Pericles,
I think you’re getting there somewhat, but you still haven’t fully grasped my line of reasoning.

A Christian would never try and deduce God from any type of independent reasoning or first principles. Any power of reasoning that can independently deduce or nullify God must be superior to God himself. The God of the Bible (the one most often referred to by Dawkins) does not ask that we deduce him by means of our own independent reasoning. We are dependent creatures, made in God’s image.

Yet God (as Saltpetre described) is conscious, sentient, and thinking. He expects those in his image to be likewise. He invites us to reason, both with himself and with each other.

Therefore, in this context of biblical thinking, God must be presupposed. It cannot be otherwise. However, if you don’t like that perspective, you are welcome to try other presuppositions. If the evidence makes more sense using those parameters, then you are likely to continue to use them.

However, don’t imagine that you are not making definite presuppositions or assumptions yourself. For example, you speak of “simply looking at the rocks” as if with a clean sheet, without bringing certain assumptions to the table. Uniformitarian geology presupposes that the processes we currently observe (wind, erosion, deposition, etc.) are the same that have been acting upon the rocks for millennia. (An intrusive and destructive flood is actively assumed not to have occurred.) And it’s essentially assumption, as we’re not observing past eons, but the rocks presently before us.

So the issue is with which set of assumptions, A or B, does the entire body of evidence makes most reasoned sense. Each set must be investigated within its own parameters.

I argue that the evidence is consistent with the data within the parameters and perspectives of the Christian God (the one Dawkins has the most problems with). The millions of dead things buried in the rock layers are testament and warning to a past grand watery cataclysm. The relatively small population of Australian aborigines is consistent with them arriving in the few millennia since the flood.

Dan,

Australia's current population of 23 million, and total world population of 8 billion (bursting at the seams), with all the technology involved, should tell you that your calculation of projected pre-cololonial Aus Aboriginal population is severely in error.

Given Australia's limited 'bush tucker' resources, tendency towards flood and drought cycles, and the fact that the Aborigines had few tools and did not farm, it would have to be expected that population growth would be severely limited by the natural conditions prevailing.

Evidence? No cities, no towns, no major settlements - just a hunter-gatherer existence with spear, boomerang and throwing sticks (not even bow and arrow). You can't get much more down to earth than that. Hand to mouth, at mercy of the elements, and from all accounts with lots of inter-clan rivalry, killings, pay-back, pointing of the bone and wife stealing. All points to competition for scarce resources.

Wildlife demographic distribution supports evolution as a proven theory, species emergence after the mass-extinction event 65 million years ago supports evolution as a proven theory, the absence of fossils of 'modern' marsupials in Africa and limited currently-living representation anywhere outside Aus/PNG supports evolution as a proven theory, and a range of 'transitional' fossils and the latest genome studies support evolution as a proven theory.

Creation? No evidence, no proof, no theory even - just a statement, with no more credibility than an old proposition that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. (At least the latter silly idea was dropped eventually, but it seems the 'creation' silly idea will take a while longer to fall from grace.)

There is evidence of major flooding in Noah's time caused by sea level rise, as evidenced in flooding of the (previously freshwater) Black Sea 9,500 years ago. Of course there's no way any Ark could house two of every species living on the planet at the time. So, either there were many Noahs and Arks, or all floods past and present have been limited in scope.

You know where my money is.

God is great, and it is only people who are fallible.

Saltpetre,
Earlier I mentioned to Pericles about being precise with our definitions. Several times you describe evolution as “proven” – demonstrated, evident fact; QED; beyond doubt; beyond discussion. Proof is a strong word, usually reserved for the exactness of a mathematical type proof, or perhaps a legal judgement pronounced on a particular date. I would suggest in the context you used them, the word leaned more towards hyperbolic rhetoric.

On what date was it proven that there was a mass-extinction event 65 million years ago? How was it proven that it was 65 million years ago and not 64 or 60 million? Would proof or rather conjecture allow variation by millions of years?

Wildlife demographic distribution supports evolution as a proven theory. Really? How so? Earlier you spoke of opossums. I’ve heard there is one opossum in South America that is more similar to Australian marsupials than to other South American marsupials. If they evolved slowly over millions of years, we would expect them to be located near each other. And Australia and South America were never thought to be joined.

Proposing that the aborigines were here for 40000 years is not plausible with any growth model with real numbers. Population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8 …), rather than arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 …), which is why the numbers can increase so quickly. Tribal conflicts and other hardships keeping the growth minimal could not leave the population down to just 300 thousand people over that many millennia. The 20th Century was very bloody in terms of warfare, yet world population multiplied from under 2 billion to over 6 billion in just one hundred years.

Yet this highlights the problem of extrapolation. Inferring trends from currently observed data would imply a population far too small for people to have been in Australia that long. That is, unless we postulate intrusions (perhaps mass annihilations) into the growth curve. Similar arguments are used by creationist when questioning supposed dates inferred by carbon dating. Extrapolations of dates from the rate of carbon decay will be in error if major intrusions had occurred.

