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It's obvious that you have learned your catechism well as you will spit it back any time your comfort level drops. How about dealing with the facts and having a mature discussion?

Let's look at some facts:

FACT: Darwinian evolution is NOT proved by the fossil record. In fact, quite the opposite. The reason for the theory of punctuated equilibrium is because Darwinian gradualism (yep, the one taught in your holy books) can't be supported by the evidence.

FACT: Natural selection and every observed mutation (including beneficial mutations) result in either less genetic information or at best no new information, not more. Government behavior not withstanding, no matter how long you give it, removing information will not produce more information.

FACT: Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny was discredited shortly after Haeckel fudged his drawings in the 1800s and unleashed this fraud on the earth. Yet last time I check, most of the texts used in the government churches still teach this as truth.

So who is it that is imposing which religion in the schools?

It's obvious that you have learned your catechism well as you will spit it back any time your comfort level drops. How about dealing with the facts and having a mature discussion?

Let's look at some facts:

FACT: Darwinian evolution is NOT proved by the fossil record. In fact, quite the opposite. The reason for the theory of punctuated equilibrium is because Darwinian gradualism (yep, the one taught in your holy books) can't be supported by the evidence.

FACT: Natural selection and every observed mutation (including beneficial mutations) result in either less genetic information or at best no new information, not more. Government behavior not withstanding, no matter how long you give it, removing information will not produce more information.

FACT: Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny was discredited shortly after Haeckel fudged his drawings in the 1800s and unleashed this fraud on the earth. Yet last time I check, most of the texts used in the government churches still teach this as truth.

So who is it that is imposing which religion in the schools?

As someone else pointed out, the KT boundary was 65 Mya, not 85. Also, early mammals of that era are usually described as "shrew-like" (also nocturnal, which is why we all have different color vision systems than reptiles), so probably even smaller than that.

The line that would eventually give rise to the mammals split from the reptile lineage before the emergency of the dinosaurs (the number cited is 324 Mya); look up "synapsid" for more information. It was actually the dominant type of land fauna until the greatest mass extinction in history at the end of the Permian (250 Mya), which was followed by the emergence of the dinosaurs. There were large synapsids in the early years of the Mesozoic, but the branch that would give rise to the mammals--the cynodonts--emerged about 220 Mya. There's a rather exhaustive description over at Wikipedia; also see talkorigins.

On a more relevant note, consider the whales. It appears now that whales are more closely related to hippos than hippos are to cows. (Again, see Wikipedia for a good summary.) This was mightily confusing, because we generally take phenotypic change as an indicator of distance between species. The important thing to remember here is that species change due to pressures put on them. Rapid pressures brought on by migration into a new environment (like the sea, for example) will cause a greater rate of phenotype change than would exist if the environment remained constant--consider the shark for this latter case.

Also, as another commenter has pointed out, the mammalian lineages had already split at that point; divergence points for some groups of mammals are after the KT boundary, but many are before it. However, it appears that even though the groups were separate, they all looked pretty much alike until they migrated into the niches vacated by the dinosaurs and diverged widely.

And lastly, your math isn't quite right. 7 million years (the divergence point for the chimp and human lineages, notwithstanding a very poorly written article) is more like a tenth of the time it took to get from (many kinds of!) shrew-like mammals to a similar level of mammalian diversity to what we see today.

The constancy of radioactive decay is not an assumption, but is supported by evidence:

The radioactive decay rates of nuclides used in radiometric dating have not been observed to vary since their rates were directly measurable, at least within limits of accuracy. This is despite experiments that attempt to change decay rates (Emery 1972). Extreme pressure can cause electron-capture decay rates to increase slightly (less than 0.2 percent), but the change is small enough that it has no detectable effect on dates.

Supernovae are known to produce a large quantity of radioactive isotopes (Nomoto et al. 1997a, 1997b; Thielemann et al. 1998). These isotopes produce gamma rays with frequencies and fading rates that are predictable according to present decay rates. These predictions hold for supernova SN1987A, which is 169,000 light-years away (Knödlseder 2000). Therefore, radioactive decay rates were not significantly different 169,000 years ago. Present decay rates are likewise consistent with observations of the gamma rays and fading rates of supernova SN1991T, which is sixty million light-years away (Prantzos 1999), and with fading rate observations of supernovae billions of light-years away (Perlmutter et al. 1998).

The Oklo reactor was the site of a natural nuclear reaction 1,800 million years ago. The fine structure constant affects neutron capture rates, which can be measured from the reactor's products. These measurements show no detectable change in the fine structure constant and neutron capture for almost two billion years (Fujii et al. 2000; Shlyakhter 1976).

"In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next."

- Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974

or

Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.

Before you start quibbling, get some context. I took these defs from there.

Personally, I believe in micro-evolution, aka adaptation, but macro-evolution, the changing of one species into another, is still up for serious critical debate

No, it isn't.

and I've yet to see any sort of proof

That's because you haven't looked.

(Oh, and why don't your religious compatriots demand such stringent "proof" from the Bible?)

Who's refusing to engage in the debate? You are! You keep moving the goal posts. Stick to the point I called you on! Explain to me the difference between the logical inference involved in concluding things that happen in physics versus the inference used to conclude that evolution is correct. All you did was show your ignorance of the scientific process by spouting creationist claims that have been refuted more times than I can count. Then you accuse me of making a personal attack when in fact, I'm merely telling you how screwed up and self centered your thinking has become, and you didn't attempt to refute that either.

We do find similarities in the DNA between closely related modern animals as well as anatomical similarities in fossilized ancestors REPEATEDLY just as evolution predicts we should. *And* we are even finding fossils of animals that evolutionary theory predicts that we should find, repeatedly.

Fossils shmossils, we find remains in various states of fossilization all the time! At the bottom of bogs for example where the oxygen level is low, such things have been found. And in older fossils we often find cases where bones, etc are *still* in the process of mineralization.

There's your response, even though you haven't responded to my original point. Please explain why logical inference is ok in other branches of science but not in biology. Stick to the point, I will not respond to any more of your goal post moving.

Maybe you should check out http://talkorigins.org/ and then explain why tired, debunked objections should carry any weight with me at all.

The fact that this got modded informative makes me want to cry. It's been debunked, but I guess if you keep on repeating it then sooner or later you'll find some poor sucker.

Their bones are found in the same layers
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH710.html

their footprints side by side in the same mud
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC101.html

It's just the way it is.
No, really it's not...

The fact that this got modded informative makes me want to cry. It's been debunked, but I guess if you keep on repeating it then sooner or later you'll find some poor sucker.

Their bones are found in the same layers
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH710.html

their footprints side by side in the same mud
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC101.html

It's just the way it is.
No, really it's not...

