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Your claim that you can make 'tests' in geology is especially interesting. One of the more striking features in geology is the persistence of discordant dates in radioisotope dating; if you use different methods you get dates that do NOT overlap.

This is "truthy" but misleading. When dating methods are used inappropriately, they will give inconsistent readings, but for the date ranges that are known to be accurate, the methods all corroborate each other.

Can We Really Believe the Dating Systems?

One point Bill Nye brought up in his debate with Ken Ham, which I wish he had spent more time on, is that we can deduce what happened after the fact. The example he gave was CSI, where investigators show up after the fact - not having observed the act - and determine what happened by using evidence.

Nye should have shown how geologists do exactly the same thing, but he didn't make the connection very well. These methods go all the way back to Christian geologists like Lyell and Cuvier, who proved the earth was very old well before Darwin published the Origin.

Christian organizations which understand that the Christian faith and evolution (or science in general, when practiced with integrity) are not at odds:

http://biologos.org/
http://truecreation.info/
http://asa3.org/

An excerpt from TrueCreation.info:

In general, the scientists who dissent from the basics of evolutionary theory are driven by ideological goals, usually based on faith, whether or not it is faith in the God of the Bible. In many cases, they do not hide the fact that they use presuppositional logic when formulating their “theories”; that is, they start by selecting their desired outcome and then seek only evidence that supports that outcome. They readily and openly admit that they sift facts through a filter, discarding any facts that do not fit with a literal interpretation of the Bible because they “simply cannot be true.” Presuppositional logic may be fine for understanding some foundational parts of the gospel message. It is of dubious value when used as an apologetic tool. But it fails miserably and completely as a scientific method. Let’s be clear — this is not science. If you seek answers to questions about the natural world using presuppositional logic, you will open yourself up to any number of incorrect answers. This goes a long way toward explaining why the results disseminated by the various “creation science” and “intelligent design” organizations rarely agree with each other! Which “Bible-based” outcome would you like? You can choose from many different ones, simply by believing the results from the various organizations I will describe below. I say “believe” rather than “accept”, because your reception of these results will be based on faith, not reason, nor trust in the practice of reason. Some evangelical Christian educators lambaste the teaching of evolution and “materialistic” science, claiming that it is an example of a heinous relativism that pervades the American educational system. They are encouraging relativism by using presuppositional logic.

Even extremely intelligent persons who are trained in the scientific method, with degrees from prestigious universities, may fall into the trap of thinking that yielding the scientific method to presuppositional logic is acceptable if done under the guise of Christian education. After all, the end justifies the means, right? Author Michael Hawley, in his book Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight, explains the psychology of this trap. In short, people will believe what they want to believe, and when they let this drive their approach to science, they will construct all sorts of flawed arguments to prove it to themselves. In many cases, they simply let themselves submit to the argument from incredulity. The human mind excels at both of these logical failings. Some will turn this around and say that this is exactly why scientists accept evolution and other theories; they want to “believe” in evolution. They completely miss the point of how and why the modern scientific method has been applied since its inception almost 200 years ago. When the scientific method is practiced using deductive and inductive logic with integrity, the impact of individual beliefs and human failings such as confirmation bias is minimized. When over 99% of scientists from different specialties and a variety of backgrounds (including many evangelical Christians) practice the scientific method with integrity and objective reasoning and come to agreement on a theory, you can trust that the theory is a solid one.

So you do agree, then, that the Baptists have not "subjugated" the public schools. That was my point.

There are plenty of Southern Baptists (and members of other Christian denominations) who believe in evolution. The American Scientific Affiliation, for example, is an organization of scientists who are Christians, most of whom believe in evolution. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Evolution/

The problem is that that approach only works if you take a very metaphorical interpretation of the bible.

With regards to evolution, if you accept it as true, then Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden could not have happened. There were no "first humans," as there was no solid dividing line between our apelike ancestors and modern humans. If there was no Garden of Eden, then there was no original sin, which means that Jesus dying for our sins was pointless, unless God intentionally created as as inherently sinful creatures and then decided that we should be tortured eternally.