BTW Saltpetre, no creationist claims Noah’s ark held two of every species, as per the modern definition of a species. God created a number of different types of animals with much capacity for variation within limits. So not all present day species would have needed being on the ark. For example, there are presently five species of rhinoceros in the world. Each of these would have diversified from the original rhinoceros ‘kind’ represented on the ark. It is likely that the definition of the word ‘kind’ might often roughly align with what present taxonomists might call genus or family.

And as for you saying that there no evidence for the creation view point, I cannot let that pass unchallenged. At the risk of repeating myself, I’ve said to others above that the evidence is abundant, in fact universal. For the evidence for creationists is the same as that for evolutionists - it is the entire body of empirical data. It is the ability to explain the evidence that gives power to the respective arguments.

For example, on the subject of fossils, geologist, Tas Walker explains, “Tree trunk fossils are frequently found cutting across many geological layers. It is not possible that POLYSTRATE FOSSILS were buried gradually over many thousands or hundreds of thousands of years because the top part of any tree would have rotted away before it could be protected by sediment. Polystrate fossils provide direct evidence that the rocks formed rapidly, consistent with a young creation, as the Bible reports.”

Geologist, Emil Silvestru, gives an explanation of one aspect of dinosaur fossil phenomena. “Many dinosaurs around the world had been fossilized in an unusual swirling position—OPISTHOTONIC POSE (i.e. the head thrown backwards, body arched and tail arched upwards) —for which their immediate underwater burial is almost certainly required. Many dinosaur bones as well as sediments hosting them reveal violent water transport. Would it therefore be unscientific to postulate one big hydraulic catastrophe as the source of all these violent and instant killings?” Perhaps the one the Bible mentions.

Not so, Dan S de Merengue.

>>Pericles, I think you’re getting there somewhat, but you still haven’t fully grasped my line of reasoning<<

On the contrary, I fully understand your "line of reasoning". It is, quite simply, the presupposition that God exists. Nothing you say makes any sense at all, without that precondition.

>>A Christian would never try and deduce God from any type of independent reasoning or first principles.<<

Exactly. So the methodologies used to justify our respective positions can never be remotely comparable. Inevitably, everything you observe can only exist within that single frame of reference. By definition.

>>Any power of reasoning that can independently deduce or nullify God must be superior to God himself.<<

Superior? Why would such an ability to necessarily be "superior"? After all, if your perception is, as you describe it, that "He invites us to reason, both with himself and with each other", why should a conclusion not be reached?

>>Yet God (as Saltpetre described) is conscious, sentient, and thinking.<<

Equally, Saltpetre offers no evidence of this description. It is a personal view, presumably determined from the same basis as your own belief, that "God must be presupposed. It cannot be otherwise."

>>However, if you don’t like that perspective, you are welcome to try other presuppositions.<<

Precisely. My "presupposition" is that the views, observations, theories and experimentation of people who use independent reasoning and first principles, are more likely to yield credible results than those who reject independent reasoning and first principles.

Which is, of course, where we will continue to differ.

As always, my thanks for the further illumination of Christian thinking. That is of course if you do actually believe it all, and are not simply amusing yourself by playing with our credulity.

Dan,

Much to review.

A polystrate tree-trunk fossil could be explained by geological movement - but 'rapid rock formation' would not provide widely date-separated strata, and therefore is a nothing proposition (carbon dating the old bugbear?).

South America and Australia were once part of the supercontinent of Gondwana, hence common Opossum ancestry is reasonable. Aus also later collided with South East Asia, with resultant 'sharing' of some genus types occurring nowhere else. (Africa was also part of Gondwana, and has fossil mega-marsupials, but Aus has no early placental fossils. Curious, eh?)

Various animals may, like alpacas, assume a recognisable, though abnormal, pose in their death throes - which may explain the dinosaur's pose. The 'inundation of the Cretaceous' (144-65 Mya), and the meteor strike 65 Million years ago (Mya) and consequent tsunamis may also account for dinosaur drowning deaths - the latter strike was mass-extinction level, wiping out the mega-dinosaurs. (Little 'dinosaurs' however have given us birds.) Carbon dating.

It appears that there was a gap of about 3.3 billion years between the beginnings of life on Earth (simple life) and the emergence of complex life, circa 620 million years ago, approximately coinciding with the Cambrian 'explosion' (of complex life) following a climate-change event which ended the 'Snowball Earth' era.

An interesting perspective is provided by the following site: apstas.com (The Australian Plants Society Tasmania Inc) in - "The Story of Gondwana"

From that article one might be inclined to surmise that the Young Earth 'creation' account has its timing wrong by a factor of 10,000 - the relevant 'creation' event may have occurred 65 million years ago rather than 6,500 years ago (or thereabouts), at the time of the accelerated separation of Gondwana, around the beginning of the Tertiary period, and following ".. the inundation of the Cretaceous.."

It may alternatively be that the timing is out by a factor of 100,000 and 'creation' occurred with the beginning of 'complex' life - "THE EDIACARAN period, 620-542 million years ago - The First Complex Life"

Possibilities, based on facts and evidence. Population? Apply your 'theory' to global population.