The Bible says the earth is a circle, i.e. flat. NASA says the earth is an oblate spheroid that is very very slightly fatter at the bottom. http://bible.cc/isaiah/40-22.htm http://regentsprep.org/Regents/earthsci/units/intr oduction/oblate.cfm

The Bible says that the Earth was created in 6 distinct phases. So do most geologists, biologists, and anyone else with half a clue about science.

What 6 phases are those? Cos i'm pretty sure most biologists would take issue with the claim that plants were created before the sun, and most cosmologists would not agree with the idea that the earth was created after space but before anything else like the stars.

You really need to read more than just creationist propaganda in order to have an accurate understanding of what science does and doesn't say. As it stands your remarks are the equivalent of saying "science say the sun revolves around the earth". That's how totally out of whack your comments are.

For you to say evolution hasn't kept current and has been discredited is just so totally divorced from reality it's not funny. For you're own sake open your eyes. Read something about evolution that isn't a piece of creationist propaganda. You are being lied to by people with an agenda. All these things that anti-evolutionists accuse science of, being blinkered zealots and using intellectual dishonesty to support an agenda, is just a total lie, and a total hypocrisy. I suggest you start by looking at http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs.html

If after seeing both sides of the story you still aren't convinced, fair enough, but don't do yourself the disservice of relying one side of the story.

The catch, of course, is that "fittest" depends on the environment that the organism lives in. And "less suitable genetic traits" are just the ones that happen to result in the individual's untimely death (i.e., before it reproduces). My myopia is obviously a less suitable genetic trait that could get me killed if I get into a situation where I need to see a danger at a distance. But none of my nearly-blind ancestors managed to get themselves killed before I came along, and I have managed to reproduce, and so this bad trait has been propagated to another generation. There seem to be certain diseases that are like that as well. Some inherited traits just happen to help a genetic line survive, and some of them just happen to not to have caused it to be extinguished.

I remember an article a few years ago that essentially said that the current generation of people is composed of a very small sample of the people who lived in the Middle Ages (to pick an epoch). Most of the family lines of that earlier epoch have been extinguished, for whatever reason. So in essence, we are whittling down to some few genetic lines that will have been lucky enough to make it that far. Whatever it is, it won't be perfect.

I think this is news because it is confirmation of an old idea that is still hotly debated.

The so call Oort clout is a fictional mathematical construct that has never been shown to exist. Science is about measurements and observations, not fictional, dubious math based on assumptions. So until they actually observe this Oort cloud, the evidence stands

What evidence -- that allegedly "stands" -- have you that new comets can never form, then?

The known mechanisms for salt removal are insufficient for an equilibrium between input and output of salt. There is a detailed report here:

http://tccsa.tc/articles/ocean_sodium.html

Already addressed.

Do you even look to see if your claims haven't been rebutted already?

Whatever the detailed equations may be, taking account that the earth and moon are not point sources, the fact is that the forces and losses get larger as the bodies are closer, not smaller. Therefore in the past, the rate at which the moon receded must have been greater. So the evidence stands.

I notice that you do not actually address any of the content of the referenced article.

So the rocks under and around the falls are really old, like the earth, but the falls themselves are young? It seems they should all be the same age. maybe that evidence can be doubted.

Yes. The falls were formed by erosion which exposed ancient rocks. Have you actually looked at the geological conclusions of the Falls, or are you just parroting creationist claims without critical examination?

Remember: creationist literature has a specific agenda: the conclusions must correspond with Biblical literalism. Despite what creationists sources will dishonestly claim about a deliberat attempt to remove "God" from the picture, real scientists form conclusions based on the actual facts, not a preassumed conclusion.

Jupiter and Saturn radiate more heat than they get from the sun. If they were billions of years old, they would have cooled off by now to equilibrium. Radioactivity would have decayed by now also if these planets were billion of years old.

You really haven't done any research, have you?

Ancient astronomers records tell us that Sirius was red, redder than Mars. Yet today Sirius is a white star. Is that an indication that stellar evolution proceeds much faster then thought? Don't tell me that ancient astronomers were mistaken in their star identification. They were actually quite advanced even though they had no telescopes yet.

You should not crib notes from Hovind. He is a known liar (and a tax dodger).

The so call Oort clout is a fictional mathematical construct that has never been shown to exist. Science is about measurements and observations, not fictional, dubious math based on assumptions. So until they actually observe this Oort cloud, the evidence stands

What evidence -- that allegedly "stands" -- have you that new comets can never form, then?

The known mechanisms for salt removal are insufficient for an equilibrium between input and output of salt. There is a detailed report here:

http://tccsa.tc/articles/ocean_sodium.html

Already addressed.

Do you even look to see if your claims haven't been rebutted already?

Whatever the detailed equations may be, taking account that the earth and moon are not point sources, the fact is that the forces and losses get larger as the bodies are closer, not smaller. Therefore in the past, the rate at which the moon receded must have been greater. So the evidence stands.

I notice that you do not actually address any of the content of the referenced article.

So the rocks under and around the falls are really old, like the earth, but the falls themselves are young? It seems they should all be the same age. maybe that evidence can be doubted.

Yes. The falls were formed by erosion which exposed ancient rocks. Have you actually looked at the geological conclusions of the Falls, or are you just parroting creationist claims without critical examination?

Remember: creationist literature has a specific agenda: the conclusions must correspond with Biblical literalism. Despite what creationists sources will dishonestly claim about a deliberat attempt to remove "God" from the picture, real scientists form conclusions based on the actual facts, not a preassumed conclusion.

Jupiter and Saturn radiate more heat than they get from the sun. If they were billions of years old, they would have cooled off by now to equilibrium. Radioactivity would have decayed by now also if these planets were billion of years old.

You really haven't done any research, have you?

Ancient astronomers records tell us that Sirius was red, redder than Mars. Yet today Sirius is a white star. Is that an indication that stellar evolution proceeds much faster then thought? Don't tell me that ancient astronomers were mistaken in their star identification. They were actually quite advanced even though they had no telescopes yet.

You should not crib notes from Hovind. He is a known liar (and a tax dodger).

The so call Oort clout is a fictional mathematical construct that has never been shown to exist. Science is about measurements and observations, not fictional, dubious math based on assumptions. So until they actually observe this Oort cloud, the evidence stands

What evidence -- that allegedly "stands" -- have you that new comets can never form, then?

The known mechanisms for salt removal are insufficient for an equilibrium between input and output of salt. There is a detailed report here:

http://tccsa.tc/articles/ocean_sodium.html

Already addressed.

Do you even look to see if your claims haven't been rebutted already?

Whatever the detailed equations may be, taking account that the earth and moon are not point sources, the fact is that the forces and losses get larger as the bodies are closer, not smaller. Therefore in the past, the rate at which the moon receded must have been greater. So the evidence stands.

