Ticking Off the Main Points Around Why Evolution Can't Happen

At some point way back when, it hit me that evolution -- meaning of course microevolution since there is no other kind --  proceeds by selection, and only by selection, not just what is formally known as Natural Selection, but all the ways that new phenotypes become characteristic of populations are really a form of selection.  By which I mean a portion of the gene pool is selected, most commonly by simple geographic separation, ideally isolated so that gene flow is prevented, and over some number of generations having to do with the number of its founders, it will develop a blended phenotype.  There's probably a name for it but i do't know the name, it's the look that develops from the set of gene/allele frequencies possessed by the founders of the population.  Yes in reality there is likely to be some continued or resumed gene flow and hybrid zones, because reality is messy, but the principle I'm getting at is most clearly illustrated where there is perfect reproductive isolation and only the members of the new population breed together.  \

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That was certainly the case with the Pod Mrcaru lizards.  There were no other lizards on the island where they were released.  The ten founders were the sole source of the genes from which the population developed its own peculiar characteristics, the large head and jaws, and the digestive system to go with them.  

The point I keep making in relation to the validity of the Toe is that selection reduces genetic diversity.   It's the only way a new population with a new appearance can come about, even a new "species," but the only way you can get there is by losing genetically, which is hardly good news for the ToE.  You can't get it by adding anything.  All you get that way is individual changes, even a whole population of different individuals; but unless some of those individuals are selected and isolated you aren't getting evolution..  But the idea of evolution is the creation of new "species" and that means whole populations that are internally more or less homogeneous phenotypically, while differing distinctly from parent populations, and selection is how that comes about.  

Selection can be the mere emigration of a random portion of a population, a random selection of individuals, to a new location some distance from the parent population.  In fact I don't know why this isn't on that list of "mechanisms of evolution" at UC Berkeley's Evolution 101 website.  They've got migration, mutation, genetic drift and natural seletion.  Migration is the same as gene flow, and the migration is the rejoining of two populations.  It's rather an awkward concept that doesn't really say what it means.  And it's really migration OUT of a population to form a new daughter population that is the real "mechanism of evolution".  Well, genetic drift is another form of it, in which the isolaselection ahd isolation occur withihn a parent population without any movement outside of it but it's clearer to think of the movement out of the gene pool  Migration INTo a population isn't evolution.   If it all blends together you could call it evolution, but then what's happening is a form of selection, some alleles dominating others, even some possibly evently dying out of the population altogether.  It isn't evoljution until a gene pool is selected and inbred, and its own gene/allele frequencies are blended into a new group phenotypic appearance.  

Natural Selection as usually understood is probably very rare.  A familiar description is of the removal of a trait or set of traits by a predator, selecting a different set of traits to proliferate because it can survive the predation.  White moths survive against white bark because the birds can't see them, while mottled moths will be picked off leaving the white ones.  But against mottled bark the white ones are picked off and the mottled moths proliferate.   It isn't just the alleles for those characteristics that are affected of course, because it is individuals that are being picked off and individuals possess genes for all the creature's characteristics so that whatever mix they possess is also lost when the individual is lost.  After a number of generations of this change from white to mottled and maybe even back again, the whole gene pool should be genetically depleted, perhaps even approaching a condition similar to clones.  Natural Selection of this sort is genetically costly, and it leads to less ability to evolve, again just what the ToE does not need..  

Of course my arguiment is that any selection is genetically costly, and that eventually, through a number of popujlation splits that bring about the formation of new daughter populations. any creature could eventually reach a state of genetic depletion.  

THE FAST TRACK TO GENETIC DEPLETION IS BOTTLENECK

That state is of course best illustrated by the endangered species, cheetahs and elephant seals for instance.  Bottleneck is really just a drastic form of selection.  Some kinds of domestic breeding may have been as drastic.  The cheetah came through a natural bottleneck of some sort, in which their numbers were drastically reduced, and the elephant seal's bottleneck was brought about by human predation, hunters who nearly destroyed the whole species.  But when protected its few survivors were able to resttore their population to great numbers, despite their being geneticallyh depleted.  The cheetah has also survived and continued to reproduce but it's reprodictively compromised and remains endangered.  

In discusseions I've ahd about this it is usually denied that the genetic depletion brought about by bottlenecks has anything in common with the effects of less drastic selection as I talk about it.  The only difference I see is that bottleneck is a faster route to the same end.  A series of selections would ultimately lead to the same genetic condition.  It's always the trend though it may not become serious until a number of poulation splits have occurred.  The example I like to give is "ring species," in which new populations form from earlier  populations by moving into new geographic areas away from the parent population.  In the new location their collective set of gene/allele frequencies eventually bring about a new "species."  

(I put the word in quotes because "species" is such a vexed term.  It's simply the Greek word for "kind" and any distinctive population, parent, daughter etc., is a "kind."    

THE TERM "RACE"

By the way, I'm pretty sure I've seen the term "race" used to refer to creatures other than human beings but it's probably an older form that's no longer in favor and I'd have to look it up.  It had no controversial connotations originally, it was just a word for the subspecies that form new characteristics in isolation from a parent population.  A race of penguins perhaps?  A race of beetles?  I don't know.  Anyway now there is all this controversy and the claim that there is no such thing as race.  All that means is that the term has come into disrepute, because of racism, but its original use was perfectly objective.  Now we're just to say"population?"  That one is so generic it's meaningless.   I think the clearest terminology is "Species" and "subspecies."  Or if you insist on "Population," then also use "subpopulation."  Or "parent population" and "daughter population." 

The need is to be able to say clearly what group descended from what group.   However, none of this nomenclature is appropriate when talking about people.  People aren't animals though of course that's what the ToE says we are.  Referring to us as "species" really grates on me.   "Race" may be fraught with cultural problems but it's still the clearest term to designate the biological differences between people groups.  I guess you could use "tribe" in some contexts, but the point is to be able to point out the biological differences brought about by genetic isolation.   At least in discussions like this one.  Maybe happily it's not of much use otherwise. 

"SPECIES" TERMINOLOGICAL CONFUSION

 The nomenclature is always a problem,  If you talk about a "species" of penguin you muddy up the whole idea of what a species is in the Linnaean sense.  I dismantle some of the Linnaean system with my way of putting things together as it is.  Or maybe the idea is muddy to begin with.  I'm for designating Bird as a Species myself.  Because I think most likely all birds come from an original pair of birds, all of them from the ostrich to the penguin to the buzzard to the hawk to the starline.  They are morphologically the same creature, and probably genetically also.  If you can look at DNA and tell what creature it belongs to, Bird should be identifiable, as is dog as is Cat..   Some groups would take more thought.  Maybe  Rodent is a species as I'm talking about it because of shared morphology.   I'm looking for shared sharacteristics that belong only to a particular group.   I suppoe any group of characteristics I choose would be disputed, but I do have a very definite idea about it.  Getting it into words may be a problem though.   It's morphological distinctions I have in mid, that much I know.  A rodent always looks like a rodent, they all have a certain skeletal structure in common, they do not look like any other creature.  All cats share a skeletal structure, from the tiget to the lion to the mountain lion to the panther to the housecat.  And it is not shared by dogs, all of which have their own skeletal structure, from the chihuahua to the Great Dane, and also include wolves and foxes.  Seems to me these are the groupings that should be called Species.  If there is a way to identify the genome of each that would help.  Divisions of Species can then be called "subspecies."  

If every daughter population is called a "species" it  then gets used as evidence for evollution.  People still think microevolution is evolution or evidence of it.  That's why this argument that there is a natural limitation to evolution is important.  If the formationm of new populations with their own characteristic traits always occurs through the loss of genetic diversity,  as I'm arguing it does, then what is normally considered to be evolution, the production of such new phenotypes that get called "species" is contrary to the necessary condition for further evolution.  Once you've reached fixed loci for most genes in a subspecies you've reached a point beyond which further change is impossible.  The cheetah and the elephant seal serve as examples for that.  If mutation could restore their genetic diversity it would have by now.  But also if you restore genetic diversity you also lose the speices.  Breeders must know this as they've had to compromise on their desire to produce pure breeds in order to preserve an animal's health, so they breed back genetic diversity into their breeds trying not to destroy their essential characteristics.  But it's a compromise.  The pure breed is the desired end product, the breed with the most fixed genes, or homozygous genes, but that's the condition that produces the most health problems for the animal.  Which is the cheetah's problem.  In the cheetah's case it can't breed with any other cat so it's stuck unless a beneficial mutation comes along.  Dogs don't seem to have that problem, they can continute to breed with other dogs in any case, so at the cost of losing some of their purebred characteristics their health can be preserved or restored.  

