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"You farking idiot."

There won't be any of there articles published in a the standard peer reviewed journals... not because of lack of trying, but rather because of the overt bias of these journals against creationist arguments (one of the challenges of serious creationist researchers). However there would likely be material in the technical journal called TJ which is a forum for creationist scientists to publish their papers in a peer reviewed journal, it is published by Answers In Genesis. Without doing an exhaustive search I can refer you to http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback /negative_10september2001.asp, which is not a peer reviewed article, but it does provide a good starting point. Nonetheless I believe an increase in specified complexity is a fairly obvious concept.

The problem is, it must be possible to find evidence that refutes a theory.

It is difficult to find evidence to completely refute a theory about something that happened in the past (including evolution and creation theories), and some zealots on both sides of the argument will hold on to their theories regardless of what evidence is shown to them, however I believe modern creationist scientist do themselves justice in making creation a science and not a matter of faith... they do struggle with and attempt to answer critics in regards to issues such as distant starlight (refer Dr Russell Humphreys - Starlight and Time for example); and much research in the creationist area has provided answers to questions that to this day remain unanswered when viewed in an evolutionary framework - for example the proliferation of comets in a supposedly old solar ssytem; appeals to a Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud are as much a fudge as are the explanations from creationists that claim that distant startlight was created en-route. Oort Clouds were given up on long ago and evidence is not showing the expected number of Trans-Newtonian Objects to support the theory of a Kuiper Belt. In fact that is what this /. article is about - we've believed that there is dark matter for a while because as a 'fudge' it helps us explain things... physicists hold on to and use the theory because it assists them understand things, but one day they may realise that one of their assumptions need to be changed in order to move forward.

It just can't be considered a scientific theory as it is completely untestable.

The same could be said of evolution. We've got to remember to separate observable science from historical science. We can formulate a theory about gravity and test it because it is observable and testable now... however theories about the past (creation or evolution) are not testable in the same matter... instead we formulate theories and interpret the evidence in light of these theories (the facts do not speak for themselves when looking at fossils) and see how our theories stack up...

Consider the fossils for example... the creationist would ask what you'd expect to find after a world-wide catastrophe like a flood that reformed the entire earths surface... you would expect to find millions of dead things, buried in rock laid down by water all over the earth... and that's exactly what we do find... laid down in the same order that creationists would predict. Meanwhile evolutionists in their attempt to discredit creationists ignore fossils in sedimentary rock on the top of Everest and continue to claim that Mars - a planet that is dry - suffered a global flood while the earth didn't - that's putting your head in the sand.

Post-scarcity? What energy source that isn't scarce would such economies use?

Likewise, I gave up on SimEarth after a half hour because I couldn't figure out how to replay the first six days of how it really happened.

This post was labelled a troll, before the modertator presumably ran out of mod points.
Reposting...
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If it's a choice between your survival or mine, take a wild guess where you rank. ...
Now try again.

Oh no, the "youre-wrong-because-im-really-selfish" argument again.

I thank God that my survival is *not* in your hands. It's in God's. And he's chosen to put an effective government in charge for my protection. Not you.

So, no... I won't "try again". You need to try again though.

From the article linked:
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Naomi Wolf, the high-profile 32-year-old feminist author and Rhodes scholar, recently admitted that her morning sickness--and her seeing the baby inside moving on a scan--has helped her change her mind about abortion.

With her first baby due soon, Wolf said that she now rejects the abortion lobby's claim that a foetus isn't a human life but is merely a mass of tissue. ...

Your fiance is probably studying an outdated biology text based on Haeckel's work that was later proven fraudulent. Haeckel was to become "became one of Germany's major ideologists for racism, nationalism, and imperialism".

If it's a choice between your survival or mine, take a wild guess where you rank.

...
Now try again.

Oh no, the "youre-wrong-because-im-really-selfish" argument again.

I thank God that my survival is *not* in your hands. It's in God's. And he's chosen to put an effective government in charge for my protection. Not you.

So, no... I won't "try again". You need to try again though.

You were arguing that any measurements on strata aged less than the minimum for K/Ar dating method were useless in falsifying it.

I answered that, explaining why it was precisely the method we must use to falsify K/Ar dating. Now you come up with a reference that says K/Ar is no longer used, rather than defending it. Regardless, the 1974 article that this talkorigins discussion references is not the one to which I am alluding. This much more recent research (1996) includes a discussion of the role of xenocrysts contaminating the sample, giving more 40Ar, along with other contaminations such as laboratory. It is explained in detail here.

Are you now claiming that K/Ar is inaccurate, or are you still defending it (in conjunction with other methods, I assume)? The talkorigins.org reference states:

Morris's complaints are dated in that, for the most part, geologists no longer use the Potassium-Argon (K/Ar) dating technique as was practiced in 1974. Instead, K/Ar dating has been largely replaced by the related Argon 40-Argon 39 (40Ar/39Ar) dating technique. This change also solved other problems that Morris (1974) complains about in his discussion of the K/Ar dating technique.

So I'm confused as to what you are saying. Can you please restate your position regarding the accuracy of K/Ar dating? If you have a response to the discussion of xenocrysts in Austin's research, I am also eager to hear (the article I linked to).

You may find the latest RATE groups discoveries interesting also.

Since this is possibly/probably a genetic trait, it is plausible that humans once lived longer, but unfortunate events left us with a shorter lifespan. Ah, here I found more details.

I'm curious to know when exactly you think that these thousands of scientists are daily studying evolution - because I'm betting they're only studying those portions of evolutionary theory that also are a part of the creationist model.

Of course, there are examples of false evolutionary predictions that have had dangerous medical effects. Take for example the philosophy that humans and other creatures would have many vestigial organs. That has turned out to be ~0. And there's the example of back treatment based on the false assumption that our ancestors walked like apes. That cause more problems until a creationist started treating patients on the assumption that the back is designed perfectly as it is. Read more here.

My recommendation is that you explore the whole of that theory of evolution that creationists reject, and see whether the pieces really do fit together.

Bear in mind, if you don't understand how a creationist can accept natural selection (which is a part of the creationist model) and still consider themselves sane/credible, then you have a lot to learn about our position. As I've said many times, I am yet to find an evolutionist who understands our position. And to me, that speaks volumes of people who are so quick to condemn something they haven't even taken the time to understand and evaluate.

