sedimentary beds can be all laid down in a single event.

Punakaiki Rocks NZ
very fragile so it's argued to be 30MA old but only rose above the surrounding landcape relatively recently

coconino sandstone and hermit shale underneath
incredible conformity between the two separate sediments
but they are very different sediemnts.
argued there's a 12MA gap between the layers
but its an incredibly flat straight boundary over a wide area.
and even in a desert area there's great erosion
to say there's 12MA in which nothing happened at all is ridiculous
see Death Valley eroded surface in desert region

Boulder fields - northeast wyoming
about a billion cobbles and boulders
sitting on top of plateau
rounded with impact marks
very different kind of rock than what they are deposited on
500km away from the source rock, sitting on top of the highest landscape in the area
needs 60m of water 100km/h to move them!
that doesn't happen today

Mega-rivers, mega-valleys
Blue Mountains Australia
Can see the plateua with a mega valley
the river in the valley is incapable of creating it
even in hundreds of millions of years.
even Charles Darwin who visited said it was impossible for the river to form the valley.
Darwin invoked climate change - an ice age - which wasn't the case though.

Mega valley, canonlands national park utah
notice the waterfalls
a valley hundreds of millions of years old should be gently graded, shouldn't be headwaters and waterfalls still
Wollombi falls NSW

Rock Debris Stanthorpe QLD
boulder fields on the highest feature in the area
rivers simply cannot move these

Was quite confused as to how all this fit together has he travelled the world.  Asked questions, got no answers.

Underfit or mis-fit rivers
common in Australia

meandering rivers in a floodplain have a clear boundary
in mapping Australia early on, it was noticed that the floodplain itself is also meandering.
Was said to be a thousands of years old river in a giant floodplain.

While this seems correct, what conditions would have caused such a giant river?
No conditions or climate today could have caused such a thing.
needs some much larger source and runoff to create this feature.

Water Gap
an outstanding example in James Range in central australia has been found.
there's a series of long sedimentary rock strata tipped on end, forming ridges running across central australia
10km of sedimentary rock were tipped on end and then metamorphised
Must have happened quickly because of how regular the features are

What is a water gap?
when the river cuts through a range or ridge
How could the river have carved through the high solid sandstone wall?
the river would have flowed around not through if it had eroded slowly over a long period of time
the water gap must have been formed by some larger process we don't currently see

Google earth image: water gap with oxbows
This forms a duplex water gap
Water gaps usually just cut straight through, they don't move around.
There is no floodplain between the water gaps but a 60m reach.  they are not the same water gap
The two channels arguably have the same slope and were created at the same time.

Could this be due to something like a landslide?
It appears again in the region.
The current and old rivers through the different watergaps have different wavelength.

Could they result from river migration or river avulsions?
impossible to migrate up the hill.
river avulsion is the rapid abandonment of an established river channel and formation of new river channel on the adjacent floodplain.
but in this case it's not the same floodplain.
definitely not river capture.

google earth image of two river channels through a ridge.  how did both form?
looking at what it would have looked like with 700m higher water level
not much flow or pressure through the gaps.
but when the level drops to 650m it reveals a dam so the water all would have flowed through the gaps
and they end up being the two outflows from a large dammed off area.
(possibly.  need to get out there to do research...)

No way for the two water gaps to be formed by any known process in the literature today.

links to relevant articles on the creation website.

when faced with unexplainable features around the world, did know of the scriptures
Genesis 8:1, 8:3, 8:5 helped to explain a lot of the features.

Genesis 6:6-8 shows what worried him as a non-Christian creationist and helped lead him to finding grace in the eyes of the Lord.

## 12:00 Monumental Monsters: Giant creatures in the fossil record - Vance Nelson
Giant creatures found around the world that do not fit the expectations of evolutionary theory.  12 creatures will be compare with their closest living counterparts
(some mac vs. pc tech issues occured)

the 6 days of creation, God creates everything
exodus 20:11

Darwin vs. the Bible
Darwin believed in onward upward evolution.
most theoriests today don't want to sell that because it doesn't fit the fossils
so they just teach change through time, that's what kids learn through time.
If evolution is just change through time then my dad is evolving at a tremendous rate.
But what Darwin promoted was onward and upward not just change through time.
the production of higher animals
a very different story from what we read in Genesis
God spoke and created everything to reproduce after its kind
Everything's gone from bad to worse to Australia today just look around

Genesis 1:31 everything was very good
It was a perfect world, it's gone downhill since.
everything was orignally vegetarian
glad we can now eat meat, woudln't make a very good vegetarian

Size of Animals - Indiana University says:
many animals keep growing all their lives, don't have a maximum size.
we don't see many massive creatures today because they die before they grow to gargantuan proportions

In a world without disease or old age or predators what would creatures look like?  Many could become very large.

Contining through Genesis history - death entered the world
Genesis 2:16-17 "dying you will die"
spiritual and physical death
plants deteriorated - genesis 3:17
(adam was responsible for not eating the fruit and he was right there and didn't stop his wife but went along with it)

If you give your animals bad food the animals don't grow so well.
so when the ground was cursed that also affected the animals and their growth.

Genesis 3:21 first animal death when God made coats of skins

Entire creation running down
Romans 8:20-22

Biblical history of organims:
1. Design
2. Decline
3. Decimation
4. Demise
(but the last D will be deliverance)

Noah's flood scours the earth and kills all ground-live outside the Ark.
Genesis 7:19-23

Genesis 8:4
Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat

Living Fossils (term invented by Charls Darwin)
A giant horsetail plant (much better than the ones we see today, same features)
we'll talk about more interesting things than plans...

Giants point to the power of the Creator
Job 41:1-5 massive marine creature Leviathan, mentioned to teach Job a point about God's awesome power

The fossil record lines up with the biblical history Ds

location: missed that
Giant turtle, weight tons, 13 feet across
much larger than the largest living one we've found
(and these are post-fall)

Colombia
Giant boa constrictor
vertebrae compared to a python vertebrae - significantly larger
could totally swallow a human!

Niger
Giant crocodile 40ft long, 10 US tons
today the largest are 17ft long

USA
Giant armadillos up to 500 pounds
the 3 banded armadillo today gets up to 3.5 pounds
today, 9 banded armadillos the texans call 'spee bumps'
Giant camel 13 feet tall, 5500 pounds
about twice as tall as today's camels
Giant bear 6feet tall at the shoulder while on all fours

Argentina
giant raccoon
160-190 pounds
today they get up to about 23 poinds in th wild

(this is exactly what we would expect and predict from the Bible)

Madagascar
giant bird known commonly as elephant bird
actual egg about twice as long as an ostrich egg
ostrich beak comes up to about it's back
went extinct as recently as the 1500s

China
giant hyena (evolutionists don't want to call it a hyena anymore though)
giant hornless rhinoceros
largest mammal discovered fossil or living
26 feet long
23 US tons estimated weight
waaaay bigger than Indian rhinoceros

This are varieties we have lost, not gained, no help for evolution theory.

What happened to the giants?
key event: the post flood ice age, or ice event

at the peak of the ice age there was still much more green on the continents today
Australia was much more luch and much less desert, as were other continents.
peak of ice age 500 years post flood
we're still in the tail end of it

desertification set in as the climate changed post ice age
lead to habitat loss and less food for the giant creatures.

The demise of some of these creatures should make us think about own personal demise.
We will some day meet our own demise and then meet the creator of the universe.
There is deliverance through Jesus Christ.

Adam brought sin and death by his disobedience
jesus Christ came to bring forgiveness of sin and life eternal by his obedience

Psalm 119 verse sixty-something?

I have some photos of resources on tables but I'll wait for wifi before uploading anything big.

I hope these notes aren't too disturbing or offensive, especially the "Male and Female He Made Them" talk which had a fair bit to say about homo/bisexuality, transgenderism, and possible chemical causes.

 

Also I haven't had much time and energy to give to the actual snark side of this yet.  I do plan to revisit my notes and provides summaries with a bit more commentary, so stay tuned.

btw I'm currently listening to the music team practising "Jesus is the rock and he rolls my blues away"

I think there's meant to be an illusionist performing later.

I mean, someone who acknowledges that he's an illusionist. *rimshot*

anyone got a good question for the Q and A session tomorrow?  (or to bring up in casual chat with one of the speakers cos that could happen)

[CyborgKin]

They (I figure they're the band for the magic act later) were practising Blue Moon and I wasn't paying much attention and then I suddenly realised this whole thing is just a dream within a dream within a dream they had moved on to performing "Non, je ne regrette rien" which of course is the wakeup song in Inception.  So that was surreal

[CyborgKin]

Yeah that's one of the songs they played after the magic act.

