My answer to Marc Robidoux' long comment

Incredulity on Literal Adam and Eve, a Tracing Problem (Quora) · Tracing Efforts Continue : Given that Trent Session V treats Adam as an individual man, when did modernist Catholics start treating him as just an allegory? · Continuing Sci Debate with Marc Robidoux · Marc and Alex between them · My answer to Marc Robidoux' long comment · Answering Pismenny, More Than One Comment

“it is not hearsay.“ As you have not provided a single bit or citation for any verifiable evidence for your claim that there was ever a global flood, it is hearsay defined as ‘an item of idle or unverified information or gossip; rumor: ‘

The evidence publically available, and mostly cited to, at least to wikipedia, has been cited over and over again by myself and opponents. AND on top of that it has been argued what it proves or doesn't prove.

“Exactly. Your considering my evidence from debates as "hearsay" is not evidence of evidence from my debates being hearsay. For instance”, - I am not making any claim so I have no need to present evidence. YOU, on the other hand, claim there was a global flood, and provide no evidence to support this at all.

You were just making the claim amounting to that citing extensive arguments about available evidence constitues no more than hearsay being there without any evidence.

"citing his screen name” - does not make someone un-anonymous. What is his real name? Is he actually a real person? What are his credentials to be making the claims he makes? - Anonymous.

He could not have answered me as he did if he had been a bot. His credentials in geology I cannot be more precise about than: arguably better than yours. Or for that matter mine.

"So, what kind of evidence do you want? I have more than one.” Oh, do tell.

When you stop asking me to prooftext every sentence I utter and start dealing with argument, like telling me what exactly you find needing evidencing. You were fine communicating with Alex Pismenny, without giving him that special treatment.

"Glenn Morton is claiming it” - and provides over 50 points of reference to the evidence backing his claim.

No, he provides 50 points of reference for several different statements in this paper, perhaps (I'll trust your count) but not one of them a better discussion of "couldn't have been laid down in one year" than his bare claim.

"Are you asking me to prove it could?” - I’m asking you to provide a shred of verifiable evidence that counters the loads of evidence that show it does no such thing.

I have given a formula: much water moving fast in a short time can move about as much dirt as little water moving slowly in a long time. Your turn to try to prove that one wrong.

"Arguments are what evaluates evidence as proof or non-proof” - Science is not about “proof”, it is about evidence, and if you provide an argument without evidence, that is not counter-evidence to arguments made under verifiable evidence.

Science obviously started after Karl Popper. Exeunt Darwin, Lyell, Newton, Galileo, Herschel ... but for some reason these men, not scientists according to you, since pretending to actually prove things, had their work kept on after Popper.

I do not provide arguments without evidence. I provide arguments about the evidence offered. If an argument is given about evidence X, the evidence I offer may also be X, and there just correcting the argument about it. Like "K-Ar dates result only from actual decay at a verified half life" corrected to "K-Ar dates measure Ar to K ratio, which results from decay, which results from accelerated decay at some times, which results from rapid cooling of lava under water and which is measured by a half life that cannot be verified against actual historical dates". Which corrects position a) "K-Ar dating proves a certain age" to position b) "K-Ar dating doesn't so, except perhaps to the year of the Flood when plenty of water was available to cool the lava, and probably some rapid decay was ongoing for radioactive reasons".

""But if you volunteer to dispute them” - I do indeed dispute them, but the burden of evidence is on you, as it is YOUR claim that there was ever a global flood.

No, you gave a truncated quote. AS NOT JUST unfounded - if you say unfounded, the burden of proof is indeed on me, and the proof is history in Genesis 6-9. BUT ALSO impossible. That puts the burden of proof on you. Why is it impossible? If you had a really good argument, no evidence I could provide for factuality could trump that. But proving something impossible takes more than just claiming it is.

"In fact, it didn't include one when I read it years ago”. - - Oh gee, well sorry for not having read something you posted yesterday as it existed years ago when you read it...

No, it didn't. It included what you cited, a bare claim that laying them down in one year was impossible. He gave no discussion, as I recall of that claim, and therefore backed up none of any such discussion by any of the 50 citations (if they are that many) by you.