SELECTION 

Domestic breeding of animals is an example of selection of course, Artifical Selection.  Darwin made use of his own experience of breeding pigeons as the selection of chosen traits to be bred, which can become the basis of a distinctive new creature, as the process or mechanism that must also happen in nature to explain the variety found there.  This he called Natural Selection.  His observation of the many varieties or "species" of finches is a famous one.  Also the Galapagos turtle.  his basic reasoning is still followed by biologists.  In the case of the finches he reasoned that their different beaks came about by their being limited to the kinds of food that a particular beak could best eat.  He observated that finches with different beaks ate different kinds of food and reasoned that the food selected the beak as it were, that is the food caused the finch to develop the kind of beak needed to eat it.

NATURAL SELECTION BY ENVIRONMENTAL PRESSURE...

This same kind of reasoning is used to explain the Pod Mrcaru lizards.  It is reasoned that their larger head and jaws and tougher digestive systems evolved to adapat to the tougher kinds of food in their new island home.  The lixards that could eat the tougher food would have the better chance of survival and reproduction and so would pass on their genes and that's how the new population developed.

...VERSUS RANDOM SELECTION

That's pretty much classical Darwinism but I don't think that's how it happens in reality.  I think that the new gene frequencies shared among the founding ten individuals simply brought out the larger head and jaw because they just happened to occur in higher frequenciy than the alleles for the original sized head and jaw,.  The new traits worked their way through the entire population over some number of generations until they characterized the entire population.  The people who had released them originally came back to check on then thirty years later and were very surprised to find the whole population so changed in such a short period of time by evolutionary standards.   Evolution supposedly takes millions of years.  That's what is supposedly shown in the fossil record.  But instead of the food's dictating the evolution of the head and haw, it seems more likely to me that the head and jaw came first, the simple repeated recombination of a limited set of allele frequencies shared among the ten founders.  The genetic changes then led the lizards to food that their new heavier jaws could now easily eat  It wasn't that the food they'd eaten when they were part of the parent poulation back on the mainland wasn't available on the island, it's that their new heavier head and jaws could now handle the tougher food, so they gravitated to it.

I think that's what happened with Darwin's finches also.   The finches split into spearate populations and became reproductively isolated from each other and  each split would produce a new daughter population from a few individuals which together possessed a new set ofgene/allele frequencies that would produce a new style of beak.  That beak would enable the bird to eat a particular kind of food.  There are beaks that are suited to digging insects out of tree bark, beaks that can crunch hard nuts or something like that, beaks that do best with soft berries.  I don't know what all the range of beaks and food is but I know there are a lot of different beaks in the finch species and that they define the sort of food each subspecies prefers.  Again, instead of this being the food's calling the shots and the bird having to adapt, I think it efar more likely that the beaks developed from the splitting of the population determine the food eaten.  Again, this is a random selection of a particular, usually smaller, set of individuals that share a new set of gene/allele frequencies that eventually blend together to give the new population a characteristic kind of beak, and proably other traits as well but it's the beak in focus at the moment.  It's the beak that adapts them to a particular kind of food.    It's selection but it's selection brought about by normal sexual recombination within a randomly selected pool of gene frequencies that bring out a type of beak/  As tje mew population continues to breed together in isolation from other finches, their shared genetic material produces the ultimate character of the whole population over time,   The new beak selects the food it is best adapted to.  The environment, the food, does not do the selecting.  The classical case that requires the animal to adapt to the environment occurs occasionally, such as in the example of the black and white moths, and the black and tan pocket mice, but it must be very rare.   

Ring Species illustrate the principle I'm getting at.  This is a series of populations of a particular species that develop as daughter populations each from the previous population, that happen to form around a geographic barrier of some kind until there are many subpopulations of this one species, and each differs from all the others.  If I'm right, the farther you go around the ring in the direction the animals went, the less genetic diversity you should find along with the phenotypic changes you also find from population to population.  It ought to be detectable by analyzing the DNA.  The genetic direction should be to more fixed genes which means less genetic diversity as alleles drop out of the population.  And in some cases perhaps, more dramatic phenotypic characteristics will also be the case.  Maybe.  Because new combinations of alleles can bring out all kinds of interesting variations.   Chipmunks around the Sierra Nevada mountains, salamanders around a California valley, seagulls around the north Atlantic, greenish warblers in northern Europe -- not sure what the barrier is there.   Such a series of populations formed from other populations is particularly evident when there is such a barrier around which they can form, but they also illustrate the principle of how creatures change simply from geographic separation.    The idea that the new population changes in response to the new environment really doesn't hold up when there's nothing particularly different about each new environment from the others.   The changes are driven by genetics as an emigrating set of individuals  takes part of a gene pool to a new location.  I really think this must be the most common way new subspecies develop.  It's a lot more benign than the scenario of the struggle for survival pictured by the ToE where the creature most fitted to a given environment survives and reproduces in greatest numbers while others less well fitted eventually disappear.   Even in this challenging fallen world competition isn't as bloody as the AToE pictures it.

I've used the Wildebeest as an example.  It has two or three populations that differ from ne another.  The main or largest population is more or less brown, one of the others is called "blue" to describe its hide, and it's smaller and I think has different shaped antlers.  This is the kind of thing that would happen if a few of the brown ones just wantered off and got lost and started their own daughter population.  Their new set of gene frequencies in this case brought out the blue hide and the size difrence and the antler difference from the original

There is also the example of the Jutland cattle which I don't remember very well, but the idea is that a large herd split into four isolated smaller herd that in isolation each developed  their own distinctive peculiarities over a matter of years just from the new pool of gene/ allele frequencies possess among the original founders of each separate population.  That's just another illustration of my point, that variation even to the creation of new "species" or really subspecies, is simply a matter of the reproductive isolation of a portion of a gene pool.  No dramatic reason for it, no predator, no scarcity of food, no hostile environment, just reproductive isolation of a new set of gene/allele frequencies.   Period.

If we just notice the variety of types of human beings that have formed tribes in isolation from each other all over the world we see the same genetic situation there too.  Each group over some number of generations develops its own distincive appearance unlike any of the other groups.  Biblically it's how we got all the races of human beings.   There is something called the Table of Nations based on the geneaologies of Noah's family given in scripture, that outlines how the Noah's descendants spread out around the world some years after the landing of the ark in the Middle East.   The children of Japheth went  North into Russia and west into Europe, the children of Shem spread around the Middle East and possibly to Asia, the children of Ham went into Africa.  I'm not sure which group went to India and Asia.   But the point is that each group developed its own characteristic population identity over time simply by blending its own gene/allele frequencies.  

AND EACH DAUGHTER POPULATION IS GOING TO HAVE SOME DEGREE OF REDUCTION OF GENETIC DIVERSITY.  THAT'S HOW NEW PHENOTYPES, SPECIES, DEVELOP.  THAT'S HOW YOU GET NEW BREEDS, YOU LOSE THE GENETIC MATERIAL FOR OTHER BREEDS.  

Same principle of geographic migration and isolation would have brought about all the various subspecies of every animal that had been on the ark too,.

BOTTLENECK DOES THE SAME THING, ONLY FASTER

And speaking of the ark it always comes up in discussions that such a drastic bottleneck sas the Flood, in which only eight human beings and a pair or seven animals were all that survived, hould have made all such further changes impossible.  It took me a while to think all this through.  At first I thought there must have been an enomrously bigger genome in the original species, indlucing humans, but then I reread a creationist book, drat I may not be able to remember the title or the author, I hope it comes back to me.  Anyway they presented a hypothetical Mendel's square from light AA to aa to dark BB to bb  show how ordinary genetics could explain how all the different skin colors found across all humanity could have been possessed by our original parents Adam and Eve.  Since it isn't all just light and dark but also shades of color they could also have had other genes for skin color.  Many genes for one trait is quite common.  Anyway I saw from that presentation how very possible skin tone could derive from a single genome.  So I didn't have to imagine any special kind of genome after all, just a genome that had a full complement of genetic possibilities, meaning no junk DNA for instance.  