Well, to address at least that one point, one model I've heard from some Christian evolutionary biologists which seems to fit the data utilizes the Upper Paleolitic Revolution as a possible point in time at which humankind first became "spiritual" and therefore capable of sin. To quickly summarize the Upper Paleolithic Revolution (though I am not a bioligist/archaeologist/what-have-you; mere computer scientist and mathemetician by training), "anatomically modern humans" - ie, humans that look like you and me - have been found as far back as about 195 thousand years in the fossil record. But it wasn't until about 50 thousand years ago that we begin to see them exhibiting modern behavioral traits such as the creation of more advanced tools than they'd been using for 145 thousand years, accelerated language development, and the first evidence of religion. This sudden revolution occurred in East Africa or the Middle East and spread from there across the globe to anatomically human populations on other continents. It's been suggested by some Christian evolutionary biologists that this revolution represents the first moment in time in which God "breathed spirit" into humans, making them moral and creative beings, and from them it spread to others or their offspring. It could've begun with just two - who rebelled against God, making for original sin - and spread into the rest of the heretofore unspiritual, anatomical human population.

This solves at least two major issues. First, it allows for original sin. Second, it fits our genetic data which suggests that the genetic human population could never have been fewer than 10 thousand at any point in history; the unspritual population provides genetic diversity for the expansion of the spiritual population - or even become spriritual themselves through cultural interactions.

My primary source: http://godandnature.asa3.org/opinion-adam-and-the-origin-of-man.html

Besides BioLogos (http://biologos.org), there are other Christian organizations which advocate conducting real science according to the scientific method, evolution and all:

http://asa3.org/ (The American Scientific Affiliation)
http://www.cis.org.uk/ (a UK organization similar to the ASA)
http://www2.wheaton.edu/ACG/ (The Affiliation of Christian Geologists)
http://bibleandscience.com/

http://truecreation.info/ has numerous references, a science advocacy site for evangelical Christians.

By the way, BioLogos's new documentary is due out this week:

http://fromthedustmovie.org/discussion/

The very first link (February Acts & Facts PDF ) on the very first website (Acts&Facts) on the above referenced page contains an analysis: "Molecular Equidistance: The Echo of Discontinuity?" (page 4) It lays out a methodology, a set of predictions and a proposed metric for testing the hypothosis. You give the impression that you have not examined the first thing about this, but came in with your mind made up. I must say that I really expected better of a Slashdot reader.

So where's their experiment? Where's their data? They just point at one thing, ask a couple of leading questions, and then speculate about what it could mean. They do no investigation. They don't apparently even attempt to answer their own questions. They offer no support for their speculation about what it means. That's what you think is science? Pointing at something you don't understand and then saying it probably means whatever you feel like it should mean? Wow. That guy is either very intellectually lazy, or he actually looked into the questions and didn't like the answers he found, so decided to just imply that he was onto something.

Page 14 presents a theory (new to me) about a second time dilation proposed by Dr. Russel Humphreys to correspond to the period of the flood. (I was familiar with "Starlight and Time, Humphrey's original publication on the subject of time dilation, but not with his later work.)

That second article is pretty lame, and certainly not scientific. He makes so many unsupported assumptions that the whole thing is merely speculation. Take his use of helium diffusion in zircons as a dating method. He offers nothing to justify any of his assumptions about it. Nor does he give any justification for not using an established method, other than that it didn't give him the answer he wanted I guess. His method has also been addressed and found wanting by others. If you're going to put forth a theory on something, you need to be able to explain conflicting evidence, and explain why your theory is better. If you don't directly address evidence that contradicts your theory, you aren't being intellectually honest.

Additionally, his work on quantized redshifts was largely based on very small studies from the 70s, where selection bias seems to be an issue. More current, and much larger studies do not agree with his conclusions. As always, the work is ongoing.

Carbon dating has been proved time and again an inaccurate measure of age so we can only theorize how old something really is (best educated guesstimate) unless there is very clear documentation as to the age.

Carbon dating is never used to data dinosaur fossils - its half-life is far too short. Other isotopes with much longer half lives are used to date rocks and fossils.

There's a good description of the science behind radiometric dating and some of the misconceptions regarding its accuracy here: Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective

Umm... got any evidence to back up any of that?

This appears to be as good of source as any:

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/universe2.htm

For instance, people used to think the world was flat like a pizza...

I get so very tired of this canard. For centuries, if not millennia, before Columbus sailed to the Americas, educated people knew that the world was not round. The idea that folk in Medieval Europe believed that the world was flat is a misconception that was invented some time during the 19th century (Russell blames Washington Irving).

Then why was Galileo executed by the Church?

For instance, people used to think the world was flat like a pizza...