"A citation is neither a good nor a bad argument” - correct, however if you make an argument and base it on citable evidence, you can be reasonably sure that this evidence has been verified by other experts in the process of peer review.

Yes, and in some cases this means it has been verified horribly badly, because their scientific culture takes that evidence or its purported implication for granted.

"Which exact reference did he give for a year long flood” - He provides 50+ references which refute the notion that year long flood could possibly produce the observed layered strata. Again “proof” is not a scientific pursuit. Evidence is the goal, and all evidence shows that the strata were laid down over millions of years. You claim it was all done in a single global flood, but provide no evidence for your claim.

He doesn't say one of these references gives any one proof for that claim, since he didn't offer to even discuss it, as I recall. Now, I'll check. Did. He doesn't. He enumerates a series of layers. He gives a reference for each one, and that proves it exists. But he doesn't anywhere near pretend to prove it could not have been laid down in one year. The closest he comes is:

// Fourth, the geologic column is not sorted be ecological zones. The Silurian Interlake, Devonian Prairie, Pennsylvanian Minnelusa and Jurassic Morisson formations are continental deposits. Oceanic deposits sandwich these beds. The ocean came and went many times. //

As he is, as said, abusing the words above and below, and pretending things are above at places where they don't exist or below at places where they don't, since he is basically treating ND as one "place", this amounts to nothing. Or here:

// Here is how I know the Williston Basin sediments couldn't be deposited in a single year. 15,000 feet divided by 365 days equals 41 feet per day. Assuming that a burrow is only 1 foot long and that the creature could not survive the burial by an additional foot of sediment, the creature doing the burrowing must accomplish his work in less than 40 minutes. That doesn't sound all that bad, until it is realized that if the poor critter ever stops to rest, even for a half an hour, he will be buried too deeply to escape. //

Here is a part reply from CMI:

// The organisms most capable of disturbing the sediment during the time constraints inherent in rapid Flood deposition are those that can burrow through or across centimetres to tens of centimetres of sediment in a matter of seconds to minutes. There are many such organisms, and space limitations permit mention of only a few of them. Among annelid worms, such rates have been measured for Sipunculus,45 Ophiodromus,46 Nephtys and Arenicola. 47 Such rates hold for certain mollusks, including numerous kinds of bivalves,48–50 certain razor clams,51 the pelecypod Neotrigonia52 and several different kinds of gastropods.53 They also hold for many crustaceans, including the amphipod Parahaustorius,54 the isopod Tylos55 and various crabs.56–58 //

https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_2/j20_2_113-122.pdf

The paper is really a scientific paper that contains multiple references for the relevant claims about checkable facts.

Another part of the reply is with me, without reference, but from what I have gathered on Flood geology elsewhere : sediments were folded over each other either during the Flood or during later landslides.

Scenario A overall being thus : 1) sediments during the Flood covered worms of the, 2) the worms burrowed up quickly (as per reference), 3) more sediment settled on them, they continued burrowing quickly through the mud, 4) this solidified before the burrows could be squeezed flat, 5) the depth in Williston Basin represents a much larger original surface, since folding occurred just afterwards.

Scenario B is, burrows solidified by the pre-Flood seas over the 2242 years up to the Flood, and pieces of that were then crushed to smaller bits and assembled by Flood currents in the water depth now known as Williston, or it was assembled by folding as in scenario A.

Scenario C is, geologists of the petrol company were dishonest or sloppy with diagnosing presence of solidified burrows all along the depth of 15 000 feet.

Scenario D (which you might check), Glenn Morton misunderstood or was sloppy about that citation, but it is less likely, since he is a geologian.

"As said, it was years since I read it, and I did not find any such proof back then. You read him more recently.” - YOU posted this link, The Entire Geologic Column in North Dakota, YOU are claiming it is a reference of something TODAY.

Yes, I am claiming it as evidence he is talking of layers all over North Dakota and presenting each as present everywhere in it.

"How about learning to parse instead of citing a half sentence?” Well, sorry, I’m not a blogger, I’m just commenting against direct quotes from you one Quora, so if that causes you to have to go back over what you said, boo hoo.

Didn't go back, I denied the limits of the quote as faithfully reproducing what I said. Namely, as the quote was a response to your words, I had to go back to that context to actually understand my words. I then did go back, and after that answer your question when it became understandable. My quoted words were posted hours or days before I saw your response.