Not sure whether it was coincidence or by design but the first background track of the magic act was from the Inception soundtrack.  Followed by a bit from The Dark Knight, followed by the Mission Impossible theme which of course was for the escape act.

Anyhow it was an alright magic act though I was familiar with most of the tricks.  I wasn't into most of the music though.

Currently waiting for a ride cos I stayed for the Night Owl talk.  It turned out to be identical to a talk from previous conference.  Comparing my notes might be interesting?  Or boring.

before the first evening talk there was a sponsor promo spot for http://www.christianuniversityforaustralia.org.au/

I guess we can add that to the various Christian educational institutions available for discussion here... in a few years when it gets built.  And this one's going to be run entirely by creationists!

Anyhow, here's the dump

 

Spoiler

## 19:30 sponsor: Christian University in Australia
presented by Ron Neller whose idea it was to do this

Is fully legally set up and recognised all that.
statistically we should have four christian univiersities in Australia
been working for two years figuring out what a christian university should be
in the process of purchasing land, might be open by 2022?
There's a great video that they can't get the sound working for
the board of governers is entirely creationists

vision: to foster wisdom, faith, service in all fields
to promote transformative leadership and nation building to rebuild this nation through education
Graduate and postgraduate degrees
science and engineering, business and law, poligicla and international science, performing arts, education, that was only half the list
engineering including robotics

high concentration of talent is needed
abundant resources are needed.  1 billion dollars in the next ten years
favourable governance is needed.  mustn't be government funded

talent: will hire the best people in australia and overseas
people from other universities currently held back from holding their beliefs
will need to sign doctrinal statements of belief
legally exempt from discriminatio laws because it's a faith institution

It's a university you live in, it's a city.
full facilities
students are not commodities but are cared for
highest quality teaching facilities
recommending 30% of staff to be foreign to foster international relationships
asia doesn't want to send students to America, better to send them to Australia
no mixed quarters
scriptural leaders for all quarters.
regular breaks for all including staff for community spiritual sessions

must not be bound by federal and state governments.
academic teaching and research must be relevant to society

abundant resources + concentration of talent = excellent graduates
concentration of talent + favourable governance = great research output
favourable governance + abaundance resoruces = technology transfer (which will help pay for the university)
university is already running in a research capacity

Been given health and safety documentation to copy

will be built right here on the sunshine coast
also trying to buy land on the beach
the council wants the university there
highest IT technology in the country

seek people to become supporters
want a million people to sign the statement "yes I want a Christian university in this country"
because the media will attack it.
promote church entity support
(this is the first day we go public)
donate financially
help others become supporters
alert the public
fund raising efforts
volunteer your skills in any way
tell family and friends
Visit us at the sponsor desk!

Endorsed by the Australian Legal Association without request.

## 19:50 Soft Tissue, proteins, and C14 in dinosaur remains - Professor Steve Taylor, university of liverpool

Richard III
1485: battle of bosworth field
remains found in 2012
bones were carbon dated, DNA was analysed
the food he ate was determiend by the carbon isotope ratios in his bones
diet high in wine and fish

Why would anyone want to carbon date dinosaur bones?
why is this an important issue?
Genesis 1:24-26
tells us when dinosaurs were made
and that we were made on the same day and in the image of God
modern evolutionary synthesis says this is untrue
if we can't trust the Bible on page 1 how can we trust the rest?
is there scientific evidence against the millions of years that will confirm the idea that dinosaurs and man walked alongside each other?

The modern secular worldview:
the geological column
fossils laid down over millions of years
a record of suffering, disease, death, cancer, thorns, thistles, pain
if this is true then the bible is not because all this suffering happened before man evolved

Scientific evidence inconsistent with millions of years
soft tissue in dinosaur bones
Mary Schweitzer interview video
dinosaur soft tissue left when the bone was dissolved in acid
"this bone was 68 million years old"
"I didn't want to tell anybody"
"how could that be?"  "how could that be, that's right."
"challenging the laws of science that this can't last even a million years"
repeatable, even an 80 million year old fossil had soft blood vessels

this research carried out by not-creationists in top universities who are shocked by these results
do not fit the believed time frame at all
published in world's top journals, not just one or two papers

timeline:
1993 blood cells were found (Schweitzer was able to recognise them, unlike previous researchers who may have missed this discovery)
1997 haemoglobin and red blood cells found in T. rex
2003 evidence of ostoecalcin - enough to produce an immune reaction.  proves not contamination

various pictures showing a wealth and variety of data, osteocytes and hollow supple vessels in a variety of dinosaur types.  they all look about the same though some are meant to be 10 million years older than others, with no change in condition.
Mammoth and mastodon meant to be 1.2 million and only a few hundred thousand years old: extremely similar features and condtitions to the above

2007: collagen in Tre x bone
2009 proteins elastin and something else
2012 fragile protiens actin, tubulin, and dna were reported
2013 chitin (glucose derivative, meant to be 505 million years old, concluded must be "contamination") and also radiocarbon
(references are given for all these)
2015 collagent and soft tissue preservation more common than previously thought

collagen imaging using second harmonic generation
put half a mm thick on slide, scan with femptosecond laser that puts out two photons that combine
can see collagen very well under 2-photon imaging
images of graphs showing significant collagen in modern bone and in cretaceous triceratops
shows much less collagen in triceratops, but it's there, both shallow and deep.

Mary Schweitzer "exactly like looking at a slice of bone but of course I couldn't believe it.  the bones are after all 65 milion years old, how could blood cells survive that long?"
She's spent years since trying to find how the blood vessels and cells were preserved for so long
but we know better

second evidence, even more compelling:
carbon dating of dinosaur bones
a more secure method because it's a measurement that's easily repeatable with the right equipment

carbon dating can be thought of like a sand timer
when something dies it stops eating and interacting with the environment
so the carbon 14 decays into nitrogen without being replenished
after 5730 years half is gone (half life)
etc
after 10 half lives it's almost immeasureably small apart from on the best equipment
can be checked against known dates to calibrate it (unlike other methods that work on much larger timescales)
dead sea scrolls, mummies, pyramids - used to calibrate carbon dating
pretty accurate up to 2500 BC, runs into trouble beyond that
can be run on bones directly
unlike other methods that are on the rocks
older fossils are only tested by dating the rocks above and below, they usually don't bother to carbon date the bones because they think there would be no point, nothing to find

How c14 dating works:
cosmic rays produce c14 in the atmosphere
98.89% of carbon i the abmosphere is c12
1.11% is c13
.00000000~01% is c14 (like 8 or 9 zeroes, hard to tell on the slide)
organic matter absorbs co2 fom the atmosphere
it's in equilibrium but stops absorbing when they die
teh c14 decays from the equilibrium ration
we measure the ration with a mass spectrometer and can calculate the age.

max c14 age is < 100,000 years
if dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years it is not possible for any c14 to be left
but we find it
we find it again and again
teh presence of radiocarbon in the dinosaur bones is hard evidence against the millions of years

not just a few samples.
multiple countries

generally 25k to 35k in radiocarbon years
(though they are really much younger due to the inaccuracies past 2.5k bc)
but it's definitive proof they cannot be millions of years old

proven it's not instrument contamination be testing bones from other more recent eras on the same equipment

could the samples be contaminated?
illustration of how bone contamination works
checked by testing a very contaminated bone
measured the contaminant, it showed up a ridiculously young 2560 years old
the contaminated ages are clearly not realistic
while testing a bone with different methods and labs gives results that are in broad agreement with each other, evidence against contamination

How can soft tissue last that long?
How can radiocarbon last that long?
(the can't)

third evidence:
original biochemistry in fossils publications
the number of peer reviewed reports on this topic is continuing to rise and attract attention because it's a real phenomenon
found throughout the world: it's a global phenomenon to find fossils with original biochemistry
not so many in africa cos there's not many digs there.

in other fossils too
squid ink still black, fossilised in 3 dimensions, inside a rock that's "150 million years old"
"jurassic squid - drawn with its own ink!" see the daily mail report online

these original biochemicals are also found all throughout the geological column
all these fossils worldwide were laid down not very long ago

billions of fossils found in layers of sedimentary rock (laid down by water) all over the world.
[heh! couldn't resist referencing a Ken Ham-ism]

Fossils
form by sudden death followed by rapid burial
found in sedimentary rock layers sometimes fossil graveyards
mostly marine
very tiny percentage are vertebrates
often find dinosaurs alongside marine fossils

