Comments on: 1.5 Million Years Ago, Homo Erectus Walked a Lot Like Us

By: Ralph

Ralph — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 06:58:20 +0000

I say let God be your source for info period

By: Stephen, UK

Stephen, UK — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:27:57 +0000

So “Let God be true and every man a liar.”

By: Jill

Jill — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:30:40 +0000

I ummm yahhhh!! hahahahaha

By: Stephen, UK

Stephen, UK — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:05:57 +0000

In my opinion it’s notoriously difficult to see how evolution could ever be disproved, which isn’t to say it’s true; just that it’s the sort of theory which is difficult to disprove. Whenever one bit gets disproved it just gets changed with a workaround, or more likely the disproof just gets ignored because so many want it to be true (or to be taught) no matter what. In that sense it isn’t really scientific, more a willful, popular mindset. What is more, people seem to think that the virtue of evolution theory is that they seem to think it disproves creation. That doesn’t in itself make it a good scientific theory. Who decides whether it is truly scientific? People with an axe to grind against creation? Interesting story in the news in UK today that half of people surveyed said that creation should be taught in schools. That could be seen as evidence in favour of creation – that so many believe there could be something to it despite all that is said about evolution. I believe that it is worth looking into whether creation could have happened suddenly less than 10,000 years ago. That belief eventually made me try doing some sums. As a result it seems to make sense. There are some nice fossils around which look far too well preserved to be more than a few thousand years old. I was looking at one in Bristol Museum in UK this month and it is one of those that still had scales of skin on it – it looked like a large lizard, like it might barely have been extinct. The observed distribution of fossils of this same species seem to be similar to what you’d expect for non-extinct large lizards rather than the remains of one of a population existing for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s like finding a single locust in a field and being told it is the only survivor of a whole plague of them which swept the fields a week or so ago. Where are the others? Surely if there was a plague there would be countless others where that one was found. If you say the plague was so long ago that the evidence has gone, then how come that one individual was found? It doesn’t seem to be true at all that there were millions of years in which dinosaurs, many species being huge, were wandering the earth. It just doesn’t seem at all true because surely if you find one fossil you’d be finding thousands of others one on top the other which had died over all those millions of years. How can this be true? I don’t care who tells me it is. The creation account seems far more likely in view of the numbers and distribution of dinosaurs we find; one here, another there. In the UK the ones found are from the same species. Surely that shows population numbers spanning hundreds of years, not millions of years. Millions of years would mean we’d be incredibly unlikely to find any two from the same species in such a small country – or alternatively we’d find millions all the same and millions of other species too. And if they were evolving then we’d expect that either no two exact same species would be found or many different species with a whole range of continuous variation between one species and another – certainly not two ot three separate individuals of exactly the same species but from different places. And when there are hardly any other types of dinosaurs found in the UK. How much disproving evidence does it take to have people shelve the theory? If people just don’t like the possibility that a creation means a Creator then they will just ignore such opposing evidence and hang onto as much supporting evidence as they can. I thought Karl Popper laid down principles for science to rule that sort of thing out as unscientific. Proper (forgive pun) Popperian science is meant to focus on opposing evidence (rather than endless cases of supporting evidence which he claimed could never prove a theory no matter how many cases there were). Not that I’d put philosophical arguments above common sense and sound judgement (such as that of those who wrote the scriptures down) but it kind of supports the view that evolution isn’t a theory being conducted scientifically by modern criteria.

By: Stephen, UK

Stephen, UK — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:27:16 +0000

overall scenario modeling parameters:
final total worldwide number of dinosaur species at end:
10,000
average worldwide number of individuals per species:
1,000,000 to 100,000,000
number of evolution cycles to reach 10,000 species:
8

scenario #1:
years before average dinosaur species evolves with a branch:
100,000
total number of years to reach 10,000 species:
800,000
parameters in last 100,000 years of their evolution:
average 5000 species,
100,000 years = 100,000 to 1,000,000 generations,
calculation:
individuals during last evolution cycle:
(1,000,000 x 5000 x 100,000) to (100,000,000 x 5000 x 1,000,000)
= 500,000,000,000,000 to 500,000,000,000,000,000
say 0.001 to 0.01% of individual skeletons survive as fossils in further 100,000 years:
worldwide number fossils existing:
50,000,000,000 to 50,000,000,000,000
dinosaur fossils per head of human population:
1 to 1,000
outcome conclusion:
*unlikely*