" I claim that strata lower than Younger Dryas strata are the material evidence of a Flood, except some for an Ice age between the Flood and Younger Dryas. If you had paid any attention to the discussion of historic science, it so happens, it can't be checked against achievements. You have material pieces of evidence. You have stories that compete about fitting the material evidence best. My claim is, the layers lower than Ice Age and Younger Dryas are material evidence left from the Flood.” - Let me restate this so an average person can understand: So HGL is claiming that some sedimentary rock formations are evidence of a global flood, but this “can’t be checked” despite the fact that there are innumerable references for geological science that directly contradict this “uncheckable” bit of his claim.

I never said anything of what you "restated" as can't be checked. I said the methodology for historic claims of non-textual evidence is often such that it cannot be checked against achievements. And this is the precise problem with the "innumerable references", meaning that they are what cannot be checked by actual achievements. Since historic science.

"My point is, Jurassic and Permian remains are material evidence of the Flood. “ - nope, it (they are/is) no such thing, all the scientifically verified evidence from geological science point to an earth 4–4.5Billion years old, and the evidence supporting this claim also support mechanisms that have been verified with evidence in keeping with scientific theories of geology, plate tectonics etc.

"All the scientifically verified evidence" is a very big claim, you would have to back that up. A theory about the past is perhaps verified as possible by consistence with theories about the past, but it is not verified as the real past. The 4.5 billion claim comes from one little piece of evidence, namely meteorites with U-Pb dates that old, and it cannot be verified there was no Pb present from scratch.

“Proof?” - Your word, not mine, not a scientific term at all.

I was asking you for it. I am well aware it's out of fashion after Popper. Probably because preceding decades Mitchelson and Morley, and Airey actually tried to prove Heliocentrism by filling in the chinks of what could be verified, and failed. The outcomes contradicted their heliocentric predictions.

"If you are suggesting there is citable evidence of something here, then 1. Please cite it, and 2. Please clarify what claim this citation supports?"

"You proceed to quote verbatim a bunch of stuff from Wikipedia that mostly contradicts your claim that there was a global flood within the last 10000 years, so not sure what that “proves” for you, but for me, ‘meh’."

It would contradict it, if carbon dates 40 000 BP were solid undisputable facts. It would contribute nothing if carbon dates were meaningless. In fact I pose a middle ground. Any sample can be contaminated by more radioactivity, and any sample decays according to half life, including the atmospheric one. This imposes limits on how quickly the pmC (percent modern carbon) can change. This means, carbon dates do provide a relative, but not an absolute chronology.

This makes it significant if lots of things disappear at the same carbon date or even start appearing at the same carbon date. So, events carbon dated 40 000 BP map each other as much as to make for instance the Flood (of which we have an at least purported historic account with several parallels, where the historicity is tampered with but not disappeared) likely. Making carbon dated 40 000 BP = 2957 BC.

"At the academia I am from, no one was required to cite for "bonis" being dative/ablative plural of all three genders of I-II declinsion adjective "bonus". I was however required to cite Maius having a side form Madius in the Middle Ages, and found the citation in Habel-Gröbel.” -Congratulations! Did that earn you a PhD (perhaps in Human Biology like Dr. Bergman?)

No, it did earn me a footnote in Swedish academia, more importantly also an actual insight in how actual academics do use, sometimes overuse references, as the one writing the paper already had one for the spelling Magius for Maius. Both Madius and Magius indicate the pronunciation of ddj, as in Italian Maggio, instead of Classic yod sound in Maius. So, he could have been fine with what he already had, but wanted one more reference even more directly.

"Now, for Neanderthals I know (Pääbo, El Sidrón, look it up) that the mitochondria and the Y-chromosomes are not found in modern man. Flood is among other things a genetic bottleneck and if a daughter in law of Noah had a Neanderthal father and a Cro Magnon mother, she would have handed on neither. Though to be fair, I may have overdone the case as some Neanderthal / Sapiens hybrid in Italy seems to have had Neanderthal like mitochondriae.” - I think you over-estimate your knowledge of genetics….

I think you owe me an argument on where mine would have been swayed by a mistake about genetics, before making that kind of resumé.

