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My recommendations from books I read in the last year or so (yes, these are all VERY STRONG recommends curated from ~100 books in the last year) -

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Science fiction-

Derek Kunsken's The Quantum Magician (I would describe it as a cross between Oceans Eleven with some not-too-Hard Science Fiction. Apparently will be a series, but is perfectly fine as a standalone novel).

Cixin Lu's very popular Three Body Problem series (Mixes cleverly politics, sociology, psychology and science fiction)

James A Corey's The Expanse Series (which has been made into the best sci fi tv series ever!)

Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief series (Hard science fiction. WARNING - A lot of the early stuff is intentionally mystifying with endless terminology that’s only slowly explained since the main character himself has lost his memories. Put piecing it all together is part of the charm.)

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Fantasy-

James Islington's Shadow of What was Lost series (a deep series which makes you think - deep magic, politics, religion all intertwined)

Will Wight's Cradle series (has my vote for one of the best fantasy series ever written)

Brandon Sanderson Legion series (Brandon Sanderson. Nuff said. Creative as always)

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Manga -

Yukito Kishiro's Alita, Battle Angel series (the manga on what the movie was based)

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Non-Fiction-

Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (and how we are not as rational as we believe we are, and how passion works in tandem with rationality in decision making and is actually required for good decisionmaking)

Rothery's Geology - A Complete Introduction (as per title)

Joseph Krauskopf's A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play, available to read online for free, including a fabulous supplementary of Talmud Parallels to the NT (a Rabbi in 1901 explains why he is not a Christian)

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Audiobooks -

Bob Brier's The History of Ancient Egypt (as per title - 25 hrs of the best audiobook lectures. Incredible)

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Academic biblical studies-

Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible and The Exodus (best academic biblical introductory books into the Documentary Hypothesis and Qenite/Midian hypothesis)

Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed (how archaelogy relates to the bible)

E.P. Sander's Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63BCE-66CE ​(most detailed book of what Judaism is and their beliefs, and one can see from this balanced [Christian] scholar how Christianity has colored our perspectives of what Jews and Pharisees were really like)

Avigdor Shinan's From gods to God (how Israel transitioned from polytheism to monotheism)

Mark S Smith's The Early History of God (early history of Israel, Canaanites, and YHWH)

James D Tabor's Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (as per title)

Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (engrossing - will make you view the gospel of Mark with new eyes)

Jacob L Wright's King David and His Reign Revisited (enhanced ibook - most readable book ever on King David)

Jacob Dunn's thesis on the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis (free pdf download - warning - highly technical but also extremely well referenced)

> Hovind does a great job of sounding convincing to somebody who doesnt have the facts.

... or someone who is not scientifically literate. I don't have all the facts either, but there are heuristics I use to determine whether someone is feeding me a line of BS or not. If you think your scientific literacy could improve, check out Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. It's an excellent manual for learning critical thinking and skepticism. You can usually find a copy at used bookstores.

> So anyway that example you gave their pushes it to 50,000 years but what about older than that?

Right, since we're only speaking about radiocarbon dating here, 50,000 years is sort of the limit, since the half-life of C-14 is around 5700 years, after tens of thousands of years, there's so little C-14 left that it's increasingly difficult to use it as a means of dating.

If you want to date something older than that, you have to use methods other than radiocarbon.

One method is paleomagnetic dating.

Ice core dating is another. In this technique, not only can years be counted, but atmospheric gases can be sampled in these layers, and sometimes, these gases can be dated radiometrically. Years where there were large volcanic eruptions can be recorded, as that sediment is found in specific layers of the cores. I seem to recall that this method is good for up to 160,000 years ago.

Radiometric dating (as distinct from radiocarbon dating) are fairly widely-used methods. One example of this sort of dating is uranium-lead dating, and is the method used my Clair Patterson when he determined the age of the Earth back in 1956. There are a bunch of methods that are used, and in some cases, when using multiple methods to date something, we get results that are very close. In short: independent methods agree with each other.

If you've not seen any of it, you might enjoy Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. In episode 7, titled The Clean Room, they detail how Clair Patterson, in his quest to discover the true age of the Earth, discovers something else rather unsettling. I won't spoil it for you - if you want to watch that specific episode, DailyMotion has a link here. It's a decent overview of radiometric dating. The whole series is pretty good, if you're looking to update your knowledge on modern science.

/u/PaulDouglasPrice

I don't hate what I don't believe in.

I do trust modern science more than I trust a book written by a bunch of uneducated goat herders. You won't admit it, but you do too. I'm sure you seek modern health care when you get sick. The bible is not a source any more than the The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is.