Engineers Canyon at Mount St Helens formed by activity in 3 separate days (over a 2 year period)

the fossil record is best understood as a result of a world wide flood that destroyed the continents and land dwellers

a video courtesy of ICR about flood evidence

fourth pieces of historical evidence inconsistent with millions of years:
dinosaurs in history
temple in cambodia, 1186 AD
pillar carved shortly after including monkeys and an obvious stegasaur

in the Bible:
book of Job, about the time of Abraham 2000 BC
behemoth description
describes a sauropod dinosaur
doesn't fit anything else
world's biggest dinosaur is Argentinosaurus
39m long 7.4m high, 90tons weight
a herd was fossilised together
must have been a massive watery catastrophy
from c13-c12 ratios we can determine he was a plant eater
tail as big as a cedar tree
bones bigger than a human "like beams of brass"

another ICR video about the word dinosaur, and behemoth stuff and how dragon was the word for dinosaur before it was invented, and dragons being in the Chineese zodiac and many other cultures depicting dragons and humans side by side, etc

Conclusions:
secular worldview -> millions of years of evoltion
biblical worldview -> recent reaction from nothing, no death before sin, a worldwide flood which laid down the fossils

these cannot be reconciled and there is no need to reconcile them, the first is wrong and the second is right

dinosaurs are probably now extinct but there are eyewitness accoutns from history and carvings
soft tissue, fragile proteins, blood and bone cells containing radiocarbon in unfossilines dino bones
latest scientific research confirms what the Bible says was right all along.

## 21:00 Night Owl Talk: Back to University - Jim Whitehall
went back to uni part time to study areas of science related to origins to become a speaker for CMI

How do the latest evolution teachings stack up?
first foray into science at age 7, thought he could fly by holding up a swing by a rope
[ohh I've heard this one, same story as last conference]

This talk is not about why evolution is false (there's plenty of resources for that) but to focus on something a lot more insidious
how the latest evolutionary teachings are carefully constructed as a series of illusions to convince people that something so false is true and scientific.

could not pull up the swing he was sitting on because it was self referencing.

The definition of science first year biology students are taught week 1:
scientific knowledge is our understanding of natural law
and then a little later:
Scientific knowledge must explain what is observed by reference to natural law

but if we substitute:
our understanding of natural law must explain waht is observed by reference to natural law.
self reference!
nature is defined in terms of nature
now the students are untethered and can float to any false doctrine you please

nature becomes responsible for nature, nature forms itself by itself.
design and creator is not science, God is myth

nature is both the source and the definition of itself
if you measure yourself by yourself you get yourself.  self reference is always true
there can never be an observation that falsifies evolution
"we know evolution is true because we exist"
this is not a true science.

many founding scientists had a correct approach to science:
acknowledging that God designed the world and science is uncovering that world.
the natural world is observed by science but not defined by science.

now on week four of biology:
Darwin observed members of a population varied greatly in their traits
(traits are features that can be scientifically measured)
physical traits, behavoural traits, even just one species has hundreds and thousands of traits.
on this, Darwin was correct.  populations do vary in traits.

Darwin reasoned that an individual born with favourable traits would have an advantage and have more offspring
thus these infintisimally small changes would accumulate over time
the illusion of inevitable upward evolution up the fitness plane
this is how evolution is presented to the public: an inevitable upward march
presented as simple to complex, with the appearance of ancestors and branching. looks inevitable, scientific, and compelling
the greater public buy into evolution based on this illusion.

this is an illusion by obfuscation: hiding certain objective truths.
the ramp must actually exist: there must be a path mutation by mutation that the organisms can walk, but this has never been shown to exist.
there must be an engine capable of propelling the population up the ramp
but natural selection is too weak an engine, too blunt and instrument to perform this job.
the fossil evidence must show this branching but it does not.
there must not be opposition to this upward movement but there is much opposition.

refreshing basic concepts.
much opposition:
is there nothing opposing the upward march?
the instructions to build the space shuttle are on blueprints, stored on paper or electronically
the instructions to build you are stored on DNA molecules
you can mutate the blueprint by flicking ink
you can mutate the DNA by smashing the molecules around

the beneficial mutations the pubic is shown regularly occur do not exist
the harmful mutations are common and pull the population down the ramp to lower fitness and eventually to extinction.
this is disastrous for Darwin
the students are never made aware of this problem
they are given the illusion of progress by beneficial mutations.

yes there are beneficial mutations but they do not add information
An adjustable shifter spanner (wrench) has more information than a fixed spanner, it has more moving parts
if a shifter gets rusted at 10cm in an environment with just 10cm nuts this is beneficial.  but it has reduced ability.
sickle cell anemia: it's great in a malaria environment but you are still diseased
students see that 'evolution has occured'
yes, cutting off your legs does make you immune to ingrown tonails...

Mutation, fitness, natural selection: upon these words they build their church.  thousands of textbooks, museums, careers.
these three are the engine of evolution, the holy trinity.

favourable mutations arise that increase fitness and are chosen by natural selection.

natural selection needs the power to examine infintesimally small trait changes and the precision to select the right ones for survival

race between two boats:
we can tell which one went faster: the trait.
but why did it go faster?  we cannot see that.  we cannot see inside the vast machinery that produces the trait.
we cannot see the reason why one boat goes faster.

the boats both have two mutations that broke a bearing and the fuel pump
one boat also had a mutatio that bent the propeller shaft to the left
and on that day there was a current to the right.
so that boat won.

but we can only see the trait of resultant speed.
we can't see what caused the speed and get rid of the damaging mutations
natural selection is too weak a force, too blunt an instrument

students are given the illusion of natural selection having 20/20 vision and meticulous precision

as engineers we use engineering to build structures to survive in a variety of environments and conditions.
surely the greatest designer would have designed into creatures variability to adapt to a variety of environments and conditions.
this is pre-programmed adapability, adaptation within a kind.

you would expect the best evidences for evolution are presented in class
and they are:
north american sparrows changed colour
drug resistance
trididad guppies changes size
artificial selection of dogs.

but all of these are pro-programmed changes.
it looks like natural selection is powerful, insightful, precise, meticulous
students are hidden from any concept that these changes are pre-programmed and designed

what if in engineering classes students were shown how buildings stand up but never any information about how they fall down?
no way to consider the merits of a structure.

Cnidarians (jellyfish)
were a favourite of a professor who could recite it's entire evolutionary history from memory
impressive in detail and that he memorised it
student then asked "sir, what's it going to evolve to next?"
the student was reasonable and the sort expected in a science class
got a dismissive laugh, "evolution doesn't work that way"

evolution is not a science if it cannot make predictions
if it can't make a simple prediction what confidence do we have in what it says about the past?

No Path
there must exist a viable step by step path that can be walked.
doesn't matter how small steps you take or how fit you are, if no path exists you aren't walking it.
textbooks have diagrams with lines connecting creatures, implying there is a path between them
no such path has ever been demonstrated
there needs to be a simple path connecting them
it's implied to exist but does not
a path could not even be simple

fitness depends on the traits of the creature
we can plot the fitness against the value of each trait
e.g. tail length
fitness is highest at the sweet spot, optimum value of tail length.
then we can add in body weight.
get a 3d plot of fitness against teh combination of tail length and body weight
there's a sweet spot of maximum fitness where the tail length and body weight are right for each other.

But there's a thousand traits, we need a thousand dimensional graph
somewhere in the intersection of all thousand trait is a point of maximum fitness.  "Goldilocks point" of precise tuning

Buut...
down the road lived a 3 legged dog and a one eyed cow.
creatures not at maximum fitness can still scrape out a basic existence.
there are local suboptimal hills
looking over thouands of traits there may be millions and millions of local maximum points
the fitness terrain has a maximum fitness point and a whole lot of smaller lower fitness hills.

a population must meander randomly through this fitness terrain by randomly chainging their traits.
when the population comes to a hill, natural selection should drive it up the hill
but if it's a local maximum as is most likely it will get stuck up there.
and as the population meanders over the fitness terrain it should leave behind fossils
clear ancestor decendent relationships blurring together the values of the traits in a continuum
that's what the theory predicts.
but the fossil record flatly fails to substantiate these expectations of finely graded change - quoting an evolutionist
this primary prediction fails.

What we find is fossils of discrete groups of high fitness, great design, consistent with special design.

what do the evolutionists do?  do they give up?  No.
it's a humanistic religion bent on teaching the falseness of God
so they need a powerful illusion to mop up this mess.