HOMOZYGOSITY

This is the crux of the whole situation I'm talking about.  each of us may have homozygous genes for some trait or another.  I have homozygous bb for blue eyes, someone else may have homozygous BB for brown eyes, and many will have the heterozygous Bb which is also brown because the B is dominant.  Perfectly common way the alleles get distributed among people.  Or animals.  But what has happoened with the endangered cheetah is that it has so many homozygous genes for its salient traits it can'[t breed with any other kind of cat.   Same with purebred animals, at least those bred in the days before the dangers to health of the animal through the drastic method of breeding for a given trait or set of traits.  Purebreds were defined as having a great many fixed loci or fixed genes or homozygous genes for the desired traits.  This wouldn't be a problem in the original Created world but it is a problem in our fallen world.  In any case homozygosity is how traits get fixed in a population.  And homozygosity is the result of bottlenecks.   That is why the question comes up about the ark since the Flood certainly created genetic bottlenecks for all living things.

It may have been working through that Mendel's square for skin color based on the book -- Creation  Science I think now though I still can't remember its author --  I began to realize that although greater homozygosity would of course be the result of a bottleneck, back at the   -- oh I remember now.  That book said that we now have something like 7% heterozygoisty so that a bottlneck now would esily reduce genetic diversity to the drastic level of tghe cheetah.  But in the days of the ark, all the creatures saved would have had much greater genetic diversity than any creature has now.  Every gene in the original parents at the Creation would have been heterozygous, and hopmozygosity would develop through sexual recombination in individuals.  On the ark there would still have been a great percentagle of heterozygosity left in each creature so that further variation was possible.  that's how they could have been the progenitors of every variety of living things we see today.  They would not have had the enormous genetic diversity of the original parents but they would still have had enough for the variation that occurred when they all spread out after the FLood.  I don't know how much.  30%?  70%?  Wild guessing.  But a lot more than we have now.  

THEREFORE, although the Flood bottleneck would have led to much reduced genetic diversity, meaning much more homozygosity, it wouldn't even be particularly noticeable since great variation would have continued for each Species.  

Not sure how this works exactly, but my guess is that mutations destroying homomzygous genes that then spread through a population could be a big contributor to the death of genes or Junk DNA.

JUNK DNA

Yes I think Junk DNA IS junk, genes that have died, representing characterestics no longer possessed by the organism, including the loss of things like the appendix and other "vestigial" organs, but also no doubt hundreds or even thousands of capacities and traits we can't even imagine.  Capacities once possessed that have been lost over the millennia because of the Fall that introduced death and disease into the world, many no doubt lost in the Flood.  Mutations are probably the biggest cause now. I think  of mutations as a disease process due to the Fall.  Anything that is a ':mistake" which is how mutation is described, has to be the product of the Fall.  If mutations occasionally produce something new and viable, that's just because it hit on a particular chemical sequence, probably one that had been lost before anyway, nothing really new.  

SPECIATION

This idea is ridiculously bogus.  The idea is that a subspecies branches off a parent population and becomes unable to breed with that population and this makes it a new Species.   My guess is that if you analyzed the DNA of these new "Species" you'd find that they have many fixed genes and are low on genetic diversity compared to the parent population.  In other words they are just another isolated race or variety or breed of that population or Species that has formed in isolation from others of its kind.  It may not be as genetically depleted as the cheetah or the elephant seal but my guess is it has to be genetically reduced.  The term "speciation" implies something from which further evolution could be launched, it implies a point at which one Species can become another Species, according to the ToE, but genetically it can't happen.  If it hasn't reached an absolute end ot its ability to vary further it hasat least reached a poitn of less ability to produce variations, far from the expectation generated by the term "speciation " as defined in the context of the ToE/.  

SOME IMPLICATIONS OF WHAT I AM ARGUING HERE:

• Species were originally created separately.  What  creationists call Kinds in an attempt to distinguish them from the Species of the ToE   My provisional definition of a Species iw first of all morphological identity, which I would have to spell out eventually for each Species, and secondly genetic.  I assume each is definable by its shared genome, but what that looks like I don't know.  Since geneticists and biologists think in evolutionary terms they aren't looking for what I'd be looking for.
• Each Species was created with a genome unto itself, with perfect DNA that always replicated without making any mistakes in copying, no junk DNA, every gene functional for some important purpose of creative variation or protection, health, strength etc. 
• If there had been no Fall every living thing would have been immortal and disease-free, and reproduction would produce endless new varieties or subspecies, while the original parents continued alongside them, never dying.
• The original genome of each individual Species possessed by the original parents, contained the possibility of an enormous number of variations, every kind of every Species we see now and some uncountable number of others that either died or never got born. 
• Those others went extinct or never could exist because so many possible allele combinations died out, certainly many subspecies died in the Flood.  Maybe even whole Species.  Well, the Trilobites are one of those.  
• In this fallen world of disease and death  none of the original parents of any Species is still alive, nor any of those preserved on the ark, nor any of the generations up to present time.  So that when a particular line of variation/microevolution is pursued out to its limits it is vulnerable to disease and extinction, whereas in theoriginal Creeated world before the Fall it would reach that genetic limit without any threat.  Thousands and thousands of such lines of variation could be generated from any original set of parents, just because God loves variety I would have to suppose.   Perhaps we'd have automatically colonized all the other planets if we ran out of room.  They would not have been dead planets as they are now.
• .

SUMMATION OF THE ARGUMENT

• Evolution, meaning any kind of phenotypic variation at the population level, is powered by selection and no other "mechanism"
• Selection means the isolation of a portion of a population either randomly or by intention or necessity, either by separation from the parent population or within it (which is Genetic Drift)
• Selection always trends to the reduction of genetic diversity, and at the extremes to genetic depletion
• This reduction means the increase of homozygous genes in the population as alleles for competing traits are ultimately eliminated and those for the selected traits become fixed
• Selection can be immediate or drastic as in bottleneck and founder effect or a slow accumulation over many population splits
• The Theory of Evolution assumes an endless ability for a Species to continue to vary, even to the eventual formation of an entirely new Species, even by Natural Selection, but this is impossible.  Selection reduces genetic diversity even to the point of genetic depletion which makes further evolution impossible.  The very mechanism that brings aqbout the phenotypic changes taken for evidence of cpmtinuous evolution actually make it impossible.  Evolution defeats Evolution.
• Any addition of genetic material into a populatoin interferes with the formation of a daughter population or new species or subspecies, such as gene floow between the parent and evolving population or mutation  There is no evolution where there is addition.  Gene flow is just the reintroctuion of formerly reduced or eliminated alleles.  Mutation may or may not add something that's actually new.  But both interfere with the process of evolution because that cess requires eproductive isolation.   Even the formation of hybrid populations only happens with selection and isolation of the reintroduced alleles.   If the isolation isn't perfect you may still get soe population change but imperfect population homogeneity
• Mutation is often made to bear a burden it can't really bear.  It is assumed to be the source of all functioning genetic material, the engine that drove the formation of DNA in the first place.   It's assumed, it can't be proved because it can't happen in reality.  Mutation is a destructive event, a mistake.  It destroys a perfectly functional allele to replace it with another, and the new one is usually either deleterious or "neutral," meaning doesn't change the product although it changes the chemical sequence of the original functioning allele to no good purpose.   Very very rarely it has a "benetificial" result in that it produces a new function. First, all it an do is produce a new form of whatever the gene does.  If it governs fur color it will produce a fur color, apparently a new one.  It can't change what the gene does.   And it brings about this change in function by destroying what was porbably the perfectly viable functioning allele  it replaced.  And it probably isn't new, it is probably just the reemergence of a formerly lost function by the accidental fortuitous recreation of a chemical sequence that had been lost at some time in the history of the species.  And then it has to be selected in order to spread in the population and replace the function it displaced at the the population level.   Such a messy business cannot possibly be how DNA came about in the first place.  This ought to be obvious.
• So all the variety we see in Nature is brought about by the variability of genes built into the genome of each Species.  It can't vary anything but what is already programmed into each gene,   And as new traits get established the alleles for those traits become fixed and the competing alleles drop out, which is the reduction of genetic diversity that fuels the phenotypic change.  It is essential to phenotypic change.  You don't get that population level change that gets called a new species unless it occurs.    Resumed gene flow could in many cases bring them back but then you lose the character of the Species that was supposed to be the evidence of evolution.   