Newton was a devout Christian and a creationist. That doesn't play well in the modern scientific community, where atheism and agnosticism are the ruling ideologies. If Isaac Newton were applying for a university job today, he would be treated with disdain. From this biography:

He loved God and believed God's Word-- all of it. He wrote, 'I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily'. He also wrote, 'Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance'.

Scientific American: Again, it is a popular magazine, not a technical journal. The distinction between the two is straightforward: a technical journal is where scientists report their current findings and conclusions, representing the cutting edge of the field, provides an idea for future directions, and is written explicitly for those who are working in the field. A popular magazine provides a summary of a field and a summary of recent research, for an audience primarily of interested amateurs. Criticizing your use of a quote from Scientific American is appropriate because it has no impact: everything reported in the magazine has already been presented in technical journals. Meanwhile using Scientific American's endorsement of talkorigins' website is perfectly valid as Scientific American is a well thought of clearinghouse of mainstream scientific ideas written for a broad audience comprised largely of interested amateurs. Likewise, talkorigins is a well regarded source of information about evolution and related fields with a similar audience. Now besides your quote being from Scientific American, it represents a summation for an interested amateur of what was going on in the field in the 1970's: the field has moved on since. For instance, in the early 80's Thomas Cech demonstrated that some RNAs can actually catalyze reactions--that is, it is possible that RNA could be both a carrier of genetic information and an enzyme. Was all the old work dumped? No but Cech's finding certainly had impact on new work, as around the same time the "RNA World" hypothesis was born.. For your source to be ignorant of a discovery of this magnitude is astounding.

Francis Hitching: You didn't even skim his book, did you? I did. Besides (again) being only a writer on the paranormal, Hitching has a poor grasp of the subject and his book is mostly a (poor) attempt at bridging the gap between evolution and creationism. Since you stubbornly refuse to read anything on talkorigins, perhaps you would read what the creationists at Answers in Genesis have to say: "Its main interest to creation scientists is its broad critique of the accepted processes of evolution from one who has found the foundation of his belief in evolution to be crumbling in parts, and at times even non-existent. [new paragraph] Perhaps many will have difficulty with Hitching's credentials. He is a populariser [sic] of 'unexplained phenomena' - yet his writing is mostly clear, and very readable. Although his journalistic style can be frustratingly general or occasionally misleading, he is largely an excellent educator and expounds his points well." So in addition to not being a champion of evolution and being endorsed by AiG, they note that Hitching has no real scientific standing. Hitching is only well-regarded by creationists.

Fred Hoyle: Let's illustrate this with another personal example. I'm a biochemist studying a particular enzyme. I want to inhibit this enzyme, and so when I was looking at its catalytic site I began drawing out various potential inhibitors. Naturally, I wondered how I could make them, but while I have some familiarity with organic chemistry and that field is closely related to my own, I am no expert in it. So I get help from an organic chemist so I can obtain my inhibitors. Note how much closer biochemistry and organic chemistry are than astrophysics and biochemistry. Fred Hoyle was only showing off the limits of his knowledge (and his hubris) when he was pontificating on the probabilities of a particular protein existing.

Illustrating further, Hoyle ignored the fact that a great many different proteins are capable of performing the same function. Taking yet another example from personal experience, the enzyme that I work on is 700 amino acids long. There are other examples of this protein found in other organisms, varying slightly in length and in composition--the sequences may be as little as 5

molecules-to-man evolution - the 150-year orthodoxy of fundamentalist materialism

(It's actually a lot older than 150 years. The idea is at least as old as Mayan religion, but Charles Darwin helped to revive it in the mid 1800s by telling fanciful tales as though they might be true.)

Science is not a religion, but it has been hijacked by a religion -- materialists who [mis]define the accepted realm and scope of "real" science and wield it to propagate their atheist/humanist worldview. It exists mostly as a heterodoxy of Biblical orthodoxy, in the hopes that humanists can have a similar bedrock foundation to provide legitimacy to atheism and licentiousness.

There is an Inquisition of sorts going on. Convert, conform, assimilate to the "scientific" orthodoxy, or be persecuted.

Bible "proofs" like the supposed prediction of the formation of Israel in 1948 are just as bogus as any of the Nostradamus prediction proofs.

this link describes what they seem to be referring to.

Does the Bible say pi equals 3.0?

Or would you rather stop link posting, and we look at one example in detail ourselves, rather than hoping on the most recent rebuttal of others?

First, I said *virtually*. Also, most of those few scientists who disagree are not working in the fields related to evolution - they are speaking outside of their expertise. Or, to quote, "Take me out of my field of study and I'm just another guy sitting on a barstool".

First of all, though the strict theory of evolution is biological only, it also relies on a number of assumptions in other fields without which it would be impossible. For example, we cannot discuss the creation of a palace on a mountain if the mountain itself does not exist. You cannot avoid that - so the questions of geology and other fields in relation to evolution are vitally important.

Secondly, there are a number of creation biologists. But I know your response - this list is small. I know a Christian biologist who has never even thought about creationism. He just accepted evolution because that is what he was taught. I am betting that most biologists today are evolutionists purely because that is what they have been told - and I'm betting that most of them have never considered creation or looked into it. So to me, the numbers of biologists is largely irrelevant. The fact is, there are some creation biologists, and that is significant.

Doing what is right? Give me a break! I would say refuting creationist lies and falsehoods is doing right.

Call a spade a spade. I'm happy for you to refute creationist lies and falsehoods. But I doubt that you are informed enough to recognise them. Do you want to look at any specific area in detail with me and find out who is right? I asked you a question: have you bothered to look past the propaganda of talkorigins and mainstream media to consider whether creationism is right? Or have you always approached it from the angle of "these poor misguided religious zealots, why can't they see the truth?" - or whatever stance it is you take.

And as far as bullying goes, I would say that some creationists attitudes that Christians who accept that the theory of evolution is correct are not real Christians and will burn in hell is far worse than anything that the T.O regulars have done.

We are the Church of God, Creator of the Heavens and the Earth. He has saved us, and called us to judge each other. You as an outsider cannot tell us how we should run our affairs. We listen to Him alone, and He requires us to guard carefully that which He gave us. I personally do not condemn evolutionist christians as unsaved. I do chastise Christians who believe evolution - I give them the benefit of the doubt, that they have not considered what they believe. But once having understood what is truly at stake in the creation evolution controversy, they must ultimately make a choice.