scenario #2:
years before average dinosaur species evolves with a branch:
10,000
total number of years to reach 10,000 species:
80,000
parameters in last 10,000 years of their evolution:
average 5000 species,
10,000 years = 10,000 to 100,000 generations,
calculation:
individuals during last evolution cycle:
(1,000,000 x 5000 x 10,000) to (100,000,000 x 5000 x 100,000)
= 50,000,000,000,000 to 50,000,000,000,000,000
say 0.01 to 0.1% of individual skeletons survive as fossils in further 10,000 years:
worldwide number fossils existing:
50,000,000,000 to 50,000,000,000,000
dinosaur fossils per head of human population:
1 to 1,000
outcome conclusion:
*unlikely*

scenario #3:
years before average dinosaur species evolves with a branch:
1,000,000
total number of years to reach 10,000 species:
8,000,000
parameters in last 1,000,000 years of their evolution:
average 5000 species,
1,000,000 years = 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 generations,
calculation:
individuals during last evolution cycle:
(1,000,000 x 5000 x 1,000,000) to (100,000,000 x 5000 x 10,000,000)
= 5,000,000,000,000,000 to 5,000,000,000,000,000,000
say 0.001 to 0.01% of individual skeletons survive as fossils in further 1,000,000 years:
worldwide number fossils existing:
50,000,000,000 to 50,000,000,000,000
dinosaur fossils per head of human population:
10 to 10,000
outcome conclusion:
*unlikely fit to number of fossils found so far*

scenario #4:
years before average dinosaur species evolves with a branch:
20,000,000
total number of years to reach 10,000 species:
160,000,000
parameters in last 1,000,000 years of their evolution:
average 5000 species,
20,000,000 years = 20,000,000 to 200,000,000 generations,
calculation:
individuals during last evolution cycle:
(1,000,000 x 5000 x 20,000,000) to (100,000,000 x 5000 x 200,000,000)
= 100,000,000,000,000,000 to 100,000,000,000,000,000,000
say 0.001 to 0.01% of individual skeletons survive as fossils in further 20,000,000 years:
worldwide number fossils existing:
1,000,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000,000,000
dinosaur fossils per head of human population:
200 to 200,000
outcome conclusion:
*very unlikely fit to number of fossils found so far*

scenario #5:
years before average dinosaur species evolves with a branch:
none (creation, only a little evolution)
total number of years to reach 10,000 species:
0 to 1000
parameters in last 1,000 years of their existence:
average 5000 species,
1,000 years = 1 to 10 generations,
calculation:
individuals during first 1,000 years of their existence:
(1,000,000 x 5000 x 1) to (100,000,000 x 5000 x 10)
= 5,000,000,000 to 5,000,000,000,000
say 0.01 to 0.1% of individual skeletons survive as fossils in further 5,000 years:
worldwide number fossils existing:
50,000,000 to 50,000,000,000
dinosaur fossils per head of human population:
0.01 to 10
outcome conclusion:
*much more likely fit to number of fossils found so far*