I notice that you do not actually address any of the content of the referenced article.

So the rocks under and around the falls are really old, like the earth, but the falls themselves are young? It seems they should all be the same age. maybe that evidence can be doubted.

Yes. The falls were formed by erosion which exposed ancient rocks. Have you actually looked at the geological conclusions of the Falls, or are you just parroting creationist claims without critical examination?

Remember: creationist literature has a specific agenda: the conclusions must correspond with Biblical literalism. Despite what creationists sources will dishonestly claim about a deliberat attempt to remove "God" from the picture, real scientists form conclusions based on the actual facts, not a preassumed conclusion.

Jupiter and Saturn radiate more heat than they get from the sun. If they were billions of years old, they would have cooled off by now to equilibrium. Radioactivity would have decayed by now also if these planets were billion of years old.

You really haven't done any research, have you?

Ancient astronomers records tell us that Sirius was red, redder than Mars. Yet today Sirius is a white star. Is that an indication that stellar evolution proceeds much faster then thought? Don't tell me that ancient astronomers were mistaken in their star identification. They were actually quite advanced even though they had no telescopes yet.

You should not crib notes from Hovind. He is a known liar (and a tax dodger).

There are clearly layers of ice covering Greenland. The assumption (belief) is that these are deposited at the rate of one layer annually. So they count the layers and based on the annual assumption, the bottom of the ice is hundreds of thousands years or even millions of years old.

Some aircraft that had crash landed there in WW2 were discovered after 42 years under 263 feet of ice. This glacial ice was compressed into several distinct layers per foot. This shows that these layers are NOT annual cycles, but simply periods of warmer and colder weather. Thus this evidence shows that the assumption about the annual nature of these layers is wrong. Therefore, these layers cannot be equated to years.

Addressed here. Ice cores are not dated by thickness.

Scientists have determined that roughly 400 million tons of minerals are deposited yearly into the world's oceans. Today's mineral content (mostly NaCl) is less than 4%. At today's rate, IF it were really true that the earth is over a billion years old the water of the sea should be totally saturated with minerals. At the present rate, the salt content corresponds to around only 4000 years worth of accumulation.

Addressed here.

This corresponds to about the time of the biblical flood.

Unless you count aluminium, which gives an age coresponding to 100 years ago.

This is evidence that the earth is not billions of years old, but still doesn't PROVE it, since we have no way of knowing whether the rate of mineral addition has always been constant. There also could have been a mechanism to remove minerals from the water, although so far nobody has come forward with a plausible mechanism.

You mean like runoff?

The fact that there are still comets in existence, even though their lifetime is only in the ten of thousands of years at most, shows that the solar system is not billions of years old.

Are you suggesting that new comets can never come into existence?

The moon moves away from the earth a little each year. If the moon were billions of years old, it would have been destructively close for both bodies long before then.

Sure, if you don't understand gravity.

At the present rate of erosion, Niagara Falls should have long ago disappeared into lake Erie, if
they were millions of years old.

The age of Niagra Falls is not the age of the earth.

If you want more evidence, I could give it to you.

Do you have any that do not confuse the age of things on the earth with the age of the earth itself? By your Niagra Falls-type reasoning, the earth can be no older than 29 years, because I have only existed for that long.

There are clearly layers of ice covering Greenland. The assumption (belief) is that these are deposited at the rate of one layer annually. So they count the layers and based on the annual assumption, the bottom of the ice is hundreds of thousands years or even millions of years old.

Some aircraft that had crash landed there in WW2 were discovered after 42 years under 263 feet of ice. This glacial ice was compressed into several distinct layers per foot. This shows that these layers are NOT annual cycles, but simply periods of warmer and colder weather. Thus this evidence shows that the assumption about the annual nature of these layers is wrong. Therefore, these layers cannot be equated to years.

Addressed here. Ice cores are not dated by thickness.

Scientists have determined that roughly 400 million tons of minerals are deposited yearly into the world's oceans. Today's mineral content (mostly NaCl) is less than 4%. At today's rate, IF it were really true that the earth is over a billion years old the water of the sea should be totally saturated with minerals. At the present rate, the salt content corresponds to around only 4000 years worth of accumulation.

Addressed here.

This corresponds to about the time of the biblical flood.

Unless you count aluminium, which gives an age coresponding to 100 years ago.

This is evidence that the earth is not billions of years old, but still doesn't PROVE it, since we have no way of knowing whether the rate of mineral addition has always been constant. There also could have been a mechanism to remove minerals from the water, although so far nobody has come forward with a plausible mechanism.

You mean like runoff?

The fact that there are still comets in existence, even though their lifetime is only in the ten of thousands of years at most, shows that the solar system is not billions of years old.

Are you suggesting that new comets can never come into existence?

The moon moves away from the earth a little each year. If the moon were billions of years old, it would have been destructively close for both bodies long before then.

Sure, if you don't understand gravity.

At the present rate of erosion, Niagara Falls should have long ago disappeared into lake Erie, if
they were millions of years old.

The age of Niagra Falls is not the age of the earth.

If you want more evidence, I could give it to you.

Do you have any that do not confuse the age of things on the earth with the age of the earth itself? By your Niagra Falls-type reasoning, the earth can be no older than 29 years, because I have only existed for that long.

There are clearly layers of ice covering Greenland. The assumption (belief) is that these are deposited at the rate of one layer annually. So they count the layers and based on the annual assumption, the bottom of the ice is hundreds of thousands years or even millions of years old.

Some aircraft that had crash landed there in WW2 were discovered after 42 years under 263 feet of ice. This glacial ice was compressed into several distinct layers per foot. This shows that these layers are NOT annual cycles, but simply periods of warmer and colder weather. Thus this evidence shows that the assumption about the annual nature of these layers is wrong. Therefore, these layers cannot be equated to years.

Addressed here. Ice cores are not dated by thickness.

Scientists have determined that roughly 400 million tons of minerals are deposited yearly into the world's oceans. Today's mineral content (mostly NaCl) is less than 4%. At today's rate, IF it were really true that the earth is over a billion years old the water of the sea should be totally saturated with minerals. At the present rate, the salt content corresponds to around only 4000 years worth of accumulation.

Addressed here.

This corresponds to about the time of the biblical flood.

Unless you count aluminium, which gives an age coresponding to 100 years ago.

This is evidence that the earth is not billions of years old, but still doesn't PROVE it, since we have no way of knowing whether the rate of mineral addition has always been constant. There also could have been a mechanism to remove minerals from the water, although so far nobody has come forward with a plausible mechanism.

You mean like runoff?

The fact that there are still comets in existence, even though their lifetime is only in the ten of thousands of years at most, shows that the solar system is not billions of years old.

Are you suggesting that new comets can never come into existence?

