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Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. That's 152 years ago, six generations ago. Within less than a decade, the fossil record provided overwhelming proof that his theory of natural selection was correct. Late 20th Century and early 21st Century genetic research has provided additional irrefutable, supporting evidence. Charles Darwin was correct. Scientifically this has been known for well over a century.

And yet Creationism, a.k.a. Intelligent Design, still prevails in many classrooms.

We have historical precedence for this, the Ptolemaic system. It held sway scientifically for over 1400 years. Many regarded the Copernican system as blasphemy many decades after it was scientifically established. It took centuries to overcome this hurdle.

I suspect the same will be true for Evolution versus Creationism. Perhaps in 2111, Evolution will be taught in every American public school classroom ... but then again, perhaps not.

mine is easily falsifiable, just find a bunny in the Cambrian and you'll have disproved Evolution

Fine.

Many, many instances can be observed where “old” fossils are deposited atop “young” fossils. This should never happen, so evolutionists postulate that geologic faulting and fracturing must have slid the older rock onto the top of the newer rock.

However, many of these instances have no evidence whatsoever of any geologic faulting or fracturing whereby the layers might have been disturbed. Evolutionists’ response? “It happened... you just can’t tell from the evidence.” Circular reasoning: Use the evidence that supports your theory to give it credibility, and use your theory to discredit evidence that doesn’t support it.

Rock layers are used to justify ages of fossils and base the timeline of evolution. Then, the ages of fossils and the timeline of evolution is used to claim that rock layers that DO occur in the wrong order must have been flipped around since otherwise they would contradict the theory... despite all of the evidence suggesting that they were laid down in exactly the order we found them in. That is circular reasoning, and is absolutely not scientific thinking.

http://www.creationism.org/vonfange/vonFangeTimeUpDownChap03.htm

Go ahead. Declare whatever you feel like. It is a (mostly) free country.

But please remember that the Pope doesn't have a blank slate to do anything. Birth Control is restricted specifically because of Onanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onanism, and more generally because of the doctrine that any life is good. Yes, it means that people will be poorer, and worse off materially, but what is the higher truth? The church is far more interested in your spiritual well-being in Heaven than your physical well-being on Earth.

Your tone makes it seem like you are non-believer. Fine. Most secularists disagree with that basic stand.

- doug

PS: As for the deforestation issue, I consider that a failing of Christianity. In Genesis we find we're supposed to take care of the world, and we certainly aren't doing a good job of that. http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v10n3p24.htm is a longer winded statement of the same idea. I haven't looked into this Dr. John E. Silvius fellow, so I don't know if he is spouting nonsense in general or not, but I like this one link.

Flood Water Source
The sources of the flood water are given in Genesis 7:11 as "the fountains of the great deep" and the "windows of heaven." Probably subterranian water or sub-oceanic sources.
Flood Water Now
Floodwater now would be in glaciers and underground, which is partly why everyone is so worried about them melting. If they melted, sea level would probably rise about 70 meters. How might that effect us? Most of the USA is under 500m. Obviously coastal areas would be screwed, and with that much water in the water cycle, there would probablybe flooding everywhere.

Smaller Earth
The water would have been a bigger problem for a smaller earth. "Fixed-Earth theories assume that the Earth has always been as it overtly appears today, and, due to lack of **considering** contrary evidence, is the currently-accepted paradigm among most scientists and the general public. But examining the accumulated evidence supporting Expanding- Earth theories now makes Fixed-Earth totally untenable, and it is time for a paradigm shift to recognize Expanding-Earth as the accepted norm." - http://www.aoi.com.au/bcw/FixedorExpandingEarth.ht m (see references at end of page; also see videos on google or youtube for illustrations of how the geometry fits perfectly; not only on our planet, but others and moons as well.)

Petrification
Petrification does not take a couple dozen thousand years, it takes only a couple dozen years... see pretrified man-made boots, etc. in creation museum.

DNA, Collagen, etc
As for the "intact DNA", I was reffering to the fact that the collegen proteins are chains of amino acids, similar to DNA in a sense that the public would understand... as a sort of "signature" of the animal. Also that's not all that was there: "Dr. Schweitzer, a biologist affiliated also with Montana State, cut into the thick bone and recovered the soft tissues, including blood vessels and possibly cells that, she said at the time, "retain some of their original flexibility, elasticity and resilience." This had never been found in a dinosaur before and prompted the investigations into the nature of the organic matter."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/science/12cnd-di no.html? ex=1177387200&en=765b089476cf3dfb&ei=5070 I also find the numbers funny: "In a news release from Harvard, Dr. Cantley said, "Basically, this is the breakthrough that says it's possible to get sequences beyond one million years," which had been thought of as the absolute time barrier for the preservation of organic matter in animal remains."