By: Stephen, UK

Stephen, UK — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:57:16 +0000

I guess all the philosophy of science requires that people do to get one back for evolution and atheism is to try to disprove the proof. Science philosophy like Popper’s says you can’t prove something, only disprove it so no matter if someone ‘proves’ creation happened, they will just insist it isn’t proof but another theory waiting to be disproved. So the eternal cycle of uncertainty continues. No matter someone might quite easily disprove evolution; people who want to insist on keeping to atheism, whatever anyones’ science might say, and evolution, no matter if it is disproved, from modern philosophy of science principles (worldly principles best ignored to reach and preserve the truth, but sometimes useful for persuading folk to believe) they can just say that the disproof of evolution can itself be disproved which lets them carry on as before. So much for what people call science. At least I have satisfied myself by a process of proving that it is reasonable to dismiss evolution as a counter to creation. If evolution happened it was over a short period. If over a short period then the evidence doesn’t really stand up but even if it does you can just as well say that creation has occurred prior to evolution to account for such a short period. If millions of years aren’t there in Earth’s biological history (because the evidence doesn’t allow for it) then there is no unimaginably long time for evolutionists to hide behind and creation accounts for the evidence better than evolution. There must have been something there thousands of years ago from which species have evolved but there can’t have been biological things there hundreds of thousands of years ago (not things like dinosaurs) because there would be so many different individuals and species – which doesn’t account for so small a number of species and fossils found today. Even just a few tens of thousands of years would have left so many dinosaur fossils we’d have found far, far more of them – taking dinosaurs as an indicator. The numbers mean there must have been less than a trillion dinosaurs and maybe 10,000 species at most. That means a few thousand years of dinosaurs evolving – or less evolution than would be needed to account for all the species we have found – or both. That means some dinosaur species existed from the start, not zero, to get what we have found. That leaves only the possibility that there were created species at the start or we would have had to have had leaps and branches of evolution and millions of species and trillions of trillions of individuals. Plus it means the length of time the dinosaurs were around is consistent with the Bible Scripture record of a creation just thousands, not tens of thousands, of years ago or there would be far, far more dinosaur fossils (probably trillions of them remaining). The alternative would be that each species had only a few dinosaurs per generation and millions and millions of species and even then we are talking a maximum of a hundred thousand years. It doesn’t stack up so the easiest alternative explanation is creation a few thousand years ago. A creation means the simplest explanation is a Creator. It also vindiactes the Scriptures which attest to all this and that means the most likely explanation is that the Scriptures have it right and the Creator is God through The Christ, His Son, The Son of Man. That means there are angels too, working as a kind of force of contract managers for the will of the Creator over His creation. That means there are spirits, there is the human spirit, the future can influence the present, there is an afterlife, there will be a judgement, the Christ will return, possibly after 6000 years since creation or about 2130 ish AD or perhaps before, which means there may be people being born now who will still be alive (at the rate life expentancy is increasing in the rich countries) and some of those might become believers in the Christ and therefore be transformed into immortals when he comes and therefore we could now be witnessing the first of a large number of humans (second creation humans) who will never die. Exciting times. Let’s hope the atheists and antichrists don’t spoil it too much but they will probably keep causing lots of trouble until the Christ comes and confounds those of them who remain. It also means the Christ’s death was indeed for sins and that He lives to provide believers with the High Priest they need and eventually to raise those of them who die from the dead. Might as well get it all in

By: Stephen, UK

Stephen, UK — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:59:55 +0000

Maybe it is acceptable to say that I have just, above, proved at least the likelihood of creation (even if there has been some evolution) and therefore the likelihood (or perhaps even the certainty, depending on the weight ascribed to these ‘arguments’) of the existence of a Creator (just need to call Him God and it is ‘proof of the existence of God’). Didn’t take much to do. Not to say people will accept it but then it’s my right to accept it over the counter ‘proof’ of the non-existence of creation and a Creator. Who can reasonably say I’m not being reasonable?