The moon moves away from the earth a little each year. If the moon were billions of years old, it would have been destructively close for both bodies long before then.

Sure, if you don't understand gravity.

At the present rate of erosion, Niagara Falls should have long ago disappeared into lake Erie, if
they were millions of years old.

The age of Niagra Falls is not the age of the earth.

If you want more evidence, I could give it to you.

Do you have any that do not confuse the age of things on the earth with the age of the earth itself? By your Niagra Falls-type reasoning, the earth can be no older than 29 years, because I have only existed for that long.

There are clearly layers of ice covering Greenland. The assumption (belief) is that these are deposited at the rate of one layer annually. So they count the layers and based on the annual assumption, the bottom of the ice is hundreds of thousands years or even millions of years old.

Some aircraft that had crash landed there in WW2 were discovered after 42 years under 263 feet of ice. This glacial ice was compressed into several distinct layers per foot. This shows that these layers are NOT annual cycles, but simply periods of warmer and colder weather. Thus this evidence shows that the assumption about the annual nature of these layers is wrong. Therefore, these layers cannot be equated to years.

Addressed here. Ice cores are not dated by thickness.

Scientists have determined that roughly 400 million tons of minerals are deposited yearly into the world's oceans. Today's mineral content (mostly NaCl) is less than 4%. At today's rate, IF it were really true that the earth is over a billion years old the water of the sea should be totally saturated with minerals. At the present rate, the salt content corresponds to around only 4000 years worth of accumulation.

Addressed here.

This corresponds to about the time of the biblical flood.

Unless you count aluminium, which gives an age coresponding to 100 years ago.

This is evidence that the earth is not billions of years old, but still doesn't PROVE it, since we have no way of knowing whether the rate of mineral addition has always been constant. There also could have been a mechanism to remove minerals from the water, although so far nobody has come forward with a plausible mechanism.

You mean like runoff?

The fact that there are still comets in existence, even though their lifetime is only in the ten of thousands of years at most, shows that the solar system is not billions of years old.

Are you suggesting that new comets can never come into existence?

The moon moves away from the earth a little each year. If the moon were billions of years old, it would have been destructively close for both bodies long before then.

Sure, if you don't understand gravity.

At the present rate of erosion, Niagara Falls should have long ago disappeared into lake Erie, if
they were millions of years old.

The age of Niagra Falls is not the age of the earth.

If you want more evidence, I could give it to you.

Do you have any that do not confuse the age of things on the earth with the age of the earth itself? By your Niagra Falls-type reasoning, the earth can be no older than 29 years, because I have only existed for that long.

There are clearly layers of ice covering Greenland. The assumption (belief) is that these are deposited at the rate of one layer annually. So they count the layers and based on the annual assumption, the bottom of the ice is hundreds of thousands years or even millions of years old.

Some aircraft that had crash landed there in WW2 were discovered after 42 years under 263 feet of ice. This glacial ice was compressed into several distinct layers per foot. This shows that these layers are NOT annual cycles, but simply periods of warmer and colder weather. Thus this evidence shows that the assumption about the annual nature of these layers is wrong. Therefore, these layers cannot be equated to years.

Addressed here. Ice cores are not dated by thickness.

Scientists have determined that roughly 400 million tons of minerals are deposited yearly into the world's oceans. Today's mineral content (mostly NaCl) is less than 4%. At today's rate, IF it were really true that the earth is over a billion years old the water of the sea should be totally saturated with minerals. At the present rate, the salt content corresponds to around only 4000 years worth of accumulation.

Addressed here.

This corresponds to about the time of the biblical flood.

Unless you count aluminium, which gives an age coresponding to 100 years ago.

This is evidence that the earth is not billions of years old, but still doesn't PROVE it, since we have no way of knowing whether the rate of mineral addition has always been constant. There also could have been a mechanism to remove minerals from the water, although so far nobody has come forward with a plausible mechanism.

You mean like runoff?

The fact that there are still comets in existence, even though their lifetime is only in the ten of thousands of years at most, shows that the solar system is not billions of years old.

Are you suggesting that new comets can never come into existence?

The moon moves away from the earth a little each year. If the moon were billions of years old, it would have been destructively close for both bodies long before then.

Sure, if you don't understand gravity.

At the present rate of erosion, Niagara Falls should have long ago disappeared into lake Erie, if
they were millions of years old.

The age of Niagra Falls is not the age of the earth.

If you want more evidence, I could give it to you.

Do you have any that do not confuse the age of things on the earth with the age of the earth itself? By your Niagra Falls-type reasoning, the earth can be no older than 29 years, because I have only existed for that long.

Yes. I have actually read all those works. And the Bible, Koran, and Book of Mormon. Now can I say that the very concept of God is so absurd as to not even be amusing? At least concepts like Santa Claus are vaguely coherent. AiG is a joke and anybody who understands the smallest amount of science will join me in chuckling at their nonsense. If you do not, I recommend http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/index.html as a great response to all of their claims. I wouldn't call sitting there with ones fingers in their ears and eyes closed a valid side to an argument. Also, would it be true to say that you do not believe in the Koran because you do not wish the implications of Allah to be brought to bear the way you live? I hear he has fruit like molten metal which the unbelievers are to choke upon in the hereafter for those who make partners unto Allah. Shouldn't that qualify as a side of the argument?

The idea that Christianity and not Christianity are the only sides which exist is nothing short of naive. Really, there is non-religion and thousands of highly silly and contradictory faiths. In short, you are being extremely unfair to the Flying Spaghetti Monster side of the argument. Have you read the Cookbook?

my disbelief in the big bang as describing the birth fo the ENTIRE universe stems from an instinct i have about the history of science: 1. at one time, people believed the world was flat 2. at one time, people believed the sun revolved aorund the earth 3. at one time, people believe humans were created in the image of god, above the other beasts

And, quite frankly, I'm waiting for an Evolutionist to come up with a compelling retort to the concept of Irreducible Complexity.

Given that there may be 800,000 years covered by the samples, that does not prove that the earlies sample is 800,000 years old. how are we to know if it is not in fact 8,000,000 years old, but due to natural climate variations, a large proportion of the sample has melted in this time.

There are numerous methods for dating ice cores. Besdies, many of these cores are taken from the deep Antarctic where there just isn't substantial melting: you may get slow accumulation from little precipitation, but very little melting.

Strangely enough, there aren't all that many accurate temperature readings for the globe over 1,000 year old, and so all that can conceivably be claimed is that the current temperature fluctuations are the fastest in recorded history.

That's true; they may not be the fastest "ever". But they likely to be the fastest in tens of thousands of years at least; we see no evidence of changes that abrupt in the paleological record.

So from this we should be able to deduce that you believe that the sun is having no affect on temperature change here. however to claim thus would be to ignore evidence from at least 2 planets, where the temperature there has continued to rise.