One million years is a long time. If something is thought to have degraded to nothing with absolutely certainty after 1 million years, you'd be pretty sure it's long gone after 2 million. But now they find intact protiens at 68 million years! That's an incredibly huge error. Even so, it's still based on the "assumption" that this dinosaur was 68 million years old to begin with. How do they date it? Rock layers? I sure hope not...

Geologic Layers
We "assume" that these layers were layed down over millions of years. They weren't. They are twisted; a flood did it. Here is evidence against the millions of years "assumption", which shows how such layers were witnessed forming in just a few hours. http://www.creationism.org/articles/nelson1.htm
I'm sure I could dig up terabytes more on this at my university (I'm a grad student at Penn State).

The point is that what we see on this planet could just as easily have been formed rapidly. There is no reason why what we see had to have formed over millions of years. That's nothing more than an assumption. Millions of years are no

man, the repetativeness of religion bashing and jokes about chairs and a certain microsoft executive make beavis and butthead look like a thinking mans comedy around here.

Be prepared to spittle on yourself some more:

• Two footprints
• Replica of the stegosaurus carved in a ten-foot column at the Ta Prohm Cambodian Temple dedicated in 1186.
• Ten quick reasons for a young earth

First and formost, clearly not all evelotionists are racists. My point is that most of the major teachers and founders of the teaching are. In the same way, I'm not saying all christians aren't racists, even though most of the major teachers and the founders aren't.

Don't think for a minute that just because some group claims to be christian that they are. It'd be like some group claim to be citizens of a nation even though they aren't. Hitler is not a poorly educated man, but he's very wrong in his conclusions. Read his book some time. I'll make it easier for you:
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11 .html

That's chapter 11 where he really digs into racist divisions. Don't get me wrong, Hitler probably wouldn't be thought of as an Evolutionist by most, but I use him as an example of a non christian whom many think is one. He may have been raised with good religious traditions, but he never truely understood who God is, and feel pray to conflicting teaching

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Now for "PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM" as evolutionists like to call it.

According to this theory, animals stay the same for long periods of time but when they change, they change rapidly. Thus, they leave no fossil records of their transformation because it happens fast in relatively small or isolated locations.

You're right: "Anyone with an elementary understanding of evolution would never make such an absurd statement." It takes someone with a deeper understanding of Evolutionary Theology to say such an absurd statement.

Here's a book full of examples of the problems with Evolution:
http://www.creationism.org/books/sunderland/Darwin sEnigma/index.htm

Since Darwin's book was printed, Evolution has become a moving target. Every year the Theory changes and there are some teachings of it that were proven false decades ago (like human babies having gill slits in the womb) but you still find them in High School and College text books. I haven't found a direct quote saying "Monkey's gave birth to humans" litterally, but it's strongly implied that that kind of change is required as a natural step in evolution from one Species to another.

But Evolution having some problems wouldn't automatically make it a bad thing for christians to celebrate Darwin's birthday. The fundimental idea of EVOLVING from one KIND of animal to ANOTHER KIND is HERESY (a belief profoundly at odds with orthodox teaching).

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Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
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Gen 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
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Gen 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
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Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
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The list goes on a little more. The point is that if you believe Jesus (not just that he lived, but that he lives now and doesn't lie), then to teach evolution, as Darwin and most of the teachers after him taught it, is wicked. Darwin studied to be a preacher and couldn't find a congregation that would have him as their preacher. He knew he was contradicting scripture. That means Darwin was calling God a liar on purpose.

To paraphrase it: God said "I created every KIND of plant and every KIND of animal." Then Darwin said "No you didn't. You see, some early animals mutated and became the KINDS of animals we have to

As a believer in ID, I can tell you that the idea that the earth is only 6000 years old is pure bunk. Nowhere in the bible is there ANY evidence to support that idea.

No, the Bible doesn't say "God created the Heavens and the Earth in 4037 B.C. on the 27th of January at 3:00pm GMT." But it does give genealogies, "so-and-so begat so-and-so," which can give you a rough estimate if you add them up. If you believe the Bible to be accurate, then 6000 years is a close enough approximation.