I assume it is due to the type of equipment or proceedure that they use. But to abuse that like Austin did raises ethics questions on his part - that is the *real* root question.

Be careful what you assume. This is *exactly* the problem I'm talking about. You talk about how Austin acted deceitfully, or unethically, but you don't even know why they can't date less than 2Ma!! And the answer to that question demonstrates beyond doubt that Austin acted with integrity, and his point was affirmed and strengthened. Do you care why? In fact, this experiment is one of the simplest demonstrations of the complete bankruptcy of evolution, yet so many fail to see. I wonder if thats because one needs a blind attitude in orde

I challenge you to present any SCIENTIFIC evidence whatsoever that these facts are wrong, misguided, overstated, misrepresented, or otherwise incorrect. Really, I am waiting.

Bleh, I had hoped to avoid getting this far into this topic; I am NOT a scientist, nor did I intend to imply that I was (so at least I succeeded in that part). I merely wanted to raise the issue of unpopular ideas not being accepted, regardless of merit.

Really, I am waiting. I will personally counter any such evidence you can present.

If you're really interested, you could browse here and here; a good start might be this and this.

but if you donate the book to me, I will read it and personally tear it apart and hunt down the author to argue with him about it.

I don't have a copy of it, and I'm currently unemployed so trying to avoid spending money unnecessarily. I'll think about it though, if you're serious. By the way, the book is a compilation of essays by 50 different people; you'd have plenty of tracking down to do.

You make unscientific, unqualified, speculative statements about the time-scale of sediment formation.

Unfortunately while sources were given, I don't remember them, and don't have references - as I said, I'm not a scientist; I don't actually know what I'm talking about. Which doesn't necessarily make me wrong, but makes me a useless debater.

Leave the science to the scientists,

Doing that as much as I can. Take a look at the sites I linked to.

I challenge you to present any SCIENTIFIC evidence whatsoever that these facts are wrong, misguided, overstated, misrepresented, or otherwise incorrect. Really, I am waiting.

Bleh, I had hoped to avoid getting this far into this topic; I am NOT a scientist, nor did I intend to imply that I was (so at least I succeeded in that part). I merely wanted to raise the issue of unpopular ideas not being accepted, regardless of merit.

Really, I am waiting. I will personally counter any such evidence you can present.

If you're really interested, you could browse here and here; a good start might be this and this.

but if you donate the book to me, I will read it and personally tear it apart and hunt down the author to argue with him about it.

I don't have a copy of it, and I'm currently unemployed so trying to avoid spending money unnecessarily. I'll think about it though, if you're serious. By the way, the book is a compilation of essays by 50 different people; you'd have plenty of tracking down to do.

You make unscientific, unqualified, speculative statements about the time-scale of sediment formation.

Unfortunately while sources were given, I don't remember them, and don't have references - as I said, I'm not a scientist; I don't actually know what I'm talking about. Which doesn't necessarily make me wrong, but makes me a useless debater.

Leave the science to the scientists,

Doing that as much as I can. Take a look at the sites I linked to.

This is just more of the system protecting the sytem.

Excellent point. New scientific ideas cannot gain acceptance, because they conflict with established scientific beliefs. Do you really think if someone found solid scientific evidence that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, that it would be accepted in the scientific community? Hell no. Anything less than 4 billion and you're a lunatic. That's one reason why information about creation science is generally either a bit silly or unashamedly religious - the mainstream scientific community will never accept it anyway, so why bother presenting it in a way they could accept if they were willing? Bleh.

Leviticus 21:16-21 -- This is about the qualifications for priests in ancient Israel. Just as the animals given for sacrifice had to be without physical blemish, a priest handling the animals would also have to be without physical blemish. It is all symbolic. In contrast, the Messiah brought in the era of personal priesthood. Every believer is to be a priest. Don't ask me to explain the beliefs or practices particular to Roman Catholicism.

Exodus 4:11 -- I don't understand your objection with this text. Read the context.

Deuteronomy 14:7 -- I'll quote from this page:

[T]he Hebrew phrase for âchew the cudâ(TM) simply means âraising up what has been swallowedâ(TM). Coneys and rabbits go through such similar motions to ruminants that Linnaeus, the father of modern classification (and a creationist), at first classified them as ruminants. Also, rabbits and hares practise refection, which is essentially the same principle as rumination, and does indeed âraise up what has been swallowedâ(TM). The food goes right through the rabbit and is passed out as a special type of dropping. These are re-eaten, and can now nourish the rabbit as they have already been partly digested.

Isaiah 13:10 -- Yet again, see the context. This is prophecy to occur near the time of the second coming of Messiah.

Genesis 19:8 -- Well, it seemed that it was going to be either his daughters or the angels. Lot had a terrible set of options. Again, if you read the context, you'll see that Lot did not actually give his daughters over to the Sodomites. Even if he had, it wouldn't necessarily mean that God looked favorably on it.

Might I suggest a book? How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940).

1. Understand the book - What is the author saying?
2. Interpret the book - What does the author mean?
3. Evaluate the book - Is the author right or wrong?

Leviticus 21:16-21 -- This is about the qualifications for priests in ancient Israel. Just as the animals given for sacrifice had to be without physical blemish, a priest handling the animals would also have to be without physical blemish. It is all symbolic. In contrast, the Messiah brought in the era of personal priesthood. Every believer is to be a priest. Don't ask me to explain the beliefs or practices particular to Roman Catholicism.

Exodus 4:11 -- I don't understand your objection with this text. Read the context.

Deuteronomy 14:7 -- I'll quote from this page:

[T]he Hebrew phrase for âchew the cudâ(TM) simply means âraising up what has been swallowedâ(TM). Coneys and rabbits go through such similar motions to ruminants that Linnaeus, the father of modern classification (and a creationist), at first classified them as ruminants. Also, rabbits and hares practise refection, which is essentially the same principle as rumination, and does indeed âraise up what has been swallowedâ(TM). The food goes right through the rabbit and is passed out as a special type of dropping. These are re-eaten, and can now nourish the rabbit as they have already been partly digested.

Isaiah 13:10 -- Yet again, see the context. This is prophecy to occur near the time of the second coming of Messiah.