As noted by the earlier poster, this evidence does not support the Sun's influence on temperature change. Indeed, Martian temperatures also rose during a decrease in solar irradiance. This is evidence that the warming on both planets is not solar.

In fact, looking at our nearest neighbour, it seems that other than the sun, there has been no other possible cause for this temperature rise.

Elsewhere in this thread a poster gave a cause which is more consistent with the evidence than "the Sun" (namely, Martian albedo changes).

Besides which, I seem to recall that temperatures peaked around 1998, and have been stable/dropping since then.

Not true. (Incidentally, 1998 is a disingenous choice of reference year by global warming deniers, as it had an anomalously strong El Nino.)

However, no such claim of bias is levelled at those whose funding comes from organisations with a vested interest in keeping the AGW myth going,

You mean, like the National Science Foundation?

or those who would lose funding were it to be known that the change in the Earth's climate WAS natural.

Really? Who do you think would lose funding? Do you think climate science would disappear if not for anthropogenic global warming?

Additionally, ALL the research being done that shows CO2 is the cause of global warming is started under the premise that this is what is the cause,

That is ridiculously false. Nothing is assumed a priori about the cause. Rather, the strengths of various natural and anthropogenic forcings are estimated from observational data. You plug in the amount of heating due to the Sun, the greenhouse effect, the cooling due to volcanism and air pollution, etc., and run your models from that.

relies entirely on almost identical computer models,

The models are not "almost identical". Some operate on spatial grids, some use spectral methods; they have competing models of biosphere feedbacks, ice dynamics, etc.

Besides which, what is wrong with "almost identical" models? The Earth runs on the same laws of physics, you know. Do you complain that aerospace codes all run on the same Navier-Stokes equations? As long as they are coded independently so they don't share the same bugs, what is the problem?

includes large "fudge factors"...

Such as?

and has yet to provide accurate results based on known information, even f

So far, I've found 3 to be the case in every one of those incidents. So far, I haven't found anything that, upon close research, was incorrect. Tough to follow, maybe, but not incorrect. Generally, I try to dig a bit into a topic before I call a large class of experts incompetent or liars.

I see no issue with this. Except when I look for answers I see people with just as many credentials making counter claims. And then when you look at the claims, they are always assuming something vital to the interpretation to be correct but it is what places the point in reference in question in the first place. I will show an example in a minute. One directly from talk origins dealing with evolution.

I think that you're referring to the stratigraphic dating of fossils, which creationist sites often accuse of being circular reasoning. This is one of those cases which appears to be true on the surface but, if you look into it and the iterative nature of the process, it's clearly not the case. Based on your description of it, I'm guessing you haven't looked all that deeply into the process, so it's hardly fair to go out and complain that all sides are equally dishonest/mistaken and the experts simply agree to disagree. I would tend to assume conclusion 3 in this case if I were you.

OK, You partly correct in what I was going after. Well, no, you were correct in that example. I was pulling from the top of my head to attempt to show the issue.

Now before I link to this, I am going to admit to my prejudice on the subject before we get into this. I am of the belief in the"bubble evolution theory". For some reasons it isn't covered on the Internet very well. I think this might be the insistence of Darwin's evolution and the fighting between creationist explanations totally dominating the scene. This was actually something presented to us back in 1970 something when I was in high school as one of the many ways life was suggested to have begun. Of course back then, they presented several theories held by science and didn't claim anything as fact or false. I think that is exactly how the subject should be taught today regardless of any consensus or vote on the more correct science.

OK, finally to the meat. If you look at this paper on macro and micro evolution under the falsification page you will see some strange thing. First, they are attempting to take an unrelated science as an example of how they are right. I find this extremely odd seeing how there is so much controversy over the other science they picked. It is like justifying the hottest hot button issues with the second hottest hot button issue and all along leaving the reality of what it is saying behind outside of the stuff they only find useful. I can live with that as it is probably just overzealous ambition working there. but after that we have a few issues that relate exactly to what I am talking about.

We can test a particular claim of macroevolution. We can test, for example, if weasels are more closely related to red pandas than bears are (Flynn and Nedbal 1998, Flynn et al. 2000). This is a test of a particular evolutionary tree or scenario. It tests a historical reconstruction. If shown, on the basis of the evidence and the best data, to be wrong, then that history has indeed been falsified. But can w

One common problem is that nowadays people equate "evolution" with "natural selection". They are not the same. Most creationists know that natural selection exists, and it is consistent with a creationist theory. People can often see natural selection in the world around us, but we don't often see evolution, although it is called that sometimes in the popular press.

This is a confusing and misleading statement. Evolution simply means change over time. Natural selection is only one of the mechanisms by which evolution is understood to occur.

Perhaps you are thinking of speciation? Because we see that happening, too.

It seems you might be trying to make the microevolution vs. macroevolution argument, without actually using those terms. I sincerely hope not.

One common problem is that nowadays people equate "evolution" with "natural selection". They are not the same. Most creationists know that natural selection exists, and it is consistent with a creationist theory. People can often see natural selection in the world around us, but we don't often see evolution, although it is called that sometimes in the popular press.

This is a confusing and misleading statement. Evolution simply means change over time. Natural selection is only one of the mechanisms by which evolution is understood to occur.

Perhaps you are thinking of speciation? Because we see that happening, too.

It seems you might be trying to make the microevolution vs. macroevolution argument, without actually using those terms. I sincerely hope not.

One common problem is that nowadays people equate "evolution" with "natural selection". They are not the same. Most creationists know that natural selection exists, and it is consistent with a creationist theory. People can often see natural selection in the world around us, but we don't often see evolution, although it is called that sometimes in the popular press.

This is a confusing and misleading statement. Evolution simply means change over time. Natural selection is only one of the mechanisms by which evolution is understood to occur.

Perhaps you are thinking of speciation? Because we see that happening, too.

It seems you might be trying to make the microevolution vs. macroevolution argument, without actually using those terms. I sincerely hope not.

One common problem is that nowadays people equate "evolution" with "natural selection". They are not the same. Most creationists know that natural selection exists, and it is consistent with a creationist theory. People can often see natural selection in the world around us, but we don't often see evolution, although it is called that sometimes in the popular press.

This is a confusing and misleading statement. Evolution simply means change over time. Natural selection is only one of the mechanisms by which evolution is understood to occur.

Perhaps you are thinking of speciation? Because we see that happening, too.

It seems you might be trying to make the microevolution vs. macroevolution argument, without actually using those terms. I sincerely hope not.

In my opinion if no one has seen it happen it takes just as much faith to believe one or the other.

Here's some evidence for evolution you can check on your very own body. Lay your fingers on the side of your jaw. Now, trace along the edge up to the very top of the jawbone. Notice how close your fingers are to your ear canal.