A lot of people scoff at the notion that the earth has only been here for 6,000 years, but that's only impossible if you assume life must have taken millions of years to evolve or that various geological formations took millions of years to form, or that radiometric dating is never wrong. Without those assumptions, there's really no reason why 6,000 years couldn't work.

ID opponents claim ID isn't science, because it's not falsifiable. Well, they're right. You can't test it, you can't reproduce it, you can't observe it, you can't prove it. The problem is, you can't really test "evolution" (by which in this case I mean the theory that all life evolved from more primitive species over several million years) either - you can make observations about our current situation, and use conclusions from those observations to predict the results of future experiments, but you can't say that proves how something happened in the past, just because it could happen that way now.

If you go sites like http://creationism.org/ or http://icr.org/ you will find more proof that we are living on a young earth rather than one that is 4.3 billion years old. A few evidences are: Lack of dust on the moon. Vegetation found on the south pole.

Alas, that isn't the case.

When we evolve, will we be bringing these guys with us?

"It's very funny to think that the neo conservatives go to war over oil - the compressed remains of million year old creatures, yet believes the world is young."

There is no evidence that oil is made over millions of years. In the lab it is produced quickly, just as coal, opal, petrified objects, fossils, stalagtites and stalagmites are formed.

There is a museum that has a petrified ham, which was petrified in only one year. Likewise, stalagtites and stalagmites can grow in just 50 years. Layered sedimentation is actually based on particle size of flowing material, and not of millions of years of layering. An entire layered sediment canyon was created in 3 hours by the Mt. St. Helen's eruption.

http://www.creationism.org/sthelens/MSH1b_7wonders .htm

Some other interesting links:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i4/ca nyon.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/1209misso ula.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i2/su rtsey.asp
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-155.htm
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-157.htm

Also note that a young earth creationist correctly predicted Uranus's electromagnetic field, while those believing in millions of years were incorrect.

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-203.htm

There is even a school of thought that says without Christianity a lot of Scientific discoveries would have been a really late in coming

Like heliocentricism, for example? Oh, wait.. wrong way round, the church battled that one for 300 years, finally pardoning Galileo for his 'crimes' in 1992.

How about evolution.. oh, wait, no.. the fundamentalists and literalists won't have any of that.

Okay, how about something really simple - the lightning conductor. Oh, no, wait.. churches originally considered lightning conductors blasphemy as they attempted to counter god's will - some went as far as to blame them for earthquakes.

Here's another one:

http://www.creationism.org/patten/PattenMarsEarthW ars/

This one also attempts to explain the evidence of water activity on mars (in a near vacuum, where liquid water can't exist) as being all part of the same thing.

Makes sense to *me* but I expect most /.'ers to reject it out of hand because the authros also happen to believe in God.

But I can tell you that they are not in any way proselytizing, but presenting the scientific evidence as observed in a coherent theory.. very cool read.

Actually, there are a very large number of people that advocate teaching the biblical account of Creation in schools. (And in fact, many of us are more than willing to pay $15,000 a year for private school to make sure it gets taught!)

Sorry, I actually meant teaching Biblical Creation exclusively and not teaching evolution at all - I hope nobody's pushing for this in public schools. There certainly need to be private schools that do, but public schools should be open to alternative ideas, and in a secular encironment, shutting out evolution altogether isn't much better than shutting out creationism.

Thanks for the link; I'll definitely check it out. Look for a book called "In Six Days"; it's a collection of essays written by 50 PhDs explaining why they believe in the Biblical account of Creation. You might also like an article my father wrote, Could Life "Just Happen?"

I read the link on your post. Whoever taught you your probability theory must have gone to a vo-tech school
Read past the first page. Quotes from evolutionists.
Can you provide even an inkling of physical evidence indicating that the first man was named "Adam" and not "Doug?" Evolutionism is kicking creationist ass in the evidence dept.
Does it matter what the first person's name was?How about where Eden was?
Give me some evolutionary evidence. now.
and if dinos and humans existed together? (more)

Here's a good article discussing the big bang.
you know, creation v. evolution is is a lot like windows v. linux.... Evolution theory is bloated and 'buggy', but has a good PR dept. (edu. institutions), while creationism just works.
Don't reply to that, instead, read more. Also read the articles from creationism.org.