I get so very tired of this canard. For centuries, if not millennia, before Columbus sailed to the Americas, educated people knew that the world was not round. The idea that folk in Medieval Europe believed that the world was flat is a misconception that was invented some time during the 19th century (Russell blames Washington Irving).

Well, this is rich.

At this point, the creationists say that not only has speciation been observed, it is vital to the process, since it allows fewer species to have been aboard the Ark during the Flood. The IDers say that speciation does not happen and has not been observed.

The problem with this is that the Flood didn't happen, and the geological evidence is so overwhelmingly against it that it isn't even considered possible except by the absolute literalists and those that don't know better. Don't take my word for it, check out the Affiliation of Christian Geologists and the American Scientific Affiliation

Further, the premise is that there are smaller number of 'kinds' of animals and that speciation has produced the diversity of life we see today. It cannot occur at the speed required by Flood proponents. I took a look at the pages you linked to. There is no discussion of the speed of speciation, or selection pressure, or population genetics that would explain, for example, how dingoes, wolves, dogs, coyotes, and other 'dog kinds' could have come from a (small) set of dogs after the Flood. Try to run the numbers on that.

The idea that there can be this massive speciation and changes in genetic distribution, since the flood, but that this is limited to 'kinds' doesn't make sense. We can measure the distance between kinds, and if you accept reasonable rates of change (within kinds), then if you go further back, the kinds meet up into super-kinds, and as you go further back, you end up with a common ancestor. There's no logical reason (other than reliance on Biblical literalism) to limit the process like that.

like picasso, the neanderthal

neanderthals didn't go extinct, they interbred. there's a little neanderthal in all of us

its not so bleak as you presume. as a unique person, he'll enjoy rockstar status. there's also asshats that pick on people in wheelchairs, but do you see stephen hawking genuinely limited by that in life? you are giving too much credence to the reaction of the lowest common denominator, which he wouldn't come in that much contact with, and wouldn't rule his life

Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective. Carbon-14 is the canard to which people cling desperately who don't know anything about radioactive isotopes. You would of course be correct that C14 only tracks material 50,000 years old or younger. Unfortunately for your argument, C14's 5,715 year halflife is just the tip of the iceberg.

Isotope and its respective halflife in years:
Thorium-230: 75,400
Uranium-234: 248,000
Chlorine-36: 300,000
Beryllium-10: 1.52 million
Uranium-235: 700 million
Potassium-40: 1.26 billion
Uranium-238: 4.5 billion
Thorium-232: 14 billion
Lutetium-176: 38 billion
Rhenium-187: 42 billion
Rubidium-87: 48.8 billion
Samarium-147: 106 billion

Given that I have held hominid skulls from today's modern humans all the way back to our ancestor's when they first diverged from the other great apes, I have done the research, sir. I have held them with my own two hands and examined them with my own two eyes.

The rest of your rant against genetics, general biology, biochemistry, et al. clearly show that you have not taken a single course in any of these subjects at the college level. Even a casual look at the evidence in an introductory biology class should be enough. But you are so busy calling others dunces that you cannot see your own idiocy.

I failed to denounce Behe successfully? On what point? Please elucidate so I can make my denunciation more complete.

If evolution cannot happen, then how can it have been reproduced, creating a new species with abilities not available to its forebears? According to you, this can't happen. For while the nimrods at Conservapedia tried to wish it away and yell the evidence into non-existence, all they ended up doing was illustrating so clearly just how deluded they were.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. OpenCarry is an individual of ignorance.

I was actually thinking more of the widely held view of how the moon was created from the earth, and how it would have to be done before the water and all life.

Still no problem with the framework view. As one of its primary exponents said of it, "The conclusion is that as far as the time frame is concerned, with respect to both the duration and sequence of events, the scientist is left free of biblical constraints in hypothesizing about cosmic origins."

... I think that if God were the God that Christians think he is, then he would have just said we came from animals, because he would know that we would have found out eventually and it would cause many people to doubt and basically go to hell for using their brains.

Perhaps the point is that they didn't use their brains quite enough. Yes, religion requires faith, but so does every belief system, including yours. No one can prove their foundational principles are true; they simply must assume them. We must all have faith so that we may understand, as Augustine and Anselm said. The question is not faith or no faith, but rather which faith -- which faith is most consistent with my thoughts, my experience, and the way I live my life?