"Sounds like initiation and metadiscussion, not my cup of tea.” - Evidence for claims, not your cup of tea?

Pretending to ask for them at a ridiculous rate, displaying a total disrespect for my right to arrive at own syntheses, and to depend on commonly known facts and to wait with references till you find one important, no that is not my cup of tea. You gave a fairly low credibility statement about platypi without a reference, it was unimpoortant for the argument, since either way the people back then could have used methods like those of modern zoologists, so I don't see why I would want to chase evidence for your claims.

"Like the fact that the earth revolves around the sun e.g."Is supposed to ... how do you check that? “ - Lol, Jeez, NASA, they just sent men to the moon and the voyager probes to the outer Solar system and beyond, that’s the APPLICATION of helio centrism, , but you don’t have to wait for them to figure it out in THEORY, Galileo did it way back, does that name evoke anything with you...

Voyager probes have been sent thanks to an application of available astronomic knowledge, with whatever mistakes in it could be irrelevant for the result, and whether Heliocentrism is in the knowledge part or the mistakes part is another question. Sending men to the Moon (at least to MIR, if moontruthers should be right) has still less to do with Heliocentrism. Here is a checkup I did when it came to Voyager:

Apparent Annual Zig Zag Question about Geo/Helio and Space Crafts
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2014/06/apparent-annual-zig-zag-question-about.html

“ I am in fact claiming the 5000 BP {blah-di-blah} Genesis 14 c. 1935 BC.” Claiming with no evidence - I add.

I gave the evidence for 5000 BP here : real date like after Genesis 14 (since that carbon dates to 3500 BC, as per evacuated temple material on reed mats from En Geddi = Asason Tamar). And as per Roman martyrology for Christmas day, 2015 BC birth of Abraham => Genesis 14 c. 1935 BC.

It was not one statement without evidence, but at lowest resolution two statements, the statement contradicting your previous one and my evidence for it in quick resumé. You read to quickly or you are too biassed against me to take in what I say.

"That the people in the pre-Flood world or early post-Flood one would reduce to goat herders is your claim “ - Nope, it is a supposition {I have not made any claims, remember?}, but if you have evidence they were otherwise employed, go ahead and cite the evidence, can’t hurt your claim to the global flood, though it also wouldn’t be evidence for that claim …

I remember your claiming not to make any claims, hypocritically. You don't see yourself as making a "claim" when you are answering what you consider as a "claim", even if the one is in fact as much a claim as the other. All answers are not simply asking for proof, and those that aren't may need some proof themselves.

{A lot of stuff ... }"No, you didn't, but AronRa did, citing some Nelson or sn. I took this as an example.” Why are you ascribing statements by others to me in this debate?

I wasn't ascribing statements of them to you, I was taking an example for what the burden of proof would be, and when a counterclaim puts a burden on proof on someone else. I was deliberately taking a statement of someone else, that you so far had no stake in.

“I'll be happy to take them one by one ..." - Go ahead - “You may mean there is a palaeontological record, that is something else.” - and I also mean there is a geological record, and astro-physics, and chemistry and on and on, there are oodles of evidence based science which you deny.

But, this is your problem, there is not a shred of evidence of a historical record. As my studies include Medieval Latin, I might be somewhat (even without a PhD) knowledgeable on what normally constitutes that.

You have yet to provide a single shred of evidence (verifiable and testable against known facts) that there ever was a global flood.

Verification : Flood story has lots of parallels, not limited to places in obvious cultural contact with ANE. Like independent witness accounts.

"On the contrary, lots collapsed. Hence lots of sediments.” - Citation for evidence to this claim?

I was not making a claim, I was correcting your supposition of what my claim was in the first place. My evidence - there are lots of sediment. Do I need any citation for that? I already gave one or two. On Kayenta and on Karoo. Explanations are usually evidenced by what is explained.

"the flatter and less deep pre-Flood lands and depths, the water we now have would have been adequate.” - Citation? Evidence? Or maybe this is your ‘common sense’ emerging again?