Can view these distinct groups from any angle, can organise them in any way.
just rotate them so they're organised from simple to complex.
but what about the massive gaps separating them?
just tilt it down so we're looking across the top of the fitness mountains so they blend together and hide the gaps.

What about the missing ancestors?
we just draw some lines in a cladogram that describe the similar traits in the groups.
this is just a grouping with nothing to do with ancestry.
you can group the numbers into odd and even and draw a line but the branching point isn't some common ancestry it just represents the decision of which goes in which group.

so it looks like they have their theory sorted with a path with ancestors and no enormous gaps
just bend the lines around into the shape of a tree of life
but the lines don't really have anything to do with ancestors, those do not exist
the cladogram is a powerful illusion

A few more illusions:
the illusion of prediction
predictions must stand on a solid rock of precise definitions
you cannot build science on a shifting sand of definitions

Fitness: in butterflies the bright colour to attract a mate determines fitness.
fitness is precisely defined as bright colours to be seen!

wait but in the black peppered moth, fitness is dull colour to not be seen!

Measuring the speed of spiders' response time to a fly landing in a web
the faster they the more likely they are to secure their prey
fitness is high speed to catch their prey. great science!

but in the sloth...
there's a reason for their name
would take a minute to go a couple of metres
fitness is slow speed to conserve energy

for a whale fitness is large size to frighten predators
for a sea lion fitness is small size for manoeuvrability

fitness is having many offspring!  fitness is having very few offspring!
and so on...

a vast bag of conflicting definitions

Similarly for natural selection

what if for an engineering project, building a bridge.  the definition of stress and strain differs and is in opposition for each cross member
that's not a way to build a coherent structure.

but having disjointed and conflicting definitions and mechanisms allows choice of whichever fits the data and situation.
it's not really a unified science

the latest evolutionary teaching is a clever arrangement of self reference, real science, conflicting definitions, and clever illusions
 

 

[SrMaryEloquentia]

Wow, you're really busy, thanks again for your hard work!

Do you have any time to interact with other attendents? Do you go undercover or do you tell people you're an observer (no judgment here, I could see myself doing either)? Have you noticed other sceptics around?

I'm snarkily following Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis, and I understand there's been some sort of schism between Creation Ministry and AiG? On the other hand, Ken Ham has "accomplished" a lot in recent years, eg the Ark Encounter. Do they mention him at all?

[SrMaryEloquentia]

7 hours ago, CyborgKin said:

Also I haven't had much time and energy to give to the actual snark side of this yet.  I do plan to revisit my notes and provides summaries with a bit more commentary, so stay tuned.

 

Keep it coming and let's snark later, this is gold!

[CyborgKin]

7 hours ago, SrMaryEloquentia said:

Wow, you're really busy, thanks again for your hard work!

Do you have any time to interact with other attendents? Do you go undercover or do you tell people you're an observer (no judgment here, I could see myself doing either)? Have you noticed other sceptics around?

I'm snarkily following Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis, and I understand there's been some sort of schism between Creation Ministry and AiG? On the other hand, Ken Ham has "accomplished" a lot in recent years, eg the Ark Encounter. Do they mention him at all?

I think in the last couple of years, CMI and Ken Ham's AiG have worked together on some projects, so I think they're getting along now.  And they do sell a few of Ken's resources.  (Pretty sure I saw at least one on the resource tables.)  I also heard that Ken Ham's AiG has run some church events in Australia this year.  That's significant because CMI used to own the name Answers in Gensesis within Australia, so for that to happen I figure something must have been worked out for Ken Ham's AiG to amicably obtain the name.

(They rebranded as CMI after certain organisational problems with Ken, now many years ago, and organised the various nations' organisations as a federation of equals so no one can radically change direction and do their own thing with the ministry.)

I think I try to answer people's questions honestly but I don't think anyone's outright asked me "are you a sceptic?" so I guess I haven't answered yet  

Besides, I can honestly say "shouldn't we all be sceptics and consider everything we hear without blindly accepting it?  Isn't that what we're being told to do here?"  And then I've truthfully said I'm a sceptic without actually ruffling any feathers

Just a few pics as a preview:

That was before a session started.  It filled up pretty quickly.

Sorry they're so big, I don't have time to resize them

[CyborgKin]

It's lunchtime so I slipped off to drop another notes dump:

Spoiler

# Day 4 - Friday

## 9:00 devotions
Rod Walsh of the Ark Van talked about breaking down on the Nullabor Plain and miraculously getting a lift on an empty low-loader.

## 9:30 The Evolutionary Roots of Liberal Thinking - Dr Martin Williams (specialty - the doctrine of salvation in 1 Peter)

Photo: Cameroon West Africa where he worked for some years at the faculty of evangelical theology
how their car was always rusting out
metaphor: the corrosive effects of one worldview on another
how darwin's ideas of evolution eat through everything

Evolution is an atheistic and humanistic worldvidw that rejects the divine and hte supernatural leaving in its wake a naturalistic and materialsistc view of the world and its history.
naturalism: the belief that only natural  lawas and forces operation in the universe.  Denial of the supernatural
Materlaisem: the denial of the spiritual

evolution and liberalism are linked in both denying the supernatural and focusing on the physical.
[all way too fast for me to keep up with]

the root of liberal theology is naturalism
diametrically opposed to naturalism "in teh beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
this is a statement of belief not a statement of science.
just as evolution is a statement of belief not a statement of science
evolution is not science but rather a naturalistic and materialistic worldview of the universe that claims to be science but is actually pseudoscience.

Princeton theological seminary
at the time of the publication of the Origin of Species

The real purpose of this talk isn't just as a history of this issue but as a very serious warning to theological institutions and the denominations that send students to them:
how theological colleges handle the evolution question has huge ramifications for not just the college but for the entire denomination.
where the college fails to provide guidance in navitating the questions of the day the denomination will suffer

In the 19th and 20th century the evolution controversy engulfed American Presbyterianism
from the 1640s to the 1800s there was little to no mention of creation being a point of issue.
the westminster catechism and confessions does have a small mention of creation, "within the space of six days"

However from the 1850s to the present it's become a matter of contention
Presbyterian quarterly review first issue article expressing that facts from modern science especially geology should be accepted as fixed truths, and claimed these facts would never subvert the Bible
went from saying creation happened in six days to saying it was the work of long ages.

the steps of the decline
[far too much text]
instead of the seminary preserving its theological heritage it was changed to reflect the mixture of liberalism in the church, which happened because of liberalism in the seminary
then a new seminary was formed to carry on the evangelical tradition and the remaining evangelical theologans left princeton for it, leaving the liberal ones behind.

What went wrong?
the 1812 placement of princeton theological seminary
the principle of unity of all truth meant that truth from scripture and nature are equally from God
true but both are not equally authoritative, which is where they went wrong
the Bible properly interpreted could not conflict with the facts of nature properly understood
God in nature can never contradict God in the Bile and in the hearts of his people
the problem beginning to surface when Charles Hodge said we interpret the Bible by science, that science and scripture are "twin daughters" rather than "mother and daughter".  though he did maintain that science must be authenticated beyond the possibility of doubt and that Darwinism was a mere unproven hypothesis, and that Darwinism's denial of final causes is atheism and no Christian can accept it.
Hodge rejected Darwin but did not accept the six-day creation, defended a Gap Theory and then later a day-age theory.
And after he died Princeton's faculty became far worse on the question of the evolutionary timescale.
His son A.A. Hodge succeeded him and was excellent in his Outlines of Theology other than origins/age issues.
[more super long quotes, need to get those from the official notes]
Wrote an introduction for Joseph Van Dyke's book Theism and Evolution, a turning point for the acceptance of evolution for American Christians.
Then in his Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, went as far as suggesting that Abraham was the beginning of Biblical history, before that was myth and poetry
B.B. Warfield succeeded A. A. Hodge
said there were multiple views of evolution, starting with the atheistic view of evolution that he rejected.
then the theistic view of evolution which he said went a bit far in conceeding evolution as fact
Then a view holding evolution as a tentative "working hypothesis" for how God created, a view which he accepted.
Thus saying there is no necessary antagonism of Christianity to evolution so longa s we do not hold to too extreme a form of evolution.
Said we may hold some conditioned version of evolutionary theory and still be Christians, whether we should is left as an open question for individuals
William Berryman Scott, grandson of Charles Hodge
professor of paleontology and geology
trained under the complete instruction of Thomas Huxley, advocate of Darwin
became thoroughly convinced of evolution
taught a "non-Darwinian" form of evolution that "left room for God"
wrote the standard introduction into geology used for decades by thousands of seminary students