There are far too many things that need to be explained away. If you have to make lots and lots of complex addendums to a theory to keep it valid, it probably isn't actually a valid theory. Maybe you have to place limits on a theory to keep it simple (ie Newtonian physics only works on the level we see, it doesn't apply down on a subatomic level), and that's what you're doing by saying it's just a metaphor, but there are just too many issues for me to believe in it any more.

Perhaps you're making a broader argument about the Bible here, but at least with respect to the framework view of the Genesis 1-2:3 creation account, there is no such complex addendum keeping it valid. It is not Bible thumpers adjusting their interpretation to fit modern scientific theories (though that's not necessarily a bad thing in itself either). The order problem you mention was addressed by Augustine in the early 400s because of exegetical considerations from within the text itself, irrespective of what modern science would later say.

One of the most poignant things someone said to me in the last few months is that even if the Christian God does exist, they wouldn't want to worship him. And it's true. That a god would create a bunch of people knowing that some are going to hell, and still call himself 'good'/ is pretty sickening. The good thing to do would just be to blank those people out of existence.

You should read Tim Keller's book The Reason for God (or listen to his MP3 on on the topic of hell linked to from that website). He addresses this topic.

Basically, you can explain away anything if you want to.

Including the evidence for God?

Those that doubt this theory get little or no funding

Except for the ones that got oil money.

Just as the theory at one time said that the earth is flat, that the sun revolves around the earth...

Except the Flat Earth theory is a myth - "with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat.". It certainly wasn't a scientific theory. And even if it was, there's nothing wrong with science accepting new evidence and abandoning an old theory. You sound a lot like the anti-science right-wing Christians with their line about "science is always changing its mind about things, but the bible has never changed!"

...and twice that we are experiencing global cooling

Global cooling is also a theory that never had significant scientific support. By the time the media covered it in the mid-1970's, the cooling trend had stopped and there were major concerns about the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

It is also interesting to note that those that favor the theory that humans cause global warming are the same people who told me in 1972 that our landfills would be full by 1990 and are the advocates of large government control...with by extension leaves us less free.

Oh I see. Some ambiguous group of "them" were wrong a long time ago on a totally different matter, and apparently hold differing political views, so therefore you're right on this matter. Well how about you go and research your ideas better before making sweeping claims?

That's about how long people have been making music (we know this because there are bird-bone flutes that old). http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199611/0045.html Probably even longer. Most of that time people did it for and with their friends for not a dime. Recorded music is only a little older than those now living. People will go right on making music, and earn money playing live, as they have done since time immemorial. We know from Linux that even complex projects will be done by amateurs (i.e. 'those who do it from love') for free. No DRM, no problemo.

That's one form of distorting what I said that sounds suspiciously close to some form of jesuit debating technique. Did you study at a jesuit school?

Actually I went to fairly standard state schools before reading Physics at Keble College, Oxford.

I never wrote that science is the "be all and end all of life". What I wrote is that it's wrong to believe something, anything at all, is that "be all and end all of life", the way religious people think about their religion. Scientists do not think like that.

Actually you said that having everything be inferior to religion is wrong and that having a single work of "one of the most outstanding scientists of antiquity" written over by a single unknown monk was "an excellent argument against religion in general." It seems a little harsh to condemn religion on the basis of one unknown man's actions, so I surmised that your view of science was very high. Perhaps I overestimated your view, but given the venom you displayed towards religion, it was very much the way you came across.

When you have a scientific approach to life you get to be more or less protected from such mistakes.

Science can't be applied to every area of life and it's not meant to be. If you tried to, you'd be making a terrible mistake, or applying science incorrectly.

You tend to approach situations with caution, you tend to analyze before believing things blindly, you do not assume that anything is the "be all and end all of life" because you know that you can be mistaken.

And here you appear to have made a mistake. It would seem that you are implying that those who follow a religion do so blindly, a statement made without sound analysis, abandoning caution and blindly assuming something that is completely without truth. And the decision to have Christ as the be all and end all of life is a carefully reasoned one that makes sense in light of the facts at hand, rather than being an assumption.

I find it interesting the Maxwell and Faraday, arguably two of the finest scientific minds the British Isles have produced, had zero problems with this attitude, something that could be said of the many other scientists who call Jesus their Lord.

Michael Faraday:

And therefore, brethren, we ought to value the privilege of knowing God's truth far beyond anything we can have in this world. The more we see the perfection of God's law fulfilled in Christ, the more we ought to thank God for His unspeakable gift.

