URCall: Impossible Spirals

From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. “Why spiral galaxies are young”—for real this time. (link)

Transcript:

Did you know that spiral galaxies could not exist if the universe was billions of years old? Their centre rotates faster than their arms. If these were billions of years old they would have blended into disk-shaped galaxies by now, and their spiral arms would have been twisted beyond recognition. So how old is our universe? Creation science has an answer that might surprise you.

This argument rests on a bait-and-switch:

Oops

Clicked on the wrong button. First time that’s happened in a while…

I’ll take this moment to note that I’ve had to take most of the URCall videos down and replace them with youtube versions, as they have pulled their vimeo copies for some reason.

Tomkins’ 70%

Because mammalian eggs are produced early in life, while sperm are created continuously, fathers are responsible for a greater share of new mutations passed down to their offspring than mothers. This slightly complicates genetics-based time-since-last-common-ancestor estimations, leading to recent results to the effect that the human-chimp split happened about twice as far back as previously thought. Adam Benton has more information, if you’re interested.

This new paper has prompted Jeffrey Tomkins, the ICR’s go-to geneticist, to publish “Chimp DNA Mutation Study–Selective Yet Surprising.” Tomkins is known for contesting the typically-cited genetic similarity figures of 94-99% and having calculated using his own method a “conservative” (i.e. maximum) figure of nearer 70%.

URCall: A Comet in the Hand is Worth a Billion in the Oort Cloud

Note: my exams should be almost over by this point, and this makes the 9th out of 30 URCall videos that we’ve looked at. What do you make of these posts, as far as filler goes?

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From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. “Are comets evidence for a young Earth?” (link)

Transcript:

Did you know that comets are evidence for a young Earth? With each orbit around the Sun comets lose mass. If the solar system is really billions of years old these comets should no-longer exist. So how do you explain that?

This is an extremely short episode from URCall – so short, in fact, that they don’t actually manage to fit their argument in.

URCall: Common Ancestor

From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. “Who is our common Mother and Father?” (link)

Transcript:

Geneticists trace humans back to a common mother – a matrilineal ancestor from which all humans descend on their mother’s side – and a common father, from which we all get our father’s genes. Current evolutionary theory places the mother – “mitochondrial Eve” – as having lived in Africa as long as 200,000 years ago, while the father – “Y-chromosomal Adam” – lived as much as 500,000 years ago. While the evolutionists argue over who lived when, Christians have a simple answer: Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve explain why all the variety of people in the world are genetically related.

Christians, as we all know, have never argued over anything. Certainly not about topics that might be related to this subject…

URCall: Herodotus II: Dragons v. Ibises

From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. “Are dragons really dinosaurs?” (link)

Transcript:

Have you ever heard of the tale of St. George and the dragon? Many cultures around the world have legends of dragons and winged serpents. The bible mentions them, and even historical figures like Marco Polo, Herodotus, and Alexander the Great wrote eyewitness accounts of them. Even today tales persist about the Loch Ness monster and the monster at Lake Champlain. Can these stories of dragons and sea monsters possibly tell of real accounts of human interactions with dinosaurs?

Are dragons dinosaurs? You’ll notice that the ICR doesn’t actually back this point up, they just point to accounts of dragons and make the leap to dinosaur. But the stories they allude to aren’t all that solid, especially when they have to now be of real dinosaurs.

URCall: Blue Star-adjacent

From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. “Blue Stars” (link)

http://vimeo.com/96211781

Transcript:

Blue stars burn so brightly that they consume their fuel much faster than other stars. The hottest blue stars last only a few million years, and no astronomer has ever observed a new blue star forming. So, if astronomers are still seeing blue stars – which should have burned out a long time ago – how can the universe be billions of years old?

URCall: Time to Double

From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. “How did we reach 7 Billion people?” (link)

Transcript:

How can we have a world population increase to over seven billion people today from only eight survivors from Noah’s flood, if the Earth is only a few thousand years old? Let’s assume one male and one female marry, and had children, and all their children marry and had children, and so on. Let’s assume, conservatively, that every 150 years the population doubles. After 32 doublings, or 4800 years, the population would reach almost 8.6 billion – which is more than we have now. On the other hand, if modern humans started 50000 years ago, at the same conservative population growth rate, even considering death rates, famine, wars etc, all the people could not even fit on the Earth. So if humans had really been around for millions of years, where did everybody go?

Let’s take a look at the equations. The ICR’s gloriously simplistic model can be written like this.

URCall: Still a Fruit Fly

From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. (link)

Transcript:

Evolution claims that change occurs from simple creatures to complex creatures – but is that really the case? Since the early 1900’s scientists have been experimenting with fruit flies, to try to produce mutations that result in a major change that evolutionary theory proposes. While over 3000 mutations have been documented, not a single one has resulted in a creature that is anything other than a fruit fly. How long are you willing to wait for science to prove evolution?

We can only start with the beginning: that evolutionary claim isn’t.

URCall: Sodom (and Gomorrah)

From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. (link)

Transcript:

Did you know that cities in the bible, once thought to have been mythical have actually been discovered by archaeologists? Abraham’s home town of Ur, for example, was excavated by sir Leonard Woolley, beginning in the 1920’s. Ur, as well as Sodom and Gomorrah, and other biblical places, were also mentioned in the Sumerian tablets of Ebla, unearthed in Syria in the 1970’s. So, if these mythical places are real after all, isn’t it logical to reason that the bible is an accurate historical record?

Ur Kaśdim is mentioned in the bible, and this is probably the same place as the real historical city of Ur. But I don’t think Ur was ever truly lost – Pietro della Valle visited in the 17th century, for example, and it doesn’t seem like the locals were unaware as to what they were standing on.