Genesis 19:8 -- Well, it seemed that it was going to be either his daughters or the angels. Lot had a terrible set of options. Again, if you read the context, you'll see that Lot did not actually give his daughters over to the Sodomites. Even if he had, it wouldn't necessarily mean that God looked favorably on it.

Might I suggest a book? How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940).

1. Understand the book - What is the author saying?
2. Interpret the book - What does the author mean?
3. Evaluate the book - Is the author right or wrong?

But specifically, in reference to your listing of Piltdown, Nebraska man, and Java man, read the extensive talk.origins FAQs on these very items: (emphasis added by me)

• Nebraska man: "as creationists tell the story, evolutionists used one tooth to build an entire species of primitive man... before further excavations revealed the tooth to belong to a peccary... The true story is much more complex... The imaginative drawing of Nebraska Man to which creationists invariably refer... was done for a British popular magazine... ...Most other scientists were skeptical even of the modest claim that the Hesperopithecus tooth belonged to a primate... It is simply not true that Nebraska Man was widely accepted as an ape-man, or even as an ape, by scientists, and its effect upon the scientific thinking of the time was negligible."
• Java man: "Many creationists have claimed that Java Man, discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1893, was "bad science". Gish (1985) says that Dubois found two human skulls at nearby Wadjak at the same level and had kept them secret; that Dubois later decided Java Man was a giant gibbon; and that the bones do not come from the same individual. Most people would find Gish's meaning of "nearby" surprising: the Wadjak skulls were found 65 miles (104 km) of mountainous countryside away from Java Man. Similarly for "at the same level": the Wadjak skulls were found in cave deposits in the mountains, while Java Man was found in river deposits in a flood plain (Fezer 1993).

  Nor is it true, as is often claimed, that Dubois kept the existence of the Wadjak skulls secret because knowledge of them would have discredited Java Man. Dubois briefly reported the Wadjak skulls in three separate publications in 1890 and 1892. Despite being corrected on this in a debate in 1982 and in print (Brace 1986), Gish has continued to make this claim, even stating, despite not having apparently read Dubois' reports, that they did not mention the Wadjak skulls (Fezer 1993)."

• Piltdown: It took *less* than 50 years and suspicions that they were a hoax existed by 1914. Even so, Piltdown represents a bad episode in science: "...the hoax points to common and dangerous faults. The hoax succeeded in large part because of the slipshod nature of the testing applied to it; careful examination using the methods available at the time would have immediately revealed the hoax."

  In the 90 years since then have we developed better and more rigorous testing methods? Yes. But even during those 40 years it took for the full hoax to be revealed, faults with Piltdown were found, long before testing showed that they were recent skulls: "...It should be remembered that, at the time of Piltdown finds, there were very few early hominid fossils; Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens were clearly fairly late. It was expected that there was a "missing link" between ape and man ... Piltdown man had the expected mix of features, which lent it plausibility as a human precursor.

  This plausibility did not hold up. During the next two decades there were a number of finds of ancient hominids and near hominids, e.g. Dart's discovery of Australopith

The difference is that when Science learns that it's wrong, it admits it and moves on to try to learn more about the universe.

Which is why it took over fifty years to recognize Piltdown was a fraud? Or why an extinct pig's tooth was ballooned into an entire human population before exposed as wrong? Or why DuBois hid the skulls that exposed his "Java man" to be bogus for decades beneath the floorboards in his house? Science is no more honorable than the individuals in it, and there are shysters and hucksters in all branches of humanity. Sadly, that means there are frauds in science, and will be for as long as there are people in the field.

When the Bible is shown to be wrong, people hold to it doggedly, making excuse after excuse until they're left in exile on the lunatic fringe defending the utterly laughable (Fundamentalists), or they must dilute the "facts" in the Bible so much that what they're left with is practically useless as a religious text describing an almighty Creator(Catholics).

I thank you for making a distinction between Christians and Roman Catholics, that discernment is rare. However you are incorrect that fundamentalists are on the lunatic fringe. There are many respected scientists in the mainstream who are fundamentalists. Many have to hide that however due to persecution and other attitudes of closed-minded individuals.

The rest of your claims are just plain wrong:

No, a rabbit does not chew its cud.

Rabbits do chew their cud, in that they eat again what has passed through their system, by practicing refection. They do eat their food again. Note the claim was not that they have multichambered stomachs, merely that they eat again what they have already eaten. I don't know about you, but a caprophagic animal is a pretty good definition of an unclean animal that I would certainly not find appealing to consume.

Jesus lies quite egregiously to try to save his own skin in the Bible when questioned by the Pharisies.

Accusations such as this without detail are not worth answering. Provide detail and you will be answered.

The Earth is not flat with four corners.

Who said it was flat with four corners? That's your misinterpretation, ignoring literary constructions. The phrase "to the corners of the earth" is still in use today as an expression.

No evidence exists for a worldwide flood between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, and even less evidence exists that we and all land/air animals came from creatures that rode an ark during that time

Mitochondrial Eve has been shown in secular literature (ever heard of the magazine "Science") to have lived ~6000 years ago. Evidence of the flood here.

The Egyptians, who were meticulous record keepers, made no mention of massive Jewish slave use that was ripped away from them by the coming of Moses. Further, if the Nile had been turned to blood, it would have caused untold destruction upon the entire region that depended upon it for their very survival. We would have learned about it by now, most likely.

Of course the Egyptians removed records of the slave Hebrew population, they are well documented revisionists. Note they don't mention losing battles either; no wonder they wiped out references to the crushing defeat they were handed. Same with the Nile, that large a defeat they would wipe out. And it was not blood for ages as you seem to imply.

Jesus describes his "kingdom" in some detail then goes on to say how not even all of his Apostles would be dead by the time he returned to his glory for all to see... I think it's safe to say that prophecy was full of crap.

However, what could explain it is the habit for humans to commit genocide at times, and also to breed within the family. These have both occurred in large scales in the past. Families would stick together very strongly (tens, hundreds, thousands of people). They would sometimes wipe out entire family lines in a war. They would marry as exclusively as possible within families. Along with disease, etc, that cuts a population down. I'd see that as a better creationist explanation.