By: Stephen, UK

Stephen, UK — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:33:42 +0000

So it seems the facts are unlikely to support a theory of dinosaurs evolving for millions of years: even a million years is very unlikely (it would require a new species only evolving from a previous one much less frequently than once every 100,000 years and hardly any branching at all). If evolution happened such that a new dinosaur species evolved from each existing dinosaur species every 10,000 years, say, and branching usually occurred then the longest time the existence of a mere 100,000 species (the most likely to have ever existed, likely far fewer than that) would support would be at most 100,000 years of such evolution. (This is where creation of most of the actual species or types of species seems a bit more fitting with the evidence, ‘types’ corresponding to the Scriptures referring to creation of ‘beasts’ and ‘monsters’ ‘after their kinds’.) So scrutinising this model of the evolution theory and the evidence regarding dinosaurs we next come to the actual numbers found and what the model would predict of that. If there were 100,000 years of dinosaurs with low numbers of species at first greatly expanding to up to 100,000 species after 100,000 years by a reasonable rate of evolution, we’d expect each species in the last 20,000 years to give us say a million dinosaurs per species on average at least. That’s because any species lasting 20,000 years would have to be in a stable population state or it would just become extinct and I can’t see how any species with less than a population averaging a million over much of that time could be said to be in a stable population state (unless isolated to a few small islands which would be the exception, surely). So we’d have on average at least 50,000 species each having a million individuals in each generation over the last 20,000 years. If their generations lasted 100 years even on average then we are looking at 200 generations over 20,000 years (probably more for some species, maybe less for others like the larger ones which might live a lot longer like giant tortoises today/recently). So that means in just the last 20,000 years we could be looking at something like 200 x 1,000,000 x 50,000 individuals. Likely though that in the last 20,000 years there were far fewer species, maybe just 5,000 at most. That’s still 1,000,000,000,000 individual dinosaurs if they had been around some 80,000 years, say but in the model just having 10,000 species at the end means only having some 50,000 years of dinosaurs, say (less than 100,000 years or there’d be more species if evolution were as modelled here). To account for just 10,000 species we’d be looking at a total of maybe 30 to 50,000 years if they came about through an expected rate of evolution (with a fair amount of branching). Now how many individuals would that be? The last 10,000 years would give us maybe 5,000 species with at least a million in each generation and maybe 100 generations. That’s 500 billion. That’s like ten times the human population now. So the total number over 50,000 years might be double that at least or a trillion individual dinosaurs. That makes me wonder why so few fossils. Still it seems that evolution would require that kind of model. So in conclusion, a modest, simple model of dinosaur population would make me think that if dinosaurs have evolved the way a simple understanding of the theories seem to suggest (without contriving them to blind us with science) then the total time for such evolution would be of the order of much less than 50,000 years. Extrapolation of the model to fit with the numbers of fossils found, including the conclusion that they lived much more recently so more fossils are likely to have survived, I’d say a trillion is too many and we’d be looking therefore at far less than even 50,000 years. Perhaps we’d only be looking for thousands rather than tens of thousands of years which implies/models to far less evolution and the possibility all the more of some creation, perhaps even a Biblical explanation fitting the model (as I indeed believe and have now, I think, demonstrated – debatably). The idea of asking that we believe it was 160,000,000 years just seems completely outrageous and impossible to explain with any kind of sense. If we are to believe it was that long that dinosaurs were around and they were evolving in that time then where are 1) the individual surviving fossils I’d expect and 2) the number of species I’d expect? Easier to believe either 1) evolution happened only within broad types of species (which we therefore could sensibly accept were originally created) 2) the dinosaurs were only around for much much less than 100,000 years (and if that’s the case, as it seems to me, and there was some creation at the start of that time of the broad types of species, then sensibly acceptable also that there could have been far less years than that, perhaps of the order of thousands rather than tens of thousands of years of living dinosaurs). So it seems there could be some evolution but not necessarily of types of sprecies, just within species and types of species maybe. Plus it seems the evolution happening over just a few thousand years would fit the facts (and a sensible model of the facts) better than millions of years. Then I’d want to revise the geology theories wherever they have depended on the long term dinosaur evolution idea. The idea that this isn’t sensible reasoning but blind stupidity is outrageous to me. It’s the first time I’ve attempted to put the reasoning down in words and figures and to model it but it’s always been somewhere there in my psyche and probably is to a lot more people. The Scriptures tell us it is plain to anyone. I guess I just showed why I feel it’s sensible to agree. The reason I agree is more to do with the fact that the Christ clearly taught that such scriptures that say this are to be heeded and believed and the clearly authoritative nature of the person of the Christ and God’s witness about Him that He is His Son. Even if I were ignorant of that though (as many were for millenia) I’d still accept that creation must have happened and clearly within the last 100,000 years (more likely within the past several thousand years). No wonder to me others since the start of human civilisation believed roughly this even without the Scriptures and the Christ and His Spirit.

By: Stephen, UK

Stephen, UK — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:48:34 +0000

Say we humour the evolutionists a little, for the sake of helping reasoning people. Say a species evolves into another every 100,000 years and a branch occurs every million years. After 10 million years there might be an average of branches having occurred 10 times which gives us 2 to the power of 10 species from branches alone. That’s about 1000. If the each branch evolved once every 100 thousand years the calculation simplified leads to the first branch producing over the entire time on its own about 10 species and in the last 100,000 years there might be 500 branches each producing 10 species which equals 5000 species in the last million years. There might be 250 times 10 in the million years before that (2500), etc. 5000 + 2500 + 1250 + 625 + 310 + 150 + 70 + 35 + 18 + 10 = approximately ten thousand species in just ten million years. Now less than 4000 species of dinosaur have been found so far I hear. If we extended this crude model of evolution theory to 20 million years and assumed something stopped the branching happening again in that time, we’d have each of these 10,000 species evolving ten times to give us 100,000 species. That seems to be a limit on how many dinosaur species we’d expect if there have only been less than 4000 found. If there are these rates of evolution – one new species from an existing one in an average of 100,000 years and at first a single branch of each species in 2 million years – we might crudely be looking at just 20 million years that could match the evidence. The idea of branches never happening seems ridiculous so we would have to accept the figures as being conservative if only once every ten evolutions being a branch. If every evolution were a branch and the original species usually survived, then a new species from an existing one every 100,000 years obviously produces the 100,000 total of species in an awful lot less than 20 million years – say less than a million at a guess (not wanting to work it all out) producing about 3 to the power of 8 or 9 species. If any evolution happens at all, maybe it seems likely it might produce a new species from an old one on average once every 10,000 years, so we would be looking at getting a hundred thousand species in only a hundred thousand years (not even bothering to calculate it since this is all so speculative and since I don’t think we can say any of this for sure). If you insist on 160 million years of evolution of dinosaurs alone, aren’t you asking for belief that a dinosaur species produced two new ones only once every million years or more. To me that is rediculous in view of what evolution I think is said to have happened since the last ice age alone. So to me, though I don’t believe in the theories of evolution much at all, if it were like they say it seems the dinosaurs could only have possibly existed for a period of 100,000 years and so this puts all the related ‘science’ in question to a rediculous extent. But since modern science seems to be built on philosophies that any idea that can be disproved but has not yet been disproved is classed as science, I don’t see why I have to believe science at all anyway – not science called such by this philosophy (Popperian science that is). I’d rather limit science far more than that so that I can actually find a decent percentage to be worthy of belief by changing the criteria of what is called science. I’d rather, in fact, make my own mind up about what consitutes science, not just let one philosopher (Popper) dictate it. To me an idea which seems rediculous but just hasn’t yet been disproved does not constitute science. If it does then science should not be believed just because it is accepted as science – that would seem foolhardy in the extreme.