5 key things we can learn
1. one of the reasons princton university and seminary embraced evoltion was the desire the present themselves as a respected and recognised institution of learning
[ugh these points are way too long and I barely have time to read them]
But friendship with the world is enmity with God, James 4:40
Dawkins says repeatedly that theisitic evolution is not a tenable position, that the evangelicals are right that there is a deep incompatibility between evolution and Christianity which he realised at age 16.  (one of the few things Dr Williams agrees with Dawkins about)
2. science whether experimental or historical is not a purely objective unbuased neutral value free enterprise.  Becuase it's done and interpreted by humans.  So there's always tentativeness and provisionality.  The idea of the coolly rational scientific observer, completely independent, free of all preconcieved thoeries, prior philosophical, ethical and religious commitments, doing investigations and coming to dispassionate unbaased conlusions that constitute aboslute truth is nowadays considers as a simplistic myth.  Need to weight scientific cliams against both the hard evidence (empirical and historical) and against the biases and myths known to be held by those making the claims
3. We need to distinguish between the methods of experimental and historical science.  Sinces that creates vaccines medicines, technologies etc is base don scientific principles that involves hypotheses, testing, repeated experimentation, etc.  Historical science uses abduction and interpretation to try to find the best explanation for the data.  The issue is not the accuracy of the data but how you go about finding and choosing explanations for it.
4. We need to realise that evolutionary science is not the only science out there.  Many have bought into the idea that evolution is about science and creation is about religion.
Terry Mortenson has carried out research on the scriptural geologists of 1815-1845 who objected biblically and scientifically to reinterpretation of scripture.  The princeton people sadly never interacted with any of these people.  The clash between evolution and Christianity is not about science but a clash of beliefs and religions and philosophical underpinnings.  What does science support, naturalism or supernaturalism?
5. we must resist th eidea that God in his providence could uahve used evolution as a means of creation (those different varieties of theistic evolution and progressive creation).
It's a contradiction to say God could have used evolution because there is abundant evidence it is incorrect.
To say God used the processes of suffering and sickness as his method of creation is to paint God as a moral monster.
Evolution undermines the apostolic gospel.  It undermines the work of redemption and to do so is contradictory and highly offensive.

11:00 Longing for Eden: a Biblical understandigng of eocology and environmental stewardship - Dr Craig Russell (PhD in soil science and nutrition)

We know something is wrong with the world we live in.
How we interact with it can be very difficult.
We long for a perfect care-free world, free of pollution, slums, bad industrial development, traffic congestion...
Presses up against our understanding of the goodness of God and his promises
We all long to be safe and loved.
We all long for the Eden described in genesis.

Ecclesiastes 3:19-20
What happens to man and beasts is the same, as one dies so does the other.  All shall return t the dust.
From a materialistic point of view it would seem that all life is futile.
thanksfully there more.
This passage echoes Genesis 3:19 from teh dust you were taken and will return.

Nutrient cycling: Bio-geo-chemistry
all things are made from and exchange the same basic elements
If all life was not chemically similar, what would you eat?  What would anything eat?
There's an incredibly complex cycle of the elements through the ecosystem, through the environment.

University memory from last agriculture lecture, the professor gave the parting thought "the best thing you can do for the world is not have any children"
how does this humanistic view compare to biblical stewardship?
the term dominion has been perverted to be about power and domination, the bible actually calls us to be stewards of the earth

large scale environmental degradation across the USSR: a damning statement about the committments of atheism

we have a responsibllity to God to reduce pollution and restore degraded land and water bodies

picture: a composite image of the world at night
a powerful tool for tracking global development etc
rate of global development lately has been astounding
much better quality of life and many lifted out of poverty in recent decades
need to consider the environmental impacts though.

What is ecology and how do we define it?
eco - house/habitat
logy - logic (LOGOS)
branch of biology that seeks to understand relationships between organisms and between them and their non living surroundings
biodiversity - species richness and abundance.
web of life / food webs / food chains - trophic interactions ie who eats who

Carl Linnaeus - father of modern taxonomy (binomial nomenclature), Swedish Biologist and creationist.
his goal of naming was to identify the key kinds of created life as referred to in Genesis.

The popular view of ecology states that the father of ecology was Ernst Haeckel, a contempory and big fan of Darwin.
They did not have cell biology and microbiology and biochemistry then.  now we see so many more layers of design and complexity
Haeckel produced fraudulent evolutionary evidence
Tree of life based on no fossil evidence.
Drew embryos to show relationships based on similarites which were complete fabrications.
The embryos in reality look very different.
But this fraud persists to this day.

the story of the origin of insects and flowering plants.
Co-evolution of the two together - Darwin wrote about this.
Evolution can't explain the origin of one living thing so how can it explain the origin of two simultaneous dependent lifeforms?

Trophic interactions
Heterotrophs and autotrophs

Genesis 1:26
man is the pinacle of God's creation, made in his image, to have dominion.
the vegetation was given as food
would have been a greater variety of lifeforms and thus foods available
joke: "Vegetarian comes from an old Chaldean word which means 'bad hunter'" - laughter

A biblical understanding of ecology
God created all living things in kinds.
Basically two fundamental kingdoms
Plants were made as food for animals and humans.
Plants do not have the breath of life in them.
The dominion mandate: man appointed as steward
death and suffering through man's sin.
global flood and subsequent ice age

Bio-geography and biomes (large regions with characteristic vegetation and animals)
ice age had a great influence on the distribution of plants, animals, and humans - lower sea level

Plants are autotrophs capturing energy fron the sun
herbivores, primary predators, secondary predators are all heterotrophs
the decay detrivores in the soil are also heterotrophs.

microbial ecology: bactria that live on the surface of roots
nitrogen-fixing bacteria living in symbiosis with the plants which give them sugar in exchange for ammonium.
a lot of active reasearch right now studying root bacteria
also a lot of active fungi working with the root system.
all the soil organisms that decompose all these nutrients for recycling are a vital part of the nutrient cycle, the whole ecology would collaps without them.

nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur are three important elements each with their own nutrient cycle, which also includes a gasseous form as part of the cycle
(the soil around lakes and ponds gives off some laughing gas)

The ecosystem provides many services: food, fiber, water purification, breaking down toxins, nutrient recycling, building material...
provided in different ways by different biomes

Ecosystems can form very rapidly
E.g. the island of Surtsey (get a free flyer from the bookshop)
1963 the island was formed now it has a fully functional ecosystem and a landscape which would appear old

Ecosystem resilience
Mount St Helens
the initial pessimistic forecast of long term barrenness was soon shown incorrect
within a few years 90% of the lifeforms had returned to the blast zone
Spirit Lake served as a great anaerobic environment for breaking down and releasing nutrients back to the environment

Ecological myths:
1. Acriculture vs Ecology is a false dichotomy
2. Mankind a rogue species? (made in the image of God!)
3. Organic, clean and great is always best?  (from a plant biology point of view a plant doesn't know or care where the molecules came from)
4. Dangerous climate change and carbon pollution?  (Co2 is not carbon, is not soot, and is plant food, the elixir of life.)
5. Wilderness is good? (outside of Eden was wilderness.  If you find yourself stuck without supplies in a wilderness your life is in danger.)
Wilderness as a curse/judgement:
Isaiah 34 and Jeremiah 4
God de-creating the land and putting it back under the dominion of the beasts rather than man, as a judgement.
This curse as the 'romantic dream of much of the environmental movement'

"Deep Ecology" Cave man comic: "something's just not right.  Our air is clean, our water is pure, we get plenty of exercise, everything we eat is organic and free range, and yet nobody lives past thirty."

So called environmental policies prevent the world's poorest for accessing energy cheaply and keep them in abject poverty.

Patrick Moore founder of Greenpeace movement (in a church basement) now condemns it for involving into a a political activist movment that is the strongest force that prevents development in developing countries

Want to better the environment?  Forgo some treats each month and help a child escape poverty!