On a related note, mitochondrial DNA seems to indicate that our common mother (mitochondrial eve) existed ~6000 years ago, less than the 70,000 years proposed here. It was originally thought that mitochondrial eve existed ~200-250,000 years ago. However, new research in 1997 (off memory) indicated that mutations in mtDNA occurred far more rapidly than assumed (assumptions were based on evolutionary expectations for mitochondrial eve). This resulted in the new date. Take note: I've had many evolutionists come back and quote the original article saying "See! It says 200,000 years, not the 6,000 creationists quote. Just another example of creationist lies". However, they failed to look at the top of the article which was dated (Again, off memory) 1996, a year before the new research was discovered. I thought I'd mention that to save potential embarrasment.

A reference can be found here, though I used to refer to the article on creationscience.com - the author is slow to update (including the now outdated moon-dust argument) so I am putting less focus on that resource.

More articles can be found here.

Hope this helps.

However, what could explain it is the habit for humans to commit genocide at times, and also to breed within the family. These have both occurred in large scales in the past. Families would stick together very strongly (tens, hundreds, thousands of people). They would sometimes wipe out entire family lines in a war. They would marry as exclusively as possible within families. Along with disease, etc, that cuts a population down. I'd see that as a better creationist explanation.

On a related note, mitochondrial DNA seems to indicate that our common mother (mitochondrial eve) existed ~6000 years ago, less than the 70,000 years proposed here. It was originally thought that mitochondrial eve existed ~200-250,000 years ago. However, new research in 1997 (off memory) indicated that mutations in mtDNA occurred far more rapidly than assumed (assumptions were based on evolutionary expectations for mitochondrial eve). This resulted in the new date. Take note: I've had many evolutionists come back and quote the original article saying "See! It says 200,000 years, not the 6,000 creationists quote. Just another example of creationist lies". However, they failed to look at the top of the article which was dated (Again, off memory) 1996, a year before the new research was discovered. I thought I'd mention that to save potential embarrasment.

A reference can be found here, though I used to refer to the article on creationscience.com - the author is slow to update (including the now outdated moon-dust argument) so I am putting less focus on that resource.

More articles can be found here.

Hope this helps.

We certainly don't claim that speciation is impossible. In fact, our predictions based on our model fit the data much more accurately. Here is a summary, but if you find it confusing I'll be happy to clarify. Basically, creationists expect speciation as a process of sorting already existing information.

I'm really not sure of the creationists you encounter, but you will find the major creationist organisations like AiG and ICR do not reject speciation or natural selection, but embrace them as observed processes.

Have you read all of this?

How does selecting certain members of species over other create new species?

More on the topic.

I mean well educated ones like this. Not someone who wants attention.

Adding ingredients is relative, even if it is only one new one.

You cannot add enough time to make spontaneous generation work. The closest anyone has come is (in their head only) adding an infinitude of extra universes to reality in the (forlorn) hope that if you toss a coin often enough, you'll come up with 10^umptysquillion heads in a row. Not only are those extra universes strictly an article of faith, but the way odds work the universe we would find ourselves in under those circumstances is extremely unlikely to be anything like as favourable to life as the one we're in. Arguments about "we're here because we're here" are just plain dumb - and the tautology they represent points once again to an article of faith.

go read this, take a look at the image it talks about, then have a little sit down and realize that this planet we're on (and all of your "intelligent designs") are more meaningless than one microscopic speck of silica in the entire ocean.

I realise that your nickname is "Cyclops", but aside from the fact that a perspective in which we are insignificant and intrinsically worthless is a useful one - it makes the value placed on each of us so much more meaningful - our planet is indeed special, since it's a cosmic hop, skip and jump from the centre of the universe (in a universe which you hold as an article of faith as having no centre).

Now I'm wondering why my comment above got modded offtopic and your's didn't. I guess it's a political thing: "I disagree (as an article of faith, not based on complete observations), so I'll blast him". Very SlashDot. (-:

PI in the Bible

"The Bible says pi = 3."

Does the Bible say pi equals 3.0?

Does the Bible Give a Wrong Value for Pi?

I see four major issues in the relevant Scripture:

1. We don't know the exact length of a cubit.
2. We aren't sure of the complete geometry of what was being measured.
3. The Scripture is giving measurements of real-world objects, not presenting a mathematical theorem. If the numbers seem wrong to us, we're not understanding what was being measured.
4. We don't know what kind of rounding, if any, was being used.

No no, not theoretical as in, they didn't exist: theoretical as in conceptually defined.
Look, we're splitting hairs here. OK, you think they're 'conceptually defined'. At the end of the day, can you just give me real reasons why a *starting population of two* does *not* fit this data? And please don't give me something like "but Y-Adam and m-Eve are millenia apart". You know well that, given experimental error in these techniques, the few millenia difference in the estimate of around 150,000 years (from the NY Times article) could well converge down to 0.0.

> The bottleneck itself ... it reflects a basic geometric necessity.
> there would still be a relatively _recent_ mEve,

Can you explain how a genetic bottleneck is a "geometric necessity"? After all, the NY Times article does state the m-Eve bottleneck occured when *all* the other women had only sons, while the Y-Adam bottleneck occured when *all* the other men only had all daughters, at some point in time. As the general population grows, I would think this would be a rarity, rather than a geometric necessity.

--If the amount of radioactivity increased dramatically due to the flood (as described in my earlier post), fossils created before the flood would look artificially "old" since post-flood fossils would have higher amounts of radio-carbon to begin with.---

An increase of such a level would have also irradiated life on Earth, including any Noah.

Yes that's right. It did. But perhaps you didn't get my point, which is:
The post-flood increase in radio carbon caused it to spike and eventually stablize at the levels we see today.
Its likely there was an initial spike in radiation levels right after the flood. This caused Noah's direct descendants to have higher mutation rates -- the distinct "1/3/rest-of-world-7" mutation pattern seen in the NYTimes article (that corresponds to the Biblical description of human ancestry.) Eventually though, the Radio-carbon levels would have subsided down to the (still *much* higher than pre-flood) levels we see today. IIRC, a paper I'd read (don't have a link handy) observed a similar effect among children born after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The Bible does note a vastly decreased human lifespan after the flood.

Note, I'm not saying radio-carbon dating is hocus-pocus. I'm saying the assumption evolutionists often make, that we can date simply everything since we know all there is to know about ancient concentrations of radio-carbon levels and they've been really smooth and constant -- now that's hocus pocus.