Now, inside the inner ear are three bones, the ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes. They are carefully arranged to transfer sound energy from the eardrum to the cochlea as efficiently as possible. How could such an amazing mechanism arise? (One that's been cited, even, as evidence for 'design' by "yokels" - just Google around a bit.)

It turns out that a classification of dinosaur called the therapsids had two jaw joints. The therapsids are known (by several independent lines of evidence) to be ancestral to modern mammals... and we have a basically complete fossil record of the gradual transition of one of those jaw joints into the modern bones of the inner ear. Note that intermediate steps were all advantageous, though not as efficient or optimized. Some transitional forms did help amplify sound energy but didn't work while the animal was chewing. We still have problems with that under some circumstances (try to listen to someone while eating celery) but the separation is far more developed now.

Seriously, try to hip yourself as to why scientists in the 1800s (commited young-Earth types, every one) were forced by the evidence to believe in an old Earth and species changing.

In my opinion if no one has seen it happen it takes just as much faith to believe one or the other.

Here's some evidence for evolution you can check on your very own body. Lay your fingers on the side of your jaw. Now, trace along the edge up to the very top of the jawbone. Notice how close your fingers are to your ear canal.

Now, inside the inner ear are three bones, the ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes. They are carefully arranged to transfer sound energy from the eardrum to the cochlea as efficiently as possible. How could such an amazing mechanism arise? (One that's been cited, even, as evidence for 'design' by "yokels" - just Google around a bit.)

It turns out that a classification of dinosaur called the therapsids had two jaw joints. The therapsids are known (by several independent lines of evidence) to be ancestral to modern mammals... and we have a basically complete fossil record of the gradual transition of one of those jaw joints into the modern bones of the inner ear. Note that intermediate steps were all advantageous, though not as efficient or optimized. Some transitional forms did help amplify sound energy but didn't work while the animal was chewing. We still have problems with that under some circumstances (try to listen to someone while eating celery) but the separation is far more developed now.

Seriously, try to hip yourself as to why scientists in the 1800s (commited young-Earth types, every one) were forced by the evidence to believe in an old Earth and species changing.

And in case anyone's wondering, here's why that's flatout wrong.

Too many repetitions of "carbon dating said some rock was a trillion years old!" have soured me on this tactic, so if you want to bring in "the last oil field we found" as evidence, you're going to have to recognize that oil fields are found all the time and identify yours a little more precisely.

Your own anecdotes are more amusingly distorted than most, too. Usually creationists at least try to get the Bible right. Seven versus ten plagues isn't as big an error as years versus millions of years, but whereas the latter error is just sad, the former is kinda funny.

... evolution is a particularly hard case. It's a very malleable theory in the broad, and entertains some diverse possibilities. ... it can be hard to find data that contradicts a theory -- or even find enough data to make people consider that the evidence might actually contradict the theory -- but new theories only have to adjust the story to fit that new data. ... Bits of evolution are modestly hard -- where it has hard data like genes, for instance. Bits of evolution are really soft -- fossils are soft data that aren't very amenable to experiment, and are more or less compatible with a lot of explanations.

Based on these statements, and links you provided in another post, it's clear that you think evolution produces no predictions and is not falsifiable. I don't agree, because as far as I know there are many potential falsifications (click on parts 1,2,3,4,5 for long lists of potential falsifications) for evolution and lots of verified predictions. I especially like this quote from Origin of Species: "If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."

What predictions can creationism offer, and how can we falsify it? As far as I can tell, the answers are "none" and "it's not falsifiable". Creationism is compatible with every conceivable discovery. For instance, it's strange that all life we find uses the same DNA bases (which is a specific requirement of common descent). But it's also compatible with creationism because, even though God could have created every species with different bases of DNA (or something even wilder) to provide obvious proof that common descent is false, He obviously chose not to, presumably because His Ways Are Mysterious. It's strange that the fossil record shows a general progression from simpler, less diverse organisms in the distant past to more diverse and complex organisms in the "recent" past (which is a specific prediction of evolution), but this is ALSO compatible with creationism because God (or Satan?) could be playing games with our heads.

I noticed your link to "Message Theory", but I'm surprised that you would consider this to be a valid example of a prediction. As far as I can tell from the book synopsis and this review, the author is basically saying "the prediction of intelligent design is that intelligent design is obviously correct and no other interpretation is possible." Isn't that tautological? It's like saying "evolution predicts that evolution is correct and no other interpretation is possible". Notice that none of the predictions or potential falsifications I have mentioned or linked to follow this pattern...

Incidentally, did you ever read the novel Contact (NOT the movie)? At the end of the book, Sagan's heroine discovers an obvious, indisputable message encoded in the digits of pi. This is what I would consider to be definitive proof of God's existence, and a true example of the discovery of a message from an intelligent designer.

I sense a problem in that many evolutionists complain that creationists don't have theories of their own, but just pick on the theories of others. That shouldn't be perceived as a problem -- it should be perceived as modern science in action. ...

I completely agree with you

... evolution is a particularly hard case. It's a very malleable theory in the broad, and entertains some diverse possibilities. ... it can be hard to find data that contradicts a theory -- or even find enough data to make people consider that the evidence might actually contradict the theory -- but new theories only have to adjust the story to fit that new data. ... Bits of evolution are modestly hard -- where it has hard data like genes, for instance. Bits of evolution are really soft -- fossils are soft data that aren't very amenable to experiment, and are more or less compatible with a lot of explanations.

Based on these statements, and links you provided in another post, it's clear that you think evolution produces no predictions and is not falsifiable. I don't agree, because as far as I know there are many potential falsifications (click on parts 1,2,3,4,5 for long lists of potential falsifications) for evolution and lots of verified predictions. I especially like this quote from Origin of Species: "If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."

What predictions can creationism offer, and how can we falsify it? As far as I can tell, the answers are "none" and "it's not falsifiable". Creationism is compatible with every conceivable discovery. For instance, it's strange that all life we find uses the same DNA bases (which is a specific requirement of common descent). But it's also compatible with creationism because, even though God could have created every species with different bases of DNA (or something even wilder) to provide obvious proof that common descent is false, He obviously chose not to, presumably because His Ways Are Mysterious. It's strange that the fossil record shows a general progression from simpler, less diverse organisms in the distant past to more diverse and complex organisms in the "recent" past (which is a specific prediction of evolution), but this is ALSO compatible with creationism because God (or Satan?) could be playing games with our heads.

I noticed your link to "Message Theory", but I'm surprised that you would consider this to be a valid example of a prediction. As far as I can tell from the book synopsis and this review, the author is basically saying "the prediction of intelligent design is that intelligent design is obviously correct and no other interpretation is possible." Isn't that tautological? It's like saying "evolution predicts that evolution is correct and no other interpretation is possible". Notice that none of the predictions or potential falsifications I have mentioned or linked to follow this pattern...