In fact, Jonathan Sarfati made a calculation on that, or someone else on CMI. Whether waters would or would not cover things depends on calculations, though obviously there is a common sense to it too : the smoother a globe surface you have, the easier it is covered in water. Here is the quote:

// That is why the oceans are so deep, and why there are folded mountain ranges. Indeed, if the entire earth’s surface were levelled by smoothing out the topography of not only the land surface but also the rock surface on the ocean floor, the waters of the ocean would cover Earth’s surface to a depth of 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles). //

https://creation.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter12.pdf

“” - quotes from the Bible not considered evidence’ " They should, they are prima facie evidence of history, same as other stories from old days - even before being admitted as Word of God.” - Your ‘common sense’ may tell you that but The Bible is a collection of myths and fables and fiction and half truths and verifiably false content, so anything within it can’t be tested and so fails test #1 to be considered evidence of anything.

// The Bible is a collection of myths and fables and fiction and half truths and verifiably false content, so anything within it can’t be tested //

Myths - not in the cosmic myths sense with no human observers. Legends - and "myths" in that sense ... are not definable as fictions or as fables. As to half truths, historic sources are always only giving part of the truth, and if you mean "part truth, part lie" you would like to demonstrate the "lie" part.

// verifiably false content //

Ah, that is a counter claim, meaning you have a burden of evidence.

// so anything within it can’t be tested //

History usually can't be tested. It's sources can be believed or not. Archaeology is rarely able to validate or invalidate an event. Never totally. You might still archaeologically prove there was a battle at Waterloo, or you might not, but you could not archaeologically see who won or who lost.

"But the problem “ is a problem for you and your blog - for me, I’m just responding to comments in a Quora answer, not a problem at all.

Netiquette. When I came on the web 20 years ago, and a few months, I quickly learned that on a forum (including obviously by extension quora) you keep discussion of one aspect under one subthread or divide it according to aspects, you don't switch it from one thread to another or one subthread to another.

{quoting accurately} " I have consistently done so” - great, carry on.

“some in Atheist community seem to have consistently given me the opposite reputation (if not, why the demand? It would be obvious, right? I am not the one making a truncated quote like "involves a calculation of what heat would have been generated” without citing the initial "So, if your argument" making the following hypothetical).” - I don’t know who you are suggesting is attacking your reputation this way, it wasn’t me, my “demand” is simply a standard request for use of my name and statements - those comments you cite are not from me.

I had to hack this out quickly (I do actually have a day job - so can’t dedicate all my time to debunking wild claims), sorry for any formatting errors. In re-reading I see that you have a problem with your reputation. Do note, I have not made any claims or ad-hominem attacks on you, but I’d just point out again that you have a habit of inserting ‘if you said’ type of quotes, this could very easily lead you to post erroneous quotes in your blog which would annoy most anyone victim of such misquotes, just some friendly advice but you should try to curb that, it may benefit your reputation you value so highly.

When I state sth with "if you said" it is not a quote. On my blogs, my words are presented as mine, yours as yours, and included quotes from other one's previous statement are in italics. In the case "if you said", the you was generic. I could as well have said "if someone said".

I have c. 9000 articles on my blogs. Most of them not depending on someone else's copyright, as this one does on yours, for instance, but over the years I have been consistently cold shouldered by either editors or people who'd have acted as intermediates with them, and then changed their mind. As a result, I am still unpaid for my work and still on the street, giving me a job 24/24 (like 3 am, not getting up and shouting at the people who pass by and deliberately, sometimes, wake me up, or like 5:45 am realising it is too late to get to sleep again, as it is on some places, and still too early to get a cup of coffee from the bakery. You BET I have some rational reasons to apprehend about my reputation.

Here is an exchange I had with Robert Honan:

... on Child Abuse and Enemies of Catholicism (and Why Some of Them Want Me Locked Up)
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2014/06/on-child-abuse-and-enemies-of.html

It includes these words by him:

I see nothing dirty with removing bigots motivated by primitive superstition from the gene pool. I'm also ethical enough to not repost other people's comments in a discussion out of context. If you want to link to my comments here and respond on your silly little blog, go right ahead. Too bad you're the typical forum bully who can't help but refight the debate in a forum where you can edit my comments to your pleasure. Either post my comments word-for-word with everyone else's comments quoted word-for-word, or don't post them at all! Perhaps I should repost this discussion to my blog, and correct your posts to openly reflect your support for child rape?

Unless you pretend I made it up, clearly credible evidence some hate me ....