/u/RedSquirrelFtw

>Let's be real nobody knows 100% how the universe was formed or how old it is, we can draw theories based on scientific evidence and the Bible but either side will never know with 100% certainty the exact details.

There are many, many independent lines of evidence that points to the universe being 13.787±0.020 billion years old. I recommend you read 13.8 by Gribbin. He does a great job of explaining how cosmologists have arrived at that number. Unlike the bible, all of the work described in that book has tirelessly been examined and contested for 100s of years of cosmologists and astronomers.

The name calling (I agree it's not acceptable) is born from people claiming their 'theory' is comparable to a scientific theory without any evidence.

Okay, so that makes sense with Mormons I've met then. The "bible talking" Mormons, as I call them, seemed to me to be of the creation viewpoint. That's why I was confused about your view on it. I didn't know the church had no official position.

I read some of your blog posts. Very nice! It is interesting and intelligent. Your post about the genetic 1% is good. Incidentally, that is also why many folks are hypothesizing about the extreme danger of artificial intelligence -- the singularity, they call it, when AI becomes just a tiny bit smarter than humans, and potentially wipes out humanity for its own good. That is, if we are merely 1% more intelligent than some primates, then if we create an AI a mere 1% more intelligent than us, would we just be creating our own master? We'd make great pets, as the saying goes. I somehow doubt it, but Nick Bostrom goes on and on about it in his book, Superintelligence, if you haven't already read it.

Continuing with the "genetic 1%", it is possible we may be alone in our galaxy. That is, while abiogenesis may be a simple occurrence, if we think about the fact that in the 4.5 billion years of earth's existence there is only one known strain of life that began, it might be extremely rare for life to evolve to our level of intelligence. Some have speculated that we may be alone because we developed early. The idea is that the universe was cooling down for the first few billion years, which completely rules out life anywhere. Then another few billion years to create elements heavy enough for complex compounds and new star systems to emerge from the debris. Then the final few billion years when we came to be. Who knows?

Thanks for responding. The reason I put this question on the table is that I believe this is an example of a system that is not evolvable.

Occasionally some of my ideas aren't as strong as I thought, and then I decide not to suggest them as evidences of something not evolvable. So I test them out in places like this.

For the next 12 or so weeks, I will be studying cellular neuroscience and things like voltage-gated ion channels.

Thank you very much for taking time to attempt a substantive responses. The textbook I'm working from is:
https://www.amazon.com/Molecules-Networks-Third-Introduction-Neuroscience/dp/0123971799/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518621412&sr=1-1&keywords=from+molecules+to+networks

1st day of class, not a single mention of evolution. 2nd day of class not a single mention of evolution.

>As such, I don't know how much we can really hope to obtain this late in the game. Anything existing between the two niches would likely have gone extinct long ago.

It is also possible the absence of intermediaties today indicates the intermediates never existed. This is a case of the problem of fitness peaks where selection will select AGAINST half formed systems. As I look at the specialization of nerve cells (compared say to a bone cell, or whatever cell), the sophistication just boggles the mind.

In humans, there are all sorts of specialized nerve cells that enable the 5 senses, the motor nerves, the thinking nerves. If a creationist wanted to have a career in biology, he could probably study the physiology of neurons since evolution is pretty much irrelevant in that field as far as I can tell. I put this question up just to see if anyone thought otherwise. Thanks again.

From what I remember, this book is pretty good. I disagree with the conclusions, but they are very well laid out and addressed. After that I would search for responses to Plantinga.

This is an interesting one, but I can't find the full thing for free. I will keep looking.

Jerry Coyne has an entire wonderful book rebutting Creationism and at the same time laying out all the evidence for, well, Why Evolution is True. While I don't remember anything specifically about biodiversity, if you want to address the most common creationist arguments, it is the best go-to book.

https://smile.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne-dp-0143116649/dp/0143116649/

Neat, it is on sale

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0143116649

> Genetic Entropy presents compelling scientific evidence that the genomes of all living creatures are slowly degenerating - due to the accumulation of slightly harmful mutations. This is happening in spite of natural selection.

https://www.amazon.com/Genetic-Entropy-John-C-Sanford/dp/0981631606

My argument is about recessive mutations not being effected by natural selection, and not about slightly harmful mutations occurring in spite of natural selection.