---Critics thrust back saying techniques like Radio-carbon dating give older ages....---

> So, I see. If we pick and choose whatever evidence ...
> radio-carbon dating is harly the only technique used for these various issues,
> and indeed it is not even the most important for determining key ages of the earth.

You go on to point me to isochron dating. However, you must be aware of widespread problems with radio dating in general?

A well-known example of a problem with isochron dating (taken from this article) occured when a prestigious lab dated recent samples as very old:

The samples were sent progressively in batches to Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Boston (USA), for whole-rock potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating ...
Geochron is a respected commercial laboratory, the K-Ar lab manager having a Ph.D. in K-Ar dating. No specific location or expected age information was supplied to the laboratory. However, the samples were described as probably young with very little argon ...
The 'ages' range from which were observed to have cooled from lavas 25-50 years ago.


---Ultimately I can't *prove* God to you without a doubt.---

> Why would you need to prove God to me? ...
> The existence of God is an indepedant question.

OK...Sorry, I'll narrow down my phrasing... It should have read:

"I can't prove the existence of the God whose works are described in the Bible..."

The Bible tells us of a God (named simply "I AM"), creating the earth and all life on it. For example, in the old testament, God says "I have made the earth and created man upon it" (Isa 45:12). And in the new testament, Jesus says "But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female" (Mark 10:6, talking in the context of divorce.) The Bible also lists the lifespans and lineages of personalities from Adam to Christ, tracing a chain used to calculate the Biblical age of the earth.

No no, not theoretical as in, they didn't exist: theoretical as in conceptually defined.
Look, we're splitting hairs here. OK, you think they're 'conceptually defined'. At the end of the day, can you just give me real reasons why a *starting population of two* does *not* fit this data? And please don't give me something like "but Y-Adam and m-Eve are millenia apart". You know well that, given experimental error in these techniques, the few millenia difference in the estimate of around 150,000 years (from the NY Times article) could well converge down to 0.0.

> The bottleneck itself ... it reflects a basic geometric necessity.
> there would still be a relatively _recent_ mEve,

Can you explain how a genetic bottleneck is a "geometric necessity"? After all, the NY Times article does state the m-Eve bottleneck occured when *all* the other women had only sons, while the Y-Adam bottleneck occured when *all* the other men only had all daughters, at some point in time. As the general population grows, I would think this would be a rarity, rather than a geometric necessity.

--If the amount of radioactivity increased dramatically due to the flood (as described in my earlier post), fossils created before the flood would look artificially "old" since post-flood fossils would have higher amounts of radio-carbon to begin with.---

An increase of such a level would have also irradiated life on Earth, including any Noah.

Yes that's right. It did. But perhaps you didn't get my point, which is:
The post-flood increase in radio carbon caused it to spike and eventually stablize at the levels we see today.
Its likely there was an initial spike in radiation levels right after the flood. This caused Noah's direct descendants to have higher mutation rates -- the distinct "1/3/rest-of-world-7" mutation pattern seen in the NYTimes article (that corresponds to the Biblical description of human ancestry.) Eventually though, the Radio-carbon levels would have subsided down to the (still *much* higher than pre-flood) levels we see today. IIRC, a paper I'd read (don't have a link handy) observed a similar effect among children born after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The Bible does note a vastly decreased human lifespan after the flood.

Note, I'm not saying radio-carbon dating is hocus-pocus. I'm saying the assumption evolutionists often make, that we can date simply everything since we know all there is to know about ancient concentrations of radio-carbon levels and they've been really smooth and constant -- now that's hocus pocus.

---Critics thrust back saying techniques like Radio-carbon dating give older ages....---

> So, I see. If we pick and choose whatever evidence ...
> radio-carbon dating is harly the only technique used for these various issues,
> and indeed it is not even the most important for determining key ages of the earth.

You go on to point me to isochron dating. However, you must be aware of widespread problems with radio dating in general?

A well-known example of a problem with isochron dating (taken from this article) occured when a prestigious lab dated recent samples as very old:

The samples were sent progressively in batches to Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Boston (USA), for whole-rock potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating ...
Geochron is a respected commercial laboratory, the K-Ar lab manager having a Ph.D. in K-Ar dating. No specific location or expected age information was supplied to the laboratory. However, the samples were described as probably young with very little argon ...
The 'ages' range from which were observed to have cooled from lavas 25-50 years ago.


---Ultimately I can't *prove* God to you without a doubt.---

> Why would you need to prove God to me? ...
> The existence of God is an indepedant question.

OK...Sorry, I'll narrow down my phrasing... It should have read:

"I can't prove the existence of the God whose works are described in the Bible..."

The Bible tells us of a God (named simply "I AM"), creating the earth and all life on it. For example, in the old testament, God says "I have made the earth and created man upon it" (Isa 45:12). And in the new testament, Jesus says "But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female" (Mark 10:6, talking in the context of divorce.) The Bible also lists the lifespans and lineages of personalities from Adam to Christ, tracing a chain used to calculate the Biblical age of the earth.

> Duh, didn't I say you were going to do this.

That sarcasm would be biting, except I'd specificially asked for 5,500+ rings in a *single* trunk. You answered with a *multi-trunk* ring matching, plus a side-comment about me not believing it.

To summarize:
Me: I'd like an A please.
You: That's easy. Here - take a B. But something tells me you won't be convinced!
Me: That's right. I am not convinced. I'd asked for an A, not a B!
You: Duh, didn't I say you were going to do this.


> I counter your single PhD Warwick with 200 PhD Steves! I win!

Science isn't a democracy. If there is a repeatable observation, then the theory-of-the-day had better account for it, or be subject to change.

> Seeing as creationists have been calling the botanists stupid since 1970

Hyuk! That makes for a funny picture -- do you think Dr. Batten stands in front of his mirror each morning, calling himself bad names?

If you're interested, I just responded to another thread from my first post.

> Really that easy?
> Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily.

I'm not convinced because I asked for (see emphasis):...

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine [sonic.net], or this one: a 4844-ring pine [sonic.net] cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

But you gave me this: (see emphasis)

Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence ...

I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees. From this article:

Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings. ...

The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl,3 the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was 're-measured' when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned ...

The author of this article should know... he's a tree physiologist. I think multiple rings in a year for some trees and not others, would throw a spanner into ring matching, no?