James Clerk Maxwell

Now my great plan, which was conceived of old, ... is to let nothing be wilfully left unexamined. Nothing is to be holy ground consecrated to Stationary Faith, whether positive or negative. All fallow land is to be ploughed up and a regular system of rotation followed. ... Never hide anything, be it weed or no, nor seem to wish it hidden. ... Again I assert the Right of Trespass on any plot of Holy Ground which any man has set apart. ... Now I am convinced that no one but a Christian can actually purge his land of these holy spots. ... I do not say that no Christians have enclosed places of this sort. Many have a great deal, and every one has some. But there are extensive and important tracts in the territory of the Scoffer, the Pantheist, the Quietist, Formalist, Dogmatist, Sensualist, and the rest, which are openly and solemnly Tabooed. ...
Christianity - that is, the religion of the Bible - is the only scheme or form of belief which disavows any possessions on such a tenure. Here alone all is free. You may fly to the ends of the world and find no God but the Author of Salvation. You may search the Scriptures and not find a

According to a 2001 Gallup poll on the origins of humans, they estimate that 72% of Americans believe in some form of creationism (as defined above). They also estimate that about 45% of Americans concurred with the statement that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."

Supporting link, link, and right from the horse's mouth link.

Yes i do have an idea of what i am talking about.

The rumor going around the internet was that WWW ment 666 in the original hebrew text that the bible was writen in. It being said that every time you enter www to get to a web page you are typing 666 in hebrew and this was proof that the internet was evil.

This has nothign to do with were the 666 came from. I has to do with someone claiming the internet was evil and creating some rumor or urban legend about it. If you find fault, find it with the rumor, not my ilistration on how translation get fucked up. I didn't start the rumor and only repeat it in the context that it isn't corect.

here is some context to help you understand it a little better. Again, i didn't start the rumor, it was going around because of numerous people other then me.

For very old samples, they don't date the bones themselves, they date minerals found in the area, or in the strata of the rock in which the bones were found, and it's generally accepted that certian layers have certian properties. There are a number of radiological tests, mostly the measurement via mass spectrometry of "extinct" elements, i.e. radioactive elements that have long since reduced to the more basic, but still rare, higher elements that don't typically occour in the same area by other means. Certian (greater than atmospheric) levels of argon and helium trapped inside bubbles in obsedian can also be quite helpful.

Besides being a very good and informative guide for how scientists derive dates from various materails, this article is also written from the perspective of a Christian, telling fellow Christians (potential non-beleivers of science) specifically why they should trust what the labcoats have to say. It's worth a look. Also, take a community college Geology class or two, with any luck you'll have as good as a time as I did.

I won't go through the trouble of quoting long stretches of this link, so I'll provide a couple points and the link and let you read it for yourself.

In contrast to the claims of Dawkins et al., no evidence exists to support the claim that even the most advanced verted eye is superior to the inverted eye.

How the eye evolved from the primitive verted type common to invertebrates into the inverted eye of vertebrates is ... an unexplained mystery. No evidence exists of any transitional forms, and all known animals have either verted or inverted eyes.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3-00Bergman. html

"NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR ADAM AND EVE"

THERE IS ALSO NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF AGAINST ADAM AND EVE.

So there is no need to bring it up in school, PERIOD.

"Also, the fact that there is not yet scientific consensus in a field DOES NOT MEAN that it is not science."

Right, so teach it that way; don't teach it as FACT because that would be a LIE.

Speaking of science, have you seen this site: http://www.asa3.org/
Oh no, Christians that are scientists, it must be 1800.

"We might not know how to cure the common cold yet, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about the germ theory of disease as a scientific fact"

I guess you are saying that it is a fact that there is a theory, not there is a solution and that is a fact, not sure what the point is here?

"or should give equal time to the idea that prayer is an alternative way to cure the sniffles"

As I have stated many times, stuff like this is a personal choice, not sure what that has to do with abiogenesis and the lack of a "missing link"?

"Not everything has to be 100% settled and conclusively proven before it is scientific and taught in science class."

I have no problem with this as long as it is taught accurately; for example, Hubble's Law should be taught as fact and Hubble's assertion that the universe is expanding should be taught as theory and things like the quantized redshifts that do not follow the predicted behavior of an expanding universe should be diosclosed.