Incidentally, did you ever read the novel Contact (NOT the movie)? At the end of the book, Sagan's heroine discovers an obvious, indisputable message encoded in the digits of pi. This is what I would consider to be definitive proof of God's existence, and a true example of the discovery of a message from an intelligent designer.

I sense a problem in that many evolutionists complain that creationists don't have theories of their own, but just pick on the theories of others. That shouldn't be perceived as a problem -- it should be perceived as modern science in action. ...

I completely agree with you

See, it makes no sense to me why you'd do that considering that I just made a point of the fact that the universe (and probably the Earth) is most likely older than 6,000 years.

Using weasel words like "most likely" when you're referring to a six-orders-of-magnitude difference in 'opinion' is, well, weaseling. And I'm calling you on it.

This is a point where 'theology' is just wrong. Testably so. There are theologies that try to reconcile Genesis with the actual age of the Earth, and there are theologies that just say "God made it look older to test us", and those aren't ruled out (since, by definition, they make no testable predictions contrary to what science actually shows). But the theologies that claim that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that the scientific evidence supports this - those are just flat wrong.

Thanks for a much more thoughtful reply than average for this thread.

Right back at ya.

Sadly I can't give your reply all the time it deserves, because I've chosen to reply to quite a few already, as well as having my original post modded up to Interesting+4 and then back down to hell by angry mods.

For what it's worth, I'd have modded you +1 interesting had I not posted.

Well, that's part of the problem with attempting to falsify evolution. What was once a valid objection becomes invalid because the target moves.

Evolution in particular, or science in general?

Before we knew how much dust was actually on the moon, for example, long-age theory made "lots" the obvious prediction. Now that we know how much dust there is on the moon, we have a post hoc explanation for it in terms of long ages.

First of all, I'm not sure that obvious prediction was "lots". After reading these two pages, it looks like there was just one guy (Pettersson) providing data that implied a large amount of dust. He did so by making a number of bad assumptions, such as the assumption that any nickel in the air must be coming from meteors.

Secondly, your "post hoc explanation" sound bite gives the impression that scientists looked at the amount of dust on the moon and fudged the numbers to make it fit. The actual process involved measuring meteorite impact rates using satellites above earth's atmosphere to avoid earthly contamination, which resulted in an estimate 1000x less than Pettersson's. This estimate was then subjected to an independent cross-check by comparing them to average amounts of meteorite dust found in sedimentary rock, and they agreed.

If you want anti-evolutionists to keep up with all the latest developments, give them funding specifically to find flaws in the latest pro-evolutionary findings.

What's special about the field of evolution that makes the usual scientific process break down? Every other field of science follows the same basic process: researchers present evidence which is then checked for accuracy by their peers. What is it, specifically, about evolution that requires tacking a separate step onto the process of peer review? Why not give that (limited) funding to people who have problems with modern medicine or plasma physics or heliocentricity? Before you answer, note that I don't really see a qualitative difference between most creationists and the arguments presented at these sites (especially the heliocentricity site). Is there a difference, other than the fact that you believe one rather than the other? (I'm crossing my fingers hoping you're not a geocentrist.)

This objection irks me. It seems that the people who accuse Behe of arguing from ignorance provide refutations in the form of arguments from credulity. Behe points out complex systems and says "remove any one piece and the system breaks." His opponents respond, "so it happened some other way." Where does the onus lie?

...

His opponents are already persuaded that "naturally" is the only way anything forms, so they give a just-so story about how it might possibly have happened, and consider the case closed.

Behe is making an extraordinary claim, namely that the evolution of a specific structure (take your pick from his examples) will never, repeat NEVER, be explained in full detail. Furthermore, he's arguing that this (predicted) failure isn't evidence for our collective stupidity. No, instead he jumps to the conclusion that this (again, predicted) fai

"You could assist me by denying that evolution deals with Fact, and I will feel much more relaxed about it. I'll settle for "evolution (in the sense of molecules-to-man) is a theory based on an assumption of naturalism". If you can assent to that, we have no disagreement about the nature of evolution itself."

If you require that facts not have the "assumption of naturalism," then fine, don't call evolution a fact. However logical consistency demands that you no longer consider "the sky is blue" to be a fact for the exact same reason. Really none of our interactions with the entire, everyday world can be considered factual without methodological naturalism. After all, a supernatural entity could be tricking us in ways that we could not possibly even imagine. Maybe this morning I ate my Cheerios with a fork because Loki tricked me into thinking it was a spoon. But such speculation I'll cheerfully leave to the sophists and postmodernists. Also, we must be very careful with our terms. Science is not possible without methodological naturalism, for the reasons in my previous post as well as the above. Philosophical naturalism on the other hand is irrelevant to science as the supernatural can't be studied using science. For somebody who says they've got a graduate degree in philosophy, your posts read messily on this distinction. Also I urge you to better inform yourself on what evolution actually says. "Molecules to man" is a phrase that instantly tells me that you've read little about evolution from pro-science sources. I recommend Berkeley's evolution website and talk.origins as good starting off places, wikipedia's got a decent page as well.

"As to explaining your "enzymes" and their behaviour, you are merely using the accepted terminology of your field. That paradigm includes "amino acids" and "protons" and other such mythical elements. Whether you believe in those or "bond pixies" doesn't really matter much if the predictions and whatnot come out the same. Whether you say, "an amino acid pops a proton off a substrate carbon," or, "a bond pixie smacks a frobnockle off a slithy tove," matters only in that the former language is that which your peers speak. If, on the other hand, you felt that you had a better model for enzyme behaviour which involved differently behaved basic entities and operations, you'd best present those ideas using new words. Good luck with that: paradigm shifting is backbreaking work."

Yes if I replaced "abstract a proton from the terminal methyl group" it wouldn't be any different than "a bond pixie smacks a frobnockle off a slithy tove" provided "The Famous Brett Wat speak" could be translated into acceptable terms. You've missed the argument completely. The argument is that just in my little field a whole host of observations using a great many different techniques done by a great many different individuals over the course of many decades have been done. It all builds on itself, it all interrelates, and major contradictions are not seen. The explanatory and predictive power is enormous. Along comes somebody who wants to know why supernatural Bond Pixies haven't been considered. Yet who and what Bond Pixies are, and how/when/why they make an enzyme work, how this is different from the established view, and what exactly are the predictive and explanatory powers of this concept are not defined, nor is any observed evidence presented. Until those terms are defined, and somebody comes up with an objective way to detect and measure Bond Pixies and how they make an enzyme function, they are not a useful concept. Same goes for evolution, cosmology, dermatology, or any other field of scientific inquiry and any other undefined supernatural entity acting in any undefined way.