I read the link on your post. Whoever taught you your probability theory must have gone to a vo-tech school
Read past the first page. Quotes from evolutionists.
Can you provide even an inkling of physical evidence indicating that the first man was named "Adam" and not "Doug?" Evolutionism is kicking creationist ass in the evidence dept.
Does it matter what the first person's name was?How about where Eden was?
Give me some evolutionary evidence. now.
and if dinos and humans existed together? (more)

Here's a good article discussing the big bang.
you know, creation v. evolution is is a lot like windows v. linux.... Evolution theory is bloated and 'buggy', but has a good PR dept. (edu. institutions), while creationism just works.
Don't reply to that, instead, read more. Also read the articles from creationism.org.

I read the link on your post. Whoever taught you your probability theory must have gone to a vo-tech school
Read past the first page. Quotes from evolutionists.
Can you provide even an inkling of physical evidence indicating that the first man was named "Adam" and not "Doug?" Evolutionism is kicking creationist ass in the evidence dept.
Does it matter what the first person's name was?How about where Eden was?
Give me some evolutionary evidence. now.
and if dinos and humans existed together? (more)

Here's a good article discussing the big bang.
you know, creation v. evolution is is a lot like windows v. linux.... Evolution theory is bloated and 'buggy', but has a good PR dept. (edu. institutions), while creationism just works.
Don't reply to that, instead, read more. Also read the articles from creationism.org.

I read the link on your post. Whoever taught you your probability theory must have gone to a vo-tech school
Read past the first page. Quotes from evolutionists.
Can you provide even an inkling of physical evidence indicating that the first man was named "Adam" and not "Doug?" Evolutionism is kicking creationist ass in the evidence dept.
Does it matter what the first person's name was?How about where Eden was?
Give me some evolutionary evidence. now.
and if dinos and humans existed together? (more)

Here's a good article discussing the big bang.
you know, creation v. evolution is is a lot like windows v. linux.... Evolution theory is bloated and 'buggy', but has a good PR dept. (edu. institutions), while creationism just works.
Don't reply to that, instead, read more. Also read the articles from creationism.org.

I read the link on your post. Whoever taught you your probability theory must have gone to a vo-tech school
Read past the first page. Quotes from evolutionists.
Can you provide even an inkling of physical evidence indicating that the first man was named "Adam" and not "Doug?" Evolutionism is kicking creationist ass in the evidence dept.
Does it matter what the first person's name was?How about where Eden was?
Give me some evolutionary evidence. now.
and if dinos and humans existed together? (more)

Here's a good article discussing the big bang.
you know, creation v. evolution is is a lot like windows v. linux.... Evolution theory is bloated and 'buggy', but has a good PR dept. (edu. institutions), while creationism just works.
Don't reply to that, instead, read more. Also read the articles from creationism.org.

I read the link on your post. Whoever taught you your probability theory must have gone to a vo-tech school
Read past the first page. Quotes from evolutionists.
Can you provide even an inkling of physical evidence indicating that the first man was named "Adam" and not "Doug?" Evolutionism is kicking creationist ass in the evidence dept.
Does it matter what the first person's name was?How about where Eden was?
Give me some evolutionary evidence. now.
and if dinos and humans existed together? (more)

Here's a good article discussing the big bang.
you know, creation v. evolution is is a lot like windows v. linux.... Evolution theory is bloated and 'buggy', but has a good PR dept. (edu. institutions), while creationism just works.
Don't reply to that, instead, read more. Also read the articles from creationism.org.

What I find odd about this post is why it is labeled insightful and not 'flamebait' or 'troll'. >of "school prayer" and "equal time" gets taken School prayer is already not allowed. >out of the picture. Do I get equal time on the >pulpit at a xitian church to teach evolution? You are not required by law to go to church. You are required to go to school. Shall I explain more? >Then why are they invading the minds of children >to teach them religious rubbish? Evolution is a They are not 'invading the minds' of our children. It's called "presenting another opinion". >confirmed, Objective fact. Religion, and Not confirmed, certainly not objective - professors who have been teaching it their whole life are NOT going to turn around and say they were wrong. ever heard of an ego? >creation "science" is pure fantasy. Neither evolution nor creation has been confirmed, although the one closest to fantasy would be evolution. If one examines evolution using probablility/statistics, one will note the overwhelming odds against it. Additionally, no evidence has been found to back it up (ie. fossil record) (while there have been findings of sea fossils on even the higest mountains [think: great flood/noah, etc.]). In short, your proclamations of opinion come off as arrogant and ignorant (a Bad combination...). --Ben. ps. want more argument?