I suggest you vary your reading. Odd Jackdaw has just given you are reading list of extremely biased sources (wikipedia editors in particular are extremely hostile to anything not in keeping with atheism or evolution. )


For balance you can begin with these sites


https://evolutionnews.org
https://uncommondescent.com
https://blog.drwile.com (one of the few YEC sites I read)


For Books


Stephen Meyer's books are pretty good ( and hated by adherents of Darwinism)


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002C949BI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent-ebook/dp/B0089LOM5G


and the ever loved Michael Behe


https://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Devolves-Science-Challenges-Evolution/dp/0062842617/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=michael+behe&qid=1562441940&s=gateway&sr=8-3

> Extinction is the ultimate genetic entropy!

Wrong Sal, in fact, you're "not even wrong" on this point. You might want to read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook-Causation-Handbooks/dp/0199642583/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539091669&sr=1-2&keywords=causation

You have causation so backwards it's not funny anymore. /u/DarwinZDF42 and a few others have so totally demolished your argument here that we would have to discover a new particle in the quantum realm to see it.

> The description that creeped me out was from a Catholic leader I saw on TV.

I could see how it would seem gross from a materialistic viewpoint. At the end of John 6, many of Jesus's disciples walk away from Him when He teaches it. When they question Him, He doubles down and says that one has to sink their teeth in ! There's a Greek word for that (trogain?). Not sure if you know it, but for the sake of comparison, I (and the Catholic Church) only consider Apostolic Churches to have a valid Eucharist because Holy ordination is required for consecration. No offense, but that means that outside of the Catholic Church, only the Eastern "Orthodox" have valid Eucharists. Everyone else is serving bread, so I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't experience anything supernatural outside of an Apostolic Church. The Church does recognize that baptisms and marriages are valid if done in the name of Christ. Consecrating a Eucharist requires ordination by a Holy order.

In regard to materialism, I would claim though that NOTHING makes sense from a material point of view. Do you disagree?
Objective knowledge (and justice) requires a lasting observer, so things like multiple singularities would wipe out any knowledge. Therefore, all that remains is subjectivity inside each blink of cosmic time, correct ?

> How does that differ from a vampire cult ceremony kids might perform where the attraction is likewise supernatural immortality

Lots of ways. Given the length of time for 'immortality', one would have to have perfected orderly thinking. Anything else would cause chaos (disorder). Try to stay locked in a closet for a while and you'll get a sample of what I mean. That's why I mentioned virtues earlier. Virtues are the perfected orders of a mind that are required to exist for eternity. A "vampire" have the opposite of orderly thinking. BTW, Hell is the realm of disordered thinking. It can not sustain itself. The Universe would dissolve into static.

> In a weightless vacuum an oscillating body can forever oscillate.

How could the initial state of each Universe be so perfectly ordered , such that our Universe has the laws of physics that are perfect for atoms, molecules and Life ? Do you realize how specific the laws of physics have to be for atoms to exist ? If so, how is this incredible order be maintained for eternity, or is each Universe repeating itself ?

Also, do you realize that an infinite regress is not logically possible? If you see a caboose go by, you can assume there is an engine pulling it, agreed? However long the train is, it can not be infinitely long, because we see the caboose. Our moment in time is like that caboose. We are experiencing an endpoint in time right now, therefore, there could not be an infinite number preceding it. There has to be a beginning, which Genesis happens to say. :)

> The Burning Times were a tragedy.

Yes. Do you realize that practice was leftover culture from Pagans? Christianity conquered brutal Pagan cultures and did away with many of those horrible practices. Sadly, there were times when the cultures overlapped. When Cortez got to where Mexico is, he saw the Aztecs kill over 8,000 people in one day. He was a hero to stop that, but our modern world tries to demonize him:

https://qz.com/374994/aztec-sacrifice-was-real-and-its-not-fetishistic-to-be-fascinated-by-it/

> Did the clergy who kissed Hitler's butt get what they asked for then after getting knee deep in blood regretted it?

The Church did what it had to diplomatically to survive, and it heroically saved millions of people. It was unarmed and facing Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. Did you know how brutally Stalin persecuted Christianity in Russia ? That didn't leave the Vatican with many options. See the link below. Despite all the diplomacy Hitler brutally persecuted the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church used convents and monestaries to smuggle over 700,000 Jews out of Europe. See links below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union

About 3000 Catholic Preists were rounded up into Dachau:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_Barracks_of_Dachau_Concentration_Camp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jews_by_Catholics_during_the_Holocaust

I recommend this book for details about the heroic stuff that the Vatican did: https://www.amazon.com/Church-Spies-Secret-Against-Hitler/dp/0465094112

> How do you know that's not a scare tactic used for controlling people?

Well, the concept has definitely has been abused by a lot of people.

At the deepest level though, it all makes logical sense to me: 1) There is an eternal mind under everything. 2) That mind requires orderliness to survive in eternity. 3) Disorder (sin) has to be separated. That's what Hell is.