Yes I know I keep repeating myself, though I hope I do it with enough variety of expression to overcome some of the resistance.  I'm trying to unseat an entrenched paradigm and the resistance to such efforts is often insurmountable even if mostly a matter of completely irrational devotion rather than an attempt to grasp the reasoning against it.

Beyond this argument there is also the geological argument about the absurdity of identifying a discrete horizontal slab of sedimentary rock with a unit of geological time in which supposedly unique events occurred as the fossils of a unique set of living things appear in this rock, while a different unique set of living things appear in a different kind of sedimentary rock above and below it.   tje cpmtact betweem tje tpw rpcls os pftem razpr sjar[ amd straight which suggests something other than a time period but the equation nevertheless persists.  If only the fossils of reptiles whow up in one layer and only the fossils of mammals show up in the compoletely diferent rock above it this is taken for evolution from the reptile to the mammal.  I don't know how the absurdity of this is lost on the scientists who accept it.    And of course there's a lot more to say about this but this post is already too long.

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Sometimes people talk about "cultural evolution" as if it exists and has something in common with Darwinian theory.  I don't get it.   Just noting it for now.

I know I shouldn't come back and add to posts later but an afterthought so often just needs to fit into what I've a;readu written.  So i apologize but later versions of this may be different in some ways, mostly new elaborations..  

  I'll try at least to come back and correct typos and my horrific run-on sentences. 

Lockdown Blues sort of

 When the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?    The righteous these days are silenced.  Oh you can hear them if you want to but you have to know who they are and that's already an obstacle, and you have to go out of your way to hear them.  What hits you in the face every minute is the lies.  And unfortunatley a lot of people believe them.  

 I feel helpless, I AM helpless or at least I don't know what to do if I had the means to do it..   I watch the conservative films at Amazon but the people who need to watch them don't.  D'Souza's Trump Card, Curtis Bowers' Agenda, both films, The Plot  Against the President that just came out.   They play in the echo chamber.   

And every day I hear the latest COVID statistics and the vaccine promises that don't tell you about the side effects, and the impression is created that the hundreds of thousands that are dying are inevitable, not a word to the contrary when I know, and I know others know, that HCQ could have saved every last one of them if they'd received it in time.  Zelenko Protocol, you can find it at Eleftherios Gkioulekas Zelenko but it may go poof on you as it did on me though I found it again.  And Simone Gold   I've posted some interviews with her.  Del Bigree also did one I haven't linked.  Harvey Risch.  Knoweldgeable honest people who are being silenced.  But there must be many others.  Why aren't we hearing from them?   This is murder.  I'm happy to know that the suppressors are going to face God for it some day, and so are those who are silenced by their own cowardice.

Totalitarian control by the Left has been brewing for quite a long time but I guess we didn't expect it to appear so suddenly, so effectively shutting us all up so completely.   All the right things are said by some, you can find them, but that's all, they are said and nothing happens, and of course they are said only into the echo chamber, outside of which the lies prevail.

I don't think I've ever looked forward to death as I do now.  I'm useless here, there's no reason to stick around, the alternative is a better life in a better world in the presence of Jesus.  I'm grateful I have that faith because so many others don't, and they won't let me give it to them either.  I'd prefer to go in the Rapture.  My own personal death, even if I die happy, probably won't persuade anyone, but the Rapture might.  Of course that will be twisted by lies too.  

Evolution Proven To Be Impossible.

We are now in essence a banana republic as they are called, complete with bogus "President Elect" who is not legally President Elect but is called that by our corrupt media and the whole corrupt leftist gang, who continue to force their views on the rest of us, yes, even to the point of election fraud which very probably replaced enough Trump votes with enough Biden votes to steal the election.  We might have a chance to save ourselves from this destruction of our great American system except for the fact that there are among other things all too many nonleftists who think Donald Trump is a fascist or something other than the effective defender of true American values his supporters know him to be.  Thus are we likely lost.  Doomed.  No more America.  Well I knew it was coming years ago, why make a fuss about it when it's finally come?  We tried.   They were smarter.  

So I'm trying to ignore it all, there being nothing I can do about it, and have been entertaining myself with such pastimes as rereading the UC Berkeley web pages they call Evolution 101.  

There is one subject that is particularly relevant for my purposes, the "mechanisms of evolution," also called there "mechanisms of change" and "mechanisms of microevolution."  The same four "mechanisms" are listed for each designation.

They are Mutation, Migration, Genetic Drift and Natural Selection.  As I recall, when I read this site some fifteen or so years ago now-- it's changed some since then but this concept is pretty much the same -- it was this part of it that contributed most to launching me toward the thoughts I've been elaborating ever since.  I think the first post I wrote on the subject at EvC was titled something like "Natural Limitations to the Processes of Evolution"  I've been blocked from EvC so I can't go find out for sure.  I'd read up on some population genetics and spent some time thinking through the genetics involved in breeding programs, mainly dogs.  

So, Mutation, Migration, Genetic Drift and Natural Selection are given as the "Mechanisms" of the biological changes that are mistaken for evidence of the ToE.

 These four "mechanisms" are not very similar to each other.  Mutation hapopens at the genetic level, producing a new sequence for better or worse, Migration is the movement of individual animals from one place to another, Genetic Drift is the consequence of random selection of traits/genetic material that creates a subpopulation within a larger population, and Natural Selection is one of the ways a trait and its genetic substrate is favored in reproduction which results in the creation of a new gene pool, or supposedly ultimately a new species.   

What I noticed back then was that that Mutation and Migration add to the genetic pool while Natural Selection subtracts from it and Genetic Drift is one of many possible effects of a subtractive process.  I already thought of natural selection as a subtractive process because I'd been thinking about domestic breeding and how it's all about preeserving chosen traits from contamination by alien genes.   In other words nothing is ever added, all alien or unwanted traits are eliminated -- that's the subtraction -- and the whole idea is to pare down the genetic stuff to as many fixed alleles as possible, which is what creates the breed you want.

After having thought about this for so many years it's hard for me to understand why it isn't obvious that getting new phenotypes in nature has to follow the same path as getting them in domestic breeding:  in selecting a trait or set of traits you are eliminating all competing traits, and this means you are reducing the genetic variability in the new population.  And reducing genetic variability means you are reducing its opportunities for further phenotypic change.  If the genetic variation is quite high to begin with, continued development of new phenotypes can go on occurring for some time, even the formation of daughter populations with their own different phenotypic presentation, but the trend is always toward the reduction of genetic variability.  This fact absolutely defeats the ToE but it's utterly ignored.  Even when reduced genetic variability is recognized its implications for the ToE never enter the discussion.

So I discovered that such things have been discussed in population genetics circles but always with the idea of which phenomenon being considered has most to do with furthering evolution.  

I've always struggled with why Genetic Drift is taken so seriously.  I don't get it.  It's just one version of the processes that bring about a new population phenotype or its gene pool.  In other words it's just a version of the subtraction of traits and their alleles or genetic material of whatever  kind, in order that others come to expression, the old having disappeared.  It's always emphasized that genetic drift is random, as if this distinguishes it from other ways populations change.  The only method that could be considered not to be random is Natural Selection but the effect is the same.  A trait is eliminated, others favored and the allele for the rejected trait disappears from the population.  Subtraction.  The alleles for the selected trait or traits increase in number but nothing new has been added.  All that has happened is that one or some have been lost.  Subtraction.  Loss of genetic diversity.