Another example would be making sure students know the missing link has not been found in 150 years of searching and there is no proof protocells create complex cells.

God bless you and keep you

With all due respect, that is because you really don't understand the fossil record. Transitionary forms, or "links between the kinds" as you put it, are common in the fossil record. So, to respond to your statement "This pretty much rules out reptiles evolving into mammals, etc, unless you can find a way to reconsile that" here are some cut and dry references that reconcile this non-dilema:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/p art1b.html#mammTransition from synapsid reptiles to mammals

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/archae opteryx.htmlArchaeopteryx lithographica

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Miller.htmlTaxon omy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record

Fossils are also VERY rare, which explains that even though its hard to find fossils (very hard) and yet transistionary forms are COMMON in the fossil record. Case closed on this, they are all over the place and cover all the "kinds".

http://scienceviews.com/dinosaurs/fossilformation. htmlThe Formation of Fossils

So, you on board now?

Regarding his comments on natural selection, I assume you are referring to these:

http://www.amazingdiscoveries.org/beginning_natura lselection.htm

I'd be interested to hear any comments on these. They seem compelling to me, especially coming from a respected biologist. (And yes, I have had college level science classes).

Regarding his "hilarious" assertions about radiometric dating (http://www.amazingdiscoveries.org/beginning_radio metricdating.htm), he did provide references to respected scientific journals. If even one example shows a system to be flawed, I would be cautious about trusting it without cross checking. The book you linked to (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html) is interesting, and did claim numerous cross checks have been done. Still, these can only show accuracy into the known past, and don't deal with possible changes in the ratios of elements measured in the various tests (though the linked book asserts that such changes are unlikely).

Another possibility I didn't see addressed on either site is that the elements of the earth have been around in their present form much longer than life on earth, thus explaining the great age of the rocks, while leaving room for the possibility of life on earth relatively recently.

Very compelling.

Well... very compelling if you haven't taken any college-level science classes. His statements about natural selection are curious. His assertions about radiometric dating are hilarious.

To see how messed up amazingdiscoveries.org actually is, read the comments about dating, and then read Dr. Roger Weins's Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective. The "revelations" on amazingdiscoveries.org made me laugh out loud.

An article worth reading on the "nonpareil" effect found here.

But because I'm obliged to satisfy my occasionally pedantic nature, the expression "nonpareil" is of Latin derivation but can be considered everyday French. Generally considered to mean "without equal."

The candies ("nonpareils"), on the other hand, aren't really candies in the sense that most people consider them. Or "tasty," for that matter. In fact, you could say that nonpareils are not nonpareil.

Energy can be generated again and again

Yeah, I never said it could not. I said I disagreed with your labeling of energy based solely on generation, since all energy is generated repeatedly.

That's a lie. I explained it several times but you refuse to listen. The definition I and geologists prefer is more valid because it more accurately identifies the progenitor of the energy

OK, you were wrong about the origin of the word, disagree with how it is used by industry shills like the dept. of energy, the geothermal education office, geothermal resources council, and the international geothermal association. You disagree with wikipedia. You disagree with the dictionary, which I quoted in an earlier post. You disagree with the geologist I just consulted via aim.

It only takes one. How is that a failure?

You agree with your own stubborn opinion and with the one web site you could find that agrees with you. If you don't understand why only having one source for you assertions is bad science then maybe you should read a few books on what science is.

99- "don't provide any reasons for your assertions (e.g. why can't something be both solar and goethermal)... " Oh, but I did. You just refuse to acknowledge my argument.

Allow me to quote your brilliant argument. "Energy can't be both solar and geothermal, period." Gee, that sure is a compelling argument. Period, huh? Well, I guess I can't argue with that.

You can split hairs all you want about the meaning of greek prefixes but I don't believe you can substantiate your claim that this greek prefix differentiates between the ground and the planet

Here is a treatise on that very subject. And you're the one who brought up the greek roots, not I. To summarize geo=dirt, aero=air, terra=the habitable land where mortals live.

Answer the question: When does solar energy turn into geothermal energy?

Your question is a logical fallacy. It contains an inherent implication that energy cannot meet the definitions of both solar and geothermal at the same point in time. Of course I already stated that several times, you just did not bother to read it.

The dictionary defines geothermal energy as heat contained within the earth. It defines solar energy as relating to, derived from, or utilizing energy from the sun. If energy is stored as heat, in the Earth, it meets both definitions.