Worshipping nature:
Romans 1:21-23

## 11:55 Fraser Island: a Consequence of Noah's Flood - Ron and Julie Neller
Set up research station on the island etc etc

structure of talk
A. explain the current model of how Fraser Island was formed (Ron)
B. present recent data that challences that interpretation (Julie)
C. Present a new model of understanding the formation (Julie)
"excuse us if we get passionate about Fraser Island, we were married on it"

Largest sand island in the world, absolutely beautiful and quite unique
you do need a 4WD to get around it [Ron wanting a four wheel drive to go to research locations has been a running joke all week]

Basic model: Thompson 1983
looked at due systems, podzolic soils, airial photography, not much actual research of the island
9 sand due building periods

How old is it?
the age has changed continuously
kept getting "older" the longer it was studied, currently said to be 700k years

Soil profile of island
photo of podzol soil
leaching
iron, aluminium, organic material
20m deel podzol soil, unheard of in global studies (otherwise up to 2 or 3m deep)

West coast degraded dunes
lost much of their shape and patterns
stream channels flowing to the west not east which is unusual and not addressed in the literature

To the east is parabolic due systems which override each other
photos and diagrams explaining what this looks like
overrunning and burying the vegetation
The eastern dunes are believed to be younger than the western side of the island.

vegetation: west coast:
soil highly leached, white, poor in nutrients, no litter layer, open woodland.

to the east, tall eucalyptus forrest where logging occured

in the centre, vine forest / rainforest growing on pure sand

on the far east is coastal dunes, pioneer species for high salinity and winds and difficult conditions

West coast streams: valleys are quite unique
they meander in a floodplain like normal riveers... except that they do not flood!  no runoff due to the sand.
they can't really be floodplains.

there are lakes perched on sand.
no contact with water table
how?

Window and Barrage

Humicrete on eastern Beach

Age of Frasier island
initially based on comparison with Gippsland (Victoria) - conjecture based on something completely different
Then looked at western coastline with carbon 14 and threw out all those ages as too young for various reasons
Then Optically Stimulated Luminescence
basically their ages are based on the idea of multiple ice ages (we believe in 1) and 9 dune systems each in a different ice age therefore total 700k years old based on ice ages that were never proven to have happened.

What does the Bible say about this model?
Genesis 7:11-24
no agreement between this model and God's words on the subject.

2. evidence challenging the model (Julie)
Why do we need a new model, does it matter, does anyone care, should we care?
Yes we should care and it does matter.  we need to see the world through a biblical framework.  We need to look at the world and see God's righteousness and authority and that just as he had a plan for Noah he has a plan for us.
We can know that I am created in the image of God and am fearfully and wonderfully made an so cna you.  How we see the world effects how we see the world.  So many people have forgotten that we are made in the image of God and that's why it matters.

Recent research:
podzol formation studies
humicrete mapping

Podzolization observed to happen more rapidly
Norway: podzolisation observed after only 100 years or less.
In Australia: incipent podzolisatio visible after 200-2500 years, mature podzols (like on the older side of the island) can show after only a thousand years.

Podzol variability: extensive drilling shows great variability in podzol depth in same dune sequences, not a clear incremental change.
So the podzols have been shown to be potentially relatively young and the depths do not fit the expectations of the model

Humicretes
known as coffee rock.
called humicretes because of the aluminium and iron
need a lot more chemical analysis of the different humicretes on the different coasts (a 4wd would be helpful...)

The humicretes sit in the lakes left where parabolic dunes once sat
base of parabolic sand blows.

interpretation:
only two periods of podzol formation with minimal differences of age
[I missed the bit about the humicretes]

Proposed model
a dunal landscape was created immediately after the flood from abundant sediment supply
podzol soils developed on these dunes, would have started immediately after vegetation appeared and begain to decompose releasing organic acids
sea level dropped during the single ice age.  glacial maximum occured at approx 500 years.
the island extended much further eastward then than today
rising sea level 500 to 700 years after the flood eroded much of the then east coast, exposing the B horizons
exposed B horizons formed humicretes due to oxidation [missed a bit of this]
sea level begins to drop over 300 years to the current level, dew parabolic dunes developed overruns the past landscap e but leaves remnants, this did not extend to the west coast as those are untouched by this.
as the sea level stabilised sediment supply diminished, which is why later parabolic dunes are smaller in size
Perched lakes possibly derived from humicrete formation.  The perched lakes are sitting on the humicrete above the water table.  (the humicrete is only semi-permeable so the water doesn't pass through like it could for the sand.)

Using Michael Oard's sea level height model
events placed on graph of sea heights plotted against time since flood

west coast has a bay so there was less destruction due to less wave action than the east cost
the 'flood plain' wasn't a flood plain but due to changing sea level and now the rivers sit in the channels left.

When we use the existing model trying to fit all the new observations into it just didn't add up.
When we view the world through the biblical framework and come up with new models, unsurprisingly it fits, it works, it explains what we see.
God's word is above everything.

Still much resarch to do to better understand the creation of Fraser Island.

"we as a couple need to travel more, we really want to solve this, so once we have a four wheel drive we're taking off, please join us." (laughter)
"we need some young arms to do the work, so if anyone has a four wheel drive..."

Ron has to buy two copies of Creation Magazine in order to be able to give it away because he's an academic and needs to keep a physical copy.
Nobody was a christian in his family but he signed them up for the Creation Magazine and now half have come to Christ.

Only one more lecture session and one music session to go, IIRC.

Actually I think it's one lecture session and one lecture about music.

[CyborgKin]

Okay now all that's left is the Q and A session.

oh and the kids present some sort of musical performance.

notes dump for "dinosaur fossils and why they are young and were formed in a watery catastrophe" and "why music proves God, and Wagner and Disney are bad"

 

Spoiler

## 14:30 Stuck in the ice-cream line

## 14:42 Whatever this talk is, I missed the introduction and the beginning

Oh it's Vance Nelson talking about dinosaur fossils

Something to do with cataloguing books and works in the 1600s and 1700s on the evidence for creation?

fossils of scallops that have reproducing after their kind, turning into scallops

Finding dinosaur bones in the fields in Canada, over 2000 pounds lying around on the surface of Alberta

South of there, Montana, Hell Creek formation [I think?] lot's of dinosaur fossils there too

when looking for fossils the texans will pick up a rock and joke "oh that's a leverite"  "what's a leverite?"  "it's a rock, leave 'er right there"

more pictures of dinosaur bones

what we find with the dinosaurs is just as important if not more important.
the dinosaurs suddenly appear in the fossil record then suddenly disappear.  none of that is any help to the theory of evolution

We find other reptiles with the dinosaurs
dorsal and ventral portions of vertebrae of champsosaurous (sort of like a narrow nosed crocodile)
redwood cones and impressions found in the Hell Creek Formation

We have to ask is this good evidence for evolution or good evolution for creation?
Redwoods suddenly appear in the fossil record and are still here the same just the same.
They reproduced after their kind.
Powerful evidence for the Biblical account.

In a museum "sequoiadendron-like cone" fossil looks exactly like a modern redwood
Another fossils megasequoia in california that's the same as one we find today in China.  [or was it metasequoia?]

Willows.
(Thought the dinosaur age was radically difference to what we have today but it turns out there's evidence of so many plants just the same as we find today.)
asked a local for some willow leaves, looked just the same as the fossil impressions

Figs
fossils are three dimensional, not flat or squashed.  fossilised fully inflated!  tore off the trees when still green then quickly fossilised
are not buried with either branches or soil deposits, were torn off in a disasterous event
figs the same as we find today, powerful evidence for a powerful storm and for things reproducing after theri kind.

Crocodiles
(Sesketchewan: if you have good binocualars you can watch your dog run away for seven days)
Not the kind of place crocodiles would live today.

Alligators
Top museum in Alberta: fossil alligator skull has plaque saying its the earliest known alligator.  Surely they would have a display comparing it to modern alligators and showing transitional forms, right?
"it is difficult to distinguish it from modern alligators"
So they took the sign down after he had a speaking tour on the topic (cos it was kinda embarassing)

Turtles:
find some the same as we find today, and some that have gone extinct.
softshell turtles basically the same as are sold as pets.
they suddenly appear in the fossil record.
museum display "turtles first *appeared* over 200 million years ago and their genral body plan has hcanged relatively little since then." then some excuses that living fossils were "under less pressure to evolve"
But maybe they've never considered that this is actually powerful evidence for creation.

Alligator gar fish
"why have they survived so long and changed so little?" asks the museum display
in an evolutionary paradigm this evidence is confusing.

What kinds of environmental conditions were responsible for depositing these materials?

Example: a place with layers of brown coal and bentonite.
the coal contains horsetails (plants), bentoninte is volcanic
was it volcanic eruption then horsetail growing for thousands of years then volcanic eruption then horsetails etc?
but the horsetails are largely facing in one direction (statisticaly signficantly) and are uprooted
they're facing northwest to south east all the way through.
also a layer of bark facing the same way.  (the bark has turned to coal too)
doesn't take swamps or millions of years to make coal.  it just takes bark.
these are pieces of bark,  not trees.
These are sheets of redwook bark.

famous paleontologist Dr Currie when asked about the depositional environment said: it's not his job to look at that.  But there was "a lot of hurricate activity in the late cretaceous"

We find land dwelling creatures with water dwelling creatures.
We find fresh and salt water creatures together.
Sharks and rays.
The rays look the same as salt water rays we find today.
There's only one way to get all these things buried together and the early geologists knew what that was.