Migration is just the REconnection of one population with another that had split at some time in the past.  During their separation new genetic combinations would have emerged, bringing out new phenotypes so that it looks like they are something new and different.  What keeps getting overlooked is that you can get dramatic differences in appearance just from inbreeding a new set of gene/allele frequencies in reproductive isolation.  Quite dramatic.  But the point here is that you get them because of the elimination, subtraction, of other forms of the traits involved.  

The ToE seems to be talked about as if there were endless genetic possibilities for change.  But if the phenotypic changes that suggest evolution in the first place turn out to be the product of eliminating genetic material the opposite from the usual expectation is the reality.

Mutation is like migration or gene flow except that it actually does bring something new into the genetic picture.  Usual a bad something or a neutral something.  But for it to be part of the population phenotype it has to be selected and all its competitors eliminated.  There's always going to be subtraction meaning always a loss of genetic diversity when you get new phenotypes.  

This is true even at the individual level.  Sexual reproducion is the process by which traits for the offspring are selected, quite randomly, all other possible traits possessed by the parents eliminated from the chosen genetic collection.  That's the formula.  It's elimination or loss that brings out the new traits.  

In one of the Attenborough films I watched recently there was footage of him as a younger man meeting an isolated tribe somewhere like Borneo or Irian Jaya, I don't remember.  Every time you see such a tribe of people who have been isolated for a very long time you can't fail to notice how strikingly distinct they are as a population, very similar to each other, clearly all of the same family, but identifiable as a group.  That's what a race is, just a population that has developed its own identifying traits in isolation over time.

That's how the ten lizards loosed on Pod Mrcaru developed their characteristic huge head and jaws over the thirty years they were left alone there.  they started out with normal sized heads and jaws like their parent population and all it took was their reproductive isolation over somenumber of genertations to bring out the traits they now all shared.  Breeding only among themsleves their own peculiar set of gene frequencies got recombined and passed on over and over again down the generations without the input of genes from the original population they'd come from.

There is no exception to this.  Evolution is impossible because of how genetics works.  Certainly there are lots more examples to be explored and lots more angles on the question that are also fun to pursue, but I dare claim that this is the rock bottom definitive falsification of the ToE.   Tty all the chess moves you can think of, if you're smart enough and honest enough you have to come to this same conclusion.

Thanks to God in Anticipation of the Day Dedicated to that Purpose

There are lots of things for me to be grateul for.  I'm taken care of, I'm free of major worries about my family and my own wellbeing, as well as having writing projects I enjoy enormously, and much more.  

But I have to say that the way things have been going politically I'm seeing the destruction of America looming, and while I know that God's judgments are for the good in the end as is everything else He does, it's nevertheless sad that it's come to this.    How it affects me personally is not my concern, I'll probably do fine as far as that goes, but the loss of America is enormously sad.   And the corruption that has been growing adds to my melancholy.

All of which this year makes it my most fervent gratitude that this world is not my true home and that eventually I'll live in a perfect world where truth and honesty and true love of God and neighbor reign.  I'm SO grateful I have that to look forward to, and above all that I've had the highest privilege a human being can have, of believing in God and the truth of His Word and salvation through Christ Jesus. 

Back to Evolution: It's SO wrong and I've proved it but so far to deaf ears

  Been watching more films than usual these days.   Could write opinions on a few of them but for the moment I'm most interested in David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet.

His films do a nice job of nature photography, especially capturing animal behavior, always fun to watch.   But of course he's big on evolutionary theory, explains everything in those terms, and is concerned about the human impact on the planet.  He's convincing about the consequences of some thoughtless human actions such as the wanton destruction of rain forest and the poaching of animals in Africa, and the need to take measures to correct these things.  I'm all for whatever can be done rationally in that direction that takes care of both man and environment, and that is also Attenborough's aim.  

But what exercises me the most is the question of global warming and human contribution to it.   It is demonstrable that the planet is warming, just from the melting of the Arctic ice, the disappearance of glaciers for instance.  The controversy is over how much is contributed by human activity.  

If you are convinced of evolutionary theory you will be thinking in terms of vast aeons of time.  If the last ice age started about 2.6 million years ago, the timing accoding to current scientific theory,  you think of an enormously slow process of freezing and warming, you also think of there having been many ice ages so that when this one is over another one will begin, on that very slow schedule.   

The last ice age, according to science, ended 11,700 years ago, warming ever since apparently, although they also say the planet is considered to be still in that ice age.   Which I suppose must mean the warming trend isn't over yet?:  I don't know -- reading is hard on my eyes so I tried to get the gist and not spend more time on it --  but with the Arctic ice melting it must be close to ending.

 https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html#:~:text=The%20Pleistocene%20Epoch%20is%20typically,parts%20of%20the%20planet%20Earth. 

However, it's interesting that the 11,700 years of warming is at least in the time frame ballpark of the biblical framework I think is the real timing.  It's not the usual millions of years   On biblical time the Flood was roughly 4500 years ago, a little less I think, and that would have to be the event that brought on the ice age.  I think in terms of the way an airconditioner works, by evacuating heat, and there are many events associated with the Flood that would generate heat s well as evacuate it, including of course the splitting apart of the continents which must have happened around that time, which I've argued quite a bit at EvC Forum.  

Only one ice age, somehow precipitated by the Flood, or by the climatic catastrophe of which the Flood was a part.  There is evidence of glaciation that came pretty far soueeth, covering much of North America for instance, though something I read put the southernmost extent of the ice as far south as northern South America a few degrees above the Equator.  Since it would have occurred after the Flood there would have been no human beings in the western hemisphere.  I'm not sure how long it took the descendants of Noah to spread out over the world, but even to spread from their landing place in the Middle East into Europe and Eastern Asia and Africa would likely have taken hundreds of years at least.  (No, humanity did not originate in Africa.  The African races or tribes are descended from Noah just like all the rest of humanity).

There is no reason to dispute the physical observations of global warming, only the timing.   What science thinks took billions or years, on biblical time only took thousands.  Sure it's laughable, but only because we're so used to thinking in terms of such vast stretches of time.  It certainly made me laugh when I first encountered the biblical timing.   Now I just automatically think in those terms.  

SO.  The ice age has been retreating for a few thousand years, the planet has been warming up for that length of time.  We know the glaciers have been retreating, there's evidence of how far they went and they aren't there now, so why is there such a big panic about its all finally retreating to the point that even the Arctic is melting?  AND of course, what is the necessity of imputing that event to human activity?  It was going to come to that point anyway, and while eleven thousand isn't four thousand it's not the huge time frame of millions in this case, it's computable on a human scale.  

If there is some contribution of human activity to the process, some argue that it's very minor, a matter of two or three percent of the total effect.   Stopping human activity is not the solution although we certainly need solutions, and if we had a biblical perspective we would have been thinking in those terms for a long time already how to mitigate the destructive effects of the warming trend.  If we were rational we would be thinking this way I mean.  Stopping SOME human activity of course, such as cutting down rainforests and doing whatever we can to replenish them and even grow a few more in other places, planning agricultural development around them, making use of new technologies that reduce the space required for agriculture, as Attenborough points out is now possible.  That sort of thing,  (Getting the Africans to stop poaching is another rhing.)

A biblical perspective would of course also tell us that this world is destined to end, and probably fairly soon too.   Doing what we can to improve its habitability for people as well as other living things is the right thing to do in any case for as long as we have left   -- that is certainly within the responsibility God gave us back in Eden before the Fall -- but it will come to an end anyway.  Because the whole thing is about human sin, meaing disobedience to God's commandments.  Think "Karma" if you can't wrap your head (or your prejudices anyway) around the idea of God's Law.  Karma is a very flawed intuition of God's Law by fallen human beings, but it's the same basic idea:  misbehavior brings negative consequences, only the Bible puts those consequences on a global as well as personal scale.  That's what brought death and disease and suffering of every kind into the originally perfect Creation, that's what brought on the Flood that destroyed most of life and the physical Creation as well, and it's human sin that brings on all forms of God's judgment, which must certainly have increased in the west since the sixties.  Very few of us think in such terms unfortunately, even Christians although it's the reason the Son of God became a man to live and die for us so we can be saved from our debt to God's Law    On the national scale, the blood of aborted babies cries out for God's vengeance, just as the blood of Abel did, but on we go committing murder anyway, and every other kind of sin.  Because as fallen creatures we are blind to God and the spiritual underpinnings of reality.