Sin is like a toxic hazard to such an ordered mind, because we are made to be connected to everyone else's mind. We are really not separate things. We are the way that God chose to know Himself. If you read the Old Testament, the orderliness explains why the Jews had to do so many rituals to purify themselves. If you are a parent who has raised children, you might recognize the pattern from the Old Testament to the New: "Just obey me now. After you grow up, we can be friends and you'll understand then." The story of the Bible is God lifting people out of brutal paganism into virtuous thinking, step by step to get us ready for Heaven.

Part 5: Summary and Question & Answer

 

There was a short summary at the end before the Q&A, in which Sanford irresponsibly attributed a bunch of things (autism, neurodegenerative disorders, a bunch of other stuff) to mutation accumulation, without evidence.

 

Oh and he didn't get to the H1N1 stuff, but he does claim that human H1N1 went extinct in 2009, which isn't true - it hybridized with a swine flu strain that continues to circulate.

 

Now to the Q&A...I'm only going to mention the relevant questions.

 

Hey, I think I know who asked that first question!

Question: Genome of 3 billion bases, 700 billion mutations for generation (because 7 billion people x 100 mutation per person) means we've sampled every mutation, a lot, right?

Answer: Yes.

Followup: So don't we then reach an equilibrium with back mutations?

Answer: Back mutations are too rare.

My notes: That's a copout answer. Do the math. For every bad mutation that happens, you remove 1 bad from the pool of possible and add 1 good (the back mutation). At some point, you hit an equilibrium. It's not hard. Sanford is denying 2+2=4.

 

Questions: Horseshoe crabs have been around for a hell of a long time, how did that happen?

Answer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Me: He then went into H1N1, and oh my goodness drop it you're wrong. I don't really feel like writing it all out again, but ffs. (I'm sure I missed a post in there, but I can't find it. We've talked about this a lot.)

OMFG he also claims that there's evidence that all RNA viruses are evolutionarily young, tens of thousands of years old. THAT'S DUE TO SATURATION, DUMBASS. Their mutation rates are so high and genomes so small that after a few thousand years you can't distinguish sequence homology from convergence. So phylogenetic signals fade after 10-20k years (give or take 10 to 20k). Nobody who knows what's what actually thinks they're that age. Read a book, John. This one, to be specific.

 

Question: What's the "starting point" for the human lineage where we don't have any of these problems?

Answer: It takes time for enough mutations to accumulate to cause a problem, there isn't one "starting point" where you would say "zero mutations".

Me: See, the real answer is "6000 years ago when god created Adam," but he can't say that, so he has to hem and haw and not actually answer the question.

 

Question: RE Fischer and other early ideas - fitness isn't one-dimensional, so all of this is overly simplified, and selection preserves "evolvability" as a phenotype, right? And second, why isn't genomic entropy seen in laboratory populations of fast-mutating organisms?

Answer: Most adaptive mutations don't increase information.

Me: Can he quantify information? No.

Answer to the second part: Reductive evolution, specifically claiming that all the adaptations in Lenski experiment were loss-of-function:

>All of the beneficial mutations in the long-term Lenski experiment were loss-of-function; genes were deleted, genes were silenced, or genes were down-regulated. In one case a promoter, which is normally regulated, because an unregulated promoter.

Bull. Shit. Putting aside that this is just not true (the Cit+ line did not experience any loss of function, for example, and not all of the beneficial mutations have been figured out, which means we literally can't make the broad claim), it exposed the "heads I win, tails you lose" nature of this discourse: If a thing works in a new condition while also functioning in the old, that's a loss of specificity. If it stops working in the old and starts working in the new, that's a loss of function. See? According to creationists, no matter what happens, creationists are right! Funny how that works, isn't it?

And there's a bonus "no new information" claim. Can't quantify it, ho hum.

 

Question: This all hinges on the distribution of mutation effects, but how can we know what the distribution will look like?

Answer: Uh...Lenski! Only a few mutations were beneficial, and they were all reductive!

Me: See above.

Answer continued: H1N1! Showed a few figures from the H1N1 paper.

Me: See above. Best worst paper. So bad it's...no, it's just bad. No genetic entropy. Virulence is not a good correlate of fitness. Also, antibiotics exist now, but didn't in 1918. So bad. Just embarrassingly incompetent.

 

And that's it!

That...wasn't really anything new, was it? Was anyone else hoping for something exciting? Fireworks from the best and brightest creationists have to offer? Me too! But this is what we get. Because there isn't anything special behind the curtain. It's just the same tired arguments, misrepresentation, and basic errors over and over.

Thanks for reading.