So, due to the fact multiple rings *can* occur in one year (but it's rare) I asked for 5,500+ rings rather than 5,000. But hey... 5,500+ rings, even with multiple rings, in a single trunk shouldn't be a probem, eh? I mean there really isn't a "reason" for a 5,000 year limit is there? For one thing, the last ice-age supposedly ended 10,000 years ago. For another, we're already upto at 4,700 rings ... no 4,800! ... almost there... just 700 rings left to go.


> > ...consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?

Actually, they do. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people who awarded the author his Ph.D.

> Really that easy?
> Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily.

I'm not convinced because I asked for (see emphasis):...

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine [sonic.net], or this one: a 4844-ring pine [sonic.net] cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

But you gave me this: (see emphasis)

Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence ...

I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees. From this article:

Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings. ...

The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl,3 the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was 're-measured' when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned ...

The author of this article should know... he's a tree physiologist. I think multiple rings in a year for some trees and not others, would throw a spanner into ring matching, no?

So, due to the fact multiple rings *can* occur in one year (but it's rare) I asked for 5,500+ rings rather than 5,000. But hey... 5,500+ rings, even with multiple rings, in a single trunk shouldn't be a probem, eh? I mean there really isn't a "reason" for a 5,000 year limit is there? For one thing, the last ice-age supposedly ended 10,000 years ago. For another, we're already upto at 4,700 rings ... no 4,800! ... almost there... just 700 rings left to go.


> > ...consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?

Actually, they do. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people who awarded the author his Ph.D.

> Really that easy?
> Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily.

I'm not convinced because I asked for (see emphasis):...

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine [sonic.net], or this one: a 4844-ring pine [sonic.net] cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

But you gave me this: (see emphasis)

Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence ...

I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees. From this article:

Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings. ...

The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl,3 the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was 're-measured' when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned ...

The author of this article should know... he's a tree physiologist. I think multiple rings in a year for some trees and not others, would throw a spanner into ring matching, no?

So, due to the fact multiple rings *can* occur in one year (but it's rare) I asked for 5,500+ rings rather than 5,000. But hey... 5,500+ rings, even with multiple rings, in a single trunk shouldn't be a probem, eh? I mean there really isn't a "reason" for a 5,000 year limit is there? For one thing, the last ice-age supposedly ended 10,000 years ago. For another, we're already upto at 4,700 rings ... no 4,800! ... almost there... just 700 rings left to go.


> > ...consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?

Actually, they do. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people who awarded the author his Ph.D.

> Really that easy?
> Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily.

I'm not convinced because I asked for (see emphasis):...

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine [sonic.net], or this one: a 4844-ring pine [sonic.net] cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

But you gave me this: (see emphasis)

Dr. Charles Ferguson of the University of Arizona has, by matching up overlapping tree rings of living and dead bristlecone pines, carefully built a tree ring sequence ...

I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees. From this article:

Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings. ...

The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl,3 the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was 're-measured' when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned ...

The author of this article should know... he's a tree physiologist. I think multiple rings in a year for some trees and not others, would throw a spanner into ring matching, no?

So, due to the fact multiple rings *can* occur in one year (but it's rare) I asked for 5,500+ rings rather than 5,000. But hey... 5,500+ rings, even with multiple rings, in a single trunk shouldn't be a probem, eh? I mean there really isn't a "reason" for a 5,000 year limit is there? For one thing, the last ice-age supposedly ended 10,000 years ago. For another, we're already upto at 4,700 rings ... no 4,800! ... almost there... just 700 rings left to go.


> > ...consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.
> Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?

Actually, they do. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people who awarded the author his Ph.D.

> The oldest records of my family
> The oldest living dog I know...

But we're not talking about you. Science says that, *globally*(!) speaking, :
1. The earliest reliable human memories and records of events
2. The oldest living trees

...both date to about 5000 years ago - as the Biblical record implies they should.

Trees are especially interesting since tree rings provide a direct way to measure age (a sort of eyewitness account across the ages).

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine, or this one: a 4844-ring pine cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

As mentioned here, there is no reason that trees *can't* live for longer (consider the two trees above). Yet the oldest trees mystically stop short of the 5000 mark. Unless some strange 'tree-timebomb' effect kills all trees of all tree species just before their 5000 year-mark (to believe this, one really need blind faith!), there *should* be hundreds of trees with trunks having 5000, 7000, 10,000+ rings. Yet none have been found (even after decades of searching).

> > Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures
> Stories about demons, elves, pixies,...

Stories are just stories and should not carry as much credence as corroborated records or hard science. But, unlike the various flood legends, most legends about elves, demons, lizards, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc, don't have them causing the near-extinction of the human species.

> Punctuated equilibrium accounts for problems seen with traditional natural selection
Agreed - my point was that a modifiction to traditional darwinian evolution was required to account for its inability to account for the fossil record.

See also my other post.
For other problems with Carbon dating and current evolutionary theory, consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.

> The oldest records of my family
> The oldest living dog I know...

But we're not talking about you. Science says that, *globally*(!) speaking, :
1. The earliest reliable human memories and records of events
2. The oldest living trees

...both date to about 5000 years ago - as the Biblical record implies they should.

Trees are especially interesting since tree rings provide a direct way to measure age (a sort of eyewitness account across the ages).

Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk. Not radio-carbon dating mind you, nor some fancy extrapolation scheme across different trunks -- just a tree with 5500+ rings in one trunk... Like this one: a still-living 4700 ring bristlecone pine, or this one: a 4844-ring pine cut down (!) just a few decades ago.

As mentioned here, there is no reason that trees *can't* live for longer (consider the two trees above). Yet the oldest trees mystically stop short of the 5000 mark. Unless some strange 'tree-timebomb' effect kills all trees of all tree species just before their 5000 year-mark (to believe this, one really need blind faith!), there *should* be hundreds of trees with trunks having 5000, 7000, 10,000+ rings. Yet none have been found (even after decades of searching).

> > Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures
> Stories about demons, elves, pixies,...

Stories are just stories and should not carry as much credence as corroborated records or hard science. But, unlike the various flood legends, most legends about elves, demons, lizards, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc, don't have them causing the near-extinction of the human species.

> Punctuated equilibrium accounts for problems seen with traditional natural selection
Agreed - my point was that a modifiction to traditional darwinian evolution was required to account for its inability to account for the fossil record.

See also my other post.
For other problems with Carbon dating and current evolutionary theory, consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site.