===============================================

While I'm at it I feel like sketching out my usual arguments against the Theory of Evolution.   The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection was Darwin's title for his theory and although it's changed in some ways the basic theory remains mostly intact.  They still don't seem to have discovered that Natural Selection CAN'T be the means of evolution from one Species to another, because selection subtracts genetic material in order to bring out the new traits/phenotypes that are considered to be the evolution that results. 

Darwin didn't have the benefit of the science of genetics in his day but he did have a lot of experience with breeding, pigeons mostly, or Artificial Selection, which is what led him to his formulation of Natural Selection:  by selecting traits he could create some dramatic new species of pigeons, so it made sense that Nature must do the same thing to bring about all the variety we see there.  

Even his experience of breeding pigeons could have shown him that to get his elaborate new breeds required the loss of other traits than those he selected.  There is a cognitive trick involved here that is easy to fall for.  You are getting something new, a pigeon with enormous tail feathers perhaps, or with an enormously puffed-out chest,  but you get it not by adding anything but by removing everything that doesn't contribute to that chosen trait.   Since you are selecting FOR the trait you may not be aware that it requires losing all competing forms of that feature to bring it about.  

Genetically this is what happens too.  A pure breed is sometimes defined as having reached the condition of fixed genes for all its main characteristics, or "fixed loci"  or homozygosity for those traits.    This is because competing alleles for each gene have been eliminated from the breeding pool by selection and the selected alleles then reproduced over many generations.  Or not as many generations in the case of a very small founding population.   

A small number of cattle originally taken from a wild herd would first produce scattered observable individual differences that had been present in the original population but barely noticeable there.  It would take the inbreeding of the particular genes in the daughter population to bring such traits to the point where they can be clearly seen.   (Another way of saying this is that the daughter population has a new set of gene frequencies from that of the parent population and over time they bring out new phenotypes that disitnguishes it from the original wild herd)  These new phenotypes now come to the fore in a few generations because there are fewer mating choices in this smaller population,  

As the herd continues in domestication it grows in population and continues to elaborate and develop an emerging phenotype.  It contains only the genes selected in the original isolation from the wild herd, and as long as the domesticated herd continues in reproductive isolation it will be those and only thoe genes that will contribute to the herd phenotype that will develop over time.  It will go through many changes in individual animals through many generations until eventually a characteristic herd phenotype should emerge.  This requires reproductive isolation so that only those original selected genes contribute to the herd phenotype.    The population could grow very large and continue to display its own characteristics that distinguish it from the original wild herd.  Of course animals will be sold and the population diminshed and the genetic component will lose some genetic material that way but if the growing herd is large enough such losses may not make much difference.  The owner of the herd may also decide to breed chosen individuals for reasons of his own.  In any case we know there are hundreds of different cattle breeds that have become purebreds over some number of generations, all most likely from the same original wild stock, all differeing from that original wild herd -- AND from other herds that were also taken from it  

This is because the domestic herd does NOT have the OTHER genes, it has only those of its own set of gene frequencies shared within its own population, that produce its own particular phenotype.    It has LESS ability to evolve than the original herd did, not more, and ultimately this means evolution  is limited and at the extremes will become impossible.  So, far from being the means of evolution from species to species, Natural Selection actually makes evolution impossible beyond the built-in genetic material of the species genome.   Evolution defeats evolution.  Meaning the phenotypic variations that selection and isolation bring about reduce genetic diversity within the selected population and such reduction is contrary to what would be required if the ToE were true.

Everybody always wants to add in mutations at this point as if that would defeat my argument.  But all mutations do is what any genetic addition does -- it interferes with the reproductive isolation that brings about new phenotypes.  Any kind of addition such as resumed gene flow between populationjs will have the same effect.  Supposedly a mutation would bring about something truly new but this is unlikely.  All it can do is change the trait coded by a particular allele, and it will only vary whatever that gene already does.  If it's eye color it will change the eye color, it can't do anything else.  If it's fur texture it will change the fur texture, it can't do anything else.  And if you do get a viable mutation that also gets selected, for it to become characteristic of the population requires that it continue to be selected and reproduced and the same genetic situation of loss of genetic diversity is the result in any case.  So you get a new eye color.  That's about it.  And my guess would be it's not new anyway, it's probably only the reemergence of an eye color that was lost to the species a long time ago.  Genes are just strings of chemicals.  

I always forget how long it takes to make any part of this argument.   I could go on to the Pod Mrcaru lizards and the Jutland cattler, which demonstrate that evolution, which is really microevolution or built-in variation, can occur in a very short period of time, thirty years in the case of the lizards, something less I think in the case of the cattle.  All it takes is reproducrtive isolation of a daughter poulation breeding among themselves for enough generations to bring out all the possibiities of the new set of gene frequencies and blend them together.   No millions of years are required.  Darwin's Galapagos turtles were the result of separation from the mainland turtle population, whose new gene frequencies produced a new general phenotype over generations of breeding in isolation.  Probably only took a couple of decades, depending on how many founding turtles there were.  The Pod Mrcaru lizards started from ten individuals.

Another argument I like is the fossil trilobite argument but I didn't intend this to become my definitive statement.  

And then there are the Geological arguments, since the ToE is considered to be shown in the fossil record which is contained in layers of sedimentary rock.  There is a seeming progression up through the Linnaean taxonomy that seems convincing, and I certainly can't explain that apparent sequence.  But the strata are explain in terms of tens of millions of years to define a specific time period -- Cambrian, Devonian, Mississippian, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic etc etc etc -- that all together from primordial to recent time add up to billions of years.  On this time scale a  particular creature, say reptiles, show up within one period of tens of millions of years, and the next period up, meaning the next layer of sedimentary rock above it, contains mammals which are then taken to have evolved from the reptiles.  this is impossible for many reasons but I'm too tired to try to argue it out again here.

And besides, the mere equation of a slab of sedimentary rock with a time period is just plain ludicrous.  And don't tell me that equation isn't made.  There is a model of the strata at the Grand Canyon that makes it very clear that is how it is understood.    No, such strata of different kinds of sediments could not possibly have occurred so regularly over tens of millions of years per layer, neatly changing from one sediment to another so abruptly and completely.  Obviously the best explanation for the strata is the Flood of Noah.  Worldwide.  Chock full of fossils of all the dead things the Flood was intended to bring about.   Water in many forms causes layering of sediments.  It even occurs with the rising of sea water.  Walther's Law I think.  I forget so much of this because I haven't argued it in so long.  It should all be at EvC Forum though unless Percy decided to censor it all.  Some of it is on my other blog here but not as much as is at EvC.  

Wish some evolutionary biologist might come along who has the honesty and integrity as well as the IQ to get my point.  Not that I have such a great IQ I hasten to add.  Mine is only middling, but perseverance and prayer can accomplish a lot.  Nevertheless it takes a lot of thought and a lot of time and it's counterintuitive in many ways, as well as fraught with all the baggage of the ToE that is being challenged.  If I die soon I'd like to think somebody appreciated it all though.

A Trump win is likely provable but maybe not very soon?

 Wondering what's going to happen with this election.  Georgia has certified Biden as winner despite the fact that all the recounting was only recounting a bunch of fraudulent ballots along with the true ones.  My impression is that Trump's legal team will be able to prove massive fraud if they get it to court, and i can't imagine that they would stop short of that.  They still need time to probe into all the allegations and document the actual detailed evidence.  Mark Levin is going to talk on his podcast Sunday night about the stages involved in such a legal proceeding as this one.  People keep expecting the evidence to be already available but he is going to explain why that expectation is ignorant of how the law works.  They have plenty of evidence of some fraud and of the great possibility of much more and that is what they need at this point.  If the Dominion program was set to turn something like 3% of Trump votes to Biden that's a pretty huge number.   