The preserved scales on dinosaur fossils requires rapid burial.

Museum display: "paddlefish: time travellers from dinosaur days... as the bones of the 65 million years old were unearthed, parts of the skeletons of a paddlefish and a sturgeon were found.  Scientists guessed that when the dinosuar died, it fell into a body of water..."

Dinosaurs in death poses from asphyxiation.  (a plaque claims one died in a dry area and it dried out and was pulled into the death pose, though that's since been falsified, plus it's silly to claim it died in a dry place when it's buried in water-laid sedimentary rock)

We find millins and millions of intact freshwater clams buried with the dinosaurs.
In the present, clams that die on the bottoms of rivers open naturally within three years and aren't yet much buried.
So how are closed fossil clams found unless they were buried very rapidly?  And they're buried with the dinosaurs so they were buried rapidly too.

Fossil tree found with dinosaur, and the fossil tree is squished [sideways so it's oval shaped]
Needs the weight of thousands of feet of sediment to squash the tree before it rots and before it fossilises

Carbon 14 and soft tissue found in the fossil record, proving that the fossils are relatively recent
dated dinosaur samples to thousands of years not millions

Soft elastic t. rex tissue
Mary Schweitzer "a lot of our science, a lot of our chemistry, doesn't allow for this"
"it doesn't seem possible... I can't explain it to be honest"

2 Peter 2:4-5
Psalms 119:160

## 14:30 Creation and Creativity: Musicians from Monkeys? - Michael Dooley (pianist, jazz and classical musician and composer, missionary in the middle east)
announcer: "the musical world in Australia is not overtly Christian or Creationist"  Mike's talk will show that music intrinsically points to God.  Also he wrote a promotional piano piece for Steinway, and writes scores for children's videos for Torchlighters

How many evolutionists does it take to change a lightbulb?
None, eventually the lightbulb will change itself... perhaps into an LED?

Soli Deo Gloria - Handel, composer of The Messiah.
his worldview was 'to God be all the glory' and that's my worldview too

music: 'trip through the morning' [I think.  In any case it's really quite nice] (album: fields of freedom)

the theory of evolution tries to come up with the orign of creativity

quote from Stuart Burgess (who invented the bikes which beat Australia in the Olympics, I hope he doesn't invent a cricket bat) (laughter)
basically that human intelligence is supposed to have evolved for hunting and such but we have far more intelligence than is really necessary.

When Adam said "this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man" - that was actually a pun.  Adam wasn't even a dad yet... (laughter)

Jabal who invented country music and Jubal who invented classical music (laughter)
8 generations after Adam and we already have both string and wind instruments

David was a great pioneer of music in the Bible.
the spiritual effects of music
1 samuel 16:23
another verse I missed, about a prophet who had a minstrel playing music to refresh his spirt

passages about the numbers of singers and instruments David had.

Ezera 7:24 - it shall not be lawful to impose toll, tribute or taxes upon musicians  "I've written to the ATO about this but haven't heard back" (laughter)

Revelation 14:2-3

The science of music: the harmonic series.
dividing a note into half, third, quarters, fifths, sixths, sevenths, eighths

Video of resonance betwen piano strings
playing a fundamental makes the upper harmonics resonate
"I guess that makes me a fundamental-ist... and my music has religious overtones" (laughter at the music puns)

when the harmonics agree with the fundamental it evokes something true and real, when they don't it sounds dark and scary.

Harmony in music is only around a thousand years old.
As christian scientists invented science, christian musicians invented music and harmonies.

J.S.Bach quote "all music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God..."
a drawing of one of the last performances of Handel's music that he was present at shortly before he died.  Great applause after a significantc chord.  "it is not for me but for up there."

Then Richard Wagner came along and wrote music that isn't in any key.  which he wrote in 1859.  Same year as origin of species and also Marx started writing Das Kapital, not a good year!

Someone asked Mike's teacher: Why did Bach write such harmonic music and today we write such discordonant music?  His anwer: "I suppose they had God in those days but we don't have God anymore"

Music: one of Bach's preludes transposed on the fly into B flat (chosen by coin flip and dice roll)

Question: why did I evolve the capability to do that?  What is the survival advantage when living in a cave hunting wild ox using stone tools?

Video clip: a chimp mashing a piano, followed by some great musicians playing very different musical styles
Angela Hewett, Oscar Peterson (both Candadian, one from european stock, one from Trinidad ancestry)
Would Darwin have expected the world's greatest jazz pianist to come out of Trinidad?

Chimps don't have opposable thumbs and so can't do scales.
The human brain has a unique motor cortex, a quarter of it is devoted to controlling the hands.
17.4% of the connections in the motor cortex are unique to humans!
100 billion neurones with around 1000 connections each.
So the difference means we need 12.5 million new connections evolving per generation since humans and chimps diverged!

And we need aesthetic appreciation for beauty or there would be no point to music.
Evolution cannot explain why the supposed ape men who could not appreciate beauty went extinct.

Wagner's wordview was different from Handel and Heyden
Most people don't read darwininan philosophers but...
video clip from "Let it Go" - Disney's Frozen
"No right no wrong no rules for me, I'm freeee"
how many hits does that have on youtube?  Millions?  Wrong.  1.5 BILLION hits on youtube and that's terrifying.
1.5 bilion kids around the worlds singing along to "no right no wrong no rules"

 

[SrMaryEloquentia]

I love the flood and fossil deposition stuff (paleontology nerd here)!

But I'm honestly surprised about Kathy Wallaces talk about sexual orientation...

Quote

male homosexuality linked to a protein in the brain
homosexual men have a higher number of older bothers
study of male brain deveopment
anti-NLGN4Y levels higher in mothers of gay sons

That sounds a lot like "people are born homosexual" - what happened to "lifestyle choice" and "pray the gay away"? ?

But then at least it's all the mother's fault:

Quote

Mother's diet and chemical exposure can cause genome-wide de nove epimarks 

Was there any reaction / discussion to that from the audience or did people just nod along and agree that contraception, GMO foods and feminism are the cause of everything that's wrong with the world?

[CyborgKin]

Oops, I forgot to post the Q and A notes.

Featuring a recommendation to go see Ken Ham's Ark Encounter if you're ever in the area (though not an endorsement of its portrayal of the shape of the ark.)

Spoiler

## 15:20 children's song on the 6 days of creation
recording and the score will be up on on creation.com/2018notes in about a week

## 15:30 question time

Q: Examples of irreduceable complexity?
A: ATP synthase, which also needs the right kind of membrane and various components to function.  Irreduceable complexity means if it was made less complex it would not function.  So many biochemical pathways are examples of this.

Q: Something about biogeography.  Also How did some kind of wolf get to the Faulkland islands?
A: Look up articles by Dominic Statham.  Humans were involved in spreading some of the animals around the world.  That makes sense in a biblical timescale but isn't an option in an evolutionary timescale.

Q: Why did God take so long to create the universe?
A: As a model for our week.

Q: How would you answer someone who says maybe God used evolution?
A: That was clearly covered by a couple of sessions, but look up Phillip Bell's book Creation and the Christian Faith, and Martin's book is Creation a Secondary issue? No it's all about Jesus.

Q: How do we deal with sceptics like Tony Reed?
A: Who?  No one's gone looking to entertain themselves with second rate atheists but surely there's answers to anything he says on creation.com but if there isn't contact us and ask us a specific question so we can answer it because we want to have everything we can answered.

Q: Feathered dinosaur finds, there's been a lot of news about these.  What do you say about a 1 ton feathered dinosaur?  Can't be a chicken.
A: You saw the monumental monsters talk right
But... is this really evidence for evolution?
The platypus, which has features and characteristics that are like a mosaic of a whole lot of different creatures.
God can make feathered reptiles if he wants to, and that doesn't mean dinosaurs are related to birds.
But that may not even really be what's there...
What you read in the media isn't the same as what's reported in the actual science journals.
In the science journals: fillaments not feathers.  Modificatins of the scale material with fillaments.  Not feathers.  A lot of these things even on the chineese fossis are fillaments not feathers.  (fake news!)
Feathers for t-rex?  We've found preserved t-rex scales in the fossil record and they not have feathers.
They found a feather in amber from dinosaur layers.  And there are bird tracks with dinosaur fossils.  Same as modern birds.
A supposed feathered dinosaur: yes there's a feather but it's not actually attached to the dinosaur.
There's always major problems with the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds.  Here's one:
dinosaur forearm vs bird wing: they use different digits.  Would have to lose one and re-evolve one back.
Bellows dinosaur lung (breath in and out the same hole) how did it evolve into the unidirectional bird lung?  No explanation.
In summary: at this point there isn't definitive proof dinosaurs had feathers, and it wouldn't prove they are related to birds if they did.