1. A single male chromosomal ancestor
   
2. With three descendant male lineages
   
3. The third male lineage had seven sub-lineages
   
4. These seven sub-lineages from the third lineage populate all the world except the Middle East and Africa.
   

1. We are all descended from a single male ancestor - Noah
   
2. Noah had three male descendants
   
3. One of the three sons, Japeth, had seven sons
   
4. The Japeth lineage (his seven sons and their descendants) populated all the world except the Middle East and Africa.
   

1. The oldest records of civilizations date back around 5000 years
   
2. The oldest living trees (determined by tree rings on the same tree - not radiocarbon dating) are around 5000 years as well. Though there is no reason trees can't live longer.
   
3. Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures
   
4. To account for problems with evolutionary theory, a new theory, Punctuated Equilibrium has gained prominence
   

Unfortunately the article is not online (fair enough because it's in their latest issue), but its "Patriarchs of the forest" in this issue.

The various dating techniques can be tied together (and are). The geologists talk of the "Geologic Column". Try this link (although it's primarily a debunking of the young earth, rather than a good basic article in geology.) Or this talk.origins FAQ.

Similarly, recent history is well mapped by the intersection of dendrochronology and carbon-14 dating. C-14 techniques are good enough to get C-14 levels from a single tree ring. So, you go to an old but living tree and take a core. Counting tree rings directly gives you years in the past. The oldest trees are around 5000 years old. But! the tree ring patterns in a locality are consistent. So you find the same patterns in the dead trees in the area. With brutal amounts of work (it's called the scientific method - 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration), you can map C14 levels for a lot of time in a number of areas.

Then you can take your dendrochronologically corrected C-14 clock and date, for example, a number of landslides and other disasters from the trees and wooden artifacts in them, under them, and above them.

Young-earth creationists, such as the site you reference, attempt to break down the strong network of interrelated geologic theory with point arguments, mostly spurious. Answers in Genesis has pages like this one which claim that under some conditions, trees have more than one growth ring per year, and various other niggles. They are niggles, because they throw a lot of weight on small details, distracting you from the bigger picture. The trick is, learning enough about things like how chronology is really done is grad school stuff, while making plausible objections is grade school stuff.

I really want to link to the hoax "debunking" of the atom bomb, but I can't find a link.

I guess this is close enough to on-topic.

Now consider that there is one test we can employ - dating objects we know the date of. Eg, a recent lava flow. Consider potassion-argon (K-Ar) dating. In a young flow (eg 1948-49) there should be too little argon in the sample to provide an accurate date. It follows logically then, that if enough argon is discovered to place it's date within the accurate date of a K-Ar then the method must be inaccurate.

Let me make this clear for Black Parrot - I know K-Ar cannot accurately measure a sample 50 years old. And the reason is because there should be too little argon. So if enough argon is present to form a date, then the assumptions that K-Ar is based on are invalid. Now consider a volcano that is discovered by explorers in 1970. It had last erupted in 1920, but they had no idea. They took some samples which showed the flow to be 1.2 million years ago. Because they are certain their testing is accurate, they will never understand that it may be incorrect.

Now here is an article which demonstrates what I said above: here

So my question is, if K-Ar fails when it can be tested, and produces an age of 0.27-3.5 million years old for something that is _known_ to be young, then why should I trust the dates given in contemporary science?

If I am to take evolution seriously, then this question must first be answered. Forget anything else, lets talk about this.

I think this deserves more research by me in the future, because a biologist who is convinced there are massive problems with evolution and then changes his mind would be significant indeed - and so would understanding his reasons why.

Especially considering this review:
At least one pro-evolution writer, Gert Korthof, has seized with delight Denton's apparent flip-flop on evolution. In Part 2 of Nature's Destiny that appearance is quickly dispelled, but Denton still deserves some of the blame for the confusion. Virtually every reference to evolution in Part 1 could be replaced with a reference to the survival of species, and the argument concerning the laws of physics would not be diminished. By using the word "evolution" as he does, Denton seems to be contributing to the obfuscation of that word, rather than clarifying it as Phillip Johnson seeks to do.

When we begin reading Part 2, it immediately becomes apparent that Denton is talking about something very different from Darwin's concept of natural selection acting on random changes. Denton proposes that evolution is true in a sense, but that it is not driven by random changes, but rather by intelligently directed leaps which involve significant changes in complexity. Further, he proposes that these directed leaps are not performed by supernatural acts of interference with the laws of physics, but instead were elaborately planned into the laws of physics from the beginning. Thus, Denton finds a point of common ground between pure naturalism and the intelligent design of higher organisms -- a remarkable feat.

Anyway, I'm off to bed.

More Info

Some More Info

Woah there, cowboy! The earth has only been around 6000 years. Guess lower.

Try 4.0e0 years

according to Science 275(5308):1880, 1997.

Basically, the example given was about bacteria that become immune to certain anti-biotics. This has been discussed by creationists - when some of these bacteria gain a specific immunity, they become weak somewhere else. Hardly evolutionary. Mutations occur, but they involve the loss or change of information - never the introduction of information required to reach a new species, for example from homo-erectus to homo-sapien, or from a single celled lifeform to humans, or from reptiles to birds. See where I'm heading? You have a string of genes, some of those values change. Almost always the change is harmful - but sometimes this turns out to be advantegous, such as the loss of wings. Not evolutionary, more like entropy.

Here is an article for your reference and further understanding: Superbugs

I'm quite sure that you have quite a lot to learn about the creationist position, and frankly its not worth my time explaining again because it is always misunderstood. Unless you are the exception amongst the rule (which would be refreshing).

All the ANSWERS are here. (Genesis FAQ)

Several thousand and several billion are big differences, what they are trying to prove is that it is older than the creationists say, therefore nullifying the faith of three major world religions.

But don't worry, it won't be long before the creationists come up with a counter argument. Here are their answers to why the earth is still young, let's watch and see if they can fight this argument... (Sorry, the format for their arguments is sort of in a "lesson plan" style, don't have time to find something better)

Although this is an obvious troll, I'll bite only because the date is wrong. The Bible would actually put the age of the beginning somewhere around 6,000 years.

Good article, also trying to explain why current aging methods (such as carbon dating) are not accurate: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazine s/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp


Main page for other articles: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/youn g.asp