I am tired of talking to you about this, and don't see much likelihood that can reason or apply logic. You have made up your mind, and don't care about the facts. I will not be responding to further posts, so don't bother unless you like talking to yourself.

In order to acheive the embryo in the first place, you take a mature female's egg and allow it to be fertiziled by male's sperm. At that point you then dissect the blastocyst (destroying it), and those cells are the "embryonic stem cells" as they have yet to differentiate.

So, there definitely is sperm involved, and if at any point the blastocyst is implanted into a human female's uterus, it will attach and draw nutrients, continue to grow, and eventually produce a baby. Religious people infer that since the blastocyst is viable from conception forward, then the destruction of the human life at any point is morally concerning, doubly so since its being done to get its cells for experimentation. After all, science has been conceiving babies in a petri dish for almost 30 years, and like you said, the only difference is that we allow them to mature.

Unfortunately, someone beat you to it, that word has already been used, from google: http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199808/0150. html. Although there it seems to be used for a bit of a different meaning - not being able to speak a language. Amazing, only one other occurrence of this word on the Web.

That's nothing more than some creationism "science".
Check this and this or some real hardcore science instead. If you want more, just google for "sun radius annual shrinkage" or smth like that. Talk.Origins is also a good source of information.

No. The truth is here

YOU are out there.

Strawman alert!
No one but creationists think that the laws of nature work by random chance. Even your hero Yockey claims that most of say a hemoglobin protein is just bulk and its amino acid sequence is superfulous http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199602/0123. html.

Anyway, you are arguing against abiogenesis. Please stop moving the goalposts. The math above shows that there is no thermodynamic reason why a dog genome cannot become a cat genome in a single step. I acknowleged the fact that it is statistically nearly impossible. Fortunately for science, none of this is necessary for evolution to work. Since abiogenesis research is not likely to ever give the exact answer on how the first self-replicator on this planet formed, I have no beef with theistic evolutionists who claim god made the first self-replicator and let evolution work from there. I take it that this is NOT your position however, right?

Ok, I look at a few more of the articles, but bear in mind, that I'm extremely distrustfully of AIG, due to it's use of highly misleading (completely dishonest, IMHO) information.

But first, a small opps on my part. K/Ar dating should only be used on samples >2 Mya, not 30 as I stated in a earlier post. My mistake, this is due to the very long half life of K (in the billions of years). Ar/Ar dating is much better for geological dating of much more recent objects.

Radioactive ?Dating? in Conflict

Ignoring critisms of Snelling's ethics (he also publishs in the science lit. quoting dates in the millions and billions of years without mentioning that he disbelieves them), this paper is very sparse on experimental details. In particular, the inclusions of xenoliths (which are well known to give a false reading if the sample isn't correctly prepared). There may be many other problems with his analysis but it is impossible to tell, as he really hasn't given any experimental details away. Also (admittly a not a major part of this paper) there is a real problem with his explaination of the false dates (" fluctuating, magnetic field affected the incoming cosmic ray influx, resulting thus in a lower radiocarbon production rate and therefore radiocarbon ?ages? much greater than the true ages"), when carbon is celibrated it tends too underestimate the ages, therefore, if anything the dates are too low, not too high.

I couldn't connect to your second link.

The next page which I looked at Superbugs: Not super after all, is just plain stupid. The whole paper is just a giant strawman arguement. Evolution doesn't have to lead to a gain of information (loss of eyesight in cave fish is a good example), so the authors foundation is built on a falsehood. He then presents no evidence to support his claim (instead he pretty much states some dumbed down first year cell bio information). This isn't a arguement, it's a joke.

I couldn't get the next three links to work (this is quite strange as I managed to get the third one to go yesterday, but didn't get time to read it), however, on the basis of the four that I've read, I really aren't impressed. What your presenting is propaganda not science.

If your interested, here is a article by a Christian geologist on radiodating.

As a postscript, I found this site which mentioned Snelling's paper. Apparently, there is considerable doubts over whether or not it is wood at all in the rock. Alex Cherkinsky, of the Geochron Labs Radiocarbon group, stated "I remember this sample very well. So they called it "wood'? It wasn't wood at all and more looked like the iron concretion with the structures lightly similar to wood. I have told about that to submitter, but anyway they wanted to date the sample". If this is true, then Snelling is a downright lier. (Source)