Q: Are there really more than two genders?
A: This is a good question in this current climate where we are told all kinds of things and told to belive all kinds of things and to disconnect our brains from realities.  Gender is something we feel which natal sex is something we're born with.
There are young ladies who see themselves as overwaith while they are actaully under weight.  Matters of the mind extend to all kinds of areas.
On college campuses in america an obvious man will ask what do you say I am?  And people cannot answer!
Gender reassignment regret exists and is a major thing.
We worry about tiny children who don't know what they want to do, whose parents are obliged to give them puberty stopping medication and later on put them in line for surgery that would remove healthy organs.  How do you explain to a 12 year old that they will never be able to have babies later in life if they have these organs removed?
What someone things about themself and belives that they are may not be true.
There are two biological sexes which are imprinted in every cell of your body, what you believe may not match that.
There was a man who strongly believed that his leg did not belong to him and held a doctor at gunpoint to get it removed.

Q: Coconino sandstone: how was it deposited during the flood if it's windblown?
A: Actually it's the secular literature which says it's wind blow because it has dune features.  You find some dune features under water but not that large so they say that it can't be deposited by water and was deposited by wind.  So when I said it was falluveal not alluveal that was a mistake.

Q: Can animal DNA get into our bodies from vaccines?
A: We do ingest animals we eat, which is fine.  While viruses are a thing they have mechanims for getting into cells, so animal DNA probably isn't a problem.
But... there are actually known problems such as human fetal cell lines which are approaching senescence which are found in vaccines.
Flu vaccines are grown on chicks so there's egg protein.
Some vaccines are grown on cell lines from abortions.  Some have to be replaced by new ones when they approach senescence.
the CDC has limits on how much human DNA is allowed in vaccines but some studies show some exceed these limits.

Q: Why did God decide to destroy thousands of Indonesians in a tsunami?  How does this glorify God?
A: That's a great question to ask to confuse a theistic evolutionist, as they can't figure out a good answer for that.
We live in a world that is cursed because of sin.  It's not like God specifically decided to destroy Indonesians.  We're all deserving of judgement and it's only by God's grace that we live.
All punishing of any humans because of sin display's God's righteousness and justice.
We see his mercy in Christ.
The more attributes of God that are put on display the more He is glorified.

Q: What are your specifications for the four wheel drive?
A: (we're disappointed no one asked us this question) - laughter

Q: Things are winding down, are you concerned about the future?
A: In one sense yes but in another sense no because we trust God and know that Christ is coming again, that won't be for an extinct race of humans.  Mankind does have a hope for the future which is an integral part of the gospel we proclaim.

Q: How do you explain Indian Head, the only rock on Fraser Island?
A: It's volcanic and would have formed early in the flood.
It forms a zeta curve and anchors a whole lot of the island giving it the shape it has.  [It sounded better before I did a poor job of summarising]

Q: Say something about the LHC and the 'God Particle'
A: CERN has a big research facility where they collide particles to try to recreate the conditions right after the Big Bang.
This is a materialistic search for the origin of everything.  But since it didn't begin that way, they are looking in the wrong place.  They have the wrong premise because they are looking for the origin of the universe within itself.
The fool says in his heart 'there is no God' - you will end up with a foolish result if you start with a foolish premise.
'the God particle' because of media hype and the media are not friendly to God

Q: Is there any way to tell the difference between scientific data and the philosophical interpretation of that data?  Is there a formula?
A: Ask yourself what did they actually see?  What are the observations that were made?
This will help you tell between truth and fiction.  Takes a lot of stress out of the process.

Q: Given the talk of dinosaurs sightings does this mean they were not wiped out in the flood?  If not then when?
A: Two of every kind was on the ark and got off and they lived alongside people.
The fossils are the ones which did not get on the ark.  The ones people saw and drew and wrote descriptions of were the ones that came off the ark and their descendents.
Probably went extinct at the end of the 1600s, from analysis of the records we find.

Q: What to say to a pastor, relative, etc, who does not agree?
A: This is an emotional type issue, people are invested a lot in their beliefs so will likely put up walls when you question their beliefs.
Do not strive but gently instruct etc [didn't catch the scripture reference]
We need a touch mind and a tender heart - MLK Jr
God is the one who opens eyes and grants repentance.
A few suggestions:
Pray and trust.
Ask them good questions.
Creationists don't have to answer all the questions, we don't always have to be on the back foot.
Sub them to creation mag, spread literature around, invite people to read and study the scriptures with you.

Q: If evolution involves death how are there animals left today?
A: Individuals don't evolve, populations do.
The less fit ones die the more fit ones survive, only some of the offspring are culled and the rest have more offspring etc.
That's how the theory goes.

Q: Given the godless philosopy now underlying our culture what's the world coming to?
A: Can't predict the future.
We're in a post-Christian future where the knowledge of God is not common in the population.
There's distrust and even hatred of God.
Last year the first major Federal Australian law passed in opposition to the Bible.
we're starting to see what the post-christian world looks like where the laws are no longer grounded in the judeo christian tradition.
call back to the line from frozen "No right no wrong, no rules, I'm free"
Who knows where it'll go?

Q: I want stickers to stick on signs at national parks to get peoples attention and tell them the truth and can I reference creation.com?
A: Please please please don't do that, that would be vandalism and would reflect badly on us.  That is really bad form to deface signs.
but talking to guides and giving them flyers after presentations can be ok.

Q: How much did fertility drop since 1960 and does it parallel marijuana use?
A: Recreational drugs including alcohol, marijuana, diet, and other things can lead to reduced fertility, malformed and defective sperm.
All kinds of things we're exposed to can cause reproductive problems though these aren't the only reasons why.  There's male factors, female factors, occupational hazards such as radio exposure.
Some amusing study getting humans dressed as sperm to run through mazes.
Men thought to be a major source of mutations in the young due to the number of cell divisions in making sperm... but the high travel distance helps to ensure that only the very healthy ones reach the egg.  That's a clever design which prevents the age of the father having much impact on genetic quality of the young.  Sperm having to swim so far is a great example of natural selection and God's design in using it.

Q: Something about the dating methods used.  Do you use radiometric dating still?
A: Not so much.  Often use relationship stratigraphy which is a standard technique that's always been used.  Geologists often send samples to multiple labs so they can choose what date to use.  Geologists don't use dates from radiometric dating as a new pieces of primary data but only to confirm an existing idea.
Problem: we can't get a zero date from a new rock we get millions or hundreds of millions of years for newly formed igneous rock.

An explanation of the % error in rock dates.
They can measure very accurately with a mass spectrometer to within a few percent.  They then need a model based on unproven and unprovable assumptions.
Can calibrate radiocarbon dates all the way back to the flood, not so certain for preflood dates because it would be a different carbon equilibrium.
But everyone agrees that the presence of radiocarbon proves a sample cannot be millions of years old so it'd good for that.

Q: Can you recommend Ken Ham's ark encounter?
A: Yes of course, by all means it's well worth a visit if you are in the area.  Though we would disagree with the shape.

Q: What about what the bible says about unity?
A: The problem with disunity is people trying to make the Bible say things it doesn't say.
Disunity isn't caused by teaching creation but by people not believing what the bible says.
Unity comes from common trust in God's Word.

 

At least some of the questions were a bit skeptical or at odds with CMI, so there's that.  I wonder how serious the "can I stick stickers on geological tour signs with your name on them?" person was, lol.

 

I heard quite a few people who really liked and appreciated Kathy Wallace's talks.  No one I talked to or overheard seemed to have any problem with any of it, apart from some who just didn't understand most of it   And she said that a lot of people (particularly women) really appreciated her talks and talked and shared a lot with her after.  There were a lot of people around her table during the breaks.  (At the Christian Museum in Australia table too.)

But yeah she was pretty clearly saying that there's (non-exclusive) epigenetic causes to probably all of LGBTQIA.

It's amazing how very close "pesticides turning the frogs hermaphroditic" is to "fluoride turning the frogs gay" now that I think about it