By: Stephen, UK

Stephen, UK — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:33:53 +0000

Say there were even a mere 100,000 of a single species of dinosaur at any one time. Say that were inconceivably a constantly low figure roughly over 10,000,000 years (even in the unlikely scenario some factors were limiting their population so it didn’t grow to billions or more in all that time but those factors were not enough to wipe them out during those millions of years). Say the dinosaurs lived a hundred years. That’s a total of 100,000 generations and an average of 100,000 alive in each generation. That’s a total of 10,000,000,000 dinosaurs. Now the theories go that actually it was not 10,000,000 years but more than ten times that. So this simple model gives us now, instead, 100,000,000,000 dinosaurs. That’s one species, say. And having a species alive for millions of years with its population sticking at an average over those millions of years at less than a million. Hasn’t anyone wondered that if that were true wouldn’t we be finding a few more of their fossils?! Surely there would be some species reaching millions in even a few thousand years. After 5 thousand years it seems unlikely to not have at least one species reaching a population similar to the numbers humans have reached in the same time these last 5000 years. Then somewhere at least one species growing in numbers still more to what humans might get to in the next thousand years at the rate of growth of today. Even if that population growth evened out within the next thousand years it could reach perhaps a hundred billion or at least ten billion. Surely over millions of years at least one species, even if it evolved, it could surely reach a thousand billion if the world population were considered. Then in the unlikely scenario the species and its evolved descendants had a population which didn’t grow to any more than that even over a hundred million years then we have 1,000,000 generations with a very improbably low average population over those generations of 100,000,000,000 for that one species. That’s 1,000,000 x 100,000,000,000 = 100.000.000.000.000.000 at least of that one species and its evolutionary descendants. Now even if only 0.01 percent of those skeletons survived to today it would be 10,000,000,000,000 fossils.

Now, if the dinosaur species evolved into a new species on average every 100,000 years then over 160,000,000 years there would be 1600 species from just that one species if there were only the one branch. If there was a split of branches every million years, say, there would be something like 1600 x 2 after 1,000,000 years, 1600 x 2 x 2 species after 2 million years 1600 x 2 to the power of a hundred species after 100 million years = 10 to the power of 33 species. So how come there have only been a few thousand species discovered and the estimated total number of species is less than a hundred thousand species worldwide. If there were one species evolving like that then why not end up with so many species over millions of years that you could have billions of billions of billions of billions of species in even just 30 million years and if each species max’d out at just a few tens of million members of the entire population ever (assuming it only reached the population mankind in a small vicinity like the UK has reached in less than 10,000 years, even though each species could last 100,000 years before evolving) we are talking of ten million members in total of each of those billions of billions of billions of billions of species.

This doesn’t seem to match the number of dinosaurs found! We’re talking, by a conservative estimate, of the order of 10 to the power of 35 dinosaurs over 160 million years and ten to the power of 33 species if the evolution were to a new species every 100,000 years and branching into just two branches every million years. In short the idea of having enough years to account for the modern popular interpretations of the fossil evidence is absurd in the extreme and that is an understatement.

I don’t see why I’m flamed for doubting the figures when they insist on hundreds of millions of years of evolution.