evolution – Page 8 – Matty (Headwind)

August 10, 2020August 10, 2021

Extensive Swamps in Lowlands

It shall be that fishermen will stand by it from En Gedi to En Eglaim; they will be places for spreading their nets. Their fish will be of the same kinds as the fish of the Great Sea, exceedingly many. But its swamps and marshes will not be healed; they will be given over to salt.
(Ezekiel 47:10-11) NKJV

Most of the sedimentary deposits assigned to the Mississippian are coal beds in the Mississippi valley. The coal is the remains of swamp habitat that was buried in a world-wide flood.

August 9, 2020May 2, 2022

Coding a Character State Matrix

Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.
(Leviticus 19:36) KJV

When you use a computer to analyze data it has to be coded in a form that the computer can understand. This is where personal bias and circular reasoning starts: not in the analysis, in the coding.

August 9, 2020March 1, 2021

A Phylogenetic Tree of Life

Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you; Love her, and she will keep you. Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.
(Proverbs 4:5-7) NKJV

Back in the early days of DNA sequencing in systematics, when PCR machines (polymerase chain reaction) were cool new toys, the data was fragmentary. We were a grad student in one of the molecular labs sequencing plant DNA.

August 9, 2020May 2, 2022

Cladistics and Circular Reasoning

(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
(2 Corinthians 10:4-5) KJV

Despite the rigorous application of philosophical ploys to guard against circular reasoning in cladistic analysis it’s a poster boy for circular reasoning because it’s based in a paradigm which is the result of personal bias. In this case the personal bias is: do you love or hate God?

August 9, 2020May 17, 2022

Induction vs. Deduction

But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain.
(Titus 3:9) KJV

In the scientific method there’s a lot philosophy involved in constructing a logical framework which should produce an experimental result which is free from bias.

August 9, 2020May 4, 2022

Evolution Theory vs. Process

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
(1 Corinthians 1:19)

The majority of Christians think of evolution as the process by which organic life developed from molecules to humans. It’s a definition of evolution that no one else uses.

August 7, 2020August 7, 2021

Liverworts, Fungi

Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
(2 Thessalonians 2:3-4) NKJV

“Liverworts, fungi” is inductive sleight-of-hand. Supposedly, Liverworts and fungi are at the low end of evolutionary development so, supposedly, their presence in the stratigraphic column indicates that a sediment is old.

August 7, 2020August 7, 2021

Heterospory and the Seed Habit

By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
(Hebrews 11:7) NKJV

“Heterospory and the seed habit” is scientific smoke and mirrors. It sounds technical, so most folk will probably assume that so long as someone else understands it, then everything’s okay.

August 6, 2020August 6, 2021

Brachiopods

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth.
(Jeremiah 25:32) KJV

Brachiopods aren’t an evolutionary dead-end which got wiped out in a mass extinction. Well, there was a mass extinction, but it didn’t wipe out the Brachiopods.

August 6, 2020August 6, 2021

Scorpions and Millipedes, first Air-breathing Animals

Repay them, O Lord, According to the work of their hands. Give them a veiled heart; Your curse be upon them! In Your anger, Pursue and destroy them From under the heavens of the Lord.
(Lamentations 3:64-66) NKJV

By a totally staggering coincidence, the first air-breathing animals to appear in the stratigraphic column just happened to be living on the beach or at the coast during Noah’s flood.