As you say paradigm shifting is hard work. But instead doing any work at all, creationists come in claiming without evidence

no new species were made.

Speciation has been observed.

And by "evolution / secular humanism movement", you mean "science".

(1) "Evolution is just a THEORY"

This is the most common (and the most disappointing) creationist argument I hear on a regular basis. While it's true that evolution is a theory, this statement is made in an attempt to cast doubt on evolution by implying that evolution is akin to a wild guess that scientists came up with after a night of heavy drinking. Newsflash: it's not going to work. Most educated people understand that you're confusing the word "theory" (which means an explanation or model that is capable of predicting future events) with the word "hypothesis" (which means an educated guess). Calling evolution a "theory" isn't an insult. For the millionth time, I will repeat this: gravity is also "just" a theory (for example, google the "General Theory of Relativity"). I might even add that most scientists would consider evolution to be a better-supported theory than gravity, because of the fact that gravity cannot (currently) be quantized, despite decades of attempts. If you want to debate evolution, fine- but don't play these childish word games.

(2) "But evolution has never been observed!"

Most creationists, faced with the mind-numbingly obvious fact that viruses and other creatures (like those famous moths) evolve right in front of our eyes, make a distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is "proven", they say, because it only represents a change in allele frequency within a species. Macro-evolution, defined as change from one species to another (aka "speciation"), is more of a problem for creationists. They often insist that speciation has never been observed outside of laboratory experiments. This is blatantly false. Many examples of speciation have been observed in the wild- for example check out this large list of peer-reviewed journal articles here and also here.

The next step that creationists take in response to this rebuttal is to claim that speciation proves nothing- only a change from one kind of organism to another will prove evolution. What's a "kind", you might ask? No one knows. Creationists will give vague examples, such as saying that a dog is a different kind of animal than a whale, but a rigid definition has never (to my knowledge) been offered or universally accepted by the major creationist organizations. It's just a convenient goal post which keeps getting pushed back every time new evidence is found. The fact is, speciation is rather easy to observe in organisms which breed relatively quickly. Observing the creation of, say, a new phylum or order could take many millennia. Unfortunately, human civilization hasn't been around that long. Plus, standard biological nomenclature isn't based on evolutionary criteria, so it isn't clear to me that equating a "kind" with a phylum or order is meaningful in this context.

(3) "But Intelligent Design is different than Biblical Creationism! It's a purely scientific alternative theory."

Don't try to pretend that "Intelligent Design" is somehow different than creationism. Especially don't try to pretend that it's a scientific theory. Seriously. No one's buying it. "Intelligent Design" is a disguise- a secular-sounding term thrown over religious creationism to try to smuggle it into a state-funded science class

(1) "Evolution is just a THEORY"

This is the most common (and the most disappointing) creationist argument I hear on a regular basis. While it's true that evolution is a theory, this statement is made in an attempt to cast doubt on evolution by implying that evolution is akin to a wild guess that scientists came up with after a night of heavy drinking. Newsflash: it's not going to work. Most educated people understand that you're confusing the word "theory" (which means an explanation or model that is capable of predicting future events) with the word "hypothesis" (which means an educated guess). Calling evolution a "theory" isn't an insult. For the millionth time, I will repeat this: gravity is also "just" a theory (for example, google the "General Theory of Relativity"). I might even add that most scientists would consider evolution to be a better-supported theory than gravity, because of the fact that gravity cannot (currently) be quantized, despite decades of attempts. If you want to debate evolution, fine- but don't play these childish word games.

(2) "But evolution has never been observed!"

Most creationists, faced with the mind-numbingly obvious fact that viruses and other creatures (like those famous moths) evolve right in front of our eyes, make a distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is "proven", they say, because it only represents a change in allele frequency within a species. Macro-evolution, defined as change from one species to another (aka "speciation"), is more of a problem for creationists. They often insist that speciation has never been observed outside of laboratory experiments. This is blatantly false. Many examples of speciation have been observed in the wild- for example check out this large list of peer-reviewed journal articles here and also here.

The next step that creationists take in response to this rebuttal is to claim that speciation proves nothing- only a change from one kind of organism to another will prove evolution. What's a "kind", you might ask? No one knows. Creationists will give vague examples, such as saying that a dog is a different kind of animal than a whale, but a rigid definition has never (to my knowledge) been offered or universally accepted by the major creationist organizations. It's just a convenient goal post which keeps getting pushed back every time new evidence is found. The fact is, speciation is rather easy to observe in organisms which breed relatively quickly. Observing the creation of, say, a new phylum or order could take many millennia. Unfortunately, human civilization hasn't been around that long. Plus, standard biological nomenclature isn't based on evolutionary criteria, so it isn't clear to me that equating a "kind" with a phylum or order is meaningful in this context.

(3) "But Intelligent Design is different than Biblical Creationism! It's a purely scientific alternative theory."

Don't try to pretend that "Intelligent Design" is somehow different than creationism. Especially don't try to pretend that it's a scientific theory. Seriously. No one's buying it. "Intelligent Design" is a disguise- a secular-sounding term thrown over religious creationism to try to smuggle it into a state-funded science class

There are even fossilized dinosaur tracks with human footprints going through them.

No there aren't

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/tsite.html

(Damn, I replied and it vapourized. Here's the bulk from memory)

And we do have a certain responsibility to reject illogical, or unscientific theories, even if they are the best ones available.

Present your data which shows evolution to be illogical or unscientific. Also note that the misinformation about abiogeneis has been debunked.

Creationists have no valid scientific data to back up their crazy claims, they've never had a paper in a peer-reviewed science journal, they only have "life is so complex a god must have designed it!" Feel free to believe in whatever you want but Creationism is not science, if it were there'd be at least one publication or fact that the Creationists would announce to the world. They have nothing other than a misguided attack on the scientific method and facts. Creationists jumping up and down screaming about what they want to be true isn't science, it's religion.

I recognize your name from /., you're a smart guy. So rather than wasting your time attacking things you find uncomfortable why not find just one verifiable fact to support the Creationist myth. Or you could disprove facts accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community with contradictory data of your own. That is, after all, how science really works.

This Michael Behe?

He's been disproven by real scientists so many times it'll make your head spin, just google away. But feel free to pick and choose what you want to believe rather than facts if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

Ok, lets start with the age of the earth. The moon moves away from the earth at a rate of about 1 inch per year. Billions of years ago, the moon would have been part of the earth.

Erosion wears away at the surface of earth's land. After billions of years, why is surface of the earth not completely flat because of erosion?

The magnetic field of the earth is gradually declining in strength. Even 100 thousand years ago, the magnetic field would have been so strong that any living organism would be squished.

It's really not fair that you associate ID with geocentricism. Actually, there are a good number of scientists who support ID with actual scientific evidence.