Probably the biggest suspicion comes in with the fact that the Republicans did well in the "down ticket" votes for other offices, and only lost Trump, which is extremely unusual.  Besides of course the suspicious fact that while Trump was winning handily on election night all counting suddenly stopped, w and then when it resumed the next morning Biden had pulled ahead.  Sydney Powell explains that as Trump's winning at such an expectedly high level the fraud softward couldn't deal with it so they had to adjourn to readjust hings to put Biden in the lead.  

I just hope we eventually find out.  I wonder what happens if they prove that Trump really did win some time after Biden is in office?  Throw the bums out I hope.

Reconsidering Some of the Timing of the Book of Revelation

Although I've accepted the Pretribulation Rapture eschatology because it all hangs together so nicely, I do run into doubts about it.  The main doubt is about the amount of time in which the judgments of the seals play out:  That is, seven years is an awfully short time for the six seals of Revelation 6 to unfold, and the seventh doesn't even start until the 8th chapter..  

The first thing that started to bother me was why we have different groups of martyrs.  Those revealed under the altar at the opening of the 5th seal seem to have been waiting quite a long time for God to avenge them, but within the Tribulation time frame it's all within the seven years, and probably fewer than that since they are waiting for a new group of martyrs to join them.    

Presumably those martyred over the two millennia up to the Rapture would have gone in the Rapture and be in heaven with the Lord Jesus as the seals are being opened, not treated with any special distinction from the Church as a whole.  But those shown in the fifth seal are treated as a special group.  Why is there a separate special group of them presumably coming after those martyred over the last two millennia?    What makes this group different from some fifty million who were tortured and killed by the Roman Church over 600 years during the Middle Ages  for instance, who would now be in heaven with the raptured Church?   I can't see any reason to divide them.  Those under the altar are "souls," evidently not yet in their resurrected glorified bodies, which means they aren't part of the raptured Church.  

I'm thinking that at least the first five seals  were already opened throughout previous history.   When we get to the sixth seal, we are now getting what sounds like prophecy for the first time, NOW comes the Day of the LORD, so the opening of that seal could be yet future.  In fact that might be the starting point of the Seventieth Week of Daniel or the Great Tribulation, instead of the opening of the first seal.  However, this plays havoc with the Pretribulation time frame.   

It would put the martyrs in the Raptured Church and since they are not yet glorified that can't be the case.  These  things are not fitting together with the Pretrib scenario.  And it is during the Tribulation that the multitude pictured standing before the throne of God in Revelation 7 were martyred, and they must be those the martyrs under the altar are told to wait for.   But although the first four seals judgments are dreadful in their own way they don't point to the killing of believers, yet this is what is assumed in the Pretrib scenario.  It seems to me more likely that they represent all those martyred in the previous two millennia, now waiting for the final martyrs of the Great Tribulation that is about to occur to join them.  If that is the case, of course, the Rapture has not yet happened.  

And that is hard to reckon with after accepting the Pretrib eschatology.  When DOES it happen then?  I am still persuaded that it doesn't make sense for it to occur at Jesus' Second Coming, but I don't see any place for it before that if I remove it from the Pretrib frame of reference.  The Pretrib timing is still the most logically satisfying, but then the time possibilities for the first six seals, and especially the fifth, seem to me to undo it.  

In his vision of Revelation John saw Jesus open the seals.  The Pretrib timing has this beginning after the Rapture of the Church, but the timing is only because of that interpretation and otherwise there are no other clues to the timing.  It could have started in John's time.  Jesus had ascended to Heaven and had earned the right to open the scroll, and there is no clue given as to why there would be any delay.  Unless we equate the opening of the seals with the Great Tribulation or Day of the LORD itself, but then that is what I'm now finding problematic given the seven-year period it all has to fit into.

It certainly seems necessary that the Great Tribulation be the seven-year period of Daniel that has yet to be fulfilled.  There are many reasons for that besides the fact that the seventieth week is still unfulfilled, a major one being the Old Testament imagery and context of the middle part of the Book of Revelation, very specifically the beasts which reflect those of Daniel and certainly his fourth beast which is now revealed to be the Roman Empire, though described as including the characteristics of the first three empires.  We see the Roman Empire and we see the Roman Church as the historical context of the Antichrist.   

Revelation reflects history as well as representing events yet to come.  In John's time he would of course recognize the Roman Empire in the beast that incorporates the beasts of Daniel's prophecy, and therefore identify the final Antichrist and the Harlot Church as related to that beast  but the Roman Catholic apostasy did not yet exist so he wouldn't know about that.  However, she's "Mystery Babylon" and all the symbolism points back through the empires to Babylon and the original religion of Nimrod and Semiramis, which was well tracked in the book "The Two Babylons."   All the False Christs track through that line, which is characterized by the image of mother - Queen of Heaven, and child -Savior which became emblematic of the Roman Church, placing it squarely within that Babylonian lineage and outside Christianity.   The Antichrist would surely represent that system rather than some unknown modern nation, and since he is also a civil power the Pope is a great candidate, the Vatican being a secular state in its own right thanks to Mussolini.  

Anyway, all these symbols point to ancient facts as well as currently existing entities as well as entities prophesied to play a future role in the End Times drama as spelled out in Revelation.  It all ends conclusively in the Day of the LORD.   Nimrod was Satan's first Antichrist stand-in (the word "vicar" will do) for the Messiah , though there are many antichrists in small and every false religion has its own version.   The Pope is put in the place of Christ too, that's what makes him the best candidate for the Tribulation Antichrist.  The vision represents that which was, which is and which is to come.  Although some teachers present this as a chronological sequence through the seven-year Tribulation, much of it appears to overlap.  It could nevertheless be a simple chronology anyway, except now I'm wondering about some elements that don't seem to fit, and that wondering MAY throw off where I end up placing the Rapture..

I also have a problem with the spiriting away of the Woman of Revelation 12 into the wilderness for 1260 days which is the equivalent of the "time, times and half a time"  allotted to different events in the Tribulation period, both in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation.    (Later:  Decided to go back to John MacArthur's study of Revelation to find out what he says about the woman's flight into the wilderness and of course he solved my problem:  this occurs at the midpoint of the Tribulation as the last three and a half of the seven years, considered to be the GREAT Tribulation, begins.  The Abomination of Desolatioin is just now set up in the temple and as Jesus warned in Matthew 24, those in Israel who know the scripture flee into the wildneress for the duration.   Works nicely.  By the way, this particular sermon in his Revelation series is especially fascinating for a lot of reasons:

.https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/66-42/the-war-of-the-ages-part-2  )

Well, I'm probably mostly trying to distract myself from other things that could drive me even crazier if I let them.  I'm far from having arrived at any conclusions about all this but I think the questions are valid and need more thought, maybe in a less crazy time, if that's even possible now..  (If I continue listening to the parts of MacArthur's Revelation series I've missed, and especially if I go back to earlier parts I may have failed to grasp, I may very well find he answers it all anyway.)

Multiple Sources of Election Fraud

 Already for weeks we'd been hearing of ballots found in dumpsters and wastebaskets, one bunch all marked for Trump.  We were getting uncontrolled mail-in voting, ballots submitted in the name of dead people and multiple ballots sent in by one person, new election laws enacted at the last minute by officials with no authority to make such decisions, all to loosen existing laws in a way that makes fraud easier.  No enforced deadline, ballots accepted long after the end of election night, no requirement that signatures be matched, postmarks fraudulently changed acording to one whistleblower,  legally pernitted observers kept from getting close enough to observe what's actually going on, under the excuse of social distancing although arrangbement s could have been made to put up plexiglass barriers and weren't.  Large numbers of  boxes of ballots to be counted delivered well  after election day to a number of polling places at 4 in the morning.  ALL in Democratic states run by Democratic governors.  Republican states were somehow able to get their ballots counted on election night, but not the Democrats.  In many precincts where Trump had a clear lead on election night, vote counting suddenly stopped and some time later all these extra ballots started being "found," every last one of them without exception marked for Biden, and in numbers that couldn't have been better calculated to overthrow Trump's earlier lead.  And that's not even to mention the fraudulent suppression of conservative opinion by Big Tech social media.

All circumstantial evidence of course, and when the Trump team started with the lawsuits we got loud objections to such supposedly unjustified conspiracy thinking for which there was "no evidence."  Al Gore got 37 days to have recounts done in Florida in 2000 without Bush interfering, declaring victory on the basis of the first count, got four different recounts and only then was Bush declared the winner.  But not this time.  Biden has declared victory, complaining about Trump's insistence on recounts and fraud checks, Biden supporters have even done victory dancing in the streets,  and Biden is acting like he's the President while these efforts to check the validity of the election are barely underway.  And this time it's not just one state but many states that are being checked.  

All circumstantial so far, yes it is, but there's an awful lot of circumstantial smoke here for there to be no fire.   And now I'm hearing about the possibility of some truly meaty evidence of large-scale fraud that may make a big difference very soon.  This is the testimony of Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney about a computer program used in many precincts that changes votes from one candidate to another.  This is the Hammer program which McInerney says was altered by a program called Scorecard invented by a Dennis Montgomery from a defense surveillance program to a vote switching program that is designed to flip something like 3% of the vote from Trump to Biden.   Montgomery's story is told here (and you may have to pick your jaw up off the floor after hearing about the level of corruption reported on here):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEkKNNXa9to     I heard McInerney interviewed by Larry Elder on his program at 5 PDT  this Tuesday, and here's Steve Bannon interview of McInerney done before the election:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYpCzWKkSy8

Here's another pre-election  interview of McInerney about the Hammer/Scorecard program:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYpVvjh_TMA

Until all this started coming out, despite the huge turnout for Trump, and despite knowledge of fraud committed in other elections by Democrats, and despite plenty of suspicion about this one,  I was willing to think well maybe angry Leftists did manage to get out the vote in enough numbers to pull off a legitimate win.  

Now I'm well beyond such a naive thought.  It may still be possible that the numbers will add up for Biden despite all the fraud, but while I say it's possible I really doubt it.   I just hope it's possible to get a fair and accurate reassessment of what really went on.

Chris Pinto radio show anticipating the election

 One of my favorites, Chris Pinto, who just put out a new documentary I must see, the true Christian History of America, did a radio show just before the election that I didn't get to until now.   http://www.noiseofthunderradio.com/show-downloads/

It's an hour long special, twice the usual length of his radio shows.  He gives his opinion that the only way Biden could win is through fraud, which may very well be what we are seeing right now, whether there is any way to prove it or not.  It won't be for lack of trying if not, considering all the lawsuits being filed.  I put a link in the previous post to lawyer Sydney Powell's discussion of the evidence.

Although it's about the election he spends a lot of time on the threat of Islam, one of the dangers of having a leftist government, amply demonstrated by Obama.  Recent beheadings in France make Islamic motivation clear.  The crazy thing, I'm saying this here, is that so many people ignore the stated aims of Islam to take over the world for Allah.  I think I must have quoted somewhere in this blog the statements to that effect from many Islamic leaders in the book by Ramon Bennett, Philistine.  If I find my post on it I'll put the link here.  

Pinto points out that the Islamic (Sharia) law that even private speech against Islam is to be punished is like the Inquisiion which punished "heresy" even when expressed in private.  According to Pinto, the right of freedom of speech came out of the Protestant Reformation, one of the concepts that is often wrongly imputed to the Enlightenment instead.   Opposition to the tyranny of the Roman Church in Europe was the inspiration for much of the Constitution and American law, and that was the project of the Reformation..  His new documentary about the true Christian heritage of America includes this sort of observation gleaned from his research.

And since a revival of the Inquisition is what I've said I expect to be a big part of the Tribulation period of the last days, Islam's growing influence in the West is right on schedule for that event that feels like it's right on the horizon.  Pinto has said at other times that he thinks the move to bring Muslims into the West, ostensibly out of compassion, is most likely because they would prosecute the Roman Catholic Inquisition against Protestants when they get strong enough, which would also fit nicely with the Marxist agenda which is already poised for global dominance.   

He also argues with prominent pastor John Piper's refusal to vote for Trump which means not voting at all, and wonders how many Christians would be influcenced by Piper.   I don't think he did a very clear job of answering him though.

HCQ the cure that is ignored for greed and power. The Zelenko Protocol for its use.

Finally getting some informatoin about Dr. Zelenko, the first name i'd heard as having had great success treating COVID with HCQ.  Way back at the beginning, early March I think.  But I didn't get to know anything about him until recently.   Here's a really good interview with him.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhLD1P5nH30&feature=youtu.be

Then there is a long paper titled The Zelenko Protocol which links to lists of documents by Zelenko and others on the use of hydrxychloroquine with COVID patients, and where at the top of the page you are directed to click on a link to find out his recommended treatment for COVID for high-risk, and low-risk patients and another link that tells you his recommended treatment for preventing COVID, which includes using Quercetin< Zinc and Vitamin C for low-risk people.. This alternative combination is also recommended to be used in larger doses for high-risk patients when HCQ is not available.

https://faculty.utrgv.edu/eleftherios.gkioulekas/zelenko/index.html

Zelenko Covid-19 Prophylaxis Protocol Twitter: @zev_dr 

Prophylaxis is an action taken to prevent or protect against a specified disease. Greek in origin, from the word "phylax", meaning "to guard" and "watching."

 Low Risk Patients 

Young healthy people do not need prophylaxis against Covid 19. In young and healthy people, this infection causes mild cold-like symptoms. It is advantageous for these patients to be exposed to Covid19, build up their antibodies and have their immune system clear the virus. This will facilitate the development of herd immunity and help prevent future Covid-19 pandemics.  However, if these patients desire prophylaxis against Covid-19, then they should take the protocol noted below. 

Moderate Risk Patients 

Patients from this category are healthy but have high viral-load exposure. This group includes medical personnel, caregivers of high-risk patients, people who use public transportation or may otherwise be exposed, first responders and other essential personnel who are crucial to the continued functioning of society. These patients should be encouraged to take prophylaxis against Covid-19 in accordance with the protocol noted below. 

High Risk Patients 

Patients are considered high risk if they are over the age of 60, or if they are younger than 60 but they have comorbidities, that is, they have other health conditions that put them at risk. These patients have between a 5 to 10% mortality rate if they are infected with Covid-19. These patients should be strongly encouraged to take prophylaxis against Covid-19 in accordance with the protocol noted below. 

Protocol for Low and Moderate Risk Patients: 

Elemental Zinc 25mg one a day1 Vitamin C 1000mg once a day2 Quercetin 500mg (OTC) once a day 

If Quercetin is unavailable, then use Epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG) 400mg (OTC) once a day 3 Protocol for High Risk Patients: Elemental Zinc 25mg one a day Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ4 ) 200mg once a day for 5 days, then once a week If HCQ is unavailable then use Low and Moderate risk protocol.

 The treatment protocol once a person actually has COVID is at a separate link. Mostly a higher dose of the same things with additional treatments as needed. https://faculty.utrgv.edu/eleftherios.gkioulekas/zelenko/Zelenko-memo-August-protocol.pdf

So frustrating to know about this treatment that could have been savintg lives all along and have no way to do anything with the information.  It's nice to know there are doctors out there who use it and are in a position to do someting, and yet they can't get a hearing either.  Even Zelenko says he is often unable to to get hold of HCQ. 

Every time I hear the news reports on new cases of COVID and the death count going up I want to run screaming in the streets about the homicidal political corruption going on.  It's going to continue to be the case that a minuscule percentage of cases will actually die but NOBODY should have to die.  

Why isn't there a big uprising about THIS?  Mobs are destroying parts of cities for a big fat lie but nobody is demonstrating against the suppression of a drug that could save people.

Lately I have the feeling I am dying.  Just don't feel well.  Had it before though and didn't die.  Maybe just depressed.  Won't know until I know.  I like this particular health guru, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who has a very radical approach to diet for preventing disease that is hard to follow but convincingly based on studies so that I wish I had the energy to follow it.  Or the money to spend a few weeks at his retreat facility.  But neither is really possible right now and I wouldn't really mind dying.  Not too happy about the idea of pain of course, and I really don't want to die of COVID so I'm going to do my best to avoid that with the zinc-quercetin combo since HCQ isn't available that I know of.  In a way I'd be very happy to die now.   I'm unable to do anything about the problems I write about here, might as well go where I'll be a lot happier.